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As Russell Brand would say, it is indeed terrifying.
We are just seeing the remnant of what was already a decaying, manipulated democracy slipping away, replaced by the wet dream of Benito Mussolini of the merger between big corporations and the state, except that this time, it was done at the European level out of reach of the people. Both ingenious and diabolical.
The next level of control should follow swiftly with CBDC and social credit, sorry green whatever (marketing is working on a proper name) to be implemented in the next few years.
But all this presuppose there will still be a Europe by that time...
I know predictions are dangerous but here's one: In a few months Ukraine will crumble. It will happen suddenly. At that time, Europe will face a dilemma. Accept defeat and the fact that all the money invested in support of Ukraine is lost or double down and intervene. It will be an existential crisis. Europe doesn't have the army to support effectively Ukraine or worse replace it on the Eastern front. But conversely, Europe has invested so much credibility in this adventure that it will be next to impossible to do nothing. The Russian have said that they are planning for the war to last until 2025. That would be surprising. Ukraine is already exhausted. In-between, it is very likely that Israel will attack Lebanon. Maybe as soon as next month.
We are clearly heading into troubled waters. The control of the narrative will get tighter. This is only the beginning.
If you are interested about AGI, here's a slightly more in-depth video about the subject. The fact is that it's happening as we speak. It's not anymore a matter of exactly when but then what? Are we ready for true artificial intelligence?
This video is amazing by what it says. Basically that AGI is down the road and will be achieved soon just by scaling up the computer power.
I also believed that this was not going to be so easy a few years ago. Not anymore.
We will have some kind of AGI by the end of the year. At the latest in early 2025. 5 years earlier than the optimistic previsions of Ray Kurzweil.
Now what? Do we also get and explosion of intelligence and the singularity by the end of the year? Not so fast? Who knows?
A few days ago I heard an interesting metaphor: The arrival of artificial general intelligence may look like a game of chess against a grand master. You think you are playing great and suddenly you realize you've lost the game! Or something else?
In any case, we should expect the unexpected. We are truly in uncharted territory!
It's not just Exxon. Tens of the largest companies, especially in Germany, are exiting the continent. Without oil, nuclear energy or Russian gas, Europe industrially is finished. You don't run a modern economy on renewables! There is still a lot of capital invested but the absurd "green" policies destroying agriculture, factories and investment will put the continent on its knees. Most countries are already in recession, it will be a depression by the end of the year. Ramping up the pressure on Russia will further accelerate the decline by limiting the import of resources. The terrible silence about the crimes of Israel in Gaza is heard loud an clear in the Middle East. What are these people thinking? It looks like some kind of collective suicide. A complete disregard of reality like the meaningless war in Ukraine which is being won by the Ukrainian army all the way to the Polish border. Madness!
Exxon
has warned the European Union that it will leave and take billions of
dollars in climate investment with it unless Brussels makes it easier to
spend those billions on transition-related projects.
The Financial Times cited the
company today as saying that there was way too much red tape in the EU
and it took too long to get a project going, which prompted the
supermajor to consider spending its $20 billion in decarbonization
investments for 2022-2027 elsewhere.
“When we make
investments, we’ve got very long time horizons in mind. I would say
that recent developments in Europe have not instilled confidence in
long-term, predictable policies,” Karen McKee, president of Exxon
Product Solutions, told the FT.
“What we’re experiencing is the deindustrialisation of the European economy and we’re concerned,” McKee also said.
The
European Union’s leadership has promised time and again it will
facilitate transition projects but it seems it has been slow to act on
this promise. According to Exxon—and a lot of other companies involved
in the transition—getting a project off the ground in the EU is fraught
with regulatory obstacles and “slow and torturous” permitting and
funding procedures, per Exxon’s McKee.
The EU’s Green Deal plan features
a “predictable and simplified regulatory environment” as one of its
four pillars but judging from the reactions of the business world, this
has yet to go from theory to practice. Faster access to funding is the
second pillar in the EU’s lineup but that, too, is taking quite long to
materialize.
It is these delays in implementation that have
prompted business leaders to meet today in Belgium to press the EU
leadership into going from words to actions. There is growing concern
that the regulatory burden put on businesses is scaring them away,
taking investments elsewhere.
