Steve Bull's Blog, page 194
September 4, 2022
Saudis Use Orwellian App to Identify Dissidents, Imprisoning Some for Decades
FILE PHOTOS. (Credit: Facebook / @kamnapp; Saudi Media Ministry)
Saudi Arabians are using a mobile app sold by both Apple and Google to snitch on their fellow citizens for dissenting against government authorities. As a result, activists and others are going to prison for more than 30 years in some cases, Business Insider reported on Friday.
On August 16, Saudi national Salma el-Shabab, a PhD student at Leeds University, was sentenced to 34 years in prison for tweets “in support of activists and members of the kingdom’s political opposition in exile,” the report said. Though the posts were made while she was in the UK, el-Shabab was nonetheless reported through the “Kollona Amn” app and immediately arrested upon returning home.
“Every day we wake up to hear news, somebody has been arrested, or somebody has been taken,” Real, a Saudi women’s-rights activist using an alias, told Insider.
Kollona Amn – which roughly translates to “We Are All Security” in Arabic – was launched by the Saudi Interior Ministry in 2017, but the last few years have seen a “dramatic” surge in court cases referencing the app, according to legal-rights activists.
The app “encourages everyday citizens to play the role of police and become active participants in their own repression. Putting the state’s eyes everywhere also creates a pervasive sense of uncertainty – there is always a potential informant in the room or following your social media accounts,” said Noura Aljizawi, a researcher at Citizen Lab, which focuses on threats to free speech online.
The Orwellian nature of the app is such that users often report on people “defensively,” fearing they could face punishment themselves for merely overhearing speech deemed offensive to the regime. In some cases, the app has also been used for “blackmail” and to “settle scores,” Insider noted.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
September 3, 2022
Sweden, Austria Start Bailing Out Energy Companies Triggering Europe’s “Minsky Moment”
Last weekend, Credit Suisse repo guru published what may have been the most insightful snippet of the entire European energy crisis (to date) when he extended the infamous “Minsky Moment” framework to Europe, and specifically Germany, which he said “can’t cover its payments without Russian gas and the government is asking citizens to conserve energy to leave more for industry.” He then elaborated that “Minsky moments are triggered by excessive financial leverage, and in the context of supply chains, leverage means excessive operating leverage: in Germany, $2 trillion of value added depends on $20 billion of gas from Russia… …that’s 100-times leverage – much more than Lehman’s.” (Zoltan’s entire note is a must read for everyone with a passing interest in what comes next).
But while Germany still pretends it can somehow avoid a devastating crisis this winter besides bailing out Uniper, one of the country’s biggest utilities (after all, admission would make Trump’s 2018 warning accurate and prescient, and everyone knows that according to Western intellectual snobs Trump can’t possibly ever be correct), other European nations are succumbing to what Zoltan dubbed a “supply-chain Minsky moment.”
On Wednesday it was Austria, which announced it would bail out the country’s main energy supplier with a two-billion-euro ($2 billion) loan, the AFP reported. Chancellor Karl Nehammer said the loan to Wien Energie was an “extraordinary rescue measure” to ensure its two million customers – mainly Vienna households – continue to receive electricity. It will run until next April.
Wien Energie asked for a bailout this weekend after suffering financial trouble amid soaring energy prices and speculation the company mismanaged their funds. Nehammer said Wien Energie, which is owned by Vienna, would have to answer questions as to how they got into trouble.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“Exorbitant Rise In Energy Prices” Forces Europe’s Top Steelmaker To Close Plants
Even though European power and natural gas prices have subsided this week, Germany, the largest economy in the bloc, still faces historically high energy costs that have forced cuts in industrial output.
The latest example is the world’s largest steelmaker, ArcelorMittal, which released a statement Friday about shutting down two plants and idling one.
Europe’s top steelmaker said two plants in Germany (one in Bremen and the other in Hamburg) would be partially closed at the end of September. A plant in Asturias, Spain, will also be idled.
ArcelorMittal blamed the coming smelter shutdowns on “the exorbitant rise in energy prices,” which is devastatingly impacting the company’s “competitiveness of steel production.” The decision to reduce metal output was also based on “weak market demand and a negative economic outlook” as energy hyperinflation risks sending Europe into a deep recession.
