Despite President-elect Trump’s promise to make the United States the “world capital of crypto,” Gary Gensler, the notoriously anti-crypto, and thankfully outgoing, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is seemingly doubling down on his anti-crypto crusade. With Gensler indeed leaving in January, the future of the SEC’s case against Unicoin, and its larger fight against cryptocurrencies, is, at worst, uncertain, given that many of Gensler’s true believers will still be working at the Commission. But there is hope that Atkins will oversee the writing of a new regulatory framework for crypto that encourages innovation.
As Donald Trump returns to the White House, his nomination of Christopher Wright to serve as Secretary of Energy points to a major effort to revive domestic uranium mining. That’s especially good news, given the Biden Administration’s recent decision to discontinue importing uranium from Russia.
In a recent article in The Engineer, Jim Pickles, Tokamak Energy’s chief of material, predicted that artificial intelligence will soon enable the creation of a new materials database that will save millions of dollars and cut years off the global quest for clean, secure, and affordable fusion energy – the Holy Grail of energy production that could mean an endless supply of free energy to power the planet.That, says Pickles, was the message at the 29th Council of the Parties (COP29) in Azerbaijan. The world, we are told, is so much closer to replicating the energy of the Sun itself – and in the process meet rapidly growing demand for affordable energy and also mitigate climate change. For over a century, scientists have predicted that “Fusion is 30 years away from reality.” OpenStar now claims fusion is just six years away, “and we’re racing against the clock.” But Popular Mechanics writer Caroline Delbert is not that confident. Delbert says that the “strange dynamic” within proprietary and venture-funded fusion research, with its predictions of free energy tomorrow, is belied by one simple truth: “After 100 years of thought and 70 years of hands-on design work, how to heat the plasma enough is still a ‘core hurdle’.”
As Project Healing Waters enters its twentieth year, current CEO John Langford is confident, based on two decades of anecdotal evidence, that fly fishing has been a powerful tool in helping disabled veterans heal from PTSD. But now, thanks to a partnership with the digital therapeutics company MindStreet, Project Healing Waters may soon be able to provide scientific evidence of just how the organization benefits veterans. MindStreet and Project Healing Waters teams are confident that data-driven evidence will support what they've always known, and what our Veterans are telling us. “Embracing the majesty of America's outdoors and reestablishing community and camaraderie in the process, through the sport and art of fly fishing, produces impactful, lasting results - a model replicable the country over.”
Whatever happened to the old bit of business wisdom: The customer is always right? U.S. and European automakers abandoned this mantra to please unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, New York, and Doha and the sycophants who rose to political power by championing their prophecies of doom. They may now be regretting that “gung-ho” accession to the marching orders of the climate commandos. Today, the sign of doom in the auto industry is lots full of unsold battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) that customers have said for years they do not trust with their lives and fortunes. Admittedly, the post-COVID inflationary spiral that has led to soaring interest rates has not helped the auto industry, but far too many of their woes are self-inflicted. Meanwhile, the Chinese are smiling, knowing they hold four aces in their hands.
ndonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto has begun his first world travel since taking office on October 20. After an initial visit to China to meet with President Xi Jinping and other Chinese officials, the 73-year-old Prabowo has scheduled a meeting in Washington with President Biden. An aide to President Subianto has confirmed that a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump is also on the table. Such a meeting between the leaders of two of the world’s largest democracies has the potential for both elderly statesmen to improve their international profiles.
One of Donald Trump’s main campaign themes was ending the federal electric vehicle mandate, which he calls a China-first policy that taxes the electric grid, subsidizes force labor, and destroys American jobs. This means rescinding Biden Administration subsidies and mandates – but what else will he be able to do? Four principles will likely guide the Trump Administration’s actions on the auto industry in the next several months: (a) tariffs to protect domestic auto industry jobs, (b) fighting against mandates that tilt the playing field toward an EV technology that is both widely unpopular especially for load-carrying vehicles, (c) lowering the overall cost of owning reliable transportation for American consumers, and (d) consumer choice, not government mandates, must drive the auto and truck marketplace.
In selecting Dr. Donna Hodge as Fitchburg State University’s twelfth and first female president, the 130-year-old Massachusetts institution has concurrently set out on a course to become a federally certified Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and take bold new steps in community engagement. During Hispanic Heritage Month, Hodge has taken the opportunity to label Fitchburg State an emerging HSI.Hodge is deeply committed to creating opportunities and solutions for underrepresented communities. Her exceptional record when previously serving at Colorado State University Pueblo was notably recognized by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), which honored her with the 2021 Excellence and Innovation Award.
The G7 virtue signaling came in the wake of the United Nations’ COP28 climate summit in December 2023 and a UN warning that “excuses” for failing to take bold action on climate change were “not acceptable.” What ought to be “not acceptable” is the fact that, except for a few Caribbean islands, European nations already have the world’s highest electricity costs. The UN counts as members both China and India, which together consume nearly 70% of the world’s coal production. Neither is a member of the G7. Nor does the “bold” G7 commitment explain how their self-imposed coal ban – which they want to impose on poor African nations – even matters.
Systems often fail because of a lack of maintenance, and maintenance budgets are frequently robbed to finance pet projects. The electric grid is no longer being ignored, but another major segment of America’s infrastructure needs a closer look. According to a 2023 article in Nature, much of the U.S. water infrastructure was first installed in the late Victorian period when the influx of workers to cities fostered an enormous housing boom. These systems are now well over 100 years old, and some piping is closer to 150 years old. Even much of the infrastructure installed in the 20th century is also well past its design life.
The beautiful city of Cape Town in South Africa just hosted Africa Oil Week, which the British-based Hyve Group called “a step towards addressing the immediate energy needs of the continent while embracing the acceleration of the clean energy transition.” The 30-year-old event largely presents the European perspective on the growth of Africa’s energy sector.But during the first week in November, as Americans are voting for a new President, Cape Town will be hosting the fourth annual Africa Energy Week, sponsored by the African Energy Chamber. Its very different mission, as stated by AEC founder and executive chairman NY Ayuk, is to make African energy poverty history by 2030.
A July survey by the Fusion Industry Association reported that among 45 private fusion companies worldwide, 25 were headquartered in the United States. Perhaps the biggest news on the U.S. fusion front is emerging from three of these firms that were spun out of the University of Wisconsin at Madison – Realta Fusion, Type One Energy, and SHINE Technologies. Realta’s Furlong says, “What Detroit was for the global automobile industry in the 1950s, what Houston is today in the global oil and gas sector … I can see Wisconsin being the global hub for the fusion industry in the 21st Century.”
Heretofore little-known Abilene Christian University (ACU), located in west Texas, made history on September 16 when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued its Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing Laboratory (NEXT Lab) a construction permit for the deployment of the Natura Resources MSR-1 system’s liquid-fueled advanced nuclear research reactor. ACU president Phil Schubert said that issuance of the construction permit moves the university “one step closer to making that a reality. The performance-driven approach of Natura Resources to advanced reactor deployment has quickly moved them from a relative unknown to a leader in the upstart advanced reactor industry.” Should ACU and Natura obtain an operating license, it would be Texas’ first new nuclear reactor since the Comanche Peak power plant’s second unit was licensed to operate in 1993. The NEXT Lab reactor is being designed to generate enough energy to power the equivalent of only about 250 homes. Its goal is to create a testing ground for scaling up molten salt reactors to larger, utility-scale units.