There are also some European
leaders, notably France’s Emmanuel Macron and Belgium’s Alexander de
Croo, who have blamed red tape for the farmers’ protests.
Douglas Murray, the director of the British Free Speech Union,
announced a new initiative on Monday aimed at doxing critics of Israel
for "hate speech" and keeping them from getting jobs.
"Douglas
Murray is Director of the British Free Speech Union. He is now going to
lead an initiative to have harsher penalties for those accused of hate
speech, and bar 'bigots' from employment opportunities based on social
media posts!" Keith Woods commented on X.
Proposing a Hate Offenders List akin to the Sex Offenders
list for those convicted of Hate Crimes would streamline law enforcement
efforts, imposing travel restrictions, limiting access to certain
public places, and significantly impacting job opportunities to deter
the wielders of hatred from positions of power.
Utilizing the SEO from social media platforms like
Twitter(X)/TikTok/Facebook posts reported onto D.A.V.I.D. will have
hyper visibility using a simple google search, affecting the individuals
employment opportunities and reputation. D.A.V.I.D. employs facial
recognition to identify bigots from photos or videos. AI spiders crawl
social media platforms, detecting antisemitic content in posts,
comments, and images.
A frightening overview of our preparation for war in the West: The wrong tools for the wrong war! and still it looks like we are rushing head first into a conflict about which nobody understand the consequences. Isn't it the definition of stupidity?
Another amazing interview from Tucker Carlson. This time we get a close up view on how the deep state really works. It is simply amazing.
Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy."
This is about the end of free speech in France but make no mistake it's coming to yours likewise if you live in the West. As we let big corporations take over our democratic systems, the next stage will be force. Wasn't it all predictable?
History does seem to be on fast forward, doesn’t it?
A
major battle is brewing throughout the Western world over the basic
principle of free speech. Is it going to be protected by law? It’s not
entirely clear what the outcome will be. We seem to be on the precipice
of a potential calamity if the courts don’t decide the right way. Even
if we squeak out a victory, the question is already in play. Our free
speech rights have never been more fragile.
Turn your attention to France right now. In the dead of night, a new law slipped
through the General Assembly that would make it a crime to criticize
mRNA shots. Critics call it the Pfizer law. It calls for fines up to
45,000 euros and possibly three years in prison for debunking an
approved medical treatment.
A
general view of the French National Assembly (Assemblee Nationale) is
seen in Paris on July 17, 2023. (Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images)
Like
all Western nations, criticism of the mRNA platform has already been
subjected to vast social-media censorship. Even given this, there has
been a major and global consumer turn against these shots. People are
not convinced that they are necessary, safe, or effective. Still,
government imposed mandates for everyone, billions of people worldwide.
This was a form of conscription that has driven a deep divide between
the rulers and the ruled.
Rather than back down, however,
governments, which have been captured by pharmaceutical interests, are
going to bat for the companies and the technology to threaten
imprisonment of anyone who speaks out openly against them.
Here is
where censorship becomes severely weaponized. It’s the next logical
step. First you deploy every power to keep the distribution channels of
information free of dissent. When that doesn’t entirely work, simply
because people find alternative means of getting the word out, you have
to intensify matters and institute outright controls.
It
stands to reason that this would happen. After all, the whole point of
censorship is to curate the public mind to put down opposition to regime
priorities. When mainstream corporate media is falling apart
and new media is rising, the next stage is to go the full way to
flat-out criminalize opinion, like any totalitarian government.
We are very close to that stage.
If it can happen in France, it can happen throughout Europe, then the
Commonwealth, and then the United States. We know this much about
politics today. It is global. The elites that have seized control of our
governments coordinate across borders. This is why it is hugely
important to pay attention to what’s going on across the pond.
As a second item, I’m alarmed to read the lead piece in the New York Times opinion section that celebrates a defamation case about which I had not previously heard.
It is by Michael Mann, professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He
had sued a writer for the Competitive Enterprise Institute for taking
issue with Mann’s climate change model, and the so-called hockey stick
in particular.
This is not my area of specialization at all but I
have no doubt that mainstream climate science should be subject to
vigorous criticism. If the COVID era has taught us anything, it
is that the “scientific consensus” can be outrageously wrong and needs a
check that comes in the form of writing, some of it zippy and cutting.
