According to British academic Matthew Hedges, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened its friendship with the Russian Federation since Russia invaded Ukraine. A fact that taken together with the UAE joining the BRICS alliance, may prove to be a major test of the strength of the West to maintain hegemony over the world order. The chief question now for both sides is whether the UAE will stop acting as a gateway for Russian access to sanctioned dual-use goods. In a war whose victors may well be determined by which side’s new technologies are most effective and not compromised, it is critical to the West that Russia not gain access to weapons through illegal third-nation technology transfers.
The Biden Administration’s love of mandates – forcing people to comply whether they want to or not – extends to automobiles and fuels. In his first year of office, President Biden issued an executive order that included a goal of “50 percent of all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in 2030 be zero-emission vehicles.” The disconnect between Biden’s EV policy and the American public is playing havoc with U.S. automakers, who just two years ago “seemed to be in raptures” with Biden’s EV policy. As Biden announced his mandate, he warbled, “We’ve just got to step up – government, industry, labor working together. We have a playbook, and it’s going to work.”
Some Western nations appear to be waking up to the reality that they are being duped – that Net Zero is a fabrication of their own egos that other nations hardly take seriously. Just don’t count on the world’s two leading English-speaking nations, or the plutocrats in Paris, Geneva, and Davos, to follow suit. They still talk as if they still control the unfolding of world affairs. Yet the modern-day utopians in the U.S. and the UK still cling to the myth that emerging superpower nations like China, India, and Russia will bow before the World Economic Forum and United Nations grifters. Why have the U.S. and the UK backed away from fossil fuels even as other nations double down to upgrade their own economies with coal? One might believe that Western leaders just want to transfer their guilt for mismanaging their power by punishing the citizens who let them do it?
[E]ven as we memorialize genuine acts of heroism, we cannot ignore those who have capitalized on America’s collective grief. Among these are Donato Tramuto, and several others who have fraudulently asserted their involvement in the events of 9/11 to enhance their professional standing. In spite of leveraging a dubious 9/11 narrative to build a philanthropic empire and political cachet, Tramuto asks for Maine voters’ trust.
There seems to be a connection between Heads of State seeking to silence dissent and the threat, and reality, of war in the world today. War, after all, has been used for millennia to rally “the people” behind a distraction that keeps them from focusing on their loss of freedom. The sad reality is that, when the thirst for power and control cannot be quenched, it is the intimidated or indoctrinated masses who suffer the most. It was quite a shock, then, for the world to learn that Kosovo prime minister Albin Kurti, who began his career organizing nonviolent protests against the Serbian regime and was later arrested by the Serbian police and put in prison, would resort to anti-democratic attacks on major media outlets in his own nation during the summer of 2023 – and would wage an anti-democratic campaign against Kosovo citizens of Serbian origin. The Putin doctrine of distraction, suppression and control, only recently festering publicly within nations like Serbia cannot be ignored by Washington. The problem facing the West however is that certain Western nations and nongovernmental organizations, too, have been infected with this “distract and control” disease of the paranoid.
What a paradox! The Scandinavian nations -- Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland – remain at the top of the World Economic Forum’s Energy Transition Index for 2023. Yet Sweden and Finland rely heavily on nuclear energy, and Norway is a significant producer of oil and gas. Norway’s geography makes hydro-a-affordable, so it hardly uses fossil fuels for electricity. Norway also leads the world in electric vehicles -79 percent of new registrations in 2022 were EVs - but has no intention of foregoing its primary source of export revenue. North Sea oil and gas will bring Norway $131 billion in revenues in 2023 alone. Swedes and Finns, while relying significantly on hydropower, are for now, firm believers in nuclear energy. Finland just fired up the first European nuclear plant in 15 years, and Sweden is on a path to double its own nuclear capacity. Only Denmark is backing away from fuels the World Economic Forum does not declare to be “renewable.”
On the same day that Hurricane (Tropical Storm) Hilary brought record rainfall to the Los Angeles area (nearly 6 inches to Lake Palmdale and 4.26 inches on the UCLA campus), a magnitude 5.1 earthquake occurred in nearby Ojai. To the truly enlightened, these rare disasters should serve as a warning from on high that the Golden State is headed for a massive downfall – punishment for trying to force smog-fighting electric vehicles on smog-free America and the world. And rightfully so. After all, every hurricane, every heat wave, every forest fire, and every flood today anywhere in the world is blamed on climate change. Climate change even eats children’s homework! Yet the same humans who cannot stop the heat, the wind, the water, and the fire believe that they can control the climate through electrification.
Thirty-five years ago, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas wrote a book entitled, The Death of Ethics in America, citing (among many others) a 1987 Wall Street Journal headline, “Ethics can be nice, but they can be a handicap, some executives declare.” [I]t is arguable that only a society lacking in ethical standards could produce the recent FTX customer funds scandal; and worse, when charged with fraud and conspiracy, the CEO could honestly (yet naively) say, “I don’t think I tried to do anything wrong.” And yet despite perhaps veering off the ethical course our forefathers sought for us, in politics, academics, business and in life, on the horizon, there is optimism and tangible prospects for lasting change.