Fourteen years after starting Oncoclínicas&Co, Dr. Bruno Ferrari has built one of the largest and most respected medical groups in Latin America, one that specializes in oncology, hematology, radiotherapy, and genomics.Now, Oncoclínicas&Co is expanding its operations into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) through a joint venture with the Advanced Drug Company for Pharmaceuticals, a part of the Al Faisaliah Group, one of the KSA’s largest conglomerates.HRH Prince Mohammed K.A. Al Faisal, President of Al Faisaliah Group and future chairman of the joint venture, was ebullient about the new relationship. “We are joining forces to improve cancer care. Our aim is to become the top private cancer treatment center for a region of over 300 million people. We will offer advanced treatments and expert care to save lives and raise the bar in cancer treatment,” he stated.
With world energy needs expected to double in the next decades, and with many banana-producing nations woefully short in electricity availability, these developments in bananas to energy may soon become a rapidly growing industry. At the virtual outset of bananas to energy research (the 2010 Malaysian study), scientists admitted there were “issues” involved in recovering the feedstock, storage problems, and financial and technical challenges to be solved before banana crop residue could provide a major source of energy for energy-starved nations. The latest research suggests that many of these hurdles are being overcome, but until banana waste to energy can be proven to be a cost-effective alternative to other renewables or even to abundant fossil fuels, most of that waste will continue to pile up.
Former California state senate majority leader Gloria Romero has abandoned the Democratic Party over its neo-Puritanical crackdown on gas appliances, gas stoves in particular. The last straw for this Latina was one we Texans fully understand.“I for example think we are going to solve nothing by banning gas stoves,” Romero told NBC News 4 San Antonio. “As a Latina, I will not give up my gas stove because you cannot toast a tortilla on an electric range.” Could it be that the voting public is awakening to the counsel of American Gas Association president and CEO Karen Harbert – “Any push to ban natural gas would raise costs to consumers, jeopardize environmental progress, and deny affordable energy to underserved populations.” The 70% majority who believe natural gas is just fine may finally have had enough.
On September 3, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and the city of Oak Ridge, birthplace of the U.S. nuclear energy industry, announced new details about “Project IKE,” a new nuclear energy development boosted by the new Tennessee Nuclear Energy Fund. Paris-based Orano USA has agreed to build a uranium enrichment centrifuge facility on the Roane County side of Oak Ridge. The project, said Lee, is the single largest investment in Tennessee history. In the words of Oak Ridge city council member Sean Gleason, “East Tennessee is becoming once again, after 80-plus years, the place the nation is looking for to lead the next nuclear race. Let Oak Ridge win another race,” he added. “We’ve done it before.”
As America’s “greenest” President (Joe Biden) fades into the sunset, one is reminded of the 1990 Tom Hanks blockbuster Joe Versus the Volcano. Our salvation may be near.In the movie, Joe Banks (Hanks) is told by a doctor he is dying. He is then duped by an unscrupulous billionaire into throwing himself into a volcano. The billionaire (and crony of the lying doctor) needs a sucker to appease the gods of the native Pacific islanders who control access to a mineral essential for manufacturing superconductors.Greta Thunberg, literally the poster child for self-sacrifice “for the sake of the planet,” has likewise been duped by unscrupulous billionaires into throwing her life away, convinced (as is the case with countless other youth) that she really has nothing else left to live for. Greta lovers worldwide have sworn off adulthood, including bearing children, because “who would want to bring children into a dying world?”
Prabowo Subianto’s career in service to Indonesia and its people spans decades. He has served his country as one of Indonesia’s most distinguished military officers across senior political positions. From his years as a member of Indonesia’s Kopassus special forces, through his ascent through the ranks of the armed forces, Prabowo earned a reputation as a maverick with a talent for novel approaches to problem-solving. But what made Prabowo stand out in the latest presidential election, is that throughout his career he has always been a man of the people.
Two months into his Presidency, Joe Biden announced a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that included $174 billion in grants, subsidies, and other payouts to encourage Americans to switch to battery-electric vehicles (BEVs). Since that initial “investment,” billions and billions more have been poured into what is increasingly a failing effort to convince or cajole auto buyers to switch. These huge expenditures, together with COVID and war monies, have ballooned the national debt to the point that 76% of income taxes are needed just to pay interest on that debt. Many fear that profligate spending has the nation’s economy on the verge of collapse. The fault lies with the very concept that Government Knows Best
Perhaps inspired by harsh realities that the 125-year-old electric vehicle technology (while much updated since its early days) even today has been unable to resolve nagging problems, automotive engineers on four continents are designing, and companies are manufacturing, vehicles that may soon turn the battery-electric vehicle into a 21st Century Edsel.Many of these new engine designs will generate zero carbon dioxide emissions, but others will not. None of these vehicles meet the EU’s definition, and all of them appear to fall outside the Biden Administration’s plans, which are wholly keyed to battery-electric vehicles.
Former CoinDesk senior research analyst George Kaloudis noted that “crypto is standing in as a feather in the cap for the individual freedom talking point GOP voters love, to the point where Trump has completely backtracked on his anti-crypto rhetoric of just a few years ago". One reason, he suggested, is that “there are enough single-issue crypto voters out there to make a difference.” The choice facing the Democratic Party as its own nominating convention draws near is even more important for the party’s public face on an issue that may for now directly impact only a small fraction of the electorate but whose advocates represent a sizable block of single-issue voters.
During a high-profile conversation with moderator Peter Bryant at the recent RealClearEnergy Future Forum, Gill Pratt, chief scientist at Toyota, said that his company’s philosophy focuses first on quality of life. From that perspective, he added, the automotive future must be a multi-pathway that respects human diversity and the diversity of uses for motorized vehicles (check the video above to see the Pratt section).Toyota, he said, recognizes the difference between decarbonization – which is the goal – and electrification, which is one means of reaching that goal. Toyota therefore is building hybrids, electric vehicles (EVs), and internal combustion engines that use hydrogen rather than gasoline or diesel as a fuel. In the developing world where electricity is in short supply, he added, the best choice may be low-carbon liquid fuels.
Many forward-thinking investors today seek to incorporate real or philosophical elements of the crypto thesis into the securities issuance and trading environment - such as the instantaneous settlement of trades, relative independence of middlemen, lower transaction costs, transparency, automation, and portability of asset ownership, including the ability to hold assets in a personal wallet, and have interactivity/utility of instruments - to ultimately be independent of institutions. Setting aside that, with increasing AML and other regulations, much of this is not really available in the crypto markets today, anyway; the securities ecosystem requires a particular focus on marrying legacy concepts and processes, with the promise of technology.
“Bad Boys” Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling, both formerly of the Minnesota-based Center for the American Experiment, just posted an article contending that, in the long run, nuclear energy is cheaper (and better) than wind or solar (though not as cheap as coal or natural gas) despite high up-front capital costs.One obvious reason is that wind turbines and solar arrays have much shorter lifespans than nuclear facilities, which are initially commissioned for 40 years and can apply for 20-year extensions thereafter; many today anticipate an 80-year lifespan. They also require one-thirtieth of the land needed for solar; wind farms would require 200 times more land. The U.S. has done it for the Navy – nuclear carriers and submarines are very expensive upfront but pay for themselves over time. Nuclear is the only “clean” pathway (and far easier on living beings than wind or solar) to a clean energy future that can power an AI-friendly society. And it leaves Joshua trees, eagles, whales, bats, and ordinary farm, forest, and prairie animals and plants alone – people, too.
