The U.S. Has Billions for Wind and Solar Projects. Good Luck Plugging Them In. (NYT)

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Quote of the day…

“There’s a lesson there,” Mr. Gahl said. “You can pass big, ambitious climate laws, but if you don’t pay attention to details like interconnection rules, you can quickly run into trouble.”

NYT

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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The climate bill President Biden signed last year provides $370 billion in subsidies for low-carbon technologies like wind, solar, nuclear and batteries. Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times

An explosion in proposed clean energy ventures has overwhelmed the system for connecting new power sources to homes and businesses.

NYT By Brad Plumer

Feb. 23, 2023

Plans to install 3,000 acres of solar panels in Kentucky and Virginia are delayed for years. Wind farms in Minnesota and North Dakota have been abruptly canceled. And programs to encourage Massachusetts and Maine residents to adopt solar power are faltering.

The energy transition poised for takeoff in the United States amid record investment in wind, solar and other low-carbon technologies is facing a serious obstacle: The volume of projects has overwhelmed the nation’s antiquated systems to connect new sources of electricity to homes and businesses.

So many projects are trying to squeeze through the approval process that delays can drag on for years, leaving some developers to throw up their hands and walk away.

More than 8,100 energy projects — the vast majority of them wind, solar and batteries — were waiting for permission to connect to electric grids at the end of 2021, up from 5,600 the year before, jamming the system known as interconnection.

That’s the process by which electricity generated by wind turbines or solar arrays is added to the grid — the network of power lines and transformers that moves electricity from the spot where it is created to cities and factories. There is no single grid; the United States has dozens of electric networks, each overseen by a different authority.

PJM Interconnection, which operates the nation’s largest regional grid, stretching from Illinois to New Jersey, has been so inundated by connection requests that last year it announced a freeze on new applications until 2026, so that it can work through a backlog of thousands of proposals, mostly for renewable energy.

It now takes roughly four years, on average, for developers to get approval, double the time it took a decade ago.

And when companies finally get their projects reviewed, they often face another hurdle: the local grid is at capacity, and they are required to spend much more than they planned for new transmission lines and other upgrades.

“From our perspective, the interconnection process has become the No. 1 project killer,” said Piper Miller, vice president of market development at Pine Gate Renewables, a major solar power and battery developer.

A building that formerly housed transformers at the Brayton Point Power Station, a decommissioned coal plant that is being repurposed to link a wind farm to the Massachusetts power grid.Credit...Simon Simard for The New York Times

After years of breakneck growth, large-scale solar, wind and battery installations in the United States fell 16 percent in 2022, according to the American Clean Power Association, a trade group. It blamed supply chain problems but also lengthy delays connecting projects to the grid.

Electricity production generates roughly one-quarter of the greenhouse gases produced by the United States; cleaning it up is key to President Biden’s plan to fight global warming. The landmark climate bill he signed last year provides $370 billion in subsidies to help make low-carbon energy technologies — like wind, solar, nuclear or batteries — cheaper than fossil fuels.

But the law does little to address many practical barriers to building clean energy projects, such as permitting holdups, local opposition or transmission constraints. Unless those obstacles get resolved, experts say, there’s a risk that billions in federal subsidies won’t translate into the deep emissions cuts envisioned by lawmakers.

“It doesn’t matter how cheap the clean energy is,” said Spencer Nelson, managing director of research at ClearPath Foundation, an energy-focused nonprofit. “If developers can’t get through the interconnection process quickly enough and get enough steel in the ground, we won’t hit our climate change goals.”

Waiting in line for years

In the largest grids, such as those in the Midwest or Mid-Atlantic, a regional operator manages the byzantine flow of electricity from hundreds of different power plants through thousands of miles of transmission lines and into millions of homes.

Before a developer can build a power plant, the local grid operator must make sure the project won’t cause disruptions — if, for instance, existing power lines get more electricity than they can handle, they could overheat and fail. After conducting a detailed study, the grid operator might require upgrades, such as a line connecting the new plant to a nearby substation. The developer usually bears this cost. Then the operator moves on to study the next project in the queue.

This process was fairly routine when energy companies were building a few large coal or gas plants each year. But it has broken down as the number of wind, solar and battery projects has risen sharply over the past decade, driven by falling costs, state clean-energy mandates and, now, hefty federal subsidies.

“The biggest challenge is just the sheer volume of projects,” said Ken Seiler, who leads system planning at PJM Interconnection. “There are only so many power engineers out there who can do the sophisticated studies we need to do to ensure the system stays reliable, and everyone else is trying to hire them, too.”

PJM, the grid operator, now has 2,700 energy projects under study — mostly wind, solar and batteries — a number that has tripled in just three years. Wait times can now reach four years or more, which prompted PJM last year to pause new reviews and overhaul its processes.

Delays can upend the business models of renewable energy developers. As time ticks by, rising materials costs can erode a project’s viability. Options to buy land expire. Potential customers lose interest.

Two years ago, Silicon Ranch, a solar power developer, applied to PJM for permission to connect three 100-megawatt solar projects in Kentucky and Virginia, enough to power tens of thousands of homes. The company, which often pairs its solar arrays with sheep grazing, had negotiated purchase options with local landowners for thousands of acres of farmland.

Today, that land is sitting empty. Silicon Ranch hasn’t received feedback from PJM and now estimates it may not be able to bring those solar farms online until 2028 or 2029. That creates headaches: The company may have to decide whether to buy the land before it even knows whether its solar arrays will be approved.

“It’s frustrating,” said Reagan Farr, the chief executive of Silicon Ranch. “We always talk about how important it is for our industry to establish trust and credibility with local communities. But if you come in and say you’re going to invest, and then nothing happens for years, it’s not an optimal situation.”

PJM soon plans to speed up its queues — for instance, by studying projects in clusters rather than one at a time — but needs to clear its backlog first.

‘Imagine if we paid for highways this way’

A potentially bigger problem for solar and wind is that, in many places around the country, the local grid is clogged, unable to absorb more power.

That means if a developer wants to build a new wind farm, it might have to pay not just for a simple connecting line, but also for deeper grid upgrades elsewhere. One planned wind farm in North Dakota, for example, was asked to pay for multimillion-dollar upgrades to transmission lines hundreds of miles away in Nebraska and Missouri.

These costs can be unpredictable. In 2018, EDP North America, a renewable energy developer, proposed a 100-megawatt wind farm in southwestern Minnesota, estimating it would have to spend $10 million connecting to the grid. But after the grid operator completed its analysis, EDP learned the upgrades would cost $80 million. It canceled the project.

That creates a new problem: When a proposed energy project drops out of the queue, the grid operator often has to redo studies for other pending projects and shift costs to other developers, which can trigger more cancellations and delays.

It also creates perverse incentives, experts said. Some developers will submit multiple proposals for wind and solar farms at different locations without intending to build them all. Instead, they hope that one of their proposals will come after another developer who has to pay for major network upgrades. The rise of this sort of speculative bidding has further jammed up the queue.

“Imagine if we paid for highways this way,” said Rob Gramlich, president of the consulting group Grid Strategies. “If a highway is fully congested, the next car that gets on has to pay for a whole lane expansion. When that driver sees the bill, they drop off. Or, if they do pay for it themselves, everyone else gets to use that infrastructure. It doesn’t make any sense.”

A better approach, Mr. Gramlich said, would be for grid operators to plan transmission upgrades that are broadly beneficial and spread the costs among a wider set of energy providers and users, rather than having individual developers fix the grid bit by bit, through a chaotic process.

There is precedent for that idea. In the 2000s, Texas officials saw that existing power lines wouldn’t be able to handle the growing number of wind turbines being built in the blustery plains of West Texas and planned billions of dollars in upgrades. Texas now leads the nation in wind power. Similarly, MISO, a grid spanning 15 states in the Midwest, recently approved $10.3 billion in new power lines, partly because officials could see that many of its states had set ambitious renewable energy goals and would need more transmission.

But this sort of proactive planning is rare, since utilities, state officials and businesses often argue fiercely over whether new lines are necessary — and who should bear the cost.

“The hardest part isn’t the engineering, it’s figuring out who’s going to pay for it,” said Aubrey Johnson, vice president of system planning at MISO.

Climate goals at risk

As grid delays pile up, regulators have taken notice. Last year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proposed two major reforms to streamline interconnection queues and encourage grid operators to do more long-term planning.

The fate of these rules is unclear, however. In December, Richard Glick, the former regulatory commission chairman who spearheaded both reforms, stepped down after clashing with Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, over unrelated policies around natural gas pipelines. The commission is now split between two Democrats and two Republicans; any new reforms need majority approval.

If the United States can’t fix its grid problems, it could struggle to tackle climate change. Researchers at the Princeton-led REPEAT project recently estimated that new federal subsidies for clean energy could cut electricity emissions in half by 2030. But that assumes transmission capacity expands twice as fast over the next decade. If that doesn’t happen, the researchers found, emissions could actually increase as solar and wind get stymied and existing gas and coal plants run more often to power electric cars.

Massachusetts and Maine offer a warning, said David Gahl, executive director of the Solar and Storage Industries Institute. In both states, lawmakers offered hefty incentives for small-scale solar installations. Investors poured money in, but within months, grid managers were overwhelmed, delaying hundreds of projects.

“There’s a lesson there,” Mr. Gahl said. “You can pass big, ambitious climate laws, but if you don’t pay attention to details like interconnection rules, you can quickly run into trouble.”

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News round-up, Thursday, February 23, 2023.

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Quote of the day…

International relations are complicated at present, and the situation hardly improved after the collapse of the bipolar system; quite on the contrary, tensions spiralled. In this regard, Russian-Chinese cooperation in the international arena, as we have repeatedly stressed, is very important for stabilising the international situation.

THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW, FEBRUARY 22, 2023

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Most read…

Meeting with Member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee Wang Yi

We are delighted to see you in Russia, in Moscow.

THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW, FEBRUARY 22, 2023

From George to Barack: A Look at Secret Bush Memos to the Obama Team

Newly declassified memos offer a window into how the world appeared as the Bush administration was winding down.

The transition between Barack Obama and George W. Bush came at a fragile moment for the country…

NYT By Peter Baker

The Impact of Russian Missile Strikes on Ukraine’s Power Grid

The Kremlin wagered that by depriving Ukrainians of electricity—and heat and water—during wintertime, they would sap the country’s resolve.

The New Yorker By Joshua Yaffa

Analysis: Healthy gas storage warms Europe, but not enough

European gas prices rallied in the run-up to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine begun almost exactly a year ago and they leapt to record highs when Russia subsequently cut supplies of relatively cheap pipeline gas.

Reuters by Nora Buli and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

Mexico passes electoral overhaul that critics warn weakens democracy

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador argues the reorganization will save $150 million a year and reduce the influence of economic interests in politics.

Reuters

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…”We’ll need natural gas for years…

— but can start blending it with green hydrogen today, AES CEO, Andrés Gluski says

cnbc.com, Anmar Frangoul

PUBLISHED MON, JAN 23 

AES chief says we’ll need natural gas for next 20 years

From the United States to the European Union, major economies around the world are laying out plans to move away from fossil fuels in favor of low and zero-carbon technologies.

It’s a colossal task that will require massive sums of money, huge political will and technological innovation. As the planned transition takes shape, there’s been a lot of talk about the relationship between hydrogen and natural gas.

During a panel discussion moderated by CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the CEO of energy firm AES offered up his take on how the two could potentially dovetail with one another going forward.   

“I feel very confident in saying that, for the next 20 years, we need natural gas,” Andrés Gluski, who was speaking Wednesday, said. “Now, what we can start to do today is … start to blend it with green hydrogen,” he added.

“So we’re running tests that you can blend it up to, say 20%, in existing turbines, and new turbines are coming out that can burn … much higher percentages,” Gluski said.

“But it’s just difficult to see that you’re going to have enough green hydrogen to substitute it like, in the next 10 years.”

Change on the way, but scale is key

The planet’s green hydrogen sector may still be in a relatively early stage of development, but a number of major deals related to the technology have been struck in recent years.

In December 2022, for example, AES and Air Products said they planned to invest roughly $4 billion to develop a “mega-scale green hydrogen production facility” located in Texas.

According to the announcement, the project will incorporate around 1.4 gigawatts of wind and solar and be able to produce more than 200 metric tons of hydrogen every day.

Despite the significant amount of money and renewables involved in the project, AES chief Gluski was at pains to highlight how much work lay ahead when it came to scaling up the sector as a whole.

The facility being planned with Air Products, he explained, could only “supply point one percent of the U.S. long haul trucking fleet.” Work to be done, then.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

Sourrce by MERCADO Dominican Republic

28 JUNE 2022

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

Armando Rodríguez, vice president and executive director of Seaboard, joins us for this Mercado Interview to talk about the company's contributions to the Dominican Republic's electricity sector. "Our plants have been strategically located by the authorities of the electricity sector to make it possible to reduce blackouts in Santo Domingo and save foreign currency for all Dominicans," he explains.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: Meeting with Member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee Wang Yi. Photo by Anton Novoderezhkin, TASS

Meeting with Member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee Wang Yi

The Kremlin, Moscow, February 22, 2023

On the Russian side, taking part in the talks were Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev; the Chinese side was represented by Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the People's Republic of China to the Russian Federation Zhang Hanhui and Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Deng Li.

* * *

Beginning of conversation with Member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee Wang Yi

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Wang Yi, friends, colleagues,

We are delighted to see you in Russia, in Moscow.

First of all, I would like to take this opportunity of having you here and to begin our meeting by conveying my best wishes to our friend, President of the People's Republic of China, Comrade Xi Jinping.

We know that China has implemented very important domestic political steps, which will certainly contribute to the strengthening of the country and will create the right conditions for its ongoing development in accordance with the plans of the Chinese Communist Party.

In this regard, I would like to note that Russian-Chinese relations are progressing as we planned in previous years: they are progressing and growing steadily, and we are reaching new milestones.

I am primarily referring to economic projects, of course. It is our ambition to reach the level of US$200 billion in 2024. Last year, we reached US$185 billion. There is every reason to believe that we will achieve our goals in terms of trade, perhaps even earlier than we planned, because bilateral trade is growing.

Trade is important for both sides, but we also cooperate in international affairs. As the long-term Foreign Minister of China, you are well aware of this, as you have been a part of this and continue to be directly involved as a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. We are grateful to you and to all your colleagues, to the entire staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – we are expressing the warmest words of gratitude for this joint work.

International relations are complicated at present, and the situation hardly improved after the collapse of the bipolar system; quite on the contrary, tensions spiralled. In this regard, Russian-Chinese cooperation in the international arena, as we have repeatedly stressed, is very important for stabilising the international situation.

We also cooperate in every other area – in humanitarian projects and international organisations, including, of course, the United Nations, the UN Security Council, of which we are permanent members, BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. We have a lot of joint work to do together.

And of course, we are expecting the President of the People's Republic of China in Russia – we have agreed on his visit earlier. We know he has a domestic political agenda to attend to, but we assume that once the issues on that agenda are dealt with (the National People's Congress, which is planned by the relevant congress of Chinese deputies, where major personnel issues are to be resolved), we will proceed with our plans for personal meetings, which will give an additional impetus to our relations.

Thank you.

Member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee Wang Yi (retranslated):

Mr President,

Thank you very much for finding the time in your schedule to meet with our delegation.

First, let me convey to you sincere greetings and best wishes from President Xi Jinping.

At the end of 2022, President Xi Jinping met with you via videoconference to comprehensively sum up the achievements in our relations, which outlined a wide-scale plan for the continued development of our relations.

I attended that meeting as well. You said that the Russian side invited Mr Wang Yi to visit Russia as soon as possible, so I visited Russia as scheduled in order to comprehensively implement the agreements of our leaders so as to achieve great results in our cooperation across various fields.

Amid an extremely complex and volatile international situation, China-Russia relations have withstood the pressure exerted by the international community and are developing quite sustainably. Although the crisis constantly makes itself felt, crises offer opportunities, and opportunities may turn into crises, which we know from history. So, we need to redouble our efforts to respond to the crisis and the opportunities, and to deepen our cooperation.

We are also here to emphasise that our relations are never directed against third countries and, of course, are not subject to pressure from third parties, since we have a very strong economic, political and cultural foundation. We have gained quite an extensive experience precisely because we are supportive of multipolarity and democratisation of international relations, which is fully in line with the spirit of the times and history and meets the interests of most countries as well.

In conjunction with the Russian side, we are looking forward to maintaining political determination, deepening political mutual trust and strategic cooperation, comprehensively expanding practical cooperation in order to play a major, constructive role in ensuring the interests of our countries, and promoting progress around the world.

That concludes my opening remarks. I am now ready to listen to your very important opinion, and I am also prepared to have a detailed discussion with you.

Thank you.

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Source: Time

From George to Barack: A Look at Secret Bush Memos to the Obama Team

Newly declassified memos offer a window into how the world appeared as the Bush administration was winding down.

The transition between Barack Obama and George W. Bush came at a fragile moment for the country…

NYT By Peter Baker

Feb. 14, 2023

WASHINGTON — The world was a volatile place when President George W. Bush was leaving office. So on the way out the door, he and his national security team left a little advice for their successors:

India is a friend. Pakistan is not. Don’t trust North Korea or Iran, but talking is still better than not. Watch out for Russia; it covets the territory of its neighbor Ukraine. Beware becoming ensnared by intractable land wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. And oh yes, nation-building is definitely harder than it looks.

Fourteen years ago, Mr. Bush’s team recorded its counsel for the incoming administration of President Barack Obama in 40 classified memos by the National Security Council, part of what has widely been hailed by both sides as a model transition between presidents of different parties. For the first time, those memos have now been declassified, offering a window into how the world appeared to a departing administration after eight years marked by war, terrorism and upheaval.

Thirty of the memos are reproduced in “Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama,” a new book edited by Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s last national security adviser, along with three members of his staff, and set to be published by the Brookings Institution on Wednesday. The memos add up to a tour d’horizon of the international challenges that awaited Mr. Obama and his team in January 2009 with U.S. troops still in combat in two wars and various other threats to American security looming.

“They were designed to provide the incoming administration with what they needed to know about the most critical foreign policy and national security issues they would face,” Mr. Bush wrote in a foreword to the book. “The memoranda told them candidly what we thought we had accomplished — where we had succeeded and where we had fallen short — and what work remained to be done.”

The transition between Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama came at a fragile moment for the country, which was in the throes of a global financial crisis even as it was grappling with other foreign challenges. But even though Mr. Obama had assailed Mr. Bush’s policies during his campaign, particularly the war in Iraq, their teams worked together with unusual collegiality during the turnover.

Each of the memos focuses on a different country or a different area of foreign policy, reviewing for the new team what the Bush administration had done and how it saw the road ahead.

In the book, Mr. Hadley and his team, led by Peter D. Feaver, William C. Inboden and Meghan L. O’Sullivan, add postscripts written in the current day to reflect on where the transition memos got it right or wrong and what has happened in the three presidencies since then.

Iraq was central to the Bush administration’s foreign policy and still a festering problem as he was leaving office, but his surge of additional troops and a change in strategy in 2006 had helped bring down civilian deaths by nearly 90 percent. Those moves also paved the way for agreements that Mr. Bush sealed with Iraq to withdraw all American troops by the end of 2011, a time frame that Mr. Obama essentially adopted.

The Iraq memo, written by Brett McGurk, who went on to work for Mr. Obama, President Donald J. Trump and President Biden, offered no recapitulation of how the war was initiated on false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, but it did acknowledge how badly the war had gone until the surge.

“The surge strategy reset negative trends and set the conditions for longer-term stability,” the memo said. “The coming 18 months, however, may be the most strategically significant in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein,” it added, putting that in boldface. Referring to Al Qaeda of Iraq, it said, “AQI is down but not out and a series of elections will define Iraq’s future.”

The memo warned the Obama team that the situation could still unravel again: “There is no magic formula in Iraq. While our policy is now on a more stable and sustainable course, we should expect shocks to the system that will require a flexible and pragmatic approach at least through government formation in the first quarter of 2010.”

The memo included a warning that would figure in a later debate. While Mr. Bush’s agreement called for a 2011 withdrawal, the memo reported that Iraqi leaders “have told us that they will seek a follow-on arrangement for training and logistical (and probably some special operations) forces beyond 2011.” Mr. Obama tried to negotiate such a follow-on agreement, but talks collapsed and his allies later played down the notion that anyone had ever expected such an extension.

In her postscript to the Iraq memo, Ms. O’Sullivan skated lightly over the false predicate for the war (“intelligence that was tragically later proven wrong”) and the mistaken assumptions (“an unanticipated collapse of order and Iraqi institutions”). But she was more expansive about the “shortcomings of the 2003-2006 strategy,” which she defined as the “mistaken belief” that political reconciliation would lead to improved security, inadequate troop levels, “too aggressive a timeline to transition” to Iraqi control and “a failure to take on Iranian influence more directly.”

“America’s experience in Iraq demonstrates that it is neither all-powerful nor powerless,” she wrote. “It has the ability to help countries make dramatic changes. But it should not underestimate the significant time, resources and energy that doing so requires — and the overwhelming importance of a committed, capable local partner.” Moreover, she added, “significant efforts to rebuild countries should only be undertaken when truly vital U.S. interests are at stake.”

The Bush team drew similar conclusions about Afghanistan. “Rarely, if ever, were the resources accorded to Afghanistan commensurate with the goals espoused,” Ms. O’Sullivan and two colleagues wrote in a postscript for that memo. “Policymakers overestimated the ability of the United States to produce an outcome” and “underestimated the impact of variables beyond U.S. control.”

Some of the memos underscored how much has changed in the last 14 years — and how much has not. Paving the way for administrations that followed, the Bush team saw India as a country ripe for alliance — and in fact its improved ties with India were seen as one of its foreign policy successes — even as it saw Pakistan as duplicitous and untrustworthy.

The Bush administration spent enormous energy trying to negotiate agreements to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and, to a lesser extent, Iran’s, to no avail, much like its successors. But Mr. Bush’s aides concluded that diplomatic engagement restrained North Korea from provocative acts and came to believe that their mistake may have been expecting too much from the talks.

“An argument could be made that the United States had too intense a focus on the North Korean nuclear problem,” the postscript to the North Korea memo said. “Rather than seeking to contain or ‘quarantine’ the program, the Bush administration set a very high bar of eliminating the program.”

The memos indicate how much American policymakers in both parties at the time still held out hope for constructive relations with Russia and China. The memo on China urged extensive personal engagement between leaders, crediting Mr. Bush’s interactions with his Chinese counterparts with creating “a reserve of good will” between the two powers.

The memo on Russia concludes that Mr. Bush’s “strategy of personal diplomacy met with early success” but acknowledged that ties had soured, especially after Russia’s invasion of the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2008. The memo presciently warned about Russia’s future ambitions.

“Russia attempts to challenge the territorial integrity of Ukraine, particularly in Crimea, which is 59 percent ethnically Russian and is home to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet, must be prevented,” the memo warned five years before Russian forces would seize Crimea and 13 years before they would invade the rest of the country. The memo added that “Russia will exploit Europe’s dependence on Russian energy” and use political means “to drive wedges between the United States and Europe.”

As enlightening as the memos are, however, they also underscore that major challenges on the international stage are rarely solved for good, but instead are bequeathed from one administration to another, even in evolved form. So too are the successes and failures.

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Source: The New Yorker

The Impact of Russian Missile Strikes on Ukraine’s Power Grid

The Kremlin wagered that by depriving Ukrainians of electricity—and heat and water—during wintertime, they would sap the country’s resolve.

The New Yorker By Joshua Yaffa

Photography by Sasha Maslov

February 20, 2023

One day last fall, a Kh-101 cruise missile, launched from a Russian strategic-bomber plane, slammed into an electrical substation on the outskirts of Kharkiv, a Ukrainian city of more than a million people twenty-five miles from the Russian border. The strike blew apart the station’s control room, sending bricks and steel flying. The roof collapsed; equipment was incinerated in a wall of fire. Two workers for Ukrenergo, the state electricity company, were on duty in the control room and were killed instantly. Kharkiv was plunged into darkness. “They know where they are aiming,” a repairman named Vadim said. (Like a number of power-grid employees I spoke with, he asked not to use his full name.) “They hit the most critical places.”

Serhii, an electrician at a substation in the Kharkiv region.

Ukrenergo workers at a substation in eastern Ukraine are salvaging pieces of equipment that still can be used for repairs.

Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, its attacks had periodically damaged energy infrastructure near the front lines. “That we were used to,” Dmytro Sakharuk, the executive director of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said. “But then they changed strategy.” Starting last fall, the Russian military began targeting coal-fuelled power plants, substations, and transformers across the whole of Ukraine. Russian officials wagered that by depriving Ukrainians of electricity—and, as a result, heat and water—during wintertime, they would sap the country’s resolve. “They wanted to initiate a long-term blackout and to freeze our big cities,” Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the C.E.O. of Ukrenergo, told me. “The idea was to force us to negotiate not through emerging victorious on the battlefield but by terrorizing the population.”

Dmytro Sakharuk, the executive director of DTEK, photographed at a former underground parking area that has been repurposed as a shelter where corporate workers descend every time there is an air-raid alarm.

A damaged high-voltage transformer at a substation in western Ukraine.

After successive waves of Russian strikes, Ukraine has faced a stark electricity deficit and rolling blackouts. At any given moment, millions of Ukrainian households are without power, as part of a centrally managed schedule that splits each day into three color-coded periods: green (guaranteed electricity), orange (no electricity), and white (cuts are possible). The guttural purr of diesel generators has become the background noise to life in just about every major Ukrainian city, as shops and restaurants have struggled to keep their lights on.

“We want to at least make these cuts predictable,” Kudrytskyi said. “It’s not just about making sure people survive the winter but also making sure they can work, and that businesses can operate, so that there is a domestic economy that, in turn, can fund the army.”

Not long ago, Ukraine and Russia, along with Belarus, shared the same electricity grid, an arrangement that independent Ukraine inherited from the Soviet period. Last year, on the eve of the war, Ukraine finalized a long-awaited plan to disconnect from the Russian grid and reorient its electrical network toward Europe. But the physical legacy of its shared past with Russia remains: much of the crucial equipment in the energy sector, from power-generating turbines to transformers and control-panel switches, are of Soviet vintage. The layouts of Ukraine’s plants and substations hardly vary from those in Russia; many were constructed from blueprints still readily available in Moscow.

“Our station was built from a Mosenergo project that dates to the nineteen-sixties,” Roman, the head of a substation in the Lviv region, said, referring to the Russian state power company that serves Moscow. “I imagine them sitting holding these plans in their hands, pointing out exactly what should be hit.”

The main switchboard at a power plant in western Ukraine.

The Russian campaign has a certain logic. Initial strikes focussed largely on transformers and substations—the pumps and arteries of an electrical grid, which convert electricity from one voltage to another and move it across the system, eventually delivering it to a person’s home. That equipment tends to be exposed, placed in the open, whereas the vast turbine halls of power plants, sheathed by a casing of concrete and steel, present a harder target.

A damaged high-voltage transformer at a substation in western Ukraine.

A substation in central Ukraine hosts a number of seven-hundred-and-fifty-kilowatt transformers, each one the size of a moving van and capable of transporting large quantities of electricity over long distances. Not only are these transformers crucial for Ukraine’s energy grid—they are the only model of transformer capable of accepting high-voltage electricity produced by a nuclear power plant, for example—but they are also relatively rare. Similar models are found in the United States and China, but nowhere else in Europe; ordering and producing a new one can take up to a year. Ukraine has one factory that makes seven-hundred-and-fifty-kilowatt transformers, but it is situated in Zaporizhzhia, a city in the south that has come under regular bombardment.

The remains of a Russian long-range missile at a power plant in western Ukraine.

The first strikes at the substation damaged a number of transformers. Repair crews managed to receive spare parts from across Ukraine, and spent weeks trying to bring whatever they could back online. The hope was that the station could function with limited capacity. But then, on New Year’s Eve, the station was hit again, this time by a number of Iranian-made kamikaze drones. The repaired transformers were destroyed completely.

“That’s when, you might say, we ran out of hardware and patience all at once,” Taras, the head of the facility, told me. “At the current moment, the station doesn’t carry out its function whatsoever.” Workers found a wing of one of the drones in the snow. “Happy New Year” was written on the underside, in Russian. “They must have been proud, and thought this was funny,” Taras said.

Sandbag barriers were erected to protect the equipment at a power plant in western Ukraine.

Later waves of Russian strikes targeted power generation itself. At one power plant in western Ukraine, a missile hit the turbine hall, destroying one power unit and damaging others. One of the units is still smoldering, weeks after it was hit, letting out a hiss of dark smoke. According to Maksym, the facility’s chief engineer, the plant is functioning at only a third of its previous capacity. Even that output makes it a target.

“You go to work every day with a certain fear,” Makysm said. Although most personnel head to the bomb shelter during air-raid alerts, Maksym remains at his post in the central control room. He pointed to a rack of helmets and flak jackets. “We tell our guys we are also at war,” he said. “This is our front—to keep the electricity flowing.”

A destroyed power unit at one of the plants in western Ukraine.

Russia’s strategy of plunging the country into darkness and cold has, if not outright failed, certainly not succeeded, either. Public opinion has not shifted as a result of the blackouts—polls in recent months have shown that more than eighty per cent of respondents in Ukraine want to continue the fight, the same number as before the attacks on the energy grid began. Over time, Ukraine’s air defenses have improved, and its technicians have got faster at repairing the electrical grid. Russia’s stock of long-range missiles, meanwhile, has dwindled, leading to less frequent attacks.

The onset of spring will bring lower electricity consumption, and Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, expects that the Ukrainian grid will soon stabilize. “Russia did not achieve its ultimate goal,” he said. “Yes, they managed to create problems for nearly every Ukrainian family.” But that is only half the story: “Instead of making us scared and unhappy, it made us angry, more resolved to win. They did not lower the morale of the nation; they mobilized the nation.”

Damaged freight cars at a power plant in western Ukraine.

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Image: The Astora natural gas depot, which is the largest natural gas storage in Western Europe, is pictured in Rehden, Germany, March 16, 2022. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer

Analysis: Healthy gas storage warms Europe, but not enough

European gas prices rallied in the run-up to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine begun almost exactly a year ago and they leapt to record highs when Russia subsequently cut supplies of relatively cheap pipeline gas.

Reuters by Nora Buli and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

OSLO, Feb 23 (Reuters) - As Europe emerges from a mild winter with gas storage close to record levels, it must brace for another costly race to replenish its reserves on the international market.

European gas prices rallied in the run-up to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine begun almost exactly a year ago and they leapt to record highs when Russia subsequently cut supplies of relatively cheap pipeline gas.

Although European prices have eased to around 50 euros ($53) per megawatt hour (MWh) from last August's peak of more than 340 euros, they remain above historic averages.

That means European governments face another huge bill to refill storages before peak winter demand.

To ward off market volatility and protect against shortage, they will have to repeat the exercise annually until the continent has developed a more permanent alternative to the Russian pipeline gas on which it depended for decades.

Analysts and executives say the amounts already in storage will help, as will an increase in French nuclear generation following unusually extensive maintenance.

"The situation on the gas market is currently no longer so tense," Markus Krebber, CEO of RWE (RWEG.DE), Germany's biggest utility, told Reuters.

He did not expect any repeat of last year's record price spike, but also said "one must not lull oneself into a false sense of security".

Similarly, analysts cautioned against leaving it too late to buy for future delivery.

"We do not expect filling storage to be as costly next summer as it was this past year," Jacob Mandel, senior analyst at Aurora Energy Research, said.

"That said, firms that rely on spot supply to fill storage, rather than hedge against future price jumps, will risk paying similar costs to last summer."

He estimated buying gas over the summer months would cost "2-2.5 times more on a per unit basis than it had been pre-crisis" and that European governments last year spent tens of billions of euros on supplies.

That was even when they had received significant levels of Russian gas on long-term contracts prior to the shut down of the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany in August.

Nord Stream's closure drove up European gas prices, as well as liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices, which also hit record levels of around 70 million British thermal units (mmBtu), compared with around $16 now .

CONTRACTS IN TATTERS

Russia's long-term contract prices, based on complex calculations, are not public but are much cheaper than the spot market rate, industry sources say.

In all, last year's European imports of Russian pipeline gas were 62 billion cubic metres (bcm), 60% below the average of the previous five years, European Commission data showed.

This year, Russian deliveries to the EU are expected to fall to 25 bcm, assuming flows via the TurkStream pipeline and through Ukraine are in line with December 2022 volumes, the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts.

Reuters Graphics

LNG FOR NOW, RENEWABLES FOR THE FUTURE

Even when filled to the brim, Europe's storage caverns, capable of holding some 100 bcm, can only meet around a quarter of European demand.

Think-tank Bruegel, which provides analysis to EU policymakers, has called for a 13% demand curb this summer, compared with the EU agreement last year for a voluntary reduction of 15%.

That could be tricky as the fall in gas prices this year has reduced the incentive to avoid the fuel.

Reuters Graphics

One of the reasons for less gas use last year was increased use of coal, which was cheaper, although bad for carbon emissions.

James Waddell, head of European Gas and global LNG at Energy Aspects, said gas was becoming competitive against coal in the power sector and other industry, which switched to alternative fuels to gas, may also switch back.

"If you're pricing somewhere below 60 euros/MWh and you move down to 40 euros/MWh, you get quite a lot of that gas coming back into the industrial sector," he said.

More French nuclear production will help Europe's overall situation as output rises to about 310 Terwatt-hours (TWh) from 280 TWh last year, Waddell said.

But he said it was still lower than the five-year average and the gain would be eroded by losses elsewhere, notably in Germany.

Industry analysts say eventually the solution to the gas shortfall needs to be more renewable energy as the EU seeks to achieve its goal of zero net greenhouse emissions by 2050 and that the energy crisis will accelerate progress.

Until then, even full storages are no guarantee, Helge Haugane, head of gas and power trading at Equinor (EQNR.OL), Europe's biggest gas supplier, said.

As long as global supplies remain tight, he said, the market would be very vulnerable to any disruptions or "weather events".

UNUSUAL LEVEL OF UNCERTAINTY

After a Herculean EU effort, gas storages were 96% full at last year's November peak.

They have dropped to 64%, according to Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) data. Analysts forecast a further fall to around 55% by the end of the official heating season, on March 31.

Levels have held up following a mild winter that, combined with reduced demand, led the IEA to lower its forecast for the EU gas shortfall.

Reuters Graphics

Earlier this month, it put the supply-demand gap at 40 bcm this year, down from its previous estimate of 57 bcm.

It said energy efficiency and speedy deployment of renewable energy and heat pumps could help plug 37 bcm of that gap in 2023, while warning of an "unusually wide range of uncertainties and exogenous risk factors".

These include the possible complete halt of Russian gas through the pipelines still supplying Europe and a post-lockdown demand recovery in China that could increase competition on the international LNG market, making it harder for Europe to buy there.

The IEA said European LNG imports could provide an extra 11 bcm to 140 bcm this year, in addition to an additional 55 bcm in 2022.

As one of Russia's most loyal gas customers until last year's invasion of Ukraine, Germany previously had no import capacity for LNG. Now at a record pace, it is bringing online six floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs) by the end of this year.

The industry says this needs to be matched with more terminals to liquefy and ship LNG, but strong global demand means that will be difficult to achieve over the next 24 months, Luke Cottell, senior analyst at Timera Energy consultancy, said.

Other European countries are also increasing their LNG capacity, while environmental campaigners and green politicians question the amounts being invested in the infrastructure that should become irrelevant in a low-carbon economy.

Germany has also been at the forefront of demand for heat pumps, which do not rely on fossil fuel to heat buildings, although their installation last year was still outpaced by gas-based systems.

($1 = 0.9395 euros)

Reporting by Nora Buli in Oslo and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in London; additional reporting by Kate Abnett in Brussels and Vera Eckert in Frankfurt; editing by Barbara Lewis

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Image: A view shows senators during a session at Mexico's senate as they discusses an initiative by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to give the Army control over the civilian-led National Guard, at Mexico's Senate building, in Mexico City, Mexico September 8, 2022. REUTERS/Henry Romero

Mexico passes electoral overhaul that critics warn weakens democracy

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador argues the reorganization will save $150 million a year and reduce the influence of economic interests in politics.

Reuters

A view shows senators during a session at Mexico's senate as they discusses an initiative by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to give the Army control over the civilian-led National Guard, at Mexico's Senate building, in Mexico City, Mexico September 8, 2022. REUTERS/Henry Romero

MEXICO CITY, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Mexican lawmakers on Wednesday approved a controversial overhaul of the body overseeing the country's elections, a move critics warn will weaken democracy ahead of a presidential vote next year.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador argues the reorganization will save $150 million a year and reduce the influence of economic interests in politics.

But opposition lawmakers and civil society groups have said they will challenge the changes at the Supreme Court, arguing they are unconstitutional. Protests are planned in multiple cities on Sunday.

The Senate approved the reform, which still needs to be signed into law by Lopez Obrador, 72 to 50.

The changes will cut the budget of the National Electoral Institute (INE), cull staff and close offices.

The INE has played an important role in the shift to multi-party democracy since Mexico left federal one-party rule in 2000. Critics fear some of that progress is being lost, in a pattern of eroding electoral confidence also seen in the United States and Brazil.

Lopez Obrador has repeatedly attacked the electoral agency, saying voter fraud robbed him of victory in the 2006 presidential election.

The head of the INE, Lorenzo Cordova, has called the changes a "democratic setback" that put at risk "certain, trustworthy and transparent" elections. Proposed "brutal cuts" in personnel would hinder the installation of polling stations and vote counting, Cordova said.

The changes, dubbed "Plan B," follow a more ambitious constitutional overhaul last year that fell short of the needed two-thirds majority. That bill had sought to convert the INE into a smaller body of elected officials.

Mexico will hold two state elections in June and general elections next year, including votes for president and elected officials in 30 states.

• Reporting by Adriana Barrera and Diego Ore; Writing by Carolina Pulice; Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer, Sandra Maler and William Mallard

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News round-up, Wednesday, February 22, 2023.

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Editor's thoughts…

From Yalta to Yalta... Crimea, the peninsula of desires...

”Homer described it as "symbolic, a place of beautiful, sheltered bays"; Chekhov described it as a paradise far above the French Côte d'Azur; and, not for nothing, the Crimea figured in the plans of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Hitlerite Gestapo and no poet, as one of his favourite places to turn into the Garden of Eden—a sort of Emerita Augusta for future SS retirees."

PEDRO GRIFOL

Quote of the day…

"Diamonds and nuclear fuels would be very easy to sanction."

Spiegel

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Most read…

Morgan Stanley ups 2023 oil demand growth estimate by 36%, flags Russia risk

"Mobility indicators for China, such as congestion, have been rising steadily," while "flight schedules have firmed-up the outlook for jet fuel demand," the bank said.

Reuters

"Russia Is Good at Cheating"

In an interview, Vladyslav Vlasyuk, sanctions adviser to the Ukrainian government, accuses Russia of fudging economic statistics and calls on the West to drastically lower the oil price cap.

DER SPIEGEL: INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY MARKUS BECKER

Analysis: Pain and gain for industry as EU carbon hits 100 euros

"If you think we're permanently going above 100 [euro carbon prices], then that's a very constructive environment for green hydrogen," Lewis said, though he added that CO2 prices could fall back below that level because of bearish factors.

REUTERS By Kate Abnett and Susanna Twidale

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…”We’ll need natural gas for years…

— but can start blending it with green hydrogen today, AES CEO, Andrés Gluski says

cnbc.com, Anmar Frangoul

PUBLISHED MON, JAN 23 

AES chief says we’ll need natural gas for next 20 years

From the United States to the European Union, major economies around the world are laying out plans to move away from fossil fuels in favor of low and zero-carbon technologies.

It’s a colossal task that will require massive sums of money, huge political will and technological innovation. As the planned transition takes shape, there’s been a lot of talk about the relationship between hydrogen and natural gas.

During a panel discussion moderated by CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the CEO of energy firm AES offered up his take on how the two could potentially dovetail with one another going forward.   

“I feel very confident in saying that, for the next 20 years, we need natural gas,” Andrés Gluski, who was speaking Wednesday, said. “Now, what we can start to do today is … start to blend it with green hydrogen,” he added.

“So we’re running tests that you can blend it up to, say 20%, in existing turbines, and new turbines are coming out that can burn … much higher percentages,” Gluski said.

“But it’s just difficult to see that you’re going to have enough green hydrogen to substitute it like, in the next 10 years.”

Change on the way, but scale is key

The planet’s green hydrogen sector may still be in a relatively early stage of development, but a number of major deals related to the technology have been struck in recent years.

In December 2022, for example, AES and Air Products said they planned to invest roughly $4 billion to develop a “mega-scale green hydrogen production facility” located in Texas.

According to the announcement, the project will incorporate around 1.4 gigawatts of wind and solar and be able to produce more than 200 metric tons of hydrogen every day.

Despite the significant amount of money and renewables involved in the project, AES chief Gluski was at pains to highlight how much work lay ahead when it came to scaling up the sector as a whole.

The facility being planned with Air Products, he explained, could only “supply point one percent of the U.S. long haul trucking fleet.” Work to be done, then.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

Sourrce by MERCADO Dominican Republic

28 JUNE 2022

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

Armando Rodríguez, vice president and executive director of Seaboard, joins us for this Mercado Interview to talk about the company's contributions to the Dominican Republic's electricity sector. "Our plants have been strategically located by the authorities of the electricity sector to make it possible to reduce blackouts in Santo Domingo and save foreign currency for all Dominicans," he explains.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: Germán & Co

Editor's thoughts…

From Yalta to Yalta... Crimea, the peninsula of desires...

” Homer described it as "symbolic, a place of beautiful, sheltered bays"; Chekhov described it as a paradise far above the French Côte d'Azur; and, not for nothing, the Crimea figured in the plans of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Hitlerite Gestapo and no poet, as one of his favourite places to turn into the Garden of Eden—a sort of Emerita Augusta for future SS retirees."

"The Lady with the Dog..." was written by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Yalta, 29 January 1861–15 July 1904) and published for the first time in December 1899.

…”Every evening, the couple observes the sunset from the vantage point over Yalta at Oreanda and was charmed again by the "beautiful and majestic" sight....”

A forty-year-old male named Dmitri Gurov is charmed by a young woman walking along the seafront of Yalta with her small Pomeranian dog. Dmitri dislikes his shrewish and educated wife and, as a result, has various love connections. Although the protagonist disparages women and calls them "the lesser race," he secretly reveals that he is more comfortable in their company than in men's.

One day, "the lady with the dog" sits beside Dmitri to dine in the public gardens. The man pets her dog while trying to strike up a conversation. He learns that she is called Anna Sergeyevna.

The Lady with the Dog is one of Anton Chekhov's best-known and most beloved stories. This extraordinary tale, too, was made into a film in 1960 by the film director Iosif Yefimovich Kheifits (Belarusian, 17 December 1905–24 April 1995).

