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Zelensky Tells Fox: Trump Assured Me He Would Support Ukraine

Zelensky Tells Fox: Trump Assured Me He Would Support Ukraine

Zelensky Tells Fox: Trump Assured Me He Would Support Ukraine

Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Fox News that former President Donald Trump reassured him that Washington will maintain its support for Kiev should he return to the White House. 

The Ukrainian leader said Trump made the remarks when the two met last week. “I don’t know what will be after [the] elections and who will be the president… But I’ve got from Donald Trump very direct information that he will be on our side, that he will support Ukraine,” he said. 

Via Associated Press

Last week, Zelensky traveled to the US and met with Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, and President Joe Biden to present Ukraine’s “victory plan.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that senior US and European officials say the proposal contains no clear path to victory for Ukraine

The plan was described as offering nothing new, and repackaged several old requests for more weapons and permission to use them in Russia. “I’m unimpressed, there’s not much new there,” one official told WSJ

While Democrats have targeted Trump as an apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin and not supportive enough of Ukraine, the former president has supported sending arms to Ukraine.

During his term in the Oval Office, Trump authorized arms transfers to Kiev, something his predecessor Barack Obama refused to do out of fear of crossing Moscow’s redlines. 

Earlier this year, a massive $60 billion aid package for Ukraine was stalled in Congress. Several key figures in the debate report that Trump broke the deadlock when he threw his support behind the aid

Although Trump has claimed he would end the war if elected in November, he has not outlined a precise plan for accomplishing that.

Instead, he has repeatedly stated the 2022 invasion would not have occurred if he had been president. Trump also insisted on Wednesday that Zelensky should have made a peace deal with Putin shortly after the war began. 

Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/30/2024 – 17:40

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Austrian Right-Wing Freedom Party Scores Historic Victory In National Elections

Austrian Right-Wing Freedom Party Scores Historic Victory In National Elections

Austrian Right-Wing Freedom Party Scores Historic Victory In National Elections

Less than a month after a crushing loss for Germany’s ruling coalition saw the the first victory for a German right-wing party since World War II, Austria’s right-wing Freedom Party scored a historic victory of its own on Sunday, winning the most votes in the country’s national election for the first time after the eurosceptic party campaigned on mass deportation, cracking down on illegal immigration, and halting aid to the giant money laundromat that is Ukraine.

And, just like after AfD’s stunning success on September 1 which was met with a full-court press from establishment parties to prevent it from ruling, so Austria’s traditional political powers have pledged to block the conservative Freedom Party from forming a government, marking the latest effort to stem the rising tide of populism in Europe.

How they’ll achieve that, replicating a strategy adopted in Germany and France, is set to become the subject of lengthy coalition negotiations beginning in the days ahead. As Bloomberg reports, despite winning the most votes for the first time in a national election, the Freedom Party’s divisive leader, Herbert Kickl, appears unlikely to play a role in Austria’s next cabinet if the establishment gets its way. That’s because all other parties set to win seats in parliament have vowed not to work with him, depriving his group of the 50% needed to form a government.

That leaves open the possibility for the second and third-placed parties, the conservative People’s Party of Chancellor Karl Nehammer and the Socialists, to join forces to rule the country instead.

While the Freedom Party may “create a stink” publicly about not receiving the mandate to form a government, Kickl will likely content himself with building popular support in opposition, said Marcus How, a geopolitical risk analyst at VE Insight.

“It could feasibly play into Kickl’s hands, as he’ll argue the coalition formed of losers,” How said. “He will not unreasonably bank on its dysfunction and unpopularity, hoping that this will strengthen the Freedom Party ahead of the next elections.”

As Bloomberg notes, a combination of Austria’s two main traditional parties used to be the country’s default arrangement, making up more than half of its governments since World War II. On occasion, the Freedom Party joined one of them to run the country — most recently from 2017 in Sebastian Kurz’s cabinet — though never as the dominant group.

That’s no longer the case.

Opening negotiations with Freedom Party over a potential coalition would be “reckless,” Nehammer said on Sunday. The People’s Party will “stand by their word” not to form a government with the far-right movement as long as Kickl remains its leader.

The People’s Party and Socialists are projected to have 93 seats together, according to preliminary results — just enough for a majority — but they still may include a third party in their coalition, most likely the liberal NEOS.

“I won’t have you in government,” NEOS head Beate Meinl-Reisinger told Kickl. “I simply find you wrong for the country” which is ironic since the largest group of Austrian votes simply find him right for the country.

Kickl was quick to condemn the move to freeze him out of talks, accusing his opponents of breaking with constitutional precedent and ignoring the will of the voters.

Now the Freedom Party is the strongest and suddenly everything is supposed to be different,” he told public broadcaster ORF. “This is their next attempt to fool the people.”

Yet fooling the people is all they have left: blocking right wing parties has been the recurring political pattern in myriad elections across Europe this year. In Germany, the AfD won regional elections in Thuringia, only for the other parties to refuse to engage with the party. A left-wing alliance in France stopped Marine Le Pen’s National Rally from scoring an election victory in July.Meanwhile, Geert Wilders’s far-right group took power in the Netherlands as member of a four-party coalition, but Wilders himself isn’t part of the executive.

Such an option looks unlikely in Austria, as Kickl has said a similar decision by then-party chief Jörg Haider in the early 2000s to give the chancellor position to the People’s Party — despite coming ahead of them in the election — was a mistake.

A three-party coalition would be a first for Austria and finding common ground for a joint government program will be an arduous task. All party leaders — even Kickl — agree that “something has to change” in the country, but they disagree on the particulars.

Austrian coalition negotiations have traditionally taken months, not weeks, so the talks could stretch into next year. Nehammer’s existing team — made up of the People’s Party and the Greens — will continue to govern in the meantime.

In any case, whoever forms the next government will face a lengthy list of policy challenges.

Despite being one of Europe’s wealthiest nations based on gross domestic product per capita, the competitiveness of Austria’s industrial base is at risk from aggressive wage hikes and government hand-outs to compensate for fast inflation. The likely end of Russian gas deliveries in December removes a cheaper source of energy, and the transition to alternative sources is fraught with risks.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/30/2024 – 05:45

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What Are World Leaders Getting Paid?

What Are World Leaders Getting Paid?

What Are World Leaders Getting Paid?

World leaders frequently rub shoulders with the rich and famous, but does that mean they themselves can be counted among this category of people?

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, based on data taken from the website PoliticalSalaries.com, the answer is ‘it depends’.

