Month: November 2022

At a moment the US says it is nearing its longtime goal of closing the Guantanamo Bay prison facility which once held hundreds of suspected terrorists during the so-called Global War on Terror, the White House is mulling to expand the Migrant Operations Center located at the same US Naval base off Cuba.

In particular, the administration is looking at housing fleeing Haitians at Guantanamo Bay amid spiraling unrest on the Caribbean island-nation – part of a broader plan the US has been pushing for UN military intervention to stabilize the country as its government faces collapse at the hands of armed gangs.

The migrant facility is separate from the notorious prison for terror suspects and has been in operation for over three decades. It typically houses migrants intercepted by the US Coast Guard in regional waters and off the southern US coast. 

But now it could serve as a crucial hub for US efforts to help stabilize the security situation in Haiti, as NBC describes: 

The White House National Security Council is asking the Department of Homeland Security what number of Haitian migrants would require the U.S. to designate a third country, known as a “lily pad,” to hold and process Haitian migrants who are intercepted at sea and what number would overwhelm a lily pad country and require Haitians to be taken to Guantánamo, according to the document.

A series of National Security Council meetings have reportedly been held to focus on the emerging crisis over the last several days, as a new flood of Haitian migrants and refugees are expected along the southern US border.

It was actually mostly Haitian migrants present among the large caravan of some 12,000 which camped under an international bridge in Del Rio, Texas in September 2021. 

We previously reviewed the chaotic and unpredictable situation in Haiti as follows: 

Armed groups have sized control of several key trade and distribution hubs in Haiti, creating dire shortages in basic necessities, such as water, and even forcing a significant number of hospitals, businesses and other institutions to close their doors.

Haiti’s descent into chaos accelerated in July 2021 after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. In the weeks following his death, then-acting PM Claude Joseph briefly took over as president, but was soon forced from power under international pressure after a bloc of countries led by the United States declared their support for Henry. The new leader reportedly has close ties to a suspect in Moise’s assassination, and even continued contact with him after the murder.

NBC says the Biden administration is bracing for the moment there’s a mass exodus from the island as the chaos spreads and resources dwindle, and as people grow more desperate.

Haitians are protesting their government’s request to bring U.S. troops into Haiti.

Haiti has been subject to foreign intervention at least three times. The last intervention brought a UN peacekeeping mission, which has since faced multiple allegations of abuse. pic.twitter.com/KSRPhRLxm3

— AJ+ (@ajplus) October 21, 2022

“The Biden administration predicts that when the fuel is no longer blocked and migrants are able to buy gas to power boats, there could be a mass exodus of Haitians trying to make the dangerous journey to the U.S. by sea, the U.S. officials said,” according to NBC.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

The UN has an interesting report on investments needed to address climate change. Let’s tune in…

Finance Flows from UN Report

Scaremongering Continues

The Guardian reports UN finds ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’

The UN environment report analysed the gap between the CO2 cuts pledged by countries and the cuts needed to limit any rise in global temperature to 1.5C, the internationally agreed target. Progress has been “woefully inadequate” it concluded.

Current pledges for action by 2030, if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5C and catastrophic extreme weather around the world. A rise of 1C to date has caused climate disasters in countries from Pakistan to Puerto Rico.

If the long-term pledges by countries to hit net zero emissions by 2050 were delivered, global temperature would rise by 1.8C. But the glacial pace of action means meeting even this temperature limit was not credible, the UN report said.

A study published this week found “large consensus” across all published research that new oil and gas fields are “incompatible” with the 1.5C target.

What Would It Cost?

Hooray! Only $4 trillion to 6 trillion per year.

“A global transformation from a heavily fossil fuel- and unsustainable land use-dependent economy to a low-carbon economy is expected to require investments of at least US$4–6 trillion a year,” stated the UN report (page 26 of 132).

Q: US$4–6 trillion a year for how many years?
A: Based on figure ES.6 (lead chart) least eight years.