According to Lauren Fix, the Car Coach®, China is well on its way to becoming a world leader in climate policy and is quickly taking over the electric car industry – and thus (barring mandate reversals) the entire auto industry. Will Europe and the U.S. admit they have been snookered by the Chinese into an all-EV future in an effort to “save the planet”? Meanwhile, China mocks “net zero” as it builds more coal-fired power plants to power the manufacture of cheap Chinese EVs that can easily undercut every other nation’s auto industry. Can the West even come close to creating a China-free EV supply chain big enough to meet global demand before the Chinese capture the world market for themselves?
The higher costs for auto insurance only add to the already-higher costs of purchasing an EV, then procuring a personal charging station and spending more money to upgrade home wiring boxes (especially for older homes). The inconvenience of having your nearly new vehicle totaled – and then having to wait perhaps months for a replacement – further adds to the “buyer avoidance” that has frustrated those who demand an immediate end to the traditional gasoline-powered vehicles that most people around the world rely upon. As automakers continue to lose money on EVs and consumers worldwide continue to prefer the vehicles they have learned to trust over decades, will EV mandates fall by the wayside – or will elites again double down, believing that “resistance is futile”?
The primary reason for higher costs and longer development times is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which appears designed to thwart any new power plant development. Way back in 1992, the Reagan-appointed NRC chairman Kenneth Rogers boasted that his agency “had been pushed in the right direction [obstructing new nuclear reactors] because of the pleas and protests of nuclear watchdog groups.” A 2016 study by the Breakthrough Institute confirms this sobering fact. Senior author Jessica Lovering explains that, “The biggest thing we found is that there’s nothing intrinsic to nuclear that leads to cost escalations. It depends on what policies are in place, on the market dynamics. You get very different cases in different countries.”
A full year before the Biden Administration enacted the Inflation Reduction Act, French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled his France 2030 green investment plan that commits 30 billion euros (about US$35 billion) to reducing carbon dioxide emissions while also revitalizing France’s industrial sector.This, on top of the 100-billion-euro allocation for pandemic recovery approved earlier, much of which was dedicated to developing green energy, is enhancing France’s reputation as a top destination for foreign direct investment (FDI). But the forgotten driver of the French renaissance is likely the nation’s generous research tax credit (CIR) system.The CIR is Europe’s most generous tax incentive in support of innovation, and the most generous of the 30 OECD countries with similar tax incentives, according to journalist Frederique Perrotin. More than 20,000 companies benefit from the R&D tax credit every year, saving about 7 billion euros in combined taxes. This, says Perrotin, makes France “the country with the highest relative weighting of all private research grants in relation to GDP.”
Kosovar journalist Adriatik Kelmendi expressed shock that this kind of censorship against the nation’s leading media outlet could occur in a democracy, done to intimidate “a people whose ideal to live freely has never been suppressed,” he stated on Klan Kosova’s website, in remarks translated from Albanian. The station, he said, “maintains a critical and watchdog approach toward various phenomena within the institutions of the government and society.”
The American south may see many hot days in summer, and, yes, the highest temperature on record was 134o F in Death Valley (in 1913), but countries like Qatar, Libya, Mali, and even Mexico are much hotter – and yet millions of people live in these nations. India, with over a billion people, has an average daily high temperature of 87.5o F. Does Lassman believe India is uninhabitable?
Ahead of the Fourth of July weekend, on just one day (June 28), over 1,200 flights were canceled, and another 5,600 were delayed. Again, good news for the planet! Airplanes account for up to 3.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions – far more than gas stoves. And global CO2 emissions from international air travel more than doubled from 1990 to 2017. So, 1,200 flights canceled help the environment, we are told. There is an exception, though, as John Kerry once so clearly explained. For guys like him and his fellow Davos billionaires, a private jet is “the only choice for somebody like me.” And you can bet that Al Gore and his chums at Davos are not dining on insects as they rake in the cash from scaring the bejeezus out of our children and gullible adults.
The euphoria of EV zealots is rarely challenged directly by little things like facts – like the fact that the vast majority of people just do not want one. A recent Rasmussen survey found that 52% of American adults think EVs are not practical compared to just 25% who think otherwise; the rest are just not sure. Ten years ago, 19% favored EVs – that’s a 6% jump in a full decade. According to the 2022 Deloitte Global Automotive Study, more than two-thirds of Americans said their next vehicle will not have any kind of electrification, while only 5% saw their next vehicle as an EV; 17% would consider a hybrid car. In southeast Asia, China, and India majorities also had no desire for an EV.
The 2022 African Youth Survey, sponsored by the Ichikovitz Family Foundation, found that 78 percent of youth surveyed from 14 countries want to start their own businesses, and two-thirds believed their nation is in the process of creating a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. But that won’t happen unless national – and local – governments, lenders, and investors both inform eager, young would-be entrepreneurs of ways they can take advantage of this big change in economic potential. The AfCFTA is now five years old, but a huge majority of young Africans know little about how they can leverage the free trade agreement to their economic advantage, and fewer still have acquired the capital to take advantage. That’s not good enough.
A report issued last September by Human Rights Watch cited Russian media reports that over 3.4 million Ukrainians — including 555,000 children – had “entered” the Russian Federation from Ukraine. The humanitarian organization called these transfers “a serious violation of the laws of war that constitute war crimes and potential crimes against humanity. White Ribbon has been developing support programs for refugees who have suffered from domestic violence, with special emphases on workplace gender equality, early gender equality education for children, affordable and supportive housing, and female economic empowerment.