The average American household without an in-home EV charging station consumes about 30 kWh per day, or about 10,720 kWh over a year’s time. With just one electric vehicle being charged at home, that total increases to about 15,220 kWh. For two-EV households, that total runs up to nearly 20,000 kWh per year (assuming both drivers commute to work). That’s nearly double current electricity usage for such families.Without an EV in the garage, air conditioning uses nearly a fifth of household electricity, followed by space heating and water heating (a combined 25%). But adding just one home-charged EV changes that calculus dramatically. The EV takes up about 30% ot the much higher total electricity use, dropping the share for all other uses significantly. Two home-charged EVs would eat up nearly half the household’s total electricity usage – and require thousands of dollars to upgrade the house’s electric panel. Today’s 50-kva transformers, which cost about $8,000 each, can power about 60 homes; that number drops closer to 40 if each of those homes houses one electric vehicle, closer to 30 with two EVs using home chargers.For a city with 120,000 homes, which today may re
Six years ago, the World Economic Forum reported that insects are “good grub,” citing a Meticulous Research study predicting that the global market for edible insects could grow to $1.18 billion by 2023 – triple the 2018 level. Eating insects is ever better for the environment than eating plants, said the WEF, because plants require land and machinery use, water use, manufacturing, processing, and transportation – among other activities during which carbon is emitted. Are we ready as a society to conclude that eating insects is a grotesque form of cannibalism? Should we now condemn Bill Gates, the FAO, the WEF, and other insect-as-food promoters are monsters assaulting yet another group of “sentient beings”?
Investigative journalist, or rather, anti-highway activist Megan Kimble’s City Limits, is a very passionate tome built on the thesis that the Interstate Highway Act of 1956 is the primary reason that communities of color today face insurmountable challenges. She has a point, as there is plenty of evidence that freeway planners tended to choose routes that disrupted cities’ poorest neighborhoods. Her preferred solution is to tear down every urban Interstate highway in the U.S. Kimble has a lot to say about what constitutes the “good life” in urban areas. Walking to parks, stores, restaurants, and neighbors’ homes builds a community culture lacking across much of America today – as much in suburbia as in broken-down inner cities.But guilt-tripping suburban commuters as beneficiaries of past racist decisions does not build the coalitions needed to transform the American landscape away from the government-created isolation that the pandemic only made more evident.
Former stockbroker, merchant banker, and gold exploration company CEO Christopher Werner spent two decades in the gold mining industry. He learned along the way that predominantly, far too many smaller mining companies run out of money before they can bring their gold to market.Werner, now chairman and CEO of C3 Bullion, decided to create a precious metals hedge fund to provide short-term funding for mining companies entering the production stage that needed a new influx of capital to begin to cash in on their already long-term investment.
Spearheaded by E. Calvin Beisner, who in 1999 composed The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship and six years later founded the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism provides a blueprint for changing the hearts and minds of an emerging generation that has been heavily indoctrinated in the belief that planet Earth is “dying” because humanity has sinned by using fossil fuels to escape the drudgery of worldwide poverty. Beisner and his co-editor, renowned climatologist David Legates, contribute their own chapters and solicited chapters from nine climate scientists, two environmental and energy economists, and two energy scientists/engineers. All the chapters have copious references, and Legates also provides a list of 44 climate change papers dating back to Arrhenius’ 1896 paper that first described the so-called “greenhouse effect.”
Since Barry DiRaimondo launched SteelWave, the company has acquired, designed, developed, entitled, or managed over 61 million square feet of industrial product and over 51 million square feet of office product.It has also has eight million square feet of life science research and development facilities — at a combined cost nearing $18 billion. To address the changing nature of the real estate investment market in 2024, Barry entered into brainstorming sessions with his son, cryptocurrency pioneer Mitch DiRaimondo.The younger DiRaimondo had recognized that commercial real estate could be used to back digital investments and bridge tangible assets with real cash flow into the digital 3.0 ecosystem.This epiphany led SteelWave to start up SteelWave Digital, through which global investors have the option to convert their traditional ownership positions in America high-end real estate into digital securities that can be traded on an exchange.
El Paso, the gateway to America, has long served as a critical juncture between the U.S. and Mexico, evolving from the "six-shooter capital" of lore into a pivotal hub for international trade and economic development. Today, the El Paso-Juarez metroplex boasts a bustling economy with a strong binational character yet finds itself hindered by national border policies and the overwhelming media attention they attract. This September, the Chamber will host the State of the Borderland event, spotlighting the economic dynamism of the Borderplex region. It's a call to the national media and policymakers to observe firsthand not just the challenges we face but more importantly, the opportunities and progress defining our community
Guterres in the same year went all the way to Beijing to “urge” China to stop funding coal projects, because (OMG!) the Paris climate agreement goals will slip out of reach without China’s cooperation. There, too, he begged the “economic superpower” to genuflect, whispering that “the way in which China restores growth will have a major impact on whether we can keep 1.5C within reach” in the post-pandemic world (spoken at the height of the pandemic!).Was President Xi so flattered by the former Prime Minister of Portugal that he immediately stopped all future plans for new coal-fired power plants in China?
The U.S. under President Biden has committed so heavily to a low-carbon economy that the administration has halted export applications for liquefied natural gas, canceled oil and gas leases, added new EPA regulations to hasten the demise of the U.S. coal industry, and much more.While there has been a lot of lip service to reviving the declining U.S. nuclear industry, and many nuclear companies are champing at the bit to get started, the regulatory bottleneck and the attendant high costs and long lead times still stand in the way of progress.
Back in February, CBS News reported that food prices had continued to rise faster than the rise in the overall Consumer Price Index. Restaurant prices were increasing at an annual rate of 5.1 percent, while grocery prices were up 1.2 percent. But the real story is that supermarket prices are 25 percent higher now than in January 2020, while inflation had increased by 19 percent. So what’s the solution for the planet? Fewer people mean fewer crops, fewer livestock, and of course fewer “gas guzzling” motor vehicles, fewer buildings, fewer everything.
When President Joe Biden and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis met at the White House last week, the praise for Romania's commitment to NATO and the protection of Europe reaffirmed the country's role as a cornerstone of Western defense against the threats posed by Russian aggression in Ukraine. The need to advance the legitimate interests of the critical U.S. ally may now be more important than ever. The importance of giving Romania the freedom of travel it has earned and clearly deserves goes far beyond its own borders. Ukraine's future may depend on its continued ability to send its grain freely throughout Europe and to destinations beyond the continent's borders.
Three decades ago, a little-known automotive engineer named Stanley Meyer obtained patents for what he called an electric water fuel cell that allegedly divided water (including tap water and salt water) into hydrogen and oxygen using a process he said was far simpler than electrolysis. Ecoticias reported last September that the Austrian automotive engineering company AVL had developed an “innovative [400-horsepower] hydrogen combustion engine” that runs on hydrogen fuel while providing performance comparable to traditional ICE vehicles. Hyundai, Kia, and the Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials (KIMM) also introduced a new engine design that combusts hydrogen directly – also without the need for fuel cells. Whether or not hydrogen fuel cells, direct hydrogen injection, or even this “water-based” engine) can ever compete with either EVs or ICE vehicles remains to be seen.
Much has been written about the downsides of offshore and onshore wind turbines, from noise pollution to the major problem of disposing of used turbine blades. But nothing has shaken the determination of the Biden Administration – and the wind industry – to continue to subsidize and fast-track their permitting despite rising opposition. One might ask why. Odd, is it not, that the same administration that has blocked multiple onshore mining permits, revoked oil and gas leases, and demanded protection for not-so-endangered species is so bent on wind energy projects that it is willing for the right whale to join the passenger pigeon in extinction?With neither profit nor environmental protection as legitimate rationales, one has to wonder about the true motives for pushing offshore wind.
Prabowo is urging a ceasefire in Gaza today, for the same reasons he has urged a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine for nearly a year. These wars must stop, "because innocent civilians are paying with their lives; because lives and livelihoods are being destroyed; because wars of this magnitude impact not just the countries and people involved but can spread and engulf entire regions and continents."But Prabowo went further, and in this there can be hope."As a Muslim, as an Indonesian," he said, "I believe in peace and coexistence, in moderation and harmony."These values are in the DNA of our nation and our people. And to us, they are just as relevant when those suffering are Europeans as they are when the victims are Asians or Africans, when they are Christian, Muslim, or Jewish."