Q: What Percent of GDP?
A: 4 to 9 percent for developing countries, and 2 to 4 percent for developed countries.

And developing countries will gladly fork over up to 9 percent of GDP every year for eight years.

Yeah, right. 

Meanwhile, the EU is burning more trees and coal. Burning trees is magically deemed environmentally neutral.

What a hoot.  

Exploring the Massive Clean Energy Boondoggle of Burning Trees as Carbon Neutral

Please consider Exploring the Massive Clean Energy Boondoggle of Burning Trees as Carbon Neutral

To the shock of everyone with any semblance of common sense, we are clearcutting forests and burning the trees based on the idea the process is carbon neutral.

26 of France’s 56 Nuclear Reactors are Offline for Pipe Corrosion or Maintenance

Also note 26 of France’s 56 Nuclear Reactors are Offline for Pipe Corrosion or Maintenance

Gear up for a cold Winter in France. The protests have started already.

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Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation may recall the episode where extra-dimensional dickhead “Q” is stripped of his powers for spreading chaos throughout the universe.

Well, Elon Musk just did that to Twitter’s content moderation thought police with just weeks to go before midterms – cutting the number of employees who can access censorship tools from hundreds to around 15 people last week, and reducing their ability to influence discussion on the platform.

According to Bloomberg, Musk and his ‘war cabinet‘ have frozen some employee access to internal tools used for content moderation and the enforcement of other policies, neutering staff’s abilities to ‘alter or penalize accounts that break rules around misleading information, offensive posts and hate speech.’

They also won’t be able to banish highly credentialed doctors and researchers posting divergent Covid-19 narratives.

All but the most ‘high-impact violations set for manual review’ will remain on the platform, according to people familiar with the matter.

Twitter staff use dashboards, known as agent tools, to carry out actions like banning or suspending an account that is deemed to have breached policy. Detection of policy breaches can either be flagged by other Twitter users or detected automatically, but taking action on them requires human input and access to the dashboard tools. Those tools have been suspended since last week, the people said.

This restriction is part of a broader plan to freeze Twitter’s software code to keep employees from pushing changes to the app during the transition to new ownership. Typically this level of access is given to a group of people numbering in the hundreds, and that was initially reduced to about 15 people last week, according to two of the people, who asked not to be named discussing internal decisions. Musk completed his $44 billion deal to take the company private on Oct. 27. -Bloomberg

On Sunday,Twitter employees had limited access to the internal tools to police Brazil’s presidential election.

Meanwhile, the company is still using automated enforcement technology as well as third-party contractors.

The restricted ability to restrict free speech has given Twitter’s Trust and Safety Team the vapors – with employees worried that the company will be short-handed during the runup to the Nov. 8 midterm election. Recall the Trust and Safety Team was headed by now-fired Vijaya Gadde – who would have had a large role (perhaps even the final decision) to ban ZeroHedge in February, 2020 for suggesting that Covid-19 was the result of a lab leak (and that we ‘doxxed’ a Wuhan lab employee using publicly available data – aka not doxxing).

Internally, employees say, Musk has raised questions about a number of the policies, and has zeroed in on a few specific rules that he wants the team to review. The first is Twitter’s general misinformation policy, which penalizes posts that include falsehoods about topics like election outcomes and Covid-19. Musk wants the policy to be more specific, according to people familiar with the matter.

Musk has also asked the team to review Twitter’s hateful conduct policy, according to the people, specifically a section that says users can be penalized for “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” -Bloomberg

On Monday, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, tweeted on Monday that the company was addressing an increase in offensive posts.

“Since Saturday, we’ve been focused on addressing the surge in hateful conduct on Twitter. We’ve made measurable progress, removing more than 1500 accounts and reducing impressions on this content to nearly zero,” he wrote, adding “We’re primarily dealing with a focused, short-term trolling campaign.”