Despite the “thaw” in Europe, hardly any European politician is grappling with disparities in global temperature data or evidence of a growing (not shrinking) Antarctic ice shelf. Questioning “the science” – even if “the science” is partly pure speculation – is grounds for deplatforming across the European (and American) metaverse. Questioning the economics, therefore, is the only viable brake on the climate lemmings. The questions are now coming rapidly – but the absolutists refuse to budge. Will Europe follow the wisdom of Giorgia Meloni and the Norwegians – and belatedly, Emmanuel Macron? Or will the Barons of Brussels continue to push Europe over the edge?
New York state senator George Borrello (a Republican) introduced a bill that would require that the manufacture and distribution of electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar collectors, and infrastructure to upgrade the power grid be conducted using only wind and solar energy – no fossil fuels, not even nuclear energy, not in New York State. Borrello explained that, “We are being told that we must make an immediate change to wind and solar as we are polluting our state and planet. If that is true, there should be no fossil fuel energy used to create wind and solar technology.” After all, he said, “the [ongoing, extensive] environmental toll from coal-fired power, diesel fuel, and the mining of rare-earth metals … exists at cross-purposes with the stated goals of those advancing the climate agenda.”
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the lockdowns that even today are encouraging government workers in particular to stay home and work (if at all) remotely, the value of downtown office space in many U.S. cities has been a question in the minds of the U.S. and global investment communities. The result – for the ready large-scale investor – is the best buying opportunity in a very long time.
Is it any wonder, then, that some less famous people have also gone off the deep end? They are surely influenced by the hordes of jet-setters at the World Bank, European Union, United Nations, and other fat-cat institutions that decry “climate change” as a catastrophe or a crisis. Meanwhile, have you heard Greta Thunberg, Antifa, Extinction Rebellion, and other such groups condemn Gore, Kerry, and their ilk for their massive use of jet fuel and electricity? Have they blocked entrances to the IPCC meetings or other jet-fuel-guzzler events? “Eco-anxiety” – the chronic fear of environmental doom – is rampant on both sides of the Atlantic (and in many areas worldwide). Scientists at Imperial College London say eco-anxiety “risks exacerbating health and social inequalities between those more or less vulnerable to these psychological impacts.”
shisekedi has resurrected the careers of convicted war criminal Jean-Pierre Bemba and convicted embezzler Vital Kamerhe and sought to bar, through spurious legislation, likely main rival Moise Katumbi from running for the presidency. This latter move, which has been in the works since 2021, was recently again condemned by the Congolese Association for Access to Justice (ACAJ). This sinister campaign, which still awaits a final vote, specifically targets Katumbi, the popular former Governor of Katanga Province, who did not announce his candidacy for president until December 2022. The legislation would bar anyone without two Congolese parents from seeking the presidency, thereby excluding Katumbi, whose father was a Greek-born Jew of Sephardic descent.
The Beatles once sang, “All you need is love.” But will Kamala Harris’ professed LOVE for electric school buses – plus the $1 billion in taxpayer subsidies she announced last October – be enough to usher in the new paradise?Hmm. Let’s do the math. The $1 billion in rebates pledged is to help purchase 2,500 electric school buses in some 391 school districts around the nation. But there are in fact about 500,000 school buses transporting children to and from school, to and from ball games and other events, nearly every school day. By simple calculation, this suggests it will take a $200 billion investment just to replace existing school buses – which must be done, Kamala tells us, by the 2030 deadline or else CHILDREN WILL DIE.
The day is coming – and we hope soon – that the world public will realize that the Gorean Dream of prosperity through decarbonization is a fairy tale spun by deceivers who grow rich because we believe their deceptions. The wrath of the public can only be held in sway while they believe that their suffering – higher taxes, appliances becoming illegal, the cars they love no longer available, their paychecks shrinking in purchasing power, and on and on – is “necessary to save the planet.”
The Italian parliament, demonstrating confidence in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, this week formally backed her plan to reintroduce nuclear power plants into Italy’s energy mix, reversing the nation’s 1987 moratorium on nuclear power. Meanwhile, energy-starved Germany is feeling the pinch from shuttering all of its 17 nuclear power plants. The U.S. has closed 11 nuclear reactors since 2013, with another eight of the 94 remaining reactors scheduled for decommissioning by 2025. Although Presidents Trump and Biden have favored bolstering the U.S. nuclear energy portfolio, America’s bureaucrat-heavy regulatory jungle remains designed to drag out facility permitting and construction for decades. White House energy spokesman John Podesta said delays caused by the current permitting process “are pervasive at every level of government,” with the result that “we got so good at stopping projects we forgot how to build things in America.”
According to the World Health Organization, 31 million Europeans have no access to public sanitation and 48 million do not have piped water at home. At least 300,000 Europeans follow San Francisco’s practice of defecating openly – but in the countryside rather on public streets. But just as in the United States, water quality has taken a back seat to “climate change.” On another front, the European Commission has adopted a “Sustainable EU Food System,” an initiative that intends to set agricultural policies for European farmers from the top down – by bureaucrats most of whom have never plowed a field. The Czech-based Society for Animals commented that a mandatory sustainable food system framework must cover areas related to the environment, climate, water, air, soil, the impact on farmed animals for food – as well as trade, transport, economic instruments, and strict food import rules.No farmers need apply. Meanwhile, in once-prosperous Europe, the European Environmental Bureau reported in 2021 that over a fifth of all Europeans were at risk of falling into poverty or social exclusion because food is seen as a commodity and not a human right. Only bureaucrats can save Europe, they add. No farmers need be consulted.