Among current world leaders is one income millionaire: Lawrence Wong, the prime minister of Singapore. He brings in an annual salary of the equivalent of almost $1.69 million, which makes him the best-earning world leader. His remuneration places him far ahead of second-ranked Viola Amherd, president of Switzerland, who earns upwards of a converted $570,000 per year.

Year is indeed singular for Amherd, who started her term on January 1 and will end it on December 31. Swiss presidents are members of the country’s government cabinet voted in by the Swiss parliament for one year at a time. The cabinet consists of seven council members who can be re-elected, so it is possible that Amherd will serve another well-paid term as Swiss president in the future.

Many of the remainder of the world’s best-paid political leaders hail from Anglophone countries, including the American president, who earns $400,000 annually. As of August 29 currency conversion rates, this was less that what Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is making, but more than what the Prime Ministers of New Zealand and Canada, Christopher Luxon and Justin Trudeau, are bringing in per year. German-speaking countries also pay their leaders well, with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer making slightly more than his German equivalent, Olaf Scholz.

Including leaders of non-sovereign entities, Hong Kong is applying a similar approach to Singapore’s, paying its current Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu the equivalent of almost $700,000 annually. While Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew was a proponent of competitive public sector pay, Hong Kong’s high remuneration has been tied to its history of high pay for colonial governors. Another leader that doesn’t helm a country, but is still handsomely rewarded is Ursula van der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. She is bringing in one of the European Union’s highest salary of approximately $358,000 per year.

Taking a different approach to determining the highest-paid world leaders on a level relative to their countries’ economic prowess, Kenyan President William Rutto is the biggest earner, bringing in the equivalent of almost 2,000% of his country’s per-capita GDP in 2023.

You will find more infographics at Statista

On the basis of 2023 average exchange rates, Rutto made the equivalent of $126,000 last year. This is in stark contrast to Kenya’s GDP per capita of just $6,300 annually. The Presidents of Tanzania and South Africa, Samia Suluhu Hassan and Cyril Ramaphosa, also crack the 1,000% mark, while aforementioned Singaporian Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and his $1.7 million salary stand at 1,158% of the per-capita GDP of the city state of $141,500.

Viola Amherd of Switzerland, Anthony Albanese of Australia and Christopher Luxon of New Zealand also reappear among the world leaders with the highest relative salaries, while U.S. President Joe Biden comes in rank 9 at a salary standing at 490% of per-capita GDP in 2023.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 09/29/2024 – 22:45

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You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows

You Don’t Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows

You Don’t Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows

Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues

Twenty years of schoolin’
And they put you on the day shift
Look out kid
They keep it all hid

Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues

As we accelerate towards whatever disastrous outcome awaits our debt-ridden, delusional, decadent, despairing society, I seem to be drawn to the anti-establishment lyrics of Bob Dylan, written during the turbulent 1960s. Maybe it’s the assassinations and unpopular war in the 60s that have triggered my focus. You certainly don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing today. A gale force wind is blowing the nation towards civil and global war, simultaneously. And it is not a naturally occurring wind, but an artificial storm created by the ruling plutocracy in a last-ditch traitorous effort to retain their wealth, power and control over our lives.

They have kept their evil machinations and malevolent schemes hidden from the view of the masses through their control of mass media, politicians, the financial system, and corporate entities, all doing their bidding in our corporate fascist totalitarian state, disguised as a democratic republic.

After twenty years of schoolin, they have propagandized and indoctrinated generations into believing whatever they are told to believe by their overlords. They have been taught to feel, emote and embrace delusionary falsehoods, rather than think critically, analyze and embrace truthful reality. The question of our time is whether enough people can be awoken from their government induced mass formation stupor to reverse our downward spiral into the abyss.

I believe I’ve known which way the winds have been blowing for the entirety of this Fourth Turning, but my expectations regarding the timing of major events have been inaccurate. My impatience is a result of not having lived through a Fourth Turning and accepting the crisis will last twenty to twenty-five years.

I should be happy the violent, bloody phase of this Fourth Turning has been delayed, as it has given me more time to prepare by acquiring more firearms, ammo, supplies, and precious metals. But a feeling of melancholy engulfs me on a daily basis, knowing there is no exit strategy for avoiding what lies ahead. If anything, the delay in any significant level of violence thus far probably ratchets up the intensity and explosiveness when it does commence, like a pressure cooker ready to explode.

If you don’t sense the impending volatility of our current state of affairs, you are either willfully ignorant, too dumbed down and distracted by your techno-gadgets to notice, or a participant in the machinations to undermine our civilized society and replace it with an authoritarian new world order of CBDCs, social credit scores, censorship, fifteen minute cities, techno-gulags, pervasive surveillance, and eating zee bugs.

The plutocrats have been utilizing their vast wealth and control over politicians, bankers, and media moguls to impose their demented psychopathic vision upon the masses, blatantly trampling upon their rights, liberties and freedoms, with no fear of retribution or consequences for their treasonous acts. They believe they are invincible, as their hubris grows to colossal levels, portending their eventual downfall. We are hurdling towards our rendezvous with destiny, for good or for ill.

The last two books I’ve read have further contributed to my sense of foreboding, as they confirm the historical fact of man’s inhumanity to man, insatiable greed driving those in power, and the willingness of the ruling elite to use violence as a means to achieve whatever outcomes they desire. The two books are Dune, by Frank Herbert, and End Times, by Peter Turchin. Dune is a science fiction novel published in 1965, capturing the corruption and duplicities practiced by the ruling classes as they fight for control over land, resources and wealth, during the waning days of a formerly great empire.

The tone of the novel is dark, ominous and gloomy. The characters seemed resigned to their tragic fate, as melancholy pervades their world, and they are powerless to change the catastrophic events which are unfolding according to an immutable destiny. I have a similar feeling regarding the events unfolding on a daily basis, as we head towards a cataclysmic climax to our empire of debt, domination, delusion, and destruction. As Frank Herbert noted, there is no escape from the choices we have made over time.