In short:

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

The total cost to British taxpayers is now close to exceeding £2.5 billion a year and is likely only to increase as a processing backlog grows…

People thought to be migrants who undertook the crossing from France in small boats and were picked up in the Channel, arrive to be disembarked from a small transfer boat which ferried them from a larger British border force vessel that didn’t come into the port, in Dover, south east England, Friday, June 17, 2022. Britain’s response to the increase in migrants crossing the English Channel on small boats is poor and officials are clearly overwhelmed on some days, an independent inspection found in a report published Thursday, July 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

The British government is currently spending £6.8 million (€7.84 million) a day on housing prospective asylum seekers and Afghan nationals in hotels across the country, the Home Affairs Select Committee learned on Wednesday.

Hearing testimony from Home Office staff and border chiefs, U.K. lawmakers sitting on the parliamentary committee were briefed that over 38,000 prospective asylum seekers had landed in Britain via the English Channel in 936 small boats so far this year, while a further 28,000 crossing attempts had been thwarted by French authorities.

The majority of those who arrived have been placed in hotel accommodation due to makeshift processing centers already reaching full capacity.

Abi Tierney, the director general for customer services at the Home Office, revealed the total cost to the British taxpayer for the hotel accommodation being block-booked for months in advance by the U.K. government is £5.6 million per day for Channel migrants, while a further £1.2 million per day is being spent on accommodating Afghan nationals evacuated from the country following the Taliban’s return to power last year. That is a total figure of £2.48 billion (€2.87 billion) per year.

When the committee chair Dame Diana Johnson asked Ms. Tierney whether that figure was “likely to go up,” the Home Office staffer replied: “Yes.”

It is likely to increase because many of those residing in hotels have been doing so for at least a year, with Ms. Tierney revealing that of the thousands of asylum seekers who arrived via the Channel last year, 96 percent are still awaiting a decision to their asylum request. Furthermore, of the 4 percent that have been processed, 85 percent of the claims have been successful.

The Home Office typically prioritizes claims whereby applicants are deemed vulnerable, and the triage of claims is not necessarily based on how long an applicant has resided in temporary accommodation.

The hotel accommodation is not only a costly measure but has had a knock-on effect with a number of weddings and celebratory occasions booked months in advance having been canceled by hotels who have taken up commercial contracts with the Home Office to block-book rooms intended for asylum seekers.

With more and more arrivals, a huge backlog in processing and an ever-rising bill to the taxpayers, the crisis is only deepening.

Clandestine Channel Threat Commander Dan O’Mahoney revealed that of the 38,000 people who have arrived via small boats onto British shores this year, 12,000 are Albanian nationals of which 10,000 are single, adult males.

This figure shows an exponential rise in Albanian nationals arriving through irregular channels in Britain, O’Mahoney said.

“Two years ago, 50 Albanians arrived in the U.K. in small boats. Last year, it was 800,” he told the committee.

Overall, roughly 1-2 percent of the whole single male population of Albania has attempted to come to the U.K., O’Mahoney added.

The rise has been exponential, and we think that is in the main due to the fact that Albanian criminal gangs have gained a foothold in the north of France and have begun facilitating very large numbers of migrants.

Clandestine Channel Threat Commander Dan O’Mahoney

Despite reiterated pledges by Conservative politicians to take back control of the English Channel, the world’s busiest shipping lane which now plays a pivotal role in Britain’s migration crisis, the number of arrivals has continued to rise sharply throughout this parliament.

Home Secretary (at the time – and now freshly reinstalled) Suella Braverman told the Conservative party conference last month that it was “her dream” to see a plane full of asylum seekers be sent to deportation centers established by the Home Office in the African country of Rwanda, a keystone policy of Boris Johnson’s administration introduced by Braverman’s predecessor Priti Patel.

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called last year’s processing figures for asylum seekers “shocking and irresponsible,” claiming it plays into the hands of criminal gangs and “leaves refugees without the support they need.”