The local elections in Albania take place in less than two weeks, and the Socialist Party of Albania has made an impressive move by allocating part of their campaign budget to plant trees in every city across the country, as part of their campaign. Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama has stated that his and his party’s aim is to seed the future for the generations to come, by leaving something good behind after these elections. Thus, the slogan “Only Forward. Never Backwards.”
Since 2015, Soltan’s persecution has been mainly due to his son’s activism. After his son Mohamed’s November 2015 testimony before the U.S. Congress, Soltan was beaten until he lost consciousness and his jaw and two front teeth were broken. More torture came after Mohamed took his father’s case to the European Parliament. Mohamed, too, had been arrested in Egypt in 2013 but was freed in May 2015 following intense negotiations in which he gave up his dual Egyptian citizenship. Egypt still claims the deal included keeping Salah Soltan in a U.S. prison for life, but that did not happen. Since regaining his freedom, Mohamed Soltan has increased his advocacy through The Freedom Initiative, which he founded as a vehicle for human rights and informing U.S. foreign policy. The Freedom Initiative has also documented continued mistreatment of the elder Soltan in Badr 1 prison – including multiple times in which he was beaten, denied medical care, and twice more lost consciousness.
Now that the American Dream has been turned into a nightmare in part by overspending that has led to the highest interest rates in the 21st Century, it is high time to admit that, as Melanie Mcdonagh writes in The Telegraph, the electric vehicle dream, too, “has turned into a nightmare.” Mcdonagh, who admits she does not drive, points out many problems, among them the horrific impact when a heavy, quiet-running electric vehicle hits an unsuspecting pedestrian or a cyclist. She also notes that some of these “vehicles” are collecting data on route history and road speed that governments (and corporations) can use for remote surveillance (and marketing gimmickry). Another problem is that the much heavier EVs could collapse bridges and force lengthy detours.
Cybersecurity expert Melvin Ejiogu says he founded VeeMost Technologies in 2002 after realizing that most of the key players in the industry at that time focused more on billing their customers and responding to current attacks than on building and managing a secure cyber environment to protect those customers over the long term. Ejiogu said he was motivated – despite a lack of capital at the time – to provide a variety of services to ensure the security of customer data rather than rely on gimmicks. His focus was on long-term maintenance protection rather than quick fixes over and over again.
Pandu Patria Sjahrir is one of Indonesia’s leading entrepreneurs. He serves as general chairman of the Indonesian Coal Mining Association. Yet the Boston-born entrepreneur is also leading the effort to increase his nation’s move towards green energy transition, as well as to develop its economic infrastructure. As managing partner at Indies Capital and founding partner of a leading venture capital firm that focuses heavily on early-stage tech startups, Sjahrir has helped raise over $1bn to support over 100 of them. These companies have gone on to generate more than US$60bn in shareholder value, create 100,000 new jobs, and usher in more than 200 new entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia.
Imagine an energy future based on the decentralized distribution of solar energy in which energy producers and consumers can directly exchange energy without going through utilities or energy companies. That is the visionary goal of Romanian entrepreneur Radu Puchiu, co-founder of technology company Tinia Group. Puchiu says that, while it is increasingly easy and inexpensive to produce solar energy, it is much harder to share that energy efficiently, especially at the local level. The whole idea of the green revolution, he contends, does not fit with transporting solar energy over long distances. The challenge, then, is to produce and use solar energy at the individual and community level.
The once-Titanic environmental movement has is dead — crushed by the climate iceberg. The world has shifted from clean air and clean water to “clean” energy that is not clean at all. Real environmental concerns over renewable energy – damage to endangered right whales and bald eagles from wind turbines, water use and contamination and toxic waste from lithium and cobalt mining – are not even part of the conversation.The ill-fated voyage of the Titanic ended when it ran smack dab into a giant iceberg, 90 percent of which was below the surface. The worldwide push for electric vehicles, which has no greater cheerleaders than U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is like a killer iceberg with dirty little secrets hidden far under the surface by a compliant media.
The latest poll shows that 78 percent of Americans disapprove of the performance of the U.S Congress, while just 18 percent approve. Yet in the latest poll that matters, Congressional incumbents had a 98 percent win rate. The reason most offered is that, while people despise Congress, they are quite fond of “their” Congress member. Of course, in the entrenched Congress very few seats are even contestable, and party leaders support those whose votes can be counted on. The entire system is so corrupt that hardly anyone even knows what their representatives are voting on beyond the headlines. By contrast, while public support for wind power is high (77 percent according to a 2021 poll), huge numbers of people oppose individual wind farms that impact their daily lives. Opposition to onshore and offshore wind spans the political spectrum to include environmentalists, chambers of commerce, fishermen, Native American tribes, ferry operators, airport commissions, business groups, municipalities, and homeowners.
