Waiting Upon Structures to Crack

This article presents a fairly accurate depiction of what's wrong with the current ideology and not only why it won't work but why the professed solutions will systematically be to do more of what doesn't work until it does which it won't. But it won't matter as success will always seem within grasp while chaos descends upon us. Such is the power of ideology!

Guest Post by Alastair Crooke

Jeffrey Tucker, in a piece entitled How Close Is Total Social and Economic Collapse?, writes, “Economies and societies fall apart slowly, then a bit more, then all at once. We seem to be in the middle period of this trajectory [in the U.S.]. The slow part began March 2020 when politicians around the world imagined that it would be no big deal to shut down the economy and restart it once the virus went away”. What a beautiful display of the power of ‘science-driven’ government it would be – Technocracy on a war-footing.

But, “[n]one of it worked. You cannot turn off an economy and normal social functioning and then turn them back on like a light switch. The attempt alone will necessarily cause unpredictable amounts of long-term breakage, not only of economic structures but also of the spirit of a people. Everything going on now reflects the disastrous presumption that doing that would be possible – and not cause dramatic and lasting damage. It was the greatest failure of politics in a century”.

Everything works until suddenly, it doesn’t. As Minsky said, stability breeds instability. The problem is that complex systems are inherently fragile. The optimization that makes them cost-effective also removes the redundancies that make them resilient. Things can fall apart quickly when some unforeseen event occurs. Not only things; the collective public psyche is a fragile complex system too – it cannot be restored to what it was simply by jabbing the re-set button.

Tucker views this essentially as a failure of judgement. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t – which is to say, a judgement failure in the way he means it. Yes, the supply-chain debacle may not adequately have been foreseen; or the self-harm that has resulted from attempting to de-couple from an intertwined economy as ubiquitous as that of China (i.e. microchip disruption).

But perhaps the reason the vaccine strategy is not being reconsidered, but has become cult doctrine on which the Establishment has doubled-down, is that it was conceived at the outset, not just as a means to an end – i.e. creating herd immunity via vaccines – but also an end in, and of itself.

Looked at in this way, we can perceive not just ‘one failure’ – that a V-shaped recovery on re-start, was presented as gospel – but rather, a series of related judgmental ‘failures’. These may give the appearance of being a troupe of wandering errors of well-intentioned, yet flawed analysis, though in fact, they were always connected by being conceived at the outset as ends in, and of themselves.

The commonality to these ‘errors’ lies with their being of ‘one project’ – being of one ‘genus’ – and not simply being a string of accidents of error.

The ostensible logic is that by ‘nudging’ almost everyone to get vaccinated, it will help achieve herd immunity, and thereby eliminate the virus. Is the Tucker-like flaw here that it was assumed that the vaccines were not ‘leaky’ in respect to variants; or that the vaccinated would not be vulnerable to infection; or that the vaccinated would not carry, shed and transmit the virus; or that any protection would not degrade in weeks or months? Perhaps they misunderstood the history of the SARS family of virus (to be not particularly susceptible to vaccines, from their tendency to slide sidewise into variants); or then again, maybe mass vaccination is also an end in itself?

No vax, no job? The unvaxed have become ‘the enemy’, in exactly the way that philosopher Carl Schmitt said that casting an ‘enemy’ is supposed to work: the assignment of a label so black and so unremittingly ‘other’ that mediation with such ‘monsters’ ‘who put the lives of others at risk’ becomes inconceivable. Such black and white Manicheanism is the essence of politics, Schmitt wrote approvingly. In Italy, for example, representatives of the political, medical and media establishment have openly accused the unvaccinated of being “rats”, “subhumans” and “criminals”, who deserve to be “excluded from public life” and “from the national health service” and even deserve to “die like flies”.

Is this another failure of thinking clearly? The inability of leaders to comprehend how such language tears society apart; that a society will not return to normal social and functioning, directly on the Green Pass ‘switch’ being turned off (if it ever is)?

Or, is it an end in itself? – Vaccination as a proxy for political loyalty – the majority defining itself in polar opposition to a demonized minority: ‘Holding the wrong political ideology makes you unclean’. You should be purged. Perhaps that is why the Biden administration is also not concerned about mass firings (and its economic disruptions) – because It helps purify the country of Trump-supporting recalcitrants?

Most obviously, the rushed ‘greening project’ tied to a declared climate ‘emergency’ is a counterpart to the shut-down and vaccine flaw. It seems that this similarly was imagined as straight-forward: the world would pirouette away from dirty to clean energy, through carbon ‘mandates’ that would shut-down both personal and collective carbon profligacy. And the economy then would be re-booted after $150 trillion had been spent on green renewables. Another display of the power of ‘science-driven’ governments, run by experts, supposedly untainted by partisanship, or expectations of personal gain.

Again, it’s not working: You cannot just ‘turn off’ a fossil-fuel based economy, and then turn it back on, a short-while later, as a green-washed ‘net zero’ one.

We may, on the one hand, perceive this as a simple failure to appreciate the practical impediments that have given the world its energy crunch, and its concomitant huge cost-hikes for consumers – albeit triggered, we are told, out of a pure concern to save the planet.

Or, on the other hand, is the carbon mandate also an end in, and of itself? i.e. the transition to a global technocratic managerial class, and the transfer of key policy tools away from the national level to the supranational? If so, this too, is not working. The social costs of the energy price shock will ripple across politics and cause further breakages in the economy.

And, is the associated shift from traditional economic management to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) – which happened to overlap with the pandemic shut down – a simple coincidence arising out of the need to act to protect people during the Covid crisis? One that has witnessed the Central Banks’ ‘creation’ of $30 trillion of liquidity injected into economies, as pandemic support. Was this then, just an unfortunate misappreciation of the risks of generating (non-transitory) inflation that would impoverish consumers, and possibly provoke economic recession?

Or, was it an end in itself, too – conceived at the outset as the jet-fuel that would finance the transition from hyper-financialised individualist capitalism (that is acknowledged even by the technocrats) to be no longer sustainable, to a stockholder corporate managerialism that would largely displace individual property rights, in favour of broader ESG, social, environmental, and diversity visions of stockholder corporatism?

As long ago as 1941, James Burnham in The Managerial Revolution, was making the case that the old paradigm of labour versus capitalism was passé; that progressive evolution would transition the world away from the capitalist-socialist dialectic to a new synthesis – an organizational structure made up of an élite managerial technocratic class – a type of society that was both ‘socialist’ (ESG and woke), yet also corporate entrepreneurial. It would be led by experts that understood problems beyond the ken of the public. Burnham believed this was in process to replace capitalism on a world scale (‘Davos’ calls it stockholder corporatism today).

Does this have an end in itself? Of course – the elite oligarchic class is preserved, and controls money and credit, albeit now at a supranational level, (i.e. the ECB practicing strict credit rationing for companies, according to its own Green doctrines). But this isn’t working so well either: We are experiencing both an energy ‘price-shock’, and disruptive inflation (more breakages).

At the international geo-political plane, things don’t seem to be working either. Team Biden says it wants a ‘managed competition’ with China, but why then send Wendy Sherman (who is not noted for her diplomatic skills) to China as Biden’s envoy? Why has there been this continuous chip-chipping away at the 1972 ‘One China’ policy with a series of small, seemingly innocuous moves on Taiwan if Team Biden wants contained competition (what he said he wants in a recent call with President Xi), but falters, time after time, to instigate a serious relationship?

Does the Team not understand that it is not ‘containing’ competition, but rather playing-with-fire, through its’ opaque hints that the U.S. might support Taiwan independence?

And then, why of all people, despatch Victoria Nuland to Moscow, if the competition with Moscow was to be quietly ‘balanced out’ as Biden’s face-to-face with Putin in Geneva seemed to signal? Like Sherman, Nuland was not received at a senior level, and her ‘Maidan arsonist’ reputation of course preceded her in Moscow. And why decimate Russia’s diplomatic representation at NATO HQ, and why have Secretary Austin talk in Georgia and Ukraine of NATO’s ‘open door’?