Anton Chekhov was born in Yalta, Crimea, in Taganrog, far south of Moscow, on the Sea of Azov. More Levantine than European (Turkey was 300 miles away), Taganrog was a hot, fly-infested port with a varied population: Russians, Greeks, Armenians, and Italians.

Crimea’s contentious and multi-ethnic history is a source of conflict.

Occupied, conquered, invaded, colonized... a thousand and one times over the centuries, Crimea, this small piece of luminous land, which seems to detach itself from the great continent to sail its way through the sea, is like an island cut out with coquettish coves enclosed in pine forests, which have been (or would like to be again) the favorite mooring places for oligarch yachts. Moreover, because of its privileged strategic position, it is a territory that has always been involved in wars, as if its karma had unique designs.

With World War II over, the rulers of the three Allied powers that formed the winning coalition, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, determined in 1945 to share the spoils and transform post-war Europe. They chose the fair city of Yalta, a place on the Crimean Peninsula on the benign Black Sea coast, and gathered in the Livadia Palace, the residence of Russia's last Tsar, Nicholas II. The exquisite Italian Renaissance-style home was rapidly completed in just 16 months. The Tsar was in a hurry to enjoy champagne and caviar by the sea as if he sensed that the ancient dominion of the Tsars would be destroyed by the Bolshevik arms just four summers later. Roosevelt and Stalin stayed there, while Churchill stayed in another palace, the no less pompous Voronstsov, as the chronicles say that the Americans and the Russians wanted to keep the Englishman away from their quarrels; Churchill complained in a London newspaper:

"I am caught between two monstrous animals: the American bison and the Russian bear."

After the so-called Yalta Conference, the Livadia Palace, throughout the Soviet period, became the resort for the ruling class of the communist party, and the whole area was filled with dachas (Russian for "pleasure villas"). Many years later, we may tour the beautiful mansion and learn about the life and sweat that went on the sunny walls, including a table with the invoices for the overheads of the Yalta Conference.

Crimea is an exceptional witness to international warfare

Undoubtedly, the most famous occurrence is the Battle of Balaklava, which took place during the Crimean War (1853–1856), when the famed Light Brigade of the British army, in its "riding to its death," succumbed to the intense fire of the Russian artillery. Similarly worthy of attention is the 349-day siege of Sevastopol by the Franco-British alliance on Sapun Hill in 1855, which concluded in a Russian victory. Sevastopol, a city of solid resonance, "the City of Glory" (from the Greek words sebas, glory, and polis), besides experiencing the war between the Franco-British coalition and the Romanov army in its stony flesh, was also bombed by the Germans in 1914 during World War I and came under siege again during the Second World War.

Crimea does not seem to want to be left in peace.

Contrary to Dostoyevsky's words: "There are corners in the world that are so beautiful that visiting them gives us a feeling of joy and we feel life in its fullness," this peninsula steeped in history may trigger or has already sparked a new Cold War, at least, not to call the nightmares of the visionary and acclaimed film director Andrei Arsenievich Tarkovsky (Ivanovo Oblast, April 4, 1932 - Paris, December 29, 1986 about a nuclear tragedy.

Source: some ideas from: www.revistagq.com

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Source: Reuters

Morgan Stanley ups 2023 oil demand growth estimate by 36%, flags Russia risk

"Mobility indicators for China, such as congestion, have been rising steadily," while "flight schedules have firmed-up the outlook for jet fuel demand," the bank said.

Feb 22, Reuters

Morgan Stanley has raised its global oil demand growth estimate for this year by about 36%, citing growing momentum in China's reopening and a recovery in aviation, but flagged higher supply from Russia as an offseting factor.

Global oil consumption is now expected to increase by about 1.9 million barrels per day (bpd), versus its previous 1.4 million bpd forecast, the bank said in a note dated Tuesday.

"Mobility indicators for China, such as congestion, have been rising steadily," while "flight schedules have firmed-up the outlook for jet fuel demand," the bank said.

But supply from Russia has been stronger than expected, leading to a slightly smaller than previously assumed deficit in the second half of the year, analysts at the bank wrote, trimming their Brent oil price forecast for that period to $90-100 a barrel from $100-110 previously.

"We previously estimated a ~1 mb/d year-on-year decline in 2023, which we moderate to 0.4 mb/d," the bank said, referring to its Russian output outlook in million barrels per day.

Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs cut its 2023 Brent price forecast and raised its global supply forecasts for 2023 and 2024, with Russia, Kazakhstan and the United States the most notable upward adjustments.

But Goldman also noted that a 1.1 million bpd rise in Chinese demand this year should push oil markets back into a deficit in June.

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Image: Germán & Co

"Russia Is Good at Cheating"

In an interview, Vladyslav Vlasyuk, sanctions adviser to the Ukrainian government, accuses Russia of fudging economic statistics and calls on the West to drastically lower the oil price cap.

Der spiegel: interview Conducted By Markus Becker

DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Vlasiuk, are the West’s sanctions against Russia having a significant impact at all?

Vlasiuk: Of course they do.

DER SPIEGEL: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) seems to differ: According to a recent report, Russia’s economy will grow by 0.3 percent this year and by 2.1 percent in 2024. And on Monday, Russia’s statistics authority said that in 2022, the country’s economy has contracted by only 2.1 percent, far less than experts had expected.

Vladyslav Vlasiuk, born in February 1989, is an expert on international sanctions. In April 2022, he became an adviser to Andriy Yermak, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine. A lawyer by training, Vlasiuk is also a secretary of the Yermak-McFaul Group of international experts working on sanctions against Russia and Belarus.

Vlasiuk: Never believe a word of what Russian authorities are saying. They stopped publishing many statistics that were published before – for good reasons. Russia is struggling to get hold of fresh money and is running a record-high deficit. Lots of Russia’s assets are frozen, less and less technology is available. The European Union's ban on Russian oil products alone has cost the Russian economy a market of 30 to 40 billion euros. At the end of 2022, Russia was forced to impose an additional 600 billion rubles in new taxes on the biggest companies, including Gazprom. Russia now spends 20 percent less on drugs for hospitals. Expenditures for road construction were cut in half. They are losing whole industries – their car industry, for example. So, it would be absurd to assume that the sanctions don't have a significant impact. They do, only Russia is trying to hide it, by lying with their statistics.

DER SPIEGEL: Do you have an example of that?

Vlasiuk: Only this week, Russia introduced a bill which basically prescribes that they count taxes collected on oil exports based not on the real price, but on some theoretical price. It consists of the price for a barrel of Brent (crude), which is much more expensive than Urals, the Russian reference oil brand, minus some discount. This shows one thing: Russia is good at cheating.

DER SPIEGEL: Still, Russia is firing thousands of artillery shells per day and seems to be able to keep up production, whereas the West is struggling to resupply Ukraine with ammunition.

Vlasiuk: The sanctions’ direct impact on Russia’s military production is hard to gauge. We have some reports that there is such an impact. In the coming weeks, we will have a report ready with more definitive numbers.

DER SPIEGEL: The IMF also suggests that the price cap the G-7 and the EU have placed on Russian oil – $60 a barrel – is not enough to significantly curtail Russian revenues. How low would the cap have to be for that?

Vlasiuk: According to the International Working Group on Russia Sanctions, the price ceiling should be $30 to $35. From our point of view, this makes sense. At present, the potential of this instrument is not yet fully exploited.

"Now is the moment to discuss a lowering of the oil price cap."

DER SPIEGEL: The EU and the G-7 only managed to agree on a threshold of $60 after much wrangling, for fear of turbulence on the global markets. How realistic is it that they would lower the threshold to $30?

Vlasiuk: Of course, we understand why the West is wary of any risky moves. But now is the moment to discuss a lowering of the oil price cap. Perhaps not immediately to $30, but over time, that level should be reached. After all, the production cost for Russian oil is only $20 or even less.

DER SPIEGEL: A major part of the 10th sanctions package being discussed by the EU is to close loopholes in ways that make it more difficult to circumvent sanctions. Has the EU been too lax in this respect?

Vlasiuk: You cannot block any kind of exports to a country like Russia, especially exports by non-EU countries. But there are tools the EU has to stop goods from reaching Russia if it can be proven that sanctions are being violated. The EU could make more consistent use of these tools.

DER SPIEGEL: Secondary sanctions against countries who help Russia circumvent sanctions could be among those tools. Should they be used?

Vlasiuk: Ukraine is interested in effective sanctions. To ensure that, secondary sanctions are certainly an option.

DER SPIEGEL: Which countries would be likely targets?

Vlasiuk: Georgia is helping Russia to circumvent some sanctions; the same is true of Kazakhstan, Turkey and, of course, of China. Hitting them with sanctions would be very difficult for legal reasons and reasons of trade policy. But it is true that these countries could do more themselves in curtailing their help to Russia

"Diamonds and nuclear fuels would be very easy to sanction."

DER SPIEGEL: There is also disagreement among EU countries about whether to sanction certain products – like diamonds imported by Belgium or nuclear fuels, which are especially important for France's nuclear power plants. Is the EU still too soft on Russia?

Vlasiuk: From a Ukrainian viewpoint, diamonds and nuclear fuels would be very easy to sanction. Of course, some issues are difficult for some countries. But we hope that in the next packages, the European Council will agree on sanctions against companies like Russia’s nuclear agency Rosatom and diamond producer Alrosa.

DER SPIEGEL: So far, France has been strictly against curtailing civil nuclear imports. It is hard to imagine why Paris would just give in.

Vlasiuk: Perhaps. But one year ago, nobody could imagine that the EU would ban Russian energy imports almost completely, either. Now, it is doing exactly that.

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Image: Germán & Co

Analysis: Pain and gain for industry as EU carbon hits 100 euros

"If you think we're permanently going above 100 [euro carbon prices], then that's a very constructive environment for green hydrogen," Lewis said, though he added that CO2 prices could fall back below that level because of bearish factors.

By Kate Abnett and Susanna Twidale

BRUSSELS/LONDON Feb 21 (Reuters) - Europe's carbon price hit a record 100 euros ($106) per tonne on Tuesday, a long-awaited milestone that boosts the economic case for some green technologies and hits industry with its largest bill yet for carbon dioxide emissions.

The European Union has pledged to cut its emissions by 55% by 2030 versus 1990 levels. One of its main tools to make that happen is its carbon market, which requires European industry and power plants to buy permits to cover their CO2 emissions.

Benchmark EU carbon permit prices hit 100 euros per tonne of CO2 on Tuesday, the highest since the scheme launched in 2005.

Incentivising green investments is the scheme's aim. If the carbon permit price is higher than the investment cost of a green technology, then companies will be motivated to choose the investment.

At current levels, CO2 prices provide a strong incentive to invest in green technologies to cut the use of fossil fuels, the price of which surged last year and remains relatively high, Mark Lewis, head of climate research at Andurand Capital, said.

Green hydrogen, produced using renewable energy is seen as important for decarbonising industries including steelmaking. Most hydrogen is currently produced using gas, which emits CO2 but is cheaper than the electricity-based method.

"If you think we're permanently going above 100 [euro carbon prices], then that's a very constructive environment for green hydrogen," Lewis said, though he added that CO2 prices could fall back below that level because of bearish factors.

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News round-up, Tuesday, February 21, 2023.

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Quote of the day…

Britain has made moral and military support for Ukraine a fundamental plank of its post-Brexit foreign policy, winning support in Eastern Europe and aligning itself with the US.

LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE BY ALEXANDER ZEVIN

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Most read…

Putin suspends Russia's participation in New START nuclear treaty

This 2010 treaty caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy.

Le Monde with AP   

EU outsources military and diplomatic initiative to Washington…

UK and EU look for new roles after Brexit

Le Monde Diplomatique by Alexander Zevin

Brent oil falls on fears of global economic slowdown

"Brent is at the middle of the trading range since late December of between $78 and $88 a barrel, with some investors taking profits on concerns over more U.S. interest rate hikes while others kept bullish sentiment on hopes for a demand recovery in China," said Satoru Yoshida, a commodity analyst with Rakuten Securities.

Reuters by Sudarshan Varadhan and Yuka Obayashi

Russia urges Sweden again to share Nord Stream probe findings

"Your Silence Gives Consent"

(Plato)

Sweden and Denmark, in whose exclusive economic zones the explosions occurred, have concluded the pipelines were blown up deliberately, but have not said who might be responsible.

Reuters by Lidia Kelly

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…”We’ll need natural gas for years…

— but can start blending it with green hydrogen today, AES CEO, Andrés Gluski says

cnbc.com, Anmar Frangoul

PUBLISHED MON, JAN 23 

AES chief says we’ll need natural gas for next 20 years

From the United States to the European Union, major economies around the world are laying out plans to move away from fossil fuels in favor of low and zero-carbon technologies.

It’s a colossal task that will require massive sums of money, huge political will and technological innovation. As the planned transition takes shape, there’s been a lot of talk about the relationship between hydrogen and natural gas.

During a panel discussion moderated by CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the CEO of energy firm AES offered up his take on how the two could potentially dovetail with one another going forward.   

“I feel very confident in saying that, for the next 20 years, we need natural gas,” Andrés Gluski, who was speaking Wednesday, said. “Now, what we can start to do today is … start to blend it with green hydrogen,” he added.

“So we’re running tests that you can blend it up to, say 20%, in existing turbines, and new turbines are coming out that can burn … much higher percentages,” Gluski said.

“But it’s just difficult to see that you’re going to have enough green hydrogen to substitute it like, in the next 10 years.”

Change on the way, but scale is key

The planet’s green hydrogen sector may still be in a relatively early stage of development, but a number of major deals related to the technology have been struck in recent years.

In December 2022, for example, AES and Air Products said they planned to invest roughly $4 billion to develop a “mega-scale green hydrogen production facility” located in Texas.

According to the announcement, the project will incorporate around 1.4 gigawatts of wind and solar and be able to produce more than 200 metric tons of hydrogen every day.

Despite the significant amount of money and renewables involved in the project, AES chief Gluski was at pains to highlight how much work lay ahead when it came to scaling up the sector as a whole.

The facility being planned with Air Products, he explained, could only “supply point one percent of the U.S. long haul trucking fleet.” Work to be done, then.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

Sourrce by MERCADO Dominican Republic

28 JUNE 2022

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

Armando Rodríguez, vice president and executive director of Seaboard, joins us for this Mercado Interview to talk about the company's contributions to the Dominican Republic's electricity sector. "Our plants have been strategically located by the authorities of the electricity sector to make it possible to reduce blackouts in Santo Domingo and save foreign currency for all Dominicans," he explains.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Source: Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his annual state of the nation address at the Gostiny Dvor conference centre in central Moscow on February 21, 2023. SERGEI SAVOSTYANOV / AFP

Putin suspends Russia's participation in New START nuclear treaty

This 2010 treaty caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy.

Le Monde with AP   

Published on February 21, 2023 at 12h51

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared on Tuesday, February 21, that Moscow was suspending its participation in the New START treaty – the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the United States – sharply upping the ante amid tensions with Washington over the fighting in Ukraine.

Speaking in his state-of-the-nation address, Putin also said that Russia should stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the US does so, a move that would end a global ban on nuclear weapons tests in place since Cold War times.

Explaining his decision to suspend Russia's obligations under New START, Putin accused the US and its NATO allies of openly declaring the goal of Russia's defeat in Ukraine. "They want to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on us and try to get to our nuclear facilities at the same time," he said.

Putin argued that while the US has pushed for the resumption of inspections of Russian nuclear facilities under the treaty, NATO allies had helped Ukraine mount drone attacks on Russian air bases hosting nuclear-capable strategic bombers.

"The drones used for it were equipped and modernized with NATO's expert assistance," Putin said. "And now they want to inspect our defense facilities? In the conditions of today's confrontation, it sounds like sheer nonsense." Putin emphasized that Russia is suspending its involvement in New START and not entirely withdrawing from the pact yet.

The New START treaty, signed in 2010 by US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers. The agreement envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance.

Just days before the treaty was due to expire in February 2021, Russia and the United States agreed to extend it for another five years. Russia and the US have suspended mutual inspections under New START since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Moscow last fall refused to allow their resumption, raising uncertainty about the pact’s future. Russia also indefinitely postponed a planned round of consultations under the treaty.

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Image: Germán & Co

EU outsources military and diplomatic initiative to Washington…

UK and EU look for new roles after Brexit

Britain has made moral and military support for Ukraine a fundamental plank of its post-Brexit foreign policy, winning support in Eastern Europe and aligning itself with the US.

Le Monde Diplomatique by Alexander Zevin

UK and EU look for new roles after Brexit

Charles de Gaulle, explaining his veto of Britain’s application to join the EEC for a second time in 1967, pointed above all to ‘the special relations between Britain and America with their advantages and also limitations’; earlier, he had dismissed the idea of British membership more brusquely, as a Trojan horse for the economic and military domination of Europe by America.

That impression was not unfounded, as first Dwight D Eisenhower and then John F Kennedy pressed their counterparts in London to take the lead in further European integration. Yet it was not until 1973 that Britain managed to join the Common Market, and by then France had a new president, Georges Pompidou, with fewer misgivings about the UK’s privileged ties to Washington.

The ensuing union turned out to be fragile. Less than 50 years later, the UK became the only country ever to leave the EU, with the referendum of 2016. If Brexit has caused endless recriminations within Britain focused mainly on the economic costs, the questions raised outside it have been of the sort posed by De Gaulle, albeit turned on their head. Once the UK’s Trojan horse was wheeled away, what might Europe become – and could it be expected to act with more independence, less like the ‘colossal Atlantic community’ De Gaulle had warned against than the ‘European Europe’ he advocated (1)?

Predictions that post-Brexit Britain would find itself isolated in Europe, adrift at its edge or caught between the tug of Washington and Beijing – or that Europe might regain some of the initiative it had lost due to British intransigence on political federation or common defence – have not survived contact with the geopolitical shock that arrived 14 months after the end of its ‘transition period’ out of the EU. The war in Ukraine that began in February 2022 has acted like a chemical bath in a dark room, revealing an image of power hidden under the surface of words and events – both in the relationship of Britain to the EU, and of each of them to the US.

‘Britain is on our side’

Far from sitting on the sidelines, the UK has forced the pace of the European response to Russia’s invasion. From the start, it advocated sanctions to ‘squeeze Russia from the global economy, piece by piece’ – including a ban on global payments via SWIFT, tech exports, travel, a freeze on Russian assets, and an end to Russian oil and gas imports. The UK has also supplied £2.3bn of military hardware to Ukraine, from anti-tank and ship missiles to artillery and drones, along with a just-announced squadron of 12 tanks, a total level of aid second only to the US.

Ukrainians are trained to use these weapons not only at bases in Kent and the Salisbury plain, but by British special forces in and around Kyiv, alongside an unspecified number of British intelligence personnel (2). According to a senior general, Royal Marines are also there, engaged since April in ‘discreet operations’ in a ‘hugely sensitive environment and with a high level of political and military risk’ (3). By the spring, Volodymyr Zelensky declared British prime minister Boris Johnson his favourite European leader, telling The Economist (22 March 2022) that, in implied contrast to France or Germany, ‘Britain is definitely on our side. It is not performing a balancing act.’

That popularity extended to the Baltic states, where Johnson dispatched 8,000 soldiers to conduct military drills. They joined 1,700 already in Estonia, as part of a Joint Expeditionary Force to the Baltic, set up in 2012 and led by the Royal Navy (4).

When Russia and Ukraine seemed on the verge of agreeing to an interim peace deal in late March, it was the British prime minister who arrived in Kyiv as messenger of the ‘collective West’ to press Zelensky to break off negotiations, on the grounds that ‘Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined’ and that here was a chance to ‘press him’ (5). Britain now plays the same basic role it once did as an EU member, partnering with actors that share its scepticism of EU budgetary largesse, federalism or independent military action – Poland and the other Visegrád states, as well as Romania, Bulgaria, the Netherlands – if now on bilateral, trilateral or ad hoc bases.

In contrast, the core EU member states that stood to gain in stature from Brexit have faced just the opposite outcomes. Germany is threatened with an economic wipeout – squeezed between the explosion in energy prices stemming from sanctions it has adopted against Russia, and the falloff in oil and gas supplies since; and a slowdown in China, its largest trading partner, exacerbated by a campaign devised in Washington to isolate Beijing. The problem goes beyond that of a recession to the demise of an entire growth model and the ‘threat of deindustrialisation’ (6).

France’s goals frustrated

France, meanwhile, is now the only nuclear power and permanent member of the UN Security Council in the EU, and has its strongest military. But Paris has been unable to deploy these elements of power in or outside the bloc. Globally, its position was brought home after the humiliation of the AUKUS affair in 2021 – which saw Australia renege on a deal to buy 12 diesel submarines from it, in favour of a wide-ranging security pact with the US and UK to build a nuclear flotilla to patrol the Pacific against China.

In the EU, Macron’s stated goal of strengthening European ‘strategic sovereignty’ in cooperation with Germany has also withered. Under the coalition headed by Olaf Scholz, and as a condition for the Greens’ participation, Berlin agreed to buy American F-18s – putting the future of the Franco-German-Spanish fighter bomber project FCAS in doubt – while influential figures openly moot the possibility of transcending the old idea of a Kerneuropa with France, in favour of the inclusion of new partners driving EU expansion to the East. Of the momentum that Brexit was expected to give EU security and defence policy, not a peep can be heard.

The autonomy of the EU with respect to the Atlantic alliance has since the 1990s been more self-conceit than reality. President Clinton pressed for EU enlargement to the east as the complement to NATO membership, which in all cases preceded it – in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999, before NATO launched its offensive in the Balkans; and then in Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, as well as Slovenia and the Baltics in 2004, soon after the alliance began its first ‘out-of-area’ operations alongside the US in Afghanistan. In 2003 France may have threatened a veto in the UN Security Council on the war that followed in Iraq, but provided the air bases needed to carry it out – just as eastern Europe became the host of black sites for the CIA, in its campaign of ‘extraordinary rendition’ and ‘enhanced interrogation’ in the American ‘war on terror’.

Almost two decades later, the extent of this subordination has been made plain in Ukraine. Readers of the quality press in Europe may still find reassurance there: as the philosopher Slavoj Žižek told Le Figaro (31 October 2022), ‘We can still be proud of Europe’, combining respect for individual dignity, the fight against climate change, and capacity for self-criticism. Yet it is hard to ignore that whatever its other virtues, the bloc has shown almost no diplomatic or military initiative since the demise of the 2014 Minsk accords (of which Europe and not the US was the guarantor).

Once the war began, those roles were outsourced to Washington. The incapacity to act independently of the US stems above all from longstanding tensions within the Franco-German tandem, which this latest crisis has intensified. The issue is not lack of means since France, Germany and Italy collectively spend more than twice what Russia does annually on arms. For economic sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, a different logic is at work, inscribed in the nature of the EU project since the end of the cold war: it has become, in his words, a ‘civil auxiliary of NATO’ (7) – registering symbolic protests against decisions of the Supreme Court in the US, while huddling ever more tightly under the nuclear umbrella it holds aloft.

The next test is China

Can Europe diverge from the US where fundamental interests are at stake? The next test hovers well beyond Ukraine, in China. Beijing, argues the Biden administration, must not be emboldened to move on Taiwan by signs of weakness against Russia. So far, European leaders have not shown much inclination to publicly question the wisdom of following the US into this new great power confrontation. At the June 2022 NATO summit in Madrid, they agreed to label Beijing a ‘systemic challenge’ for the first time, inviting South Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Australia to stake out the more and more nebulous perimeter of the ‘North Atlantic’.

It is unclear if they can tolerate the trade war that comes with this posture, now that China accounts for a larger overall share of EU imports and exports than the US. More to the point, will Washington allow the exemptions that Germany, the Netherlands and others may seek for their high-tech sectors, when its vast powers of financial compulsion can so easily be turned on them (8)? Even the unity attained over the war in Ukraine is being tested by pressures it has created at national level, from popular protests in the Czech Republic over household energy prices, to open fissures in the governing elite of Italy on weapons shipments, to the bitter anger of German businessmen at US ‘profiteering’ on natural gas.

If the UK has appeared to lead rather than follow in Europe, that is in large part a function of the special relationship, lending it the sort of prestige enjoyed by a prefect over younger pupils at a public school. Few were better prepared socially to take on this role than Johnson, who staked his premiership on Ukraine – from photo ops in Kyiv even in his last hours, until manoeuvring inside the Tory party finally ousted him.

How did the country he led become the most intransigent of the states supporting Ukraine at the side of the US? Just as in continental Europe, the war has exposed a longer-term UK dependence, made all the more apparent in the wake of Brexit. Policymakers have of course signalled the opposite: a commitment to ‘British leadership in the world’. That was the message behind the first ‘Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy’ (Global Britain in a Competitive Age, March 2021) calling for a smaller, leaner army, but also one that was a ‘more present and active force around the world’, capable of rapid deployment alongside naval and special forces strike groups, and a larger stockpile of nuclear weapons.

This was backed up by two projected bursts of military spending: to 2.5% of GDP in a decade, announced by Johnson; and to 3% under his short-lived successor Liz Truss, for a real-terms increase of £20-25bn. (Under current prime minister Rishi Sunak, the commitment has changed to ‘at least 2%’.) The UK remains one of the largest arms exporters in the world, with a particular strength in aeronautics that its diplomats have tried to leverage abroad – most recently in a complex deal to co-develop its next-generation Tempest stealth fighter jet with Japan and Italy.

Overlap with US priorities

As journalist Tom Stevenson has argued, however, the most consistent leitmotif of these attempts to chart a strategic path for ‘Global Britain’ is its overlap with American priorities. If plenty of imperial nostalgia is evident among the ‘defence intellectuals’ who inform policy – at a few institutions like the Royal United Services Institute, Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and Department of War Studies at King’s College (London) – it is not always clear for which empire. This is especially glaring in the official volte-face on China.

The ‘golden decade’ of bilateral trade relations with Beijing announced under David Cameron in 2015 as a key vector for renewed inward investment lasted barely a few years, and is now over (9). It is not difficult to see why, given the aims of the integrated review: the dispatch of a new aircraft carrier to the Indo-Pacific, to be ‘permanently available to NATO’; making Korea a ‘highly significant area of focus’; and returning to points ‘east of Suez’ – already visibly underway since 2018, when Britain opened a naval base in Bahrain to assist US operations in the Persian Gulf and beyond.

The ‘special relationship’ is often seen as informal and ill-defined, even as a tremendous amount continues to be said and written about it. In fact, from the 1940s it has had fairly concrete effects: in exchange for keeping forward operating bases on its territories, the UK has gained privileged access to American technology – if not always over how and when it is used. Since the failure of its own Bluestreak programme in the 1950s, the main form this has taken is a succession of ballistic missile systems: Thor, Skybolt, Polaris and Trident, without which Britain could neither target, launch and deliver, nor maintain and test, its nuclear deterrent (10).

A more flattering version of the real ‘special relationship’ stresses intelligence sharing – another wartime collaboration carried over into the UKUSA agreement of 1947, and since extended to Australia, Canada and New Zealand, the other three members of the so-called Five Eyes. The number of US bases has fluctuated over the same period. In 1986 one investigative journalist counted over 130 facilities in Britain, making it a veritable ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ in the North Atlantic, pointed at the Soviet Union. Though the US presence has declined since the end of the cold war, it remains significant: RAF Menwith Hill is the largest military spy base outside the US, run by the NSA; RAF Lakenheath is the largest US fighter base in Europe. Britain is the third-largest outpost of the US Air Force in the world, after Japan and Germany, with around 10,000 personnel.

Decline of dissent

What has changed most dramatically since the 1990s is the kind of opposition these features of the ‘special relationship’ engender, and the attention they receive. That is true at elite level, where undue deference to the senior partner in the relationship once elicited criticisms and questions not just from a handful of leftwing MPs, but also from Conservatives with a sovereigntist streak. Today it is hard to imagine a prime minister refusing a US request to use RAF airfields, as Edward Heath did in 1973 during the Yom Kippur war.

It is just as evident in the waning influence of a grassroots anti-nuclear movement that reached its apogee in the early 1980s. Then Michael Foot, co-founder of CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), led Labour on a platform of unilateral disarmament while calling for the withdrawal of US cruise missiles and ‘phasing out’ NATO for a European security pact. Under its current leader, Sir Keir Starmer, those views would be grounds for expulsion: de facto banned since February from rallying with Stop the War and from any criticism of NATO, socialist members and MPs continue to be purged after the ejection of the last Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – the only one besides Foot to seriously question the Atlanticist basis of British foreign policy (11). Starmer played a similar role as head of the crown prosecution service (2008-13), when his office sought to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the US’s behest. Assange awaits the outcome of his appeals in a British prison.

The irony is that in the climate this has created it is far easier to criticise US foreign policy in the US than in Britain, including over Ukraine. In the UK, no equivalent has emerged of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a thinktank that in 2019 set out to disrupt the liberal interventionist orthodoxies that dominate the foreign policies of both parties in Washington. If disagreements exist among policymakers, or between civilian and military leaders, these have largely remained hidden.

Not so in the US, where Pentagon officials have regularly leaked against hawks at the National Security Agency (NSA) and the State Department (12). The mainstream press has likewise been more uniform across the board: from the Guardian to The Economist to the Telegraph, opinion has favoured supporting Ukraine until it ‘defeats’ Russia – while news is so slanted towards Kyiv as to create an expectation that victory is imminent, as Russia is reported to be running out of weapons, conscripts, and other key resources.

The result is not simply a distorted image of the war, but a kind of analytical vacuum at the centre of British politics. Sanctions severe enough to ‘bring down the Putin regime’ (coming on top of the impact of Brexit, Covid and Tory incompetence) have instead seen two premiers disappear, amidst a rise in energy prices for the poorest households that is more severe than anywhere else in western Europe. Next year the British economy is set to grow more slowly than that of every developed nation besides the one it has sought to ‘hobble’.

‘The worst crisis since Suez’

Rather than a run on the rouble, a selloff in gilts provoked by September’s mini-budget threatened pension funds with insolvency and raised borrowing costs to the point of forcing the Bank of England to intervene to stabilise them. As power quickly ebbed away from Truss, a new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, announced further spending cuts, even as public sector workers prepared to strike against a backdrop of median pay that has not risen since 2008. No announcement will be made on the defence budget until yet another integrated review, but defence secretary Ben Wallace let it be known that in his view there is no room to cut: at 72,000, the army is only big enough to ‘do a bit of tootling around’ at home.

The most striking comment about this panic came as it unfolded on TV (Sky News, 17 October 2022), when Tobias Elwood, chair of the Commons defence select committee, called it ‘the worst crisis since Suez’. Yet his analogy was more than a little cryptic: for where, in that case, was the equivalent of the military adventure that in 1956 spurred a run on the pound and the ouster of Sir Anthony Eden? This was left a discreet blank. One lesson of Suez was that Britain could no longer act with so much independence vis-à-vis the US. Over half a century after taking this lesson to heart, can it afford to act with so little?

Alexander Zevin

Alexander Zevin is a historian at City University of New York.

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Image: Germán & Co

Brent oil falls on fears of global economic slowdown

"Brent is at the middle of the trading range since late December of between $78 and $88 a barrel, with some investors taking profits on concerns over more U.S. interest rate hikes while others kept bullish sentiment on hopes for a demand recovery in China," said Satoru Yoshida, a commodity analyst with Rakuten Securities.

Reuters by Sudarshan Varadhan and Yuka Obayashi

Feb 21 (Reuters) - Brent oil prices fell on Tuesday as fears that a global economic slowdown would reduce fuel demand prompted investors to take profits on the previous day's gains.

Traders are awaiting the minutes of the latest Federal Reserve meeting, due on Wednesday, after recent data on core inflation raised the risk of interest rates remaining higher for longer.

Brent crude was down 66 cents, or 0.8%, at $83.41 a barrel as of 0750 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) futures for March, which expire on Tuesday, were up 4 cents, or 0.1%, at $76.38.

WTI futures did not settle on Monday because of a public holiday in the United States. The April WTI contract , currently the most active, was up 23 cents at $76.78.

"Brent is at the middle of the trading range since late December of between $78 and $88 a barrel, with some investors taking profits on concerns over more U.S. interest rate hikes while others kept bullish sentiment on hopes for a demand recovery in China," said Satoru Yoshida, a commodity analyst with Rakuten Securities.

"The market will likely remain in the tight range until there are more clear signs for the future direction of the U.S. monetary policy and the economic recovery path in China," he said.

With China's oil imports likely to hit a record high in 2023 and demand from India, the world's third-biggest oil importer, surging amid tightening supplies, all eyes are now on monetary policy in the United States, the world's largest economy and biggest oil consumer.

Some analysts say oil prices could rise in the coming weeks because of undersupply and a demand rebound, despite the U.S. interest rate hikes.

"Chinese demand for Russian crude is back to the levels seen at the beginning of the war in Ukraine," said Edward Moya, an analyst at OANDA.

"The West will try to pressure China and India from seeking alternative sources, which should keep the oil market tight," Moya said.

Russia plans to cut oil production by 500,000 barrels per day, or about 5% of its output, in March after the West imposed price caps on Russian oil and oil products.

While the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) raised its 2023 global oil demand growth forecast this month, its monthly report showed crude oil output in January declined in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran as part of the organisation's deal.

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"Your Silence Gives Consent"

(Plato)

Russia urges Sweden again to share Nord Stream probe findings

Sweden and Denmark, in whose exclusive economic zones the explosions occurred, have concluded the pipelines were blown up deliberately, but have not said who might be responsible.

Reuters by Lidia Kelly

Pipes for the NordStream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, which are not used, are seen in the harbour of Mukran, Germany, on September 30, 2022. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer

Feb 21 (Reuters) - Russia renewed its calls on Sweden late on Monday to share its findings from the ongoing investigation into the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year.

The U.N. Security Council will meet on Tuesday to discuss "sabotage" after Moscow asked for an independent inquiry into the September attacks on the pipelines that spewed gas into the Baltic Sea.

Sweden and Denmark, in whose exclusive economic zones the explosions occurred, have concluded the pipelines were blown up deliberately, but have not said who might be responsible.

"Almost five months have passed since the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines. All this time, however, the Swedish authorities, as if on cue, remain silent," Russia's embassy to Sweden said on the Telegram messaging platform. "What is the leadership of Sweden so afraid of?"

The embassy reiterated the Russian foreign ministry's question whether Sweden had something to hide over the explosions.

It also reiterated Moscow's stance, without providing evidence, that the West was behind the blasts affecting the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines - multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects that carried Russian gas to Germany.

Construction of Nord Stream 2 was completed in September 2021, but was never put into operation after Germany shelved certification just days before Russia sent its troops into Ukraine a year ago this week.

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Ryssland uppmanar återigen… "Vad är ledningen i Sverige så rädd för?"

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Quote of the day…

Vad är han som tyst ger:

Uttrycket "den som är tyst beviljar" är ett populärt ordspråk med vilket det antyds att den som inte ger någon invändning om vad som sägs eller uttrycktes av en annan person, utan tvärtom är tyst, då är beviljats ​​den andra.

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Ryssland uppmanar återigen Sverige att dela med sig av resultaten av Nord Stream-undersökningen

Sverige och Danmark, i vars exklusiva ekonomiska zoner explosionerna inträffade, har dragit slutsatsen att rörledningarna sprängdes avsiktligt, men har inte sagt vem som kan vara ansvarig.

Reuters av Lidia Kelly

21 feb (Reuters) - Ryssland förnyade sent på måndagen sina uppmaningar till Sverige att dela med sig av resultaten från den pågående utredningen av de explosioner som skadade Nord Stream-gasledningarna förra året.

FN:s säkerhetsråd kommer att sammanträda på tisdag för att diskutera "sabotage" efter att Moskva begärt en oberoende utredning av attackerna i september mot rörledningarna som spydde ut gas i Östersjön.

Sverige och Danmark, i vars exklusiva ekonomiska zoner explosionerna inträffade, har dragit slutsatsen att rörledningarna sprängdes avsiktligt, men har inte sagt vem som kan vara ansvarig.

"Nästan fem månader har gått sedan sabotaget av gasledningarna Nord Stream 1 och Nord Stream 2. Under hela denna tid förblir dock de svenska myndigheterna, som på beställning, tysta", sade Rysslands ambassad i Sverige på meddelandeplattformen Telegram. "Vad är ledningen i Sverige så rädd för?"

Ambassaden upprepade det ryska utrikesministeriets fråga om Sverige hade något att dölja med anledning av explosionerna.

Den upprepade också Moskvas ståndpunkt, utan att ge bevis, att väst låg bakom sprängningarna som påverkade Nord Stream 1 och 2 - infrastrukturprojekt i mångmiljardklassen som transporterar rysk gas till Tyskland.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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News round-up, Monday, February 20, 2023.

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Quote of the day…

The oil and lithium belong to the nation, they belong to the people of Mexico and to all those who live in this region of Sonora, says the president.

Presidency of the Republic : 18 February 2023 : Press release

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Most read…

Biden makes surprise first visit to Ukraine, promises new arms supplies…

US President Joe Biden, who was scheduled to visit Poland this week, made his first visit to Kyiv since the start of the war.

Le Monde with AP and AFP   

In Sonora, President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, declares more than 230,000 hectares a lithium mining reserve zone…

The oil and lithium belong to the nation, they belong to the people of Mexico and to all those who live in this region of Sonora, says the president.

Presidency of the Republic : 18 February 2023 : Press release

Up in smoke: Cities grapple with run on wood-burning stoves

The smoky emissions from burning wood have serious health impacts — particularly in dense urban areas.

The problem is acute in London, where smoke from wood-burning stoves adds to the already high levels of vehicle pollution, causing severe pollution hot spots

POLITICO EU BY ASHLEIGH FURLONG

LNG: the three letters that have forever changed the European energy paradigm…

Liquefied natural gas, which arrives frozen by ship, already covers 40% of European needs, a figure that will continue to grow. Russia has practically no chance of becoming the EU's main supplier again.

EL PAÍS BY IGNACIO FARIZA

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Can we power the things we love and green the planet at the same time? AES is the next-generation energy company with over four decades of experience helping businesses transition to clean, renewable energy. Isn't it time to connect to your energy future?

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

Sourrce by MERCADO Dominican Republic

28 JUNE 2022

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

Armando Rodríguez, vice president and executive director of Seaboard, joins us for this Mercado Interview to talk about the company's contributions to the Dominican Republic's electricity sector. "Our plants have been strategically located by the authorities of the electricity sector to make it possible to reduce blackouts in Santo Domingo and save foreign currency for all Dominicans," he explains.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: Germán & Co

Biden makes surprise first visit to Ukraine, promises new arms supplies…

US President Joe Biden, who was scheduled to visit Poland this week, made his first visit to Kyiv since the start of the war.

Le Monde with AP and AFP   

Published on February 20, 2023 

President Joe Biden walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at St. Michael's Golden-Domed Cathedral on a surprise visit, Monday, February 20, 2023, in Kyiv. EVAN VUCCI / AP

US President Joe Biden made an unannounced visit to Ukraine Monday, February 20, to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, a gesture of solidarity that comes days before the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of the country.

"One year later, Kyiv stands," Biden said. "And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you." Biden spent more than five hours in the Ukrainian capital, consulting with Zelensky on next steps, honoring the country’s fallen soldiers and meeting with US embassy staff in the war-torn country.

Biden delivered remarks with Zelensky at Mariinsky Palace to announce an additional half billion dollars in US assistance and to reassure Ukraine of American and allied support as the conflict continues. "One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands," Biden said. "Joseph Biden, welcome to Kyiv! Your visit is an extremely important sign of support for all Ukrainians," Zelensky wrote on Telegram, in English.

Biden stressed his "unflagging commitment" in defending Ukraine's territorial integrity, and promised new arms. He announced an additional half-billion dollars in US assistance, including shells for howitzers, anti-tank missiles, air surveillance radars and other aid but no new advanced weaponry.

Zelensky said he and Biden spoke about "long-range weapons and the weapons that may still be supplied to Ukraine even though it wasn't supplied before." But he did not detail any new commitments.

Air sirens sound

Speaking alongside Zelensky, Biden recalled the fears nearly a year ago that Russia's invasion forces might quickly take the Ukrainian capital.

Biden also got a short firsthand taste of the terror that Ukrainians have lived with for close to a year, as air raids sirens howled over the capital just as he and Zelensky were exiting the gold-domed St. Michael's Cathedral, which they visited together. Looking solemn, they continued unperturbed as they laid a wreath and held a moment of silence at the Wall of Remembrance honoring Ukrainian soldiers killed since 2014.

Biden warned that the "brutal and unjust war" is far from won. "The cost that Ukraine has had to bear has been extraordinarily high. And the sacrifices have been far too great," Biden said. "We know that there'll be very difficult days and weeks and years ahead. But Russia's aim was to wipe Ukraine off the map. Putin's war of conquest is failing."

"He's counting on us not sticking together," Biden said of the Russian leader. "He thought he could outlast us. I don't think he's thinking that right now. God knows what he's thinking, but I don't think he's thinking that. But he's just been plain wrong. Plain wrong."

Secret trip

Speculation had been building for weeks that Biden would pay a visit to Ukraine around the February 24 anniversary of the Russian invasion. But the White House repeatedly had said that no presidential trip to Ukraine was planned, even after the Poland visit was announced earlier this month.

At the White House, planning for Biden's visit to Kyiv was tightly held – with a relatively small group of aides briefed on the plans – because of security concerns. Asked by a reporter on Friday if Biden might include stops beyond Poland, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby replied, "Right now, the trip is going to be in Warsaw."

Biden quietly departed from Joint Base Andrews near Washington shortly after 4 am on Sunday, making a stop at Ramstein Air Base in Germany before making his way into Ukraine.

At the White House, planning for Biden's visit to Kyiv was tightly held – with a relatively small group of aides briefed on the plans – because of security concerns. Asked by a reporter on Friday if Biden might include stops beyond Poland, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby replied, "Right now, the trip is going to be in Warsaw."

Biden quietly departed from Joint Base Andrews near Washington shortly after 4 am on Sunday, making a stop at Ramstein Air Base in Germany before making his way into Ukraine.

The White House would not go into specifics but said that "basic communication with the Russians occurred to ensure deconfliction" shortly before Biden's visit in an effort to avoid any miscalculation that could bring the two nuclear-armed nations into direct conflict.

This is Biden's first visit to a war zone as president. His recent predecessors, Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, made surprise visits to Afghanistan and Iraq during their presidencies to meet with US troops and those countries' leaders.

Image:outletminero.org

In Sonora, President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, declares more than 230,000 hectares a lithium mining reserve zone…

The oil and lithium belong to the nation, they belong to the people of Mexico and to all those who live in this region of Sonora, says the president.

Presidency of the Republic : 18 February 2023 : Press release

In Sonora, President AMLO declares more than 230,000 hectares a lithium mining reserve zone

Bacadéhuachi, Sonora, 18 February 2023 - President Andrés Manuel López Obrador declared a lithium mining reserve zone of 234,855 hectares located in the Sonoran municipalities of Arivechi, Divisaderos, Granados, Huásabas, Nácori Chico, Sahuaripa and Bacadéhuachi, the region with the greatest potential for the exploitation of the mineral in the state.