Just a month ago, Georgia Power announced that its Vogtle nuclear reactor Unit 3 had started a nuclear reaction inside the reactor – meaning that the nuclear fission process has begun splitting toms and generating heat. The DOE [has] admitted it takes 3 million solar panels or 400-plus wind turbines to produce the same power as a single 1-gigawatt reactor. With the four Vogtle units collectively generating nearly 5 gigawatts, replacing them would require 15 million solar panels or 2,000 wind turbines – just to provide a portion of the energy that Georgia needs. But solar panels and wind turbines last a maximum 20 years, while nuclear facilities have an 80-year lifespan. So the real number is 12 million solar panels, or 1,600 wind turbines, per gigawatt of nuclear energy. Nationwide, the nation’s 94 nuclear reactors collectively generate nearly 100 gigawatts of electricity. To replace all this energy over an 80-year lifespan, America would have to purchase 1.2 billion mostly Chinese-made solar panels or build 160,000 wind turbines.
‘Deepfake’ videos, fast becoming the rage, leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other technologies to, for example, superimpose the face of a real person onto the face of another to make it appear that the real person is saying or doing something they did not in fact do. The technology is so advanced that it can be quite difficult to tell whether it is “live … or Memorex.” However, deepfakes can be utilized with nefarious purposes in mind, such as using a celebrity personality to convince people to contribute to campaigns or make rash purchases; indeed, the unscrupulous are now using technology to distort business and politics.
What if you were able to tie crypto to underlying assets that have a relatively stable cash flow value? Is it possible today to connect tech-oriented real estate with crypto capital? Mitch DiRaimondo, whose father founded the west coast commercial real estate company Steelwave Inc., has been testing that market for the past few years. He started Steelwave Digital with the idea of moderating the craziness of the crypto world with the institutional governance of the commercial real estate world. Will the digital ecosystem supplant the current financial system? No, says DiRaimondo, “but we do think that it will augment the current system.” Digital currencies can create more frictionless transactional environments for trading interests in a wide variety of assets – not just hard assets. Moreover, it opens the door for a much broader global investor base.
It seems that, led by luxury carmakers, the future may be bright for the venerable internal combustion engine if new synthetic fuels technologies can produce an affordable replacement for gasoline and diesel fuels. The revolt had been brewing ever since Europe got a wakeup call with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that upset the Net Zero applecart and led even Germany to reopen coal-fired power plants.
The ongoing campaign by U.S.-based hedge fund Argentem Creek Partners to seize all assets of the Ukrainian GNT Group offers a vivid example of wrongdoing. GNT Group’s owners have struggled, in the wake of the pandemic and the Russian blockade of the Port of Odesa, to timely repay a $75 million loan negotiated by distressed asset investing funds.
Montenegro’s decades-long battle to escape Russian influence and join the free nations of the Western alliance is once again in jeopardy. On April 2, the nation will choose as president either a man who helped secure the nation’s independence and its NATO membership or a candidate endorsed by the same forces who prefer that Montenegrins live under Serbian hegemony – a position favored by the Russian bear. Though small in size and population, Montenegro’s alliance with NATO and its intention to join the European Union ensure NATO’s full control of the Adriatic Sea. This protects trade routes from the Italian cities of Trieste, Venice, and Padua and down through Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina to the north and Albania and Greece to the south. All but Bosnia-Herzegovina (which is aligned with NATO) are NATO members.
Sahir Berry, cofounder and CEO of the Nigeria-based financial services firm NowNow Digital Systems, says the key to his company’s success – and a critical component for hundreds of millions in the developing world who have until now lacked access to financial services – is the universality of the smartphone and the widespread acceptance in digital payment platforms.
In his new book A Just Transition: Making Energy Poverty History with Natural Resources, Cameroonian attorney NJ Ayuk, founder and chairman of the African Energy Chamber, lays out the blueprint for bringing that hopeful vision to reality. Ayuk, an avoked capitalist, found great wisdom in a statement that Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin applied to Communism: “Industry cannot be developed without electrification” of the whole continent. Fortunately, Ayuk added, Africa is endowed with an abundance of energy sources that can and must be developed to the greatest extent – by Africans. Ayuk sums up his proposal for creating an African Century this way. Start with gas in order to quickly beef up African electricity production – the key to just about everything. Explore options for developing all energy resources. Use oil domestically in the manufacture of petrochemicals, lubricants, plastics, and other products. Phase in renewables, which admittedly do not yield as much energy today for the money as fossil fuels; and use energy growth – electricity – to support agriculture, manufacturing, tourism, and other sectors that can create jobs and expand the economy. Seize every opportunity to acquire new technologies and skills along the way, and work with partners who can help train Africans to use them.
The key chapter (4) in noted author and Renaissance Man Vaclav Smil’s newest book, How the World Really Works, is subtitled, “The four pillars of modern civilization.” To the uninitiated, this means cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia. Smil continues, stating that, “a poor understanding of energy has the proponents of a new green world naively calling for a near-instant shift” from fossil fuels to green, solar energy. They lack any comprehension of energy density, which is highest by far in liquid hydrocarbons. The idea of decarbonizing society also ignores the manifold petroleum byproducts – including asphalt and plastics — and made affordable by the production of gasoline, kerosene, and other fuels.Smil then warns that total reliance on intermittent wind and solar energy will require mass-scale, weeks-long electricity storage and/or extensive (low-loss) energy grids of high-voltage lines to transmit electricity across time zones from rural to urban areas.Almost mockingly, Smil asks if renewables can actually supplant the energy now received from fossil fuels as well as the energy now supplied by liquid fuels to vehicles, ships, and airplanes – especially within the very short mandated timeframes?