Is there some hidden logic to this, or were these envoys intentionally sent as some kind of ‘kick-ass’ provocative gesture to underline who’s boss (i.e. America is Back!)? This is known in Washington as ‘capitulation diplomacy’ – competitors are presented with only the terms of their capitulation. If so, it didn’t work. Both envoys effectively were sent packing, and Washington’s relations with these key states are degraded to near zero.

The Russia-China axis have come to the conclusion that polite diplomatic discourse with Washington is like water off a duck’s back. The U.S. and its European protégés simply do not hear what Moscow or Beijing says to them – so what is the point to talking to ‘tin-eared’ Americans? Answer: None.

Tucker wrote in respect to pandemic lockdowns that “everything going on now reflects the disastrous presumption that [continuing] doing that [which it was already doing] would be possible, and not cause dramatic and lasting damage. It was the greatest failure of politics in a century”. Is this true for America’s foreign policy too (i.e. capitulation diplomacy)?

Is it assumed that the way for America to retain global primacy is to continue coat-trailing China on Taiwan and its One China policy; and to coat-trail Russia on NATO membership for Ukraine? And that repeated hints at bilaterals with a folksy Biden are all that is necessary to stop events spiralling out of control?

Is all this coat-trailing and provocation simply Team Biden misjudging how serious China and Russia are about their Red Lines ‘meaning it’, or, is it an end in itself? (As an aside, Burnham was clear that many wars would have to be fought before a managerial society could fully take hold. These wars would lead to the destruction of sovereign nation states, such that only a small number of great nations would survive, culminating into the nuclei of three ‘super-states’. Burnham believed that “sovereignty will be restricted to the few super-states”.)

Tucker’s initial question, we should recall, was How Close Is Total Social and Economic Collapse? Our point in this piece is that this litany of failures are linked by being conceived at the outset, as ends in, and of themselves. And to one extent or another, none are working. So is a perfect storm gathering?

The commonality to these distinct ‘errors’ lies with their being ‘one project’ – a stealth coup of the policy tools and structures of public accountability, at the national level, and their transfer to the supranational plane (also known as the Re-Set). They derive, all, from the cult of technocratic managerialism. In the last analysis, Tucker is right: In the pursuit of this project, and its failing flock of subsets, “the attempt alone will necessarily cause unpredictable amounts of long-term breakage, not only of economic structures but also of the spirit of a people”.

Cults historically are dismissive of fragility in complex systems. They are focussed on the means to ‘ends’. They would not necessarily see Tucker’s ‘breakages’ even as breakage. Human attitudes and behaviour – i.e. people – are seen as an obstruction, and as Biden repeatedly warns, “if people won’t help, they must get out of the way of vaccine rules … get out of the way of people doing the right thing”.

It seems that Russia and China, seeing all this, will remain aloof and patient – waiting upon structures to crack.

Green energy: A bubble of unrealistic expectations!

 As an oil and gas specialist in London 30 years ago, I analyzed models which clearly indicated a breakdown of supply after the year 2020. Here we are today, facing an uncertain future with no clear workable policies. The article below outlines the dilemma most clearly. There will be no free lunch! Energy is complex and requires tradeoffs.  Our green energy policies are pulling us straight into a third major energy crisis. We urgently need intelligent and knowledgeable leaders to solve such a difficult conundrum. Where are they?

Authored by David Hay via Everegreen Gavekal blog,

“You see what is happening in Europe. There is hysteria and some confusion in the markets. Why?…Some people are speculating on climate change issues, some people are underestimating some things, some are starting to cut back on investments in the extractive industries. There needs to be a smooth transition.”

- Vladimir Putin (someone with whom this author rarely agrees)

“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of its citizens.”

– John Maynard Keynes (an interesting observation for all the modern day Keynesians to consider given their support of current inflationary US policies, including energy-related)

Introduction

This week’s EVA provides another sneak preview into David Hay’s book-in-process, “Bubble 3.0” discussing what he thinks is the crucial topic of “greenflation.”  This is a term he coined referring to the rising price for metals and minerals that are essential for solar and wind power, electric cars, and other renewable technologies.

It also centers on the reality that as global policymakers have turned against the fossil fuel industry, energy producers are for the first time in history not responding to dramatically higher prices by increasing production.  Consequently, there is a difficult tradeoff that arises as the world pushes harder to combat climate change, driving up energy costs to painful levels, especially for lower income individuals. 

What we are currently seeing in Europe is a vivid example of this dilemma.  While it may be the case that governments welcome higher oil and natural gas prices to discourage their use, energy consumers are likely to have a much different reaction.

Summary

• BlackRock’s CEO recently admitted that, despite what many are opining, the green energy transition is nearly certain to be inflationary.

• Even though it’s early in the year, energy prices are already experiencing unprecedented spikes in Europe and Asia, but most Americans are unaware of the severity.

• To that point, many British residents being faced with the fact that they may need to ration heat and could be faced with the chilling reality that lives could be lost if this winter is as cold as forecasters are predicting.

• Because of the huge increase in energy prices, inflation in the eurozone recently hit a 13-year high, heavily driven by natural gas prices on the Continent that are the equivalent of $200 oil.

• It used to be that the cure for extreme prices was extreme prices, but these days I’m not so sure.  Oil and gas producers are very wary of making long-term investments to develop new resources given the hostility to their industry and shareholder pressure to minimize outlays.

• I expect global supply to peak sometime next year and a major supply deficit looks inevitable as global demand returns to normal.

• In Norway, almost 2/3 of all new vehicle sales are of the electric variety (EVs) – a huge increase in just over a decade. Meanwhile, in the US, it’s only about 2%. Still, given Norway’s penchant for the plug-in auto, the demand for oil has not declined.

• China, despite being the largest market by far for electric vehicles, is still projected to consume an enormous and rising amount of oil in the future.

• About 70% of China’s electricity is generated by coal, which has major environmental ramifications in regards to electric vehicles.

• Because of enormous energy demand in China this year, coal prices have experienced a massive boom. Its usage was up 15% in the first half of this year, and the Chinese government has instructed power providers to obtain all baseload energy sources, regardless of cost. 

• The massive migration to electric vehicles – and the fact that they use six times the amount of critical minerals as their gasoline-powered counterparts –means demand for these precious resources is expected to skyrocket.

• This extreme need for rare minerals, combined with rapid demand growth, is a recipe for a major spike in prices.

• Massively expanding the US electrical grid has several daunting challenges– chief among them the fact that the American public is extremely reluctant to have new transmission lines installed in their area.

• The state of California continues to blaze the trail for green energy in terms of both scope and speed. How the rest of the country responds to their aggressive take on renewables remains to be seen.

• It appears we are entering a very odd reality: governments are expending resources they do not have on weakly concentrated energy. And the result may be very detrimental for today’s modern economy.

• If the trend in energy continues, what looks nearly certain to be the Third Energy crisis of the last half-century may linger for years. 

Green energy: A bubble in unrealistic expectations?

As I have written in past EVAs, it amazes me how little of the intense inflation debate in 2021 centered on the inflationary implications of the Green Energy transition.  Perhaps it is because there is a built-in assumption that using more renewables should lower energy costs since the sun and the wind provide “free power”. 

However, we will soon see that’s not the case, at least not anytime soon; in fact, it’s my contention that it will likely be the opposite for years to come and I’ve got some powerful company.  Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, a very pro-ESG* organization, is one of the few members of Wall Street’s elite who admitted this in the summer of 2021.  The story, however, received minimal press coverage and was quickly forgotten (though, obviously, not be me!). 

This EVA will outline myriad reasons why I think Mr. Fink was telling it like it is…despite the political heat that could bring down upon him.  First, though, I will avoid any discussion of whether humanity is the leading cause of global warming.  For purposes of this analysis, let’s make the high-odds assumption that for now a high-speed green energy transition will continue to occur.  (For those who would like a well-researched and clearly articulated overview of the climate debate, I highly recommend the book “Unsettled”; it’s by a former top energy expert and scientist from the Obama administration, Dr. Steven Koonin.)