“As an energy-intensive industry, we are extremely affected. With gas and electricity prices increasing tenfold within just a few months, we are no longer competitive in a market that is 25% supplied by imports,” explained Reiner Blaschek, CEO of ArcelorMittal Germany.
Blaschek asked lawmakers to address the historic energy crisis and get prices “under control immediately.” Elevated prices this summer have resulted in a series of smelter closures from other metal-producing companies because high energy costs made production uneconomical.
In Germany, one of every six industrial companies feels forced to reduce production due to high energy prices, a survey by the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce, DIHK, showed at the end of July. Nearly a quarter of the companies forced to reduce production had already done so by end-July, and another one-quarter are in the process of scaling back production due to sky-high energy prices, according to the survey of 3,500 companies from all sectors and regions in Germany.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
#238. Money and the end of abundance
A FINANCIAL CRISIS PRIMER
Amongst the world’s decision-makers, French president Emmanuel Macron has come closer than anyone to spelling out the reality of the current economic situation, saying that “we are in the process of living through a tipping point or great upheaval”, and referencing “the end of abundance” (my emphasis).
If his words are taken seriously – as they should be – a major crisis looms. The global financial system is entirely predicated on perpetual economic growth.
As important as what Mr Macron has said is what he didn’t say. He didn’t say that abundance is over ‘for a year or two’, or that we’ll have to live through this ‘until better times return’. He didn’t make fatuous promises of ‘sunlit uplands’ or ‘a new golden age’.
Some of us have long known that an age of abundance made possible by low-cost energy was coming to an end. Until now, though, decision-makers have fought shy of this conclusion, taking refuge in the tarradiddle of ‘infinite growth on a finite planet’ proffered by a deeply flawed economic orthodoxy.
What should concern us now isn’t when, or whether, other leaders will arrive at this same conclusion. The trend of events is going to impose that emerging reality upon them.
Rather, we need to be prepared for what happens when market participants arrive at the same conclusion as Mr. Macron.
The nature of the crisis
Preparedness requires clarity, and we need to be in no doubt that what we’re witnessing now is an unfolding affordability crisis. This means two things – and both of them point towards a major financial slump.
First, the ability of consumers to make discretionary (non-essential) purchases is in structural decline. This spells relentless contraction, not just in obvious discretionary sectors like leisure, travel and entertainment, but in ‘tech’ and consumer durables as well.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why are farmers in the Netherlands protesting?
Blamed for much of the climate crisis, biodiversity decline, water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, farmers and farming are at the centre of a worldwide debate which is only gaining heat. This argument has come to a head in the Netherlands, where farmers have been involved in high-conflict protests, blocking roads with tractors and farm waste, and setting fire to bales of hay. Police response to protests has been reportedly heavy handed – even shooting at protestors.
Why are they protesting? Dutch courts have insisted on a 50% (up to 70% in some areas) reduction in nitrogen pollution by 2030, to be achieved by drastic reductions in livestock numbers. Farmers feel singled out, and the Government has taken a U-turn on its previous support of intensive farming.
The problemFor decades, in the Netherlands, government policy has promoted the intensification of the livestock sector, and a lack of intervention in the market has meant that prices have been pushed down, leaving ever-greater intensification as the only means to stay afloat for many. The Netherlands have Europe’s highest livestock density, with 3.8 ‘livestock units’ (a measure of animal numbers) per hectare of agricultural area, which, being a small country, leaves it with a huge issue when it comes to the volume of waste these animals produce. When manure and urine mix, ammonia, a compound of nitrogen, is released, and can damage natural habitats and result in air pollution. While the focus of much of the coverage has been on dairy farms, pig farms in the Netherlands, in particular, are also a major source of nitrogen and phosphate pollution, with much of the nitrogen coming in the form of high protein soybean meal, often imported from recently deforested areas in South America.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Darker and Colder: Europeans Warned of ‘Unprecedented’ Power Failures This Winter
“Production of electricity cannot keep up with demand.”
jonathanfilskov-photography via Getty Images
Europeans are being warned of ‘unprecedented’ power failures this winter as the energy crisis brings a foreseeable future that will be colder and darker.
“There is an increased risk of a lack of power this winter,” Klaus Winther, deputy director at Energinet, the Danish national transmission system operator for electricity and natural gas, told TV2.