At the 15th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC), hosted by Heartland Institute, Utah State Treasurer Marlo Oaks revealed how globalist U.S and world leaders, government scientists and bureaucrats, and media are quickly implementing policies that reflect the “Cultural Revolution” horribly implemented by China’s Chairman Mao. According to Oaks, the globalist community, enamored by the total control the Chinese Communist Party exhibits over its populace, is using Maoist tactics to undo the “inalienable rights” of life, liberty, and property born from the Magna Carta that are the hallmark of the American “experiment” that has brought the vision of freedom to billions worldwide. Like Mao, Deng, and Xi, these globalists favor an atheistic, amoral power structure to which all humanity must bow in worship.
Just last week Austrian humanities professor Ralph Schoellhammer blasted German energy research as being tainted by adherence to a green agenda. Schoellhammer said that, as with many other Western nations, the German focus on energy transition had blinded them to the serious risk of a shortage due to deteriorating geopolitical circumstances. A decade ago the German government announced it would shutter all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. Reinforcing that decision, Robert Habeck, Germany’s minister for the economy, last summer outrageously claimed that nuclear power could not help offset reduced gas supplies. Habeck then decided, based on claims by contracted think tanks that any disruptions to the agenda would cost the Germany economy a trillion dollars through 2050, to push ever harder for a quick energy transition. Germany had already joined dozens of nations pledging to stop using coal by 2028 in keeping with commitments to strive for Net Zero.
In the aftermath of Turkey’s devastating earthquake, 78 people have been arrested — not necessarily as scapegoats of the tragedy but because they are accused of “sharing provocative posts” on social media. Twenty have been placed in pretrial detention, and hundreds of others face legal proceedings. These arrests, in combination with the Turkish government’s outrageous blocking and throttling of social media access right at the peak of the response effort, have drawn renewed attention to the country’s draconian and restrictive social media law, which lawmakers passed last fall.
The 15th International Conference on Climate Change had as a major focus how the climate catastrophists used the COVID pandemic as a template for ratcheting up the so-called “great reset” to grow the role of government. Key speakers included Climate Depot founder Marc Morano and Fossil Future author Alex Epstein on Friday and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) on Saturday (more on the Saturday messages in a follow-up article). The conference also included numerous breakout sessions on topics ranging from global temperature to the green assault on agriculture to government overreach to the green agenda’s impact on people. All plenary and breakout sessions can be found at www.climateconference.heartland.org.
It seems that the more Biden, Kerry, and the Net Zero crowd attack King Coal, the more they get stuck in its clutches. Maybe, like Brer Rabbit, they are too self-absorbed and too much in a hurry to realize that demonizing the old fossil is a pathway to enslavement. And the Chinese Brer Fox is laughing his tail off. Climate analyst Sarah Brown last summer assured her readers that “coal is not making a comeback.” Uh, Sarah. As we just said, global coal demand is expected to surpass its all-time high this year. And the West can do little to slow down that demand, which is largely in developing nations (if you call India and China “developing”). All of which means that Joe Biden and the entirety of the Net Zero community are stuck with Tar Baby coal, for which, much like cobalt and rare-earth minerals (and so much more), China controls the world market.
In Disney’s 2005 adaptation of the tale of Chicken Little, the squawking bird that for over a century had been the symbol of the follies of alarmism becomes the heroine for sounding the alarm – turning the moral of the venerable story on its head. Half a century ago, our first climate fears, as described on the covers of Time, Newsweek, and many other avant garde “news” magazines, were of “a coming ice age.” But when a warming trend ensued shortly afterward, the mantra turned to “global warming.” It is almost laughable, therefore, that the trillion-dollar climate change industry today (including the self-appointed fact checker Snopes) has gone the extra mile to disclaim those early stories. In 2015, Scientific American cried out, “For Its 40th Birthday, Let’s Retire Newsweek‘s Global Cooling Story.”
History suggests the Biden Administration – from the top down – has much more in common with Mao than with Xi – in many ways. And, shockingly, today’s America is 70 years behind China when seen through socialist (Maoist) eyes. Our “revolution” is just beginning. Theirs is mature. Joe Biden, despite his failings, is (perhaps unwittingly) doing his part to “liberate the masses to make revolution,” one to be led by a younger generation that despises the “American experiment” in freedom and trashes all of Western culture. The evidence is overwhelming. Barring a major reversal by America’s media and educators, Biden’s legacy may well be compared with Mao’s. Both focused on total transformation of a nation and silencing of dissent. Ethics, even honesty, are out the window – the only thing that matters is power and control.
With the direct experience gained from the early success of the Starbucks College Achievement Plan (SCAP), ASU saw an opportunity to expand the positive workforce impact by bringing in more corporations and universities. Along with TPG's The Rise Fund, an impact investing fund, ASU helped co-found InStride. Today, the four-year-old public benefit company has over 40 corporate partners and a growing number of new university partners to further expand the educational impact first modeled by SCAP.