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune

The non-fiction – End Times – was published in 2023 by Peter Turchin, a complexity scientist studying the dynamics of historical societies, further painting a very bleak picture of our current historical paradigm, with little opportunity to alter the violent upheaval about to engulf our decaying society. Him and his team created a quantitative model that analyzed complex societies across thousands of years and discovered predictable waves of political instability brought about by the same forces in a predictable pattern. Based upon this model, in 2010 Peter went on record predicting major instability in the U.S. in the early 2020s. The basis for his prediction was as follows:

“When a state, such as the United States, has stagnating or declining real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, declining public trust, and exploding public debt, these seemingly disparate social indicators are actually related to each other dynamically. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability. In the United States, all of these factors started to turn in an ominous direction in the 1970s. The data pointed to the years around 2020 when the confluence of these trends was expected to trigger a spike in political instability.” – End Times – Peter Turchin

I know many people don’t trust academic created models, especially when they attempt to predict future history and sociological trends. Many dismiss Strauss & Howe’s Fourth Turning generational theory as voodoo and making history fit into their model. I’ve been convinced since reading the book in 2004 of its validity, and nothing that has occurred since the start of this Fourth Turning in 2008 has convinced me otherwise. Turchin’s model, based on entirely different criteria, essentially predicts violent upheaval, war and societal collapse on the same timeline as the Fourth Turning theory.

In addition, I have been following the daily writings of Martin Armstrong, a non-academic investment manager, for a decade, and his Socrates model also predicts civil war, global war, economic collapse and a turbulent outcome by 2032. In fact, all three models are in alignment regarding the degree of violence, bloodshed and turmoil, with clear winners and losers by the time this crisis period resolves itself. This is a naturally occurring phenomenon as described by Turchin.

“All complex societies go through cycles of alternative stretches of internal peace and harmony periodically interrupted by outbreaks of internal warfare and discord.” – End Times – Peter Turchin

The level of gaslighting, propaganda, misinformation, censorship of the truth, and blatant mistruths being peddled to the masses by the plutocrats pulling the levers of this shitshow has reached epic proportions. This is being perpetrated as a last-ditch desperate effort to maintain the control they have been exercising since the 21st Century commenced. The upcoming election in five weeks has accelerated their efforts to derail Trump’s election at all costs.

Two attempted assassinations by Deep State patsies, after a half dozen failed efforts to imprison Trump, and the ascension of Saint Kackler by the Deep State and controlled regime media using fake polls and trying to duplicate the Biden basement dummy strategy has failed. The vote margin in the swing states appears to be too large for the Democrat cheating schemes of illegal immigrants and dead people voting, mail-in ballot fraud, and Dominion vote switching to overcome. The plutocrats thought they had covered all their bases but are in danger of seeing their best laid plans self-destruct.

“The plutocrats can use their wealth to buy mass media, to fund think tanks, and to handsomely reward those social influencers who promote their messages. In other words, they wield enormous power to sway the electorate toward the opinions that promote their interests. The plutocrats can afford to plan, and implement their plans, for the long term.” – End Times – Peter Turchin

I believe the tapestry of history will be stained by the traitorous machinations of the nefarious Deep State forces controlling Biden, Harris, Congress, and every governmental department in the next five weeks. Spineless Jerome Powell has done as he was told by producing a crisis level interest rate cut when stock and housing markets are at all-time highs and unemployment is near all-time lows. They will stop at nothing to retain rule over our nation, even risking nuclear annihilation in their game of chicken with Putin.

They believe their 3rd assassination attempt will be a charm. We should be vigilant for whatever false flag or new “deadly” pandemic they can activate in the coming weeks. Will it be another FBI created “white supremacist” Trump supporter terrorist attack on people of color? Or will they initiate a false flag in the Middle East with their Israeli co-conspirators to launch the neo-con dream war with Iran? They launched the Covid scamdemic in a matter of weeks, so a new terrifying super virus isn’t out of the question. Anything they can do to interfere with a smooth election will be attempted.

They believe they can’t allow Trump to take office in January 2025. We all know the uni-party does as they are told by the monied interests. The plutocrats don’t spend $4 billion per year “lobbying” politicians for nothing. The election of Trump would not materially change the course of this titanic ship of debt. We’ve already struck the iceberg and are taking on water. Economic catastrophe is a certainty.

Trump may only delay the inevitable. Turchin’s book explains what is really happening out of sight of the masses. Super-elites (Trump, Musk, Carlson versus Obama, Soros, Gates) are battling for supremacy, while the little people are nothing more than pawns in the chess game of world domination as our nation rots from within.

“The social pyramid has grown top-heavy. We now have too many ‘elite aspirants’ competing for a fixed number of positions in the upper echelons of politics and business. In our model, such conditions have a name: elite overproduction. Together with popular immiseration, elite overproduction, and the intra-elite conflicts that it has engendered, has gradually undermined our civic cohesiveness, the sense of national cooperation without which states quickly rot from within.” – End Times – Peter Turchin

Turchin’s model revolves around what he terms an oversupply of super-elites who are created when a country/empire devolves into a plutocracy, where the rich get richer by rigging the system in their favor, while the rest of society sinks into immiseration (impoverishment). Every empire goes through the same cyclical process, which eventually leads to its decline.

Turchin marked the 1970s as when the tide turned heavily in favor of the elites, with the middle and lower classes slowly and steadily sinking into despair, as their standard of living has degraded year after year, while being lured deeper and deeper into debt by the ruling elite who have profited mightily from their indebtedness. The Establishment/Deep State/Plutocracy/Ruling Elite or whatever other term you want to use for the evil psychopaths running the show and telling their Biden and Harris puppets what to say and do, are all part of George Carlin’s Big Club – and you ain’t in it.

“The business and political elites knew each other, went to the same schools, belonged to the same clubs, married into the same families, shared the same values – in reality, formed the phenomenon which has lately been dubbed The Establishment.”– The Triumph of Conservatism – Gabriel Kolko

As the younger generations are enslaved in student loan debt to obtain degrees from left wing universities, controlled by communist academics, older generations are mired in debt from McMansions, $60,000 SUVs, outrageous medical expenses, and plain old grocery bills. For the past forty years, the relative wages of the average American have been in decline, while the wealth of the elites, controlling the mega-corps, too big to fail banks, media conglomerates, and political system, have risen to obscene heights on the backs of the working-class peasants. Life expectancy has been in decline, depression and suicides on the rise, discontent and anger reaching acute levels, and an oversupply of elite aspirants, created by all that newly printed fiat, have created a combustible mixture on the verge of erupting like Mount Saint Helens.

Those who currently benefit from our utterly corrupt plutocracy of psychopaths and deviants, pretend everything is normal and anyone questioning their provably false narratives are dangerous conspiracy theorists who must be censored, silenced and prosecuted for thought-crime. Their arrogance towards the common man and hubris in believing their own bullshit has left them susceptible to the vengeance of those they have scorned, ridiculed, and belittled, while pillaging the wealth of an empire in its death throes.

