Cargo Cult “Democracy”

A cargo cult is an indigenist millenarian belief system in which adherents perform rituals which they believe will cause a more technologically advanced society to deliver goods. These cults were first described in Melanesia in the wake of contact with allied military forces during the Second World War.
— “Cargo cult”. Wikipedia. Retrieved on 26 October 2021, at 20:31 (UTC).

Cargo Cult Ritual

The Green Energy Cargo Cult

Dmitry Orlov • Club Orlov • October 26, 2021 

Are wind generators and solar panels a replacement for fossil fuels? A lot of people still seem to believe that, even after the recent flood of bad news on this front, but a few people are already beginning to suspect something.

Although some people claim that wind and solar farms have an EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) of 5 or even 7, it is trivial to prove that this just isn’t so. If, for each 1 kWh of energy invested in their design, marketing, production, installation, maintenance, removal and safe disposal, they were to return 5 or even 7 kWh over their useful lifetime of, optimistically, 20 years, and assuming a constant (inflation-adjusted) cost of energy, they would produce at least 400% of pure profit! Compare that to a bank deposit or a guaranteed income investment yielding 3% over inflation (if you can find one!). Over the same 20 years it would produce a mere 80% profit, which is equivalent to an EROEI of just 1.8. If wind and solar installations were so lucrative, their promoters would not be asking for government subsidies; they would be running away from frenzied mobs of investors shouting “Shut up and take my money!” Such a huge, and guaranteed, rate of return, is something to die (or at least risk going to jail) for.

Instead, the wind and solar energy sectors have turned into gigantic state subsidy sponges. Not only have they squandered money and natural resources, but they have become a major headache for grid operators because they have managed to force through regulations requiring grid operators to take whatever electricity they produce regardless of demand. However, there is generally little risk of them ever producing too much electricity; for instance, wind farms for all of 2021, for all of Germany, have produced just 20% of their rated capacity and solar farms barely over 10%. In any case, all they have to show for several trillion dollars of squandered public funds, and huge swaths of land and sea blighted by their installations, are much higher electricity rates. In Russia, which has so far avoided this green plague and has instead concentrated on developing hydroelectric and nuclear generation capacity, electricity rates are 10 (ten!) times lower than in the West. Thus, the real EROEI of wind and solar is not 5 or even 7 but much less than zero: they are a net waste of energy.

While such very simple analysis is sufficient to demonstrate that wind and solar farms are not just unprofitable but a net waste of energy, a more in-depth look would reveal that they also impose exorbitant costs on the rest of the electric grid. That is, if wind and solar installations were entirely free, connecting them to the electric grid imposes costs on other energy producers because their output fluctuates randomly, depending, as it does, on the availability of wind and sunlight, instead of being matched to real-time electricity demand. This forces other electricity producers to waste fuel, whether by spinning idly or by rapidly ramping up and down, in order to compensate. In turn, this causes energy rates to fluctuate wildly (in some cases going negative on cool, sunny, windy days while shooting up into the stratosphere on cold or hot, overcast and windless ones), making it impossible for energy-intensive businesses to plan their production so as to avoid financial losses.

The problem of ragged energy generation from wind and solar, which is unmatched to real-time energy demand, could be remedied by the introduction of mass energy storage, but electricity storage doesn’t exist except for a few boutique applications, and scaling it up would only compound the overall waste of energy. There are just a few locations on Earth that could reasonably be used for mass electric storage: that is where there is a lake at a high elevation in close proximity to a lake at a lower elevation that could be connected together using pipelines, pumps and turbines; all other mass electricity storage ideas have so far turned out to be duds and, given the physics of the problem, are likely to remain so. Thus, it would be far more cost-effective and energy-efficient, overall, to keep wind and solar farms disconnected from the electric grid; not as good as never building them at all, but a major step in the right direction. As far as building any more of them, here is an interesting datapoint: spot prices for polycrystalline silicon, a major ingredient in solar panels, having reached an all-time low of $6.30/kg in mid-2020 have since gone up 600% to $36/kg and are now predicted to continue to increase over time.