Today, thanks to the Netflix release of a 2022 movie based on Stephen Camelio’s screenplay, “Mending the Line,” America is learning that fly fishing can play an important role in the physical and emotional healing of disabled veterans – true social change.Upon its streaming release last month, “Mending the Line” was Netflix’ most watched movie. It has also become a major recruiting tool for Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing Inc. (PHW), which helps disabled veterans cope with physical and emotional damage and builds camaraderie many had lost when they left the military.Retired Navy Captain Ed Nicholson had no idea that the idea he birthed while recuperating at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2005 would grow to serve 65,000 veterans just since 2012, including women vets who have just formed a PHW offshoot called Women on the Fly.
While nuclear energy has accounted for about 20% of the electricity generated in the U.S., and in 2023 supplied nearly half the nation’s carbon-free electricity, a new report from the Government Accountability Office says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must more fully consider possible impacts of climate change on the nation’s mostly aging nuclear power plants. Dichotomous messages from the DOE and NRC are highlighted in a recent article by ThorCon International co-founder Robert Hargraves, who bluntly stated that the U.S. is not building commercial nuclear power plants – while 16 other nations are – “because NRC and EPA regulators are so misinformed about radiation.”
The energy-poor nation of Ethiopia has just become the first in the world to ban the import of all non-electric automobiles. This despite the fact that barely half of Ethiopian citizens have any access to electricity. Other sources say that number may be as low as 30 percent. And wouldn’t you know it? Clean Technica reports that the primary beneficiaries of these changes are Chinese automakers! Made-in-China new and low-mileage used vehicles are “selling quite well” in Addis Ababa, though there are also Toyotas and other models. Who, though, is buying and driving these low-cost (but not by Ethiopian standards) Chinese EVs? Not very many Ethiopians, for whom even a $25,000 EV costs 20 times the GDP per capita. The much more likely suspects are the 30,000 Chinese who run much of the nation. Curiously, there are almost no public charging stations, suggesting that EV owners charge their vehicles in private, secure garages.
Remember the American love for the open road? That paean to American freedom built on the automobile, but made possible by highways that also enabled trucks to deliver goods to just about any location quickly and safely? And then came the Progressives to spoil all the fun.First, they hopped on the “climate emergency” bandwagon to justify massive subsidies for “clean” vehicles to “save the planet,” emphasizing no tailpipe emissions while ignoring the darker realities of cobalt and lithium mining, Chinese labor camps, or the cost of an entirely new infrastructure the private sector was not about to underwrite. ansportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, announcing the new rules, boasted that, “We estimate that today’s rule will prevent 5.5 trillion pounds of carbon dioxide from going into our atmosphere between now and 2050.” Citing the tougher mileage standards, Papa Pete also claimed that the new rules will "save a typical American household hundreds of dollars.”
In the Foreword to Magatte Wade’s book, The Heart of a Cheetah, the late Ghanaian economist George Ayittey wrote that the hope for a prosperous African future requires that young Africans take the “Cheetah pledge” – to seek their wealth in the private sector, shunning government service.After decades of frustration despite creating successful African-based businesses, Wade has learned that African Cheetahs must overcome the world’s most laborious and most corrupt regulatory bureaucracies. In far too many African nations, those in power benefit from the status quo, as it gives them near-total authority to decide who can make a profit, usually for a price.
When long-time friends Kelvin “PJKev” Mensah and Aaron Wilson decided to turn their love for private jet travel into a new business, they had already established what was once described as a "stellar track record as entrepreneurs working with premiere startup organizations and influencers". Wilson and Mensah, who in early 2020 co-authored the widely praised 'How To Get Funding for Your Startup', around the same time launched Approved Jets, which began as a private aviation brokerage but has since morphed into a one-stop luxury travel booking destination. The dynamic duo generated first-year revenues in the millions of dollars – and both today believe they have just gotten started.
Here’s an unspoken truth. While it is true that governments have subsidized the rich who buy electric vehicles, heat pumps, solar panels, wind turbines, and other products, their motives are far from the altruistic myth they spread across even kindergarten classrooms. They are rubbing our faces in the mud, saying, “Gimme your lunch money, or you will be sorry!” And they are not ashamed, even when their pet policies create great harm to their “subjects.” The massive wealth transfers to largely unregulated tech giants, the Big Three hedge funds (Black Rock, State Street, and Vanguard), and well-protected Big Pharma reveal just how much influence government has today over who wins and loses — and how the rich skew the game to their own advantage. At the same time, leaders have brought the entire world to the brink of nuclear war. A reckoning is coming.
As is the case for the United States and many other nations, 2024 is a presidential election year in Ghana, a nation whose 1992 constitution is in large part based on the British and U.S. constitution models, notably in guaranteeing fundamental human rights and freedoms.But Ghanaians, many of whom are eager for new leadership for a nation that ought to be an African prosperity and human rights leader, are bewildered by the actions by Ghanaian officials to suppress an emerging political bloc intent on changing Ghana’s future for the better.
Leave it to Joe Biden. When the 80-year-old plutocrat John Forbes Kerry steps down as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC), he chose 75-year-old John David Podesta, Jr., to finish out the year. The two climate czars could not have come from more different beginnings. For his self-important mission to “save the planet,” Kerry has been called a “climate clown” on social media and “the Forrest Gump of Climate” by Bloomberg Media. Ever the aloof Eurocentric diplomat, Kerry never lets anyone forget how important he is. Podesta, from much more humble roots, prefers to work behind the scenes, often in a supporting role. It was clearly past time for Kerry to go. The day before he “retired,” Kerry spoke at a press conference and raised eyebrows and temperatures when he blurted out that people might “feel better” about the Russian government if Russia would just commit to fighting climate change as hard as he has done.
Twenty years ago the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis posed the question whether the social benefits of light rail outweigh its costs. The essay assumed that transit must be publicly owned and regulated – yet the very history of the trolley shows that as soon as government took control, once-profitable vehicles became a huge liability.The most shocking revelations in the Fed’s essay were that fare revenue covered so little of the operating cost (let alone maintenance, expansion finance, or other things real businesses must find answers for): St. Louis 28.2 percent; Buffalo, 21.4 percent; Baltimore (19.4 percent). The Fed’s conclusion? No privately owned system could ever be built or operated with such a dismal balance sheet.The Fed made two errors. First, not calculating whether the public investment would stimulate the local economy enough to justify the cost. Second, not comparing the cost of allowing private entities to bid for individual routes.Throwing public dollars at public transportation has long been popular among city mayors and increasingly with the federal government. It’s other people’s money, but you get the photo ops.
Even more than SMRs, microreactors are fast becoming the rage among those seeking to decarbonize energy generation. Microreactor designs allow them to operate as part of the electric grid, independently of the grid, or as part of a microgrid to generate up to 20 megawatts thermal energy for both electricity generation and heat for industrial applications. In sum, as development of microreactors continues, the primary hurdle may not be on the manufacturing end. Adapting the nuclear regulatory framework to accommodate microreactors, perhaps with a general permit structure, could be the key to revolutionizing electricity generation for industry, remote communities, and other applications without straining the electric grid or building massive new transmission infrastructure.
Much as with the space program, the federal government has spent huge sums subsidizing the construction and purchase of electric vehicles, including 18-wheelers, airplanes, and tanks. All of this has been driven, ostensibly, by the perceived threat posed by the plant food carbon dioxide. Much as with the Edsel, the electric vehicles that European, American, and other Western governments have been subsidizing are “the wrong car for the wrong market at the wrong time.” As Mark Knopfler’s Romeo said to Juliet, “the timing was all wrong,” perhaps the only real flaw with the current EV mandates is that the supply chain – especially in the West – is just not ready for prime time.