The reason I italicized “for now” is that in my view it’s extremely probable that voters in many Western countries are going to become highly retaliatory toward energy policies that are already creating extreme hardship.  Even though it’s only early autumn as I write these words, energy prices are experiencing unprecedented increases in Europe.  Because it’s “over there”, most Americans are only vaguely aware of the severity of the situation.  But the facts are shocking… 

Presently, natural gas is going for $29 per million British Thermal Units (BTUs) in Europe, a quadruple compared to the same time in 2020, versus “just” $5 in the US, which is a mere doubling.  As a consequence, wholesale energy cost in Great Britain rose an unheard of 60% even before summer ended.  Reportedly, nine UK energy companies are on the brink of failure at this time due to their inability to fully pass on the enormous cost increases.  As a result, the British government is reportedly on the verge of nationalizing some of these entities—supposedly, temporarily—to prevent them from collapsing.  (CNBC reported on Wednesday that UK natural gas prices are now up 800% this year; in the US, nat gas rose 20% on Tuesday alone, before giving back a bit more than half of that the next day.)

Serious food shortages are expected after exorbitant natural gas costs forced most of England’s commercial production of CO2 to shut down.  (CO2 is used both for stunning animals prior to slaughter and also in food packaging.)  Additionally, ballistic natural gas prices have forced the closure of two big US fertilizer plants due to a potential shortfall of ammonium nitrate of which “nat gas” is a key feedstock. 

*ESG stands for Environmental, Social, Governance; in 2021, Blackrock’s assets under management approximated $9 ½ trillion, about one-third of the total US federal debt.

With the winter of 2021 approaching, British households are being told they may need to ration heat.  There are even growing concerns about the widespread loss of life if this winter turns out to be a cold one, as 2020 was in Europe.  Weather forecasters are indicating that’s a distinct possibility.  

In Spain, consumers are paying 40% more for electricity compared to the prior year.  The Spanish government has begun resorting to price controls to soften the impact of these rapidly escalating costs. (The history of price controls is that they often exacerbate shortages.) Naturally, spiking power prices hit the poorest hardest, which is typical of inflation whether it is of the energy variety or of generalized price increases. 

Due to these massive energy price increases, eurozone inflation recently hit a 13-year high, heavily driven by natural gas prices that are the equivalent of $200 per barrel oil.  This is consistent with what I warned about in several EVAs earlier this year and I think there is much more of this looming in the years to come.

In Asia, which also had a brutally cold winter in 2020 – 2021, there are severe energy shortages being disclosed, as well.  China has instructed its power providers to secure all the coal they can in preparation for a repeat of frigid conditions and acute deficits even before winter arrives.  The government has also instructed its energy distributors to acquire all the liquified natural gas (LNG) they can, regardless of cost.  LNG recently hit $35 per million British Thermal Units in Asia, up sevenfold in the past year.  China is also rationing power to its heavy industries, further exacerbating the worldwide shortages of almost everything, with notable inflationary implications.

In India, where burning coal provides about 70% of electricity generation (as it does in China), utilities are being urged to import coal even though that country has the world’s fourth largest coal reserves.  Several Indian power plants are close to exhausting their coal supplies as power usage rips higher.

Normally, I’d say that the cure for such extreme prices, was extreme prices—to slightly paraphrase the old axiom.  But these days, I’m not so sure; in fact, I’m downright dubious.  After all, the enormously influential International Energy Agency has recommended no new fossil fuel development after 2021—“no new”, as in zero. 

It’s because of pressure such as this that, even though US natural gas prices have done a Virgin Galactic to $5 this year, the natural gas drilling rig count has stayed flat.  The last time prices were this high there were three times as many working rigs. 

It is the same story with oil production.  Most Americans don’t seem to realize it but the US has provided 90% of the planet’s petroleum output growth over the past decade.  In other words, without America’s extraordinary shale oil production boom—which raised total oil output from around 5 million barrels per day in 2008 to 13 million barrels per day in 2019—the world long ago would have had an acute shortage.  (Excluding the Covid-wracked year of 2020, oil demand grows every year—strictly as a function of the developing world, including China, by the way.)

Unquestionably, US oil companies could substantially increase output, particularly in the Permian Basin, arguably (but not much) the most prolific oil-producing region in the world.  However, with the Fed being pressured by Congress to punish banks that lend to any fossil fuel operator, and the overall extreme hostility toward domestic energy producers, why would they? 

There is also tremendous pressure from Wall Street on these companies to be ESG compliant.  This means reducing their carbon footprint.  That’s tough to do while expanding their volume of oil and gas. 

Further, investors, whether on Wall Street or on London’s equivalent, Lombard Street, or in pretty much any Western financial center, are against US energy companies increasing production.  They would much rather see them buy back stock and pay out lush dividends.  The companies are embracing that message.  One leading oil and gas company CEO publicly mused to the effect that buying back his own shares at the prevailing extremely depressed valuations was a much better use of capital than drilling for oil—even at $75 a barrel.

As reported by Morgan Stanley, in the summer of 2021, an US institutional broker conceded that of his 400 clients, only one would consider investing in an energy company!  Consequently, the fact that the industry is so detested means that its shares are stunningly undervalued.  How stunningly?  A myriad of US oil and gas producers are trading at free cash flow* yields of 10% to 15% and, in some cases, as high as 25%.

In Europe, where the same pressures apply, one of its biggest energy companies is generating a 16% free cash flow yield.  Moreover, that is based up an estimate of $60 per barrel oil, not the prevailing price of $80 on the Continent.

*Free cash flow is the excess of gross cash flow over and above the capital spending needed to sustain a business.  Many market professionals consider it more meaningful than earnings. 

Therefore, due to the intense antipathy toward Western energy producers they aren’t very inclined to explore for new resources.  Another much overlooked fact about the ultra-critical US shale industry that, as noted, has been nearly the only source of worldwide output growth for the past 13 years, is its rapid decline nature. 

Most oil wells see their production taper off at just 4% or 5% per year.  But with shale, that decline rate is 80% after only two years.  (Because of the collapse in exploration activities in 2020 due to Covid, there are far fewer new wells coming on-line; thus, the production base is made up of older wells with slower decline rates but it is still a much steeper cliff than with traditional wells.) 

As a result, the US, the world’s most important swing producer, has to come up with about 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of new output just to stay even.  (This was formerly about a 3 million bpd number due to both the factor mentioned above and the 2 million bpd drop in total US oil production, from 13 million bpd to around 11 million bpd since 2019).  Please recall that total US oil production in 2008 was only around 5 million bpd.  Thus, 1.5 million barrels per day is a lot of oil and requires considerable drilling and exploration activities.  Again, this is merely to stay steady-state, much less grow. 

The foregoing is why I wrote on multiple occasions in EVAs during 2020, when the futures price for oil went below zero*, that crude would have a spectacular price recovery later that year and, especially, in 2021.  In my view, to go out on my familiar creaky limb, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!  With supply extremely challenged for the above reasons and demand marching back, I believe 2022 could see $100 crude, possibly even higher. 

*Physical oil, or real vs paper traded, bottomed in the upper teens when the futures contract for delivery in April, 2020, went deeply negative. 

Mike Rothman of Cornerstone Analytics has one of the best oil price forecasting records on Wall Street.  Like me, he was vehemently bullish on oil after the Covid crash in the spring of 2020 (admittedly, his well-reasoned optimism was a key factor in my up-beat outlook).  Here’s what he wrote late this summer:  “Our forecast for ’22 looks to see global oil production capacity exhausted late in the year and our balance suggests OPEC (and OPEC + participants) will face pressures to completely remove any quotas.” 

My expectation is that global supply will likely max out sometime next year, barring a powerful negative growth shock (like a Covid variant even more vaccine resistant than Delta).  A significant supply deficit looks inevitable as global demand recovers and exceeds its pre-Covid level.  This is a view also shared by Goldman Sachs and Raymond James, among others; hence, my forecast of triple-digit prices next year.  Raymond James pointed out that in June the oil market was undersupplied by 2.5 mill bpd.  Meanwhile, global petroleum demand was rapidly rising with expectations of nearly pre-Covid consumption by year-end.  Mike Rothman ran this chart in a webcast on 9/10/2021 revealing how far below the seven-year average oil inventories had fallen.  This supply deficit is very likely to become more acute as the calendar flips to 2022.