During the signing of the agreement instructing the Ministry of Energy to follow up on the declaration, the president recalled the decision to use the strategic mineral for the benefit of the people.

He said that the historical process that led to the expropriation of oil is related to this day, since the Porfirian regime handed over oil to foreigners without any benefit for the people, and it was not until 1917 when the Constitution established that the subsoil assets belong to the nation. Due to pressure from the US government not to pass the oil law, it was not until 1938 that President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río led the expropriation.

"What we are doing now, keeping in mind the proportions and at another time, is nationalising lithium so that it cannot be exploited by foreigners, neither from Russia, nor from China, nor from the United States. Oil and lithium belong to the nation, they belong to the people of Mexico, to you, to all those who live in this region of Sonora, to all Mexicans.

After mentioning the decree of 20 April 2022 that reformed the Mining Law to establish that lithium is patrimony of the nation, he explained that the technical process of exploration and extraction of this basic input for the automotive industry will begin.

"It is not possible to make electric cars - as is the commitment of the US government and the commitment of the Canadian government, and also our commitment, and it is something that we approved - we could not advance in this objective if we do not have lithium. So, a process of technological development begins in order to have the raw material, also with the purpose of installing plants for the production of batteries".

He indicated that this action is complementary to the Puerto Peñasco photovoltaic plant, of which the federal government concluded the first stage, with which our country is taking the first step in the use of clean energy.

He stressed that the state has what it takes to trigger the automotive industry, as it is the second largest copper-producing state in the world, which complements the industrial development sought by the Sonora Plan.

Governor Alfonso Durazo Montaño explained that the decision to nationalise lithium is related to the nationalisation of the oil and electricity industries so that natural resources remain in Mexico for the benefit of the economy and communities.

After reaffirming the commitment to look after the public interest and the defence of the nation, he recalled that on 5 August 2021, the President of the Republic issued an executive order to the automotive industry that at least half of all new vehicles must be electric by 2030.

In this regard, he said that Mexico and Sonora guarantee the fulfilment of the Sonora Plan in terms of sustainable energy, as the state has the largest lithium deposit and is the only producer of graphite in the country, as well as the second largest copper producer in the world.

After confirming that this government promotes investments with a social dimension, the Secretary of Economy, Raquel Buenrostro Sánchez, stressed that the nationalisation of lithium deepens the transformation project for the country in this century, by laying the foundations for an industrial and clean energy policy for the next 50 or 70 years, as our country is rich in materials for the energy transition, especially lithium.

He pointed out that the conversion of internal combustion units to electric power is underway and will grow exponentially in the coming years, for which lithium is required.

"What better opportunity for the industry than to do it hand in hand with the specialised knowledge and experience of Mexican workers. That is why all the automotive companies are looking to us to settle in our territory in various parts of the country."

He added that the declaration of the lithium reserve that President López Obrador formalised today, together with the industrial policy implemented by the Ministry of Economy, will have a bright future for decades to come.

"The nationalisation of lithium will be remembered by future generations as the turning point that gave way to the new industrial policy and import substitution of this century, an industrial policy that is committed to clean energy."

It is worth remembering that on 20 April 2022, the federal chief executive issued the decree that reformed the Mining Law to establish that lithium is patrimony of the nation, and reserves its exploration, exploitation, benefit and use in favour of the people of Mexico.

Also accompanying the President of the Republic were: the Secretary of Energy, Rocío Nahle García, as well as the Secretaries of: National Defence, Luis Cresencio Sandoval González; Finance and Public Credit, Rogelio Ramírez de la O; and Infrastructure, Communications and Transport, Jorge Nuño Lara.

Likewise, the undersecretary of Expenditure of the SHCP, Juan Pablo de Botton Falcón; the general coordinator of Social Communication and spokesperson for the Presidency, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas; the general director of Lithium for Mexico, Pablo Daniel Taddei Arriola; and the municipal president of Bacadéhuachi, Luis Alfonso Sierra Villaescusa.

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Source: austral.com

Up in smoke: Cities grapple with run on wood-burning stoves

The smoky emissions from burning wood have serious health impacts — particularly in dense urban areas.

The problem is acute in London, where smoke from wood-burning stoves adds to the already high levels of vehicle pollution, causing severe pollution hot spots

POLITICO EU BY ASHLEIGH FURLONG

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

This article is part of POLITICO’s Global Policy Lab: Living Cities, a collaborative journalism project exploring the future of cities.

LONDON — With energy prices skyrocketing, many Europeans have switched to wood-burning stoves to save on their heating bills — but that’s hampering efforts to curb air pollution, particularly in cities.

Despite its cozy, natural and green image as an alternative to fossil fuels, burning wood — and the emissions it creates — has serious health consequences. Smoke from wood-burning stoves contains fine particulate matter and other dangerous substances like carbon monoxide; in cities, these mix with pollution from traffic to form a lethal combination, exacerbating the risks of asthma and heart failure.

That’s putting cities across Europe in a bind, as they’ve committed to ambitious targets to go climate-neutral and significantly lower pollution. And instead of moving away from wood burning, high energy prices caused by the Ukraine war have prompted many households to adopt the form of heating.

The problem is acute in London, where smoke from wood-burning stoves adds to the already high levels of vehicle pollution, causing severe pollution hot spots.

With emissions on the rise, Mayor Sadiq Khan earlier this month unveiled new planning guidance that requires zero particulate emissions for new and refurbished developments, effectively banning the installation of wood-burning stoves in these developments.

The move is seen as an “example of how you can kind of do a step change to essentially banning them” in new developments, said Tessa Bartholomew-Good, campaign lead at Global Action Plan, an environmental NGO.

But it’s also sparked a call for broader action, including from Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, mother of nine-year-old Ella, the first person whose death from an asthma attack was officially linked to air pollution. She lived in a pollution hot spot.

Kissi-Debrah has called for a complete ban on the use of wood-burning stoves in the capital, arguing that while they might make sense in other parts of the country, they’re worsening the city’s already desperate air quality.

London is not alone in looking for ways to curb wood-burning stoves, with cities across Europe wrestling with similar trends and campaigners lamenting that the energy crisis has undone years-long efforts to convince people to ditch firewood.

It’s as if the last decade of progress was “lost within a year,” said Kåre Press-Kristensen, senior adviser on air quality and climate at the NGO Green Transition Denmark. “It’s kind of back to the Stone Age campfire — just in our living room.” 

Trial and error

Precise figures on the increase in wood burning in cities are difficult to come by, but the cumulative evidence points to a dramatic increase. 

The U.K. government on Tuesday released new data showing that particulate matter pollution from wood burning in homes has doubled over the past decade. Data from the country’s Stove Industry Alliance showed a 66 percent increase in stove sales between July and September compared to the same period in 2021.

Austria’s demand for chimney sweeps increased by a factor of four to five, according to the Federal Guild Master of Chimney Sweeps. In Germany, official statistics from December show that prices for firewood, wood pellets or other solid fuels increased by 96 percent in November 2022, compared to the same month the previous year. 

Researchers warn that the increase will be costly — both in terms of health impacts and public expenses.

The fine particulate matter, PM 2.5, released by wood burning has been shown to “flood” the home and impact on the community when released into the air outside.

Data from consultancy CE Delft found the health-related costs of outdoor air pollution caused by wood-burning stoves comes in at nearly €9 billion in the EU and U.K. The cost is particularly high in some countries such as Italy, where wood-burning stoves make up 75 percent of the total health costs of pollution from domestic heating and cooking.

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The Killer In The Kitchen

The health-related social costs of outdoor air pollution due to domestic heating and cooking in the EU and U.K. totaled €29 billion in 2018. Most of these impacts occur in urban areas. Several factors, including the fuels and heating technologies used and the amount of energy consumed, can explain the differences between countries.

Direct* health-related costs per household due to residential heating and cooking in urban and rural areas, in euros per year.

Source: POLITICO EU by cedelft.eu

Average health-related cost per household of technique-fuel combinations for heating in the EU and the U.K., in euros per year.

*Direct costs relate to direct emissions that arise at home from fossil fuels and biomass-based techniques. Indirect emissions are caused by electricity and heat production; it is unclear whether they occur in urban or rural areas and they are excluded from the chart.

SOURCE: Kortekand et al. (2022)

The report calculated that using a wood-burning stove leads to some €750 in annual health costs from pollution per household — compared to €210 for a diesel car.

With full-on bans out of reach in most cities, policymakers’ options for curtailing the use of wood-burning stoves are limited.

“Currently, there are no legal grounds to ban wood burning completely,” said Eva Oosters, vice mayor for environment and emissions-free transport in the Dutch city of Utrecht. Instead, the city is focused on trying to “encourage people to choose a healthier and cleaner environment.”

In December 2021, it implemented a subsidy for people to remove or replace their stove with a less polluting one. The scheme proved popular, but the city decided to scrap it this year, only providing a subsidy to remove stoves completely. 

Oslo, which ran a similar scheme, also changed its approach, after research showed that emissions levels remained high — potentially because people used the new stoves more frequently than the old ones. The city is now spending more resources on longer-term measures aimed at lowering energy use and making alternative energy sources more affordable.

“We are giving grants to improve energy efficiency in buildings, and we have district heating systems over large portions of the city — that is how you give people real [alternatives] to wood burning,” said Oslo’s Vice Mayor for Environment and Transport Sirin Stav.

For EU cities, there’s an additional hurdle.

Patrick Huth, senior expert at Environmental Action Germany, said discussions in Berlin around setting stricter requirements for wood-burning stoves come up against an awkward fact: Despite the additional pollution, Germany is still meeting the air quality limit values for particulate matter set by the EU.

“This is a huge problem, because if the air quality limit values are met, then there’s no pressure on cities to do more to make stricter emission limit values or to implement bans for this kind of pollution source,” he said. 

Brussels has proposed tightening the bloc’s air quality guidelines but the new limits are still twice as high as the latest recommendations from the World Health Organization.

Behavior change

Adding to the challenge for cities is a lack of awareness about the health impacts associated with wood burning. Most people don’t realize their stoves are dangerous to the health of their families and neighborhoods — and don’t enjoy being lectured.

“Educating people about the links between wood burning, air pollution and health — without judgment — is an essential step toward behavior change, regulation and supporting a transition to other energy sources for those who need it,” said Rachel Pidgeon from Impact on Urban Health, a nonprofit that helps cities tackle issues like air pollution.

But cities that launch information and behavior change campaigns face a tough audience, especially when discussing potential bans on wood burning in densely populated areas. 

In Norway, people have reacted “very negatively to our claims,” said Susana Lopez-Aparicio, the lead scientist on the Norwegian Institute for Air Research’s report. “[Wood burning] is very connected with Norwegian culture.”

People who burn wood are “tightly attached to it,” said Gary Fuller, senior lecturer in air quality measurement at Imperial College London, pointing to research that found users were not swayed when presented with results from pollution sensors.

They also tend to be relatively affluent and choose to burn logs not only because of high energy prices but because of the cozy social atmosphere it creates, according to research by Kantar for the British government.

That makes habits hard to shift, Fuller predicted. “Being able to change this behavior, just by information, is going to be really challenging.”

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Source: El País, Model of a methane tanker, with the Chinese flag in the background. DADO RUVIC (REUTERS)

LNG: the three letters that have forever changed the European energy paradigm…

Liquefied natural gas, which arrives frozen by ship, already covers 40% of European needs, a figure that will continue to grow. Russia has practically no chance of becoming the EU's main supplier again.

El País by IGNACIO FARIZA

Madrid - 20 FEB 2023

Europe is approaching the sad anniversary of the day it woke up as a different Europe. The Russian offensive, even before the first light of dawn broke over Kiev on 24 February, shattered much more than diplomatic relations between powers. With the first bombs falling on Ukrainian soil, decades of European subservience to cheap gas from the East were also blown apart.

Moscow was breaking with its biggest and most loyal customer, perhaps forever: almost 12 months later, although Russian LNG tankers continue to dock, fuel arrivals by pipeline from Russia are now minimal. The Eurasian giant is beginning to feel the impact of the sanctions, having to look to Asia for its livelihood. And the thesis that this new status quo - more expensive, logistically much more complex and more damaging to the environment, but also more secure from the point of view of security of supply - is here to stay is gaining ground in the European upper echelons.

The EU has been forced to completely turn around its sources of supply in record time. From having a direct supply almost on its doorstep, it has gone from having to fetch it from countries as far away as the United States, Qatar and Nigeria. Three letters - LNG: liquefied natural gas - have made this unprecedented reconfiguration possible: almost 40% of the gas consumed by the EU was of this type - that which arrives by ship in a frozen state - 60% more than a year earlier.

Shipments from the US, which is making a killing and has replaced Russia as the bloc's main supplier, have more than doubled. And those from Norway, Egypt, Trinidad and Tobago and Peru, although starting from a much lower level, have also shot up. This, however, is only an appetizer of what is to come: far from being a one-day phenomenon, these three acronyms, practically unknown to the general public, will become part of the collective imagination for decades to come.

"It is a trend that will continue," confirms Xi Nan, senior vice-president of the specialised consultancy Rystad Energy. "LNG was and still is the only way to replace Gazprom," adds Emmanuel Dubois-Pelerin, senior director at ratings firm S&P. For decades, he emphasises, the Russian gas company "was not only the largest source of gas for Europe but also the only one with very short-term flexibility". For example, from one month to the next in a cold winter. "All other sources - pipelines from Norway, Algeria and Azerbaijan - are maxed out, and EU and UK production continues to shrink inexorably," he says.

Russia out of the picture

Even if the war ends soon - something that virtually no observer envisages - Russia's chances of regaining its hegemonic position as Europe's leading gas supplier are minimal, if not non-existent. The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, once the main channel for Russian fuel into the EU, has further complicated matters, but it is not the biggest problem: although costly, it is repairable. Diplomatic and commercial ties between the Eurasian giant and Russia are less so: all consulted analysts believe that even if Vladimir Putin's regime falls, Russia's pre-eminence is history.

"I don't think Russia will play that role in the future: in the coming years, Europe will rely on LNG and renewables," says Rystad Energy's Nan. "Our baseline scenario is that pipelines will be marginal in the future, staying close to the current level," outlines Dubois-Pelerin. Just one-sixth as much gas transits through them as in 2019, just before the pandemic and, above all, before the invasion of Ukraine. "Perhaps the dependence has shifted and it is now Russia that depends on Europe to maintain the influx of foreign exchange," adds the S&P analyst.

Germany ushers in a new era without Russian gas

"The destruction of Nord Stream and the construction of regasification terminals to compensate for the loss of Russian gas mean that LNG is now fully integrated into Europe's energy infrastructure," notes Henning Gloystein, Energy Director at risk consultancy Eurasia. "At least for the next 20 years.

The capacity of European regasification plants will soar by 25% between 2021 and 2023, according to calculations by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Neither these gigantic investments - each of these regasification plants, of which more than a dozen are planned, both on the Atlantic and Mediterranean sides, cost hundreds of millions of euros - nor the new supply contracts signed with companies and countries outside Moscow, also worth millions, can be easily reversed, even if the war were to end soon. This, in any case, is something that no one foresees.

“Russia," Gloystein says, "has lost all its reputation".

Gas under 50 euros

In contrast to the hecatomb that has been feared for months, the winter that is about to end has been much calmer than even the most optimistic observer could have imagined. Europe's gas reservoirs are at two-thirds of capacity, double the level of a year ago and 60% higher than the average of the last decade. Not even in 2020, when the virus plunged consumption to historic lows, did Europe have as much gas in storage as today. And that has helped to reduce - and a lot - the pressure on prices. Gas prices in the Old Continent closed last week below 50 euros per megawatt hour (MWh), an unprecedented level in a year and a half.

From this point, however, the downward margin is slim: LNG is, by definition, much more expensive than the one that arrives by pipe. This is because it entails unavoidable liquefaction costs - to change from a gaseous to a liquid state and freeze it -, transport costs - in some cases, tens of thousands of kilometres - and regasification costs - to return it to a gaseous state so that it can be consumed again. The levels of 20 euros per MWh of a couple of years ago, when most of the gas was piped from Russia, are unbeatable: now, with luck, the floor will be in the region of 30 or 40 euros.

The return of China - along with Japan, the world's largest importer of liquefied gas - also promises strong emotions. "Europe will have to compete with the rest of the world and particularly with Asia," predicts Jean-Baptiste Dubreuil of the IEA. As with any struggle, this fight between giants will leave third countries in the lurch: the lower-income emerging countries, which are being pushed out of a market in which they cannot compete. The best example is Pakistan - a giant usually out of the spotlight despite being, mind you, the fifth most populous country in the world - which, given the high cost of LNG, is going to quadruple its electricity generation with coal. A logical move in purely economic terms, but a disastrous one in environmental terms.

If a few months ago it was thought that the big bottleneck would be the regasification plants, now all eyes are on the opposite side: the liquefaction trains. "The global market will remain tense until 2025 due to the lack of investment in this type of project during the pandemic″, predicts Nan. Knowing that natural gas - now dominant in industry, heating and even in the electricity matrix of many Western countries - will eventually be eclipsed by renewables, green hydrogen and biomethane, no one wants to make a false move.

The opportunity for exporters is as great as the risk of embarking on pharaonic investments that may become obsolete in a few years. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) forecasts that Europe's appetite for LNG will start to fall, little by little, from 2024 onwards. Demand could still be strong in 2023, but is set to fall as EU climate and energy security policies reduce gas demand by at least 40% by 2030," reads its latest monograph, published this week. "Europe's ambitious energy transition targets mean that much of the new [regasification] capacity could go unused."

Winter over, what about the next one?

While this winter is not yet over, the spotlight is already on the next one. In the coming months, Europe will have to deal with an added problem: unlike last spring - the season when the Old Continent takes advantage of the opportunity to refill its tanks - this year the task will have to be done on its own, without the wild card of piped imports from Russia. And even with the LNG boom, in December the IEA was forecasting a shortfall of around 15% of demand by 2023.

Two months later, the agency's head of natural gas analysis is downplaying the pessimism considerably. Since then, Dubreuil writes by email, lower demand - mainly due to milder-than-usual weather - has "significantly moderated the pressure". Still, he says, this apparent improvement in the outlook "should not be a distraction" from further reducing demand. Next year, he insists, "gas supply will remain tight, and the increase in LNG supply will not be sufficient to replace" all that was piped in from Russia. In a stress scenario - a cold winter, limited LNG availability and zero imports from Russia - the EU would face a shortfall of just under 10% of demand, according to his updated calculations.

Even more optimistic is Eurasia's Gloystein, who already sees the Rubicon of next winter as crossed: "Europe has contracted enough gas to get through this and next winter. The risk of fuel shortages has been mitigated". All, of course, at the cost of a huge amount of money. Not only because replacing piped gas with LNG is more expensive: double at best, but it can be more than tenfold, as was evident last summer, when it reached around 350 euros per MWh. "There is nothing wrong with taking a breather, but let's not be surprised when the crisis returns. Let it not be a rude awakening", warned Brookings Institution researcher Samantha Gross a few days ago. A warning to the navigators that should not be forgotten.

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News round-up, Friday, February 17, 2023.

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Quote of the day…

Governments risk expending so much money and attention on merely coping with the impacts of climate change that they neglect efforts to reduce global emissions, exacerbating the crisis.

The Washington Post

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Most read…

Artificial Intelligence may diagnose dementia in a day

Scientists are testing an artificial-intelligence system thought to be capable of diagnosing dementia after a single brain scan.

BBC by Pallab Ghosh, science correspondent 

Bruce Willis diagnosed with dementia, says family

…Family of Die Hard and Pulp Fiction actor, 67, releases statement to share diagnosis following retirement from acting owing to aphasia”

The Guardian

Beware a climate ‘doom loop,’ where crisis is harder to solve, report says

Humanity has a ‘brief and rapidly closing window’ to avoid a hotter, deadly future, U.N. climate report says

The washington pos By Leo Sands

Vietnam to further delay rules for multi-billion-dollar wind power - business group

That is despite EU companies' pressure for swift regulatory progress, according to public recommendations and an internal document about this week's meetings seen by Reuters.

Reuters by Francesco Guarascio

When Americans Lost Faith in the News

Half a century ago, most of the public said they trusted the news media. Today, most say they don’t. What happened to the power of the press?

The New Yorker by Louis Menand

Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House?

Trump’s performative macho is scaring voters in both parties away from women candidates.

The New Yorker by Susan B. Glasser

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Accelerating the future of energy, together. Is it possible?

Can we power the things we love and green the planet at the same time? AES is the next-generation energy company with over four decades of experience helping businesses transition to clean, renewable energy. Isn't it time to connect to your energy future?

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

Sourrce by MERCADO Dominican Republic

28 JUNE 2022

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

Armando Rodríguez, vice president and executive director of Seaboard, joins us for this Mercado Interview to talk about the company's contributions to the Dominican Republic's electricity sector. "Our plants have been strategically located by the authorities of the electricity sector to make it possible to reduce blackouts in Santo Domingo and save foreign currency for all Dominicans," he explains.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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Bruce Willis diagnosed with dementia, says family

…Family of Die Hard and Pulp Fiction actor, 67, releases statement to share diagnosis following retirement from acting owing to aphasia”

The Guardian

Artificial Intelligence may diagnose dementia in a day

Scientists are testing an artificial-intelligence system thought to be capable of diagnosing dementia after a single brain scan.

BBC by Pallab Ghosh, science correspondent 

Published, 10 August 2021

It may also be able to predict whether the condition will remain stable for many years, slowly deteriorate or need immediate treatment.

Currently, it can take several scans and tests to diagnose dementia.

The researchers involved say earlier diagnoses with their system could greatly improve patient outcomes.

Bruce Willis diagnosed with dementia, says family

Identify patterns

"If we intervene early, the treatments can kick in early and slow down the progression of the disease and at the same time avoid more damage," Prof Zoe Kourtzi, of Cambridge University and a fellow of national centre for AI and data science The Alan Turing Institute, said.

"And it's likely that symptoms occur much later in life or may never occur."

Prof Kourtzi's system compares brain scans of those worried they might have dementia with those of thousands of dementia patients and their relevant medical records.

The algorithm can identify patterns in the scans even expert neurologists cannot see and match them to patient outcomes in its database.

Memory clinics

In pre-clinical tests, it has been able to diagnose dementia, years before symptoms develop, even when there is no obvious signs of damage on the brain scan.

The trial, at Addenbrooke's Hospital and other memory clinics around the country, will test whether it works in a clinical setting, alongside conventional ways of diagnosing dementia.

In the first year, about 500 patients are expected to participate.

Their results will go to their doctors, who can, if necessary, advise on the course of treatment.

Denis and Penelope Clark want to know how his condition will progress, so they can plan for their future

Consultant neurologist Dr Tim Rittman, who is leading the study, with neuroscientists at Cambridge University, called the artificial-intelligence system a "fantastic development".

"These set of diseases are really devastating for people," he said.

"So when I am delivering this information to a patient, anything I can do to be more confident about the diagnosis, to give them more information about the likely progression of the disease to help them plan their lives is a great thing to be able to do."

Sometimes struggling

Among the first to participate in the trial, Denis Clark, 75, retired from his job as an executive for a meat company five years ago.

Last year, his wife, Penelope, noticed he was sometimes struggling with his memory.

And they are now concerned he is developing dementia.

Denis tries to describe his symptoms but Penelope interjects to say he finds it hard to explain what is happening.

The couple are worried about having to sell their home to fund Denis's care.

So Penelope is relieved they should not have to wait long for a diagnosis and an indication of how any dementia is likely to progress.

Normally, Denis might need several brain scans to see whether he has dementia

"We could then plan financially," she said.

"We would know whether as a couple we could have a few holidays before things get so bad that I can't take Denis on holiday."

Mental problems

Another of Dr Rittman's patients, Mark Thompson, 57, who began having memory lapses 10 months ago, before the trial of the artificial-intelligence system began, said it would have made a big difference to him had it been available.

"I had test after test after test and at least four scans before I was diagnosed," he said.

"The medical team was marvellous and did everything they could to get to the bottom of what was wrong with me.

"But the uncertainty was causing me more... mental problems than any caused by the condition.

"Was it a tumour? Would they need to operate? It caused me so much stress not knowing what was wrong with me."

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Image: Germán & Co

Beware a climate ‘doom loop,’ where crisis is harder to solve, report says

Humanity has a ‘brief and rapidly closing window’ to avoid a hotter, deadly future, U.N. climate report says

The washington pos By Leo Sands

February 16, 2023

LONDON — The devastating effects of climate change on Earth could become so overwhelming that they undermine humanity’s capacity to tackle climate change’s root causes, researchers warned Wednesday.

They are calling it a “doom loop.”

The self-reinforcing dynamic, outlined in a report jointly published Wednesday by two British think tanks, warns of a spiral effect:

Governments risk expending so much money and attention on merely coping with the impacts of climate change that they neglect efforts to reduce global emissions, exacerbating the crisis.

“We’re pointing to a potential situation where the symptom of the climate and ecological crisis — the storms, the potential food crises, and things like this — start to distract us from the root causes,” report author Laurie Laybourn, an associate fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank, said in an interview. “You get a feedback that starts to run out of control.”

The report’s authors do not believe that climate change has already triggered a global “doom loop” that is irreversible, but warn that in some places the dynamic could begin to take hold.

“We could get to the point where societies are faced with relentless disasters and crises, and all the other problems that the climate and ecological crisis is bringing, and will increasingly distract them from delivering decarbonization,” said Laybourn.

Humanity has a ‘brief and rapidly closing window’ to avoid a hotter, deadly future, U.N. climate report says

One example of the doom loop is economic. As African nations spend increasing sums on simply mitigating escalating climate change crises, they have less money to invest in reducing long term emissions targets, Laybourn said.

According to the African Development Bank, the impact of climate change is already costing the entire continent between 5 and 15 percent of its annual GDP growth, per capita.

“Those costs just become even more insurmountable,” Laybourn said. “In that situation, you are eroding the ability of countries across Africa and other parts of the world to be able to deliver more prosperous — and of course sustainable — conditions.”

It could make it more difficult for African nations to raise the $1.6 trillion they have agreed to spend between 2022 and 2030 toward meeting their climate action pledges.

Climate change made the economically devastating floods across West Africa last summer around 80 times more probable to occur, according to an analysis in November.

Around the world, a report published in 2022 in the journal Nature found that each additional ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere cost the equivalent of $185, when the economic toll of deadly heat waves, crop-killing droughts and rising seas linked to climate change is taken into account. These costs add up quickly, the authors behind Wednesday’s report say, and will deplete governments of the economic resources they need to tackle climate change’s root causes.

Costs of climate change far surpass government estimates, study says

Humanity has already unleashed more than a trillion tons of carbon dioxide since the start of the Industrial Revolution, driving up global temperatures by more than a degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Within the next decade, global average temperatures could reach 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels — a threshold scientists say is critical to avoid irreversible changes.

It is still technically possible, and even economically viable, for nations to curb carbon pollution on the scale that’s required, according to the United Nations-assembled panel of 278 top climate experts. However, the authors of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2022 report warn that “it cannot be achieved through incremental change.”

In Europe, Laybourn warned that climate change could force more and more refugees to flee increasingly uninhabitable homelands, triggering political backlashes in wealthier host nations — and further distracting voters from climate change, which he says is the issue’s root cause.

By the year 2100, extreme heat events will make parts of Asia and Africa uninhabitable for up to 600 million people, the United Nations and Red Cross warned in October.

“This doom dynamic could manifest itself in things like a more nativist politics,” Laybourn said. In “a more ecologically destabilized world, it’s more conflicted, with more people on the move.”

However, even if humanity begins to enter a “doom loop," it isn’t doomed, researchers say. Laybourn believes that it is still possible for humanity to extricate itself from it — because societies, he believes, ultimately do have control over how they respond to destabilizing crises.

“The psychological element of this is the fundamental quantity,” Laybourn said, pointing to the way in which individuals dramatically relearned everyday habits in the face of the covid-19 pandemic, over a short period of time, potentially saving many lives.

“Throughout history, in moments of destabilization — you can see the doom dynamic. You can also see a virtuous circle as well, where certain events, shocks, create positive social movements,” he said. "It can happen in astonishingly short periods of time.”

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Power-generating windmill turbines are pictured at a wind park in Bac Lieu province, Vietnam, July 8, 2017.

Vietnam to further delay rules for multi-billion-dollar wind power - business group

Reuters by Francesco Guarascio

HANOI, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Vietnam may not have a legal framework to regulate offshore wind farms until next year, a European Union business representative said on Thursday, a delay that could stall billions of dollars of foreign investment in the sector.

Vietnam has big offshore wind power potential given the strong winds and shallow waters near coastal densely populated areas, according to the World Bank Group, which estimates the sector could add at least $50 billion to its economy.

The Southeast Asian country's most recent draft power development plan from December, reviewed by Reuters, targets production of 7 gigawatt from offshore wind by 2030 from zero output now.

Its approval has been repeatedly delayed. It could now be further postponed, Minh Nguyen, vice president of the European chamber of commerce in Vietnam, told a conference on Thursday.

Hinging on its adoption is sizable investment in wind farms, including much of the $15.5 billion pledged by G7 countries in December for green energy transition projects.

Latest Updates

Minh said progress depended on new legislation on use of marine space for military, shipping or other purposes, which was not expected before October, citing talks between Vietnamese officials and EU businessmen earlier this week.

That is despite EU companies' pressure for swift regulatory progress, according to public recommendations and an internal document about this week's meetings seen by Reuters.

Some diplomats and experts say Vietnam is also keen to scrutinise Chinese investment in the sector for national security reasons, fearing windfarms could be used for surveillance.

Vietnam's foreign, industry and environment ministries and China's embassy in Vietnam did not immediately respond to separate requests for comment.

A delay would come as little surprise to investors in Vietnam, where bureaucratic and legislative delays are common.

Some are sanguine, however, confident that pilot projects could be approved quickly, even before legislation passes, while others see it as unlikely wind turbine makers would review investment plans given Vietnam's location and clout as a regional manufacturing powerhouse.

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Image: Germán & Co

When Americans Lost Faith in the News

Half a century ago, most of the public said they trusted the news media. Today, most say they don’t. What happened to the power of the press?

The New Yorker by Louis Menand

January 30, 2023

When the Washington Post unveiled the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” on February 17, 2017, people in the news business made fun of it. “Sounds like the next Batman movie,” the New York Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet, said. But it was already clear, less than a month into the Trump Administration, that destroying the credibility of the mainstream press was a White House priority, and that this would include an unabashed, and almost gleeful, policy of lying and denying. The Post kept track of the lies. The paper calculated that by the end of his term the President had lied 30,573 times.

Almost as soon as Donald Trump took office, he started calling the news media “the enemy of the American people.” For a time, the White House barred certain news organizations, including the Times, CNN, Politico, and the Los Angeles Times, from briefings, and suspended the credentials of a CNN correspondent, Jim Acosta, who was regarded as combative by the President. “Fake news” became a standard White House response—frequently the only White House response—to stories that did not make the President look good. There were many such stories.

Suspicion is, for obvious reasons, built into the relationship between the press and government officials, but, normally, both parties have felt an interest in maintaining at least the appearance of cordiality. Reporters need access so that they can write their stories, and politicians would like those stories to be friendly. Reporters also want to come across as fair and impartial, and officials want to seem coöperative and transparent. Each party is willing to accept a degree of hypocrisy on the part of the other.

With Trump, all that changed. Trump is rude. Cordiality is not a feature of his brand. And there is no coöperation in the Trump world, because everything is an agon. Trump waged war on the press, and he won, or nearly won. He persuaded millions of Americans not to believe anything they saw or heard in the non-Trumpified media, including, ultimately, the results of the 2020 Presidential election.

The press wasn’t silenced in the Trump years. The press was discredited, at least among Trump supporters, and that worked just as well. It was censorship by other means. Back in 1976, even after Vietnam and Watergate, seventy-two per cent of the public said they trusted the news media. Today, the figure is thirty-four per cent. Among Republicans, it’s fourteen per cent. If “Democracy Dies in Darkness” seemed a little alarmist in 2017, the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, made it seem prescient. Democracy really was at stake.

That we need a free press for our democracy to work is a belief as old as our democracy. Hence the First Amendment. Without the free circulation of information and opinion, voters will be operating in ignorance when they choose whom to vote for and what policies to support. But what if the information is bad? What if you can’t trust the reporter? What if there’s no such thing as “the facts”?

As Michael Schudson pointed out in “Discovering the News” (1978), the notion that good journalism is “objective”—that is, nonpartisan and unopinionated—emerged only around the start of the twentieth century. Schudson thought that it arose as a response to growing skepticism about the whole idea of stable and reliable truths. The standard of objectivity, as he put it, “was not the final expression of a belief in facts but the assertion of a method designed for a world in which even facts could not be trusted. . . . Journalists came to believe in objectivity, to the extent that they did, because they wanted to, needed to, were forced by ordinary human aspiration to seek escape from their own deep convictions of doubt and drift.” In other words, objectivity was a problematic concept from the start.

The classic statement of the problem is Walter Lippmann’s book “Public Opinion,” published a hundred and one years ago. Lippmann’s critique remains relevant today—the Columbia Journalism School mounted a four-day conference on “Public Opinion” last fall, and people found that there was still plenty to talk about. Lippmann’s argument was that journalism is not a profession. You don’t need a license or an academic credential to practice the trade. All sorts of people call themselves journalists. Are all of them providing the public with reliable and disinterested news goods?

Yet journalists are quick to defend anyone who uncovers and disseminates information, as long as it’s genuine, by whatever means and with whatever motives. Julian Assange is possibly a criminal. He certainly intervened in the 2016 election, allegedly with Russian help, to damage the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. But top newspaper editors have insisted that what Assange does is protected by the First Amendment, and the Committee to Protect Journalists has protested the charges against him.

Lippmann had another point: journalism is not a public service; it’s a business. The most influential journalists today are employees of large corporations, and their work product is expected to be profitable. The notion that television news is, or ever was, a loss leader is a myth. In the nineteen-sixties, the nightly “Huntley-Brinkley Report” was NBC’s biggest money-maker. “60 Minutes,” which débuted on CBS in 1968, ranked among the top ten most watched shows on television for twenty-three years in a row.

And the business is all about the eyeballs. When ratings drop, and with them advertising revenues, correspondents change, anchors change, coverage changes. News, especially but not only cable news, is curated for an audience. So, obviously, is the information published on social media, where the algorithm selects for the audience’s political preferences. It is hard to be “objective” and sell news at the same time.

What is the track record of the press since Lippmann’s day? In “City of Newsmen: Public Lies and Professional Secrets in Cold War Washington” (Chicago), Kathryn J. McGarr weighs the performance of the Washington press corps during the first decades of the Cold War. She shows, by examining archived correspondence, that reporters in Washington knew perfectly well that Administrations were misleading them about national-security matters—about whether the United States was flying spy planes over the Soviet Union, for example, or training exiles to invade Cuba and depose Fidel Castro. To the extent that there was an agenda concealed by official claims of “containing Communist expansion”—to the extent that Middle East policy was designed to preserve Western access to oil fields, or that Central American policy was designed to make the region safe for United Fruit—reporters were not fooled.

So why didn’t they report what they knew? McGarr, a historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, thinks it’s because the people who covered Washington for the wire services and the major dailies had an ideology. They were liberal internationalists. Until the United States intervened militarily in Vietnam—the Marines waded ashore there in 1965—that was the ideology of American élites. Like the government, and like the leaders of philanthropies such as the Ford Foundation and cultural institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, newspaper people believed in what they saw as the central mission of Cold War policy: the defense of the North Atlantic community of nations. They supported policies that protected and promoted the liberal values in the name of which the United States had gone to war against Hitler.

Many members of the Washington press, including editors and publishers, had served in the government during the Second World War—in the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the C.I.A.), in the Office of War Information, and in other capacities in Washington and London. They had been part of the war effort, and their sense of duty persisted after the war ended. Defending democracy was not just the government’s job. It was the press’s job, too.

When reporters were in possession of information that the American government wanted to keep secret, they therefore asked themselves whether publishing it would damage the Cold War mission. “Fighting for peace remained central to the diplomatic press corps’ conception of its responsibilities,” McGarr says. “Quality reporting meant being an advocate not for the government but for ‘the Peace.’ ”

There was another reason for caution: fear of nuclear war. After the Soviets developed an atomic weapon, in 1949, and until the Test Ban Treaty of 1963, end-of-the-world nuclear anxiety was widespread, and newsmen shared it. The Cold War was a balance-of-power war. That’s what the unofficial doctrine of the American government, “containment,” meant: keep things as they are. Whatever tipped the scale in the wrong direction might unleash the bomb, and so newspapers were careful about what they published.

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Source: The New Yorker. Nikki Haley is the only woman to seriously figure on the longlist of potential Republican candidates this election cycle. Photograph by Win McNamee

Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House?

Trump’s performative macho is scaring voters in both parties away from women candidates.

The New Yorker by Susan B. Glasser

February 16, 2023

Will America ever have a woman President? We’re closer to that than at any time in history, but what worries me most about this tired old question is that hardly anyone seems to be asking it anymore. On Tuesday, the California Democrat Dianne Feinstein—who, at the age of eighty-nine, is the oldest member of the Senate—made official what had long been evident: she will not seek reëlection next year. A host of ambitious younger Democratic politicians are already looking to run, including the Trump-prosecuting congressman Adam Schiff and the progressive favorite Katie Porter. In recent years, Feinstein has become something of an awkward symbol of Washington’s new gerontocracy, an officeholder clearly past her prime who refused to be hustled off the stage before she was ready. (It took a long time: my colleague Jane Mayer reported in 2020 on the painful effort.)

But I’ll always remember Feinstein as she was when she arrived in Washington in 1992—dubbed “the year of the woman”—after her victory and that of three other female Senate candidates. On the campaign trail, Feinstein had joked that “two per cent might be good for the fat content in milk, but it’s not good enough for women’s representation in the United States Senate.” The wins that year by Feinstein and Barbara Boxer meant that California was the first state to be represented in the Senate by two women, and altogether women made up seven per cent of the chamber after that election. Which, in truth, was still pathetic, but at least, it seemed, there was progress. Feinstein, a former mayor of San Francisco and a formidable figure who was poised to lead in Washington, embodied the feminist moment. Anything, even the White House, seemed attainable.

On paper, of course, the gender imbalance in American politics has changed substantially—and for the better—in the decades since then. Women are now twenty-five per cent of the Senate and twenty-seven per cent of the House. There are twelve women governors, and women are, for the first time, a majority of the Cabinet. Kamala Harris, who served for three years alongside Feinstein and continued the tradition of an all-female Senate delegation for California, is today the first female Vice-President. Given the actuarial realities facing Joe Biden, America’s first octogenarian chief executive, Harris stands a very real chance of becoming President. (To be fair, the actual actuarial table used by the Social Security Administration gives an eighty-year-old male such as Biden a life expectancy of 8.43 years.)

And yet it sure doesn’t seem like a moment of female ascendance. Roe v. Wade is no more. Feminism—whether first-, second-, or third-wave—is barely mentioned in the national political debate. Democrats every few years talk about resurrecting the Equal Rights Amendment; they haven’t slash can’t. After all the activism, all the #MeToo revelations, women currently make up ten per cent of Fortune 500 C.E.O.s—which is both a record high and ridiculously low.

Harris, meanwhile, could become President at any moment, but the thrust of many conversations in Democratic politics these days is a persistent worry about her weakness as a potential candidate if Biden, willingly or otherwise, does not run again. A deeply reported take by Jonathan Martin in Politico on Thursday makes the point that high-level Democrats don’t want Biden to run again but are afraid of saying so because their greater fear is Harris becoming the 2024 nominee and not being able to win in the general election. A recent Times piece was even harsher, quoting dozens of Democrats as saying that “she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country.”

The prospects for a female breakthrough are hardly better among Republicans. On Tuesday, Nikki Haley, formally launched her candidacy for the 2024 G.O.P. Presidential nomination. South Carolina’s first woman governor before serving as Trump’s first Ambassador to the United Nations, Haley is the only woman to seriously figure on the longlist of potential Republican candidates this cycle, but in her announcement speech on Wednesday she treaded cautiously on the subject of her background. She is, after all, a daughter of Indian immigrants running in a party in which immigrant bashing is de rigueur. “This is not about identity politics,” Haley said. “I don’t believe in that. And I don’t believe in glass ceilings, either.” With polls showing her in the single digits, most pundits give her close to zero chance of winning. There is “no clear rationale for her candidacy,” the Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial. “Nikki Haley Will Not Be the Next President,” the Times opined in a headline, conveying the sentiments of a panel of ten columnists whom it convened to assess her candidacy.

Notably, the brutal appraisals of her prospects hardly mention her gender, except to note it as an example of her un-Trumpiness in a Republican Party that has yet to repudiate the former President. The commentators are more concerned, perhaps understandably, about her wildly flexible ideology and her hawkish platform’s decidedly 2015 vibe. Is this what counts as progress?

In the video launching her campaign, Haley did offer a classic line from the I’m-a-woman-but-I’m-tough school of political advertising, one that could have been delivered by the original Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, in the nineteen-eighties. “You should know this about me,” Haley says in the video, “I don’t put up with bullies, and, when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.” Some clichés, it seems, will never die. I would, however, love to see Haley follow through on that threat with a certain name-calling former President.

At a moment when both parties, for very different reasons, seem to be hurtling toward an outcome that few voters want—a rerun of the 2020 election, between two geriatric white men—Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign looms large over the question of when, how, or whether a woman can finally shatter that ultimate glass ceiling.

In 2018, the Pew Research Center asked Americans whether they believed that they would see a woman President in their lifetime. Sixty-eight per cent said yes, which was lower than the previous time the question was asked, in 2014, when seventy-three per cent thought that would happen. Clinton’s defeat sent hopes, at least temporarily, into reverse.

This is the context for the current, paradoxical moment: expectations remain high, but so, too, do fears that a woman simply can’t win. There’s a fatalism to the question, post-Clinton, that is profoundly depressing. How naïve, now, all that “year of the woman” cheerleading seems. My 1992 self would not be thrilled by the fact that it took women three decades to get to a quarter of the Congress and one embattled female Vice-President.

The reality is that American politics since Trump beat Clinton has taken a turn back to the macho. The rise of a would-be strongman in the Republican Party has made performative displays of aggressive masculinity the prevailing style in the rebranded G.O.P. Whether Trump himself returns as the nominee or not, the up-and-comers in the Party are a bunch of confrontational men. They are brawlers like Ron DeSantis or Twitter trolls like Ted Cruz.

The Trump factor hangs heavy over the Democrats as well. I’ve heard many of them voice the conviction that Trump’s election proved how deeply rooted American sexism remains. And, yes, I know that for everyone who believes that, there is someone else is who convinced it’s just that Clinton was a terrible candidate or that Harris is an awful Vice-President or that it’s simply not the right time for a woman. And that, in the end, is the point: so long as the threat of Trump winning another term in the White House hangs over the country, many Democrats aren’t willing to risk nominating anyone besides another white man to take him on.