It is so far unclear how Labour would handle the migration crisis on Britain’s southern shores in a more efficient manner, or how the party would tackle bogus claims, with its leader Sir Keir Starmer simply stating previously that a Labour government would implement an “immigration system based on compassion and dignity.”

Several developing countries are more than a little upset after newly minted UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak decided to snub the Cop27 climate talks, and to keep King Charles from attending, The Guardian reports.

“I can understand why the king was asked not to attend – keeping him out of the fray. However, as the principal UK policymaker and the Cop26 president, the PM should have led the summit,” said Belize’s ambassador to the UN, Carlos Fuller. “It seems as if they are washing their hands of leadership.”

Sunak’s reason for not going – to concentrate on the UK’s economic statement – was questioned. Mohamed Nasheed, speaker of the Maldives parliament and former president, said: “[It’s] very worrying that the UK thought there was anything more serious than climate change. You can count the pennies but might lose the pounds.”

Developed countries were also concerned. One senior government aide said: “It appears as if the new UK prime minister wants to wash his hands of the previously strong role the government played on international climate action. It’s another stab in the back for [Cop26 president Alok] Sharma.” -Guardian

Last year’s Cop26 talks held in Glasgow were notably headed by Boris Johnson, and ended with a global consensus that global temperatures need to rise no more than 1.5C. The conference was chaired by cabinet minister Alok Sharma – who will not be at Cop27.

Sunak will instead speak at a reception for businesses and environmental leaders at Buckingham Palace this Friday, just 48 hours before Cop27 starts.

“The prime minister is not expected to attend Cop27 and this is due to other pressing domestic commitments including preparations for the Autumn Budget. The UK will be fully represented by other senior ministers as well as the Cop president Alok Sharma,” said a #10 spokeswoman on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson may attend this year’s talks, following precedent set by former leaders including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

“For all Boris Johnson’s ills, no one can reasonably accuse him of ignoring or not prioritising climate action. The UK has benefited from the leadership of Alok Sharma and Lord Goldsmith,” one Commonwealth diplomat told The Guardian. “One hopes [Sunak’s stance] is not a backsliding of the positions the UK has taken in recent years on both areas.”

It is unusual for the head of state of an important Cop not to attend the handover. After convening the landmark Paris agreement of 2015, French president François Hollande was warmly received at the following UN climate Cop, in Marrakech.

The UK still holds the presidency of the UN negotiations, until the reins are handed over to the Egyptian government at the Cop27 summit in Sharm El-Sheikh. This puts the British government in a key position in the long-running climate talks, and the prime minister would normally be expected to hold closed-door bilateral meetings with counterparts around the world, focusing on the climate but including other subjects, such as the Ukraine war and the global economic crisis.

Egypt is particularly miffed at Sunak’s decision for some reason, voicing “disappointment” according to the report.

Perhaps it’s time to send the Gretas. Or the bees. Or the Gretas with bees in their mouth so that when they bark they shoot bees at you.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

A potentially deadly new strain of COVID has been created in a University lab in London, according to a report.

The Daily Mail reports that researchers at Imperial College London have hybridised the original Wuhan strain of the disease with both the Omicron or Delta variants separately.

The College is yet to reveal how effective the strain they have created is, and has denied that the work constitutes gain of function, the process now widely believed to have been responsible for the original strain in Wuhan.

Molecular biology expert Dr. Richard Ebright warned that the new mutant strain, which was injected into hamsters in London, “is insanity, both in terms of the redundancy and waste,” and that it has zero “foreseeable practical applications.”

At least four labs on two continents now have constructed non-natural, lab-generated viruses that retain the high immune escape of Omicron and acquire higher severity than Omicron and that, as such, are reasonably expected to increase transmission or pathogenicity in humans. https://t.co/jKeDXXNY2G

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) October 28, 2022

“This should be a wake-up call,” the biologist urged, adding “If the world wishes to avoid new pandemic waves and pandemics caused by lab-generated enhanced potential pandemic pathogens, then it is urgently necessary to restrict senseless high-risk, low-benefit research that creates enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and to implement effective national oversight, with force of law, on such research.”