In fact, despite oil prices pushing toward $80, total US crude output now projected to actually decline this year.  This is an unprecedented development.  However, as the very pro-renewables Financial Times (the UK’s equivalent of the Wall Street Journal) explained in an August 11th, 2021, article:  “Energy companies are in a bind.  The old solution would be to invest more in raising gas production.  But with most developed countries adopting plans to be ‘net zero’ on carbon emissions by 2050 or earlier, the appetite for throwing billions at long-term gas projects is diminished.”

The author, David Sheppard, went on to opine: “In the oil industry there are those who think a period of plus $100-a-barrel oil is on the horizon, as companies scale back investments in future supplies, while demand is expected to keep rising for most of this decade at a minimum.”  (Emphasis mine)  To which I say, precisely! 

Thus, if he’s right about rising demand, as I believe he is, there is quite a collision looming between that reality and the high probability of long-term constrained supplies.  One of the most relevant and fascinating Wall Street research reports I read as I was researching the topic of what I have been referring to as “Greenflation” is from Morgan Stanley.  Its title asked the provocative question:  “With 64% of New Cars Now Electric, Why is Norway Still Using so Much Oil?” 

While almost two-thirds of Norway’s new vehicle sales are EVs, a remarkable market share gain in just over a decade, the number in the US is an ultra-modest 2%.   Yet, per the Morgan Stanley piece, despite this extraordinary push into EVs, oil consumption in Norway has been stubbornly stable. 

Coincidentally, that’s been the experience of the overall developed world over the past 10 years, as well; petroleum consumption has largely flatlined.  Where demand hasn’t gone horizontal is in the developing world which includes China.  As you can see from the following Cornerstone Analytics chart, China’s oil demand has vaulted by about 6 million barrels per day (bpd) since 2010 while its domestic crude output has, if anything, slightly contracted.

Another coincidence is that this 6 million bpd surge in China’s appetite for oil, almost exactly matched the increase in US oil production.  Once again, think where oil prices would be today without America’s shale oil boom.

This is unlikely to change over the next decade.  By 2031, there are an estimated one billion Asian consumers moving up into the middle class.  History is clear that more income means more energy consumption.  Unquestionably, renewables will provide much of that power but oil and natural gas are just as unquestionably going to play a critical role.  Underscoring that point, despite the exponential growth of renewables over the last 10 years, every fossil fuel category has seen increased usage. 

Thus, even if China gets up to Norway’s 64% EV market share of new car sales over the next decade, its oil usage is likely to continue to swell.  Please be aware that China has become the world’s largest market for EVs—by far.  Despite that, the above chart vividly displays an immense increase in oil demand. 

Here’s a similar factoid that I ran in our December 4th EVA, “Totally Toxic”, in which I made a strong bullish case for energy stocks (the main energy ETF is up 35% from then, by the way): 

“(There was) a study by the UN and the US government based on the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gasses Induced Climate Change (MAGICC).  The model predicted that ‘the complete elimination of all fossil fuels in the US immediately would only restrict any increase in world temperature by less than one tenth of one degree Celsius by 2050, and by less than one fifth of one degree Celsius by 2100.’  Say again?  If the world’s biggest carbon emitter on a per capita basis causes minimal improvement by going cold turkey on fossil fuels, are we making the right moves by allocating tens of trillions of dollars that we don’t have toward the currently in-vogue green energy solutions?”

China's voracious power appetite increase has been true with all of its energy sources. 

On the environmentally-friendly front, that includes renewables; on the environmentally-unfriendly side, it also includes coal.  In 2020, China added three times more coal-based power generation than all other countries combined.  This was the equivalent of an additional coal planet each week.  Globally, there was a reduction last year of 17 gigawatts in coal-fired power output; in China, the increase was 29.8 gigawatts, far more than offsetting the rest of the world’s progress in reducing the dirtiest energy source.  (A gigawatt can power a city with a population of roughly 700,000.)

Overall, 70% of China’s electricity is coal-generated. This has significant environmental implications as far as electric vehicles (EVs) are concerned.  Because EVs are charged off a grid that is primarily coal- powered, carbon emissions actually rise as the number of such vehicles proliferate. As you can see in the following charts from Reuters’ energy expert John Kemp, Asia’s coal-fired generation has risen drastically in the last 20 years, even as it has receded in the rest of the world.  (The flattening recently is almost certainly due to Covid, with a sharp upward resumption nearly a given.)

The worst part is that burning coal not only emits CO2—which is not a pollutant and is essential for life—it also releases vast quantities of nitrous oxide (N20), especially on the scale of coal usage seen in Asia today. N20 is unquestionably a pollutant and a greenhouse gas that is hundreds of times more potent than CO2.  (An interesting footnote is that over the last 550 million years, there have been very few times when the CO2 level has been as low, or lower, than it is today.) 

Some scientists believe that one reason for the shrinkage of Arctic sea ice in recent decades is due to the prevailing winds blowing black carbon soot over from Asia.  This is a separate issue from N20 which is a colorless gas.  As the black soot covers the snow and ice fields in Northern Canada, they become more absorbent of the sun’s radiation, thus causing increased melting.  (Source:  “Weathering Climate Change” by Hugh Ross)

Due to exploding energy needs in China this year, coal prices have experienced an unprecedented surge.  Despite this stunning rise, Chinese authorities have instructed its power providers to obtain coal, and other baseload energy sources, such as liquified natural gas (LNG), regardless of cost.  Notwithstanding how pricey coal has become, its usage in China was up 15% in the first half of this year vs the first half of 2019 (which was obviously not Covid impacted).

Despite the polluting impact of heavy coal utilization, China is unlikely to turn away from it due to its high energy density (unlike renewables), its low cost (usually) and its abundance within its own borders (though its demand is so great that it still needs to import vast amounts). 

Regarding oil, as we saw in last week’s final image, it is currently importing roughly 11 million barrels per day (bpd) to satisfy its 15 million bpd consumption (about 15% of total global demand).  In other words, crude imports amount to almost three-quarter of its needs.  At $80 oil, this totals $880 million per day or approximately $320 billion per year.  Imagine what China’s trade surplus would look like without its oil import bill!

Ironically, given the current hostility between the world’s superpowers, China has an affinity for US oil because of its light and easy-to-refine nature.  China’s refineries tend to be low-grade and unable to efficiently process heavier grades of crude, unlike the US refining complex which is highly sophisticated and prefers heavy oil such as from Canada and Venezuela—back when the latter actually produced oil.

Thus, China favors EVs because they can be de facto coal-powered, lessening its dangerous reliance on imported oil.  It also likes them due to the fact it controls 80% of the lithium ion battery supply and 60% of the planet’s rare earth minerals, both of which are essential to power EVs.    

However, even for China, mining enough lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, aluminum and the other essential minerals/metals to meet the ambitious goals of largely electrifying new vehicle volumes is going to be extremely daunting.  This is in addition to mass construction of wind farms and enormously expanded solar panel manufacturing.

As one of the planet’s leading energy authorities Daniel Yergin writes: “With the move to electric cars, demand for critical minerals will skyrocket (lithium up 4300%, cobalt and nickel up 2500%), with an electric vehicle using 6 times more minerals than a conventional car and a wind turbine using 9 times more minerals than a gas-fueled power plant.  The resources needed for the ‘mineral-intensive energy system’ of the future are also highly concentrated in relatively few countries. Whereas the top 3 oil producers in the world are responsible for about 30 percent of total liquids production, the top 3 lithium producers control more than 80% of supply. China controls 60% of rare earths output needed for wind towers; the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 70% of the cobalt required for EV batteries.”

As many have noted, the environmental impact of immensely ramping up the mining of these materials is undoubtedly going to be severe.  Michael Shellenberger, a life-long environmental activist, has been particularly vociferous in his condemnation of the dominant view that only renewables can solve the global energy needs.  He’s especially critical of how his fellow environmentalists resorted to repetitive deception, in his view, to undercut nuclear power in past decades.  By leaving nuke energy out of the solution set, he foresees a disastrous impact on the planet due to the massive scale (he’d opine, impossibly massive) of resource mining that needs to occur.  (His book, “Apocalypse Never”, is also one I highly recommend; like Dr. Koonin, he hails from the left end of the political spectrum.)