Scientist
Michael Mann attends the New York screening of the HBO Documentary "How
to Let Go of the World and All The Things Climate Can't Change" in New
York on June 21, 2016. (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for HBO)
Dr.
Mann filed a defamation lawsuit. Defamation is a very high bar: it
means to deliberately lie about something with the intention to harm.
One might not suppose that many things could qualify as that, certainly
not criticism of a climate model. Indeed, most defamation lawsuits are
dismissed outright simply because this country generally values free
speech.
This one, however, was accepted by the judge in
Washington, D.C. court. After a full decade in litigation, and a full
hearing, the jury ended up deciding in favor of the plaintiffs. One
defendant, Rand Simberg, has been told to pay $1K and the other, Mark
Steyn, $1M. Simberg says he will appeal and stands by every word that he
wrote. Steyn agrees and is ready to appeal.
Essentially this verdict is criminalizing hyperbole, said the defense attorney.
The
op-ed writer, however, says this is justice. “Our recent trial victory
may have wider implications,” he says. “It has drawn a line in the sand.
Scientists now know that they can respond to attacks by suing for
defamation.” He mentions in particular people who have disagreed with
the COVID consensus—disagreeing with Anthony Fauci—or otherwise make
“false claims about adverse health effects from wind turbines.”
Can you imagine? Criticize a wind turbine or pandemic lockdowns and find yourself hauled in front of a judge!
Will
this case have a chilling effect on criticism of government?
Absolutely! Indeed, it is terrifying to think what it implies. And the
writer leaves nothing to the imagination. He sees this case as a wedge
to make scientific criticism of any area of life—from vaccines to
climate change to the conversion to EVs—essentially illegal. In any
case, if not that, it comes close by erecting so many landmines that
critics essentially shut up for fear of having their whole lives ruined.
This
case went on for ten years. The article in question was published 12
years ago. How is it possible that litigants pushed a case for that
long? It was to establish a serious precedent. That precedent is now
clearly established. The definition of defamation is so malleable that
juries can decide anything. Just the prospect of being hauled before a
judge over ten years is enough to deter speaking out.
We can hope
that this appeal reverses the decision. But let’s face it: free speech
should not rest on such a thin foundation of jury-created law and
arbitrary judicial edict. This is all extremely dangerous and flies in
the face of the First Amendment.
Essentially, every critic of the
“scientific consensus” in every area has been put on notice. They are
already fair game. That’s the world toward which we are moving.
Here’s
the issue. Censorship works when government can control all the
distribution channels of information. What happens when that no longer
works? The powers that be have to use more direct methods, even when
they fly in the face of the First Amendment. Those who say that this
cannot happen here need to pay closer attention to the reality of what’s
happening.
Many people are excited to see the breakup of old media. Certainly I am but consider how the censors will respond.
They are getting hardcore, relying more on law rather than capture, and
hoping the courts can act to shut up the critics permanently. That’s
the future we are looking at. It is extremely dangerous. Under this
trajectory, free speech will be no more. The First Amendment will be a
dead letter.
The United States has
become so utterly dependent upon an uninterrupted supply of affordable
electricity that, as our grid becomes ever more fragile American society
has become fragile along with it.
Former CIA director James
Woolsey testified before the U.S. Senate in 2015 that, if America’s
electric grid were to go down for an extended period, such as one year,
“there are essentially two estimates on how many people would die from
hunger, from starvation, from lack of water, and from social disruption.
“One estimate is that within a year or so, two-thirds of the United States population would die,” Mr. Woolsey said. “The other estimate is that within a year or so, 90 percent of the U.S. population would die.”
Chris Keefer, president of Canadians for Nuclear Energy, concurred.
“The energy grid is a civilizational life support system, and without it, modern society collapses very quickly,” he said.
Mr.
Keefer is one of the experts featured in energy analyst, author, and
documentarian Robert Bryce’s new film, “Juice: Power, Politics and the
Grid.” This five-part docuseries looks at how and why America is now
“fragilizing” and destabilizing the engineering marvel that is the
central pillar of our society.