A feeling of despair leading to a revolutionary vibe is in the air, as sides have been drawn, no compromise is possible, and those 300 million firearms are poised to be put to use. The debased establishment doesn’t think enough people have the gumption and courage to step up and call their bluff. If they are able to steal this election again and install another actual moron in the White House, the country will begin to implode, with chaos, violence and much bloodshed likely.

“Americans today grossly underestimate the fragility of the complex society in which we live. But an important lesson from history is that people living in previous eras similarly didn’t imagine that their societies could suddenly crumble around them. States die in a great variety of ways. Some go out in a bang of violence; others unravel quietly and die with a whimper.” – End Times – Peter Turchin

I tend to lean towards the American empire going out with a bang, rather than a whimper. I’ve referenced this level of normalcy bias and cognitive dissonance among the masses previously with regards to the last two Fourth Turnings. In late 1859 there was virtually no one who foresaw the devastation and death that would engulf the nation in the next five years, with over 600,000 killed and 500,000 wounded. Over 8% of the white male population between the ages of 13 and 43 died in the space of those five years.

In early 1938 very few people expected a global conflagration involving virtually every country on earth to result in the deaths of 65 million people (3% of the global population). We are now at another turning point in human history. When enough critical thinking citizens become convinced there is no hope of fixing their problems through conventional means, like the ballot box, because the system is unfixable and corrupt, violent upheaval will consume the nation, with an unknowable outcome. As Turchin has documented, this societal implosion has occurred on a regular basis across the centuries. The only difference is previous regimes didn’t have the means to destroy the planet with the push of a button.

These periodic societal implosions are entirely the result of plutocratic greed, where the ruling elites feel impelled to rig the financial and political institutions in a way that pumps immense wealth into their pockets, creating a chosen few who see their mega-yachts rising on a tide of Fed created fiat, while the dinghies of the impoverished many sink to the bottom of the sea. This predictable devolution of every empire is what destabilizes their society and leads to discord, violence, and the overthrow of the existing social order.

The “Haves” have so much wealth, so much control over our media, so much unwarranted influence over our political system, so much dominion over our intel agencies and military, and complete domination over central banking, while the “Have Nots” have little chance to succeed or even maintain their standard of living, as their anger towards the “Haves” reaches the boiling point. You can feel it. It will only take one spark to ignite this powder-keg of engineered wealth imbalance to initiate Civil War 2.0.

Turchin’s model predicts a grim future, with an outbreak of serious violence during the 2020s. Based on the current trajectory of our societal disintegration, his model paints a dark, bleak future for the United States, and probably the entire world when the USA does everything in its power to maintain world domination through military means. Based on hundreds of previous empire collapses, Turchin provides this assessment:

“The probability of ruler assassination was 40%. Bad news for the elites. Even more bad news for everybody was that 75% of the crises ended in revolutions or civil wars (or both), and in one-fifth of cases, recurrent civil wars dragged on for a century or longer. 60% of exits led to the death of the state – it was conquered by another or simply disintegrated into fragments. The overall conclusion is grim. In most cases, several disasters combined, and some societies experienced really severe outcomes – End Times – Peter Turchin

Strauss and Howe’s Fourth Turning theory predicts war and bloodshed on a grand scale in the second half of this crisis period (2024 – 2032). Turchin’s model predicts the same. Martin Armstrong’s Socrates model also predicts the same. I find it interesting that Neil Howe and Peter Turchin, both academics, choose to disregard the unequivocal outcome of their models and pretend a positive outcome is a possibility. Hope is not a strategy, and denying the reality before our very eyes, benefits no one except those in power.

Armstrong, an investment manager, shows no inclination to not trust his model. He expects civil and global war, while predicting this will be the last presidential election in U.S. history. What will happen between now and November 5, to ignite the next bloody phase of this crisis? Will they shoot Trump’s plane out of the sky? Will they blatantly cheat on election day through fake mail-in ballots and Dominion vote switching, installing kackling Kamala as their puppet? Will they provoke Russia and/or Iran into launching World War 3? We know for sure these societal storms will only intensify until a climax is attained, with distinct winners and losers.

It has been a slow train coming, but it is picking up speed as we enter the final stages of this journey. The Deep State has had control for too long and their time has come. They have disregarded and torn the U.S. Constitution to shreds. We are no longer bound by their illegal laws, regulations and rules. They don’t apply no more. We’ve been standing around and waiting for someone else to do the dirty work.

The Founders, like Jefferson, risked their very lives to give us this country. It is time to make a brave and courageous stand against the forces of evil and take this country back from the super-elite fools glorifying their traitorous deeds in the name of Satan. The slow train of justice is coming around the bend, and anyone who cares about the future of this Republic needs to hop on. The times that try men’s souls have arrived. The choices we make will matter.

Man’s ego is inflated, his laws are outdated, they don’t apply no more
You can’t rely no more to be standin’ around waitin’
In the home of the brave, Jefferson turnin’ over in his grave
Fools glorifying themselves, trying to manipulate Satan
And there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend

Slow Train Coming – Bob Dylan

Tyler Durden
Sun, 09/29/2024 – 17:30

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The Democrats' "Kudzu Economy" | ZeroHedge

The Democrats’ “Kudzu Economy” | ZeroHedge

The Democrats’ “Kudzu Economy”

Authored by Thaddeus McCotter via American Greatness,

As many a Gen Xer will do these days, I dusted off an old compact disc: REM’s album Murmur, which was released in 1983. As I listened to the first track, “Radio Free Europe,” I looked at the CD’s cover. It was an eerie photo of thick vegetation.

As I later learned, when the REM album was released, this plant was well on its way to enveloping large swaths of the southeastern United States, including Georgia (which was REM’s original base). The name of the all-consuming plant? Kudzu (Pueraria montana).

Immediately, I thought of the left’s “Green Economy.” Bear with me.

Per a 2019 article in The Nature Conservancy entitled “Kudzu: The Invasive Vine that Ate the South”: “Kudzu looks innocent enough yet the invasive plant easily overtakes trees, abandoned homes and telephone poles.”

Kudzu is an invasive species. “Kudzu—or kuzu (クズ) – is native to Japan and southeast China. It was first introduced to the United States during the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 where it was touted as a great ornamental plant for its sweet-smelling blooms and sturdy vines.”

The invasive plant’s other ominous nickname is “mile-a-minute,” for its spread of up to “one foot per day.” This makes Kudzu’s spread as lightning quick as it is lethal to indigenous vegetation:

“[Kudzu] outcompetes everything from native grasses to fully mature trees… This loss of native plants harms other plants, insects and animals that adapted alongside them, leading to cascading effects throughout an ecosystem. Over time, these effects of habitat loss can lead to species extinctions and a loss of overall biodiversity.”