Putting aside the environmental ravages of developing rare earth minerals, when you have such high and rapidly rising demand colliding with limited supply, prices are likely to go vertical.  This will be another inflationary “forcing”, a favorite term of climate scientists, caused by the Great Green Energy Transition.

Moreover, EVs are very semiconductor intensive.  With semis already in seriously short supply, this is going to make a gnarly situation even gnarlier.  It’s logical to expect that there will be recurring shortages of chips over the next decade for this reason alone (not to mention the acute need for semis as the “internet of things” moves into primetime). 

In several of the newsletters I’ve written in recent years, I’ve pointed out the present vulnerability of the US electric grid.  Yet, it will be essential not just to keep it from breaking down under its current load; it must be drastically enhanced, a Herculean task. For one thing, it is excruciatingly hard to install new power lines. As J.P. Morgan’s Michael Cembalest has written: “Grid expansion can be a hornet’s nest of cost, complexity and NIMBYism*, particularly in the US.”  The grid’s frailty, even under today’s demands (i.e., much less than what lies ahead as millions of EVs plug into it) is particularly obvious in California.  However, severe winter weather in 2021 exposed the grid weakness even in energy-rich Texas, which also has a generally welcoming attitude toward infrastructure upgrading and expansion.

Yet it’s the Golden State, home to 40 million Americans and the fifth largest economy in the world, if it was its own country (which it occasionally acts like it wants to be), that is leading the charge to EVs and seeking to eliminate internal combustion engines (ICEs) as quickly as possible.  Even now, blackouts and brownouts are becoming increasingly common.  Seemingly convinced it must be a role model for the planet, it’s trying desperately to reduce its emissions, which are less than 1%, of the global total, at the expense of rendering its energy system more similar to a developing country.  In addition to very high electricity costs per kilowatt hour (its mild climate helps offset those), it also has gasoline prices that are 77% above the national average. 

*NIMBY stands for Not In My Back Yard.

While California has been a magnet for millions seeking a better life for 150 years, the cost of living is turning the tide the other way.  Unreliable and increasingly expensive energy is likely to intensify that trend.  Combined with home prices that are more than double the US median–$800,000!–California is no longer the land of milk and honey, unless, to slightly paraphrase Woody Guthrie about LA, even back in the 1940s, you’ve got a whole lot of scratch.  More and more people, seem to be scratching California off their list of livable venues. 

Voters in the reliably blue state of California may become extremely restive, particularly as they look to Asia and see new coal plants being built at a fever pitch.  The data will become clear that as America keeps decarbonizing–as it has done for 30 years mostly due to the displacement of coal by gas in the US electrical system—Asia will continue to go the other way.  (By the way, electricity represents the largest share of CO2 emission at roughly 25%.) 

California has always seemed to lead social trends in this country, as it is doing again with its green energy transition.  The objective is noble though, extremely ambitious, especially the timeline.  As it brings its power paradigm to the rest of America, especially its frail grid, it will be interesting to see how voters react in other states as the cost of power leaps higher and its dependability heads lower.  It’s reasonable to speculate we may be on the verge of witnessing the Californication of the US energy system. 

Lest you think I’m being hyperbolic, please be aware the IEA (International Energy Agency) has estimated it will cost the planet $5 trillion per year to achieve Net Zero emissions.  This is compared to global GDP of roughly $85 trillion. According to BloombergNEF, the price tag over 30 years, could be as high as $173 trillion.  Frankly, based on the history of gigantic cost overruns on most government-sponsored major infrastructure projects, I’m inclined to take the over—way over—on these estimates.

Moreover, energy consulting firm T2 and Associates, has guesstimated electrifying just the US to the extent necessary to eliminate the direct consumption of fuel (i.e., gasoline, natural gas, coal, etc.) would cost between $18 trillion and $29 trillion.  Again, taking into account how these ambitious efforts have played out in the past, I suspect $29 trillion is light.  Regardless, even $18 trillion is a stunner, despite the reality we have all gotten numb to numbers with trillions attached to them.  For perspective, the total, already terrifying, level of US federal debt is $28 trillion.

Regardless, as noted last week, the probabilities of the Great Green Energy Transition happening are extremely high.  Relatedly, I believe the likelihood of the Great Greenflation is right up there with them. 

As Gavekal’s Didier Darcet wrote in mid-August:  ““Nowadays, and this is a great first in history, governments will commit considerable financial resources they do not have in the extraction of very weakly concentrated energy.” ( i.e., less efficient)  “The bet is very risky, and if it fails, what next?  The modern economy would not withstand expensive energy, or worse, lack of energy.” 

While I agree this an historical first, it’s definitely not great (with apologies for all the “greats”).  This is particularly not great for keeping inflation subdued, as well as for attempting to break out of the growth quagmire the Western world has been in for the last two decades.  What we are seeing in Europe right now is an extremely cautionary case study in just how disastrous the war on fossil fuels can be (shortly we will see who or what has been a behind-the-scenes participant in this conflict).

Essentially, I believe, as I’ve written in past EVAs, we are entering the third energy crisis of the last 50 years.  If I’m right, it will be characterized by recurring bouts of triple-digit oil prices in the years to come.  Along with Richard Nixon taking the US off the gold standard in 1971, the high inflation of the 1970s was caused by the first two energy crises (the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo and the 1979 Iranian Revolution).  If I’m correct about this being the third, it’s coming at a most inopportune time with the US in hyper-MMT* mode.

Frankly, I believe many in the corridors of power would like to see oil trade into the $100s, and natural gas into the teens, as it will help catalyze the shift to renewable energy.  But consumers are likely to have a much different reaction—potentially, a violently different reaction, as I noted last week. 

The experience of the Yellow Vest protests in France (referring to the color of the vest protestors wore), are instructive in this regard.  France is a generally left-leaning country.  Despite that, a proposed fuel surtax in November 2018 to fund a renewable energy transition triggered such widespread civil unrest that French president Emmanuel Macron rescinded it the following month.

*MMT stands for Modern Monetary Theory.  It holds that a government, like the US, which issues debt in its own currency can spend without concern about budgetary constraints.  If there are not enough buyers of its bonds at acceptable interest rates, that nation’s central bank (the Fed, in our case) simply acquires them with money it creates from its digital printing press.  This is what is happening today in the US.  Many economists consider this highly inflationary.

The sharp and politically uncomfortable rise in US gas pump prices this summer caused the Biden administration to plead with OPEC to lift its volume quotas.  The ironic implication of that exhortation was glaringly obvious, as was the inefficiency and pollution consequences of shipping oil thousands of miles across the Atlantic.  (Oil tankers are a significant source of emissions.)  This is as opposed to utilizing domestic oil output, as well as crude from Canada (which is actually generally better suited to the US refining complex).  Beyond the pollution aspect, imported oil obviously worsens America’s massive trade deficit (which would be far more massive without the six million barrels per day of domestic oil volumes that the shale revolution has provided) and costs our nation high-paying jobs.

Further, one of my other big fears is that the West is engaging in unilateral energy disarmament.  Russia and China are likely the major beneficiaries of this dangerous scenario.  Per my earlier comment about a stealth combatant in the war on fossil fuels, it may surprise you that a past NATO Secretary General* has accused Russian intelligence of avidly supporting the anti-fracking movements in Western Europe.  Russian TV has railed against fracking for years, even comparing it to pedophilia (certainly, a most bizarre analogy!). 

The success of the anti-fracking movement on the Continent has essentially prevented a European version of America’s shale miracles (the UK has the potential to be a major shale gas producer).  Consequently, the European Union’s domestic natural gas production has been in a rapid decline phase for years. 

Banning fracking has, of course, made Europe heavily reliant on Russian gas shipments with more than 40% of its supplies coming from Russia. This is in graphic contrast to the shale output boom in the US that has not only made us natural gas self-sufficient but also an export powerhouse of liquified natural gas (LNG). 