Fear has led to the neglect and downplaying of important, even urgent, human concerns and allowed the elites to begin restructuring world society to accommodate their belief (or tool for control) that carbon dioxide is an evil that must be eradicated. The carbon conundrum has even confabulated the field of geopolitics and turned allies into enemies and vice versa. Europeans are now questioning UN, EU, and WEF mandates that would force them into buying expensive heat pumps, electric vehicles, and other inconveniences while adapting to routine blackouts and brownouts resulting from the shuttering of reliable sources of energy. They also see how their leaders’ policies are benefiting the Chinese, whose own cheaper electric vehicles (made with slave labor) are flooding markets. Isn’t it time for people everywhere to demand answers to the serious questions about the real-world costs of imposing the “renewables” agenda be laid out in full?
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) city of Dubai has placed its bid to be the crypto capital of the world. The cosmopolitan city, which is hosting four separate crypto events in April alone this year, created the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) to oversee the development of its virtual asset business environment in terms of regulation, licensing, and governance.But it appears the UAE and Dubai are facing strong competition from The Bahamas and Nassau, which in 2020 created its own Digital Asset Registered Exchanges (DARE) legislation, then bolstered that legislation in 2023 in the wake of the FTX scandal.Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis, while opening up the 2022 Crypto Bahamas conference in Nassau stated that, "We have the vision to transform the Bahamas into the leading digital asset hub in the Caribbean."
When auto (even EV driving) enthusiast Rowan Atkinson – Mr. Bean to his fans – last June wrote in The Guardian that there are “sound environmental reasons” why “keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV,” he was vilified as a eco-traitor.Atkinson had added, “We’re realizing that a wider range of options need to be explored if we’re going to properly address the very serious environmental problems that our use of the motor car has created.” These include, he said, hydrogen fuel cells and synthetic fuels that would extend the lives of older vehicles long after governments are demanding they be scrapped.
Although the West is preoccupied with the European Parliament elections in June and the U.S. presidential elections in November, another significant election will be occurring later this month, when Indonesians go to the polls on February 14. In the political arena, Prabowo Subianto emerges as a figure of seasoned statesmanship, having adeptly softened his domestic image while simultaneously asserting a commanding presence on the global stage. As the incumbent Defense Minister, his tenure has been marked by the forging of pivotal agreements, showcasing his diplomatic acumen. In contrast, Ganjar Pranowo offers a fresh, media-savvy persona, appealing to the populace with his approachable style and populist rhetoric. However, his track record reveals a shortfall in executing significant initiatives and in articulating a vision that resonates with the aspirations of the world’s fourth-largest populace. Anies Baswedan, on the other hand, stands as a polarizing contender, championing an anti-establishment message that finds resonance among conservative Muslim factions, yet his policy proposals have faced scrutiny for their lack of depth and tangible outcomes.Among these contenders, Prabowo is positioned as the frontrunner, embodying Indonesia’s most promising pathway to realizing its aspirations on both a domestic and international stage.
Elections for the European Parliament will be held in June, and big changes appear on the horizon. The Green parties, who won big in 2019 and pushed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to present an ambitious climate agenda, are in decline. Led by disgruntled (and targeted) farmers, voters in at least 18 of the EU’s 27 member nations are expected to express disapproval of EU policies at the ballot box. What if, said Professor Simon Hix, an author of the ECFR report, this “backdrop” of stirring populism is fueled by the return of Donald Trump as U.S. president in November? “Parties of the political mainstream need to wake up and take clear stock of voter demands,” he said. Hix added, “They should make clear, on key issues relating to democracy and the rule of law, that it is they, and not those on the political fringes, who are best placed to protect fundamental European rights.” That’s a funny way of describing opposition to climate alarmist legislation and to policies the people by their vote have determined are not in their interest.
The Biden Administration’s proposed fiscal 2024 budget included a new proposal for the Digital Asset Mining Energy (DAME) excise tax with a goal of taking 30 percent of the cost of electricity used in cryptocurrency mining for the federal treasury. While the proposal failed to win support last year, it remains a goal of the Biden Administration.But a new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute urges the White House to “Don’t Depower Crypto.” The report concludes that the DAME tax would do more harm than good, stifling innovation and consumer well-being. And, given the rapid pace of change in the fledgling industry, the tax would make almost no real-world sense.
Although much of the 2024 electoral focus in the West will be on the U.S. presidential elections in November, another significant election will be occurring in February --- when Indonesians go to the polls on Valentine’s Day. The Presidential contest has come down to a three-horse race between former General and current Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto, Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, and academic and former governor of Jakarta Anies Baswedan.One of the latest polls conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) at the end of December put Prabowo in a commanding lead. One of the latest polls on the race, in January, reported Prabowo's lead standing at 56%.
“For cryptocurrencies,” says Forbes staff writer Maria Gracia Santilana Linares, “2023 was neither the best nor the worst of times.” On the one hand, the overall crypto market, which fell hard in 2022 after reaching $3 trillion in 2021, rebounded to $1.7 trillion. On the other hand, the industry “found itself in the crosshairs” of regulators, led by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and lawmakers.For all those, and other, reasons, many in the crypto universe are looking for a brand-new start in 2024, including the SEC. Noting that Blackrock recently adjusted its bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) application to allow JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs access and the recent allowance of ETF trading as authorized by the SEC, Eric Swartz, who heads up the Web3 practice at the Sterlington law firm, says he is “super excited” about crypto’s future.
It is high time for the U.S. nuclear energy industry to revive, regardless of whether the planet is marching towards a carbon-neutral energy future. In France, whose nuclear reactors that today supply about two-thirds of that nation’s energy are decades old, President Macron’s government has proposed an energy bill that calls for constructing six to 14 new nuclear reactors. The reason? To ensure “energy sovereignty.” The era of micro SMRs and SMRs in general is just beginning. Yet, the regulatory framework available for bringing these innovative solutions to the energy crisis to market is irrational and unsuitable – it is overkill that impedes the energy transition.
The anti-carbon crowd’s newest villain is Castor canadensis, otherwise known as the North American beaver. This methane producer, we are told, must be stopped from destroying Alaska. And, we are told, “beavers are on the move in northern Canada, too.” Imagine if Russia began reintroducing European beavers (Castor fiber) to Siberia! [Oops! They are.] What is the beavers’ crime? The ecofreaks tell us they are causing MORE climate change simply by building dams in areas formerly too bleak for occupation. But hold on a minute. Even these Arctic researchers admit that the “humble beaver” is a highly skilled “environmental engineer” who, in the face of increasing wildfires and droughts, is an ally in the “fight against climate change.” As environmental science professor Emily Fairfax explains, “They build these dams, which slow the water down, they dig canals that spread the water out, and ultimately they just give it time to sink into the earth like a big old sponge.”
In his first week in office, President Biden announced his goal of electrifying the entire 600,000-vehicle federal fleet of civilian vehicles, to be “made right here in America.” He pledged, “I’m going to start the process where every vehicle in the U.S. military is going to be climate friendly.” Biden’s dream of an all-electric vehicle fleet is further compounded by an April 2023 Gallup Poll that showed only 12% of American auto buyers (and just 1% of GOP voters) were “seriously considering” purchasing an EV. In the U.S., 2024 will mark a major turning point. Those who still prefer their gas appliances, gasoline-powered vehicles, rare steaks, and innumerable other benefits of modern society need to recognize that this may be the last time they have a chance to keep those choices available in the future.