Thus, the effective EROEI of wind and solar farms is comparable to that of a classic cargo cult, in which native tribes that have become inured to the indignity of regular airlifts providing them with humanitarian relief in the form of, say, beer and pizza, when suddenly deprived of this affront to their native dignity, take to building fake airstrips with fake control towers, and burning bonfires in place of runway lights, in the hopes of luring more transport planes laden with aforementioned beer and pizza. The natives then sit around and wait for some transport planes to land, remaining hungry and sober. Eventually, sanity returns and they wander off into the jungle in search of something to eat. With regard to renewable energy, we are not quite there yet, but it may be time to try to move things along because with any more of this nonsense a lot of people will end up very cold and very hungry—and very angry as well.

Original here.

END

Danse Macabre (voix & orchestre) de Camille Saint-Saëns.

Azrael e a Lei do Carma

Azrael é o arcanjo da boa morte e da justa retribuição.

Azrael é o arcanjo do “cá se fazem cá se pagam”, ou do “cá se fazem lá se pagam”.

Pintura de Mikhail Vrubel Azrael, 1904.

No Tripitaca, o Buda cita, entre as cinco reflexões diárias, uma reflexão em relação ao Carma:

Eu sou o dono das minhas acções, herdeiro das minhas acções, nascido das minhas acções, relacionado através das minhas acções e tenho as minhas acções como árbitro. O que quer que eu faça, para o bem ou para o mal, disso me tornarei o herdeiro.

Entenda-se que:

• dono das minhas acções: não poderei negar a minha responsabilidade no que fiz;
• herdeiro das minhas acções: colherei os frutos das minhas acções;
• nascido das minhas acções: o resto da minha vida, e pós-vida, decorre das minhas acções;
• Buda explicita desta maneira, a liberdade, responsabilidade, e capacidade, que cada um tem de dirigir o seu destino.
• O Carma não é linear, não segue necessariamente uma sequência linear directa e imediata, e os frutos de uma acção podem demorar anos, vidas, a amadurecer.

O Cara da Funerária

Ele afirma: “em 2020 não tivemos quase nenhum morto para fazer funeral! Já agora em 2021, estão morrendo muitas pessoas!”

O que ele afirma é o seguinte: em 2020 durante o Covid não estava morrendo ninguém, como as mídias afirmavam!

Mas agora em 2021 depois de iniciado a “imunização mundial”, muitas pessoas estão morrendo! Acima de tudo, pessoas “imunizadas” que estavam internadas em hospitais, ou pessoas que simplesmente caíram mortas em suas casas e foram encontradas caídas no chão alguns dias depois!

Você pode não acreditar, mas O INVERNO está chegando…!✝️

O cara da funerária

Danse Macabre Listening Map

FIM

What is Chauvinism? Tracing the Term from the Legendary Nicolas Chauvin to Misogyny.

Chauvinism is the unreasonable belief in the superiority or dominance of one's own group or people, who are seen as strong and virtuous, while others are considered weak, unworthy, or inferior. It can be described as a form of extreme patriotism and nationalism, a fervent faith in national excellence and glory. In English, the word has come to be used in some quarters as shorthand for male chauvinism, a trend reflected in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, which, as of 2018, begins its first example of use of the term chauvinism with "an attitude of superiority toward members of the opposite sex". 
From Chauvinism. Wikipedia. Edition of 7 October 2021, at 15:10 (UTC).

Éric Zemmour

The Zemmour Phenomenon

 
Can ‘France’s Tucker Carlson’ Retake France for Patriots?

Guillaume Durocher • The Unz Review • October 12, 2021 • 2,100 Words • Has Comments

France is abuzz with the news that Éric Zemmour – a right-wing pundit – may in run the country’s presidential elections set for April 2022. Polls already have Zemmour enjoying double-digit support and potentially even beating Marine Le Pen and the mainstream conservative candidates, thus making him run off against sitting President Emmanuel Macron in the second round.