So, are we to blame posh 19th-century Americans’ vanity for the introduction of and devastation by Kudzu? The introduction, perhaps. But, like sundry other 21st-century problems, we can point to the 20th Century’s titans of science and the federal government for the vast extent of the devastation. As the Nature Conservancy concedes:

“From the 1930s through the 1950s, the Soil Conservation Service promoted it as a great tool for soil erosion control and was planted in abundance throughout the south. Little did we know that kudzu is quite a killer, overtaking and growing over anything in its path.” [Italics mine.]

Note the article’s use of “we,” to mute the culpability of the government and scientific community at the time. Some things never change, right Dr. Fauci? Nor does the present scientific community’s effort to without the slightest trace of humility or irony push their remunerative climate change narrative—and the more apocalyptic the narrative the better:

“Kudzu thrives in areas with mild winters and hot summers. Climate change may be making it easier for creeping vine to spread, as winters in many areas of the U.S. become milder. Climate change also can lead to more regional drought, an opportunity for this versatile killer.” [Italics mine.]

The weasel words “may” and “can” have been italicized, rather than, say, the words “does” or “will.” Why? It is an attempt to insulate subsequent speculative statements from having to be demonstrably factual—you know, like real science expects (or used to, anyway). This is the tell in apocalyptic climate change rhetoric.

Here is an easy way to remember the climate change cult’s rhetorical conceit: “If I could be any plant in the forest, I would be Kudzu.” Yet, there are no “ifs,” “ands,” nor “buts” about it. You cannot be any plant in the forest; thus, you are not now and can never be a Kudzu. (Don’t shoot the messenger.) Still, such is advice for those who have not been indoctrinated to blindly “trust the science” and the expertise of the governing elite.

Is there any hope of eradicating Kudzu? It is possible, though the size of the “patch” is determinative of how best to do so. “Newer, smaller patches can be controlled with persistent weeding,” as well as through persistent mowing and grazing (by cattle and goats, not people)” will weaken and eventually control the plant.” Bigger patches require cutting the invasive vine and treating it with herbicides. Oh, and here is the most comprehensive remedy 21st-century science provides: “The best way to deal with kudzu or other invasive plants is to prevent them from spreading.”

You don’t say?

On the subject of things best not to spread, ponder the latest collusion between the environmental and political science communities: the Democrats’ Kudzu Economy (a.k.a., the “Green economy”).

Their Kudzu economy perversely denigrates increasing prosperity and promotes scarcity in the name of collective virtue. Reducing energy and product production, spurring inflation, and curtailing employment opportunities and the American Dream, itself, the Democrats’ Kudzu economy seeks to insulate its proven failures behind a veneer of collective “purpose.” Trillion-dollar spending bills combined with executive and administrative diktats are designed to curtail and, in many instances, eliminate consumer choices and smother the entrepreneurial spirit and productive capacity of the American people. Further, Democrats and their cohorts in radical climate change organizations seek to have an omnipotent federal government, as well as state and local governments, substitute their arbitrary and capricious decisions and preferences for those of the sovereign people it purports to—and is supposed to—serve.

Rarely right but never in doubt, this elitist gaggle of climate alarmists, leftist politicians, collusion media, anti-competitive corporatists, and sundry know-it-all billionaires bent upon introducing and spreading within the most prosperous economy in human history their own version of an invasive socialist ideology that will smother and destroy everything in its path.

Imbued with neo-pagan earth worship, including dire prophecies of an apocalypse if its dictates are not obeyed, at its invasive root the Democrats’ Kudzu economy is simply more hoary socialism in earth shoes: another duplicitous attempt to impose a demonstrably failed, inhumane ideology upon an unfortunate populace.

Unlike their 20th-century predecessors in the Soil Conservation Service who acted and erred with inaccurate information but with the best of intentions to improve the lives of Americans, the proponents of the Democrats’ Kudzu economy should know better; however, they have allowed ideology and greed to desensitize them to the consequences of their actions upon their fellow citizens. For the rest of us, the Kudzu economy may be “The End of the World As We Know It,” but its elitist proponents feel fine.

Well, for now, anyway. Kudzu advance is not limited to the largely “red,” southeastern states. It has been increasingly found in “blue” northern climes, including the states of Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon, Illinois, and Delaware. Should a landscaping crew happen upon the invasive vine on a tony estate on Martha’s Vineyard or any of the other retreats of the insulated elites, perhaps the Democrats will learn a painful lesson that blind faith in fallible science has unforeseen and unfortunate consequences. Heck, maybe that could then spur a further self-examination of their radical ideology and, thus, a reconsideration of their zealous promotion of their Kudzu economy.

Is this too much to expect? Probably. But where there is life, there is hope; and, however deep the darkness enveloping it, a thin reed of truth will out to the light.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 09/28/2024 – 23:20

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How American Tech Workers Feel About Joining A Union

How American Tech Workers Feel About Joining A Union

How American Tech Workers Feel About Joining A Union

American tech workers, along with lawyers and accountants, have some of the lowest rates of union membership in the country.

But in the last few years of ballooning layoffs, sentiments may be changing.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu, shows the percentage of U.S. tech employees that would join a union if their company had access to one.

Data is sourced from Blind, which conducted an online survey of 1,901 verified tech professionals.

Which Tech Company Employees Are Likely to Join a Union?

Amongst the companies, union support appears to be highest at Intuit (financial software), General Motors, and Oracle (enterprise software).

Company Name Likely Unlikely
💼 Intuit 94% 6%
🚗 General Motors 92% 8%
🖥️ Oracle 85% 15%
💻 Atlassian 85% 15%
🎨 Adobe 83% 17%
📶 Qualcomm 83% 17%
🔗 LinkedIn 82% 18%
💽 Dell 79% 21%
🏦 Capital One 78% 22%
🌐 Cisco 77% 23%
📱 ByteDance 75% 25%
🔧 Intel Corporation 74% 26%
📊 Splunk 73% 27%
🟦 Block 73% 27%
💳 Visa 73% 27%
💸 Stripe 73% 27%
☁️ Salesforce 72% 28%
🎮 NVIDIA 71% 29%
🛒 Amazon 70% 30%
🧑‍💼 Indeed.com 70% 30%
🏦 PayPal 69% 31%
👗 Nordstrom 69% 31%
🏢 Meta 67% 33%
🖥️ ServiceNow 64% 36%
🚗 Uber 64% 36%
🖥️ Microsoft 63% 37%
🛍️ Walmart 60% 40%
👻 Snap 58% 42%
🚙 Rivian Automotive 58% 42%
📝 DocuSign 55% 45%
🏦 JPMorgan Chase & Co. 50% 50%
🍏 Apple 47% 53%
🚗 Tesla Motors 45% 55%
🔍 Google 40% 60%
📊 Survey Average 67% 33%

On the other hand, TeslaDocuSign, and Google employees have the least desire to join a union.