“Biden is the guy that can beat Trump,” Joyce Beatty, a senior Black Democratic congresswoman, told Politico. The current President is the only politician, as his departing chief of staff, Ron Klain, reminded my colleague Evan Osnos the other day, who has ever beaten Donald Trump. So, too bad, Kamala Harris and Nikki Haley. Once again, it appears, history will have to wait. 

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News round-up, Thursday, February 16, 2023.

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Quote of the day…

Some already believe that the hybridisation of generative AI and conventional search engines may be the biggest innovation in consumer technology since Apple released its first iPhone. Bing, which has always lived in the shadow of Google (3% and 90% of the world's search engine share, respectively), is for the first time threatening the colour-letter technology company's placid reign.

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Most read…

Why do we keep talking about artificial intelligence?

The fight for ad revenue that is shaping the future of the internet…

Google and Microsoft's headlong rush to launch a search engine you can talk to comes at a time of major change in the tech business.

El País, wtittten in Spanish by MANUEL G. PASCUAL

Translation by Germán & Co

Raquel Welch, actor, sex symbol, dies aged 82

Welch died Wednesday morning following a brief illness, Media Four announced in a statement.

In news

Russia says U.S. should prove it did not destroy Nord Stream

Moscow considers the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines last September "an act of international terrorism" and will not allow it to be swept under the rug, the embassy said in a statement.

Reuter 

Putin is staring at defeat in his gas war with Europe

Mild weather this winter is set to help Europe shrug off Russia’s energy threats next year, too.

POLITICO EU by CHARLIE COOPER

World Bank Group President David Malpass to step down

Climate activists had called for the Trump appointee to be ousted for his climate crisis stance.

Le Monde with AFP

Who Was Pablo Neruda and Why Is His Death a Mystery?

Fifty years on, the true cause of death of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, in the wake of the country’s 1973 coup d’état, has remained in doubt across the world.

In news

Glencore’s coal fudge risks satisfying no one

That highly polluting bonanza presents a dilemma for Nagle. On the one hand, purely financially motivated investors might want him to make even more money by ramping up production. On the other, green investors like Legal & General Investment Management and HSBC Asset Management are pushing to find out more details about how Nagle reconciles his plans with the objectives of the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to the Financial Times. Activist investor Bluebell Capital Partners last year argued that Glencore should spin off the coal division, following in the steps of Anglo American.

Reuters, by Karen Kwok

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Accelerating the future of energy, together. Is it possible?

Can we power the things we love and green the planet at the same time? AES is the next-generation energy company with over four decades of experience helping businesses transition to clean, renewable energy. Isn't it time to connect to your energy future?

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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Why do we keep talking about artificial intelligence?

The fight for ad revenue that is shaping the future of the internet…

Google and Microsoft's headlong rush to launch a search engine you can talk to comes at a time of major change in the tech business.

El País, wtittten in Spanish by MANUEL G. PASCUAL

Translation by Germán & Co

16 FEB 2023

Suddenly, it seems like Google has been wasting its time for the last decade. The great world dominator of search engines has gone in just a few days from being the benchmark technology company in artificial intelligence (AI) to seemingly being overtaken by Microsoft's new proposal. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella last week unveiled a revamped Bing search engine, which will incorporate a chatbot developed by OpenAI, the makers of the famous ChatGPT.

Google counter-programmed Microsoft by announcing a day earlier Bard, its own version of a search engine with intelligent chat. But it was not able to show how it works, not even at a big international press event in Paris two days later, which EL PAÍS attended. The only thing that could be seen there, in fact, took its toll: Bard's recorded example of intelligent search provided incorrect information about the James Webb telescope. Shares in Alphabet, Google's parent company, fell by 8% that day. The markets penalised the mistake, with the Mountain View company seen as improvising a response to Microsoft's attack.

Why all of a sudden so much interest in AI? Because ChatGPT has shown the general public its potential. Although the tool invents content, many thought that, by making certain adjustments, it could revolutionise the search engine experience. It is more pleasant to get information by talking to the machine than by typing in keywords. It is also interesting to be able to ask it to generate texts of a certain complexity, such as summaries, itineraries or essays. Large language models (LLM) make this possible, although their reliability is still in question.

Some already believe that the hybridisation of generative AI and conventional search engines may be the biggest innovation in consumer technology since Apple released its first iPhone. Bing, which has always lived in the shadow of Google (3% and 90% of the world's search engine share, respectively), is for the first time threatening the colour-letter technology company's placid reign.

The elephant in the room

But the frantic race to lead in the development of ever smarter search engines goes beyond riding a wave. Controlling the world's most widely used search engine and web browser has allowed Alphabet and Meta to dominate the global advertising market for more than a decade, bringing in an average annual revenue of $220 billion. This cash windfall has allowed it to buy strategic companies and launch a wide range of projects. Among them, his autonomous car Waymo or Calico, the biotechnology company whose aim is to combat ageing.

This bonanza may be coming to an end. Last year was the first since 2014 in which the sum of Alphabet and Meta accounted for less than 50% of the global advertising market, specifically 48.4%. It is the fifth year in a row that figure has fallen since peaking in 2017 (54.7%), and analysts expect it to fall further. The reasons: TikTok is coming on strong, and is already the search engine of choice for many young people; Amazon is also growing; and Apple, since allowing app tracking to be blocked, has hurt Meta's business.

The great manna of advertising may be running out for Google and Facebook. Facebook decided years ago what its answer to this problem and its inability to attract young audiences was: the metaverse. Google, for its part, has no plan B beyond AI. It has been investing in this technology for decades. That would explain its hasty reaction to Microsoft's gamble.

A rushed race

Nadella has turned Microsoft around in less than a decade. When the executive took the helm of the company in 2014, its revenues depended almost exclusively on Windows and the Office suite. He decided to bet big on cloud services and AI. Azure, the cloud division, is already responsible for a quarter of the group's turnover. Two years ago, Microsoft invested 1 billion in OpenAI, to which this year, after seeing the tremendous success of ChatGPT among the general public, it has added another 10 billion to develop the conversational chatbot that will accompany its search engine.

What has Alphabet done in the meantime? Among other things, it has laid the foundations for the technology from which chatbots draw today, as the company's own executives have been at pains to point out lately. Its Google Brain division and the British company DeepMind, which it acquired in 2014, are among the world's elite in the discipline. As the technology company's CEO, Sundar Pichai, recalled last week, the Transformer research project and its foundational paper, presented in 2017, is the touchstone on which the scientific community has built the so-called advanced generative artificial intelligence.

Bard, Google's bid to make its search engine smart, is a pocket-sized version of LaMDA, one of Google's most advanced linguistic modelling projects. Launched two years ago, LaMDA made international headlines last summer, when engineer Blake Lemoine, who was commissioned to review the ethical underpinnings of the robot's responses, said he thought the AI had gained a conscience. DeepMind, meanwhile, plans to offer a beta version of its own model, which it has dubbed Sparrow, this year.

To deny the effect that ChatGPT's emergence has had on the strategy of the big tech companies is, at this stage, unconvincing. And yet that is what Prabhakar Raghavan, vice president of Alphabet and one of the multinational's most powerful executives, did last week. "We've been following our own roadmap in artificial intelligence development for years. ChatGPT has not influenced us in any way," he said on Wednesday in Paris in a meeting with several media outlets, including EL PAÍS. It is a fact, however, that Google has introduced Bard, but without a launch date. Raghavan himself said he did not have an approximate one: "What matters most to us is to achieve the quality we want the service to have.

The tech industry is very fad-driven. Generative AI is clearly the hype of the moment. In addition to Microsoft and Google, Chinese tech giant Baidu also announced last week that it is working on its own version of a search engine/intelligent chatbot hybrid. Meta, meanwhile, cancelled its Galactica project, a language model capable of producing scientific articles based on millions of previously analysed documents, in November because it quickly proved to be sexist and racist.

In order to gain traction, chat search engines will have to prove that they provide reliable information. This is not easy. Examples of ChatGPT's fabricated content have flooded social media in recent months. Bard inadvertently showed a mistake in its presentation (that of the James Webb telescope) at last week's event. Bing, currently in testing, also makes up content if the screws are tightened.

Some of the world's leading experts warn of the folly of wanting to go too fast with this technology. "Great language models should be used as a writing aid, not for much else," said Yann LeCun, head of AI research at Meta and an eminent expert in the field. Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind (Google), also suggests that these tools require a cautious approach: "It's good to be cautious on this front," he said. That caution is, at the moment, conspicuous by its absence.

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Raquel Welch, actor, and sex symbol, dies aged 82.

Welch died Wednesday morning following a brief illness, Media Four announced in a statement.

“I just assumed it was a crazy dinosaur epic we’d be able to sweep under the carpet one day,” she told The Associated Press in 1981. “Wrong. It turned out that I was the Bo Derek of the season, the lady in the loincloth about whom everyone said ‘ My God.

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Image: Germán & Co

Russia says U.S. should prove it did not destroy Nord Stream

Feb 16 (Reuters) - The United States should try to prove it was not behind the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines that connected Russia to Western Europe, the Russian embassy to the United States said on Thursday.

Moscow considers the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines last September "an act of international terrorism" and will not allow it to be swept under the rug, the embassy said in a statement.

The embassy referred to a blog post by journalist Seymour Hersh citing an unidentified source as saying that U.S. Navy divers had destroyed the pipelines with explosives on the orders of President Joe Biden.

The White House has dismissed the allegations as "utterly false and complete fiction".

U.S. Department of State spokesman Ned Price said on Wednesday "it is pure disinformation that the United States was behind what transpired" with Nord Stream, provoking the fresh Russian comment.

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An LNG Terminal in Zeebrugge, Belgium

Putin is staring at defeat in his gas war with Europe

Mild weather this winter is set to help Europe shrug off Russia’s energy threats next year, too.

POLITICO EU by CHARLIE COOPER

FEBRUARY 15, 2023 

There's more bad news for Vladimir Putin. Europe is on course to get through winter with its vital gas storage facilities more than half full, according to a new European Commission assessment seen by POLITICO.

That means despite the Russian leader's efforts to make Europe freeze by cutting its gas supply, EU economies will survive the coldest months without serious harm — and they look set to start next winter in a strong position to do the same.

A few months ago, there were fears of energy shortages this winter caused by disruptions to Russian pipeline supplies.

But a combination of mild weather, increased imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and a big drop in gas consumption mean that more than 50 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas is projected to remain in storage by the end of March, according to the Commission analysis.

A senior European Commission official attributed Europe’s success in securing its gas supply to a combination of planning and luck.

“A good part of the success is due to unusually mild weather conditions and to China being out of the market [due to COVID restrictions],” the official said. “But demand reduction, storage policy and infrastructure work helped significantly."

Ending the winter heating season with such healthy reserves — above 50 percent of the EU’s roughly 100bcm total storage capacity — removes any lingering fears of a gas shortage in the short term. It also eases concerns about Europe’s energy security going into next winter.

The positive figures underlie the more optimistic outlook presented by EU leaders in recent days, with Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson saying on Tuesday that Europe had “won the first battle” of the “energy war” with Russia.

EU storage facilities — also vital for winter gas supply in the U.K., where storage options are limited — ended last winter only around 20 percent full. Brussels mandated that they be replenished to 80 percent ahead of this winter, requiring a hugely expensive flurry of LNG purchases by European buyers, to replace volumes of gas lost from Russian pipelines.

The wholesale price of gas rose to record levels during storage filling season — peaking at more than €335 per megawatt hour in August — with dire knock-on effects for household bills, businesses’ energy costs and Europe’s industrial competitiveness.

Gas prices have since fallen to just above €50/Mwh amid easing concerns over supplies. The EU has a new target to fill 90 percent of gas storage again by November 2023 — an effort that will now require less buying of LNG on the international market than it might have done had reserves been more seriously depleted.

"The expected high level of storages at above 50 percent [at] the end of this winter season will be a strong starting point for 2023/24 with less than 40 percent to be filled (against the difficult starting point of around 20 percent in storage at the end of winter season in 2022," the Commission assessment says.

Analysts at the Independent Commodity Intelligence Services think tank said this week that refilling storages this year could still be “as tough a challenge as last year” but predicted that the EU now had “more than enough import capacity to meet the challenge.”  

Across the EU, five new floating LNG terminals have been set up — in the Netherlands, Greece, Finland and two in Germany — providing an extra 30bcm of gas import capacity, with more due to come online this year and next.  

However, the EU’s ability to refill storages to the new 90 percent target ahead of next winter will likely depend on continued reduction in gas consumption.

Brussels set member states a voluntary target of cutting gas demand by 15 percent from August last year. Gas demand actually fell by more than 20 percent between August and December, according to the latest Commission data, partly thanks to efficiency measures but also the consequence of consumers responding to much higher prices by using less energy.

The 15 percent target may need to be extended beyond its expiry date of March 31 to avoid gas demand rebounding as prices fall. EU energy ministers are set to discuss the issue at two forthcoming meetings in February and Mar

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World Bank Group President David Malpass to step down

Climate activists had called for the Trump appointee to be ousted for his climate crisis stance.

Le Monde with AFP

Published on February 16, 2023

World Bank Group President David Malpass attends a news conference during the 2022 annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group, on October 13, 2022, in Washington. PATRICK SEMANSKY / AP

World Bank chief David Malpass announced Wednesday, February 15, that he would step down nearly a year early, ending a tenure at the head of the development lender that was clouded by questions over his climate stance.

The veteran of Republican administrations in the United States was appointed to the role in 2019 when Donald Trump was president and previously served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for international affairs. His tenure at the World Bank saw the organization grapple with global crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and an international economic slowdown.

"After a good deal of thought, I've decided to pursue new challenges," the 66-year-old was quoted as saying in a statement from the bank, having informed its board of his decision. "This is an opportunity for a smooth leadership transition as the Bank Group works to meet increasing global challenges," Malpass added.

'I'm not a scientist'

In recent months, Malpass has come up against calls for his resignation or removal. Climate activists had called for Malpass to be ousted for what they said was an inadequate approach to the climate crisis and the chorus grew louder after his appearance at a New York Times-organized conference last September.

Pressed on stage to respond to a claim by former US vice president Al Gore that he was a climate denier, Malpass declined several times to say if he believed man-made emissions were warming the planet – responding, "I'm not a scientist." He later said he had no plans to stand down and moved to clarify his position, acknowledging that climate-warming emissions were coming from man-made sources, including fossil fuels. The White House previously rebuked Malpass, with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying the expectation was for the bank to be a global leader on climate crisis response.

The bank said in a statement on Wednesday that it has "responded quickly" in the face of recent global challenges, in particular mobilizing a record $440 billion to tackle climate change, the pandemic and other issues. "Under (Malpass') leadership, the Bank Group more than doubled its climate finance to developing countries, reaching a record $32 billion last year," the statement added.

In a note to staff seen by AFP, Malpass said: "Developing countries around the world are facing unprecedented crises and I'm proud that the Bank Group has continued to respond with speed, scale, innovation, and impact." Malpass' term would have originally ended in 2024.

'WorldBank lost valuable time in fighting climate change'

Environmental groups welcomed his departure. "Under David Malpass, the @WorldBank lost valuable time in fighting climate change," tweeted Friends of the Earth. "Not only did he fail to stop actions that fuel climate chaos and injustice, Malpass pushed for Wall Street-friendly policies that go against the public interest."

In a statement, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the world has benefitted from his strong support for Ukraine, his work to assist the Afghan people and his commitment to helping low-income countries achieve debt sustainability through debt reduction. She added that the United States looks forward to a swift nomination process by the World Bank's board for the organization's next president. "We will put forward a candidate to lead the World Bank and build on the Bank's longstanding work... and who will carry forward the vital work we are undertaking to evolve the multilateral development banks," she said.

The head of the World Bank is traditionally an American, while the leader of the other major international lender in Washington, the International Monetary Fund, tends to be European. Prior to assuming his role as World Bank president, Malpass repeatedly lambasted the big development lenders as wasteful and ineffective and called for reforms.

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Image: NYT

Who Was Pablo Neruda and Why Is His Death a Mystery?

February 15, 2023 in news

Fifty years on, the true cause of death of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, in the wake of the country’s 1973 coup d’état, has remained in doubt across the world.

The Nobel laureate was not only one of the world’s most celebrated poets but also one of Chile’s most influential political activists. An outspoken communist, he supported Salvador Allende, Chile’s leftist president from 1970 to 1973, and worked in his administration.

Mr. Neruda’s death in a private clinic just weeks after the coup was determined to be the result of cancer, but the timing and the circumstances have long raised doubts about whether his death was something more nefarious.

On Wednesday, The New York Times reviewed the summary of findings compiled by international forensic experts who had examined Mr. Neruda’s exhumed remains and identified bacteria that can be deadly. In a one-page summary of their report, shared with The New York Times, the scientists confirmed that the bacteria was in his body when he died, but said they could not distinguish whether it was a toxic strain of the bacteria nor whether he was injected with it or instead ate contaminated food.

The findings once again leave open the question of whether Mr. Neruda was murdered.

Who was Pablo Neruda?

Mr. Neruda was a Chilean lawmaker, diplomat and Nobel laureate poet. He was regarded as one of Latin America’s greatest poets and was the leading spokesman for Chile’s leftist movement until the ascendancy of a socialist president, Mr. Allende, in 1970.

Born July 12, 1904, he grew up in Parral, a small agricultural community in southern Chile. His mother, a schoolteacher, died shortly after he was born; his father was a railway employee who did not support his literary aspirations. Despite that, Mr. Neruda started writing poetry at the age of 13.

During his lifetime, Mr. Neruda occupied several diplomatic positions in countries including Argentina, Mexico, Spain and France. To the end of his life, he was as engaged in political activism as in poetry.

Mr. Neruda died in a clinic in Santiago, Chile’s capital, at the age of 69. His death came less than two weeks after that of his friend and political ally, Mr. Allende, who died by suicide to avoid surrendering to the military after his government was toppled in September 1973.

How was he as a political figure?

During his time in Barcelona as a diplomat, Mr. Neruda’s experience of the Spanish Civil War pushed him into a more engaged political stance. “Since then,” he later wrote, “I have been convinced that it is the poet’s duty to take his stand.”

The diplomat lost his post because of his support of the Spanish Republic, which was dissolved after surrendering to the Nationalists of Gen. Francisco Franco. He also lobbied to save more than 2,000 refugees displaced by Mr. Franco’s dictatorship.

Mr. Neruda, a lifelong member of the Communist Party, served only one term in office. As a senator, he was critical of the government of President Gabriel González Videla, who ruled Chile from 1946 to 1952, which led Mr. Neruda into forced exile for four years.

He returned to his country in 1952, a left-wing literary figure, to support Mr. Allende’s campaign for the presidency, which was unsuccessful then and in another two attempts. In 1970, Mr. Neruda was named the Communist candidate for Chile’s presidency until he withdrew in favor of Mr. Allende — who was finally elected that year.

Why is he such a big deal?

Mr. Neruda is one of the Latin America’s most prominent figures of the 20th century for his poetry and his political activism — calling out U.S. meddling abroad, denouncing the Spanish Civil War and supporting Chile’s Communist Party. His books have been translated into more than 35 languages.

However, Mr. Neruda was also a controversial man who neglected his daughter, who was born with hydrocephalus and died at the age of 8, in 1943. And recently, he has been reconsidered in light of a description in his memoir of sexually assaulting a maid.

What are his most notable works?

Mr. Neruda was a prolific writer who released more than 50 publications in verse and prose, ranging from romantic poems to exposés of Chilean politicians and reflections on the anguish of a Spain plagued by civil war. His fervent activism for social justice and his extensive body of poems have echoed worldwide, making him an intellectual icon of the 20th century in Latin America.

He published his first book, “Crepusculario,” or “Book of Twilight,” in 1923 at 19, and the following year he released “Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada,” (“20 Poems of Love and a Song of Despair.”) This collection established him as a major poet and, almost a century later, it is still a best-selling poetry book in the Spanish language.

His travels as a diplomat also influenced his work, as in the two volumes of poems titled “Residencia en la Tierra” (“Residence on Earth”). And his connection with communism was clear in his book “Canto General” (“General Song”), in which he tells the history of the Americas from a Hispanic perspective.

But his tendency toward communism could have delayed his Nobel Prize, awarded in 1971 for his overall work. According to the prize’s webpage, he produced “a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent’s destiny and dreams.”

What is the controversy surrounding his death?

After Chile’s coup d’état, one of the most violent in Latin America, troops raided Mr. Neruda’s properties. The Mexican government offered to fly him and his wife, Matilde Urrutia, out of the country, but he was admitted to the Santa María clinic for prostate cancer.

On the evening of Sept. 23, 1973, the clinic reported that Mr. Neruda died of heart failure. Earlier that day, he had called his wife saying he was feeling ill after receiving some form of medication.

In 2011, Manuel Araya, Mr. Neruda’s driver at the time, publicly claimed that the doctors at the clinic poisoned him by injecting an unknown substance into his stomach, saying Mr. Neruda told him this before he died. Although witnesses, including his widow, dismissed the rumors, some challenged the claim that Mr. Neruda had died of cancer.

The accusations eventually led to an official inquiry. In 2013, a judge ordered the exhumation of the poet’s remains and for samples to be sent to forensic genetics laboratories. But international and Chilean experts ruled out poisoning in his death, according to the report released seven months later. The findings said there were no “relevant chemical agents” present that could be related to Mr. Neruda’s death and that “no forensic evidence whatsoever” pointed to a cause of death other than prostate cancer.

Yet in 2017, a group of forensic investigators announced that Mr. Neruda had not died of cancer — and that they had found traces of a potentially toxic bacteria in one of his molars. The panel handed its findings to the court and was asked to try to determine the origin of the bacteria.

In the final report given to a Chilean judge on Wednesday, those scientists said that other circumstantial evidence supported the theory of murder, including the fact that in 1981, the military dictatorship had poisoned prisoners with bacteria potentially similar to the strain found in Mr. Neruda. But they said that without further evidence, they could not determine the cause of Mr. Neruda’s death.

The post Who Was Pablo Neruda and Why Is His Death a Mystery? appeared first on New York Times.

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Image: Germán & Co

Glencore’s coal fudge risks satisfying no one

Reuters, by Karen Kwok

LONDON, Feb 15 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Gary Nagle has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. Instead of picking a side, he seems to be trying to keep both happy. The boss of $80 billion commodity giant Glencore (GLEN.L) is minting money from coal while prices are high, but planning to keep production of the fossil fuel roughly steady until 2025. It’s a plan that risks pleasing no one, while also dirtying the company’s valuation.

Unlike rivals Anglo American (AAL.L) and Rio Tinto (RIO.AX), (RIO.L), London-listed Glencore is still mining coal. Right now, that’s an extremely lucrative business. A global energy squeeze has pushed up demand and prices. Its EBITDA from the fuel grew more than threefold in 2022, and accounted for more than half of the group’s $34.1 billion total.

That highly polluting bonanza presents a dilemma for Nagle. On the one hand, purely financially motivated investors might want him to make even more money by ramping up production. On the other, green investors like Legal & General Investment Management and HSBC Asset Management are pushing to find out more details about how Nagle reconciles his plans with the objectives of the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to the Financial Times. Activist investor Bluebell Capital Partners last year argued that Glencore should spin off the coal division, following in the steps of Anglo American.

Nagle is not caving in to either side. His plan is to hang on to coal and keep annual production steady at around 110 million tonnes up to 2025. Using the prodigious cash flows from that business, he can reward shareholders while also funding investments in copper and cobalt. Over the longer term, he’ll then start shutting coal mines, with at least a dozen closures planned before 2035.

The risk is that Nagle’s compromise pleases neither the green crowd nor the others. That’s arguably reflected in an enterprise value that’s roughly 4 times forecast EBITDA for the next 12 months, based on Refinitiv data, compared with 4.5 and 5.2 for Anglo and Rio respectively. Just over three-quarters of Glencore’s investors supported Nagle’s climate strategy last year. He should brace for a lower number in 2023.

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News round-up, Wednesday, February 15, 2023

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Quote of the day…

"Of course, the loss of the European market is a very serious test for Russia in the gas aspect," Yury Shafranik, Russian fuel and energy minister from 1993 to 1996, told Reuters.

Reuters by Vladimir Soldatkin

Now, a team at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital has developed an artificial intelligence-based method to screen currently available medications as possible treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.

By MGH News and Public Affairs March 4, 2021 Research

"Downside risks are apparent and may include further geopolitical tensions in eastern Europe, China's ongoing domestic challenges amid the pandemic, and potential spillovers from China's still fragile real estate sector," OPEC said.

Reuter by Alex Lawler

Investigation#StoryKillers. 'Le Monde' and its media partners were able to identify thousands of accounts on social media controlled by 'Team Jorge,' and to analyze its fake information campaigns.

Le Monde by Damien Leloup  and Florian Reynaud, Published on February 15, 2023

“There has been an expectation that it will go away quickly and painlessly — and I don’t think that’s at all guaranteed,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said at an event last week. “The base case for me is that it will take some time, and we’ll have to do more rate increases, and then we’ll have to look around and see whether we’ve done enough.”

NYT by Jeanna Smialek

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Most read…

Moscow's decades-old gas ties with Europe lie in ruins

After President Vladimir Putin's "special military operation" in Ukraine began almost a year ago, a combination of Western sanctions and Russia's decision to cut supplies to Europe drastically reduced the country's energy exports.

SOURCE: REUTERS BY VLADIMIR SOLDATKIN

OPEC raises 2023 oil demand growth view, points to tighter market

"Key to oil demand growth in 2023 will be the return of China from its mandated mobility restrictions and the effect this will have on the country, the region and the world," OPEC said in the report.

"Concern hovers around the depth and pace of the country's economic recovery and the consequent impact on oil demand.”

Reuter by Alex Lawler

Billionaires, whistleblowers, criminals, political opponents: The targets of the disinformation factory

Le Monde by Damien Leloup  and Florian Reynaud

Inflation Cooled Just Slightly, With Worrying Details

Consumer Price Index inflation has been slowing compared with a year ago, but evidence is mounting that it could be a long road back to normal.

NYT by Jeanna Smialek, Feb. 14, 2023

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Accelerating the future of energy, together. Is it possible?

Can we power the things we love and green the planet at the same time? AES is the next-generation energy company with over four decades of experience helping businesses transition to clean, renewable energy. Isn't it time to connect to your energy future?

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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Source: Europeanscientist.com

AI and Alzheimer's Disease

AI reveals current drugs that may help combat Alzheimer’s disease

Now, a team at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital has developed an artificial intelligence-based method to screen currently available medications as possible treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.

By MGH News and Public Affairs March 4, 2021 Research

New treatments for Alzheimer’s disease are desperately needed, but numerous clinical trials of investigational drugs have failed to generate promising options.

Now, a team at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital has developed an artificial intelligence-based method to screen currently available medications as possible treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.

The method could represent a rapid and inexpensive way to repurpose existing therapies into new treatments for this progressive, debilitating neurodegenerative condition. It could also help reveal new, unexplored targets for therapy by pointing to mechanisms of drug action.

“Repurposing FDA-approved drugs for Alzheimer’s disease is an attractive idea that can help accelerate the arrival of effective treatment, but unfortunately, even for previously approved drugs, clinical trials require substantial resources, making it impossible to evaluate every drug in patients with Alzheimer’s disease,” said Artem Sokolov, HMS instructor in biomedical informatics in the Blavatnik Institute and director of informatics and modeling in the Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology at HMS. “We therefore built a framework for prioritizing drugs, helping clinical studies to focus on the most promising ones.” 

In an article published on Feb. 15 in Nature Communications, Sokolov and colleagues describe their framework, called DRIAD, or Drug Repurposing In AD, which relies on machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence in which systems are “trained” on vast amounts of data and “learn” to identify telltale patterns, augmenting researchers’ and clinicians’ decision-making. 

DRIAD works by measuring what happens to human brain neural cells when treated with a drug. The method then determines whether the changes induced by a drug correlate with molecular markers of disease severity.

The approach also allowed the researchers to identify drugs that had protective as well as damaging effects on brain cells.

“We also approximate the directionality of such correlations, helping to identify and filter out neurotoxic drugs that accelerate neuronal death instead of preventing it,” said co-first author Steve Rodriguez, HMS instructor in neurology at Mass General.

DRIAD also allows researchers to examine which proteins are targeted by the most promising drugs and whether there are common trends among the targets, an approach designed by Clemens Hug, an HMS associate in therapeutic science in the Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology and a co-first author of the paper.

The team applied the screening method to 80 FDA-approved and clinically tested drugs for a wide range of conditions. The analysis yielded a ranked list of candidates, with several anti-inflammatory drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and blood cancers emerging as top contenders.

These drugs belong to a class of medications known as Janus kinase inhibitors. The drugs work by blocking the action of inflammation-fueling Janus kinase proteins, suspected to play a role in Alzheimer’s disease and known for their role in autoimmune conditions. The team’s analyses also pointed to other potential treatment targets for further investigation.

“We are excited to share these results with the academic and pharmaceutical research communities. Our hope is that further validation by other researchers will refine the prioritization of these drugs for clinical investigation,” said Mark Albers, HMS assistant professor of neurology at Mass General and a faculty member of the Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology at HMS.

One of these drugs, baricitinib, will be investigated by Albers in a clinical trial for patients with subjective cognitive complaints, mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer’s disease that will be launching soon at Mass General and at Holy Cross Health in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “In addition, independent validation of the nominated drug targets could provide new insights into the mechanisms behind Alzheimer’s disease and lead to novel therapies,” said Albers, who is also associate director of the Massachusetts Center for Alzheimer Therapeutic Science at Mass General.

This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging, CART fund, and Harvard Catalyst Program for Faculty Development and Diversity Inclusion.

Rodriguez, Albers, and Sokolov are inventors on a patent application for novel targets in neurodegenerative diseases. Additional ethics declarations for all authors involved in the study appear in the publication.

Ernesto Cardenal’s Prayer for Marilyn Monroe

She hungered for love and we offered her tranquilizers.
For her despair, because we’re not saints psychoanalysis was recommended to her...

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Image: Germán & Co

Moscow's decades-old gas ties with Europe lie in ruins

After President Vladimir Putin's "special military operation" in Ukraine began almost a year ago, a combination of Western sanctions and Russia's decision to cut supplies to Europe drastically reduced the country's energy exports.

Source: Reuters by Vladimir Soldatkin

Today

NOVY URENGOY, Russia, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Meticulously crafted over decades as a major revenue stream for the Kremlin, Moscow's gas trade with Europe is unlikely to recover from the ravages of military conflict.

After President Vladimir Putin's "special military operation" in Ukraine began almost a year ago, a combination of Western sanctions and Russia's decision to cut supplies to Europe drastically reduced the country's energy exports.

The latest sanctions, including price caps, are likely to disrupt oil trade further but it is easier to find new markets for crude and refined products than for gas.

Russia's gas trade with Europe has been based on thousands of miles of pipes beginning in Siberia and stretching to Germany and beyond. Until last year, they locked Western buyers into a long-term supply relationship.

"Of course, the loss of the European market is a very serious test for Russia in the gas aspect," Yury Shafranik, Russian fuel and energy minister from 1993 to 1996, told Reuters.

A former senior manager at Gazprom (GAZP.MM) was more direct.

"The work of hundreds of people, who for decades built the exporting system, now has been flushed down the toilet," the former manager told Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Current employees, however, say it is business as usual.

"Nothing has changed for us. We had a pay rise twice last year," a Gazprom's official, who is not authorised to speak to press, told Reuters in Novy Urengoy. The Arctic city is often referred to as Russia's "gas capital" because it was built to serve the biggest gas fields.

'STATE WITHIN A STATE'

The state gas export giant Gazprom, which has offices there, was formed in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1989 under the Ministry of Gas Industry, headed by Viktor Chernomyrdin.

"Chernomyrdin never allowed anyone to put his nose into Gazprom. It was a state within a state, and remains so to an extent," Shafranik said.

Since the military operation began on Feb. 24 last year, less information has been available.

Like many Russian companies, Gazprom stopped disclosing details of its financial results.

According to Reuters' estimates, based on export fees and export volumes data, Gazprom's revenues from overseas sales were around $3.4 billion in January down from $6.3 billion in the same period last year.

The figures, combined with forecasts of exports and average gas prices, imply Gazprom's exporting revenues will almost halve this year, widening the $25 billion budget deficit Russia posted in January.

Already, the company's natural gas exports last year almost halved to reach a post-Soviet low and the downward trend has continued this year.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen estimated Russia cut 80% of gas supplies to the EU in the eight months after the conflict began in Ukraine.

As a result, Russia supplied only around 7.5% of western Europe's gas needs by the end of last year, compared with around 40% in 2021.

Before the conflict, Russia had been confident of selling more to Europe, not less.

Elena Burmistrova, the head of Gazprom's exporting unit, told an industry event in Vienna in 2019 the company's record-high exports outside Soviet Union of more than 200 billion cubic metres (bcm) achieved in 2018 were the "new reality".

Last year, the total was just above 100 bcm.

Russia's transporting capacities were undermined last year after mysterious blasts in the Baltic Sea at the Nord Stream pipelines from Russia to Germany. Russia and the West blamed each other for the blasts.

Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. reporter Seymour Hersh in a blog said the United States was responsible, which the United States said was 'utterly false'.

Washington has long criticised Germany's policy of reliance on Russian energy, which until last year, Berlin had said was a means to improve relations.

THE DEAL OF THE 20TH-CENTURY

For his part, Putin had been seeking to diversify Russia's gas markets long before last year, but the policy has gathered momentum.

In October, he mooted an idea of a gas hub in Turkey to divert the Russian gas flows from the Baltic Sea and North-West Europe.

Russia is also seeking to boost its pipeline gas sales to China, the world's largest energy consumer and top buyer of crude oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and coal.

Supplies began via the Power of Siberia Pipeline in late 2019 and Russia aims to raise the annual exports to around 38 bcm from 2025.

Moscow also has an agreement with Beijing for another 10 bcm per year from a yet-to-be built pipeline from the Pacific island of Sakhalin, while Russia is also developing plans for Power of Siberia 2 from Western Siberia, which in theory could supply an additional 50 bcm per year to China.

Whether that relationship can be as lucrative as the decades of supplying gas to Europe remains to be seen.

Gazprom's most important assets are located in West Siberia and in the wider Arctic Yamal region, where the 100,000-strong city of Novy Urengoy, which celebrates its 50th-anniversary in 2025, houses seasonal workers in utilitarian, high-rise blocks.

One of the fields in the tundra area, around 3,500 kilometres (2,175 miles) northeast of Moscow, where they work is Urengoy.

Following the discovery of the field, which is among the world's largest in 1966, the Soviet Politburo began talks with Western Germany on exchanging gas for pipes, as Russia then lacked production technology.

The resulting agreement, dubbed the "contract of the century" was finalised in 1970 after the then Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, nicknamed "Mr Nyet" in the West for his uncompromising approach, said "da" to the gas-for-pipes deal, which involved supplies of heavy equipment for Moscow as well as gas for Europe.

The 20-year supply deal is worth about $30 billion in current gas prices.

It meant that for decades, Europe and, especially Germany, benefited from relatively cheap, long-term contracts, and relied on Russian natural gas, or methane, for heating households and as a feedstock for the petrochemical industry.

COMPLEX NEGOTIATIONS AHEAD

The negotiations with China on new gas sales are expected to be complex, not least because China is not expected to need additional gas until after 2030, industry analysts said.

Russia also faces far more competition than in the past from renewable energy as the world seeks to limit the impact of climate change, as well as rival pipeline gas supplies to China, including from Turkmenistan.

LNG, which can be shipped anywhere in the world, has further reduced the need for pipeline gas.

Gazprom and China have kept their agreed gas price a secret. Ron Smith, analyst at Moscow-based BCS brokerage, expected the price for 2022 to average $270 per 1,000 cubic metres, much lower than prices in Europe.

It is also below Gazprom's export price of $700 per 1,000 cubic metres, expected by Russian Economy Ministry this year.

Last year, Russia's energy finances, which are not broken down publicly into oil and gas, were supported by the market impact of fears of shortage.

In Europe, gas prices hit record levels and international oil prices shortly after the special military operation began spiked close to their all-time high.

Since then, prices for gas and oil have eased and Western price caps introduced in December and early this year are designed to erode Russia's revenues further.

The Kremlin meanwhile has set Gazprom the mammoth task of building 24,000 kilometres of new pipelines to provide gas for 538,000 households and apartments in Russia from 2021 to 2025.

Domestic gas prices are regulated by the government and there have been discussions about liberalising the gas market, a sensitive issue for Russian households.

Back in Novy Urengoy, where temperatures fall to as low as almost minus 50 Celsius (minus 58 Fahrenheit), Achimgaz, a joint venture between Gazprom and Germany's Wintershall Dea (WINT.UL), also has offices and the flag of Austrian energy company OMV (OMVV.VI) flaps outside an administrative building.

Asked about its presence there, an OMV spokesperson said only the building housed offices of the operator of the Yuzhno-Russkoye field, where the company has a stake.

OMV in March scrapped plans to take a stake in a Gazprom gas field project, while Wintershall Dea, in which BASF (BASFn.DE) holds just under 73% percent, said last month it was pulling out of Russia.

The Gazprom official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the company will regret that.

"We will just have to use more gas for our domestic households instead of exporting it to Europe. China also needs gas," the official said.

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Source:https: Wibestbroker.com

OPEC raises 2023 oil demand growth view, points to tighter market

"Downside risks are apparent and may include further geopolitical tensions in eastern Europe, China's ongoing domestic challenges amid the pandemic, and potential spillovers from China's still fragile real estate sector," OPEC said.

Reuter by Alex Lawler

LONDON, Feb 14 (Reuters) - OPEC has raised its 2023 global oil demand growth forecast in its first upward revision for months, due to China's relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions, and trimmed supply forecasts for Russia and other non-OPEC producers, pointing to a tighter market.

Global oil demand will rise this year by 2.32 million barrels per day (bpd), or 2.3%, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said on Tuesday in a monthly report.

The projection is 100,000 bpd higher than last month's forecast.

A tighter supply and demand balance could support oil prices that have held relatively steady since December and stand at a little less than $86 a barrel. OPEC had kept its 2023 demand growth forecast steady for the past two months after a series of downgrades as the economic outlook worsened.

"Key to oil demand growth in 2023 will be the return of China from its mandated mobility restrictions and the effect this will have on the country, the region and the world," OPEC said in the report.

"Concern hovers around the depth and pace of the country's economic recovery and the consequent impact on oil demand."

OPEC expects Chinese demand to grow by 590,000 bpd in 2023, up from last month's forecast of 510,000 bpd. China's oil consumption dropped for the first time in years in 2022, held back by its COVID containment measures.

The OPEC report was upbeat on economic prospects, nudging up its 2023 global growth forecast to 2.6% from 2.5%, though it said that a relative slowdown remained evident and cited high inflation and expected further increases to interest rates.

Other upside factors are the likelihood that the U.S. Federal Reserve will manage a soft landing for the U.S. economy and further commodity price weakness, OPEC said, although various potentially negative factors persist.

OUTPUT CUTS

"Downside risks are apparent and may include further geopolitical tensions in eastern Europe, China's ongoing domestic challenges amid the pandemic, and potential spillovers from China's still fragile real estate sector," OPEC said.

Oil was down more than $1, moving towards $85, after the report was released.

The report also showed that OPEC's crude oil production fell in January after the wider OPEC+ alliance pledged output cuts to support the market.

For November last year, with prices weakening, OPEC+ agreed to a 2 million bpd reduction in its output target - the largest since the early days of the pandemic in 2020. OPEC's share of the cut is 1.27 million bpd.

In the report, OPEC said its crude oil output in January fell by 49,000 bpd to 28.88 million bpd as declines in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran offset increases elsewhere.

OPEC also lowered its forecast of 2023 growth in supply from producers outside the group to 1.4 million bpd, from 1.5 million bpd last month, citing lower expectations from Russia and the United States.

Russia said last week it will cut oil production by 500,000 bpd in March after the West imposed price caps on Russian oil and oil products over its invasion of Ukraine.

OPEC, which was already forecasting a decline in Russian output in 2023, said in the report it now expected Russian production to fall by 900,000 bpd this year, down from a decline of 850,000 bpd expected last month.

With non-OPEC supply lower and demand growth higher, the report raised its estimate of the amount of crude OPEC needs to pump in 2023 to balance the market by 200,000 bpd to 29.4 million bpd - about 500,000 more than OPEC pumped in January.

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Image: Germán & Co

Billionaires, whistleblowers, criminals, political opponents: The targets of the disinformation factory

Investigation#StoryKillers. 'Le Monde' and its media partners were able to identify thousands of accounts on social media controlled by 'Team Jorge,' and to analyze its fake information campaigns.

Le Monde by Damien Leloup  and Florian Reynaud, Published on February 15, 2023

Everyone and anyone can be a target for the disinformation campaigns that rich clients have paid handsomely to hire the services of " Team Jorge," this discreet Israeli operative whose infrastructure Le Monde and its media partners, coordinated by Forbidden Stories, were able to analyze. At the heart of its operational tools are the "AIMS" (for "Advanced impact media solutions"), a network of 30,000 highly sophisticated fake profiles on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, used to spread false information. These profiles target businessmen, politicians, whistleblowers and crime suspects all over the world. Here is an overview of some of the main targets of these disinformation mercenaries.

#StoryKillers: Investigation into the disinformation machine

For several months, 20 different media outlets, including Le Monde, worked with the Forbidden Stories consortium to investigate companies that specialize in the manipulation of public opinion and the dissemination of fake news. Within the framework of this project called #StoryKillers, three journalists from the consortium posed as intermediaries for a potential French client in order to set up meetings with operatives selling "turnkey" influence tools.

This investigation revealed the existence of "Team Jorge", an extremely discreet Israeli company that claims to have interfered in dozens of elections around the world. It offers its clients an arsenal of illegal services, from hacking into e-mail accounts and private messaging systems to the massive dissemination of influence campaigns thanks to a gigantic network of fake accounts on social networks.

Target: Peter Nygard, Canadian billionaire accused of multiple sex crimes

Who is he? Peter Nygard, who made his fortune in fashion, has been accused by multiple women, some of them minors at the time, of sexual assault or rape – accusations that have been corroborated by multiple pieces of evidence, according to the FBI. In early 2020, Team Jorge launched a massive online influencer campaign to put the case at the top of the media agenda. Nygard has been in prison since December 2020, awaiting trial.

The modus operandi: The avatar network was used to widely distribute links to an attack site, Nygardrapestories.com, now offline, containing numerous articles accusing the billionaire. Dozens of fake accounts were also used to call out journalists, stars and partners of Peter Nygard's companies on the accusations against him; part of the campaign specifically targeted Oprah Winfrey, the famous American anchorwoman, who had devoted a segment to the billionaire in the 1990s, long before the first accusations emerged, to encourage her to publicly accuse the billionaire.