Zemmour would, according to these same polls, win around 45% of the vote in this scenario. That’s short of a victory but, this early in the game, it’s exactly the kind of level of support Brexit and Donald Trump received before their triumphs in 2016.

But who is Éric Zemmour? The pundit has been virtually a household name in France for many years. He is akin to Tucker Carlson in America: just about the only voice in the TV news media who effectively, though usually not explicitly, defends the interests of the nation’s core ethnic demographic.

I have previously written on Zemmour’s career in the media. Suffice to say that he has been able to carve out a lucrative niche for himself as the highest-profile nationalist/conservative voice in the French media landscape. This makes him a polarizing but popular figure as there is great untapped demand among audiences for patriotic rhetoric. This demand is largely ignored by journalists who are, like in the rest of the West, structurally biased in favor of left-liberal causes.

Occasionally, mainstream journalists forget to keep their biases subtle and covert. One journalist at the France Info public TV station said Zemmour “is not allowed to come here.” The channel then publicly contradicted the journalist and clarified that Zemmour would be invited only when he had officially become a candidate.

Zemmour’s career: right-wing media gadfly

Zemmour has successfully built up his profile on the right-wing edge of the media system. He long worked for the conservative newspaper Le Figaro and broke through on TV talk shows in which he was noted for his criticism of feminism and professional “anti-racist” activism. He has been periodically fired by certain media for going ‘too far.’ He has also often been dragged into court by said “anti-racist” lobby groups – while he has generally been vindicated, he twice was found guilty of “inciting racial hatred.” In the end, Zemmour has been able to flourish despite these setbacks, keeping gainful employment in a critical section of the French media and continuing to reach his audience.

Zemmour is technically still not a candidate for the election. However, things came to a head earlier this year as he set up a political party, recruited staff, and raised funds. Last month, France’s TV regulator, the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA), required that Zemmour’s TV appearances be limited to what is proportionately allowed for presidential candidates. This was a big deal as Zemmour had previously been allowed to dominate a popular talk show on maverick TV station CNews, which had enjoyed as many as 800,000 viewers at a time.

Zemmour’s ideas:
The defense of French interests, including the native French

Regarding Zemmour’s political ideas, the best place to start for English-speakers is probably the recent interview he gave to a Hungarian think-tank, on the occasion of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fourth Demographic Summit. (This event, focused on opposing immigration and supporting European families and fertility, was itself very noteworthy and included the participation of the prime ministers of Czechia, Serbia, and Slovenia.)

In the interview, Zemmour explicitly mentions France’s white identity with a suitable quote from General Charles de Gaulle, who said that the French were “a European people of white race, Greek and Latin culture, and Christian religion.” Both add that while some non-Whites and Muslims may become French citizens, the nation would lose her identity if these groups ceased to be “a small minority.” In the French media, few have been as explicit as Zemmour in denouncing the ills of Afro-Islamic immigration and the results in terms of criminality, welfare abuse, and day-to-day Islamization.

(Those who want a more detailed exposé of Zemmour’s views read my review of his longest work: Le Suicide français, a meticulous examination of the steady decay of the French nation over the past fifty years. The book sold an estimated 300,000 copies.)

In Zemmour’s politics, France is the be-all-end-all. He is enamored with the nation who gave citizenship to the Jews during the French Revolution, enabling his own people to flourish, and with the glory that France was able to achieve under great leaders such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle.

Zemmour’s dissident critics: A tool of the globalist oligarchy?

Zemmour has plenty of critics, including among patriotic dissidents. One such critic is the anti-Zionist civic nationalist Alain Soral, who asks: Why is Zemmour “allowed” to speak in the media in the way he does? Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has long made similar comments, enjoyed no such privilege but was viciously demonized. Is Zemmour not allowed to rise because, wittingly or not, he serves the interests of the global oligarchy which wishes to see France weakened, paralyzed, and bled by fatal internal conflict, namely the ethno-religious civil war which Zemmour is effectively promoting?