The horde has left Dubai, many in their private jets. Next stop in the champagne and caviar COPcon is Baku, Azerbaijan, which, at 92 feet below sea level, seems an appropriate place to bury Net Zero. The award came on the heels of an historic agreement between Azerbaijan and next-door Armenia, which both nations hope will bring peace to intertwined peoples with a long history of deadly strife. The UN admits that developing countries would need nearly six trillion dollars over the next few years to give up fossil fuels and try to power entire nations on intermittent energy sources – all of which would depend on either debt to mostly European banks or heavy strings attached to government-to-government loans or grants. Yet prior promises of $100 billion have yet to materialize. Allison Pearson chastises the eco-religionists who ‘claim that they alone are on the right side of humanity” despite the fact that their project to “save the planet” spells a “painful reduction in comfort and joy for millions” (I would say billions). Pearson chides the fearmongers who predict a “climate catastrophe” without Net Zero for ignoring the elephant in the room – that we are “certain to have an economic and societal catastrophe if we persist in trying to reach that goal by 2050. Humanity cannot bear it.”
China, Russia, India, and the United States all came to President Ramaphosa in Johannesburg, each with different, perhaps irreconcilable, goals – and pitfalls for the host nation which has a vested interest in staying in both camps. As noted by the nonpartisan Wilson Center, there is an ongoing debate in the U.S. over South Africa’s compliance with the eligibility criteria for preferential trade benefits under AGOA, one that revolves around two sets of concerns – barriers to U.S. trade and actions that undermine U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. Could a U.S. move to deprive South Africa of AGOA’s benefits foster a further downward spiral in the South African economy? Does the U.S. want to risk further destabilization of the largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa and a major U.S. trading partner?
For decades, the masses have been in the dark about the identities of the puppet masters [dark money] pulling the strings of their acolytes “chosen” to run the world’s powerful institutions. People thought, with much instruction from “official” channels, that public office holders themselves were in charge. The problem with most public protests, says Seamus Bruner in his blockbuster book, Controligarchs, is that the real targets – the puppet masters – have long been hidden, not even recognized by a public that is fed, from the right and the left, to focus on celebrities (effectively, the sales reps and public faces of the “controligarchs”). With artificial intelligence aiding in the creation of a “superhuman” class, the bulk of humanity lacking such access becomes “useless,” says Harari. The tough decision, then, is “what to do with all these useless people.”
It was like 1938 all over again. On their way to sunny Dubai, the private jets of the scam artists pretending to care about planetary warming while not so secretly plotting to obliterate the freedoms of billions of world citizens were frozen on the glaciated runways. The planet had to be laughing. It seems the Earth knows it is being used as the fall guy for their evil deceit. Just to prove a point – that they are NOT in charge – Mama Gaia threw down the heaviest snowfall in Munich’s memory to show them who’s really boss. Maybe she has finally grown weary of the luxury liner class who disguise their schemes for world domination with scary scenarios implying that they can “save the planet” if we just give them more power to diminish our lives.
If only there were a cryptocurrency backed by legitimate assets – a cryptocurrency that had the same type of backing as a bank, but with a lot more flexibility.Then you learn there is such a currency – and that it is structured democratically such that individual holders of this currency can choose to help you fund your project; that it is not just the board of directors who decides your fate.Not long ago, such a currency was a dream, but today, that dream has come true, thanks, in part, to a group of investors who pooled some of their assets to roll out the Unicoin two years ago.By 2025, over $525 million worth of Unicoins will have been sold, according to the company website. Now, others appear to be copying the template to create additional asset-backed cryptocurrencies.
Emerging technologies like global positioning satellites, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence hold immense value for commercial and defense applications. When these technologies are developed for dual use, they can help our country stay competitive – and protect our own national security in the process.Dual-use tech can create jobs, keep our country competitive, and let Americans live more comfortably. Meanwhile, those same emerging technologies and capabilities can help people survive on the frontlines and thwart cyber attacks.
Growing resistance to the dystopian visions of the global elites may truly mean that COP 28 is their “Custer’s last stand” against the “barbarians” who (in their eyes) are unwilling to submit to a Panem-style society in which elites get richer and everyone else gets poorer. Rumblings against zero-emission vehicle mandates, expressed by drivers and automakers, have prompted serious challenges to the globalist demand for decarbonization (humans are “carbon units” – Soylent green was people) in the oddest places. The entire [COP 28] event appears to focus on how the elites can maintain total control over the world’s wealth, its people, and the planet’s natural resources. They claim they are “saving the Earth”, but their true goal requires sacrificing its people not to “save the Earth” (which, as an inanimate object, hardly needs “saving”) but to protect their wealth and power. Trouble is, people from Argentina to Amsterdam are figuring this out – and they are mad. And they are getting organized. The time is near for a showdown at the COP 28 corral – and for a final reckoning on whether the elites – or the people – will win this war.
The U.S. Congress is currently embroiled in discussions of allegations of money laundering by high government officials and their family members. Yet, even if the wildest accusations being tossed around are true, they would pale in comparison to the shenanigans of two prominent Lebanese bankers – both now under multiple indictments for money laundering to aid Hezbollah’s extra-legal activities. Despite promises by SGBL CEO Antoun Sehnaoui, U.S. Treasury official Daniel Glaser wondered whether the Bank of Lebanon (BDL) and its CEO, Riad Salameh, might use the acquisition of LCB “as a launching pad” for a new round of Hezbollah-linked money laundering. Glaser, it now appears, was right to worry. Salameh and Sehnaoui, both facing ruin, are the likely chief culprits in what may become a “high-tech lynching” of a prominent Lebanese anti-corruption campaigner.
Radical interest in the Green movement grew quickly as the battle shifted from “criteria pollutants” to “decarbonization,” which they rightly saw as an engine for weakening Western civilization. Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil have their roots in New Left Marxism. Even Greta Thunberg voices tacit support for Hamas.Campus radicals shifted from “free speech” to banning speech that challenged their growing power. Their blatant hatred of their “enemies” is a far cry from the energy that drove the civil rights movement. The New Left scoffed at Dr. King’s, mantra, “Hate cannot drive out hate – only love can do that.”
Like the biblical “voice crying in the wilderness,” German Finance Minister Christian Lindner this week left Green Party activists and others enamored by the green religion gnashing their teeth. “Until it is clear,” said Lindner, “that energy is available and affordable, we should end dreams of phasing out electricity from coal in 2030. Now is not the time to shut down power plants.”
The modern American version of “the environmental emperor has no clothes” until now has been the rise and fall of Enron. As former Ken Lay speechwriter Robert Bradley, Jr., says, “(T)he cause of Enron’s financial bankruptcy were at root philosophical…. Enron’s leaders were certainly engaged in massive philosophical fraud – an attempt to cheat reality itself.” Like Ken Lay with Enron, the Green revolution has relied heavily on government subsidies and a “revolution always” business philosophy aimed at making pariahs of anyone who dares oppose the grandiose – but fatally flawed – plan.
Martin Scorsese’s newest blockbuster, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which is based on David Grann’s nonfiction book, tells the story of how Oklahoma cattle baron William King Hale and his nephews Bryon and Ernest Burkhart, outwardly pretended to be friends and benefactors of the oil-rich Osage Nation community while under cover of night and masks robbed and murdered (or tried to murder) their own wives. While charity watchdog organizations say no more than 35% of donations should go to fundraising costs, charities with high-sounding names (cancer foundations, firefighters and police associations, veterans’ organizations, and “children’s” charities) turn out to just be shills for their principals to rake in sizable salaries on the backs of the truly charitable. The truly worst paid over 90% of collections to solicitors, and two-thirds paid at least 70%.