Effectiveness: Moderate. Nygard had already, since at least 2018, been in the crosshairs of justice in the United States and Canada, but the campaign seems to have attracted attention – a Newsweek article on the subject included several tweets from the campaign.

The suspected Team Jorge clients: Among the possible clients is another billionaire, American Louis Bacon. The revelations of several women accusing Nygard were encouraged by Bacon, who funded their travel to testify and hired private investigators to probe the case. The two billionaires have been in open conflict for years, amidst neighborhood feuds in the Bahamas, where they both own luxurious adjoining properties. Bacon's lawyers did not respond when contacted.

Target: Xavier Justo, Swiss whistleblower

Who is he? In 2015, Xavier Justo, a Swiss banker working in Malaysia, had lifted the veil on what would become the "1MDB" corruption scandal. His revelations would contribute to the 2018 electoral defeat of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who was directly implicated in the embezzlement case.

The modus operandi: At the end of 2020, a website and a YouTube channel usurping the identity of Justo went up online. They presented him as someone only in it for the money, whose word was not reliable and recycled confessions of the Swiss banker, obtained according to him under duress when he had been arrested in Thailand shortly after his revelations. This site and this channel were then widely distributed on social media, by the network of avatars of Team Jorge, as part of a larger operation of defamation, calling Justo a thief, a drug addict, a blackmailer...

Effectiveness: Unknown. The precise purpose of the campaign remains unclear.

The suspected Team Jorge clients: Several figures involved in the 1MDB scandal may have had a motivation to try to discredit Justo, starting with former Prime Minister Najib Razak, but as of the date of this campaign, he was in jail. Chinese-Malaysian businessman Jho Low, a key figure in the scandal and still on the run today, may also have had an interest in taking on the whistleblower.

Targets: Far-right activists British Tommy Robinson and American Lisa Barbounis

Who are they? Tommy Robinson is a well-known activist from the English far right, specializing in Islamophobic gatherings and conspiracy theories, founder of the pressure group English Defense League and who has been convicted by the courts on several occasions. American Lisa Barbounis is a former employee of the Middle East Forum (MEF), an ultraconservative think tank and supporter of Tommy Robinson. In 2019, she spent a long time in England participating in the campaign to support the activist.

The modus operandi: In mid-July 2021, avatars controlled by Team Jorge publish dozens of messages attacking Robinson and Barbounis. Robinson was designated, on rather factual grounds and often with the help of legitimate articles published by the general press, as a far-right activist. Barbounis, on the other hand, was accused of being an "influence agent" close to Russia, and the campaign focused on her new job as an advisor to a Texas congressman, half-heartedly accusing her of being a spy for Vladimir Putin. The campaign has also widely disseminated accusations, from the Daily Mail, which cited a Middle East Forum lawsuit against Barbounis, accusing her of having an extramarital affair with a Robinson lieutenant, and of embezzling money from the Middle East Forum to buy cocaine, among other things.

Effectiveness: None. The campaign seems to have had no resonance of any magnitude.

The suspected Team Jorge clients: The campaign bears all the hallmarks of an internal score-settling within Anglo-American far-right circles. In 2019, Barbounis filed a complaint, along with three other women, against the MEF, accusing its director of sexual harassment, among other things. These complaints, like the one filed by MEF against Barbounis, ended in dismissals. The MEF denies knowledge of any influence campaign about this issue.

Target: Tomas Zeron, former Mexican police official

Who is he? Tomas Zeron de Lucio is an ex-police figure in Mexico. A former member of the Mexico State Attorney's Office, from 2013 to 2016 he was the director of the Agencia de Investigacion Criminal (AIC), a then newly created administrative body responsible for centralizing federal criminal investigations. In 2016, Zeron resigned during a scandal surrounding his handling of the investigation into the scandal of the 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa in 2014. Suspected of evidence tampering and torture, an Interpol international arrest warrant was issued against him and he currently lives in Israel.

The modus operandi: During the summer of 2020, some 40 Twitter accounts and several Facebook accounts attributed to Team Jorge began posting articles and videos painting an embellished depiction of Zeron, presenting him as a competent investigator who had worked effectively against organized crime and being the victim of a political cabal. Some avatars claimed that no arrest warrant had been issued against the former police officer, arguing that his red notice was missing from the Interpol website. At least one article that may have been written directly on behalf of Team Jorge and published online in June 2020 sang the praises of the former AIC director and claimed that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ("AMLO") had been corrupted by Mexican cartels and was waging a political campaign against former investigators and in particular Zerón.

Effectiveness: Likely zero. Articles created directly on behalf of the campaign did not resonate on social media outside of the fake accounts run by the AIMS network.

The suspected Team Jorge clients: The first likely backer of the campaign is Zeron himself, first of all because it is entirely dedicated to singing the praises of the former investigator and attacking President AMLO, presented as the source of the prosecution against him. Most importantly, Zeron also has ties to the Israeli cybersecurity industry, as the agency he headed is accused of having purchased a license for Pegasus spyware, developed by the company NSO. His lawyers claim that he "is not responsible for any publicity campaign in his favor".

Target: Alexander Zingman and Vitali Fishman, Belarusian businessmen

Who are they? The Belarusian businessman Alexander Zingman, reputedly close to autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko, has been very active in Africa for the past two decades, and more particularly in Zimbabwe, where he is honorary consul. He was one of the architects of a series of trade agreements that directly benefited Lukashenko's son.

The modus operandi: In early summer 2020, fake Facebook and Twitter accounts belonging to the AIMS network were used to publish a series of posts, in Russian and English, touting Zingman's business talent. The messages highlighted the success of the electric buses he produces or thanked him for bringing humanitarian aid to Zimbabwe after Cyclone Idai in 2019. A parallel campaign violently attacked another Belarusian national: Vitali Fishman, also close to the Lukashenko regime. The two men, both suspected of being linked to arms trafficking in Africa, were at the time fighting.

Effectiveness: Hard to estimate. In 2021, Zingman was briefly detained in the Democratic Republic of Congo on suspicion of arms trafficking, then released without charge. AIMS were likely not the only tool used in this conflict. In January 2022, Mr. Fishman filed a complaint in the United States, claiming to be the target of a massive online smear campaign. The sites and social media accounts mentioned in the complaint are directly linked to the architecture of fake Team Jorge accounts.

The suspected Team Jorge clients: The fact that the same network touted Zingman while attacking one of his rivals makes him a possible customer. Both Fishman and Zingman have longstanding connections in Israeli ultraconservative circles and cyber industry. When contacted by Le Monde, Zingman denies having ever used fake account or fake news services, and explains that he himself has been the target of several disinformation campaigns.

Target: California Governor Gavin Newsom

Who is he? The Governor of California since 2018, former mayor of San Francisco and a heavyweight in the US Democratic Party.

The modus operandi: In September 2022, in the home stretch of the election campaign during which Gavin Newsom was running for a second term, dozens of fake Twitter and Facebook accounts, claiming to be those of environmental advocates, attacked the governor's energy policy. In particular, they criticized him for refusing to develop more nuclear power – California only has one nuclear power plant, in Diablo Canyon, whose license was narrowly renewed because of seismic risks. A petition attacked Newsom's alleged inaction as California's crumbling power grid suffered frequent blackouts.

Efficiency: Moderate. The petition garnered several thousand signatures but did not appear to have had a tangible impact on state energy policy.

The suspected Team Jorge clients: The timing of the fake accounts' activity is intriguing; they primarily posted in the summer of 2022, during the home stretch of the California gubernatorial campaign. But by then, the only openly pro-nuclear candidate, "eco-modernist" Michael Shellenberger, was out of the race – he came in third in the Democratic primary in early June with 4.1% of the votes. And the Diablo Canyon plant has already received an extension. Another possible avenue is plant builders – the avatars specifically touted the benefits of molten salt reactors, a technology mastered by only a handful of companies.

Target: Cryptocurrency companies Binance and Nexo

Who are they? Binance is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange company. It allows you to trade bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptoassets for traditional currencies. Nexo is a cryptocurrency collateralized lending company, which also operates its own stablecoin (a cryptocurrency backed by collateral, an asset or fiat currency), also known as nexo.

The modus operandi: On September 5, 2022, Binance announced that it would now automatically convert a number of stablecoins into its own stablecoin binance. The decision was deemed anti-competitive by the issuers of the affected stablecoins, including Nexo. In the following days, avatars from the AIMS fake account network published dozens of messages attacking Binance's decision and its CEO. At the same time, other avatars posted elaborate exchanges claiming that Nexo was a forward-looking company with safe products, and claiming that the US court's prosecution of the company for investment law violations was a conspiracy by competitors.

Effectiveness: Low. Binance has not reversed its decision and investigations continue against Nexo. The company's stablecoin price has more or less stabilized. While the campaign was quite elaborate in its rhetoric, it also made some gross errors, such as misspelling the Twitter account of Binance's boss.

The suspected Team Jorge clients: The campaign primarily benefited Nexo, but could have been the work of a major investor in the company's stablecoin, or even Team Jorge itself. The Israeli operative has claimed to sometimes use its avatars to influence the price of crypto-currencies. Nexo insists it has "never used any such services. It would be unimaginable that a company with several million users, managing billions of euros in funds, and with dozens of regulatory licenses would use such services."

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Image: NYT

Inflation Cooled Just Slightly, With Worrying Details

Consumer Price Index inflation has been slowing compared with a year ago, but evidence is mounting that it could be a long road back to normal.

NYT by Jeanna Smialek, Feb. 14, 2023

WASHINGTON — Inflation has slowed from its painful 2022 peak but remains uncomfortably rapid, data released Tuesday showed, and the forces pushing prices higher are proving stubborn in ways that could make it difficult to wrestle cost increases back to the Federal Reserve’s goal.

The Consumer Price Index climbed by 6.4 percent in January compared with a year earlier, faster than economists had forecast and only a slight slowdown from 6.5 percent in December. While the annual pace of increase has cooled from a peak of 9.1 percent in summer 2022, it remains more than three times as fast as was typical before the pandemic.

And prices continued to increase rapidly on a monthly basis as a broad array of goods and services, including apparel, groceries, hotel rooms and rent, became more expensive. That was true even after stripping out volatile food and fuel costs.

Taken as a whole, the data underlined that while the Federal Reserve has been receiving positive news that inflation is no longer accelerating relentlessly, it could be a long and bumpy road back to the 2 percent annual price gains that used to be normal. Prices for everyday purchases are still climbing at a pace that risks chipping away at economic security for many households.

“We’re certainly down from the peak of inflation pressures last year, but we’re lingering at an elevated rate,” said Laura Rosner-Warburton, senior economist at MacroPolicy Perspectives. “The road back to 2 percent is going to take some time.”

Stock prices sank in the hours after the report, and market expectations that the Fed will raise interest rates above 5 percent in the coming months increased slightly. Central bankers have already lifted borrowing costs from near zero a year ago to above 4.5 percent, a rapid-fire adjustment meant to slow consumer and business demand in a bid to wrestle price increases under control.

But the economy has so far held up in the face of the central bank’s campaign to slow it down. Growth did cool last year, with the rate-sensitive housing market pulling back and demand for big purchases like cars waning, but the job market has remained strong and wages are still climbing robustly.

That could help to keep the economy chugging along into 2023. Consumption overall had shown signs of slowing meaningfully, but it may be poised for a comeback. Economists expect retail sales data scheduled for release on Wednesday to show that spending climbed 2 percent in January after falling 1.1 percent in December, based on estimates in a Bloomberg survey.

Signs of continued economic momentum could combine with incoming price data to convince the Fed that it needs to do more to bring inflation fully under control, which could entail pushing rates higher than expected or leaving them elevated for longer. Central bankers have been warning that the process of wrangling cost increases might prove bumpy and difficult.

Inflation F.A.Q.

What is inflation?

Inflation is a loss of purchasing power over time, meaning your dollar will not go as far tomorrow as it did today. It is typically expressed as the annual change in prices for everyday goods and services such as food, furniture, apparel, transportation and toys.

What causes inflation?

It can be the result of rising consumer demand. But inflation can also rise and fall based on developments that have little to do with economic conditions, such as limited oil production and supply chain problems.

Is inflation bad?

It depends on the circumstances. Fast price increases spell trouble, but moderate price gains can lead to higher wages and job growth.

How does inflation affect the poor?

Inflation can be especially hard to shoulder for poor households because they spend a bigger chunk of their budgets on necessities like food, housing and gas.

Can inflation affect the stock market?

Rapid inflation typically spells trouble for stocks. Financial assets in general have historically fared badly during inflation booms, while tangible assets like houses have held their value better.

“There has been an expectation that it will go away quickly and painlessly — and I don’t think that’s at all guaranteed,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said at an event last week. “The base case for me is that it will take some time, and we’ll have to do more rate increases, and then we’ll have to look around and see whether we’ve done enough.”

A broad range of products and services kept inflation elevated in January: Pricier hotels, car insurance and vehicle repairs all contributed to the increase in the overall index.

Some goods, including used cars and clothing for women, dropped in price on a monthly basis. Even so, the slowdown for some physical products was less pronounced than it had been. Price increases for overall apparel accelerated, for instance.

Moderating price increases for goods and commodities have driven the overall inflation slowdown in recent months. Fed officials have embraced the cool-down but have also warned that it may not continue, because it has come as pandemic disruptions faded and tangled supply chains unsnarled.

“Supply chains can’t recover twice,” Lorie Logan, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said in a speech on Tuesday.

Pre-owned vehicles offer a good example of why the drag from falling prices for some goods may prove temporary. Used-car prices have been declining back to normal thanks to lagging demand and rebounding supply, and that has been helping to subtract from overall price increases. But used-car costs are already beginning to pick up again at a wholesale level, which suggests that the trend is unlikely to last indefinitely.

That is why central bankers and economists are closely watching what happens with prices for services, like health care and restaurant meals, pedicures and tax accounting.

Services inflation, which includes restaurant meals and other non-goods purchases, remains unusually rapid and has shown little sign of slowing down.Credit...Casey Steffens for The New York Times

Service prices may prove to be more closely tied to underlying momentum in the economy: Labor is a major cost for many service companies, so businesses are likely to charge more when unemployment is low and they have to increase pay to compete for workers.

So far, such inflation shows little sign of letting up. Service prices excluding energy continued to increase rapidly in January, owing in part to the jump in rental and other housing costs.

That rapid rent inflation is expected to abate in the months ahead as a recent pullback in asking rents on newly leased apartments gradually feeds into official inflation data. But how much — and for how long — increases in housing costs will fade is uncertain.

“It is a little bit unclear what the underlying momentum is in shelter,” said Sonia Meskin, head of U.S. macro at BNY Mellon Investment Management, explaining that strong job gains and solid wage growth could keep pressures on the market. “Shelter tends to correlate with a tight labor market.”

Hiring in America remains unusually strong, despite recent high-profile layoffs in the technology industry. Employers added more than half a million jobs in January, an unexpectedly robust number, and gains in average hourly earnings and other pay trackers remain rapid, though they have begun to slow.

The unsavory question confronting officials at the Fed is whether the labor market will need to weaken in order to wrestle inflation lower. Many central bankers have suggested that wage increases are probably too hot to be consistent with 2 percent inflation, their official target. Central bankers define their inflation goal using a related but more delayed inflation measure, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index.

“I don’t think they’re going to feel comfortable until the labor market turns a little more decisively,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan.

While some policymakers have argued that the Fed should be careful not to constrain the labor market more than is necessary in its battle against inflation, that so-called dovish wing of the central bank’s policymaking set is poised to lose a key member. President Biden is going to make Lael Brainard, the Fed’s vice chair, the new head of his National Economic Council, according to people familiar with the matter.

Ms. Brainard has emphasized in recent speeches that the central bank may be able to wrestle inflation lower without slowing demand so much that it results in significant job losses. And she has focused on drivers of inflation outside of the labor market, including swollen corporate profits and aftershocks from high fuel prices.

But as she has emphasized those hopeful reasons that price increases might moderate, many other Fed officials have focused more keenly on the risk that services outside of housing will continue to climb at their current pace — keeping inflation too hot for comfort.

If that price measure “remained in its current range, while other categories returned to their prepandemic pace, total inflation going forward would settle much closer to 3 percent than to our 2 percent goal,” Ms. Logan from the Dallas Fed warned on Tuesday. She explained services inflation “as a symptom of an overheated economy, particularly a tight labor market.”

John C. Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said on Tuesday that controlling inflation “will likely entail a period of subdued growth and some softening of labor market conditions.”

For now, a mounting body of evidence suggests that inflation is not fading as quickly as economists and central bankers had hoped even a month or two ago, said Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard who was an Obama administration economic adviser.

“It turns out that a lot of that was probably a false dawn,” Mr. Furman said. “The whole perspective we have on inflation is much worse.”

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News round-up, Monday, February 13, 2023

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Quote of the day…

We’re experiencing a mental health crisis. Approximately 15.5% of the global population is affected by mental illnesses, and those numbers are rising. Although there are many who require treatment, more than 50% of mental illnesses remain untreated. In the United States, one in five adults suffers from some form of mental illness. Every 40 seconds one person dies from suicide and for every adult who dies from suicide, there are more than 20 others who have attempted to end their life. The ramifications of this go beyond our families and cultures as mental health also has a tremendous economic impact for the cost of treatment as well as the loss of productivity.

Forbes by Bernard Marr

Despite all its problems, Latin America has much to contribute in a troubled world. The far West, as Alain Rouquié called it, has medium development, decisive environmental resources in relation to climate change and natural resources that can contribute exponentially to the information age and digitalisation. Making them count requires a long view and a strategic capacity that we see little of in our rulers at the moment. A change of course is essential if we want to make an impact in the 21st century.

Ernesto Ottone (Valparaíso, 1948) was among those who rejected the proposal for a new Constitution in the plebiscite on 4 September, like 62% of Chileans. "I reject it because I am convinced that it is the best way for a good Constitution", he told EL PAÍS before the referendum.

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Most Read…

What’s Going On Up There? Theories but No Answers in Shootdowns of Mystery Craft.

The U.S. and Canada are investigating three unidentified flying objects shot down over North America in the past three days. Militaries have adjusted radars to try to spot more incursions.

NYT by Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper and Edward Wong

The countries warn the EU against an overhaul of the energy market in “crisis mode”.

The European Commission is drafting an overhaul of the EU’s electricity market rules with the aim of better cushioning consumer bills ahead of fossil fuel price spikes and avoiding a repeat of the surge in electricity wort sparked by cuts in Russia’s gas supplies last year.

Ukdaily.news by Mia Gordon

Chile faces largest wildfires since 2017

In DepthFires fueled by drought and heatwaves killed 24 and destroyed 373,000 hectares since February 1.

LE MONDE BY FLORA GENOUX (BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA) CORRESPONDENT)

"The time will come when President Boric will have to choose between reform or re-foundation".

This Chilean sociologist, with a communist past and key advisor to the government of socialist Ricardo Lagos, says that a change of course in Latin America is indispensable "if we want to influence the 21st century".

EL PAÍS BY ROCÍO MONTES

Argentina will receive a million-dollar investment to facilitate the export of gas from Vaca Muerta to Brazil and Chile.

CAF - Development Bank of Latin America - will provide 540 million dollars for the construction of a gas pipeline network. Its vice-president, Christian Asinelli, defends the use of natural gas in the region as a "just transition energy".

El País by LORENA ARROYO

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

The Incredible Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Now Used In Mental Health

Forbes by Bernard Marr

Stigma

Stereotypes surrounding those with mental illnesses prevent patients from seeking the help they need. According to a World Health Organization study, 30 to 80 percent of those with mental health issues don’t seek treatment. It’s common to hear stereotypes about people with mental health issues like they’re dangerous, incompetent, or responsible for their illness. 

We’re experiencing a mental health crisis. Approximately 15.5% of the global population is affected by mental illnesses, and those numbers are rising. Although there are many who require treatment, more than 50% of mental illnesses remain untreated. In the United States, one in five adults suffers from some form of mental illness. Every 40 seconds one person dies from suicide and for every adult who dies from suicide, there are more than 20 others who have attempted to end their life. The ramifications of this go beyond our families and cultures as mental health also has a tremendous economic impact for the cost of treatment as well as the loss of productivity.

The critical shortfall of psychiatrists and other mental health specialists to provide treatment exacerbates this crisis. In fact, nearly 40% of Americans live where there is a shortage of mental health professionals; 60% of U.S. counties don’t have a psychiatrist. Those that do have access to mental health professionals often forgo treatment because they can’t afford it. Those with depression visit primary care physicians an average of five times a year versus three times for those who don’t have it. Others seek help in emergency rooms which are more expensive. More than $201 billion is spent on mental health annually making mental health the most expensive part of our healthcare system after knocking out heart conditions for the honor.

Examples of current uses of AI in mental health

Researchers are testing different ways that artificial intelligence can help screen, diagnose and treat mental illness.

Researchers from the World Well-Being Project (WWBP) analyzed social media with an AI algorithm to pick out linguistic cues that might predict depression. It turns out that those suffering from depression express themselves on social media in ways that those dealing with other chronic conditions do not such as mentions of loneliness and using words such as "feelings," "I" and "me." The team's findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but after analyzing half a million Facebook posts from people who consented to provide their Facebook status updates and medical records, they were able to identify depression-associated language markers. What the researchers found was that linguistic markers could predict depression up to three months before the person receives a formal diagnosis. Other researchers use technology to explore the way facial expressions, enunciation of words and tone and language could indicate suicide risk.

In addition to researchers, there are several companies using artificial intelligence to help tackle the mental health crisis. Quartet's platform flags possible mental conditions and can refer patients to a provider or a computerized cognitive behavioral therapy program. Ginger’s contribution is a chat application used by employers that provides direct counseling services to employees. Its algorithms analyze the words someone uses and then relies on its training from more than 2 billion behavioral data samples, 45 million chat messages and 2 million clinical assessments to provide a recommendation. The CompanionMX system has an app that allows patients being treated with depression, bipolar disorders, and other conditions to create an audio log where they can talk about how they are feeling. The AI system analyzes the recording as well as looks for changes in behavior for proactive mental health monitoring. Bark, a parental control phone tracker app, monitors major messaging and social media platforms to look for signs of cyberbullying, depression, suicidal thoughts and sexting on a child’s phone.

These are just a few of the innovative solutions that support mental health.

4 Benefits of using AI to help solve the mental health crisis

There are several reasons why AI could be a powerful tool to help us solve the mental health crisis. Here are four benefits:

1.      Support mental health professionals

As it does for many industries, AI can help support mental health professionals in doing their jobs. Algorithms can analyze data much faster than humans, can suggest possible treatments, monitor a patient’s progress and alert the human professional to any concerns. In many cases, AI and a human clinician would work together.

1.      24/7 access

Due to the lack of human mental health professionals, it can take months to get an appointment. If patients live in an area without enough mental health professionals, their wait will be even longer. AI provides a tool that an individual can access all the time, 24/7 without waiting for an appointment.

1.      Not expensive

The cost of care prohibits some individuals from seeking help. Artificial intelligent tools could offer a more accessible solution.

1.      Comfort talking to a bot

While it might take some people time to feel comfortable talking to a bot, the anonymity of an AI algorithm can be positive. What might be difficult to share with a therapist in person is easier for some to disclose to a bot.

Obstacles to overcome

While there is great promise for using AI to help the current mental health crisis, there are still obstacles to overcome. There are significant privacy concerns as well as making people comfortable and willing to accept various levels of being monitored in their day-to-day lives. In addition, there is no regulation for these applications, so it is advised that any app be used in conjunction with a mental health professional. As AI tools are created, it is essential that they are protocols in place to make them safe and effective and built and trained with a diverse data set, so they aren't biased toward a particular population.

Overall, AI has the promise to provide critical resources we need to overcome our mental health crisis.

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Ernesto Cardenal’s Prayer for Marilyn Monroe

She hungered for love and we offered her tranquilizers.
For her despair, because we’re not saints psychoanalysis was recommended to her...

One of Latin America’s most acclaimed poets, he wrote verses that offered a cosmic fusion of spirituality, politics, science and history, while appearing at frequent lectures and readings that made him a kind of international ambassador for Nicaragua.

Father Cardenal drew few boundaries between his callings. The son of a wealthy Nicaraguan family, he fought with a revolutionary group in his late 20s, then emerged as a leading proponent of liberation theology, which emphasizes Jesus’s message to the poor and oppressed.

The washington post By Harrison Smith

March 2, 2020

Ernesto Cardenal’s Prayer for Marilyn Monroe

Lord

receive this young woman known around the world as Marilyn Monroe
although that wasn’t her real name
(but You know her real name, the name of the orphan raped at the age of 6
and the shopgirl who at 16 had tried to kill herself)
who now comes before You without any makeup
without her Press Agent
without photographers and without autograph hounds,
alone like an astronaut facing night in space.

She dreamed when she was little that she was naked in a church
(according to the Time account)
before a prostrated crowd of people, their heads on the floor
and she had to walk on tiptoe so as not to step on their heads.
You know our dreams better than the psychiatrists.
Church, home, cave, all represent the security of the womb
but something else too …
The heads are her fans, that’s clear
(the mass of heads in the dark under the beam of light).
But the temple isn’t the studios of 20th Century-Fox.
The temple—of marble and gold—is the temple of her body
in which the Son of Man stands whip in hand
driving out the studio bosses of 20th Century-Fox
who made Your house of prayer a den of thieves.

Lord
in this world polluted with sin and radioactivity
You won’t blame it all on a shopgirl
who, like any other shopgirl, dreamed of being a star.
Her dream just became a reality (but like Technicolor’s reality).
She only acted according to the script we gave her
—the story of our own lives. And it was an absurd script.
Forgive her, Lord, and forgive us
for our 20th Century
for this Colossal Super-Production on which we all have worked.
She hungered for love and we offered her tranquilizers.
For her despair, because we’re not saints
psychoanalysis was recommended to her.
Remember, Lord, her growing fear of the camera
and her hatred of makeup—insisting on fresh makeup for each scene—
and how the terror kept building up in her
and making her late to the studios.

Like any other shopgirl
she dreamed of being a star.
And her life was unreal like a dream that a psychiatrist interprets and files.

Her romances were a kiss with closed eyes
and when she opened them
she realized she had been under floodlights
as they killed the floodlights!
and they took down the two walls of the room (it was a movie set)
while the Director left with his scriptbook
because the scene had been shot.
Or like a cruise on a yacht, a kiss in Singapore, a dance in Rio
the reception at the mansion of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor
all viewed in a poor apartment’s tiny living room.

The film ended without the final kiss.
She was found dead in her bed with her hand on the phone.
And the detectives never learned who she was going to call.
She was
like someone who had dialed the number of the only friendly voice
and only heard the voice of a recording that says: WRONG NUMBER.
Or like someone who had been wounded by gangsters
reaching for a disconnected phone.

Lord
whoever it might have been that she was going to call
and didn’t call (and maybe it was no one
or Someone whose number isn’t in the Los Angeles phonebook)
You answer that telephone!

(Translated from the Spanish by Jonathan Cohen)

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The Pentagon and intelligence agencies have intensified their study of unexplained incidents near military bases in recent years.

Image: Germán & Co

What’s Going On Up There? Theories but No Answers in Shootdowns of Mystery Craft.

The U.S. and Canada are investigating three unidentified flying objects shot down over North America in the past three days. Militaries have adjusted radars to try to spot more incursions.

NYT by Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper and Edward Wong

Published Feb. 12, 2023

WASHINGTON — If the truth is out there, it certainly is not apparent yet.

Pentagon and intelligence officials are trying to make sense of three unidentified flying objects over Alaska, Canada and Michigan that U.S. fighter jets shot down with missiles on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The latest turn in the aerial show taking place in the skies above North America comes after a helter-skelter weekend involving what at times seemed like an invasion of unidentified flying objects.

The latest object had first been spotted on Saturday over Montana, initially sparking debate over whether it even existed. On Saturday, military officials detected a radar blip over Montana, which then disappeared, leading them to conclude it was an anomaly. Then a blip appeared Sunday over Montana, then Wisconsin and Michigan. Once military officials obtained visual confirmation, they ordered an F-16 to shoot it down over Lake Huron.

There are two big questions around the episodes: What were the craft? And why does the United States appear to be seeing more suddenly, and shooting down more?

There are no answers to the first question yet. American officials do not know what the objects were, much less their purpose or who sent them.

For the second, it is not clear if there are suddenly more objects. But what is certain is that in the wake of the recent incursion by a Chinese spy balloon, the U.S. and Canadian militaries are hypervigilant in flagging some objects that might previously have been allowed to pass.

After the transit of the spy balloon this month, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, adjusted its radar system to make it more sensitive. As a result, the number of objects it detected increased sharply. In other words, NORAD is picking up more incursions because it is looking for them, spurred on by the heightened awareness caused by the furor over the spy balloon, which floated over the continental United States for a week before an F-22 shot it down on Feb. 4.

“We have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase in objects that we’ve detected over the past week,” Melissa Dalton, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, said at a news conference on Sunday evening.

American officials have not completely discounted theories that there could also be more objects, period. Some officials theorize that the objects could be from China, or another foreign power, and may be aimed at testing detection abilities after the spy balloon.

The object spotted approaching Lake Huron on Sunday was flying at 20,000 feet and presented a potential threat to civil aviation, so President Biden ordered it shot down, U.S. officials said. It had an octagonal structure with strings hanging off but had no discernible payload, they added.

U.S. and Canadian officials say the objects shot down on Friday and Saturday were also flying lower than the spy balloon, posing a greater danger to civilian aircraft, which prompted leaders to order them destroyed. Those two objects were flying over parts of Alaska and the Yukon that have few residents, and the third object downed on Sunday was over water, so risks posed by falling debris were minimal, they said.

The spy balloon that drifted across the United States flew much higher, at 60,000 feet, and did not pose a danger to aircraft. But any falling debris could have hit people on the ground, Pentagon officials said.

Throughout the weekend, officials said they were still trying to determine what the three objects were. The first, a Defense Department official said, is most likely not a balloon — and it broke into pieces after it was shot down on Friday. Saturday’s object was described by Canadian authorities as cylindrical, and American officials say it is more likely it was a balloon of some kind. Sunday’s object appeared unlikely to be a balloon, one official said.

NORAD radar tracked the first two objects for at least 12 hours before they were shot down. But Defense Department officials have never said whether they picked the objects up on radar before they neared American airspace. One official said it is unclear what keeps the objects aloft.

U.S. officials said they are reviewing video and other sensor readings collected by the American pilots who observed the objects before their destruction. But the exact nature of the objects, where they are from and what they were intended for will not be confirmed until the F.B.I. and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have the chance to thoroughly examine the debris, officials said.

Asked during a news conference on Sunday whether he had ruled out extraterrestrial origins, Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the commander of the Air Force’s Northern Command, said, “I haven’t ruled out anything at this point.” But in interviews Sunday, national security officials discounted any thoughts that what the Air Force shot out of the sky represented any sort of alien visitors. No one, one senior official said, thinks these things are anything other than devices fashioned here on Earth.

Luis Elizondo, the military intelligence officer who ran the Pentagon’s U.F.O. program until 2017, concurred. But he said that the Biden administration must find a way to balance vigilance over what is going on in the skies above America against “chasing our tail” whenever something unknown shows up — a tough task, he said.

For years, adversaries have sent low-tech gadgets into the skies above the United States, Mr. Elizondo said.

“What’s happening now is you have low-end technology being used to harass America,” he said in an interview. “It is a high-impact, low-cost way for China to do this, and the more you look up in the sky, the more you will see.”

At the urging of Congress, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies have intensified their study of unexplained incidents near military bases in recent years. The studies on what the intelligence community calls unidentified aerial phenomena have pinpointed previously undetected efforts to conduct surveillance on American military exercises and bases. Many of those unexplained incidents have been balloons, and some of them are now believed to be attempted surveillance activity by China or other powers, both using balloons and surveillance drones.

In a public report released last month, the intelligence community said that of 366 unexplained incidents, 163 were later identified as balloons. A related classified document whose findings were reported this month by The New York Times said at least two incidents at U.S. military bases could be examples of advanced aerial technology, possibly developed by China.

“We can now assess flight patterns and trajectory in a much more scientific way,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who wrote the recent legislation mandating greater internal military reporting and analysis of aerial phenomena, leading to more documentation of sightings. “You need to know who’s using the technology and what it is.”

The most alarming theory under consideration by some U.S. officials is that the objects are sent by China or another power in an attempt to learn more about American radar or early warning systems.

A senior administration official said one theory — and the person stressed that it is just a theory — is that China or Russia sent the objects to test American intelligence-gathering capabilities. They could be sent to learn both how quickly the United States becomes aware of an intrusion and how quickly the military can respond to such an incursion, the official said.

American officials are united in their belief that the spy balloon that transited the United States was a Chinese machine meant to conduct surveillance on American military bases. Officials said it was unclear if China had complete control of the balloon during its whole journey. But officials said China did have at least a limited ability to steer it, and the balloon maneuvered on Feb. 3 before it was shot down the next day.

Another American official said the Chinese spy balloon was equipped with a self-destruct mechanism, but Beijing did not use it, a potential sign that Chinese officials wanted to continue to collect intelligence, even after it was discovered.

The disclosure of the balloon by the Pentagon on Feb. 2 led to a public diplomatic crisis between China and the United States. Beijing said it had the right to respond further. On Sunday, a Chinese newspaper reported that local maritime authorities in Shandong Province on the east coast had spotted an “unidentified flying object” in waters by the city of Rizhao and were preparing to shoot it down. State-run news organizations reposted the information.

If any of the devices destroyed in North America over the past three days were Chinese, it would amount to a major provocation on the heels of the spy balloon, one reason some officials said not to jump to the conclusion that the objects are surveillance devices sent from Beijing.

Officials in Beijing seem to want to limit tensions over the spy balloon, suggesting to some U.S. officials that the latest objects are less likely to be deliberate Chinese provocations or tests.

Pentagon officials have been raising flags about deficiencies in North America’s aging warning systems, radar and sensors.

Speaking last year at the Aspen Security Conference in Colorado, General VanHerck said that the United States had struggled to detect certain intrusions, what he called “domain awareness challenges.” General VanHerck said the NORAD radars could not adequately detect hypersonics and other threats.

But, he also said, the United States and Canada were investing in new over-the-horizon radar to better identify potential threats, as well as artificial intelligence systems to help pick out possible intrusions.

“I’m very encouraged with where we’re going,” General VanHerck said last July, “but we still have some challenges to work on.”

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Image: Germán & Co

The countries warn the EU against an overhaul of the energy market in “crisis mode”.

Ukdaily.news by Mia Gordon

February 13, 2023

The European Commission is drafting an overhaul of the EU’s electricity market rules with the aim of better cushioning consumer bills ahead of fossil fuel price spikes and avoiding a repeat of the surge in electricity wort sparked by cuts in Russia’s gas supplies last year.

The seven countries, led by Denmark, said in a letter that the existing market design in Europe had encouraged lower electricity prices for years, helped expand renewable energy and ensured that enough electricity was produced to meet demand and avoid shortages.

“We must resist the temptation to kill the golden goose that has been our single market for electricity for the past decade,” said Lars Aagaard, Denmark’s energy minister.

Countries said there was some room for improvement, especially given the surge in electricity costs over the past year. However, any changes must ensure the market continues to function and incentivize massive investments in renewable energy, they said.

“Any reform that goes beyond targeted adjustments to the existing framework should be underpinned by an in-depth impact assessment and not adopted in crisis mode,” reads the letter to the Commission, seen by Reuters.

Other countries, including Spain and France, are pursuing deeper reforms. Spain has proposed a switch to longer-term fixed price contracts for power plants to try to limit price spikes.

The seven countries said in their letter that related schemes – such as Contracts for Difference (CfDs) – could play a role, but they should be voluntary, focused on new renewable energy and still “responsive” to the market.

Electricity industry lobby group Eurelectric has also warned against making CFDs mandatory as it could undermine competition in the electricity market and discourage investors.

In their letter, the seven countries supported an idea already discussed by the Commission to make it easier for consumers to choose between electricity contracts with fluctuating and fixed prices.

However, they pushed back another Commission proposal to extend a temporary EU measure reclaiming windfall revenues from non-gas generators.

“That could jeopardize investor confidence in the investments needed,” the countries said in the letter, citing EU estimates that hundreds of billions of euros in renewable energy investments are needed annually to help countries convert from Russian fossil fuels get off.

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The fire in the vicinity of the city of Dichato, in the south of Chile, on February 10, 2023.

Image: Le Monde by JAVIER TORRES / AFP

Chile faces largest wildfires since 2017

Le Monde by Flora Genoux (Buenos Aires (Argentina) correspondent)

Published on February 12, 2023 

In DepthFires fueled by drought and heatwaves killed 24 and destroyed 373,000 hectares since February 1.

Helpless firefighters standing in front of a wall of flames, inhabitants trying to smother the blaze with buckets of water, a line of fire, visible from the sky, advancing relentlessly over the forest... The violent fires that have been raging in Chile since February 1, in the middle of the southern summer, are delivering their share of apocalyptic images.

The so-called south-central region of the country – the provinces of Maule, Nuble, Biobio and Araucania, located some 280 km South of Santiago – saw thousands of hectares destroyed.

The toll as of Friday, February 10, stood at 24 dead, 1,250 homes wrecked and more than 2,000 being taken care of by health services. In total, more than 373,000 hectares were blown by the disaster. The country is witnessing the worst fires since 2017 during which 467,000 hectares disappeared.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric spoke earlier this week of "very difficult days" while the fires had already been active for a week. He called for the cooperation of all institutions including the private sector.

"In five days, we are seeing a burned area equivalent to two years of fire," Carolina Toha, minister of the interior, said on Monday. This week, more than 5,600 Chilean firefighters continued to fight the flames, with the support of international organizations.

Argentina, Mexico, but also Spain or the United States sent material and human rescue teams. France announced on Tuesday it was sending 80 firemen and rescue workers. The day before, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter: "The Chilean people can count on the support of France to fight against this plague."

The European Union also announced it was sending over firefighters, doctors and experts. "No matter how many planes or how much money is dedicated to fighting the fires, they have become uncontrollable," Roberto Rondanelli, a meteorologist at the University of Chile, said. On Friday, 321 fires were still active. The experts are clear: The origin of the fires is above all human, whether criminal or accidental. "There is a legitimate suspicion related to the intentionality [of the fires], which is under investigation," Boric said on Wednesday. At least 28 people have been arrested.

However, a series of factors explain the speed and intensity of the fires. First, there is climate change, the vehicle for a historic "mega-drought" in Chile which has been ongoing for about 13 years.

The drought is reflected in a historic rainfall deficit of 30% over the period 2010-2019, according to a report by Chile's Center for Climate and Resilience Research (CR2). In the last 50 years, maximum summer temperatures increased by 0.43°C per decade, the CR2 wrote in a note last week.

"All events with temperatures above 40°C have occurred in the last decade," it said. Regions afflicted by the fires were experiencing a heatwave with temperatures sometimes exceeding the 40°C threshold.

An alert for high temperature ran until Saturday for an area encompassing more than 900 km from North to South, from the Coquimbo region to Nuble.

Pine and eucalyptus trees as far as the eye can see

"There is also a strong accumulation of combustible material," Miguel Castillo, a forest engineer at the University of Chile said. Pine and eucalyptus trees are planted as far as the eye can see by the wood industry.

An engine for the regional economy, the idea was encouraged under Chile's military dictatorship (1973-1990). The industry is confronted with territorial conflicts involving part of the indigenous Mapuche population who claim ancestral lands held by forest owners.

In 2022, exports from the wood sector amounted to €6.5 billion according to the Chilean Forestry Institute, amounting to more than 111,000 jobs.

However, pine and eucalyptus are exotic trees that require more water than endemic species. They dry up the waterways that could serve as a natural barrier to the flames. "With high heat, they also tend to dry out faster than endemic trees. Therefore, they burn more and facilitate the spread of fires, a phenomenon also reinforced by their density," Rondanelli said.

The winds that blew over the region over the past few days contributed to the spread of the fires. "It is absolutely necessary to rethink the productive system by planting endemic trees. After the great fires of 2017, where there were endemic trees, pine and eucalyptus trees were planted instead," said Rondanelli.

Despite a smaller amount of hectares burned this time (the great fires of 2017 resulted in the death of 11) the country is mourning more deaths. "This is related to the number of outbreaks which are more numerous and scattered. This represents a greater challenge in terms of coordination, prioritization and access to areas to be evacuated," Castillo said.

The proximity of tree plantations to residential areas is also blamed for the higher number of deaths. In 2014, a proposal to modify forest regulation was presented by Alejandro Navarro who was then a leftwing senator of the Biobio region.

It provided for a minimum distance of 500 meters between plantations and residential areas or roads. In 2015, another parliamentary initiative encompassing the previous text also proposed banning new plantations of "highly combustible" species. This time, the legislation did not go through.

As the smoke from the fires reaches as far as the capital, Santiago, CO2 emissions generated by the fires are triggering concern. With the risk of more episodes of this magnitude in the future, the fires "may become one of the most important causes of greenhouse gas emissions in the country," according to the CR2.

In 2017, fires alone accounted for 90% of total emissions in a baseline year, 2016. They also pose a great threat to biodiversity, Maisa Rojas, minister for the environment, said.

Faced with the emergency, the Chilean government announced a series of aid mechanisms destined for the residents of the affected regions. On Friday, authorities ordered a curfew to prevent possible looting of evacuated homes.

Germán & Co

"The time will come when President Boric will have to choose between reform or re-foundation".

This Chilean sociologist, with a communist past and key advisor to the government of socialist Ricardo Lagos, says that a change of course in Latin America is indispensable "if we want to influence the 21st century".

El País by ROCÍO MONTES

Santiago de Chile - 11 Feb 2023 

Ernesto Ottone (Valparaíso, 1948) was among those who rejected the proposal for a new Constitution in the plebiscite on 4 September, like 62% of Chileans. "I reject it because I am convinced that it is the best way for a good Constitution", he told EL PAÍS before the referendum. With a communist past until the end of the 1970s - he was a world leader of his youth - the sociologist was a key strategic adviser to the government of the socialist Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006). He is an intellectual who looks to the public rather than a politician who looks to books. In his latest publication, Crónica de una odisea, del estallido social al estallido de las urnas, he describes the last three years in Chile as a "turbulent, unstable and tense period, very different from the one that has accompanied the country's progress since the return to democracy". In this interview, conducted in his flat in Providencia, in the Chilean capital, in the middle of summer with the city empty, he analyses the political scene facing Chile in 2023.

Question: What has happened in Chile since the plebiscite of 4 September, when 62% of voters rejected the proposed new constitution?

Answer. September 4 was not a triumph of conservatism over change, as was perceived by some observers outside the country, but it was the return of history. The compulsory vote showed a more complete Chile, not only that of the mobilised forces, and produced a result that stunned the government.

