science

One In Three Spaniards Say Their Area Suffers From Over-Tourism

A YouGov survey highlighted how the sting of over-tourism is being felt by as many as one in three people in Spain. 

As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, this figure grows even higher when looking at certain regions, with 48 percent of respondents living in Catalonia saying that there are too many international tourists in the local area. 

You will find more infographics at Statista

The polling company found that where 45 percent of respondents in Spain had an unfavorable view of the holiday rental properties industry, only 21 percent held the same view of the hotel industry.

Looking at Spain’s neighbor, 18 percent of respondents in France said they thought there were too many international tourists there. 

However, a higher share of French respondents said that there were about the right number of international tourists (44 percent) or even that there were not enough (24 percent).

In Britain, Denmark and Sweden, very few held the view that overtourism was a local issue.

As one response to the housing crisis in Spain, the government proposed last month a 100 percent tax on the value of properties bought by non-residents from outside of the EU, including the UK.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 03/01/2025 – 07:35…

Escobar: Baltic/Black Sea Power-Games & Red-Lines Intersect In A “Strange War”

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

No one ever lost money betting on the batshit crazy “policies” of the ferociously yapping Baltic chihuahuas. Their latest power play of sorts is a drive to turn the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.

The notion that a bunch of Russophobic sub-entities have what it takes to expel the Russian superpower from the Baltic Sea and pose a threat to St. Petersburg does not even qualify as cartoonish. Yet that is indeed part and parcel of NATO’s re-configured obsessions, as their warmongering “vanguard” has been relocated to a London-Warsaw-Baltic chihuahuas-Ukraine axis.

What kind of black hole rump “Ukraine” will turn out to be after the end of the war – which may not even happen in 2025 – remains to be seen. What’s certain is that in the case of a Ukraine exit – whatever the modalities – enter Romania.

The whole electoral farce in Romania – complete with the demonization of election front-runner Calin Georgescu – revolves around the upgrading of the Mihail Kogalniceanu base, which will become the largest NATO military base in Europe.

So, once again, this is all about the Black Sea. NATO wreaking havoc in the Black Sea carries way more savory prospects than NATO via chihuahuas monopolizing the Baltic Sea.

Ilya Fabrichnikov, a member of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, has published a remarkable essay essentially focusing on the Black Sea (this is a short version on the Kommersant daily).

Fabrichnikov convincingly argues that from an European – UE/NATO – angle, what really mattered in Ukraine was “to move its borders, along with its military, political and economic infrastructure, close to Russia’s, to put under full control the strategic Black Sea trade corridor – which easily stretches further north along the Odessa-Gdansk route – in order to more conveniently and quickly explore the economic spaces of Asia and North Africa, and to begin dictating its terms to Russian supplies of oil, gas and other resources needed by the European economy.”

As this focused power play instrumentalizing Ukraine is unravelling in real time, a replacement is needed – even as warmongering Eurocrats keep peddling their Orwellian “peace is war” dementia non-stop, complete with a non-stop tsunami of sanctions and renewed promises of avalanches of weapons to Kiev.

This is a classic Brussels vassals affair – even as the toxic Medusa von der Lugen as head of the EC and Rutti-Frutti as the new head of NATO were essentially appointed by Washington and London. Collectively, Europe has pumped way more military-political funds into black hole Ukraine than the Americans.

The reason is simple. For Europe there’s no Plan B apart from that mirific “strategic defeat” of Russia.

The EU/NATO Black Sea power play would make it even more imperative for Russia to connect with Transnistria. The only one who can answer whether this is part of the current planning is of course President Putin.

Neo-nazis go pipeline bombing

Russian intel is very much aware that the Europeans have to some extent already…

How Long Do Muslims Fast For Ramadan Around The World?

This year’s Ramadan is expected to start on the night of Friday, February 28, with the first day of fasting on Saturday, March 1. 

As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, the holy month is based on the Islamic lunar calendar which is 11 days shorter than the Gregorian solar year, and so its start shifts earlier each year. While the number of days of Ramadan are equal for all Muslims observing it around the world, the length of the daily fast is not.

You will find more infographics at Statista

During Ramadan, observers vow to abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and sexual activities through daylight hours. 

This means that those living further north have to fast for much longer than their counterparts living closer to the equator or even to those in the Southern hemisphere, which is currently tilted away from the sun. 

The chart above, based on data from website islamicfinder.com, shows that Muslims fasting for Ramadan in Reykjavík, Island, will have to fast for up to 16 hours and 29 minutes, which is the time between sunrise and sunset on March 29, the last and longest day of fasting this year. 

Meanwhile Muslims living in Melbourne, Australia, will only need to fast for a maximum of 13 hours and 16 minutes.

With the dates of Ramadan moving, there can be a significant difference in the length of fasting depending on the year.

For example, in 2013, Ramadan took place during the peak of summer for the Northern Hemisphere, with countries such as Norway experiencing sundown for only around three hours at night. 

This meant practicing communities faced fasts lasting upwards of 20 hours. 