I personally do not find the Soralian critique convincing. He fails to recognize the fact that there are differing factions within the French and global oligarchies. Indeed, Donald Trump was able to win the U.S. presidency precisely by exploiting these divisions. He governed with the support of ultra-Zionists who won a great deal for Israel. America won a bit too, though admittedly much less, with drastic reductions in border crossings and refugee settlements.

In France, Zemmour has been able to survive thanks to the support of the Dassault family, an originally Jewish family (I don’t know how much they have intermarried with gentiles) who own the Figaro newspaper and a segment of the French arms industry, and Vincent Bolloré, a gentile billionaire industrialist who owns CNews. I cannot say if these men have supported Zemmour out of right-wing convictions or for subscriptions/ratings.

It is true that Zemmour’s rhetoric is ambiguous. At times, he speaks of “assimilating” foreigners into France, such as by a recent proposal to require newborns to be given traditional French names. At others, he speaks of France’s white identity and of potential civil war between the natives and the Muslims.

Assimilation is a non-starter in a country where around one fifth of newborns are Muslim and one third are non-European. I do not however think “racial civil war” will be occurring in France at least within the next 10-15 years. And even if it did, the fact is that at this stage the Europeans would easily win.

Zemmour’s Jewish identity: rationally pro-French?

There is no downplaying Zemmour’s Jewish identity, right down to his Gargamelian phenotype. Indeed he regularly goes to a conservative synagogue – which probably gives him some subcultural and social autonomy to take taboo permissions within the Parisian politico-media set. He is not among the neoconservatives who have pushed for France to undertake endless wars against the Islamic world on behalf of Israel. Indeed, Zemmour rarely mentions Israel and, in writing though not to my knowledge on television, he has criticized France’s Jewish lobbying organization, the CRIF for being “a State within the State.”

Zemmour arguably has good reason to be a pro-French Jew. His ancestors were Sephardic Jews in Algeria who had been blessed with French citizenship with the Crémieux Decree of 1870 (itself passed by a French Jew during the chaos of the Franco-Prussian War). This unlocked great opportunities for Algerian Jewry, who had previously been subalterns to the local Muslims.

Zemmour’s parents left Algeria for France during the Arabs’ war for independence in the 1950s, no doubt sensing that their time was up. In 1962, Algeria’s 1 million European settlers and most Jews fled the country, knowing that the Arabs would prepare a grisly fate for them if they did not (“the suitcase or the coffin” was the slogan of the day).

Zemmour was born and raised in Seine-Saint-Denis in suburban Paris, the resting place of French kings and now France’s most Afro-Islamic département (county). The French and Jewish residents have had to face the rising tide of Afro-Islamic ways of life and violent criminality. The bullying of Jewish children by Blacks and Muslims is said to be habitual.

Thus, Zemmour’s French nationalism would be motivated by a rational ethnic calculation: contra the anti-French propaganda of Bernard-Henri Lévy and company, modern France has objectively treated its Jews well on the whole. “As happy as God in France” is a traditional Jewish saying. The French are obviously more tolerant of the Jews than are Blacks and especially Muslims. What will happen to the Jews once France has an Afro-Islamic majority? Over the past decade, terrorist attacks by Muslims have become a banal occurrence in France, killing hundreds upon hundreds with knives, bombs, and charging vehicles.

Zemmour Can Win

I cannot say if Zemmour’s campaign is serious or merely an umpteenth conservative/populist grift operation. Indeed, Zemmour has timed his crypto-campaign with the release of his latest book, La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot(France Has Not Spoken Her Last), a diary of his conversations with French media and political figures since 2006.

What I can say is that a Zemmour victory is by no means impossible. Plenty of celebrity outsiders have been able to convert their media clout into political power: I think of Beppe Grillo in Italy, Donald Trump in America, or Vladimir Zelensky in Ukraine.

In a feeble op-ed, the establishment Le Monde newspaper has argued Zemmour cannot reproduce Trump’s success, on the grounds that he cannot take over the conservative party (Les Républicains) with its nationwide political presence. This strikes me as unconvincing cope when we know that President Emmanuel Macron himself won without the support of any established political party. Instead he founded his own party and pilfered politicians from the center-right, center, and center-left. Zemmour could do just the same with politicians of the conservative or nationalist right.