Lest anyone forget, carbon-based life forms have declared war on carbon, which means war on themselves. Those policies and laws that are “transformative” are coming out of Silicon Valley. The pride of Silicon Valley, ChatGPT, barely a toddler, has already proven to be “superior” to humans in many ways. More to the point, young Chat requires no food or water, is relatively impervious to heat and cold, and does not even require oxygen to “breathe.” The “transhuman” can live and rule virtually forever!Yes, Chat [and the entire new species of AI] may need occasional maintenance and upgrades, but the Chatters will soon be able to perform their own maintenance. And, very likely soon enough, their own “reproduction” – without any worries about “reproductive health.” As scientist Lisa Li says in Mark de Castrique’s 2016 novel, “The Singularity Race, ”If we create an artificial intelligence with imagination and wisdom, we can’t avoid the development that logically follows – artificial consciousness. And like any conscious entity, he’ll have a desire for self-preservation.”
According to Elliott Barnes, who heads up tech services for DTI, the modeling includes a sky view that provides an overhead image of the entire school property along with a 2D floor plan placed on top of the roof that enables first responders to set up a command post at a safe distance from impacted buildings (especially valuable in case of fire). This mapping enables responders to prioritize specific areas; for example, clearing spaces below heavy rooftop HVAC units that might collapse during a fire.Barnes says the company’s technology shows promise for safety management at industrial facilities and large factories with hazards even more difficult to navigate without proper mapping. But for the moment, the focus is on schools. . South Lake Middle and High School principal Greg Hiemstra has given the DTI technology high praise.
The big story of 2023 just might be the clash between the global elites who have imposed electric vehicle mandates and the worldwide “irredeemable deplorables” for whom an electric vehicle is not on their shopping list. The EV today has become the symbol of the One World Order in which billionaires and their cronies alone intend to determine what we can drive, eat, and say. Put another way, the EV mandate is a globalist Trojan horse designed to lure us into believing we are saving the planet when in fact we are ensuring our own demise. Will we listen to the good people of tiny Wyoming? Or will we laugh them off as kooks as the World Economic Forumcrowd steps up its timetable for when “we will own nothing” and we had better be thankful that we are still allowed to breathe?
Recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy contended that atrocities committed by Russian troops against unarmed Ukrainian citizens constituted war crimes. “This is real genocide,” Zelenskyy said while surveying the death toll in the town of Bucha. Keeping silent in the face of barbarity emboldens the bad actors, who, seeing that no one is stopping them, feel no compunction to change their behavior. Only with a united front willing to demand that genocidal criminals face consequences can society prevail over barbarism.
The politicization of science in America – a new form of Lysenkoism — has taken hold across America’s academy. Washington State’s newly adopted climate science curriculum for high school students asserts that, “For too long, science and science education have prioritized … rational thinking.” High schoolers must focus on emotions, poetry, activism, and a “public participatory artwork” – not on learning how the world really works.
“The most valuable outcome of this summit is the fact that, for the first time ever, we heard U.S. officials talking about investment partnerships and not about aid or U.S.-centric trade only. For the first time, the U.S. began to see African nations as potential partners rather than charity-seeking liabilities.” -- Ivor Ichikowitz, African philanthropist and entrepreneur
Today’s “net zero” advocates are like little Alices smoking hookahs (or something else) with imaginary Absolems while pressing society toward unreachable goals and condemning anyone who fails to fall into line with their militarist vision. Seven years ago author John C. Wright published an exhaustive list of “things supposedly caused by global warming” that included “Atlantic more salty, Atlantic less salty,” “brain eating amoebae,” “Earth slowing down, Earth spins faster, Earth to explode,” and hundreds more – “and all on 0.006 deg C per year!” Time flies, and the list by now is likely twice as long. The entirety of academia seemingly revolves around identifying new horrors caused by carbon dioxide. And smoking Absolem’s hookah. Perhaps, though, it is time to leave behind the imaginary world of Puff!
American Enterprise Institute scholar Norman Ornstein warned in 2008 that, “If we do not get our science and tech act together, we will be losers in another big way.” That was 15 years ago. If this trend continues, it may not just be the term “American” that fades away. But can we, will we, stop the “slouching towards Gomorrah” that the late Robert Bork warned about three decades ago?
The repercussions of the German decision to support Ukraine against Russia is causing consternation within the nation.
On November 10, 2022, less than two weeks before the start of the Qatar World Cup, a London-based organization, Equidem, released a report on working conditions at the soccer stadiums’ construction sites. The report has attracted substantial media interest, with the migrant workers’ issue already in focus. The 75-page report alleges that migrant workers at World Cup stadium sites in Qatar have faced discrimination and exploitation and calls for urgent action to protect labor rights. But Equidem’s report has severe flaws. It is marred by obvious factual failings and a biased viewpoint. It is superficial and misleading.
Ought we not agree that federal subsidies for nuclear power are “shiny objects” that distract from the real way to boost the U.S. nuclear power industry, provide cheap, reliable, clean energy without frequent blackouts, and keep our air and water clean?
Veterans Village is more than just a template for nonprofits willing to build housing for veterans, seniors, special needs adults, and female heads of households, or anyone needing the stability a home provides; Dana Spain believes that VBC's modular approach to housing construction can work just as well in the for-profit sector.