Q. What was the text that was rejected like?

A. The text that the constitutional convention presented to the plebiscite was a mixture of constitutional text and partisan political programme, which hurt representative democracy and the balance of power and which artificially exacerbated the issue of nationalities. This was not accepted by Chileans who want a new constitution that reflects a social, modern, democratic and inclusive state. Chileans do not want to replace the authoritarian traces of the past with new authoritarian dangers.

Q. How did President Boric's government, which was for the alternative that lost, stand after the referendum?

A. President Boric weakened his authority and his role as head of state by merging with that project. Partly because he partially shared it, I believe, and partly under pressure from the ruling group around him, which in truth represents only a minority sector, I fear, of those who brought him to the government, because the rest were reformist voters who voted against the extreme right candidate in the 2021 presidential elections. Today the government has included sectors of the traditional left, which occupy important positions that help to contain the excesses of doctrinarism and imperfection, although they do not always succeed in doing so.

Q. Chile is making a second attempt at a new constitution. Do you think this is necessary?

A. Yes, of course. Chileans rejected a text, not the idea of a new Constitution that has greater legitimacy, that responds to the challenges of the 21st century, that frames a social state and that protects individual liberties and encourages greater inclusiveness. I believe that the newly initiated new process, with greater institutional thickness, will be able to achieve a Constitution acceptable to the vast majority of the country.

Q. 2023 will be a difficult year for Chile, with an economic recession...

A. The situation is difficult for this year, not only in Chile, but in the whole world. It will require a lot of political capacity, you can't keep taking one step in one direction and another in the opposite direction. The time will come when President Boric will have to choose between reform or refoundation.

Q. The president has very high disapproval, 66%, according to the latest Cadem. How do you overcome this bad moment of popularity?

A. He will only be able to recover from his high level of disapproval if his ability to govern improves, if he generates broad agreements on economic and social problems in the fight against crime, on changing the tax system and improving the pension system, on the functioning of the education and health systems in a non-traumatic way. In short, if it is dominated by a state vocation that has so far appeared only intermittently.

Q. This year, Chile commemorates the 50th anniversary of the 1973 coup d'état. How do you see Chile on this date?

A. Chile has no room to increase its internal conflicts and generate a more polarised situation. The commemoration of the 1973 coup d'état should be read as a national decision never to repeat that tragedy. This requires first and foremost a well-functioning democracy. It must be commemorated in a sober, profound and historic way. The "never again" and the republican character that marked the 30th anniversary 20 years ago, in 2003, when Chile was moving forward in all areas, must be present.

Q. Are you one of those who believe that the far right is growing stronger in Chile and that it has presidential options?

A. For that to happen there would have to be a collapse of the traditional right and a predominance in its electorate of those who most yearn for authoritarianism. The rebirth of reformist centre and centre-left forces would have to fail and the more extreme sectors of the radical left would have to predominate. This could generate in the country a demand for authoritarianism at any price, led by the extreme right. I hope that this does not happen, that the gods do not blind the democrats. But to avoid such tendencies, realism, political generosity and deep democratic convictions are required.

Q. While this is happening in Chile, how do you, a sociologist who made a career in ECLAC, see the rest of Latin America?

A. Latin America is one of the regions hardest hit by this sad and fragmented phase of a globalisation in decline. There is no longer one dictatorship in Latin America, but three. There are countries with a strong democratic degradation, others with inconsistent democracies, within a short period of time there have been two attempted coups d'état and democratic institutions have been weakened in general.

Q. We are in a violent region...

A. We make up 8.6% of the world's population, but one third of the world's crimes - excluding war crimes - are committed in our region. After the end of the economic boom between 2003 and 2013, the economy began to fall, and the poverty and equality indicators, which had indicated progress in the right direction, began to go back in the wrong direction. This situation will be very difficult to reverse with the current economic situation. Citizen demands have no capacity to respond and the fragility of democracies is spreading.

Q. Are we facing a pendulum swing to the left, considering the sign of several Latin American governments?

A. There is the illusion of a pink tide, but it is very heterogeneous and probably volatile. In general, elections tend to be won by those in opposition. The danger of the spread of authoritarian populism of different signs is just around the corner. But this is not an inevitable fate as in the Greek tragedies. It does, however, require a gigantic effort.

Q. Where should this effort be focused?

A. Resuming economic growth, generating a productive transformation that adds value to our generous natural resource base. Modernising our states and democratic institutions, enhancing cooperation between the public, private and civil society sectors, and relaunching efforts to achieve greater levels of equality and poverty reduction by prioritising public policies and creating a progressive fiscal pact. Combat organised crime through coordinated intelligence, preventing the development of corruption and better management of mega-cities. Overcoming the region's invisibility in the world, the absence of a single voice to put forward its interests, and avoiding the ideologisation of regional organisations that are often linked to discourses of the past that are alien to the current reality.

Q. Do you see any room for optimism?

A. Despite all its problems, Latin America has much to contribute in a troubled world. The far West, as Alain Rouquié called it, has medium development, decisive environmental resources in relation to climate change and natural resources that can contribute exponentially to the information age and digitalisation. Making them count requires a long view and a strategic capacity that we see little of in our rulers at the moment. A change of course is essential if we want to make an impact in the 21st century.

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Source: El País

Argentina will receive a million-dollar investment to facilitate the export of gas from Vaca Muerta to Brazil and Chile.

CAF - Development Bank of Latin America - will provide 540 million dollars for the construction of a gas pipeline network. Its vice-president, Christian Asinelli, defends the use of natural gas in the region as a "just transition energy".

El País by LORENA ARROYO

01 FEB 2023

For more than a decade, Vaca Muerta has represented a hope for Argentina's battered economy that has yet to materialise. The 30,000-kilometre field in Patagonia makes Argentina the country with the second largest shale gas resources in the world. But getting it out and transporting it has proved a complex task since exploitation began in 2012. Now, a new investment agreement has rekindled the hopes of those hoping for a definitive take-off of the field.

Economy Minister Sergio Massa announced last week that he had reached an agreement with CAF - Development Bank of Latin America* to finance a gas pipeline that will facilitate exports to Chile and Brazil. "It will be 540 million dollars to build the La Carlota-Tío Pujio gas pipeline, the Reversal del Norte and the compressor plants," the minister said on his Twitter account. The investment, which will be approved in March by CAF's board of directors, foresees the construction of kilometres of pipelines to transport gas from Vaca Muerta, in the west of the country, to Santa Fe, in the northeast. This, the minister said, would increase "the possibilities of gas export volumes" to neighbouring countries.

According to Reuters, with these works the country expects to be able to reverse the energy balance deficit of $5 billion recorded in 2022 and achieve a surplus of about $12 billion in 2025. "From the point of view of the country's productive activities, obviously developing the potential of Vaca Muerta is very important for the economy," acknowledged CAF vice-president Christian Asinelli in an interview with América Futura. The official stresses that the work to be financed by the multilateral organisation will be beneficial for the region's energy integration and will reduce Argentina's dependence on current imports of Bolivian gas.

A "just transition energy"

"With this infrastructure work, what is being done is to connect the gas from Vaca Muerta with a section of a gas pipeline that will allow gas to be taken from the south of the country to the north," he explains. In addition, "with a series of investments in five gas conversion plants", it will be possible to link these gas pipelines with Bolivia to send gas to Brazil, on the one hand, and to the north of Chile, on the other. According to his estimates, if everything goes according to plan, the construction of 132 kilometres of pipelines and the reconversion of the five plants that would allow gas to be transferred from northern Argentina to Bolivia could be ready in less than two years.

Faced with criticism from some sectors that natural gas is not a clean energy - since it emits methane, one of the gases that contributes most to climate change - CAF defends its use as a "transition energy" towards a green matrix through fair processes that benefit the region's population. "For countries like Argentina, it is a fair transition energy," Asinelli points out. "For Latin America and the Caribbean, what we need is to look for spaces that improve, from an environmental point of view, but without forgetting the people, the needs, social growth and the reduction of poverty," he adds, pointing out that in the region there is a "different consensus than in Europe" on energy issues.

"Gas for us is a transitional energy that will help us to achieve the standards of the sustainable development goals, but through a process that is fair for our countries, where we can use our natural resources by lowering the amount of emissions, that is, by stopping using coal plants and using gas, which is clearly an energy that pollutes much less. It is not the ultimate goal, but it is the path that can lead us towards what we call a just transition, where the human and social aspects are not forgotten either," he adds.

Asinelli recognises that those who make public policies have to find a balance between benefiting populations, caring for people and making the right decisions to care for the environment, a task that, he says, "is sometimes not easy". In this sense, the CAF official stresses that the decision to invest in Vaca Muerta has been taken after analysing the previous environmental impact studies and that the disbursements will be made as the work progresses: "I believe that this process of using gas as a transition energy, if it is done well, will clearly bring more development, which is what we are looking for".

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News round-up, Monday, February 13, 2023

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Quote of the day…

We’re experiencing a mental health crisis. Approximately 15.5% of the global population is affected by mental illnesses, and those numbers are rising. Although there are many who require treatment, more than 50% of mental illnesses remain untreated. In the United States, one in five adults suffers from some form of mental illness. Every 40 seconds one person dies from suicide and for every adult who dies from suicide, there are more than 20 others who have attempted to end their life. The ramifications of this go beyond our families and cultures as mental health also has a tremendous economic impact for the cost of treatment as well as the loss of productivity.

Forbes by Bernard Marr

Despite all its problems, Latin America has much to contribute in a troubled world. The far West, as Alain Rouquié called it, has medium development, decisive environmental resources in relation to climate change and natural resources that can contribute exponentially to the information age and digitalisation. Making them count requires a long view and a strategic capacity that we see little of in our rulers at the moment. A change of course is essential if we want to make an impact in the 21st century.

Ernesto Ottone (Valparaíso, 1948) was among those who rejected the proposal for a new Constitution in the plebiscite on 4 September, like 62% of Chileans. "I reject it because I am convinced that it is the best way for a good Constitution", he told EL PAÍS before the referendum.

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Most Read…

What’s Going On Up There? Theories but No Answers in Shootdowns of Mystery Craft.

The U.S. and Canada are investigating three unidentified flying objects shot down over North America in the past three days. Militaries have adjusted radars to try to spot more incursions.

NYT by Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper and Edward Wong

The countries warn the EU against an overhaul of the energy market in “crisis mode”.

The European Commission is drafting an overhaul of the EU’s electricity market rules with the aim of better cushioning consumer bills ahead of fossil fuel price spikes and avoiding a repeat of the surge in electricity wort sparked by cuts in Russia’s gas supplies last year.

Ukdaily.news by Mia Gordon

Chile faces largest wildfires since 2017

In DepthFires fueled by drought and heatwaves killed 24 and destroyed 373,000 hectares since February 1.

LE MONDE BY FLORA GENOUX (BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA) CORRESPONDENT)

"The time will come when President Boric will have to choose between reform or re-foundation".

This Chilean sociologist, with a communist past and key advisor to the government of socialist Ricardo Lagos, says that a change of course in Latin America is indispensable "if we want to influence the 21st century".

EL PAÍS BY ROCÍO MONTES

Argentina will receive a million-dollar investment to facilitate the export of gas from Vaca Muerta to Brazil and Chile.

CAF - Development Bank of Latin America - will provide 540 million dollars for the construction of a gas pipeline network. Its vice-president, Christian Asinelli, defends the use of natural gas in the region as a "just transition energy".

El País by LORENA ARROYO

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

The Incredible Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Now Used In Mental Health

Forbes by Bernard Marr

Stigma

Stereotypes surrounding those with mental illnesses prevent patients from seeking the help they need. According to a World Health Organization study, 30 to 80 percent of those with mental health issues don’t seek treatment. It’s common to hear stereotypes about people with mental health issues like they’re dangerous, incompetent, or responsible for their illness. 

We’re experiencing a mental health crisis. Approximately 15.5% of the global population is affected by mental illnesses, and those numbers are rising. Although there are many who require treatment, more than 50% of mental illnesses remain untreated. In the United States, one in five adults suffers from some form of mental illness. Every 40 seconds one person dies from suicide and for every adult who dies from suicide, there are more than 20 others who have attempted to end their life. The ramifications of this go beyond our families and cultures as mental health also has a tremendous economic impact for the cost of treatment as well as the loss of productivity.

The critical shortfall of psychiatrists and other mental health specialists to provide treatment exacerbates this crisis. In fact, nearly 40% of Americans live where there is a shortage of mental health professionals; 60% of U.S. counties don’t have a psychiatrist. Those that do have access to mental health professionals often forgo treatment because they can’t afford it. Those with depression visit primary care physicians an average of five times a year versus three times for those who don’t have it. Others seek help in emergency rooms which are more expensive. More than $201 billion is spent on mental health annually making mental health the most expensive part of our healthcare system after knocking out heart conditions for the honor.

Examples of current uses of AI in mental health

Researchers are testing different ways that artificial intelligence can help screen, diagnose and treat mental illness.

Researchers from the World Well-Being Project (WWBP) analyzed social media with an AI algorithm to pick out linguistic cues that might predict depression. It turns out that those suffering from depression express themselves on social media in ways that those dealing with other chronic conditions do not such as mentions of loneliness and using words such as "feelings," "I" and "me." The team's findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but after analyzing half a million Facebook posts from people who consented to provide their Facebook status updates and medical records, they were able to identify depression-associated language markers. What the researchers found was that linguistic markers could predict depression up to three months before the person receives a formal diagnosis. Other researchers use technology to explore the way facial expressions, enunciation of words and tone and language could indicate suicide risk.

In addition to researchers, there are several companies using artificial intelligence to help tackle the mental health crisis. Quartet's platform flags possible mental conditions and can refer patients to a provider or a computerized cognitive behavioral therapy program. Ginger’s contribution is a chat application used by employers that provides direct counseling services to employees. Its algorithms analyze the words someone uses and then relies on its training from more than 2 billion behavioral data samples, 45 million chat messages and 2 million clinical assessments to provide a recommendation. The CompanionMX system has an app that allows patients being treated with depression, bipolar disorders, and other conditions to create an audio log where they can talk about how they are feeling. The AI system analyzes the recording as well as looks for changes in behavior for proactive mental health monitoring. Bark, a parental control phone tracker app, monitors major messaging and social media platforms to look for signs of cyberbullying, depression, suicidal thoughts and sexting on a child’s phone.

These are just a few of the innovative solutions that support mental health.

4 Benefits of using AI to help solve the mental health crisis

There are several reasons why AI could be a powerful tool to help us solve the mental health crisis. Here are four benefits:

1.      Support mental health professionals

As it does for many industries, AI can help support mental health professionals in doing their jobs. Algorithms can analyze data much faster than humans, can suggest possible treatments, monitor a patient’s progress and alert the human professional to any concerns. In many cases, AI and a human clinician would work together.

1.      24/7 access

Due to the lack of human mental health professionals, it can take months to get an appointment. If patients live in an area without enough mental health professionals, their wait will be even longer. AI provides a tool that an individual can access all the time, 24/7 without waiting for an appointment.

1.      Not expensive

The cost of care prohibits some individuals from seeking help. Artificial intelligent tools could offer a more accessible solution.

1.      Comfort talking to a bot

While it might take some people time to feel comfortable talking to a bot, the anonymity of an AI algorithm can be positive. What might be difficult to share with a therapist in person is easier for some to disclose to a bot.

Obstacles to overcome

While there is great promise for using AI to help the current mental health crisis, there are still obstacles to overcome. There are significant privacy concerns as well as making people comfortable and willing to accept various levels of being monitored in their day-to-day lives. In addition, there is no regulation for these applications, so it is advised that any app be used in conjunction with a mental health professional. As AI tools are created, it is essential that they are protocols in place to make them safe and effective and built and trained with a diverse data set, so they aren't biased toward a particular population.

Overall, AI has the promise to provide critical resources we need to overcome our mental health crisis.

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Ernesto Cardenal’s Prayer for Marilyn Monroe

She hungered for love and we offered her tranquilizers.
For her despair, because we’re not saints psychoanalysis was recommended to her...

One of Latin America’s most acclaimed poets, he wrote verses that offered a cosmic fusion of spirituality, politics, science and history, while appearing at frequent lectures and readings that made him a kind of international ambassador for Nicaragua.

Father Cardenal drew few boundaries between his callings. The son of a wealthy Nicaraguan family, he fought with a revolutionary group in his late 20s, then emerged as a leading proponent of liberation theology, which emphasizes Jesus’s message to the poor and oppressed.

The washington post By Harrison Smith

March 2, 2020

Ernesto Cardenal’s Prayer for Marilyn Monroe

Lord

receive this young woman known around the world as Marilyn Monroe
although that wasn’t her real name
(but You know her real name, the name of the orphan raped at the age of 6
and the shopgirl who at 16 had tried to kill herself)
who now comes before You without any makeup
without her Press Agent
without photographers and without autograph hounds,
alone like an astronaut facing night in space.

She dreamed when she was little that she was naked in a church
(according to the Time account)
before a prostrated crowd of people, their heads on the floor
and she had to walk on tiptoe so as not to step on their heads.
You know our dreams better than the psychiatrists.
Church, home, cave, all represent the security of the womb
but something else too …
The heads are her fans, that’s clear
(the mass of heads in the dark under the beam of light).
But the temple isn’t the studios of 20th Century-Fox.
The temple—of marble and gold—is the temple of her body
in which the Son of Man stands whip in hand
driving out the studio bosses of 20th Century-Fox
who made Your house of prayer a den of thieves.

Lord
in this world polluted with sin and radioactivity
You won’t blame it all on a shopgirl
who, like any other shopgirl, dreamed of being a star.
Her dream just became a reality (but like Technicolor’s reality).
She only acted according to the script we gave her
—the story of our own lives. And it was an absurd script.
Forgive her, Lord, and forgive us
for our 20th Century
for this Colossal Super-Production on which we all have worked.
She hungered for love and we offered her tranquilizers.
For her despair, because we’re not saints
psychoanalysis was recommended to her.
Remember, Lord, her growing fear of the camera
and her hatred of makeup—insisting on fresh makeup for each scene—
and how the terror kept building up in her
and making her late to the studios.

Like any other shopgirl
she dreamed of being a star.
And her life was unreal like a dream that a psychiatrist interprets and files.

Her romances were a kiss with closed eyes
and when she opened them
she realized she had been under floodlights
as they killed the floodlights!
and they took down the two walls of the room (it was a movie set)
while the Director left with his scriptbook
because the scene had been shot.
Or like a cruise on a yacht, a kiss in Singapore, a dance in Rio
the reception at the mansion of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor
all viewed in a poor apartment’s tiny living room.

The film ended without the final kiss.
She was found dead in her bed with her hand on the phone.
And the detectives never learned who she was going to call.
She was
like someone who had dialed the number of the only friendly voice
and only heard the voice of a recording that says: WRONG NUMBER.
Or like someone who had been wounded by gangsters
reaching for a disconnected phone.

Lord
whoever it might have been that she was going to call
and didn’t call (and maybe it was no one
or Someone whose number isn’t in the Los Angeles phonebook)
You answer that telephone!

(Translated from the Spanish by Jonathan Cohen)

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The Pentagon and intelligence agencies have intensified their study of unexplained incidents near military bases in recent years.

Image: Germán & Co

What’s Going On Up There? Theories but No Answers in Shootdowns of Mystery Craft.

The U.S. and Canada are investigating three unidentified flying objects shot down over North America in the past three days. Militaries have adjusted radars to try to spot more incursions.

NYT by Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper and Edward Wong

Published Feb. 12, 2023

WASHINGTON — If the truth is out there, it certainly is not apparent yet.

Pentagon and intelligence officials are trying to make sense of three unidentified flying objects over Alaska, Canada and Michigan that U.S. fighter jets shot down with missiles on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The latest turn in the aerial show taking place in the skies above North America comes after a helter-skelter weekend involving what at times seemed like an invasion of unidentified flying objects.

The latest object had first been spotted on Saturday over Montana, initially sparking debate over whether it even existed. On Saturday, military officials detected a radar blip over Montana, which then disappeared, leading them to conclude it was an anomaly. Then a blip appeared Sunday over Montana, then Wisconsin and Michigan. Once military officials obtained visual confirmation, they ordered an F-16 to shoot it down over Lake Huron.

There are two big questions around the episodes: What were the craft? And why does the United States appear to be seeing more suddenly, and shooting down more?

There are no answers to the first question yet. American officials do not know what the objects were, much less their purpose or who sent them.

For the second, it is not clear if there are suddenly more objects. But what is certain is that in the wake of the recent incursion by a Chinese spy balloon, the U.S. and Canadian militaries are hypervigilant in flagging some objects that might previously have been allowed to pass.

After the transit of the spy balloon this month, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, adjusted its radar system to make it more sensitive. As a result, the number of objects it detected increased sharply. In other words, NORAD is picking up more incursions because it is looking for them, spurred on by the heightened awareness caused by the furor over the spy balloon, which floated over the continental United States for a week before an F-22 shot it down on Feb. 4.

“We have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase in objects that we’ve detected over the past week,” Melissa Dalton, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, said at a news conference on Sunday evening.

American officials have not completely discounted theories that there could also be more objects, period. Some officials theorize that the objects could be from China, or another foreign power, and may be aimed at testing detection abilities after the spy balloon.

The object spotted approaching Lake Huron on Sunday was flying at 20,000 feet and presented a potential threat to civil aviation, so President Biden ordered it shot down, U.S. officials said. It had an octagonal structure with strings hanging off but had no discernible payload, they added.

U.S. and Canadian officials say the objects shot down on Friday and Saturday were also flying lower than the spy balloon, posing a greater danger to civilian aircraft, which prompted leaders to order them destroyed. Those two objects were flying over parts of Alaska and the Yukon that have few residents, and the third object downed on Sunday was over water, so risks posed by falling debris were minimal, they said.

The spy balloon that drifted across the United States flew much higher, at 60,000 feet, and did not pose a danger to aircraft. But any falling debris could have hit people on the ground, Pentagon officials said.

Throughout the weekend, officials said they were still trying to determine what the three objects were. The first, a Defense Department official said, is most likely not a balloon — and it broke into pieces after it was shot down on Friday. Saturday’s object was described by Canadian authorities as cylindrical, and American officials say it is more likely it was a balloon of some kind. Sunday’s object appeared unlikely to be a balloon, one official said.

NORAD radar tracked the first two objects for at least 12 hours before they were shot down. But Defense Department officials have never said whether they picked the objects up on radar before they neared American airspace. One official said it is unclear what keeps the objects aloft.

U.S. officials said they are reviewing video and other sensor readings collected by the American pilots who observed the objects before their destruction. But the exact nature of the objects, where they are from and what they were intended for will not be confirmed until the F.B.I. and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have the chance to thoroughly examine the debris, officials said.

Asked during a news conference on Sunday whether he had ruled out extraterrestrial origins, Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the commander of the Air Force’s Northern Command, said, “I haven’t ruled out anything at this point.” But in interviews Sunday, national security officials discounted any thoughts that what the Air Force shot out of the sky represented any sort of alien visitors. No one, one senior official said, thinks these things are anything other than devices fashioned here on Earth.

Luis Elizondo, the military intelligence officer who ran the Pentagon’s U.F.O. program until 2017, concurred. But he said that the Biden administration must find a way to balance vigilance over what is going on in the skies above America against “chasing our tail” whenever something unknown shows up — a tough task, he said.

For years, adversaries have sent low-tech gadgets into the skies above the United States, Mr. Elizondo said.

“What’s happening now is you have low-end technology being used to harass America,” he said in an interview. “It is a high-impact, low-cost way for China to do this, and the more you look up in the sky, the more you will see.”

At the urging of Congress, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies have intensified their study of unexplained incidents near military bases in recent years. The studies on what the intelligence community calls unidentified aerial phenomena have pinpointed previously undetected efforts to conduct surveillance on American military exercises and bases. Many of those unexplained incidents have been balloons, and some of them are now believed to be attempted surveillance activity by China or other powers, both using balloons and surveillance drones.

In a public report released last month, the intelligence community said that of 366 unexplained incidents, 163 were later identified as balloons. A related classified document whose findings were reported this month by The New York Times said at least two incidents at U.S. military bases could be examples of advanced aerial technology, possibly developed by China.

“We can now assess flight patterns and trajectory in a much more scientific way,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who wrote the recent legislation mandating greater internal military reporting and analysis of aerial phenomena, leading to more documentation of sightings. “You need to know who’s using the technology and what it is.”

The most alarming theory under consideration by some U.S. officials is that the objects are sent by China or another power in an attempt to learn more about American radar or early warning systems.

A senior administration official said one theory — and the person stressed that it is just a theory — is that China or Russia sent the objects to test American intelligence-gathering capabilities. They could be sent to learn both how quickly the United States becomes aware of an intrusion and how quickly the military can respond to such an incursion, the official said.

American officials are united in their belief that the spy balloon that transited the United States was a Chinese machine meant to conduct surveillance on American military bases. Officials said it was unclear if China had complete control of the balloon during its whole journey. But officials said China did have at least a limited ability to steer it, and the balloon maneuvered on Feb. 3 before it was shot down the next day.

Another American official said the Chinese spy balloon was equipped with a self-destruct mechanism, but Beijing did not use it, a potential sign that Chinese officials wanted to continue to collect intelligence, even after it was discovered.

The disclosure of the balloon by the Pentagon on Feb. 2 led to a public diplomatic crisis between China and the United States. Beijing said it had the right to respond further. On Sunday, a Chinese newspaper reported that local maritime authorities in Shandong Province on the east coast had spotted an “unidentified flying object” in waters by the city of Rizhao and were preparing to shoot it down. State-run news organizations reposted the information.

If any of the devices destroyed in North America over the past three days were Chinese, it would amount to a major provocation on the heels of the spy balloon, one reason some officials said not to jump to the conclusion that the objects are surveillance devices sent from Beijing.

Officials in Beijing seem to want to limit tensions over the spy balloon, suggesting to some U.S. officials that the latest objects are less likely to be deliberate Chinese provocations or tests.

Pentagon officials have been raising flags about deficiencies in North America’s aging warning systems, radar and sensors.

Speaking last year at the Aspen Security Conference in Colorado, General VanHerck said that the United States had struggled to detect certain intrusions, what he called “domain awareness challenges.” General VanHerck said the NORAD radars could not adequately detect hypersonics and other threats.

But, he also said, the United States and Canada were investing in new over-the-horizon radar to better identify potential threats, as well as artificial intelligence systems to help pick out possible intrusions.

“I’m very encouraged with where we’re going,” General VanHerck said last July, “but we still have some challenges to work on.”

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Image: Germán & Co

The countries warn the EU against an overhaul of the energy market in “crisis mode”.

Ukdaily.news by Mia Gordon

February 13, 2023

The European Commission is drafting an overhaul of the EU’s electricity market rules with the aim of better cushioning consumer bills ahead of fossil fuel price spikes and avoiding a repeat of the surge in electricity wort sparked by cuts in Russia’s gas supplies last year.

The seven countries, led by Denmark, said in a letter that the existing market design in Europe had encouraged lower electricity prices for years, helped expand renewable energy and ensured that enough electricity was produced to meet demand and avoid shortages.

“We must resist the temptation to kill the golden goose that has been our single market for electricity for the past decade,” said Lars Aagaard, Denmark’s energy minister.

Countries said there was some room for improvement, especially given the surge in electricity costs over the past year. However, any changes must ensure the market continues to function and incentivize massive investments in renewable energy, they said.

“Any reform that goes beyond targeted adjustments to the existing framework should be underpinned by an in-depth impact assessment and not adopted in crisis mode,” reads the letter to the Commission, seen by Reuters.

Other countries, including Spain and France, are pursuing deeper reforms. Spain has proposed a switch to longer-term fixed price contracts for power plants to try to limit price spikes.

The seven countries said in their letter that related schemes – such as Contracts for Difference (CfDs) – could play a role, but they should be voluntary, focused on new renewable energy and still “responsive” to the market.

Electricity industry lobby group Eurelectric has also warned against making CFDs mandatory as it could undermine competition in the electricity market and discourage investors.

In their letter, the seven countries supported an idea already discussed by the Commission to make it easier for consumers to choose between electricity contracts with fluctuating and fixed prices.

However, they pushed back another Commission proposal to extend a temporary EU measure reclaiming windfall revenues from non-gas generators.

“That could jeopardize investor confidence in the investments needed,” the countries said in the letter, citing EU estimates that hundreds of billions of euros in renewable energy investments are needed annually to help countries convert from Russian fossil fuels get off.

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The fire in the vicinity of the city of Dichato, in the south of Chile, on February 10, 2023.

Image: Le Monde by JAVIER TORRES / AFP

Chile faces largest wildfires since 2017

Le Monde by Flora Genoux (Buenos Aires (Argentina) correspondent)

Published on February 12, 2023 

In DepthFires fueled by drought and heatwaves killed 24 and destroyed 373,000 hectares since February 1.

Helpless firefighters standing in front of a wall of flames, inhabitants trying to smother the blaze with buckets of water, a line of fire, visible from the sky, advancing relentlessly over the forest... The violent fires that have been raging in Chile since February 1, in the middle of the southern summer, are delivering their share of apocalyptic images.

The so-called south-central region of the country – the provinces of Maule, Nuble, Biobio and Araucania, located some 280 km South of Santiago – saw thousands of hectares destroyed.

The toll as of Friday, February 10, stood at 24 dead, 1,250 homes wrecked and more than 2,000 being taken care of by health services. In total, more than 373,000 hectares were blown by the disaster. The country is witnessing the worst fires since 2017 during which 467,000 hectares disappeared.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric spoke earlier this week of "very difficult days" while the fires had already been active for a week. He called for the cooperation of all institutions including the private sector.

"In five days, we are seeing a burned area equivalent to two years of fire," Carolina Toha, minister of the interior, said on Monday. This week, more than 5,600 Chilean firefighters continued to fight the flames, with the support of international organizations.

Argentina, Mexico, but also Spain or the United States sent material and human rescue teams. France announced on Tuesday it was sending 80 firemen and rescue workers. The day before, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter: "The Chilean people can count on the support of France to fight against this plague."

The European Union also announced it was sending over firefighters, doctors and experts. "No matter how many planes or how much money is dedicated to fighting the fires, they have become uncontrollable," Roberto Rondanelli, a meteorologist at the University of Chile, said. On Friday, 321 fires were still active. The experts are clear: The origin of the fires is above all human, whether criminal or accidental. "There is a legitimate suspicion related to the intentionality [of the fires], which is under investigation," Boric said on Wednesday. At least 28 people have been arrested.

However, a series of factors explain the speed and intensity of the fires. First, there is climate change, the vehicle for a historic "mega-drought" in Chile which has been ongoing for about 13 years.

The drought is reflected in a historic rainfall deficit of 30% over the period 2010-2019, according to a report by Chile's Center for Climate and Resilience Research (CR2). In the last 50 years, maximum summer temperatures increased by 0.43°C per decade, the CR2 wrote in a note last week.

"All events with temperatures above 40°C have occurred in the last decade," it said. Regions afflicted by the fires were experiencing a heatwave with temperatures sometimes exceeding the 40°C threshold.

An alert for high temperature ran until Saturday for an area encompassing more than 900 km from North to South, from the Coquimbo region to Nuble.

Pine and eucalyptus trees as far as the eye can see

"There is also a strong accumulation of combustible material," Miguel Castillo, a forest engineer at the University of Chile said. Pine and eucalyptus trees are planted as far as the eye can see by the wood industry.

An engine for the regional economy, the idea was encouraged under Chile's military dictatorship (1973-1990). The industry is confronted with territorial conflicts involving part of the indigenous Mapuche population who claim ancestral lands held by forest owners.

In 2022, exports from the wood sector amounted to €6.5 billion according to the Chilean Forestry Institute, amounting to more than 111,000 jobs.

However, pine and eucalyptus are exotic trees that require more water than endemic species. They dry up the waterways that could serve as a natural barrier to the flames. "With high heat, they also tend to dry out faster than endemic trees. Therefore, they burn more and facilitate the spread of fires, a phenomenon also reinforced by their density," Rondanelli said.

The winds that blew over the region over the past few days contributed to the spread of the fires. "It is absolutely necessary to rethink the productive system by planting endemic trees. After the great fires of 2017, where there were endemic trees, pine and eucalyptus trees were planted instead," said Rondanelli.

Despite a smaller amount of hectares burned this time (the great fires of 2017 resulted in the death of 11) the country is mourning more deaths. "This is related to the number of outbreaks which are more numerous and scattered. This represents a greater challenge in terms of coordination, prioritization and access to areas to be evacuated," Castillo said.

The proximity of tree plantations to residential areas is also blamed for the higher number of deaths. In 2014, a proposal to modify forest regulation was presented by Alejandro Navarro who was then a leftwing senator of the Biobio region.

It provided for a minimum distance of 500 meters between plantations and residential areas or roads. In 2015, another parliamentary initiative encompassing the previous text also proposed banning new plantations of "highly combustible" species. This time, the legislation did not go through.

As the smoke from the fires reaches as far as the capital, Santiago, CO2 emissions generated by the fires are triggering concern. With the risk of more episodes of this magnitude in the future, the fires "may become one of the most important causes of greenhouse gas emissions in the country," according to the CR2.

In 2017, fires alone accounted for 90% of total emissions in a baseline year, 2016. They also pose a great threat to biodiversity, Maisa Rojas, minister for the environment, said.

Faced with the emergency, the Chilean government announced a series of aid mechanisms destined for the residents of the affected regions. On Friday, authorities ordered a curfew to prevent possible looting of evacuated homes.

Germán & Co

"The time will come when President Boric will have to choose between reform or re-foundation".

This Chilean sociologist, with a communist past and key advisor to the government of socialist Ricardo Lagos, says that a change of course in Latin America is indispensable "if we want to influence the 21st century".

El País by ROCÍO MONTES

Santiago de Chile - 11 Feb 2023 

Ernesto Ottone (Valparaíso, 1948) was among those who rejected the proposal for a new Constitution in the plebiscite on 4 September, like 62% of Chileans. "I reject it because I am convinced that it is the best way for a good Constitution", he told EL PAÍS before the referendum. With a communist past until the end of the 1970s - he was a world leader of his youth - the sociologist was a key strategic adviser to the government of the socialist Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006). He is an intellectual who looks to the public rather than a politician who looks to books. In his latest publication, Crónica de una odisea, del estallido social al estallido de las urnas, he describes the last three years in Chile as a "turbulent, unstable and tense period, very different from the one that has accompanied the country's progress since the return to democracy". In this interview, conducted in his flat in Providencia, in the Chilean capital, in the middle of summer with the city empty, he analyses the political scene facing Chile in 2023.

Question: What has happened in Chile since the plebiscite of 4 September, when 62% of voters rejected the proposed new constitution?

Answer. September 4 was not a triumph of conservatism over change, as was perceived by some observers outside the country, but it was the return of history. The compulsory vote showed a more complete Chile, not only that of the mobilised forces, and produced a result that stunned the government.

Q. What was the text that was rejected like?

A. The text that the constitutional convention presented to the plebiscite was a mixture of constitutional text and partisan political programme, which hurt representative democracy and the balance of power and which artificially exacerbated the issue of nationalities. This was not accepted by Chileans who want a new constitution that reflects a social, modern, democratic and inclusive state. Chileans do not want to replace the authoritarian traces of the past with new authoritarian dangers.

Q. How did President Boric's government, which was for the alternative that lost, stand after the referendum?

A. President Boric weakened his authority and his role as head of state by merging with that project. Partly because he partially shared it, I believe, and partly under pressure from the ruling group around him, which in truth represents only a minority sector, I fear, of those who brought him to the government, because the rest were reformist voters who voted against the extreme right candidate in the 2021 presidential elections. Today the government has included sectors of the traditional left, which occupy important positions that help to contain the excesses of doctrinarism and imperfection, although they do not always succeed in doing so.

Q. Chile is making a second attempt at a new constitution. Do you think this is necessary?

A. Yes, of course. Chileans rejected a text, not the idea of a new Constitution that has greater legitimacy, that responds to the challenges of the 21st century, that frames a social state and that protects individual liberties and encourages greater inclusiveness. I believe that the newly initiated new process, with greater institutional thickness, will be able to achieve a Constitution acceptable to the vast majority of the country.

Q. 2023 will be a difficult year for Chile, with an economic recession...

A. The situation is difficult for this year, not only in Chile, but in the whole world. It will require a lot of political capacity, you can't keep taking one step in one direction and another in the opposite direction. The time will come when President Boric will have to choose between reform or refoundation.

Q. The president has very high disapproval, 66%, according to the latest Cadem. How do you overcome this bad moment of popularity?

A. He will only be able to recover from his high level of disapproval if his ability to govern improves, if he generates broad agreements on economic and social problems in the fight against crime, on changing the tax system and improving the pension system, on the functioning of the education and health systems in a non-traumatic way. In short, if it is dominated by a state vocation that has so far appeared only intermittently.

Q. This year, Chile commemorates the 50th anniversary of the 1973 coup d'état. How do you see Chile on this date?

A. Chile has no room to increase its internal conflicts and generate a more polarised situation. The commemoration of the 1973 coup d'état should be read as a national decision never to repeat that tragedy. This requires first and foremost a well-functioning democracy. It must be commemorated in a sober, profound and historic way. The "never again" and the republican character that marked the 30th anniversary 20 years ago, in 2003, when Chile was moving forward in all areas, must be present.

Q. Are you one of those who believe that the far right is growing stronger in Chile and that it has presidential options?

A. For that to happen there would have to be a collapse of the traditional right and a predominance in its electorate of those who most yearn for authoritarianism. The rebirth of reformist centre and centre-left forces would have to fail and the more extreme sectors of the radical left would have to predominate. This could generate in the country a demand for authoritarianism at any price, led by the extreme right. I hope that this does not happen, that the gods do not blind the democrats. But to avoid such tendencies, realism, political generosity and deep democratic convictions are required.

Q. While this is happening in Chile, how do you, a sociologist who made a career in ECLAC, see the rest of Latin America?

A. Latin America is one of the regions hardest hit by this sad and fragmented phase of a globalisation in decline. There is no longer one dictatorship in Latin America, but three. There are countries with a strong democratic degradation, others with inconsistent democracies, within a short period of time there have been two attempted coups d'état and democratic institutions have been weakened in general.

Q. We are in a violent region...

A. We make up 8.6% of the world's population, but one third of the world's crimes - excluding war crimes - are committed in our region. After the end of the economic boom between 2003 and 2013, the economy began to fall, and the poverty and equality indicators, which had indicated progress in the right direction, began to go back in the wrong direction. This situation will be very difficult to reverse with the current economic situation. Citizen demands have no capacity to respond and the fragility of democracies is spreading.

Q. Are we facing a pendulum swing to the left, considering the sign of several Latin American governments?

A. There is the illusion of a pink tide, but it is very heterogeneous and probably volatile. In general, elections tend to be won by those in opposition. The danger of the spread of authoritarian populism of different signs is just around the corner. But this is not an inevitable fate as in the Greek tragedies. It does, however, require a gigantic effort.

Q. Where should this effort be focused?

A. Resuming economic growth, generating a productive transformation that adds value to our generous natural resource base. Modernising our states and democratic institutions, enhancing cooperation between the public, private and civil society sectors, and relaunching efforts to achieve greater levels of equality and poverty reduction by prioritising public policies and creating a progressive fiscal pact. Combat organised crime through coordinated intelligence, preventing the development of corruption and better management of mega-cities. Overcoming the region's invisibility in the world, the absence of a single voice to put forward its interests, and avoiding the ideologisation of regional organisations that are often linked to discourses of the past that are alien to the current reality.

Q. Do you see any room for optimism?

A. Despite all its problems, Latin America has much to contribute in a troubled world. The far West, as Alain Rouquié called it, has medium development, decisive environmental resources in relation to climate change and natural resources that can contribute exponentially to the information age and digitalisation. Making them count requires a long view and a strategic capacity that we see little of in our rulers at the moment. A change of course is essential if we want to make an impact in the 21st century.

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Source: El País

Argentina will receive a million-dollar investment to facilitate the export of gas from Vaca Muerta to Brazil and Chile.

CAF - Development Bank of Latin America - will provide 540 million dollars for the construction of a gas pipeline network. Its vice-president, Christian Asinelli, defends the use of natural gas in the region as a "just transition energy".

El País by LORENA ARROYO

01 FEB 2023

For more than a decade, Vaca Muerta has represented a hope for Argentina's battered economy that has yet to materialise. The 30,000-kilometre field in Patagonia makes Argentina the country with the second largest shale gas resources in the world. But getting it out and transporting it has proved a complex task since exploitation began in 2012. Now, a new investment agreement has rekindled the hopes of those hoping for a definitive take-off of the field.

Economy Minister Sergio Massa announced last week that he had reached an agreement with CAF - Development Bank of Latin America* to finance a gas pipeline that will facilitate exports to Chile and Brazil. "It will be 540 million dollars to build the La Carlota-Tío Pujio gas pipeline, the Reversal del Norte and the compressor plants," the minister said on his Twitter account. The investment, which will be approved in March by CAF's board of directors, foresees the construction of kilometres of pipelines to transport gas from Vaca Muerta, in the west of the country, to Santa Fe, in the northeast. This, the minister said, would increase "the possibilities of gas export volumes" to neighbouring countries.

According to Reuters, with these works the country expects to be able to reverse the energy balance deficit of $5 billion recorded in 2022 and achieve a surplus of about $12 billion in 2025. "From the point of view of the country's productive activities, obviously developing the potential of Vaca Muerta is very important for the economy," acknowledged CAF vice-president Christian Asinelli in an interview with América Futura. The official stresses that the work to be financed by the multilateral organisation will be beneficial for the region's energy integration and will reduce Argentina's dependence on current imports of Bolivian gas.

A "just transition energy"

"With this infrastructure work, what is being done is to connect the gas from Vaca Muerta with a section of a gas pipeline that will allow gas to be taken from the south of the country to the north," he explains. In addition, "with a series of investments in five gas conversion plants", it will be possible to link these gas pipelines with Bolivia to send gas to Brazil, on the one hand, and to the north of Chile, on the other. According to his estimates, if everything goes according to plan, the construction of 132 kilometres of pipelines and the reconversion of the five plants that would allow gas to be transferred from northern Argentina to Bolivia could be ready in less than two years.

Faced with criticism from some sectors that natural gas is not a clean energy - since it emits methane, one of the gases that contributes most to climate change - CAF defends its use as a "transition energy" towards a green matrix through fair processes that benefit the region's population. "For countries like Argentina, it is a fair transition energy," Asinelli points out. "For Latin America and the Caribbean, what we need is to look for spaces that improve, from an environmental point of view, but without forgetting the people, the needs, social growth and the reduction of poverty," he adds, pointing out that in the region there is a "different consensus than in Europe" on energy issues.

"Gas for us is a transitional energy that will help us to achieve the standards of the sustainable development goals, but through a process that is fair for our countries, where we can use our natural resources by lowering the amount of emissions, that is, by stopping using coal plants and using gas, which is clearly an energy that pollutes much less. It is not the ultimate goal, but it is the path that can lead us towards what we call a just transition, where the human and social aspects are not forgotten either," he adds.