Admittedly, there is a chance that so many right-wing candidates (Zemmour, Marine Le Pen, and a conservative) are fielded that none of them breaks through to the second round. So far, polls show a right-candidate breaking through. This would become a very serious risk if the far-left, Socialists, and Greens agree to a common candidate – but this seems quite unlikely given the monumental egos involved.

Politico Europe, with more realism than Le Monde, writes by contrast that Zemmour “is winning the match against his rivals and against the media.” The paper notes that he is “getting far more prime-time TV slots and front-page stories than many of his rivals.” A Socialist political analyst told Politico: “He checkmated the media. Just like Trump. Zemmour is very well-known in a splintered media landscape and is ahead of the pack because those who make the most outrageous statements have the advantage today.”

Can Zemmour Govern?

I am more skeptical about Zemmour’s ability to govern. After all, being an effective “media-troll” does not require the same skill set as does governing a country, as Trump learned to his chagrin. Still, there are reasons to be more optimistic. Political and media power is far more concentrated in European countries than they are in the United States.

Viktor Orbán in Hungary has been able to push a patriotic agenda in Hungary with little effective pushback. In Italy, Matteo Salvini was able to rise to astonishing levels of popularity when he, as Interior Minister, blocked the arrivals of illegal immigrants in the south of the country. Salvini’s successes were only scuppered by the “populist” Five-Star Movement’s collusion with the Italian Establishment. (While the complexities of Italian politics are far beyond the scope of this article, I would say: keep an eye on Italy, the country is perfectly likely to flip sooner or later, with the next elections planned for 2023.)

At this stage, Zemmour’s crypto-campaign has served to have taboo patriotic and pro-French messages penetrate the country’s political discourse in a way unprecedented since the days of Jean-Marie Le Pen. The dynamics of Zemmour’s career and campaign are distinctly Trumpian. Marine Le Pen has solidified her position in the French political landscape by carefully reeling in “excesses” and effectively being house-trained by the legacy media. Zemmour by contrast has developed his position and prospered by always pushing the envelope in a way which the rest of the media could not deal with – except by giving him more prominence by denouncing him and trying to shut him down.

Original article and readers' comments here.

END

Green Energy

An interesting coincidence: the beginning of October ushered in a double crisis: the first collapse of the Internet and the final failure of the Green Economy. Facebook employees used saws and axes to get into their working places, for the smart doors stubbornly refused to yield the way and their badges had lost their magic touch. It seems the Internet trouble had been initiated by some unknown forces outside of Facebook. These forces have access to the inner working of the Internet. Perhaps it was military; or some obscure technicians guarding Internet secrets. They proved their power: even Facebook’s domain was placed up for sale. Mark Zuckerberg could not do it, I was told. Was it a blackmailer’s threat to global finance? Or an attempt to deflect Congressional hearings? Perhaps it was a simple demonstration of naked power.

At the same time, the first blow of winter revealed the inability of green energy to heat our homes and energise industry. Nature proved its abilities: all of a sudden, Europe’s winds refused to move the turbines. An unusual calm settled in the North, as if the winds were confined by Aeolus in his bag. Energy prices skyrocketed. The excellent future planned for mankind, all digital, internet-based and free of fossil remains, failed to materialise. Instead of continuing our march towards the dreadful New Normal, we shifted back to our troublesome but familiar normality when things went awry. The cowboy hat of Big Tech was too large for its head. Mercifully, this misfortune occurred well before the whole of mankind had been railroaded into smart dwellings heated by the mischievous wind. Otherwise, last weekend could have been the end of Homo Sapiens: we would have frozen outside, unable even to pass through the smart doors.

An energy crisis combined with an Internet failure is very dangerous. Why don’t we encounter extra-terrestrials? Here’s a possible answer: every sapient civilisation destroys itself before it achieves the capability to venture to the stars. Intelligent creatures tend to overestimate their thinking abilities; instead of sticking to known technologies and implementing small improvements, they want to make a giant leap forward. The results are gloomy, as we learn now.