“We are seeing the grid’s reliability, resilience, and affordability all declining,”
Mr. Bryce told The Epoch Times. “We wanted to get people and policy
makers to understand that our most important energy network is being
fragilized, and we ignore this danger at our peril,” Mr. Bryce said.
He
has been fixated on America’s electric grid for decades and authored
the 2020 book, “A Question of Power,” one of the more comprehensive
studies of how electricity grids work and why they may not work as well
in the coming years.
Steven Pinker, author and Harvard psychology
professor, wrote in a review of the book that “energy is our primary
defense against poverty, disorder, hunger, and death.”
And yet,
many nations in the West have engaged in a game of Russian roulette with
their power grids, in an attempt to reduce global temperatures.
A ‘Dire Warning’
The
warnings don’t just come from the analysts featured in the documentary;
electricity regulators are becoming more vocal in sounding the alarm as
well.
In a May 2023 report,
the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), charged
with overseeing grid reliability, stated that a majority of America’s
grid is now at heightened risk levels for outages.
“This report is an especially dire warning that America’s ability to keep the lights on has been jeopardized,” National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jim Matheson stated.
It
was the near-collapse of Texas’s power grid during winter storm Yuri in
2021 that compelled Mr. Bryce to make the documentary. He partnered
with film director Tyson Culver, who along with Mr. Bryce, experienced
the crisis first-hand while living in Austin.
“I didn’t plan to
make another documentary after we made our first film that we released
in 2019,” he said. “I just thought, ‘I can’t do this; it costs too much
and takes too long.’
“But then we learned that the [Texas] grid
nearly failed, and if it had failed, tens of thousands of people would
have died,” he said. “And we realized, if this could happen in Texas,
the energy capital of the world, then the electric grid is really being
undermined.”
The North American electric grid is rapidly being
transitioned from one in which coal had once dominated to one that is
seeing an ever increasing share of wind, solar, and natural gas. In the
process, America’s electric grid is changing from something that was
once so reliable that consumers rarely thought about it, to one that
increasingly features rolling blackouts and may, one day soon, be on the
brink of long-term failure.
The Fatal Trifecta
The destabilization of the power grid is the result of what analyst and author Meredith Angwin deems the “fatal trifecta.”
“The Texas grid almost collapsed because of what I call the fatal trifecta,” Ms. Angwin states. “The first part of the fatal trifecta is over reliance on renewables, which go on and off when they want to.
“The
second part is over reliance on natural gas, which is delivered just in
time and can be interrupted just in time,” she says. “And the third
part is relying on a neighbor to help.”
All of these factors came
into play during Texas winter storm Yuri in 2021. Wind and solar
facilities were unable to deliver in freezing weather, and supplies of
natural gas were interrupted by freezing temperatures as well, just as
people needed electricity to heat their homes.
According to a Texas comptroller’s report,
natural gas supplied 51 percent of Texas’ electricity; wind 25 percent;
and coal 13 percent. As these sources went offline, utilities
frantically enacted blackouts to cut demand, fearing that a mismatch of
supply and demand that lasted more than several minutes would cause
long-term damage to the grid’s hardware.
While Texas
missed having a months-long outage of its electric grid by only a matter
of minutes, the damage from short-term outages was severe.
“Rolling
blackouts were intended to take stress off the power grid but turned
into outages that—in some parts of the state—lasted several days,” the
report stated. In that short time, at least 210 deaths were attributed
to the outage, which also caused an estimated $195 billion in economic damage.
The third leg of the “fatal trifecta” is the ability of regions of the grid to support each other.
For
all its fragmented sources, utilities, and regulations, the North
American power grid is interconnected in a way that allows one region to
shift electricity to another region if one has an excess and the other a
shortfall. Utilities routinely rely on this to balance supply and
demand at any given moment.
Increasingly, however, with excess
reserves dwindling as coal plants are aggressively shut down across the
United States, this ability to “phone a friend” is going away.
Following Europe and California
In
many ways, Texas followed the lead of Europe and California in
transitioning their grid to wind and solar energy, retiring coal plants
and sometimes nuclear plants as well, to halt global warming and please
anti-nuclear activists. Because wind and solar are weather-dependent, a
dispatchable backup source is needed, and that source is typically
natural gas.