To counterbalance this, Muslims may also observe Ramadan using the timetable of Mecca (13 hours and 35 minutes in 2025) or their nearest Muslim city.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 02/28/2025 – 18:00…

Even The NYT Is Saying, “Buy Gold”

Via SchiffGold.com,

A recent piece in the New York Times encouraged readers to buy gold, noting its record-breaking run since 2020. However, what the article gets wrong is associating the phenomenon with presidential policies instead of central bank monetary policy. Treasury policies can contribute to money supply growth by issuing debt, and presidential policies can add fuel to economic fires. 

But money printing and sustained artificially-low interest rates are why inflation keeps resurging no matter which political party is in power.

As Peter Schiff recently said on X:

Trump has given the Fed a gift, as FOMC members will blame the coming surge in inflation on tariffs. But tariffs won’t be the cause. Resurgent inflation will result from the Fed’s monetary policy mistakes. They held interest rates too low for too long and printed too much money.
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) February 20, 2025
The Fed is permanent, and can’t be reformed. 

No matter who joins the Board of Governors or who becomes Fed Chairman, the only tools that central banks really know how to use are inflationary. Money printing and artificially-low interest rates are the only methods the Fed has in their effort to manage the economy.

Inflation is an expansion of the money supply, not the rise in prices. Prices go up as a result of inflation, not the other way around. But while the NYT piece attributes this 12% increase in 2025—following a 27% rise in 2024—to President Donald Trump’s second-term policies, such as tariffs and deportation plans, the fundamental driver is that central bank monetary policy has inflated the money supply and eroded confidence in fiat currency, propelling gold’s ascent. 

Analysts like those quoted in the NYT article suggest that Trump’s proposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, could stoke inflation by raising import costs. Economists quoted in the piece note that such measures, combined with labor market pressures from deportation policies, are pushing investors toward gold. This makes sense on the surface — disruptions to trade and labor can indeed lift prices, and higher costs for imports will just be passed onto consumers. But money supply growth is what inflation is; price increases are just one of its downstream effects. Gold’sgain suggests a deeper unease tied to the Federal Reserve’s actions rather than any single administration.

The money supply (M2) has ballooned from $15.4 trillion in early 2020 to over $21 trillion today, according to Fed data. Meanwhile, interest rates remain below historical norms. Low rates discourage saving and devalue fiat currency, making gold—a finite asset immune to printing presses—an attractive hedge. The Times focuses on Trump’s tariff threats, but central banks set the stage long ago.

M2, 1981 to Present

Source

The World Gold Council reports that central banks bought 1,037 tons of gold in 2024, up 6% from 2023, signaling a shift away from dollar dominance. Physical demand is also straining markets, with the article noting New York futures traders awaiting bars from London vaults.

The Times mentions Trump’s quip about auditing Fort Knox “to make sure the gold is there,” a comment Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent downplayed. Official figures peg U.S. reserves at 8,133 metric…

NATO Is The Big Obstacle To Peace In Ukraine

Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

During his recent campaign for president, Donald Trump repeatedly stated that he had a secret plan for settling the war in Ukraine. 

He suggested that he would be able to resolve the conflict within a day of so of taking office. That obviously was political hyperbole because the war is still going on. Trump and people in his administration are now talking to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russian officials in an effort to find a way to end the war and possibly even normalize relations between the United States and Russia.

There is one great big obstacle, however, to bringing an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict. That obstacle is NATO, the old Cold War dinosaur that should have gone out of existence with the end of the Cold War, just like the Warsaw Pact did.

Instead, NATO not only remained in existence, it also ultimately became the root cause of the war between Ukraine and Russia.

It’s that critically important point that is lost on the U.S. mainstream media. For them, the war began at the moment that Russia invaded Ukraine. Nothing that preceded that invasion matters to the mainstream media. What came before the invasion is simply considered irrelevant.

But it’s not irrelevant, especially because it might well prove to be an insurmountable obstacle to a lasting peace between Ukraine and Russia.

With the surprise end of the Cold War, the U.S. national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — lost its big official enemy — Russia (or, to be more exact, the Soviet Union), which meant the end of the big Cold War racket that had kept the national-security branch in high cotton in terms of power and taxpayer-funded largess.

The Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA were panicky. At first, they announced that they were willing to participate in the “war on drugs.” They then converted their old partner and ally Saddam Hussein into an official enemy, who they used to scare the American people for some 11 years. Then, their interventionist and deadly foreign policy in the Middle East brought about the 9/11 retaliatory strikes and they were off to the races again, with the “war on terrorism” replacing the Cold War’s “war on communism.”

But they never lost sight of the possibility of reconverting Russia into a renewed official enemy, as part of a new Cold War, especially given that the anti-Russia Cold War sentiment was so deeply embedded within the American people. That’s when they began using NATO to expand eastward toward Russia’s border by absorbing former members of the Warsaw Pact.

An important thing to note about this was that U.S. officials had promised Russia that NATO would not expand. It would stay, they repeatedly stated, right where it was.

It was a lie. Instead, NATO was used to expand eastward, which enabled NATO’s missiles, tanks, weapons, troops, and planes to get ever closer to Russia’s border. It’s worth mentioning that…