It turns out that overriding smart doors requires a sturdy axe; perhaps green policy and green politicians should be subjected to the same solution. Some energy prices are incompatible with human life.

The Green New Deal turned out to be a quixotic fantasy. We aren’t ready to switch to futuristic sources of energy. Not now, anyway. We might as well stop calling oil, gas and coal by this fancy “fossil” name: they are combustible fuels. The war on combustibles, led by the Rockefeller Fund and joined by young futurists, was extremely successful, perhaps too successful for its own good. Europe and North America, as well as China and Russia have declared their desire to achieve a carbonless world. The contrary opinion, namely that man-made climate change aka global warming is just a hoax, has been officially banned.

China was the first to make the U-turn. They were already decommissioning coal mines in Inner Mongolia when they discovered that they need energy to power their plants. Surprise! Now they are in a national emergency in winter, forced to re-activate mothballed coal mines. The setup for the crisis was the closure of coal mines in Mongolia for globalist political reasons, and the completion of the crisis was stopping the import of Australian coal over a political dispute. Apparently, China’s leaders had been persuaded that the climate is rapidly becoming warmer, and that the Green New Deal means they no longer have to power their factories and heat their homes. It turned out that the globalists were premature, and they are switching back to proven energy solutions.

However, Europe is stubborn. Europeans have been convinced that there is no other way; they have to give up the usual fuels and switch to “clean” ones. Even if they would freeze to death, they will stick to clean energy. The German Green Party leader Annalena Baerbock was asked where she would get energy if the winds were becalmed and the sun was covered by clouds? (It happened this September). Electricity will continue to come from the sockets; but it will be carbon-neutral electricity, she said. “Where should the electricity come from? Of course, further from the socket and of course further from the factories, through the power lines that we have. But this electricity must be climate-neutral in the future.” She doesn’t seem to understand that it takes energy to create electricity.

The Greens are well-intentioned, but indoctrinated and opinionated. In Ghost Busters (1984), a Green activist shuts off the electricity to Ghostbusters’ HQ and disaster befalls New York City. Likewise, the Greens are actively destroying Europe’s traditional energy supplies. Probably it will spell the end of the Green Deal; that is, once people understand that this is a suicidal course.

Gazprom Signals Nord Stream Start-up in October, 2021

Recently, natural gas, a convenient source of energy, was subjected to steep price rises over purely political manipulations. Instead of paying so much, the Germans could use Russian natural gas. The Russians have completed laying down the Nord Stream 2, a pipeline for natural gas that leads directly to Germany. If it became operative, the price for natural gas will go down and the German people will be warm this coming winter. But first, NS 2 has to be licensed; it has to satisfy some political conditions that were established some time ago in order to block the NS 2 from delivering cheap gas. Politicians demand that the pipeline must have more than one owner, because it was built by Russia’s Gazprom. Furthermore, they say Poland and Ukraine must be allowed to voice their objections before cheap Russian gas is permitted to cross the German border. Yet Poland and Ukraine are Gazprom’s competitors! If it depends on their permission, no gas will ever come via NS 2; rather it will continue to be delivered for much higher price via strongly anti-Russian Ukraine and Poland.

Putin broke the rise in gas prices by expressing his confidence that the problem will be resolved soon. If he had pointed out that it is far from certain, the price would stayed sky-high, bringing yet more dividends to Gazprom investors. Did Putin act against his (and Russia’s) interests out of pure altruism? Well, no. But Putin wants a healthy, sustainable business, bringing stable profits every year; on the other hand, German and European negotiators want natural gas prices intolerably high, forcing citizens to switch to electricity. Russia could profit a lot today, but there would be nothing for tomorrow. Putin prefers to have satisfied gas customers in Europe.

Europeans could have cheaper energy, both for heating and driving, but their leaders won’t allow that. They decided that energy prices will be high, very high; so you’ll feel every degree of Centigrade/Fahrenheit in your pocket. Putin stated the Europeans miscalculated when they decided to abandon traditional fuels. Perhaps he said so out of kindness, because there is not the slightest doubt: the European and North American leaders knew that ‘clean’ fuels are much more expensive and much less reliable, and still they chose it.