Winther says the crisis will herald a new era of energy consumption predicated on rationing to prevent blackouts.
A “perfect storm” of soaring prices, a hot dry summer, and a collapse in the confidence of energy security means power grid failures are now a real possibility.
“The production of electricity cannot keep up with the demand, and this increases the probability of a power failure,” said Winther.
Although insisting that “power cuts are the absolutely last tool we have in the drawer,” Winther warned that individual distribution companies may be forced to shut off electricity supplies for hours at a time to avoid longer blackouts.
Meanwhile, Brian Vad Mathiesen, professor of energy planning at Aalborg University, said Danes may have to adopt a 1970’s oil crisis-style mentality and get used to living in colder and darker houses.
“We must create energy-saving campaigns on a scale we cannot imagine, and everyone must take responsibility,” he said.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Sweden, the prospect of sustained power outages has been increased from “low” to “real,” with the more populated areas most at risk.
“This winter, at its coldest, there is a real risk that we will have to interrupt electricity consumption in parts of southern Sweden,” strategic operations manager for Swedish power grid operator Svenska Kraftnät, Erik Ek, said in a press release.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
September 2, 2022
Surprise: Gazprom “Completely Halts” Nord Stream Gas Supplies Due To “Unexpected” Leak
After a 3-day halt, Russian energy giant Gazprom was expected to resume critical supplies of nat gas to Europe via Nord Stream 1 tomorrow, but it appears that Putin is enjoying the game of cat and mouse a little too much, and gas flows won’t be getting restored any time soon, because moments ago Gazprom announced that it had “completely halted” transport of gas to Nord Stream until a previously undetected oil leakage is rectified. That could takes hours, days… or months.
GAZPROM ISSUES STATEMENT ON NORD STREAM 1 MAINTENANCEGAZPROM: TRANSPORT OF GAS TO THE NORD STREAM PIPELINE HAS BEEN COMPLETELY HALTED UNTIL FAULTS ARE RECTIFIEDGAZPROM: DURING ROUTINE MAINTENANCE WORKS OIL LEAKAGE WAS DETECTEDGAS SUPPLIES TO NORD STREAM FULLY STOPPEDGAZPROM STATEMENT GIVES NO TIME FRAME FOR RESTART OF GAS SUPPLY THROUGH NORD STREAM 1To quote Walter Sobchak, “Mark it zero” for the foreseeable future.
That means that Europe will now be forced to rely even more on… well… Russian gas, in the form of much more expensive LNG resold by China. And after tumbling by more than 50% in the past few days, we fully expect European gas prices are about to go super parabolic and take out all time highs as soon as trading returns on Monday.
The news promptly sent spoos sliding back under 4000.
We’re Being Trained To Worry About ‘Russian Propaganda’ While Drowning In US Propaganda
Listen to a reading of this article:
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One of the weirdest, most insane things happening today is the way the entire western world is being trained to freak out about “Russian propaganda” — which barely exists in the west — while ignoring the fact that we are spending every day marinating in billions of dollars worth of US empire propaganda.
CNN has an article out titled “Darya Dugina’s death provides a glimpse into Russia’s vast disinformation machine — and the influential women fronting it” on the recently assassinated daughter of Alexander Dugin, a Russian political thinker of wildly exaggerated influence.
The article uses Dugina’s assassination to further stoke its audience’s ever-growing panic about Russian disinformation, quickly becoming a commentary on Russia’s entire propaganda network without bothering to articulate how Dugina’s death “provides a glimpse” into its workings.
Without the slightest hint of self-reflection or irony, this CNN article about Russian propaganda cites as its two main experts a think tanker from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and a think tanker from the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). The Atlantic Council is a NATO narrative management firm that is funded by NATO, the US government, the UK government, various other US-aligned states, the arms industry, and numerous billionaires. CEPA’s donor list looks similar to the Atlantic Council’s and includes US arms manufacturers and the US government through both the US State Department and the CIA cutout National Endowment for Democracy. Both are used to promote the information interests of the US-centralized power alliance in Europe and North America.
As we’ve discussed previously, the way news media cite corrupt warmongering think tanks to discuss foreign policy without ever mentioning their immense conflicts of interests is plainly journalistic malpractice…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
