Putin Prepares For A Showdown With Trump As 50,000 Russian Troops Move Into Position

by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:

Now that Donald Trump has won the election, he is going to have to deal with Vladimir Putin and Russia, and that isn’t going to be easy. The Russians have no incentive to end the conflict because they are steadily gobbling up territory in eastern Ukraine. As long as the Russians are making progress toward achieving their goals, why would they want to stop? On the other side, the Ukrainians will never agree to any peace agreement that allows the Russians to keep all of the territories that they have already taken, but the Ukrainians are losing even more ground with each passing day. Of course most members of Congress and our NATO allies want to keep fighting until Russia is defeated, but escalating the war even more is likely to bring us to the brink of nuclear conflict.

TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

So where do we go from here?

As we wait to see what Trump will do once he takes office, the Russians have gathered a force of 50,000 troops to push the Ukrainians completely out of the Kursk region…

The war between Russia and Ukraine is escalating.

The neighbors this weekend launched their largest drone attacks against each other since the start of the war nearly three years ago. Russia last week began a fresh effort to oust Ukrainian forces from its Kursk region after amassing more than 50,000 troops, including some 10,000 soldiers from North Korea. And Russian troops, while advancing steadily in Ukraine’s east, are incurring record numbers of dead and injured, according to the British military’s top commander.

The fact that North Korean troops are now involved has gotten a tremendous amount of attention.

Apparently these North Korean troops are actually “wearing Russian uniforms”…

US and Ukrainian officials say 10,000 of the 50,000 massed troops are North Koreans.

Those soldiers are said to be wearing Russian uniforms and have been equipped by Moscow, but will fight in their own units.

Putin’s army has also been training the North Koreans in infantry tactics, artillery fire, and trench clearing.

NATO officials are absolutely furious that North Korean troops are being introduced into this conflict, and they want to take things to the next level.

They will undoubtedly be putting pressure on Trump to take action, and we shall see what Trump decides to do.

Over the past few days, the corporate media has been telling us that there was a phone call between Trump and Putin…

President-elect Trump spoke with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Thursday and warned him not to escalate the fighting in Ukraine, according to a source briefed on the call.

It was being reported that Trump specifically warned Putin not to escalate the war in Ukraine…

The source said Trump’s message to Putin was roughly: “Don’t escalate because I have weapons, too.”

But now the Russians are denying that such a call ever took place…

But the Kremlin is denying that any of this happened. It is saying the call didn’t even take place. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blasted the Post report as “pure fiction” and said that currently there are no plans for the Russian president to speak to Trump.

“This is completely untrue. This is pure fiction, it’s just false information. There was no conversation,” Peskov told reporters in a briefing.

“This is the most obvious example of the quality of the information that is being published now, sometimes even in fairly reputable publications,” Peskov added.

What in the world is going on here?

Obviously, someone is lying to us.

A call either happened or it didn’t.

Hopefully Trump will come forward and clarify things for us.

Meanwhile, the Russians continue to march forward in eastern Ukraine…

On the front lines, particularly in Ukraine’s east, Russia is advancing slowly but steadily. Russian troops seized almost 200 square miles of Ukrainian territory last month, according to a Ukrainian war-monitoring group, DeepState, which said it was the largest monthly gain this year.

At this moment, a fierce battle is happening for the key logistical hub of Kurakhovo…

Russian troops are engaged in urban combat with the Ukrainian army in the city of Kurakhovo in the Donetsk People’s Republic. As TASS was told by security agencies, the Ukrainian troop group is being “taken in pincers” from the northern, southern and western suburbs.

The agency’s source reported that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are currently trying to transfer small groups to the city.

The city of Kurakhovo is located 46 km from Donetsk and 30 km from Pokrovsk. The settlement acted as a logistics hub through which supplies were supplied to the Ukrainian garrison in Ugledar. On November 2, the Ministry of Defense also reported the capture of the village of Kurakhovka, located on the approaches to Kurakhovo.

The Russians are going to try to take as much territory as they can before winter officially begins.

Once snow starts piling up everywhere, it will become much more difficult to maneuver.

Elsewhere, our relations with China also continue to go downhill. In fact, the Biden administration just ordered TSMC to stop sending advanced AI chips to China…

The U.S. ordered Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co to halt shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers that are often used in artificial intelligence applications starting Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Department of Commerce sent a letter to TSMC imposing export restrictions on certain sophisticated chips, of 7 nanometer or more advanced designs, destined for China that power AI accelerator and graphics processing units (GPU), the person said.

Needless to say, this is going to make the Chinese even angrier with us.

And we are being told that the EU and China are also “on a path that leads straight to a dangerous trade war”…

China and the European Union are on a path that leads straight to a dangerous trade war. After European duties on imports of electric vehicles, the Asian giant announces its first retaliation: from Friday, Nov. 15, Beijing will impose “temporary anti-dumping measures” on brandy imported from EU countries, despite “progress” announced by both sides over the weekend on negotiations to remove duties on battery-powered cars.

Beijing threatened to tax the distillate a month ago, trying to dissuade EU governments from imposing duties and sit at the negotiating table with Brussels from a position of less weakness. In a note, China’s Ministry of Commerce explained that “the authorities have decided to implement temporary anti-dumping measures in the form of cash deposit or letter of guarantee” against European brandies. A decision taken in response to the risk of “substantial damage to the domestic industry.”