BCCI had tried to obscure the source of laundered monies by rapidly shuffling ill-gotten cash through “a kaleidoscope array of banks and shell corporations” before returning the “cleaned” cash to narco kingpins, including Panama’s General Manuel Noriega and Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi (uncle of the slain Jamal Khashoggi). What is transpiring now may become for SGBL and BDL the equivalent of what happened to BCCI three decades ago. In January, the U.S. Treasury placed sanctions on Lebanese money exchanger Hassan Moukalled and his company CTEX for conducting financial transactions to benefit Hezbollah at the expense of the Lebanese people and economy and pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars for himself.
Real estate can be a very lucrative career, but there are many risks beyond the agent’s control, including price and interest rate fluctuations, credit availability, liability and other legal matters. Most agents are independent contractors whose income is strictly based on commissions from the sale, purchase, or rental of houses, offices, and other property. The first big idea on which Elwell and Co-Founder and president President Daniel Kennedy founded RLTY Capital was buying a portion of agents’ commissions when the contract is signed. This solved the pain point of agents having to wait weeks or even months until the closing. This singular decision opened the door for the kind of 2023-era dialogue with agents that is bringing about major changes in the broker-agent relationship.
When Joe Biden wanted to cut a deal with Iran to secure the release of five Americans being held hostage, his negotiators turned to their “best friend” in the Middle East – Qatar. Qatar, which just last year hosted European football’s World Cup, has over the past decade become, as one reporter put it, “indispensable as a geopolitical fixer.” According to Fiona McDonald, “The U.S. privately acknowledges that it doesn’t do anything in the Gulf without Qatar.” To back up her claim, she cites Ayham Kamel, who oversees the Middle East and Africa for the political risk consultant Eurasia Group, who said, “Few other regional parties have the depth of the relationship to move the needle on this [hostages] issue.”
Green goals, it turns out, have fueled the fires of war and left the West awkwardly needing fossil fuel energy more than ever while publicly declaring fossil fuel energy as the greatest threat to humanity, dwarfing even an increasingly likely nuclear holocaust. But then again, those who claim that fossil fuels inspired an artificial prosperity built on slowly destroying the planet may prefer a post-nuclear world without electricity and without the great majority of Earth’s current population.
As Hezbollah-backed protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in support of Hamas, Americans may not realize these two terrorist organizations (not acknowledged by the United Nations, which lavishes millions on them) have received hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. financial aid in the last three years alone. The sins of Hezbollah and its coterie of Lebanese bankers – including Bank of Lebanon governor Riad Salameh and Antoun Sehnaoui, chief executive of Société Générale Bank of Lebanon (SGBL) – have recently been exposed in courtrooms in both Lebanon and the United States. Hamas was established by members of the Muslim Brotherhood among others in 1987 and shortly afterwards, asserted its own intention to wage a never-ending holy war against Israel. A 2005 report by the Washington Institute chronicles Iran’s financing of Hezbollah’s campaign of terror and Hezbollah’s widespread criminal operations. Even two decades ago, Iran was providing up to $200 million a year in cash and weaponry.Iran also funds Hezbollah through purportedly private charities and front organizations. Notably, the widely banned al-Aqsa International Foundation has funnelled millions of dollars and weapons to Hamas, al Qaeda, and Hezbollah.
And then there is the high profile case of capitalizing upon stolen valor regarding Donato Tramuto, who claimed he “almost died” in the second plane to hit the Twin Towers but was saved by a toothache that led him to deboard from United Flight 175. Tramuto’s lie enabled him to create a foundation and raise millions of dollars – not for 9/11 victims (as many donors may have supposed) but to raise his profile as a philanthropist. Some of the donated funds went to Christ the King Seminary, which was shut down after its president, Father Joe Gatto, was accused of molesting children. But perhaps the biggest recipient of the Tramuto Foundation’s ill-gotten gains is the RFK Human Rights Foundation.
Modern-day Lebanon, though, is rife with corruption at the highest levels that includes funneling monies to terrorist organizations, notably Hezbollah. In recent years, attempts by both the Lebanese and American judicial systems to unmask the corruption within the nation’s banking industry have been met with stout opposition. In the civil suit filed in U.S. district court by the families of victims of Hezbollah terrorism, plaintiffs allege collusion with Hezbollah by SGBL, Middle East Africa Bank, BLOM Bank, Byblos Bank, Bank Audi, Bank of Beirut, Lebanon and Gulf Bank, Banque Libano- Française, Bank of Beirut and the Arab Countries, and Fenicia Bank.
The geopolitical tensions clouding today’s world make it easy to trigger alarm bells, especially in Washington. However, in the case of Hesai and its lidar systems, facts ought to triumph over sensationalism. Any damaging claims against Hesai, particularly those emanating from vested competitors like Ouster, warrant skepticism. Apart from generating an imbalanced competitive landscape, sidelining Hesai could have a more pernicious effect: delaying the advent of safer American roads.
One problem facing Indonesia’s logistics industry, stemming from its weak connectivity infrastructure, is the challenge of high costs. Djohan says that his nation’s logistics costs could reach as high as 23 percent of GDP, while Thailand, China, and Malaysia have logistics costs no higher than 15 percent of GDP. Logistics costs in Japan and Taiwan, by contrast, are under 10 percent of GDP. The biggest challenge to continued improvements, therefore, lies with modernizing operations by Indonesian-owned private companies, many of which lag far behind. One problem is that local trucking companies, many still manually recording delivery logs, typically lack the technology and skills – and money – to digitize their processes.
Mann’s thesis seems to be that an army of activists who condemn the Industrial Revolution can defeat the desires of Chinese, Russian, Indian, and pan-African people who want the benefits from using fossil fuels and create a utopian world powered solely by renewable energy. This thesis is as phony as a Biden dollar, for far too many reasons to list in a brief column. While his European counterparts stray from dogma, Biden--like a Moses held up on each side by John Kerry and Al Gore--is standing firm. But despite the posturing, even a diminished Biden ought to know the climate war is over. China won.
It will take great courage to stand up to teacher unions, indoctrinated children, the deplatforming media, the Justice Department, and hate speech from on high to demand an end to the climate hysteria that elitists use to scare people into accepting a massive decline in their prosperity. But that is the battle – more than immigration, funding foreign wars, or even “structural racism” – that ought to be the dividing line in 2024. Like 2020’s vaccine mandates, EV mandates force tremendous losses of personal freedom. And our children are being taught that freedom – speaking out against government and the ruling class – is a bad thing. But so is darkness.
According to British academic Matthew Hedges, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened its friendship with the Russian Federation since Russia invaded Ukraine. A fact that taken together with the UAE joining the BRICS alliance, may prove to be a major test of the strength of the West to maintain hegemony over the world order. The chief question now for both sides is whether the UAE will stop acting as a gateway for Russian access to sanctioned dual-use goods. In a war whose victors may well be determined by which side’s new technologies are most effective and not compromised, it is critical to the West that Russia not gain access to weapons through illegal third-nation technology transfers.
The Biden Administration’s love of mandates – forcing people to comply whether they want to or not – extends to automobiles and fuels. In his first year of office, President Biden issued an executive order that included a goal of “50 percent of all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in 2030 be zero-emission vehicles.” The disconnect between Biden’s EV policy and the American public is playing havoc with U.S. automakers, who just two years ago “seemed to be in raptures” with Biden’s EV policy. As Biden announced his mandate, he warbled, “We’ve just got to step up – government, industry, labor working together. We have a playbook, and it’s going to work.”