In 2011, the Nord Stream system of pipelines running under the Baltic Sea from northern Russia began delivering gas west from northern Russia to the German coastal city of Greifswald.  For years, the Russians sought to build a parallel system with the inventive name of Nord Stream 2.  The US government opposed its approval on security grounds but the Biden administration has dropped its opposition.  It now appears Nord Stream 2 will happen, leaving Europe even more exposed to Russian coercion. 

Is it possible the Russian government and the Chinese Communist Party have been secretly and aggressively supporting the anti-fossil fuel movements in America?  In my mind, it seems not only possible but probable.  In fact, I believe it is naïve not to come that conclusion.  After all, wouldn’t it be in both of their geopolitical interests to see the US once again caught in a cycle of debilitating inflation, ensnared by the twin traps of MMT and the third energy crisis?

*Per former NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasumssen:  Russia has “engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organizations—environmental organizations working against shale gas—to maintain Europe’s dependence on imported Russian gas”.

Along these lines, I was shocked to listen to a recent podcast by the New Yorker magazine on the topic of “intelligent sabotage”.  This segment was an interview between the magazine’s David Remnick and a Swedish professor, Adreas Malm.  Mr. Malm is the author of a new book with the literally explosive title “How To Blow Up A Pipeline”.   Just as it sounds, he advocates detonating pipelines to inhibit fossil fuel distribution. 

Mr. Remnick was clearly sympathetic to his guest but he did ask him about the impact on the poor of driving energy prices up drastically which would be the obvious ramification if his sabotage recommendations were widely followed.  Mr. Malm’s reaction was a verbal shrug of the shoulders and words to the effect that this was the price to pay to save the planet.

Frankly, I am appalled that the venerable New Yorker would provide a platform for such a radical and unlawful suggestion.  In an era when people are de-platformed for often innocuous comments, it’s incredible to me this was posted and has not been pulled down.  In my mind, this reflects just how tolerant the media is of attacks on the fossil fuel industry, regardless of the deleterious impact on consumers and the global economy.

Surely, there is a far better way of coping with the harmful aspects of fossil fuel-based energy than this scorched earth (literally, in the case of Mr. Malm) approach, which includes efforts to block new pipelines, shut existing ones, and severely restrict US energy production.  In America’s case, the result will be forcing us to unnecessarily and increasingly rely on overseas imports.  (For example, per the Wall Street Journal, drilling permits on federal land have crashed to 171 in August from 671 in April.  Further, the contentious $3.5 trillion “infrastructure” plan would raise royalties and fees high enough on US energy producers that it would render them globally uncompetitive.)

Such actions would only aggravate what is already a severe energy shock, one that may be worse than the 1970s twin energy crises.  America has it easy compared to Europe, though, given current US policy trends, we might be in their same heavily listing energy boat soon.

Solutions include fast-tracking small modular nuclear plants; encouraging the further switch from burning coal to natural gas (a trend that is, unfortunately, going the other way now, as noted above); utilizing and enhancing carbon and methane capture at the point of emission (including improving tail pipe effluent-reduction technology); enhancing pipeline integrity to inhibit methane leaks; among many other mitigation techniques that recognize the reality the global economy will be reliant on fossil fuels for many years, if not decades, to come. 

If the climate change movement fails to recognize the essential nature of fossil fuels, it will almost certainly trigger a backlash that will undermine the positive change it is trying to bring about.  This is similar to what it did via its relentless assault on nuclear power which produced a frenzy of coal plant construction in the 1980s and 1990s.  On this point, it’s interesting to see how quickly Europe is re-embracing coal power to alleviate the energy poverty and rationing occurring over there right now - even before winter sets in.  When the choice is between supporting climate change initiatives on one hand and being able to heat your home and provide for your family on the other, is there really any doubt about which option the majority of voters will select?

EcoHealth Throws NIH Under The Bus Over Wuhan Gain-Of-Function Report

 What is interesting is not that the more you dig the more proof of "bio-engineering" you find (although you do) but the more dirt you bring back to the surface.

 Is our system rotten to the core?

 

The question over whether the NIH funded risky gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China was officially 'answered' last week, after the agency claimed that one of their partners - EcoHealth Alliance, failed to report that they had 'accidentally' created a chimeric coronavirus that was able to infect humanized mice.

To review, in a Wednesday letter addressed to Rep. James Comer (R-KY), NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence A. Tabak admits to funding a "limited experiment" to determine whether "spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model." According to the letter, humanized mice infected with the modified bat virus "became sicker" than those exposed to an unmodified version of the same bat coronavirus.

The letter claims that EcoHealth CEO Peter Daszak failed to report this finding, and gave Daszak five days to submit "any and all unpublished data from the experiments and work conducted" under the NIH grant.

If true, it would mean Dr. Anthony Fauci, who runs the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, wasn't lying when he told Sen. Rand Paul in July when he denied the agency was conducting GoF research.

Except, according to Vanity Fair, EcoHealth did report their findings in a timely manner.

"These data were reported as soon as we were made aware, in our year four report in April 2018," said New York City-based EcoHealth in a statement.

If that's the case, Fauci is either incompetent for not knowing, or lying.

And so - the left-leaning Vanity Fair admits Rand Paul 'might have been onto something' when he accused Fauci of lying over GoF research.

What's more, VF connects more dots that mainstream outlets pretend don't exist - namely a revelation from a leaked grant proposal which reveals that Daszak attempted to obtain DARPA funding for "the kind of research that could accidentally have led to the pandemic."

As scientists remain in a stalemate over the pandemic’s origins, another disclosure last month made clear that EcoHealth Alliance, in partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was aiming to do the kind of research that could accidentally have led to the pandemic. On September 20, a group of internet sleuths calling themselves DRASTIC (short for Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19) released a leaked $14 million grant proposal that EcoHealth Alliance had submitted in 2018 to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

It proposed partnering with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and constructing SARS-related bat coronaviruses into which they would insert “human-specific cleavage sites” as a way to “evaluate growth potential” of the pathogens. Perhaps not surprisingly, DARPA rejected the proposal, assessing that it failed to fully address the risks of gain-of-function research. -Vanity Fair

According to the article, the leaked documents 'struck a number of scientists and researchers as significant for one reason' - namely that a distinctive segment of SARS-CoV-2's genetic code is a 'furin cleavage site' which makes the virus more infectious because of its ability to enter human cells - exactly the feature EcoHealth proposed modifying in the leaked proposal.

"If I applied for funding to paint Central Park purple and was denied, but then a year later we woke up to find Central Park painted purple, I’d be a prime suspect," said Jamie Metzl, a former executive vice president of the Asia Society, who sits on the World Health Organization’s advisory committee on human genome editing and has been calling for a transparent investigation into COVID-19’s origins (via Vanity Fair).

As one member of the DRASTIC coalition, New Zealand data scientist Gilles Demaneuf told Vanity Fair: "I cannot be sure that [COVID-19 originated from] a research-related accident or infection from a sampling trip. But I am 100% sure there was a massive cover-up."

On Sunday, Fauci appeared on ABC News with trusted softball-thrower George Stephanopoulos, where he hid behind semantics - claiming that the NIH's contract with Daszak adhered to a 'framework' that didn't constitute Gain of Function research.

Of course, we also know that the NIH shielded one of Daszak's grants from review under said framework.

Meanwhile, we'd still love to know what was said on that call between Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins right after ZeroHedge reported that Indian researchers found "HIV-like insertions" at the furin cleavage site of SARS-CoV-2 in a now-retracted paper.

Related:

• Fauci In 2012: Gain-Of-Function Research 'Worth Risk Of Lab Accident Sparking Pandemic'
• Fauci-Funded EcoHealth Refuses To Give Wuhan Documents To Congress
• 'EcoHealth Alliance' Orchestrated Key Scientists' Statement On "Natural Origin" Of SARS-CoV-2
• Video Of Live Bats In Wuhan Lab Reveals Daszak Lied In Now-Deleted Tweet
• "Sadly, It Starts With Two Lies": Peter Daszak's Latest Wuhan Screed Shredded

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: RIGHT?