As it happens, over a thousand workers in North America already belong to the Alphabet Workers Union, which represents employees at Google and other subsidiaries like Waymo.

Meanwhile, Tesla has been involved in several controversies regarding unions. For example, in May 2024, a U.S. labor agency accused by Tesla of discouraging workers from creating a union at its Buffalo, NY plant.

However, on average 67% of those polled in the Blind survey said they were likely to join a union and 73% said that unions “mostly helped.”

When Blind asked tech workers why the industry’s union membership rate is so low compared to other jobs, the general sentiment indicated that tech employees are already well compensated for their jobs, without needing collective bargaining.

The tech sector might be poised for an upswing after Federal Reserve’s first big rate cut. Check out How Sectors Perform After Rate Cuts to see where else gains are made.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 09/28/2024 – 22:45

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The 'Chemical War' Killing 70,000 Americans Each Year

The ‘Chemical War’ Killing 70,000 Americans Each Year

The ‘Chemical War’ Killing 70,000 Americans Each Year

Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The United States needs to ramp up enforcement against every step of the manufacturing and trafficking of fentanyl and other deadly synthetic drugs if it hopes to stem the crisis, several experts told The Epoch Times. With every passing day, however, the path to success gets narrower as the criminal organizations involved get more sophisticated.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images

More than 100,000 Americans died of an overdose last year; of which more than 70,000 overdosed on synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The United States government has poured billions into addiction treatment, but the drugs are too broadly available for the treatment to stick, some experts said, arguing the supply needs to be drastically curbed.

Illicit fentanyl usually comes across the southern border from Mexico where it’s manufactured from chemicals made in China and pressed into pills that often look like prescription drugs such as Xanax, Adderall, or oxycodone.

Steps by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to regulate export of illicit chemicals have been dismissed by the experts as cosmetic. Instead, they say, the regime is using drugs as a strategic weapon against the United States.

“This is a chemical war that we’re facing, and no one’s treating it as a war,” said Derek Maltz, former head of special operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

“People are treating it as a drug issue. It’s not a drug issue. It’s the number one threat to our national security,” he told The Epoch Times.

The House Select Committee on the CCP issued a report earlier this year detailing China’s involvement at every step of fentanyl trafficking. Chinese companies produce the precursor chemicals from which fentanyl is prepared. Chinese companies ship the chemicals to Mexico. Chinese-made pill presses allow the production of counterfeit pills. Chinese organized crime groups then help the cartels launder and move the illicit profits from the United States to Mexico.

Both the Trump and the Biden administrations have managed to press China to impose additional regulations on fentanyl as well as its analogs and precursors, but the measures “lack teeth” because they fail to impose “substantial costs” on illicit producers, according to Andrew Harding, a research assistant in the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.

“As long as the producers can stay quiet and evade law enforcement, they will continue to produce,” he told The Epoch Times.

The CCP has claimed to shut down 14 websites, suspend more than 330 business accounts, and close down more than 1,000 online shops that were engaged in the sale and distribution of illicit drugs and precursor chemicals, a senior Biden administration official told reporters in July.

But he acknowledged that “there continues to be a significant supply of precursor chemicals out of [China].”

An overview of global illicit drug pathways, shown during a press conference at the Department of Justice in Washington on Oct. 17, 2017. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

“There’s obviously a whole lot more to do. And that’s why these ongoing conversations and engagements are so important, even if we’re taking small steps one at a time,” he said.

The experts, however, suggested that the time for small steps and engagement has passed as China’s weak actions hint at intentionality.

“This is all part of their strategic plan, in my opinion, to harm America,” Maltz said.

“It’s part of the unrestricted warfare game, and that’s what’s happening. And they’re actually very successful, because America is not taking care of business, and America is not taking it seriously.”

The Select Committee on CCP found that Beijing was subsidizing illicit chemical exports, providing tax rebates specifically on sales of chemicals that are often not only illegal in China, but lack legitimate use besides making illegal drugs. Some of the rebates were even higher than those offered on any other export products.

It also found evidence that the regime was intentionally making it difficult for foreigners to find information about the rebates.

The Biden administration, however, stopped short of endorsing this conclusion.

“We do not have any information to support that finding, that [China] is actually subsidizing these exports,” said the senior administration official, adding “there’s a need for an ongoing conversation about that.”

The White House didn’t respond to a list of questions emailed by The Epoch Times.

To truly solve the crisis, the experts said, the United States needs to hit every chokepoint along the trafficking chain. And it must be done fast.

We’re losing hundreds of thousands of Americans. What’s going to happen in a few years?” Maltz asked.

“They’re not going to be filling jobs that are important down the line. They’re not going to be going to college, they’re not going to be getting professional jobs, they’re not going to be helping our society. They’re going to be gone.”

The government is already playing catch-up with traffickers, he noted.

Cartels and other criminal organizations are increasingly trafficking synthetic drugs even more powerful than fentanyl, such as xylazine and nitazenes. Xylazine is particularly abhorrent since it causes tissue necrosis and its overdose can’t be reversed using naloxone—a drug that can overturn an overdose caused by opioids, including fentanyl, if administered quickly.

If the fentanyl crisis is likened to cancer, the United States is already in an advanced stage, according to Michael Brown, formerly a DEA agent of more than 30 years who now heads counter-narcotics technology at Rigaku Analytical Devices.

A person lies on the street after the decriminalization of all drugs, in the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood in Portland, Ore., on Jan. 25, 2024. (Bottom Left) A used Narcan brand naloxone nasal spray lies on the street after paramedics and police respond to a suspected fentanyl drug overdose in Portland, Ore., on Jan. 25, 2024.

So far, it should still be possible to crack down on the supply of fentanyl precursor chemicals, perhaps with the aid of artificial intelligence, he said. But the precursor chemicals have their own precursors too. If the cartel labs become so sophisticated as to manufacture fentanyl precursors from chemicals that are too general in purpose to effectively track, it will be even more difficult to root the problem out, he said.

“If the cartels get to what I call the final evolution of narco-chemistry, which means they have multiple recipes that can be used to make stage one, stage two, and stage three pre-precursors to make the required precursors, there’s no way even using AI, I think, we can beat this issue in the next five to 10 years.”