As Europe, California, and Texas have learned, this transition creates vulnerability compared to coal and nuclear plants,
where fuel can be stored on-site. It has also led to sharply increasing
prices for electricity, as dual systems of power generation need to be
built, along with additional transmission infrastructure.
According to a 2021 Princeton Study,
relying on wind and solar to achieve net zero by 2050 would require
America’s high-voltage transmission network to triple in size, at a cost
of $2.4 trillion.
In what appears to be a surrender, or at least a
retreat, from the net-zero transition, some European countries, like
Germany, are restarting their coal plants as wind and solar fail to meet
demand, even at inflated prices.
“What we see in Europe from this
misguided infatuation with renewables is a stark warning, and I think
we can see the same thing in California—skyrocketing electricity prices
and no significant reduction in CO2 to speak of,” Mr. Bryce said.
At
the same time, the drive to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions has led to
political and corporate campaigns to shift ever more products onto the
electric grid. This includes such essentials as home heating, transportation, and cooking.
Laws
and regulations in Europe and the United States have sought to ban or
phase out oil and gas heating in homes, along with gasoline-powered
cars, trucks, and buses. The effect of this will be to make people more
dependent on electricity while pushing up demand to levels that many say
the grid cannot meet.
“The grid is already cracking under
existing demand,” Mr. Bryce said. “We’re seeing the grid’s reliability,
resilience, and affordability all declining, while these pressure groups
are trying to put yet more demand on it.
“This is a date with disaster.”
Wind and Solar Devour Open Spaces
Added to this is the insatiable hunger of the wind and solar industry for the consumption of land.
According to a May report
by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), reaching the goal of net-zero carbon
dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050 would consume more than 250,000 square
miles, or 160 million acres, of land.
“With current siting
practices, an area the size of Texas is required to accommodate the wind
and solar infrastructure we need to reach nationwide net-zero emissions
by 2050,” stated Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at TNC, a renewable energy advocate.
Many
energy experts and environmentalists are coming to the conclusion that
nuclear energy is the best choice to generate reliable, affordable
energy, while cutting CO2 emissions. Despite headline nuclear
catastrophes at plants in Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima,
many countries are building new plants or delaying closures of existing
nuclear plants, considering it the cleanest and least environmentally
harmful source of electricity.
According to a report
by the Nuclear Energy Institute, wind farms require up to 360 times as
much land area to produce the same amount of electricity as a nuclear
energy facility, and solar facilities require up to 75 times the land
area. Compared to coal and natural gas plants, wind and solar consume at least 10 times as much land, according to the left-leaning Brookings Institution.
In
addition to a smaller footprint, nuclear power stations also typically
do not require the construction of thousands of miles of new
transmission lines to reach remote locations, where wind and solar
facilities are typically built.
With nuclear, Mr. Bryce said, “we don’t need to expand the grid; we can use the grid we have.”
Climate Activists Embrace Nuclear
Even ardent supporters of green-new-deal initiatives are starting to accept that nuclear must be at least part of the plan.
“What
we’re seeing out of Congress, and to some extent out of this White
House, is more accommodation for nuclear energy,” Mr. Bryce said.
A 2022 report
by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reports that “France,
the EU’s leading atomic state with nuclear weapons and fifty-six power
reactors, is poised to launch a major reinvestment in nuclear power.”
Bulgaria,
the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Poland are also preparing to
build new nuclear reactors, the report states, while other European
nations—Austria, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, and Portugal—remain
opposed to nuclear power.
California regulators, meanwhile, opted in December 2023 to keep the state’s nuclear facility at Diablo Canyon
open through at least 2030, having previously ordered its closure in
2025. This is a retreat for a state that has been plagued with rolling
blackouts as it jumped headlong into a wind and solar future.
“If
we are going to agree that climate change is an issue, with more
[weather] extremes for longer, it’s total insanity to make our most
important energy network dependent on the weather,” Mr. Bryce said. “We need weather-resilient, weather-resistant generation, not weather-dependent generation.”
“With
the Inflation Reduction Act and the investment tax credits, production
tax credits, all of the financial incentives in the power-gen sector are
to build more wind and solar,” he said. “To me, that is just absolute
crazy town.”