 Here we are 2 years later, the data is fairly clear:  

We would have been better off doing "nothing"!

 

 Since the virus was a little more dangerous than usual for the old and the weak, we could have isolated these populations better and eventually vaccinate some of them. The pandemic would be over by now.

But it won't. Thanks to the path of social disruption we chose, waves upon waves of virus variants will slowly erode our health systems, which are already on their knees, (months of waiting time now to see a doctor all over Europe!) and our social systems, compounded by economic recessions and political decay.

Drug Companies Don’t Fund The Media! Stop Asking! (Video - 10mn)

 Who needs conspiracies when the crimes are committed in plain sight?

Civilizations crumble when people stop believing the principles on which they are built, mostly because over time they have become lies. Are we there yet? 

Physicians and the Vaccine Tyranny

 Fortunately doctors are speaking out but how long before the pharmaceutical industry shut them up? Just as the food industry shut up the farmers earlier?

Post by Dr. Blaise Edwards

I find myself in the position that I must use an alias for fear of reprisal.  Those days may be quickly coming to an end, as hospitals are denying requests for vaccine exemptions with impunity.  I will likely soon be out the door, with nothing to lose.  Even if I survive this round, if the “pandemic” continues, it won’t be long before I am shelved like a can of spam.

Doctors need to be called out.  From early in the pandemic, it was like a mass hypnosis or forgetfulness of everything we had learned in medical school.  Immune system knowledge was shelved and replaced by government dictates.  The thought of early outpatient treatment with “off label” drugs that could modulate the immune system was forbidden.

We essentially told patients that they had to go home and wait until they were sick enough to be hospitalized, then treatment would begin.  Imagine telling all diabetics that there is no metformin, Glucophage, or insulin.  Would we really wait until patients are in diabetic ketoacidosis, and then treat them only at the hospital?  It is medical malfeasance of a grand scale.

We physicians gave up our training and our reasonable medical thought process.  The reasons are multiple.  First, it was the easy way out.  Second, many of us are employed and fear reprisal.  Third, despite what the public thinks, we physicians are not bold leaders, we tend to be sheep, and are afraid of having an entire institution ostracize us or our colleagues to think us crazy.

As we got to the point of vaccine rollout, doctors were not using the scientific method, questioning and challenging prevailing hypotheses.  They kept their heads down, closed clinics, converted to telemedicine, and pushed only the jab.

I had conversations with doctors who are supposed experts in virology and immunology denying the lasting immunity of natural infection.  Conversations about natural immunity:

“I have antibodies.”

“But they will wane.”

“But I have memory cells.”

Dumbfounded look.

Really, are these the leaders we want?

Other conversations about the safety of vaccines:

“The vaccine is safe.”

“No, we would have shut down any trial in the past after even 100 deaths.”

“This is more serious.”

“But the survival rate is about 99.6%.”

“It’s killing people.”

“So is the vaccine”

“You can’t believe VAERS.”

“It was set up to help protect the public, and if anything, it is underreporting side effects.”

“You’re a conspiracy theorist.”

Or conversations about early treatment

“You must get the vaccine, it is the only “proven” treatment, there are no other treatments.”

“Really, ivermectin has eradicated COVID in India, parts of Mexico, Japan….”

“It is a horse dewormer.”

“It won a Nobel Prize in medicine, is a WHO essential drug, and has been around for decades with a great safety profile.”

“No, only the vaccine works.”

“But it is failing”

“You are a denier and a conspiracy theorist.”

“Sigh….”

Lately, it has been all about getting 100% of the population jabbed.  For what reason?  I am not sure, and some of the more detailed and investigated theories scare me.  I shudder to think.  But last year’s heroes are being labeled selfish and villainous for not getting the vaccine.  Hospital systems have abandoned their community’s health and ignored early successful outpatient treatment in favor of huge government subsidies for inpatient and ICU treatment.  The success of these treatments was not great, but that is another article.  Now we have the same hospital systems turning their backs on their own employees.  Basically, health providers have a choice, get shot, or get fired.  How does that help?  Both vaxxed and unvaxxed can spread the virus, so it doesn’t help anyone.  It only helps the hospital to get more government money by meeting quotas.

I, for one, will remember that when we faced a real crisis, the hospitals and many physicians chose money and profit over their own community’s best interest.  Perhaps it is time for groups of physicians to get back to running their own healthcare clinics and hospitals.  We used to have a code of ethics.  We used to put patients first.  Not anymore.

As for physicians, those who are blindly following the government edicts are culpable in a moral atrocity.  Bullying and deriding patients who chose to refrain from this still experimental therapy is an abomination.  (You will say it isn’t experimental anymore, to which I would say that just because the government broke its own rules regarding approval, doesn’t make it legal or right).  Patients have sincere beliefs for making their choice.  Respect their thoughts.  Do you yell as much at smokers, drinkers, fornicators, drug abusers, etc?  No, I think not. I think you chose to fit in because it gives you a sense of righteousness.

And going so far as to encourage vaccination in children and pregnant women is crazy.  There is blood on the hands of any physician who does this.  With children, there is no benefit to the vaccine, only harm.  They would serve themselves and society better with natural immunity.  The vaccine hasn’t been studied on women and their babies.  It is pregnancy category X (unknown) but being pushed wholesale on these poor women without proper studies.  Shame on you, doctors who are doing this.  I certainly have lots to answer for when I meet my maker, but this is on another level.

I beg physicians to get back to basics, remember all the epidemiology and immunology that bored us to tears in school.  Investigate the real literature and take a stand.  Society needs us to do this.  Even if you have been vaccinated, help those who are fighting for their lives.  Stand up against this forced vaccine tyranny.  Support those who have legitimate reasons for declining the jab. If you don’t stand up now, who will stand up for you when you are faced with your choice of yet another booster or your job.

Newman: "Deep State Cannot Stop Unprecedented Awakening"

 This should be obvious by now. We have moved from convincing to silencing.

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Award winning journalist Alex Newman says, “The Deep State globalists cannot stop the “unprecedented awakening going on in America.” 

Newman, who wrote the popular book called “Deep State: The Invisible Government Behind the Scenes,” explains, “Everybody knows that the press is lying..."

"  Nobody believes the press anymore.  ‘Let’s go Brandon.’  Everybody knows this is absolutely absurd.  The point is not to make people believe these absurdities anymore.  The point now is to demoralize people and to really silence us.  That’s what’s going on with sicking the FBI and DOJ on parents complaining about hate being taught to their children, and that’s what’s going on with the propaganda...

They want to silence us.  They want to intimidate us.  They want to bully us, and they want to terrorize us into staying quite...

AG Garland said all these parents are intimidating and harassing school boards.  What could be more intimidating than sicking one of the world’s most powerful law enforcement agency on parents expressing their concern?  I can’t think of more things that would be more intimidating than that.  So, the irony is off the charts, but the goal here is to silence people into submission.”

Newman says the threats and bullying are backfiring and is not working in the least.  There is good news, and Newman explains,

“They trot out these people to demoralize us and to scare us and make us think that everything is over.  Just keep your head down and comply, but it’s not working. 

It is absolutely not working. 

We have an awakening going on in this country... there’s an awakening that is happening here that is unprecedented in the modern history of this country.  It is such good news, but now we are in a race against time.  They are trying to collapse the supply chain and trying to implode everything before enough people wake up and do something about it.”

Newman points out that since 2016, the Deep State has been losing the narrative and losing badly.  Newman explains,

“The entire propaganda machine was non-stop bombarding Americans with anti-Trump propaganda, and Americans went to the polls.  Even with all the voter fraud in 2016, Trump still won in an Electoral College landslide.  That’s how much they have lost control of the narrative. 

They thought by shadow banning us and rigging their algorithms, people should not come across our information.  That failed, and that’s why they had to ban you.  This is why they had to ban thousands of top content creators that were making huge amounts of money for them. 