Pressure on CCP and Mexico

“An effective U.S. strategy to combat the international fentanyl trafficking industry should begin with the recognition that the United States lacks good-faith partners in both the Chinese and Mexican governments,” according to a recent Heritage report coauthored by Harding.

The CCP has not only been unwilling to address the issue constructively, but has in fact used it as a bargaining chip to force concessions from the U.S. on technology sales, he said.

The Mexican government, in the meantime, seems to be under profound influence of the cartels, the experts said.

All those chemicals … are coming in and they’re coming in freely because people are being paid off, and the Mexican government allows it,” Victor Avila, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent with Homeland Security Investigations, told The Epoch Times.

The only way to induce cooperation would be to twist the hands of governments, some experts said. The Biden administration has imposed sanctions on more than 300 entities and individuals tied to fentanyl trafficking but it’s not clear if that has produced any tangible effect.

Sanctions would only be effective if they hit major companies, Brown said.

In 2019, China had more than 23,000 chemical companies and about 5,000 that produced pharmaceutical precursors. The Chinese chemical industry produces some $1.5 trillion annual revenue. That’s about 40 percent of the world’s chemical market, he noted.

If a few small Chinese chemical companies are sanctioned, it doesn’t make much of a splash. But if a major Chinese company is targeted, that would get the attention of the regime and create a deterrent, Brown told The Epoch Times.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) holds up a bag representing fentanyl during a hearing in Washington on Jan. 11, 2024. The hearing examined legislative solutions to stop the flow of fentanyl into and throughout the United States. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

With its extensive internet monitoring, the CCP, sufficiently motivated, should be able to sniff out fentanyl precursor traffickers, the Select Committee on CCP report pointed out.

The CCP could also share useful information with the United States.

If China was sincere on helping the U.S. with the crisis, it would have agreed to share information on chemical shipments with the U.S. and Mexico so that they can be tracked,” Brown said.

Even in absence of CCP’s cooperation, however, the United States could do much more, the experts suggested.

Intercepting Packages

The United States should use its Navy and the Coast Guard to interdict suspicious maritime shipments from China to Mexico before they reach cartel-controlled ports, the Select Committee on CCP report recommended.

But because fentanyl is so potent, precursor chemicals are often sent in smaller quantities by air, Brown said.

Packages from China to Mexico are usually shipped through Alaska, giving the United States an opportunity to check them on the way, he noted.

“Customs and Border Protection have access to those parcels. If they can identify a suspected parcel, they can go in and actually seize it.”

Sometimes, the chemicals are sent to a front company that looks like a drug maker but in fact doesn’t produce anything. A background check would reveal it as fake.

Precursor chemicals can also be shipped to a legitimate pharmaceutical company and then diverted to cartels. In that case, the company’s production wouldn’t match the amount of precursors it’s ordering.

It’s extremely common, however, for the packages to be mislabeled, Brown said. The only way, then, would be to check packages en masse using sniffing dogs or gadgets that can identify chemicals. Not all packages would need to be checked, but it would need to be a percentage large enough to serve as a deterrent.

Such checks could be much more effective by using artificial intelligence to recognize suspicious patterns, he said.

“Does it make sense for somebody in Mexico to order 500 pounds of pool cleaner from China AI would say, ‘I don’t like this. Maybe take a look at it,’ right?”

An officer from the Customs and Border Protection, Trade, and Cargo Division works with a dog to check parcels for fentanyl at John F. Kennedy Airport’s U.S. Postal Service facility in New York City, on June 24, 2019. Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images

Focusing on shipping has the added benefit of minimizing the civil rights impact of false positives. Nobody needs to be arrested or stopped by police to check a package during transit. International packages are already expected to get probed by customs officers, so there’s no new privacy intrusion.

“If you’re using pattern recognition and parcel screenings, if you open it up, if five out of 50 parcels are legitimate, it doesn’t matter. You just put it back on the board and send it to where it’s going. But if you start making a 20 to 30 percent seizure rate, cartels are going to go on panic mode,” Brown said.

Targeting Cartel Labs

More than 100 “super labs,” operated by cartels in Mexico, produce fentanyl and press it into pills, Avila said.

The first step should be to designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, he recommended.

“Let’s start there, because that’s what they are. You designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations now, you treat them just like ISIS, just like the Taliban, just like al Qaeda, exactly the same, meaning that no longer do you do even what I used to do as a special agent—those investigative techniques are stale and outdated. You need to go after these guys using Department of Defense resources.”

There’s a chance the United States could convince the Mexican government to cooperate with U.S. military operations against cartels.

“We have good informant networks in Mexico and we know where … a lot of these production labs are. We could definitely get access to their locations. So we should be destroying those production labs, because without the chemicals, without the labs, you can’t produce the poison,” Maltz said.

There needs to be a way to intimidate the cartels, he suggested.

“We have to be way more aggressive with the cartels right now. There’s no fear. They have no fear of America because there’s no consequences.”

Securing the Border

“Having a wide-open border, and that’s what we have now, is facilitating the ability for these cartels and for these criminals to get these substances into America, because our resources are being overwhelmed,” Maltz said.

When the Border Patrol has its hands full processing hundreds of thousands of people illegally crossing the border, that’s when the drugs can pour in undetected.

Read the rest here…

Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/27/2024 – 23:25

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After Letting 600K Criminals Into The US, Kamala Slithers Down To The Border And Does Trump Impression

After Letting 600K Criminals Into The US, Kamala Slithers Down To The Border And Does Trump Impression

After Letting 600K Criminals Into The US, Kamala Slithers Down To The Border And Does Trump Impression

On Friday, ‘Border Czar’ Kamala Harris flew down to Arizona for a photo-op at the southern US border – through which untold millions of migrants from all over the world have entered the United States illegally during the Biden-Harris administration.

While there, she gave a ridiculous speech in which she (get this) called for tougher border security – pledging to enact various forms of immigration reform if she’s elected in November, including a 5-year ban on reentry for those who enter the country illegally.

After doing her best Trump impression, however, Harris then floated a path to citizenship for those who have been in the country “for years.”

A reminder…

Also on Friday, a damning revelation from Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX); US Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) revealed that over 650,000 migrants with criminal histories were let loose in the United States between ‘mid-May 2023 through the end of July 2024.’

“As of July 21, 2024, there were 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories on ICE’s national docket, which includes those detained by ICE and on the agency’s non-detained docket. Of those, 435,729 are convicted criminals, and 226,847 have pending criminal charges,” wrote deputy DHS Director Patrick J. Lechleitner in response to a March letter from Gonzales demanding answers.