Could it be explained by their hostility to Russia? None of the countries blessed by natural gas and oil (Iran, Venezuela, Russia) are favoured allies of the EU and UK. It seems European leaders are determined to freeze out any houses that are being heated by natural gas. UK regulators rejected Shell’s plans to develop the North Sea gasfield, and Shell is not a Russian or Iranian company. My explanation: they want to kill off oil and gas; and they do not mind the frozen citizens. In the UK, the fuel bills will rise by £400; he who can’t afford it, let him suffer.

This political energy crisis is worldwide. One reason is the huge government purchases of unreliable solar and wind technology. Another reason: combustible energy is underinvested. For quite a few years, energy companies believed that it isn’t worth it to spend money on traditional fuels; they were told that combustibles are on their way out. Now perhaps they will think again. Now that we realize we still need gas and oil, we better start investing in Russia because these products are only found in the far-away Arctic wilderness. It takes time and money to develop new gas fields.

The problem is that East Europeans like to cheat the Russians. They know the Russians are hated by the US and EU elites; so they believe they will get better results through litigation. They keep moving the goalposts to ensure their victory. The Russians started to build NS 2 a few years ago; to counter this development, the gas directive was applied to NS 2 in 2020. It was a peculiar decision: the directive was not around when Russians began to build the pipeline. But East European leaders are extremely dishonest. Advocate General Michal Bobek recently called upon the court to change its decision. Will it, or won’t it?

If the EU will not allow Russians to run the pipeline as they see fit, perhaps the Europeans won’t get any natural gas at all. And then, it will be this very cold winter that will decide for Europeans. The question is, do they prefer to stay well heated, or do they prefer to screw the Russians even at the price of freezing?

Russians also accept the idea of global warming. They think that within the Green New Deal, they will be able to showcase their mechanical talents, their higher education. It is more suitable for them than just selling oil like Saudi Arabians do. However, it is far from certain that sophisticated jobs will actually appear. Russia may be quite cold, but it has a great advantage in the national heating systems built in the Soviet days. It is warmer in Moscow apartments than in Jerusalem in the winter. In Israel, winter is cold; Moscow is better – as I discovered years ago.

Russia is beset by Ukraine and Poland, two very hostile neighbor states, yet Putin still wants to play ball with them. As winter sets in, very soon we shall see if the regulators persist. In the end of October, there will be the conference in Glasgow; and we shall see just how much the Europeans are ready to pay to ‘save the climate’.

Israel Shamir can be reached at adam@israelshamir.net

This article was first published at The Unz Review.

By Israel Shamir at The Unz Review on October 11, 2021 
Original article and readers' comments here.

END

How to Reclaim Freedom of Speech

in a Culture of Censorship

By Larry Alton at American Thinker on October 6, 2021

This country was founded on the premise of freedom of speech. In fact, it’s so integral to the fabric of this nation that it was included in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But over the past century, this right has been under attack. And it’s all come to a head since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What is Free Speech?

The term “freedom of speech” gets thrown around a lot these days. And while we’re blessed to live in a country where we can even debate this topic, the reality is that those on the Left have perverted the idea of free speech and shrunk it down to something that it is not.

To say that free speech is merely a shadow of what it once was would be a huge understatement. So before we dig into some concrete ways everyday folks like us can protect and capitalize on our right to free speech, let’s strip it back to the basics and look at what the Constitution says:

First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

While there are a lot of big words, the meaning is clear. The First Amendment basically protects five different freedoms: speech, religion, press, assembly, and the ever-important right to petition the government. And when you combine these five freedoms together, it makes the United States of America the most free country in the entire world. (In fact, you could argue it makes the U.S. the freest country in the history of the world -- and there’s hardly even a debate.)

When the Founders began the process of creating a constitution that would serve as the backbone for the United States, they were essentially starting an experiment. At that point, nearly every nation was led by a king, emperor, or dictator. The average citizen had no rights, very limited freedoms, and absolutely no power or voice in the election of these rulers. In fact, they had just come on a boat from a country where the very oppression of freedoms pushed them out.