Today in Newsweek Ugandan President Museveni wrote this -- We see hundreds of millions of our own citizens without access to electricity. We see climate-compulsive Western investment in African energy funneled into wind and solar that creates intermittent electricity and not the consistent baseload generation required to power factories or produce employment. We see Europeans with jobs made possible by diverse means of electricity production, and Africans with neither, forcing tens of thousands to make life-threatening crossings of the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. Now with Europe reinvesting in its own fossil fuel power industry to bring mothballed power plants back online, in a truly perverse twist we are told new Western investment in African fossil fuels is possible—but only for oil and gas resources that will be piped and shipped to Europe. This is the purest hypocrisy.
Playing host nation to a World Cup is a highly coveted accolade; for all and sundry who make up the citizenry, this means nation building, infrastructure, job creation, renewed patriotism and lasting change long after the closing ceremonies. Qatar didn’t need the face-lift, but the nation’s leaders recognized the huge stakes when they beat out Australia, South Korea, Japan and the United States to become the first Arab nation to host the games.
Despite federal and other mandates, many people in the U.S. and worldwide opted against vaccination against the COVID-19 virus and its variants; millions more worldwide lack easy access to these vaccines. Many others who got initial vaccinations looked at the side effects of injection-based vaccines that promised protection and “just said no” to further injections.
Shades of Emanuel Macron! California Governor Gavin Newsom has horrified his core constituency by announcing his state will NOT be shutting down the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. The state legislature, perhaps remembering that power outages two decades ago led to Gov. Gray Davis being recalled, voted to extend the life of the plant until 2030, only because of an urgent need to boost uncertain grid reliability.
Urban schizophrenia is running rampant in the United States. Urban politicians seem oblivious or even hostile to rural neighbors who supply their food and energy while punishing their own residents for the sins of their alleged grandfathers. Often the short-sightedness in one city causes negative impacts far beyond the city’s boundaries.
Last October when I had lunch in Baton Rouge with Scott McKay, the first of his op-eds championing an American revivalism had just appeared in The American Spectator. There, he had proclaimed that Bush Republicanism was effectively dead, that “conservatism” had been quite unsuccessful at conserving anything, and that Trump was a John the Baptist figure who had set the table for the coming revival.
Both supporters and detractors of the 1619 Project can recognize that focusing solely on the struggles of those brought to the American colonies as permanent slaves tells only one part of the story of African colonization and its ongoing impacts both on the African continent and worldwide. Yet both in the United States and across the African continent, true liberation began only in the aftermath of World War II.
While some are certain of the inevitability of the impending demise of the internal combustion engine (ICE), others are far less certain. Cristian Agapie points to market pressures due to increased demand for electric vehicles have raised prices and operating costs as well. Another writer calls out electric vehicles, even Tesla’s, as just boring to drive. One thing for certain: hardly anyone will be able to enjoy the camaraderie and thrill of working on these vehicles.
Finclusion founder Timothy Nuy set out with long-time partner Tonderai Mutesva to start a digital consumer neobank that provides essential financial services and can operate across the African continent. They structured their businesses to overcome two significant obstacles: Africa’s distribution gap and creating functional credit risk profiles for a population with very limited financial records. Finclusion’s socially conscious business model bypasses traditional banking and financial infrastructure constraints by using supervised machine learning and artificial intelligence to serve millions of unbanked African entrepreneurs.
“Does the lack of ethics in business or politics reflect our own lack of ethics?” “There is a growing public demand for regulating the standards of public life for those working in both the private sector and in public service”, the moderator pointed out. And so in 2022, we must ask ourselves – “Where is the ethical leadership; where is fair play?” In years prior, it could be contended that the search for power, influence, and reputation seemed to dwarf the genuine desire to do good to and for others in America’s public square.
Jeremy Tillman had a vision. “I wanted to create a marketplace that made it easy for people to find the corporate training they needed and to develop technology to allow companies to better manage the learning processes of their employees.” And so, in 2004, after an epiphany while working on another firm’s project, he started TrainUp.com.
Black investors today hold just 3% of partner-level positions at venture capital firms. That has to change, says Sherrard Harrington, chairman of the Black-owned venture capital firm and business incubator EonXI that he and current NBA star Spencer Dinwiddie founded in 2019. In just four years, Harrington and Wilson have built two distinct entities, EonXI Ventures, the investor team, and EonXI Labs, an incubator that spins out and develops new concepts. The partners got a huge boost in 2020 through investing in Dapper Labs, creators of NBA Top Shot, a marketplace for trading virtual basketball highlights that helped drive this year’s non-fungible token (NFT) boom.
An Indianapolis-based consulting firm has launched the "Prosperity Through Equity" project with a “Rural America Tour”-formatted survey intended to create a national snapshot of the impact of the pandemic on rural American communities. Their hope is that multitudes will fill out the survey and join in this energetic undertaking. Thomas P. Miller & Associates (TPMA), which has served clients in over 40 states and has employees in 13, seems well positioned to lead this project.
The stark truth that this review should highlight is that the U.S. and its Western allies have been left behind at the starting gate in a race only China seems to have realized was taking place. President Biden’s executive order supporting the concept of resilient, diverse, secure supply chains is certainly admirable. Techmet Chairman and CEO Brian Menell says that the United States must make the supply of critical minerals a central part of both domestic and foreign policy.
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