In short, this couldn’t have come on a worse day for Harris…

Meanwhile, the internet is forever… (maybe)

Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/27/2024 – 23:00

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Structural Supports Of North Carolina Dam "Compromised" As Officials Warn "Imminent Failure" 

Structural Supports Of North Carolina Dam “Compromised” As Officials Warn “Imminent Failure” 

Structural Supports Of North Carolina Dam “Compromised” As Officials Warn “Imminent Failure” 

The remnants of Hurricane Helene have dumped torrential rains across the southeastern US, particularly in Florida’s Big Bend region and up the coast into the Carolinas. In western North Carolina, officials have issued urgent evacuation orders, warning residents to move to higher ground as a dam collapse could occur. 

In a Facebook post, Rutherford County Emergency Management told residents that Lake Lure Dam’s “structural supports” have been compromised but are currently holding. 

“Evacuations have occurred from the Dam to Island Creek Road. Evacuation sirens are sounding downstream of the dam. Emergency personnel are working with the structural engineers and are going house to house to ensure all citizens have been evacuated,” Rutherford County officials said in a Facebook post shortly after lunch. 

Earlier, Rutherford County officials told residents around the dam to evacuate to higher ground immediately. They warned, “Dam failure imminent!! Evacuate to higher ground immediately!!”

“Terrible situation taking shape over at Lake Lure,” WSOC meteorologist Keith Monday wrote on X. 

WSOC provided more clarity into the dire situation playing out around Lake Lure Dam. 

The failure will impact neighbors in Cleveland County as well. The sheriff’s office asked anyone who lives along Waterway Drive, Abes Mountain Road, and the Broad River to evacuate.

Lake Lure is a small lake town located about 30 miles east of Asheville. The town is next to Chimney Rock, which is home to an iconic North Carolina hike of the same name.

Not good. 

Another dam failure. 

*Developing… 

Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/27/2024 – 18:00

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UK Says Goodbye To Coal

UK Says Goodbye To Coal

UK Says Goodbye To Coal

Via OilPrice.com,

  • The closure of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station marks the end of coal-fired electricity generation in the UK.

  • This shift is part of the UK’s commitment to achieving net zero emissions and transitioning to renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

  • The UK is the first G7 country to phase out coal entirely, demonstrating a significant step towards a cleaner and more sustainable energy future.

The UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station is to shut at the end of September, drawing to a close Britain’s 142-year reliance on the fossil fuel to produce electricity.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station has been generating electricity since 1968 via its four coal-fired boilers, eight vast cooling towers and 199-metre tall chimney, which occupies a prominent spot in the East Midlands skyline.

It is able to power about two million homes and has been the last station of its kind in the UK since September 2023, when Northern Ireland’s Kilroot power station stopped producing electricity from coal.

On September 30, Ratcliffe will close for the final time. Many of the 170 people employed by the plant’s owner, Uniper, will stay on to help with the two-year decommissioning process.

Ratcliffe’s closure puts a full stop on the country’s use of coal for electricity, which began with the Holborn Viaduct power station in London in 1882, the first of its type in the world.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station which is to shut at the end of September, drawing to a close Britain’s 142-year reliance on the fossil fuel to produce electricity. The power station has been generating electricity since 1968 via its four coal-fired boilers, eight vast cooling towers and 199-metre tall chimney, which occupies a prominent spot in the East Midlands skyline. Photo credit should read: Jacob King/PA Wire

Coal went on to play a major role in the national energy supply throughout the 20th century and accounted for about 80 per cent of UK power in 1990, falling to 39 per cent in 2012.

Since then, 15 coal power plants closed or switched fuels and last year the fossil fuel made up just one per cent of the UK’s supply, according to data from National Grid’s Electricity System Operator.

Meanwhile, renewables, mainly wind and solar power, now make up more than half of the mix, according to Government statistics. Gas has also played a part in the switch, rising from 28 per cent of the power mix in 2012 to 34 per cent last year.

Dhara Vyas, deputy chief executive of Energy UK, said:

“Ten years ago, coal was the leading source of this country’s power – generating a third of our electricity.

“So, to get to this point just a decade later, with coal’s contribution replaced by clean and low carbon sources, is an incredible achievement.

“As we aim for further ambitious targets in the energy transition, it’s worth remembering that few back then thought such a change at such a pace was possible.”

While the likes of Sweden and Belgium were among the first in Europe to phase out coal entirely, the UK will be the first country in the G7 bloc of major world economies to reach the milestone.

France, by comparison, has given itself until 2027 to complete the phase-out, Canada will follow suit until 2030. Germany, on current plans, will not do it until 2038.

But next comes the far larger task of significantly reducing the use of gas and further ramping up renewables, as the newly-elected Labour Government seeks to hit net zero emissions from electricity generation by 2030.

Its first steps were to set up a new state-owned energy investment company, GB Energy, and to lift a de facto ban on new onshore wind projects in the planning system in England.

The Government also handed out contracts for a new wave of green power projects in early September, including onshore and offshore wind and solar farms, which officials said will generate enough power for 11 million homes, in its annual auction.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said recently that switching to clean power is not just about fighting climate change, but energy security, after rocketing gas prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused consumer bills to spiral in 2022 and 2023.

Jess Ralston, head of energy at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said the swift transition from coal to renewables “shows how possible it is to make the net zero electricity transition”.

Renewables are also cheaper than fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency reported that in 2023 an estimated 96 per cent of newly-installed solar and onshore wind plants had lower generation costs than new natural gas globally.

Ms Ralston said:

“The British public have been burnt by over-reliance on gas for electricity and home heating during the ongoing gas price crisis and keen to see the shift to renewables, not only to reduce emissions but to stabilise energy prices too.”

As for coal, many countries might be phasing it out, but use of the fossil fuel globally for electricity still rose 1.1 per cent last year, according to energy analysis company Ember.

This was mainly driven by China, which accounted for 54.9 per cent of global coal-fired generation.

However, China added seven times more renewable energy capacity than coal last year, indicating that even the world’s largest coal user is – eventually – shifting towards clean energy.

Christine Shearer, research analyst at Global Energy Monitor, said there remains “a lot of work to do” to meet global targets on phasing it out, most of which aim for 2035 in developed countries.

She added: “The good news is the UK shows that once a country clearly commits to a coal phase-out it often happens even faster than planned, because the policy landscape becomes clear and paves the way for cheaper alternatives.”

Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/27/2024 – 05:00

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