This should be a wake-up call.

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) October 28, 2022

Dr. Ebright further warned that the development is huge “especially, in terms of the risk of triggering a new pandemic wave upon accidental or deliberate release of the laboratory-generated viruses.”

If the world wishes to avoid new new pandemics caused by lab-generated pathogens, then it is urgently necessary to restrict high-risk, low-benefit research that creates enhanced potential pandemic pathogens and to implement effective national oversight with force of law.”

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) October 28, 2022

“[T]here is no justification for intentionally making potential pandemic viruses more transmissible. The consequences of an accident could be too horrific, and such engineered viruses are not needed for vaccines.”

A Plea for Making Virus Research Safer https://t.co/orioZLXQm8

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) October 30, 2022

The development comes after Boston University created a new strain with an 80 percent KILL RATE in a similar fashion.

NEW: After Boston University created a new COVID with an 80% kill rate, it’s now been revealed Imperial College London has done nearly the same thing, merging the deadly original virus with the highly contagious Omicron. Critics are calling it “insanity” and “playing with fire.”

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 29, 2022

A former director of the Israeli Government’s Institute for Biological Research, Professor Shmuel Shapira, described the research as “playing with fire.” 

This should be totally forbbiden, Its playing with fire.
Boston University CREATES new Covid strain that has an 80% kill rate https://t.co/4zSmwcsjmi

— Prof Shmuel C. Shapira MD MPH (@shmuelcshapira) October 17, 2022

Last week, a new interim report released by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions concluded that the origins of Covid-19 more likely than not came from a “research-related incident,” rather than “natural zoonotic spillover.”

“While precedent of previous outbreaks of human infections from contact with animals favors the hypothesis that a natural zoonotic spillover is responsible for the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 that resulted in the COVID-19 pandemic was most likely the result of a research-related incident,” the report states, while conceding that “This conclusion is not intended to be dispositive.”

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While many parts of Europe, from Germany and France to the UK, enjoy unseasonably warm weather, a new three-month forecast indicates the increasing possibility that ‘Old Man Winter’ is set to move in. 

Bloomberg reports UK’s Met Office’s three-month outlook shows a colder-than-normal winter is ahead. The forecast said there’s a 25% chance the season will be cold, a 60% chance of it being around average, and 15% of it being mild. 

“The likelihood of a colder three-month period overall is slightly greater than normal,” the forecasts said.

Warm weather has been an important factor in plunging natural gas prices across Europe. Dutch natural gas futures, Europe’s benchmark, have fallen more than 70% since late August to 92.50 euros per megawatt-hour. 

We wrote a note a little more than a week ago titled “Germany May Stave Off Worst Of Energy Crisis As Mild Temps Forecast Through Mid-November.”

However, abnormally warm weather is set to dissipate by mid-November across North West Europe and be more in line with 30-year averages. 

Colder weather is also ahead for Germany. 

And the UK. 

The good news is EU NatGas storage is 94% full despite reduced NatGas shipments from Russia. Shipments via Ukraine are one of the last remaining Russian supply lines to western Europe after the bombing of Nord Stream pipelines. The US is set to ramp up LNG shipments this winter. 

“The weather is quickly becoming a major factor as an unusually hot October kept gas demand in check across Europe and brought some relief for policymakers. The start of the heating season has been pushed back, allowing more gas to be injected into storage sites. The safety buffer could play a key role when the temperatures do drop, and consumption picks up again,” Bloomberg said. 

Even with NatGas storage levels above a 10-year average for this time of year, colder weather in the second half of November could start drawing on inventories — and at some point, NatGas prices will reverse.