Freedom of speech wasn’t just some afterthought that government officials threw into the mix for the sake of putting ink to paper. It was at the very core of the entire thing.

As founding father Benjamin Franklin once wrote in the Pennsylvania Gazette,“Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government: When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved.”

Freedom of speech is designed to protect Americans from being silenced by the government. It can be used to promote social or political change. Likewise, it can be used to oppose change. The First Amendment protects citizens against government censorship and limitations of freedom of expression, though it does not prevent private companies from setting their own rules. (This is a very important point that must be taken into account anytime freedom of speech limitations come into question.)

Because we live in a world of high-tech communication that’s underscored by the internet and social media, it’s impossible to have a discussion about free speech without bringing online platforms into the conversation. And, admittedly, this is where it gets a little sticky.

Because most social media platforms and large online media companies overwhelmingly have a liberal slant or bias, it’s often difficult for those on the right side of conversations to express themselves without being attacked or censored.

As NewAmerica.org puts it, “In an inequitable and unjust world, ‘neutral’ platforms and institutions will perpetuate and even exacerbate inequities and power imbalances unless they understand and adjust for those inequities and imbalances.”

This is where the real fight is today. While you won’t find many government officials overtly silencing their constituents, you will find massive organizations disguised as private companies dictating the flow of information online. And this is where more than 20 different international coalitions of civil society organizations are focusing their energy and effort. Those at the forefront of the fight to reclaim freedom of speech and cancel undue online censorship are fighting to do things like:

• Protect individual rights to freedom of expression online;

• Enable universal access to the internet (for full and equitable participation);

• Require transparency and oversight with how different governments and companies access and use the personal data of users;

• Enable (and even incentivize) greater diversity of platforms and communication services.

In other words, we can’t give all of the power to companies like Facebook and Google, who are able to censor half of the country’s voice based on the fact that they’re technically “private” companies who have the right to set their own rules. Because once a company becomes big enough to control the discourse of a nation, the rules no longer apply to them. At that point, there are only two real options: (1) Disband the company and/or allow additional competition to rise (and thereby provide more avenues for objective discourse), or (2) Prevent the company from limiting the speech of its users. That might sound extreme, but it’s reality.

Ways You Can Capitalize on Your Freedom of Speech

The good news is that the First Amendment still exists. It’s part of the Constitution and you have every right to protection that it offers. But here’s the bad news: If we don’t start standing up for our rights and using these freedoms, they’ll start to fade. And while it might take 10, 20, or even 100 years, the government will take these freedoms from us. Now is the time to stand up. Here are several ways you can do it:

• Publish your own content. While platforms like Facebook might silence conservative content and talking points, there are plenty of other ways to let your voice be heard online. For example, you can always start your own blog. In fact, The Blog Starter will show you how to do it in just 20 minutes. And once you’re up and running, you can begin publishing content and ideas for meaningful dialogue.

• Engage thoughtful discourse. When you do spend time on traditional social media platforms, make it a point to only engage in thoughtful discourse. In other words, stay away from the toxic, argumentative traps that other people lay. Instead, join groups and make friends with those who are willing to look at both sides of an issue. The more these types of conversations are pushed to the top, the more media platforms have to give room for objective discussion.

• Support First Amendment groups. Finally, put your money where your mouth is. Find free speech groups that you believe in and support them with your time and dollars. Oftentimes, this is the best use of your resources. They have the ability to pool money from thousands of different places, which gives them the power to spark change.

Now’s the Time to Stand Up

In the words of our first president, George Washington, “If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.”

Let us not be led to the slaughter, dumb, silent, and cooperative. Instead, let’s stand up while it’s possible to do so. The best way to protect freedom of speech is to use it. Whether that’s starting your own blog, changing the way you engage people online, or supporting various freedom of speech groups, there are plenty of steps you can take. Now’s the time to step up!

Image: Newtown Graffiti

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

Original here.

END