They have lost total control of the narrative, and they are left with what can they blow up and what can they do to scare us?  What can they do to make us think we are all alone, and that’s exactly what we are seeing right now, and it is crystal clear.  I think everybody should be able to see this at this point.”

In closing, Newman points out how weak the Deep State really is and says, “Their entire narrative is based on lies, deception, trickery and intrigue..."

Without admitting it, we are already converted to transhumanism

 Although the conclusions are the same, Thierry Meyssan has a slightly different and sometimes interesting approach to current problems. He presents an interesting description of the current control of information too. (You can find a link to his Web site below.)

Article by Thierry Meyssan

 The containment, due to the political reaction to Covid-19, favoured a global redistribution of wealth in favour of a few Internet players (Microsoft, Alphabet...). At the same time, investment funds (Vanguard, Blackrock, etc.), which were already managing astronomical sums and could impose their interests on states, became the property of a few families. There are now stratospheric wealth gaps between a few super-billionaires and the people.

The middle classes, which had been slowly eroding since the fall of the USSR and the beginning of economic globalisation, are gradually disappearing. In practice, democratic systems cannot withstand these sudden and gigantic wealth gaps.

As always in periods of change in political systems, the social class that aspires to power imposes its point of view. In this case, transhumanism. The idea that scientific progress will enable a transformation of human biology to the point of overcoming death. Almost all of the world’s fifty largest fortunes seem to subscribe to this fantasy. For them, technology will replace many people in the same way that science has replaced superstition.

In order to impose their new Doxa, these very large fortunes are starting to control what we think and to force us to act according to this new ideology. The most recent phenomenon is precisely our reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic. Historically, in all previous epidemics without exception, doctors sought to cure the sick. That was the old world. In the new transhumanist world, no one is to be cured, all are to be protected with a new technology, messenger RNA. Most developed states forbid their doctors to treat their patients and their pharmacists to sell drugs that might help them (hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, etc.). A leading medical journal, The Lancet, even published an article claiming that an old drug used by millions of people was killing Covid patients who took it. The Internet giants censor accounts that promote it. Everything must be done to make messenger RNA the one and only option.

I am not a doctor. I don’t know what these products are worth. I’m just a man who observes the way in which a debate is closed before it has begun. I am not interfering in the scientific debate, but I am observing the closure of the debate.

The messenger RNA case against doctors is not over, however. President Joe Biden held a virtual global summit on September 22, 2021 to distribute 500 million packets of messenger RNA ’vaccine’. To everyone’s surprise, the states that were to be the recipients of this gift boycotted the summit. They do not believe that messenger RNA is a solution for them [1].

To understand them, all you need is a calculator: the states that went all in on messenger RNA had 20 to 25 times more deaths per million population than those that allowed care by doctors.

Transhumanism already fascinates us because we don’t ask about the ban on Covid care. It does not have the same influence outside the West.

In the past, vaccination consisted of inoculating a small portion of a disease so that the body learns to defend itself against it. Since Covid-19, messenger RNA has been equated with vaccination, yet it is not a vaccine in the classical sense.

Propaganda

History has shown us that in order to impose a new regime, you must first get people to act in accordance with a new ideology. Once the subjects have started to comply, it becomes very difficult for them to back down. The game is up. This is called propaganda. Propaganda is not about controlling discourse, but about using it to change behaviour [2].

As we have all given up on experimenting with Covid care, we have all signed up to messenger RNA and now the health pass. We are ripe to enter this new regime. It is absurd to call it a "dictatorship"; an old world concept. We do not yet know what this new regime will be, yet we are already building it.

States are threatened by the very large fortunes mentioned above, which are generally much more powerful than they are. States have mainly fixed costs and very little room for manoeuvre. On the contrary, the new very large fortunes can withdraw their investments here at any time and take them there. Very few Sovereign Wealth Funds can compete with them and thus still be independent of them.

The corporate media refuse to question the ban on care for Covid-19. They devote all their energy to promoting messenger RNA.

The corporate media

The corporate media have been very active in this project. For a long time, but especially since the end of the Cold War, journalism has defined itself as a search for ’objectivity’, even though it is known to be impossible.

In court, witnesses are not asked to be ’objective’. But they are required to "tell the Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth". It is known that each person has only perceived a part of the Truth according to his or her own condition. Thus, in an accident involving a pedestrian and a car, most of the pedestrian witnesses agree with the pedestrian, while most of the motorist witnesses say that the car was in the right. It is only the sum of the evidence that tells us what happened.

The corporate media reacted to the influx of new actors into their profession (blogs and social networks) first by trying to disqualify them: these people are touching, but they are not trained enough to compare themselves to us. Professional journalists have made a distinction between freedom of expression (for all) and freedom of the press (for them alone). One thing leading to another, they have set themselves up as schoolmasters, the only ones capable of giving good and bad marks to those who try to imitate them. To do this, they imagined that they would check their assertions (fact check) as if their work were comparable to a television game show.

Worried that politicians would side with their constituents rather than the very rich, the corporate media have extended fact checking to their political guests. There are countless programmes where a leader is subjected to editorial fact-checking. Political discourse, which should be an analysis of society’s problems and how to solve them, is reduced to a series of figures that can be checked against statistical yearbooks.

The corporate media have asserted themselves first as a ’Fourth Estate’ and then, after absorbing the others, as the main Estate. This notion comes from the 18th century British politician and philosopher, Edmund Burke. The ’Fourth Estate’ was constituted alongside the Spiritual, the Temporal and the Commons (the simple people). Burke, in the name of his liberal conservatism, did not dispute its legitimacy. Today everyone can see that it is not based on a value, but on the money of its owners.

The choice of subjects covered by the corporate media is constantly shrinking. It is slowly moving away from analysis and concentrating on verifiable data only.

Twenty years ago, for example, newspapers that challenged my work would present it summarily and then immediately disqualify it as ’conspiratorial’. Today, they no longer dare to summarise my theses, because they have no way of ’fact-checking’ them. So they just classify me as ’unreliable’. Faced with younger, non-professional journalists, the corporate media limit themselves to insults. As a result, there is a growing gap between them.

This phenomenon is particularly evident with the ’yellow vests’, ordinary citizens who were protesting against this sociological evolution of the world even before containment allowed it to triumph. I remember a debate on a 24-hour news channel where a member of parliament asked a yellow vest what allowance would satisfy the protesters, while the yellow vest replied, "We don’t need allowances, we want a fairer system." The corporate media quickly removed individuals who, like this lady, were thinking about the problems of society and replaced them with others who were making concrete and immediate demands. They did everything to censor their thinking.

In the past, the Church published a list of books that were forbidden to the faithful. Today, on the contrary, they try to publish a list of reliable sources, even to determine a priori the Truth.

Good and bad grades

Another solution envisaged by the new ruling elite is to re-establish the Index librorum prohibitorum. In the past, the Church - which was not only a community of believers but also a political power - published a list of books that were censored for all but its clerics. It wanted to protect the People from the errors and lies of the protesters. This only lasted for a while. In the backlash, the believers deprived the Church of its political power.

Former Nato and Bush Administration officials set up a New York-based company, NewsGuard, to compile a list of unreliable websites (including ours) [3]. Or NATO, the European Union, Bill Gates and a few others have created CrossCheck, which finances, among other things, Les Décodeurs du Monde [4]. It seems that the exponential multiplication of information sources has ruined this project.

A more recent method consists in defining a priori, not who is reliable, but what the Truth is.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has just set up a "Mission against disinformation and conspiracy", its president, the sociologist Gérald Bronner, considers that the State should set up a body to establish the Truth on the basis of "scientific consensus". He considers it unacceptable that the word of "a university professor is equivalent to that of a yellow vest" [5].

This method is not new. In the 17th century, Galileo claimed that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the other way round. Gérald Bronner’s predecessors opposed him with various passages from the Holy Scriptures, which were then considered a revealed source of knowledge. Then the ’scientific consensus’ led to his condemnation by the Church.

The history of science is full of examples of this type: almost all the great discoverers were opposed by the ’scientific consensus’ of their time. Most of the time their ideas were not able to triumph with demonstrations, but with the death of their opponents: the leaders of the "scientific consensus".