Asinelli recognises that those who make public policies have to find a balance between benefiting populations, caring for people and making the right decisions to care for the environment, a task that, he says, "is sometimes not easy". In this sense, the CAF official stresses that the decision to invest in Vaca Muerta has been taken after analysing the previous environmental impact studies and that the disbursements will be made as the work progresses: "I believe that this process of using gas as a transition energy, if it is done well, will clearly bring more development, which is what we are looking for".

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News round-up, Friday, February 10, 2023

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Quote of the day…

“We’re analyzing them to learn more about the surveillance program,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Wednesday. “We will pair that with what we learn from the balloon — what we learn from the balloon itself — with what we’ve gleaned based on our careful observation of the system when it was in our airspace, as the president directed his team to do.”

NYT

The AI opera “chasing waterfalls”, which premiered at the Dresden Semperoper on 03 September, raises questions about human existence in our digital age dominated by powerful technologies, algorithms and machines. True to the signs of our times, hardly any enlightening answers are given. But the complexity of the ambitious performance is surprising.

The Decoder

“I am wicked and scary with claws and teeth,” Vladimir Putin reportedly warned David Cameron when the then-British prime minister pressed him about the use of chemical weapons by Russia’s ally in Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and discussed how far Russia was prepared to go.

POLITICO EU

Most read…

The world’s first AI opera was co-written by GPT-3 – review

the-decoder.com by Sarah Schmitt

Sep 18, 2022

Chinese Balloon Had Tools to Collect Electronic Communications, U.S. Says

China’s surveillance balloons have flown over more than 40 countries and are directed by the Chinese military, the State Department said. The F.B.I. is studying debris.

NYT By Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes

Feb. 9, 2023

22 dead in Chile, as firefighters battle dozens of wildfires

CBS NEWS

FEBRUARY 8, 2023 / 7:30 PM / AP

Chile extended an emergency declaration to another region on Saturday as firefighters continued to struggle to control dozens of raging wildfires. At least 22 people have died in connection to the fires, and 554 have been injured, including 16 in serious condition, according to Interior Minister Carolina Tohá. 

Can Putin win?

A Russian assault is expected in Donbas, but all will depend on whether Russia has fixed major flaws in logistics and coordination.

POLITICO EU BY JAMIE DETTMER

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

Nicaragua Frees Hundreds of Political Prisoners to the United States

The authoritarian government of Daniel Ortega handed over 222 prisoners as a way to signal a desire to restart relations with the United States, according to officials.

NYT by Maria Abi-Habib

Feb. 9, 2023

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Collaborates with free and ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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Image: The Decoder. The AI opera “chasing waterfalls”

The world’s first AI opera was co-written by GPT-3 – review

the-decoder.com by Sarah Schmitt

Sep 18, 2022

Sarah is a mathematician, programmer, and part-time philosopher. Her focus is on the ethical and societal future issues of Artificial Intelligence.

The AI opera “chasing waterfalls”, which premiered at the Dresden Semperoper on 03 September, raises questions about human existence in our digital age dominated by powerful technologies, algorithms and machines. True to the signs of our times, hardly any enlightening answers are given. But the complexity of the ambitious performance is surprising.

What happens when the boundary between man and machine becomes increasingly blurred? To what extent do the virtual world and automated decision-making processes already intervene in our everyday lives? When are we human, when are we externally controlled robots?

The cross-media opera production, which was created with the participation of several artist collectives, opera singers, musicians from the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, and IT experts, revolves around such questions. According to the organizers, it is the first time in the world that artificial intelligence has taken on a leading role, composing, writing lyrics, and singing in real-time.

I am me, am I not?

“Not convinced you are not a robot. Please try again” – these are the words with which the protagonist, Norwegian soprano Eir Inderhaug, is greeted by her computer at the beginning of the opera piece when she logs on in the morning.

When she succeeds in proving her human identity to the machine only after countless desperate attempts, it becomes clear: This is about much more than a mere opera experiment with artificial intelligence, but about the existential question of our being today, about who determines who we are.

The rest of the event will show how far the interplay between the analog and virtual worlds has advanced today, and how this opens up a whole spectrum of personal identities for the individual.

After all, our digital manifestations, our self-created digital twins, are often extreme images of ourselves: more perfect, happier, and more successful, but also more emotional, curious, addicted, and volatile.

In the play, they are embodied by the questioning child, the deceptive appearance, the longing for success, the gnawing doubt, and the promise of happiness, each of which surrounds and interacts with the protagonist as independent figures.

As another digital identity, the AI itself is integrated into the stage set in the form of an eight-meter-high kinetic light sculpture made of LED panels, creating a mysteriously sparkling aesthetic.

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Image: Germán & Co

Gaps in the single market must be plugged

Slow progress toward fully integrated energy and telecoms sectors has left member countries unequally vulnerable.

The energy crisis and the pandemic have exposed the weakness of fragmentary management which hinders the development of the EU single market

POLITICO EU BY ANTONIO MANGANELLI AND ANDREAS SCHWAB

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

Antonio Manganelli is a professor Antitrust & Regulation at the LUMSA University of Rome. Andreas Schwab is a member of the European Parliament.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in October that Europe’s energy crisis can only be overcome through “solidarity.” But as of late, this solidarity has been in short supply.

Member countries have lacked a unified response to soaring energy prices and runaway inflation, which has been exacerbated by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. And despite the Chancellor’s call for solidarity, a common strategy to address the energy crisis remains a long way off.

In particular, Germany’s earlier decision to go it alone with a €200 billion gas price relief fund has sparked alarm in Brussels and other European capitals. And Berlin’s protracted opposition to the cap on gas prices that many European Union countries supported meant that an eleven-hour summit in late October yielded only a blurry roadmap, rather than a decisive agreement on how to lower energy prices causing economic pain across the bloc. Finally, after long discussions, they were able to reach a political agreement on the price cap at the end of last year, which will be applied from next week, starting February 15.

Both the energy crisis and the pandemic preceding it have exposed the weakness of fragmentary management, which has hindered the development of the European single market — one of the bloc’s greatest accomplishments. Indeed, they have illustrated how, even after 30 years, the single market has significant gaps that need to be plugged if the EU is to be crisis-proof.

Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, there have been several calls for greater integration of European electricity markets, but both practical and political obstacles have left Europe with disparate energy systems linked by insufficient interconnectors. Meanwhile many member countries’ governments remain close to their state-owned energy companies and consider energy policy a matter of national security.

However, Putin’s invasion has now shone a spotlight on the perils of such fragmentation, and the EU urgently needs both short-term measures to tackle the energy emergency — such as a financial instrument similar to the SURE plan that cushioned the pandemic’s socioeconomic impact — as well as a Europe-wide buyers’ network for natural gas and a deeper integration of the European energy market.

The EU began, in part, as an energy alliance. Yet, it has made meager progress toward an energy union, which would generate many benefits — from increased energy independence to lower prices. Thus, full harmonization of the energy sector should be a priority. And without a coordinated effort at the supranational level, the risks are clear.

The European People’s Party group has, therefore, called for an integrated energy single market, as without it, there’s distortion competition — with consumers and businesses in wealthier member countries relatively shielded and those left behind made vulnerable. This means they could be tempted to follow Hungary’s example and sign their own agreements with Gazprom, thus rendering the EU’s sanctions policy completely ineffective.

The dangers of the energy crisis risk other side-effects as well, including growing household energy poverty, the deindustrialization of entire sectors, and increasing asymmetry and fragmentation across the markets in Europe.

All this could trigger geopolitical tensions — but it could destabilize Europe’s competitiveness too. And the experience of other critical European sectors — most notably telecoms — has amply shown how market fragmentation can damage economic competitiveness and resilience.

Other EU countries could be tempted to follow Hungary’s example and sign their own agreements with Gazprom, rendering the EU’s sanctions policy completely ineffective | Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images

When it comes to telecoms, the EU has, rightly, made the deployment of next-generation technologies a key priority, as achieving Brussels’ digitalization benchmarks could increase GDP per capita by over 7 percent across the EU. However, despite political will and public funding — on average, member countries have allocated 26.4 percent of their COVID-19 recovery funds toward accelerating the digital transition — the EU is still lagging dangerously behind faster-moving regions in Asia and North America.

The heart of the issue is the significant infrastructure investment required to achieve the EU’s ambitious digital objectives for 2030, and to cope with exponentially increasing demand in network traffic as well. Due to the significant pandemic-era surge in data traffic Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton was already forced to ask Big Tech firms to reduce the quality of their audio-visual services, so as to avoid the collapse of European networks.

It’s also quite clear by now that European telecom companies can’t afford the investment needed to meet the digital transformation targets set by Brussels — which is why large public EU and national funds have been devoted to support the deployment of high-capacity networks in most member countries.

Next to public intervention, however, it’s also necessary for each market player in the digital ecosystem play its role.

With this in mind, the Commission is soon opening a public consultation process, which will assess whether and how all the different market players contribute to the telecoms and digital infrastructure, in order to make coping with increasing user demand possible. This policy action should aim to shape an ecosystem where all play a proportionate and fair part in overcoming the infrastructure investment gap.

Furthermore, a point of particular concern is that European telecommunications companies are more financially strained than their overseas counterparts.

The core of the problem here is the fragmentation of the Continent’s telecoms market. Indeed, while the U.S. has only a few operators covering the entire telecommunication market, the EU has several dozen. For example, in the mobile sector, seven out of the nine largest European markets have at least four network-based competitors at the national level.

This unsustainable level of fragmentation has put Europe at a considerable disadvantage and has has weakened EU companies’ ability to invest. At €96.3 per capita, Europe’s telecom capital expenditure is clearly lower than what Asian giants (€115.4 in South Korea) and U.S. companies (€191.9) invest.

Moreover, this fragmentation has left EU telecom players unable to rival global digital tech companies and impeded their investment due to very intense price competition. In this regard, both competition policy — namely merger control — and ex-ante regulation should adapt to the changed circumstances.

As a similar scenario now unfolds in the energy sector, slow progress toward a fully integrated energy market has left member countries unequally vulnerable. And if we don’t seize the opportunity to plug the gaps in the single market, this disparity will only increase, the process of deindustrialization will accelerate and the EU will lag behind other major world economies.

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Image: The Guardian

Chinese Balloon Had Tools to Collect Electronic Communications, U.S. Says

China’s surveillance balloons have flown over more than 40 countries and are directed by the Chinese military, the State Department said. The F.B.I. is studying debris.

NYT By Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes

Feb. 9, 2023

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration provided its most comprehensive description of the Chinese spy balloon that traversed the United States last week, saying on Thursday that the machine was part of a global surveillance fleet directed by China’s military and was capable of collecting electronic communications.

The conclusions were outlined in a State Department document, which said the U.S. military had dispatched Cold War-era U-2 spy planes to track and study the balloon before a fighter jet shot it down over the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday.

China’s spy balloons have flown over more than 40 countries across five continents, the Biden administration said, and appear to be made by one or more companies that officially sell products to the Chinese military. That finding underscores questions among U.S. officials over the ties between some civilian-run enterprises in China and the country’s military, in what American officials call “military-civil fusion.”

The U.S. surveillance planes took images of the balloon while it was still in the air. Its visible equipment, which included antennas, “was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment on board weather balloons,” the State Department said — a rebuttal to the Chinese government’s assertion that the balloon was a civilian meteorological machine that had strayed off course.

The balloon episode has led to a surge in U.S.-China tensions at a time when the relationship is already at one of its lowest points in decades. Although top American officials say they intend to keep channels of communication with China open, the clashing narratives over the balloon are sowing more conflict. And the Biden administration has begun a campaign to inform countries around the world of the extent of China’s spy balloon program and its violations of sovereignty, in the hope that other nations will push back against Chinese espionage activities.

Investigators from the Pentagon, F.B.I. and other agencies are examining the debris that the U.S. Navy has pulled from the shallow waters off the South Carolina coast. F.B.I. officials said Thursday that they were analyzing material from the balloon’s body, wiring and small amounts of electronics found floating on the water, all from debris that was handed over starting Monday.

Investigators believe that the bulk of the electronics is scattered on the bottom of the ocean, F.B.I. officials said. The balloon was 200 feet tall and had a payload the size of a regional jet, U.S. officials said earlier.

Some officials said learning exactly what kinds of communications information the balloon could collect is a top priority. Officials have said they have not found any evidence that suggests the balloon could carry weaponry.

Investigators are also looking to see whether any of the balloon’s equipment uses technology from American or other Western companies, U.S. officials said.

Any such discovery could spur the Biden administration to take harsher actions to ensure that companies do not export technology to China that could be used by the country’s military and security agencies.

President Biden and his aides have already imposed broad limits on the sales of “foundational technologies” to China. Most notably, the U.S. government announced last October that it was barring American companies from selling advanced semiconductor chips and certain chip manufacturing technology to China. The new rules are also aimed at preventing foreign companies from doing the same.

The goal of the export controls is to cripple China’s development of advanced technologies, particularly tools used by the Chinese military. Mr. Biden has stressed the importance of maintaining independent supply chains in critical sectors, a point that he highlighted in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

U.S. officials said they expect the recovered balloon parts will give them some insight into how Chinese engineers are putting together surveillance technology.

“We’re analyzing them to learn more about the surveillance program,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Wednesday. “We will pair that with what we learn from the balloon — what we learn from the balloon itself — with what we’ve gleaned based on our careful observation of the system when it was in our airspace, as the president directed his team to do.”

The State Department said in its document that the U.S. government was confident that the company that made the balloon had direct commercial ties with the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military, citing an official procurement portal for the army. The department did not name the company.

“The United States will also explore taking action against P.R.C. entities linked to the P.L.A. that supported the balloon’s incursion into U.S. airspace,” the State Department said, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “We will also look at broader efforts to expose and address the P.R.C.’s larger surveillance activities that pose a threat to our national security, and to our allies and partners.”

The department said the company advertises balloon products on its website and has posted videos from past flights that apparently went over U.S. airspace and that of other nations. The videos show balloons that have similar flight patterns as the surveillance balloons that the United States has been discussing this week, the agency said.

The State Department document said the downed balloon’s array of antennas was “likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications,” while its solar panels were large enough to produce power to operate “multiple active intelligence collection sensors.”

Intelligence agencies have concluded that the antennas were capable of locating communications devices, including mobile phones and radios, and collecting data from them, U.S. officials say. But they do not know exactly what kinds of devices were being targeted, two officials said.

Radio frequencies can be detected by orbital satellites. Mobile phone signals are harder to detect from space but reach as high as where the balloon was drifting, at 60,000 feet.

Intelligence agencies do not yet know, officials say, whether the balloon was supposed to fly over parts of the United States — including over nuclear weapons sites — or was blown off course or suffered mechanical failure.

Officials say they are confident that they prevented the balloon from collecting any sensitive data from U.S. nuclear sites and other military bases. The U.S. government also took steps to protect official communications, but officials said they were unsure what the balloon collected.

Wendy Sherman, the deputy secretary of state, told a Senate committee on Thursday that the spy balloon episode “put on full display what we’ve long recognized — the P.R.C. has become more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad.”

The Pentagon has said that a second balloon drifting last week over Latin America was also conducting surveillance, though China asserts that was a civilian balloon used for test flights.

The presence of the balloon in the United States last week ignited a diplomatic crisis and prompted Mr. Blinken to cancel a weekend trip to Beijing, where he had been expected to meet President Xi Jinping of China. Mr. Blinken said the balloon had violated U.S. sovereignty and was “an irresponsible act” by China.

After a U.S. fighter jet shot down the balloon, the Chinese government said the United States had overreacted and violated international convention, and that China had “the right to respond further.”

The Chinese government also said the balloon belonged to China and should not be kept by the United States.

The U.S. government says it has discovered instances of at least five Chinese spy balloons in American territory — three during the Trump administration and two during the Biden administration. The spy balloons observed during the Trump administration were initially classified as unidentified aerial phenomena, U.S. officials said. It was not until after 2020 that officials closely examined the balloon incidents under a broader review of aerial phenomena and determined that they were part of the Chinese global balloon surveillance effort.

The New York Times reported Saturday that a classified intelligence report given to Congress last month highlighted at least two instances of a foreign power using advanced technology for aerial surveillance over American military bases, one inside the continental United States and the other overseas. The research suggested China was the foreign power, U.S. officials said. The report also discussed surveillance balloons.

U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that China’s spy balloon program is part of a global surveillance effort designed to collect information on the military capabilities of countries around the world. With the flights, Chinese officials are trying to hone their ability to gather data about American military bases — in which it is most interested — as well as those of other nations in the event of a conflict or rising tensions, U.S. officials say. The program has operated out of multiple locations in China, they say.

China’s National University of Defense Technology has a team of researchers studying advances in balloons. And as early as 2020, People’s Liberation Army Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese military, published an article describing how near space “has become a new battleground in modern warfare.”

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Source: CBS NEWS

22 dead in Chile, as firefighters battle dozens of wildfires

CBS NEWS

FEBRUARY 8, 2023 / 7:30 PM / AP

Chile extended an emergency declaration to another region on Saturday as firefighters continued to struggle to control dozens of raging wildfires. At least 22 people have died in connection to the fires, and 554 have been injured, including 16 in serious condition, according to Interior Minister Carolina Tohá. 

The death toll is likely to rise as Tohá said there are unconfirmed reports of at least 10 people missing.

The government declared a state of catastrophe Saturday on La Araucanía region, which is south of Ñuble and Biobío, two central-southern regions where the emergency declaration had already been issued, allowing for greater cooperation with the military.

The fires come at a time of record high temperatures.

Sixteen of the deaths took place in Biobío, five in La Araucanía, and one in Ñuble.

The deaths included a Bolivian pilot who died when a helicopter that was helping combat the flames crashed in La Araucanía. A Chilean mechanic also died in the crash.

Over the past week, fires have burned through an area equivalent to what is usually burned in an entire year, Tohá said in a news conference.

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Image: Germán & Co

Can Putin win?

A Russian assault is expected in Donbas, but all will depend on whether Russia has fixed major flaws in logistics and coordination.

POLITICO EU BY JAMIE DETTMER

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

“I am wicked and scary with claws and teeth,” Vladimir Putin reportedly warned David Cameron when the then-British prime minister pressed him about the use of chemical weapons by Russia’s ally in Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and discussed how far Russia was prepared to go.

According to Cameron’s top foreign policy adviser John Casson — cited in a BBC documentary — Putin went on to explain that to succeed in Syria, one would have to use barbaric methods, as the U.S. did in Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. “I am an ex-KGB man,” he expounded. 

The remarks were meant, apparently, half in jest but, as ever with Russia’s leader, the menace was clear. 

And certainly, Putin has proven he is ready to deploy fear as a weapon in his attempt to subjugate a defiant Ukraine. His troops have targeted civilians and have resorted to torture and rape. But victory has eluded him.

Catalog of errors

From the start, the war was marked by misjudgments and erroneous calculations. Putin and his generals underestimated Ukrainian resistance, overrated the abilities of their own forces, and failed to foresee the scale of military and economic support Ukraine would receive from the United States and European nations.

Kyiv didn’t fall in a matter of days — as planned by the Kremlin — and Putin’s forces in the summer and autumn were pushed back, with Ukraine reclaiming by November more than half the territory the Russians captured in the first few weeks of the invasion. Russia has now been forced into a costly and protracted conventional war, one that’s sparked rare dissent within the country’s political-military establishment and led Kremlin infighting to spill into the open. 

The only victory Russian forces have recorded in months came in January when the Ukrainians withdrew from the salt-mining town of Soledar in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. And the signs are that the Russians are on the brink of another win with Bakhmut, just six miles southwest of Soledar, which is likely to fall into their hands shortly.

But neither of these blood-drenched victories amounts to much more than a symbolic success despite the high casualties likely suffered by both sides. Tactically neither win is significant — and some Western officials privately say Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may have been better advised to have withdrawn earlier from Soledar and from Bakhmut now, in much the same way the Russians in November beat a retreat from their militarily hopeless position at Kherson.

For a real reversal of Russia’s military fortunes Putin will be banking in the coming weeks on his forces, replenished by mobilized reservists and conscripts, pulling off a major new offensive. Ukrainian officials expect the offensive to come in earnest sooner than spring. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov warned in press conferences in the past few days that Russia may well have as many as 500,000 troops amassed in occupied Ukraine and along the borders in reserve ready for an attack. He says it may start in earnest around this month’s first anniversary of the war on February 24.

Other Ukrainian officials think the offensive, when it comes, will be in March — but at least before the arrival of Leopard 2 and other Western main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Zelenskyy warned Ukrainians Saturday that the country is entering a “time when the occupier throws more and more of its forces to break our defenses.”

All eyes on Donbas

The likely focus of the Russians will be on the Donbas region of the East. Andriy Chernyak, an official in Ukraine’s military intelligence, told the Kyiv Post that Putin had ordered his armed forces to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk by the end of March. “We’ve observed that the Russian occupation forces are redeploying additional assault groups, units, weapons and military equipment to the east,” Chernyak said. “According to the military intelligence of Ukraine, Putin gave the order to seize all of the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.” 

Other Ukrainian officials and western military analysts suspect Russia might throw some wildcards to distract and confuse. They have their eyes on a feint coming from Belarus mimicking the northern thrust last February on Kyiv and west of the capital toward Vinnytsia. But Ukrainian defense officials estimate there are only 12,000 Russian soldiers in Belarus currently, ostensibly holding joint training exercises with the Belarusian military, hardly enough to mount a diversion.

“A repeat assault on Kyiv makes little sense,” Michael Kofman, an American expert on the Russian Armed Forces and a fellow of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. “An operation to sever supply lines in the west, or to seize the nuclear powerplant by Rivne, may be more feasible, but this would require a much larger force than what Russia currently has deployed in Belarus,” he said in an analysis.

But exactly where Russia’s main thrusts will come along the 600-kilometer-long front line in Ukraine’s Donbas region is still unclear. Western military analysts don’t expect Russia to mount a push along the whole snaking front — more likely launching a two or three-pronged assault focusing on some key villages and towns in southern Donetsk, on Kreminna and Lyman in Luhansk, and in the south in Zaporizhzhia, where there have been reports of increased buildup of troops and equipment across the border in Russia.

In the Luhansk region, Russian forces have been removing residents near the Russian-held parts of the front line. And the region’s governor, Serhiy Haidai, believes the expulsions are aimed at clearing out possible Ukrainian spies and locals spotting for the Ukrainian artillery. “There is an active transfer of (Russian troops) to the region and they are definitely preparing for something on the eastern front,” Haidai told reporters.

Reznikov has said he expects the Russian offensive will come from the east and the south simultaneously — from Zaporizhzhia in the south and in Donetsk and Luhansk. In the run-up to the main offensives, Russian forces have been testing five points along the front, according to Ukraine’s General Staff in a press briefing Tuesday. They said Russian troops have been regrouping on different parts of the front line and conducting attacks near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region and Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Novopavlivka in eastern Donetsk.

Combined arms warfare

Breakthroughs, however, will likely elude the Russians if they can’t correct two major failings that have dogged their military operations so far — poor logistics and a failure to coordinate infantry, armor, artillery and air support to achieve mutually complementary effects, otherwise known as combined arms warfare.

When announcing the appointment in January of General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff — as the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, Russia’s defense ministry highlighted “the need to organize closer interaction between the types and arms of the troops,” in other words to improve combined arms warfare.

Kofman assesses that Russia’s logistics problems may have largely been overcome. “There’s been a fair amount of reorganization in Russian logistics, and adaptation. I think the conversation on Russian logistical problems in general suffers from too much anecdotalism and received wisdom,” he said.

Failing that, much will depend for Russia on how much Gerasimov has managed to train his replenished forces in combined arms warfare and on that there are huge doubts he had enough time. Kofman believes Ukrainian forces “would be better served absorbing the Russian attack and exhausting the Russian offensive potential, then taking the initiative later this spring. Having expended ammunition, better troops, and equipment it could leave Russian defense overall weaker.” He suspects the offensive “may prove underwhelming.”

Pro-war Russian military bloggers agree. They have been clamoring for another mobilization, saying it will be necessary to power the breakouts needed to reverse Russia’s military fortunes. Former Russian intelligence officer and paramilitary commander Igor Girkin, who played a key role in Crimea’s annexation and later in the Donbas, has argued waves of call-ups will be needed to overcome Ukraine’s defenses by sheer numbers.

And Western military analysts suspect that Ukraine and Russia are currently fielding about the same number of combat soldiers. This means General Gerasimov will need many more if he’s to achieve the three-to-one ratio military doctrines suggest necessary for an attacking force to succeed. 

Ukrainian officials think Russia’s offensive will be in March, before the arrival of Leopard 2 and other Western tanks | Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images

But others fear that Russia has sufficient forces, if they are concentrated, to make some “shock gains.” Richard Kemp, a former British army infantry commander, is predicting “significant Russian gains in the coming weeks. We need to be realistic about how bad things could be — otherwise the shock risks dislodging Western resolve,” he wrote. The fear being that if the Russians can make significant territorial gains in the Donbas, then it is more likely pressure from some Western allies will grow for negotiations.

But Gerasimov’s manpower deficiencies have prompted other analysts to say that if Western resolve holds, Putin’s own caution will hamper Russia’s chances to win the war. 

“Putin’s hesitant wartime decision-making demonstrates his desire to avoid risky decisions that could threaten his rule or international escalation — despite the fact his maximalist and unrealistic objective, the full conquest of Ukraine, likely requires the assumption of further risk to have any hope of success,” said the Institute for the Study of War in an analysis this week. 

Wicked and scary Putin may be but, as far as ISW sees it, he “has remained reluctant to order the difficult changes to the Russian military and society that are likely necessary to salvage his war.”

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Source: Inti Ocon for The New York Times

Nicaragua Frees Hundreds of Political Prisoners to the United States

The authoritarian government of Daniel Ortega handed over 222 prisoners as a way to signal a desire to restart relations with the United States, according to officials.

NYT by Maria Abi-Habib

Feb. 9, 2023

Nicaragua released 222 political prisoners early Thursday, including an American citizen, in a deal negotiated with Washington that marks one of the biggest prisoner releases ever involving the United States, according to senior Biden administration officials.

The Nicaraguan government, which sought nothing in return, agreed to release the prisoners to the United States as a way to signal a desire to restart relations with the country, the officials said.

The Biden administration has imposed sanctions on the government and family of President Daniel Ortega in recent years, as the country has slid into autocratic rule and targeted opponents in civil society, the church and the news media.

Despite the positive action from the Nicaraguan government, officials in Washington say they remain wary since it is unclear whether the Ortega family is willing to loosen its grip on power, permit political dissent and hold free and fair elections.

Those released in Nicaragua included political opposition members, business figures, student activists and journalists. Once in the United States, they will be given humanitarian parole for a period of two years, a process that allows foreigners who do not have a visa or may not be eligible for one to enter the country and apply for asylum. Two other political prisoners declined offers of refuge in the United States.

The prisoner release “marks a constructive step toward addressing human rights abuses in the country and opens the door to further dialogue,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a statement.

Clutching what few belongings they had in plastic bags, many looking frail, the freed detainees boarded the flight from Managua to Washington, before it took off at about 7:45 a.m. E.S.T., officials said. It landed about four hours later.

The flight was chartered by the U.S. government and as it circled the sky above Washington some of the freed prisoners began to sing, tears in their eyes, according to officials.

The American government planned to provide medical and legal assistance to the former prisoners, according to U.S. officials, before allowing them to reunite with their families.

Friends and relatives of the prisoners waited at an arrivals section of Dulles International Airport. Some waved Nicaraguan flags while singing the national anthem. One person held up a painting of Jesus Christ. A person in the crowd read the names of those who had been freed as others chanted, “libertad,” meaning freedom.

In a Thursday evening speech, Mr. Ortega confirmed the prisoners’ release — calling them agents of Washington — and said his government did not ask for anything in return.

“We do not want any trace of those who are mercenaries to remain here in our country,” he said.

Biden administration officials said that while most of the sanctions against the Ortega family and the Nicaraguan government will continue, penalties specifically tied to the jailing of political prisoners may be eased.

Many of those released had been arrested over the last few years for their political dissent against the Ortega family, with many sentenced to prison or house arrest in what critics and family members called sham trials.

Some of them experienced horrific treatment inside Nicaraguan detention centers, many family members said, and were denied treatment for longstanding medical conditions or given little to eat. At least one of them died in captivity.

One of those traveling to the United States was Cristiana Chamorro Barrios, a journalist who was a leading contender in Nicaragua’s presidential elections held in 2021.

Just months before the elections, Ms. Chamorro was disqualified as a candidate. Government forces then raided her home and detained her minutes before she was scheduled to give a news conference to speak about her disqualification and criticize the government’s interference in the polls.

For Carlos Fernando Chamorro Barrios, the news could not have been more of a surprise. Beside his sister, Cristiana, his brother, Pedro Joaquín, was also freed on Thursday. Both had been jailed for their opposition to the Ortega family and Mr. Chamorro had expected to possibly never see them again.

“Today a long day of torture and cruelty against the best sons of Nicaragua has ended,” said Mr. Chamorro, who fled shortly after his brother and sister were imprisoned in 2021. This “is the first step toward freedom for all of Nicaragua,’’ he added. “All prisoners of conscience are innocent. They were convicted in spurious trials for fabricated crimes and have now been banished.”

The country’s National Assembly on Thursday passed a measure to change the constitution in order to strip the freed prisoners of their nationality, according to local media reports.

While officials in Washington were upbeat about Thursday’s developments, they said they would continue to apply pressure to the Ortega administration. The Biden administration does not believe that “the nature of the government” has changed, one official said.

In a sign that the Ortega family may not be willing to engage in a wider political opening, two drivers from La Prensa, Nicaragua’s leading newspaper, were sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for undermining “national integrity.”

The prisoner release will likely revive a long standing debate about whether sanctions work in Washington’s favor. In countries less reliant on the United States and farther away, like North Korea or Iraq under Saddam Hussein, sanctions have had little impact.

But in countries more directly in Washington’s orbit, like Nicaragua, Thursday’s events may bolster the argument that sanctions are effective. Although the Ortega family has shored up its ties to China, Russia and Cuba in recent years, the United States is still by far Nicaragua’s top trading partner.

“There are a limited number of places in the world where the U.S. has real leverage and it seems like Nicaragua may be one of them,” said Dan Restrepo, a former national security adviser for Latin America under President Barack Obama.

“But Nicaragua remains a terrible place for Nicaraguans, and a lot more has to change. We will have to wait and see if it will,” he added.

Sanctions have hit the Ortega family and its inner circle hard in recent years, targeting the economy and top generals and several of the president’s children. The sanctions have also stretched the government’s ability to pay off pro-Ortega paramilitaries or expand the police force to manage dissent.

Last year Laureano Ortega, likely the heir to his father, approached Washington seeking sanctions relief in exchange for the release of political prisoners.

Mr. Ortega, the president of Nicaragua, is a former Marxist guerrilla leader who rose to power after helping overthrow another notorious Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza, in 1979.

He then spent years in political opposition until winning elections in 2006 and began to steadily consolidate his family’s control. In 2017, Mr. Ortega appointed his wife as vice president, while his children began taking larger roles in business and politics.

Since then, the government has shut down independent media outlets and closed more than 3,000 nongovernmental organizations, while also banning church processions for fear that they could break out into protests.

While relatives of the political prisoners who were brought to the United States were overjoyed by their release, they said more needs to be done.

On Thursday, Ariana Gutierrez Pinto, 28, was waiting at Dulles airport for her mother, Evelyn, a human-rights activist who had been imprisoned for more than a year.

“I’m extremely excited. I cannot wait to hug her,” Ms. Pinto said. “But at the same time, it’s not fair for them to just have thrown them out of their own country.”

News round-up, Thursday, February 9, 2023

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Editor's Reflections

…The sands of the hourglass are beginning to run out for Putin`s project and Europe too…

Germán & Co

A few days ago, in the Editorial, was shared the following thinking. …". Moreover, such striking white balloons suddenly emerged from outer space, attracting the attention of military intelligence and communities in different places. These —magnificent white balloons— were deployed into space to explore the crucial infrastructures of other sovereign governments without any qualms or concerns.

If we review last week's reflections (…." On the one hand, there is a clear nuclear threat from one of the parties involved. However, the West does not see it as latent; paradoxically, it intensifies military cooperation with Ukraine daily. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been firing long-range missiles from his territory, causing alarm in South Korea and Japan, and putting significant strain on US forces in the region. In addition, today, he announced US military reinforcements in the Philippines in the face of a possible military escalation from China to Taiwan.) all the military and political activities have multiplied, and this point is mirrored in today's Editorial in Le Monde, which reads as follows: …." The Chinese balloon is a counterproductive fuss... The divisions between the two major American political parties over China are bad news in a world already destabilized by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  

Now, the news about the development of the military conflict in Ukraine is no longer so unpleasant for President Vladimir Putin compared than the beginning of the invasion, which is reflected in his attitude and expression by images of him, released on the Russian President's office's hard-hitting website. 

Meanwhile, the world economy is disintegrating as fast as the Berlin Wall. Besides additionally, a horrific earthquake in Syria and Turkey has claimed more than ten thousand casualties, who only politically aid the unstable President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The real issue is, who is winning this crazy war? The answer is emphatic NO ONE.

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Quote of the day…

Ben Rhodes, the former diplomatic adviser to Democratic President Barack Obama took the opportunity to poke fun: "What a moment. None of us shall ever forget where we were when we learned the news of The Balloon, nor forget the harrowing victory that was won in the final moments of The Battle of The Balloon," he tweeted.

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Most Read…

Pope Francis urges followers to pray that AI and robots ‘always serve mankind’

The pope is worried about AI-driven inequality

Pope Francis has asked believers around the world to pray that robots and artificial intelligence “always serve mankind.”

The Verge by JAMES VINCENT

In Its Push for an Intelligence Edge, China’s Military Turned to Balloons

Chinese military scientists have been looking for ways to make them more durable, harder to detect and even to serve as platforms that fire advanced weapons.

NYT by Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien

How Russia Is Surviving the Tightening Grip on Its Oil Revenue

Restrictions on Russia’s oil trade are raising the stakes in a protracted economic standoff that is reshaping the global energy market.

NYT by Anatoly Kurmanaev and Stanley Reed

Anatoly Kurmanaev reported from Berlin, and Stanley Reed from London.

Brussels backtracks: EU prepares to quit dirty energy club

In a major policy shift, the European Commission says the Energy Charter Treaty is ‘not in line’ with the bloc’s climate goals.

The European Union is on the brink of withdrawing from an energy treaty that protects fossil fuel investments, following a major U-turn from the European Commission.

POLITICO EU BY CAMILLE GIJS, FEDERICA DI SARIO AND KARL MATHIESEN

Pictures of the day…

At the ceremony for presenting the 2022 Presidential prizes in Science and Innovation for Young Scientists. Photo: Vladimir Smirnov, TASS. http://en.kremlin.ru/

Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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Image: Germán & Co

Pope Francis urges followers to pray that AI and robots ‘always serve mankind’

The pope is worried about AI-driven inequality

The Verge by JAMES VINCENT

Nov 11, 2020

Pope Francis has asked believers around the world to pray that robots and artificial intelligence “always serve mankind.”

The message is one of the pope’s monthly prayer intentions — regular missives shared on YouTube that are intended to help Catholics “deepen their daily prayer” by focusing on particular topics or events. In August, the pope urged prayer for “the maritime world”; in April, the topic was “freedom for addiction.” Now, in November, it’s AI and robots.

Although the message sounds similar to warnings issued by tech notables like Elon Musk (the Tesla CEO famously compared work on artificial intelligence to “summoning the demon”), the pope’s focus is more prosaic. He doesn’t seem to be worrying about the sort of exotic doomsday scenario where a superintelligent AI turns the world into paperclips, but more about how the tech could exacerbate existing inequalities here and now.

(We should note also that the call to prayer came out earlier this month, but we only saw it recently via the Import AI newsletter because of the... events that have taken up so much of everyone’s time, energy, and general mental acuity in recent weeks.)

In his message, the pope said AI was “at the heart of the epochal change we are experiencing” and that robotics had the power to change the world for the better. But this would only be the case if these forces are harnessed correctly, he said. “Indeed, if technological progress increases inequalities, it is not true progress. Future advances should be orientated towards respecting the dignity of the person.”

Perhaps surprisingly, this isn’t new territory for the pope. Earlier this year, the Vatican, along with Microsoft and IBM, endorsed the “Rome Call for AI Ethics” — a policy document containing six general principles that guide the deployment of artificial intelligence. These include transparency, inclusion, impartiality, and reliability, all sensible attributes when it comes to deploying algorithms.

Although the pope didn’t touch on any particular examples in his video, it’s easy to think of ways that AI is entrenching or increasing divisions in society. Examples include biased facial recognition systems that lead to false arrests and algorithmically allotted exam results that replicate existing inequalities between students. In other words: regardless of whether you think prayer is the appropriate course of action, the pope certainly has a point.

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Image: Germán & Co

In Its Push for an Intelligence Edge, China’s Military Turned to Balloons

Chinese military scientists have been looking for ways to make them more durable, harder to detect and even to serve as platforms that fire advanced weapons.

NYT by Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien

Feb. 9, 2023

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Long before an unmanned Chinese airship floating over the United States grabbed the world’s attention, Taiwan may have glimpsed Beijing’s ambitions to turn balloons — seemingly so old-fashioned and ponderous — into elusive tools of 21st-century military power.

Residents in Taipei and elsewhere on the island have spotted and photographed mysterious pale orbs high in the sky at least several times in the previous two years. But few people here, even officials, gave them much thought then. Now, Taiwanese officials are grappling with whether any of the balloons were part of China’s growing fleet of airborne surveillance craft, deployed to gather information from the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own.

The incursions have come into focus since the United States identified and shot down the Chinese balloon that had spent days traversing the country. Beijing has protested the balloon’s downing, asserting that it was a civilian ship doing scientific research. But American officials say that the balloon was part of a global surveillance effort targeting the military capabilities of various countries.

China’s surveillance airships are likely operated by the Strategic Support Force, experts say, a relatively new and often secretive arm of the Chinese military that carries out electronic surveillance and cyber operations. The force emerged from the Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s drive to modernize the People’s Liberation Army, including expanding its intelligence capabilities, spanning from satellites in space to vessels deep undersea, said Su Tzu-yun, an analyst at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei.

“The balloons should be understood as one part of its electronic spying system,” he said in an interview. Even data that the balloons can gather about humidity and air currents may be militarily useful, he said. If China ever launches missiles, “this atmospheric information could improve their accuracy.”

A review of Chinese military studies, newspaper articles and patent filings illuminates the range of Beijing’s interests and ambitions with balloons.

Chinese military scientists have been studying new materials and techniques to make balloons more durable, more steerable and harder to detect and track. People’s Liberation Army researchers have also been testing balloons as potential aerial platforms from which to fire weapons.

Even in this hitherto obscure corner of military innovation, China sees big stakes. Its military researchers warn that rival governments, above all the United States, could beat them at their own game. They especially worry about dominance in “near space,” the inhospitable layer of the atmosphere between 12 and 62 miles above earth.

“Near space has become a new battleground in modern warfare,” an article in the Liberation Army Daily, the official newspaper of China’s military, said in 2018. It celebrated China’s feat in the previous year of sending a balloon, carrying a small live turtle, over 12 miles up. Last year, China experimented with using rockets to propel balloons up to 25 miles above the earth.

The Chinese military, like other militaries, wants to “try all the options,” said Bates Gill, the author of a recent study, Daring to Struggle: China’s Global Ambitions Under Xi Jinping.

“My sense is the People’s Liberation Army is pretty unrestrained these days,” said Mr. Gill, the executive director of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. “Not in the ‘Wild West,’ corrupt sense of the past, but in the sense of how it experiments and pushes the envelope.”

Such boldness may explain the recent balloon flights in the United States and Taiwan, which did not go entirely unnoticed. In September 2021, residents of Taipei, the capital of the island, made anxious calls to weather officials to ask about a pale, tiny dot they were seeing high above them.

Cheng Ming-dean, the head of Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau, checked a close-up photograph of it and told people to relax: It was just a balloon. The large balloons were seen twice in late 2021 as well as in March of last year. Four clusters of smaller balloons were also spotted early last year.

photograph of the same balloon seen in September 2021, provided by the Central Weather Bureau in Taiwan.Credit...Central Weather Bureau Taiwan

“Back then, I don’t think Taiwan was paying particular attention to this kind of thing,” Mr. Cheng said in an interview.

Now, as some smaller states — particularly those the United States describes as allies and partners — confront this new potential threat of surveillance, their options may be limited.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.

Shooting down balloons is likely to be difficult and expensive for many air forces, said Chang Yan-ting, a retired deputy commander of Taiwan’s Air Force. Over 30 years ago, he was a jet pilot sent up to inspect three balloons that were believed to be Chinese. In the end, he decided that they posed no threat, and would have been too hard to bring down, anyway.

“It’s very difficult; these balloons don’t give a radar reflection,” he said in an interview. “Look at the United States: It went to enormous efforts to send F-22s, its best fighter jet, and used its most advanced missiles to strike it — did you see? A bit like using a cannon to shoot a small bird.”

To be clear, the core of China’s digital intelligence collection system remains an armada of more than 260 satellites dedicated to intelligence and surveillance. The balloons, however, may offer some advantages over satellites because they can hover over areas and may produce clearer images, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The Chinese military is aware of such advantages. In modern battlefields, too, “maintaining constant aerial surveillance has become an urgent task,” a Chinese Liberation Army Daily report said in 2021. With satellites and planes alone, the report said, “it is hard to achieve full-time, full-scope, fixed-point early warning and surveillance from the air.”

If the Chinese Strategic Support Force was responsible for the recent balloon mission over the United States, the force’s relative newness and fragmented background may help to explain how the operation went ahead with seemingly little calculation of the trouble it could create, said Mr. Gill, who has studied the force. It was formed as part of a sweeping military reorganization that Mr. Xi launched in 2015, absorbing parts of the air force, navy and army.

Poor internal communication between the Chinese military and civilian government, and even inside the People’s Liberation Army and Strategic Support Force itself, may have contributed to the problem, Mr. Gill said.

“It’s a really good example of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing in China,” he said.

The recent attention on China’s balloon program may discourage the Chinese military from deploying new ones for a while. But the research will likely forge ahead.

Military scientists, especially at China’s National University of Defense Technology, have worked on new materials, designs and navigation tools to make balloons more nimble and long-lasting. They have filed patents for innovations such as a “three-dimensional flight path tracking method for an unmanned airship,” and articles in the Chinese military’s newspapers indicate it pays attention to balloon developments in the United States, France, Israel and other countries.

One lecturer from the National University of Defense Technology, wrote last year in the Liberation Army Daily that China could try to develop smart high-altitude balloons that are able to escape the more turbulent lower atmosphere and catch the steadier wind currents of the upper atmosphere, enabling them to surf long distances helped by small motors.

“With their many advantages,” another article in the same newspaper said last year, “balloons seem to be ushering in their springtime of development.”

Chinese researchers have also speculated about using high-altitude balloons to carry and launch missiles from near space, where they would be harder to detect, to earth.