Some Western nations appear to be waking up to the reality that they are being duped – that Net Zero is a fabrication of their own egos that other nations hardly take seriously. Just don’t count on the world’s two leading English-speaking nations, or the plutocrats in Paris, Geneva, and Davos, to follow suit. They still talk as if they still control the unfolding of world affairs. Yet the modern-day utopians in the U.S. and the UK still cling to the myth that emerging superpower nations like China, India, and Russia will bow before the World Economic Forum and United Nations grifters. Why have the U.S. and the UK backed away from fossil fuels even as other nations double down to upgrade their own economies with coal? One might believe that Western leaders just want to transfer their guilt for mismanaging their power by punishing the citizens who let them do it?
[E]ven as we memorialize genuine acts of heroism, we cannot ignore those who have capitalized on America’s collective grief. Among these are Donato Tramuto, and several others who have fraudulently asserted their involvement in the events of 9/11 to enhance their professional standing. In spite of leveraging a dubious 9/11 narrative to build a philanthropic empire and political cachet, Tramuto asks for Maine voters’ trust.
There seems to be a connection between Heads of State seeking to silence dissent and the threat, and reality, of war in the world today. War, after all, has been used for millennia to rally “the people” behind a distraction that keeps them from focusing on their loss of freedom. The sad reality is that, when the thirst for power and control cannot be quenched, it is the intimidated or indoctrinated masses who suffer the most. It was quite a shock, then, for the world to learn that Kosovo prime minister Albin Kurti, who began his career organizing nonviolent protests against the Serbian regime and was later arrested by the Serbian police and put in prison, would resort to anti-democratic attacks on major media outlets in his own nation during the summer of 2023 – and would wage an anti-democratic campaign against Kosovo citizens of Serbian origin. The Putin doctrine of distraction, suppression and control, only recently festering publicly within nations like Serbia cannot be ignored by Washington. The problem facing the West however is that certain Western nations and nongovernmental organizations, too, have been infected with this “distract and control” disease of the paranoid.
What a paradox! The Scandinavian nations -- Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland – remain at the top of the World Economic Forum’s Energy Transition Index for 2023. Yet Sweden and Finland rely heavily on nuclear energy, and Norway is a significant producer of oil and gas. Norway’s geography makes hydro-a-affordable, so it hardly uses fossil fuels for electricity. Norway also leads the world in electric vehicles -79 percent of new registrations in 2022 were EVs - but has no intention of foregoing its primary source of export revenue. North Sea oil and gas will bring Norway $131 billion in revenues in 2023 alone. Swedes and Finns, while relying significantly on hydropower, are for now, firm believers in nuclear energy. Finland just fired up the first European nuclear plant in 15 years, and Sweden is on a path to double its own nuclear capacity. Only Denmark is backing away from fuels the World Economic Forum does not declare to be “renewable.”
On the same day that Hurricane (Tropical Storm) Hilary brought record rainfall to the Los Angeles area (nearly 6 inches to Lake Palmdale and 4.26 inches on the UCLA campus), a magnitude 5.1 earthquake occurred in nearby Ojai. To the truly enlightened, these rare disasters should serve as a warning from on high that the Golden State is headed for a massive downfall – punishment for trying to force smog-fighting electric vehicles on smog-free America and the world. And rightfully so. After all, every hurricane, every heat wave, every forest fire, and every flood today anywhere in the world is blamed on climate change. Climate change even eats children’s homework! Yet the same humans who cannot stop the heat, the wind, the water, and the fire believe that they can control the climate through electrification.
Thirty-five years ago, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas wrote a book entitled, The Death of Ethics in America, citing (among many others) a 1987 Wall Street Journal headline, “Ethics can be nice, but they can be a handicap, some executives declare.” [I]t is arguable that only a society lacking in ethical standards could produce the recent FTX customer funds scandal; and worse, when charged with fraud and conspiracy, the CEO could honestly (yet naively) say, “I don’t think I tried to do anything wrong.” And yet despite perhaps veering off the ethical course our forefathers sought for us, in politics, academics, business and in life, on the horizon, there is optimism and tangible prospects for lasting change.
According to Lauren Fix, the Car Coach®, China is well on its way to becoming a world leader in climate policy and is quickly taking over the electric car industry – and thus (barring mandate reversals) the entire auto industry. Will Europe and the U.S. admit they have been snookered by the Chinese into an all-EV future in an effort to “save the planet”? Meanwhile, China mocks “net zero” as it builds more coal-fired power plants to power the manufacture of cheap Chinese EVs that can easily undercut every other nation’s auto industry. Can the West even come close to creating a China-free EV supply chain big enough to meet global demand before the Chinese capture the world market for themselves?
The higher costs for auto insurance only add to the already-higher costs of purchasing an EV, then procuring a personal charging station and spending more money to upgrade home wiring boxes (especially for older homes). The inconvenience of having your nearly new vehicle totaled – and then having to wait perhaps months for a replacement – further adds to the “buyer avoidance” that has frustrated those who demand an immediate end to the traditional gasoline-powered vehicles that most people around the world rely upon. As automakers continue to lose money on EVs and consumers worldwide continue to prefer the vehicles they have learned to trust over decades, will EV mandates fall by the wayside – or will elites again double down, believing that “resistance is futile”?
The primary reason for higher costs and longer development times is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which appears designed to thwart any new power plant development. Way back in 1992, the Reagan-appointed NRC chairman Kenneth Rogers boasted that his agency “had been pushed in the right direction [obstructing new nuclear reactors] because of the pleas and protests of nuclear watchdog groups.” A 2016 study by the Breakthrough Institute confirms this sobering fact. Senior author Jessica Lovering explains that, “The biggest thing we found is that there’s nothing intrinsic to nuclear that leads to cost escalations. It depends on what policies are in place, on the market dynamics. You get very different cases in different countries.”
A full year before the Biden Administration enacted the Inflation Reduction Act, French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled his France 2030 green investment plan that commits 30 billion euros (about US$35 billion) to reducing carbon dioxide emissions while also revitalizing France’s industrial sector.This, on top of the 100-billion-euro allocation for pandemic recovery approved earlier, much of which was dedicated to developing green energy, is enhancing France’s reputation as a top destination for foreign direct investment (FDI). But the forgotten driver of the French renaissance is likely the nation’s generous research tax credit (CIR) system.The CIR is Europe’s most generous tax incentive in support of innovation, and the most generous of the 30 OECD countries with similar tax incentives, according to journalist Frederique Perrotin. More than 20,000 companies benefit from the R&D tax credit every year, saving about 7 billion euros in combined taxes. This, says Perrotin, makes France “the country with the highest relative weighting of all private research grants in relation to GDP.”
Kosovar journalist Adriatik Kelmendi expressed shock that this kind of censorship against the nation’s leading media outlet could occur in a democracy, done to intimidate “a people whose ideal to live freely has never been suppressed,” he stated on Klan Kosova’s website, in remarks translated from Albanian. The station, he said, “maintains a critical and watchdog approach toward various phenomena within the institutions of the government and society.”
The American south may see many hot days in summer, and, yes, the highest temperature on record was 134o F in Death Valley (in 1913), but countries like Qatar, Libya, Mali, and even Mexico are much hotter – and yet millions of people live in these nations. India, with over a billion people, has an average daily high temperature of 87.5o F. Does Lassman believe India is uninhabitable?
Ahead of the Fourth of July weekend, on just one day (June 28), over 1,200 flights were canceled, and another 5,600 were delayed. Again, good news for the planet! Airplanes account for up to 3.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions – far more than gas stoves. And global CO2 emissions from international air travel more than doubled from 1990 to 2017. So, 1,200 flights canceled help the environment, we are told. There is an exception, though, as John Kerry once so clearly explained. For guys like him and his fellow Davos billionaires, a private jet is “the only choice for somebody like me.” And you can bet that Al Gore and his chums at Davos are not dining on insects as they rake in the cash from scaring the bejeezus out of our children and gullible adults.
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