Every time we push China further away, the result is that they just get even closer to the Russians.

This should deeply alarm all of us, and I have been specifically warning about this particular alliance of superpowers for a very long time.

Originally Posted at https://www.sgtreport.com

zerohedge
Economics , News , Politics , Science
November 22, 2024
2 views

Utility Companies Are Not On Our Side

Authored by Linnea Leuken & H. Sterlin Burnett via RealClearPolitics,

When electric power was a novel idea and just beginning to be adopted in urban centers, the industry had a Wild West feel to it as multiple companies strung wires, opened power plants, and sold electricity on an unregulated market. Competition was fierce, but state and local governments concluded that the inefficiencies and redundancies endangered the public and imposed higher costs.

So states set up service territories with monopolistic or oligopolistic service providers, who were entrusted with providing reliable power and sufficient reserve for peak periods in return for being guaranteed a profit on rates proposed by the utilities but approved or set by newly established state public utility commissions (PUCs). These commissions were charged with ensuring public utilities served the general public universally within their territory, providing reliable service at reasonable rates.

Much has changed since then. Politicians began to supplant engineers to decide, based on self-interested calculations, what types of power should be favored and disfavored, and what types of appliances and modes of transportation Americans could use. As the 21st century dawned, a new consideration entered the picture: Climate change.

Under the banner of combatting global warming, utilities were at first encouraged and then coerced into adopting plans and policies aimed at achieving net zero emissions of carbon dioxide. The aim of providing reliable, affordable power – the rationale for the electric utilities’ monopolies in the first place – was supplanted by a controversial and partisan political goal. Initially, as states began to push renewable energy mandates, utilities fought back, arguing that prematurely closing reliable power plants, primarily coal-fueled, would increase energy costs, compromise grid reliability, and leave them with millions of dollars in stranded assets.

Politicians addressed those concerns with subsidies and tax credits for renewable power. In addition, they passed on the costs of the expanded grid to ratepayers and taxpayers. Effectively, elected officials and the PUCs, with a wink and a nod, indemnified utilities for power supply failures, allowing utilities to claim that aging grid infrastructure and climate change were to blame for failures rather than the increased percentage of intermittent power added to the grid at their direction.

Today, utilities have enthusiastically embraced the push for renewable (but less reliable) resources, primarily wind and solar. PUCs guarantee a high rate of return for all new power source (wind, solar, and battery) installations, which has resulted in the construction of ever more and bigger wind, solar, and battery facilities. The costlier, the more profitable – regardless of their compromised ability to provide reliable power or the cost impact on residential, commercial, and industrial ratepayers.

A new report from The Heartland Institute demonstrates the significant financial incentives from government and financiers for utilities to turn away from affordable energy sources like natural gas and coal, and even nuclear, and instead aggressively pursue wind and solar in particular. All of this is done in the name of pursuing net zero emissions, which every single major utility company in the country boasts about on their corporate reports and websites. Reliability and affordability come secondary to the decarbonization agenda.

Dominion Energy is a good example, as they are one of the most aggressive movers on climate-focused policy. Dominion CEO Robert Blue speaks excitedly about government-forced transitions to a wind- and solar-dominated grid in interviews. During one interview with a renewable energy podcast, he said:

“[S]ometimes the government needs to focus on outcomes. We’re trying to address a climate crisis, and we are going to need to move quickly to do that.” In the same interview, he expressed enthusiasm about federal policy that would achieve a government-directed transition.

And why wouldn’t he? Dominion, like most utilities, is granted government tax credits and guarantees on returns for investing in large, expensive projects like offshore wind, the most expensive source of electric power. The bigger the project, the bigger the profit with guaranteed returns.

Also, onshore wind companies have received special “take limits” from the Fish and Wildlife Service to kill protected bald eagles and golden eagles, while prosecuting oil companies if birds are injured or killed on their sites.

Net zero policies are not the environmental panacea that climate change activists proclaim. Industrial-scale wind and solar use substantially more land than conventional energy resources, disrupting ecosystems and destroying wildlife habitats in the process.

And despite recent technological advances, wind and solar are still not dispatchable resources, meaning they cannot provide consistent power at all times needed. Refuting claims made by environmentalists and utilities that wind and solar are the cheapest sources of electric power, costs have risen steeply as the use of wind and solar has increased. Customers of Duke Energy in Kentucky, for example, are paying 78% higher rates in the wake of coal-fired plant closings.

Politicians and utilities are pushing for even more electrification for appliances and vehicles despite the fact that Federal Energy Regulatory Commission officials have repeatedly warned in recent years that adding more demand for electric power while replacing reliable power sources with intermittent renewables is destabilizing the power system.

It appears that the utilities prioritize short-term profits over grid reliability or keeping costs reasonable – and the government officials who are supposed to keep them in check are only encouraging them. It doesn’t need to be this way. The U.S. grid was not always this way. Only in recent years, with the obsessive pursuit of net zero, have rolling black and brownouts become so common.

Today, utility companies are sending lobbyists to conservative policymakers in order to convince them that the utilities have our best interests in mind. Their track record tells another story. Meanwhile, Americans have less reliable electricity at higher costs.

Linnea Lueken (llueken@heartland.org, X: @LinneaLueken) is a research fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/22/2024 – 06:30