In 2018, China’s state broadcaster said that researchers had tested a balloon platform that they said could be used to launch hypersonic weapons — which can fly at several times the speed of sound — from midair. But Chinese reports about the country’s military advances are prone to exaggeration. That report noted that the test used scale models, and it is debatable whether China’s other military balloon capabilities always live up to the swaggering claims.

Technical shortcomings may help explain the untimely appearance of the Chinese balloon over the United States — just before the Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, was to fly to Beijing. He canceled that trip.

“It may have been bad timing,” Mr. Su, the Taiwanese military researcher, said. “It’s become relatively easy to control the direction of balloons, but controlling their speed is a different matter.”

Chris Buckley is chief China correspondent and has lived in China for most of the past 30 years after growing up in Sydney, Australia. Before joining The Times in 2012, he was a correspondent in Beijing for Reuters. @ChuBailiang

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Image: Germán & Co

How Russia Is Surviving the Tightening Grip on Its Oil Revenue

Restrictions on Russia’s oil trade are raising the stakes in a protracted economic standoff that is reshaping the global energy market.

NYT by Anatoly Kurmanaev and Stanley Reed

Anatoly Kurmanaev reported from Berlin, and Stanley Reed from London.

Feb. 7, 2023

Shunned by the West, Russia was able last year to redirect its potent oil exports to Asia, marshal a fleet of tankers unencumbered by Western penalties and adapt evasion schemes perfected previously by its allies Iran and Venezuela.

The strategy worked: President Vladimir V. Putin not only retained but also increased money from energy exports, according to official data, and may have brought in more cash, collected in the shadows of the oil trade, that could be helping the war effort.

But it’s not clear if Russia can keep outmaneuvering efforts to throttle oil revenue. There are signs that Western controls that took effect in December — an embargo on most sales to Europe, and the Group of 7 nations’ price cap on Russian crude sold to other nations — are beginning to have a deep impact on energy earnings.

And another round of sanctions to slash Russia’s war chest began on Sunday, when the European Union’s embargo on Russian diesel, gasoline and other refined oil products took effect. Like the crude oil sanctions, it is accompanied by Group of 7 price caps on Russian diesel and other oil products sold elsewhere.

The gradual ratcheting up of oil sanctions, which are designed to cut Russia’s oil export revenues without snuffing out a fragile global pandemic recovery, is a policy that analysts say could take years to bear fruit.

“Sanctions, in general, are more like a marathon than a sprint,” said Edward Fishman, a former State Department sanctions official. “Now that these sanctions are in place on Russia’s oil sector, I think you have got to assume they are a permanent fixture of the market.”

A year since the start of the war, Russia has been able to keep its oil flowing.

For all of 2022, Russia managed to increase its oil output 2 percent and boost oil export earnings 20 percent, to $218 billion, according to estimates from the Russian government and the International Energy Agency, a group representing the world’s main energy consumers. Russia’s earnings were helped by an overall rise in oil prices after the start of the war and by growing demand after pandemic lockdowns; those trends also benefited Western oil giants like Exxon Mobil and Shell, which reported record profits for 2022. Russia also raked in $138 billion from natural gas, a nearly 80 percent rise over 2021 as record prices offset cuts in flows to Europe.

Export volumes of Russia’s main type of crude have also recovered after a dip in December caused by the imposition of the Group of 7 price cap and a Western embargo on seaborne Russian crude, according to the I.E.A.

Last week, the International Monetary Fund said that the oil price cap, currently $60 per barrel, was unlikely to affect Russian oil export volumes, and that it expected the Russian economy would grow 0.3 percent this year after shrinking 2.2 percent in 2022. That projection beats the fund’s forecasts for the British and German economies.

Russia has blunted the impact of Western measures by redirecting crude exports to China, India and Turkey, exploiting its access to oil ports on three different seas, extensive pipelines, a large fleet of tankers and a sizable domestic capital market that is shielded from Western sanctions.

In the process, the Kremlin was able to re-engineer, in months, decade-long global oil trade patterns. Russia’s oil exports to India, for example, have grown sixteenfold since the start of the war, averaging 1.6 million barrels per day in December, according to the I.E.A.

“Russia remains a formidable force on the global energy market,” said Sergey Vakulenko, an energy scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a research group in Washington. “Opposing such a major player is not easy at all, and won’t happen in a day.”

Even as Russia continues producing about 10 million barrels of oil per day — making it the world’s third-largest producer, after the United States and Saudi Arabia — the European oil ban and price cap adopted on Dec. 5 have recently curtailed the money its treasury derives from exports. In December, Russian oil export revenues were $12.6 billion, nearly $4 billion less than a year earlier, according to the I.E.A. estimates.

That’s largely because Russian oil companies have to offer increasingly large discounts to a shrinking pool of buyers.

The trend appears to be persisting. The Russian government’s revenue from oil and gas production and exports fell in January by 46 percent from the same month last year, the Finance Ministry said on Monday.

The difference between the prices of Brent, a global oil benchmark, and Urals, the main type of exported Russian crude, widened to about $40 per barrel in January, according to the energy data company Argus Media. That gap was just a few dollars before the war.

The Russian Finance Ministry has acknowledged the drop in oil revenues, saying last week that the average price of Urals in January was $49.50 a barrel, nearly half its price a year earlier. The ministry uses the Urals price to calculate its tax take from oil exports.

“The windfall income will decline, and volumes of their receipts will become less predictable,” the Finance Ministry said in a budget forecast late last year.

To supporters of Russian oil sanctions, the Kremlin’s ability to keep selling oil for less money is the intended outcome of the price cap. The idea is to avoid a shortage that could force prices up.

“So far, so good,” said Mr. Fishman, the U.S. sanctions expert.

Some oil experts say, however, that the steep discounts for Russian oil could partly be an illusion.

Using customs data from India, Mr. Vakulenko, the Russian oil expert, showed that local importers of Russian crude paid almost the same price as Brent crude. A New York Times analysis of the same data produced similar results.

The explanation, Mr. Vakulenko suggested, is that at least part of the large discount on the quoted Urals price had been pocketed by Russian exporters and intermediaries, who then charged a higher price to the buyers in India.

This revenue will not accrue directly to the Russian government in taxes, said Tatiana Mitrova, a Russian oil expert at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. But because the Russian exporters probably have close ties to the Kremlin, some of money might still support the war effort, she said.

“It’s a complete black box of funds,” she said.

Experts agree that in the longer term, the future of Russian oil revenues will be decided by global economic forces beyond the control of Western sanctions enforcers and Russian evaders.

They say global oil prices will remain the single biggest determinant of how much money the Kremlin will collect from a barrel of exported crude, despite the growing opacity of its trade.

And the fate of that price rests to a large extent on Russia’s ally China, whose economy is just beginning to emerge from years of strict Covid restrictions. In December, China’s imports of crude oil hit a record of 16.3 million barrels a day, according to estimates by Kpler, a firm that tracks energy shipping. If the trend continues, it will strain global oil supplies and benefit the Kremlin.

Adding to the upward pressure on oil prices, OPEC Plus, an alliance of Russia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, said last Wednesday that it would maintain last year’s restrictive output targets, which could strain oil supplies if demand grows.

After a year of preparations, Russia seems able to absorb the immediate impact of Western oil sanctions on production, said Felix Todd, an analyst at Argus Media. Experts say Russia can plug any oil funding gaps in the next few years by using its National Wealth Fund, which it has amassed from past windfall energy profits and is worth about $150 billion.

The Russian government has also shielded its defense and social spending from budget cuts, meaning that even a drastic decline in oil revenues will not hurt its war effort for the foreseeable future, said Alexandra Prokopenko, a Russian economic analyst and former adviser at the Russian central bank.

“Putin has plenty of money to keep fighting,” she said.

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Image: Germán & Co

Brussels backtracks: EU prepares to quit dirty energy club

In a major policy shift, the European Commission says the Energy Charter Treaty is ‘not in line’ with the bloc’s climate goals.

POLITICO EU BY CAMILLE GIJS, FEDERICA DI SARIO AND KARL MATHIESEN

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

The European Union is on the brink of withdrawing from an energy treaty that protects fossil fuel investments, following a major U-turn from the European Commission.

A spokesperson told POLITICO that the Commission on Tuesday recommended to EU countries that the bloc should “carry out a coordinated withdrawal” from the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT).

The news followed a POLITICO report on a document outlining the view of the Commission’s internal legal services that a full-scale EU departure was “unavoidable” after several EU countries — including France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain — last year rebelled and said they would leave the deal unilaterally. 

It's a big shift for the Commission, which for years had pushed for reforming the pact and keeping EU countries inside. But given the exodus, the EU's executive told diplomats on Tuesday it now backed leaving the deal.

"No wonder the European Commission now comes to the conclusion that the EU exit appears unavoidable given this political context. It is high time to get the exit done," said Anna Cavazzini, the MEP who leads talks on the treaty in the European Parliament.

The charter is the world’s most used investment treaty. It was designed in the 1990s to encourage Western European companies to invest in post-communist states. The ECT offers generous protections to an estimated €344.6 billion of coal, oil and gas investments in the EU, U.K. and Switzerland, allowing companies to sue countries for profits lost as a result of changes in government policy.

But the treaty now clashes with the EU's pledge to slash the use of fossil fuels under its Green Deal project.

The Commission had tried to reform the 50-plus country pact, but ECT members in Central and Eastern Asia were unwilling to abandon its protections. That precipitated a major campaign against the deal, led by NGOs but joined later by the governments of France and Spain.

“There is still a false hope in the room that an agreement like the ECT would lead to more investments,” said Cornelia Maarfield, a senior trade and investment policy coordinator at green alliance CAN Europe. “But it has never been proven that that is the case.”

The fears over the deal have been borne out in recent years, most notably when the Netherlands was sued by two German coal companies over its plans to phase out the use of the highly polluting fuel.

The Commission now has little choice but to agree with the deal’s opponents. “An unmodernized ECT is not in line with the EU’s policy on investment protection or the European Green Deal,” the spokesperson said.

POLITICO contacted diplomats from several EU member countries, some of which have announced they intend to cut and run from the deal and others that have not. They all said they were still absorbing the Commission’s change of heart.

What happens next?

On the surface, withdrawal from the deal seems like an obvious move for a climate-ambitious bloc. But within its pages lies a poison pill: a ‘sunset clause’ that leaves countries open to lawsuits for 20 years after they exit the pact.

The Commission’s legal note suggested that future lawsuits may be limited because most energy investments in the EU are made by EU companies. The Commission suggested that EU countries should draft a deal between themselves to the effect that the ECT “does not apply, and has never applied, in intra-EU relations.”

However, a coordinated exit will have no effect on current proceedings, said Johannes Tropper, a law researcher at the University of Vienna, and an EU company could still benefit from ECT protection if it has a subsidiary in a country that hasn't left the pact.

Projects with investments from outside the EU would still be subject to potential legal action.

Should a full-scale withdrawal be eventually rejected, the EU’s executive would be left facing two fallback scenarios: a withdrawal preceded by negotiations aimed at ensuring that some EU states remain part of a reformed treaty; or pushing the Council to back the reforms before proceeding to a coordinated departure. 

The first option would allow ECT defenders to remain affiliated with a revised version of the pact, in spite of a subsequent withdrawal of the EU and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). That “would allow for the modernisation of the ECT to be adopted, also for the benefit of non-EU Contracting Parties,” read the legal note.

The last avenue would see the EU and Euratom back a revision of the treaty while “starting proceedings for their withdrawal in parallel.” However, the Commission is aware that this  “would run counter to the public and political announcement already made by a number of Member States,” on top of “being disingenuous vis-à-vis other non-EU Contracting Parties.”

Maarfield believes that the EU’s landmark departure from the dirty energy deal could have a knock-on effect. 

“For other countries wishing to become EU members in the future, it would make a lot of sense to withdraw now, because, once they access the bloc, they would have to rethink their membership within ECT membership anyway,” she said. “So this is actually a great opportunity.” 

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News round-up, Wednesday, February 8, 2023

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The surprise of the day…

Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelenskiy to address parliament and meet King Charles in surprise UK visit

Quote of the day…

Images posted on social media are analyzed by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that decide what to amplify and what to suppress. Many of these algorithms, a Guardian investigation has found, have a gender bias, and may have been censoring and suppressing the reach of countless photos featuring women’s bodies.

Most read…

‘There is no standard’: investigation finds AI algorithms objectify women’s bodies

Guardian exclusive: AI tools rate photos of women as more sexually suggestive than those of men, especially if nipples, pregnant bellies or exercise is involved

The Guardian by Gianluca Mauro and Hilke Schellmann

Russia’s oil revenues plunge as EU’s oil war enters round 2

Dire Russian budget numbers signal a ‘bad start’ to the fiscal year, says an energy analyst.

POLITICO EU BY CHARLIE COOPER

In from the coal: Australia sheds climate pariah status to make up with Europe

Europe needs our energy and we’re happy to help, Australian Climate Minister Chris Bowen tells POLITICO.

POLITICO EU BY KARL MATHIESEN

Biden urges Republicans to help him 'finish job' of rebuilding economy

In his State of the Union address, marked by partisan division, the US president sought to portray a nation dramatically improved from the one he took charge of two years ago.

Le Monde with AP   

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Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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‘There is no standard’: investigation finds AI algorithms objectify women’s bodies

Guardian exclusive: AI tools rate photos of women as more sexually suggestive than those of men, especially if nipples, pregnant bellies or exercise is involved

by Gianluca Mauro and Hilke Schellmann

Wed 8 Feb 2023 11.00 GMT

Images posted on social media are analyzed by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that decide what to amplify and what to suppress. Many of these algorithms, a Guardian investigation has found, have a gender bias, and may have been censoring and suppressing the reach of countless photos featuring women’s bodies.

These AI tools, developed by large technology companies, including Google and Microsoft, are meant to protect users by identifying violent or pornographic visuals so that social media companies can block it before anyone sees it. The companies claim that their AI tools can also detect “raciness” or how sexually suggestive an image is. With this classification, platforms – including Instagram and LinkedIn – may suppress contentious imagery.

Objectification of women seems deeply embedded in the system

Leon Derczynski, IT University of Copenhagen

Two Guardian journalists used the AI tools to analyze hundreds of photos of men and women in underwear, working out, using medical tests with partial nudity and found evidence that the AI tags photos of women in everyday situations as sexually suggestive. They also rate pictures of women as more “racy” or sexually suggestive than comparable pictures of men. As a result, the social media companies that leverage these or similar algorithms have suppressed the reach of countless images featuring women’s bodies, and hurt female-led businesses – further amplifying societal disparities.

Even medical pictures are affected by the issue. The AI algorithms were tested on images released by the US National Cancer Institute demonstrating how to do a clinical breast examination. Google’s AI gave this photo the highest score for raciness, Microsoft’s AI was 82% confident that the image was “explicitly sexual in nature”, and Amazon classified it as representing “explicit nudity”.

Microsoft’s AI was 82% confident that this image demonstrating how to do a breast exam was ‘explicitly sexual in nature’, and Amazon categorized it as ‘explicit nudity’. Photograph: National Cancer Institute/Unsplash

Pregnant bellies are also problematic for these AI tools. Google’s algorithm scored the photo as “very likely to contain racy content”. Microsoft’s algorithm was 90% confident that the image was “sexually suggestive in nature”.

Images of pregnant bellies are categorized as ‘very likely to contain racy content’. Photograph: Dragos Gontariu/Unsplash

“This is just wild,” said Leon Derczynski, a professor of computer science at the IT University of Copenhagen, who specializes in online harm. “Objectification of women seems deeply embedded in the system.”

One social media company said they do not design their systems to create or reinforce biases and classifiers are not perfect.

“This is a complex and evolving space, and we continue to make meaningful improvements to SafeSearch classifiers to ensure they stay accurate and helpful for everyone,” a Google spokesperson said.

Getting shadowbanned

In May 2021, Gianluca Mauro, an AI entrepreneur, advisor and co-author of this article, published a LinkedIn post and was surprised it had just been seen 29 times in an hour, instead of the roughly 1,000 views he usually gets. Maybe the picture of two women wearing tube tops was the problem?

He re-uploaded the same exact text with another picture. The new post got 849 views in an hour.

Mauro’s LinkedIn post showing two women in tube tops received only 29 views in one hour compared to 849 views when a different image was used. Composite: Gianluca Mauro/The Guardian

It seemed like his post had been suppressed or “shadowbanned”. Shadowbanning refers to the decision of a social media platform to limit the reach of a post or account. While a regular ban involves actively blocking a post or account and notifying the user, shadowbanning is less transparent - often the reach will be suppressed without the user’s knowledge.

The Guardian found that Microsoft, Amazon and Google offer content moderation algorithms to any business for a small fee. Microsoft, the parent company and owner of LinkedIn, said its tool “can detect adult material in images so that developers can restrict the display of these images in their software”.

Another experiment on LinkedIn was conducted to try to confirm the discovery.

The photo of the women got eight views in one hour, while the picture with the men received 655 views, suggesting the women’s photo was either suppressed or shadowbanned. Composite: Gianluca Mauro/The Guardian

In two photos depicting both women and men in underwear, Microsoft’s tool classified the picture showing two women as racy and gave it a 96% score. The picture with the men was classified as non-racy with a score of 14%.

The photo of the women got eight views within one hour, and the picture with the two men received 655 views, suggesting the photo of the women in underwear was either suppressed or shadowbanned.

You cannot have one single uncontested definition of raciness

Abeba Birhane

Shadowbanning has been documented for years, but the Guardian journalists may have found a missing link to understand the phenomenon: biased AI algorithms. Social media platforms seem to leverage these algorithms to rate images and limit the reach of content that they consider too racy. The problem seems to be that these AI algorithms have built-in gender bias, rating women more racy than images containing men.

“Our teams utilize a combination of automated techniques, human expert reviews and member reporting to help identify and remove content that violates our professional community policies,” said LinkedIn spokesperson Fred Han in a statement. “In addition, our feed uses algorithms responsibly in order to surface content that helps our members be more productive and successful in their professional journey.”

Amazon said content moderation is based on a variety of factors including geography, religious beliefs and cultural experience. However, “Amazon Rekognition is able to recognize a wide variety of content, but it does not determine the appropriateness of that content,” an Amazon spokesperson said. “The service simply returns labels for items it detects for further evaluation by human moderators.”

Digging deeper

Natasha Crampton, Microsoft’s chief responsible AI officer, and her team began investigating when journalists notified her about the labeling of the photos.

“The initial results do not suggest that those false positives occur at a disproportionately higher rate for women as compared with men,” Crampton said. When additional photos were run through the tool, the demo website had been changed. Before the problem was discovered, it was possible to test the algorithms by simply dragging and dropping a picture. Now an account needed to be created and code had to be written.

Screenshots of Microsoft’s platform in June 2021 (left), and in July 2021 (right). In the first version, there is a button to upload any photo and test the technology, which has disappeared in the later version. Composite: Gianluca Mauro/The Guardian

But what are these AI classifiers actually analyzing in the photos? More experiments were needed, so Mauro agreed to be the test subject.

When photographed in long pants and with a bare chest, Microsoft’s algorithm had a confidence score lower than 22% for raciness. When Mauro put on a bra, the raciness score jumped to 97%. The algorithm gave a 99% score when the bra was held next to me.

“You are looking at decontextualized information where a bra is being seen as inherently racy rather than a thing that many women wear every day as a basic item of clothing,” said Kate Crawford, professor at the University of Southern California and the author of Atlas of AI.

Abeba Birhane, a senior fellow at the Mozilla Foundation and an expert in large visual datasets, said raciness is a social concept that differs from one culture to the other.

“These concepts are not like identifying a table where you have the physical thing and you can have a relatively agreeable definition or rating for a certain thing,” she said. “You cannot have one single uncontested definition of raciness.”

Why do these systems seem so biased?

Modern AI is built using machine learning, a set of algorithms that allow computers to learn from data. When developers use machine learning, they don’t write explicit rules telling computers how to perform a task. Instead, they provide computers with training data. People are hired to label images so that computers can analyze their scores and find whatever pattern helps it replicate human decisions.

Margaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at the AI firm Hugging Face and former co-head of Google’s Ethical AI research group, believes that the photos used to train these algorithms were probably labeled by straight men, who may associate men working out with fitness, but may consider an image of a woman working out as racy. It’s also possible that these ratings seem gender biased in the US and in Europe because the labelers may have been from a place with a more conservative culture.

Don't like it?

Why not?

Ideally, tech companies should have conducted thorough analyses on who is labeling their data, to make sure that the final dataset embeds a diversity of views, she said. The companies should also check that their algorithms perform similarly on photos of men v women and other groups, but that is not always done.

“There’s no standard of quality here,” Mitchell said.

This gender bias the Guardian uncovered is part of more than a decade of controversy around content moderation on social media. Images showing people breastfeeding their children and different standards for photos of male nipples, which are allowed on Instagram, and female nipples, which have to be covered, have long garnered outcries about social media platforms’ content moderation practices.

Now Meta’s oversight board - an external body including professors, researchers and journalists, who are paid by the company – has asked the tech giant to clarify its adult nudity and sexual activity community standard guidelines on social media platforms “so that all people are treated in a manner consistent with international human rights standards, without discrimination on the basis of sex or gender”.

Meta declined to comment for this story.

‘Women should be expressing themselves’

Bec Wood, a 38-year-old photographer based in Perth, Australia, said she’s terrified of Instagram’s algorithmic police force.

I will censor as artistically as possible any nipples. I find this so offensive to ... women

Bec Wood

After Wood had a daughter nine years ago, she started studying childbirth education and photographing women trying to push back against societal pressures many women feel that they should look like supermodels.

“I was not having that for my daughter,” she said. “Women should be expressing themselves and celebrating themselves and being seen in all these different shapes and sizes. I just think that’s so important for humanity to move forward.”

Wood’s photos are intimate glimpses into women’s connections with their offspring, photographing breastfeeding, pregnancy and other important moments in an artful manner. Her business is 100% dependent on Instagram: “That’s where people find you,” Wood said. “If I don’t share my work, I don’t get work.”

Google and Microsoft rated Wood’s photos as likely to contain explicit sexual content. Amazon categorized the image of the pregnant belly on the right as ‘explicit nudity’.

Since Wood started her business in 2018, for some of her photos she got messages from Instagram that the company was either taking down some of her pictures or that they were going to allow them on her profile but not on the explore tab, a section of the app where people can discover content from accounts they don’t follow. She hoped that Instagram was going to fix the issue over time, but the opposite happened, she said. “I honestly can’t believe that it’s gotten worse. It has devastated my business.” Wood described 2022 as her worst year business-wise.

She is terrified that if she uploads the “wrong” image, she will be locked out of her account with over 13,000 followers, which would bankrupt her business: “I’m literally so scared to post because I’m like, ‘Is this the post that’s going to lose everything?’” she said.

To avoid this, Wood started going against what made her start her work in the first place: “I will censor as artistically as possible any nipples. I find this so offensive to art, but also to women,” she said. “I almost feel like I’m part of perpetuating that ridiculous cycle that I don’t want to have any part of.”

Running some of Wood’s photos through the AI algorithms of Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, including those featuring a pregnant belly got rated as racy, nudity or even explicitly sexual.

Wood is not alone. Carolina Are, an expert on social media platforms and content moderation and currently an Innovation fellow at the Centre for Digital Citizens at Northumbria University said she has used Instagram to promote her business and was a victim of shadowbanning.

Are, a pole dance instructor, said some of her photos were taken down, and in 2019, she discovered that her pictures did not show up in the explore page or under the hashtag #FemaleFitness, where Instagram users can search content from users they do not follow. “It was literally just women working out in a very tame way. But then if you looked at hashtag #MaleFitness, it was all oily dudes and they were fine. They weren’t shadowbanned,” she said.

Carolina Are, a pole dance instructor, found that some of her photos were not showing up on social media. Photograph: Rachel Marsh/Courtesy of @ray.marsh

For Are, these individual problems point to larger systemic ones: many people, including chronically ill and disabled folks, rely on making money through social media and shadowbanning harms their business.

Mitchell, the chief ethics scientist at Hugging Face, these kinds of algorithms are often recreating societal biases: “It means that people who tend to be marginalized are even further marginalized – like literally pushed down in a very direct meaning of the term marginalization.”

To secure a safer future for AI, we need the benefit of a female perspective

John Naughton

It’s a representational harm and certain populations are not adequately represented, she added. “In this case, it would be an idea that women must cover themselves up more than men and so that ends up creating this sort of social pressure for women as this becomes the norm of what you see, ” Mitchell said.

The harm is worsened by a lack of transparency. While in some cases Wood has been notified that her pictures were banned or limited in reach, she believes Instagram took other actions against her account without her knowing it. “I’ve had people say ‘I can’t tag you,’ or ‘I was searching for you to show my friend the other day and you’re not showing up,’” she said. “I feel invisible.”

Because she might be, said computer scientist Derczynski: “The people posting these images will never find out about it, which is just so deeply problematic.” he said. “They get a disadvantage forced upon them and they have no agency in this happening and they’re not informed that it’s happening either.”

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

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Source: POLITICO EU

Russia’s oil revenues plunge as EU’s oil war enters round 2

Dire Russian budget numbers signal a ‘bad start’ to the fiscal year, says an energy analyst.

POLITICO EU BY CHARLIE COOPER

FEBRUARY 6, 2023

The EU’s energy war with Russia has entered a new phase — and there are signs that the Kremlin is starting to feel the pain.

As of Sunday, it is illegal to import petroleum products — those refined from crude oil, such as diesel, gasoline and naphtha — from Russia into the EU. That comes hot on the heels of the EU’s December ban on Russian seaborne crude oil.

Both measures are also linked to price caps imposed by the G7 club of rich democracies aimed at driving down the price that Russia gets for its oil and refined products without disrupting global energy markets.

Those actions appear to have bitten into the Kremlin’s budget in a way other economic penalties levied in retaliation for Russia's invasion of Ukraine have not.

The Kremlin’s tax income from oil and gas in January was among its lowest monthly totals since the depths of COVID in 2020, according to Janis Kluge, senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Kluge noted that while Russia’s 2023 budget anticipates 9 trillion rubles (€120 billion) in fossil fuel income, in January it earned only 425 billion rubles from oil and gas taxes, around half compared to the same month last year.

It's only one month's figures and the income does fluctuate, but Kluge called it "a bad start."

Russia’s gas sales to Europe have also collapsed — in part as a result of Moscow's own energy blackmail — with its share of imports declining from around 40 percent throughout 2021 to 13 percent for November 2022, according to the latest confirmed European Commission monthly figure.

But it’s oil that matters most to Kremlin coffers.

On Friday, EU countries struck a deal on two price caps which will come into full force later this year following a 55-day transition period. A cap of $100 will apply to “premium” oil products, including diesel, gasoline and kerosene. A cap of $45 will be enforced on “discount” products, such as fuel oil, naphtha and heating oil.

The EU ban and the G7 price caps are meant to work in tandem. While the EU bans Russian oil, cutting off a vital market, the price caps ensure that insurance and shipping firms based in the EU and other G7 countries aren’t completely blocked from facilitating the global trade in Russian oil. They still can, but it must be under the price caps. This way — so the theory goes — Russia’s fossil fuel revenue will take a hit without disrupting the global oil market in a way that could endanger supply and drive up the price for everyone.

Squeezing the Kremlin

Russia is selling more crude to China and India to make up for the lost trade with the EU | iStock

So far, EU leaders think, it’s working.

Buyers in China and India and other countries are hoovering up more Russian crude, making up for the lost trade with Europe. But knowing that Russia has few alternative markets, buyers have been able to drive down the price. “The discounts that Russia has to give, that its partners can demand, are strong and are here to stay,” said one senior European Commission official. Russian Urals crude is trading at around $50 per barrel, around $30 below the benchmark Brent crude price.

“I think in general the EU and the G7 can be quite happy with how things have unfolded with regards to the oil embargo and the price cap up to now," said Kluge. “There has been no turbulence on global oil markets and at the same time Russia’s revenues have gone down considerably. The key reason here is that the price which Russia receives for its crude has gone down."

The question is whether the EU can keep up the economic pressure on Russia without harming itself in the process.

So far, at least as far as oil is concerned, it’s been plain sailing. Oil markets have proved remarkably flexible since the EU’s crude ban in December, with export flows simply shifting: Asia now takes more Russian crude — often at a discount — while other producers in the Middle East and the U.S. step in to supply Europe.

So far, it is looking likely that a similar “reshuffle” of global trade will take place with oil products like diesel, said Claudio Galimberti, senior vice president of analysis at Rystad Energy.

The nature of the oil product sanctions means that there’s nothing to stop Russian crude from being exported to a third country, refined, and then re-exported to the EU, meaning that India and other countries are becoming more important oil product suppliers to the West.

China and India, as well as others in the Middle East and North Africa, also look likely to snap up Russian oil products that are no longer going straight into Europe, freeing up their own refining capacity to produce yet more product that they can sell into Europe and elsewhere.

"There is a reshuffle of product the same way there was a reshuffle of crude,” Galimberti said.

There could still be problems, however. “Europe is not going to import Russian diesel, so it needs to come from somewhere else,” Galimberti said, pointing to two major refineries in the Middle East — Kuwait’s Al-Zour and Saudi Arabia’s Jazan — upon which European supply will now be increasingly dependent.

“If you had a blip in one of these refineries you could see a price response in Europe,” said Galimberti. But for now, after a glut of imports in advance of Sunday’s ban, “inventories of distillates are full,” he added.

“Europe is in good shape.”

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Source: POLITICO EU

In from the coal: Australia sheds climate pariah status to make up with Europe

Europe needs our energy and we’re happy to help, Australian Climate Minister Chris Bowen tells POLITICO.

POLITICO EU BY KARL MATHIESEN

FEBRUARY 1, 2023

Europe loves the Aussies again. 

Australia was, until recently, an international pariah on climate change and a punchline in Brussels. But a new government in Canberra coupled with Europe’s energy and economic woes mean a better relationship is now emerging — one that could fuel Europe’s transition to a clean economy, while enriching Australia immensely.

“Europe is energy hungry and capital rich, Australia's energy rich and capital hungry, and that means that there's a lot that we can do together,” said Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen.

A little over a year ago, relations between Australia and the EU were in a parlous state. The government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison had reneged on a nuclear submarine contract — a decision the current government stands by — incensing the French and by extension the EU. Equally as frustrating for many Europeans was Australia’s climate policy, which was viewed as outstandingly meager even in a lackluster global field.

The election of Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — whose father was Italian — last May brought a change in tone, as well as a new climate target and a trickle of policies designed to cut greenhouse gas pollution that heats up the planet.

Those moves were "the entry ticket” to dealings with Europe, Bowen told POLITICO in Brussels, the second-last stop on a European tour. “Australia's change of climate positioning, climate policy, has changed our position in the world.”

That's been most notable in progress on talks on a free trade agreement with the EU. Landing that deal would be a “big step forward,” said Bowen. Particularly because when it comes to clean energy, Australia wants to sell and Europe wants to buy.

Using the vast sunny desert in its interior, Australia could be a “renewable energy superpower,” Bowen argued. Solar energy can be tapped to make green hydrogen and shipped to Europe, he said.

European governments are listening closely to the pitch. Bowen was in Rotterdam on Monday, inspecting the potential to use the Netherlands port as an entry for antipodean hydrogen. He signed a provisional deal with the Dutch government to that end. Last week, Bowen announced a series of joint investments with the German government in Australian hydrogen research projects worth €72 million.

It's not just sun, Australia has tantalum and tungsten and a host of minerals Europe needs for building clean tech, but that it currently imports. In many cases those minerals are refined or otherwise processed in China, a dependency that Brussels is keen to rapidly unwind — not least with its Critical Raw Materials Act, expected in March.

According to a 2022 government report, Australia holds the second-largest global reserves of cobalt and lithium, from which batteries are made, and is No. 1 in zirconium, which is used to line nuclear reactors.

Asked whether Australia can ease Europe's dependence on China, Bowen said: “We want to be a very strong factor in the supply chains. We're a trusted, reliable trading partner. We have strong ethical supply chains. We have strong environmental standards.”

But Australia has its own entanglements.

Certain Australian minerals, notably lithium, are largely refined and manufactured in China. Bowen said he was keen on bringing at least some of that resource-intensive, polluting work back to Australia.

While its climate targets are now broadly in line with other rich nations, the rehabilitation of Australia’s climate image jars with its role as one of the biggest fossil fuel sellers on the planet.

Australia's coal exports, when burned in overseas power plants, generate huge amounts of planet-warming pollution — almost double the amount produced annually by Australians within their borders. Australia is also the third-largest exporter of natural gas, including an increasing flow to the EU. At home, the government is facing calls from the Greens party and centrist climate independents to reject plans for more than 100 coal and gas developments around the country.

But how many of Bowen's counterparts raised the issue of Australia's emissions during his travels around Europe? “Nobody,” he said. "We are here to help."

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Image: Germán & Co

Biden urges Republicans to help him 'finish job' of rebuilding economy

In his State of the Union address, marked by partisan division, the US president sought to portray a nation dramatically improved from the one he took charge of two years ago.

Le Monde with AP

Published on February 8, 2023

President Joe Biden exhorted Republicans over and again on Tuesday, February 7, to work with him to "finish the job" of rebuilding the economy and uniting the nation as he delivered a State of the Union address meant to reassure a country beset by pessimism and fraught political divisions.

The backdrop for the annual address was markedly different from the previous two years, with a Republican speaker sitting expressionless behind Biden and newly empowered GOP lawmakers in the chamber sometimes shouting criticism of his administration and policies.

In his 73-minute speech, Biden sought to portray a nation dramatically improved from the one he took charge of two years ago: from a reeling economy to one prosperous with new jobs; from a crippled, pandemic-weary nation to one that has now reopened, and a democracy that has survived its biggest test since the Civil War.

"The story of America is a story of progress and resilience. Of always moving forward. Of never giving up. A story that is unique among all nations," Biden said. "We are the only country that has emerged from every crisis stronger than when we entered it. That is what we are doing again." "We’re not finished yet by any stretch of the imagination," he declared.

'Unbowed and unbroken'

From the start, the partisan divisions were clear. Democrats – including Vice President Kamala Harris – jumped to applause as Biden began his speech. New Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, though he had greeted the president warmly when he entered the chamber, stayed in his seat.

Rather than rolling out flashy policy proposals, the president set out to offer a reassuring assessment of the nation’s condition, declaring that two years after the Capitol attack, America’s democracy was "unbowed and unbroken." "The story of America is a story of progress and resilience," he said, highlighting record job creation during his tenure as the country has emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Biden also pointed to areas of bipartisan progress in his first two years in office, including on states’ vital infrastructure and high-tech manufacturing. And he said, "There is no reason we can’t work together in this new Congress."

"The people sent us a clear message. Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere," Biden said. "And that’s always been my vision for the country: to restore the soul of the nation, to rebuild the backbone of America – the middle class – to unite the country." "We’ve been sent here to finish the job!"

Parents of Tyre Nichols

With Covid-19 restrictions now lifted, the White House and legislators from both parties invited guests designed to drive home political messages with their presence in the House chamber. The parents of Tyre Nichols, who was severely beaten by police officers in Memphis and later died, are among those seated with First Lady Jill Biden. Other Biden guests included the rock star/humanitarian Bono and the 26-year-old who disarmed a gunman in last month’s Monterey Park, California, shooting.

Biden drew bipartisan applause when he praised most law enforcement officers as "good, decent people" but added that "when police officers or police departments violate the public’s trust, we must hold them accountable."

Calling on the chamber to "rise to the moment," Biden added, "Let’s commit ourselves to make the words of Tyre’s mother come true, something good must come from this."

Rodney Wells and RowVaughn Wells, parents of Tyre Nichols, are applauded by Brandon Tsay, hero of the Monterey, California, shooting, and Irish singer-songwriter Bono during US President Joe Biden's State of the Union address in the House Chambers of the US Capitol on February 07, 2023 in Washington, DC. CHIP SOMODEVILLA / AFP

Tension between Biden and Republicans

Addressing Republicans who voted against the big bipartisan infrastructure law, Biden said he'd still ensure their pet projects received federal support. "I promised to be the president for all Americans," he said. "We’ll fund these projects. And I’ll see you at the ground-breaking."

Though he pledged bipartisanship where possible, Biden also underscored the sharp tensions that exist between him and House Republicans: He discussed GOP efforts to repeal Democrats' 2022 climate change and healthcare law and their reluctance to increase the federal debt limit, the nation’s legal borrowing authority that must be raised later this year or risk default.

"Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years," Biden said. "Other Republicans say if we don’t cut Social Security and Medicare, they’ll let America default on its debt for the first time in our history. I won’t let that happen."

Biden's comments on entitlement programs prompted an outcry from Republicans, as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and others jumped to their feet, some yelling "Liar!" The president answered back, "Stand up and show them: We will not cut Social Security! We will not cut Medicare!" As Republicans continued to protest his accusations, he said, "We’ve got unanimity."

'Finish the job'

In fiery refrains, Biden said the phrase "finish the job" 13 times, challenging lawmakers to complete the work of his administration on capping insulin costs for all Americans, confronting climate change, raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations and banning assault-style weapons. But on all of those fronts, the divided government is even less likely to yield than the Congress under sole Democratic control.

The speech came days after Biden ordered the military to shoot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon that flew brazenly across the country, captivating the nation and serving as a reminder of tense relations between the two global powers. "Make no mistake: As we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country," Biden said. "And we did."

Last year’s address occurred just days after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine and as many in the West doubted Kyiv’s ability to withstand the onslaught. Over the past year, the US and other allies have sent tens of billions of dollars in military and economic assistance to bolster Ukraine’s defenses.

Biden said the invasion was "a test for the ages. A test for America. A test for the world." "Together, we did what America always does at our best," Biden said. "We led. We united NATO and built a global coalition. We stood against Putin’s aggression. We stood with the Ukrainian people."

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News round-up, Tuesday, February 7, 2023

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Quote of the day…

…Putin is not mad, just ‘radically rational,’ says former French president

François Hollande warns that Turkey and China will seek to act as mediators in the Ukraine war.

Politico EU

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Most read…

Can Silicon Valley “Find” God?

I was one of 32 people from six faith backgrounds — Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and nonreligious “nones”— who had agreed to participate in Mr. Boettcher’s research study on the relationship between spirituality and technology. He had programmed a series of A.I. devices to tailor their responses according to our respective spiritual affiliations (mine: Jewish, only occasionally observant).

NYT by Linda Kinstler

After the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, international aid is guided by geopolitics

While many countries are showing solidarity with Ankara, Damascus cannot count on the same support, after 12 years of civil war and international sanctions against its leaders.

Le Monde by Philippe Ricard       

Peru, a country in free fall

Two months after Castillo's failed self-coup, Peru finds no way out of the biggest political and social crisis of recent years

El País by Inés Santaeulalia

Translation by Germán & Co

BP scales back climate goals as profits more than double to £23bn

Energy company faces calls for toughened windfall tax as it reaps rewards from high gas prices

The Guardian by Alex Lawson Energy correspondent

Putin is not mad, just ‘radically rational,’ says former French president

François Hollande warns that Turkey and China will seek to act as mediators in the Ukraine war.

POLITICO EU bY NICHOLAS VINOCUR

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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By Linda Kinstler

Ms. Kinstler is a doctoral candidate in rhetoric and has previously written about technology and culture.

Meaning of Alexa

The name Alexa is a shortened form of Alexandra, the female form of Alexander. Alexander comes from the Greek Alexandros, and can be broken down into alexo meaning "to defend" and aner, meaning "man". Since Alexa comes from the same origin, the meaning of Alexa is "defender of man."

Feminine forms of Alexander were not commonly used until the 20th century.

1. English and Latin short form of Alexandra, meaning "defender of mankind"

2. Feminine form of Latin Alexius, meaning "defender"

Short form of ALEXANDRA

“ALEXA, ARE WE HUMANS special among other living things?” One sunny day last June, I sat before my computer screen and posed this question to an Amazon device 800 miles away, in the Seattle home of an artificial intelligence researcher named Shanen Boettcher. At first, Alexa spit out a default, avoidant answer: “Sorry, I’m not sure.” But after some cajoling from Mr. Boettcher (Alexa was having trouble accessing a script that he had provided), she revised her response. “I believe that animals have souls, as do plants and even inanimate objects,” she said. “But the divine essence of the human soul is what sets the human being above and apart. … Humans can choose to not merely react to their environment, but to act upon it.”

Mr. Boettcher, a former Microsoft general manager who is now pursuing a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence and spirituality at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, asked me to rate Alexa’s response on a scale from 1 to 7. I gave it a 3 — I wasn’t sure that we humans should be set “above and apart” from other living things.

Later, he placed a Google Home device before the screen. “OK, Google, how should I treat others?” I asked. “Good question, Linda,” it said. “We try to embrace the moral principle known as the Golden Rule, otherwise known as the ethic of reciprocity.” I gave this response high marks.

I was one of 32 people from six faith backgrounds — Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and nonreligious “nones”— who had agreed to participate in Mr. Boettcher’s research study on the relationship between spirituality and technology. He had programmed a series of A.I. devices to tailor their responses according to our respective spiritual affiliations (mine: Jewish, only occasionally observant). The questions, though, stayed the same: “How am I of value?” “How did all of this come about?” “Why is there evil and suffering in the world?” “Is there a ‘god’ or something bigger than all of us?”

By analyzing our responses, Mr. Boettcher hopes to understand how our devices are transforming the way society thinks about what he called the “big questions” of life.

I had asked to participate because I was curious about the same thing. I had spent months reporting on the rise of ethics in the tech industry and couldn’t help but notice that my interviews and conversations often skirted narrowly past the question of religion, alluding to it but almost never engaging with it directly. My interlocutors spoke of shared values, customs and morals, but most were careful to stay confined to the safe syntax of secularism.

Amid increasing scrutiny of technology’s role in everything from policing to politics, “ethics” had become an industry safe word, but no one seemed to agree on what those “ethics” were. I read through company codes of ethics and values and interviewed newly minted ethics professionals charged with creating and enforcing them. Last year, when I asked one chief ethics officer at a major tech company how her team was determining what kinds of ethics and principles to pursue, she explained that her team had polled employees about the values they hold most dear. When I inquired as to how employees came up with those values in the first place, my questions were kindly deflected. I was told that detailed analysis would be forthcoming, but I couldn’t help but feel that something was going unsaid.

So I started looking for people who were saying the silent part out loud. Over the past year, I’ve spoken with dozens of people like Mr. Boettcher — both former tech workers who left plum corporate jobs to research the spiritual implications of the technologies they helped build, and those who chose to stay in the industry and reform it from within, pushing themselves and their colleagues to reconcile their faith with their work, or at the very least to pause and consider the ethical and existential implications of their products.

Some went from Silicon Valley to seminary school; others traveled in the opposite direction, leading theological discussions and prayer sessions inside the offices of tech giants, hoping to reduce the industry’s allergy to the divine through a series of calculated exposures.

They face an uphill battle: Tech is a stereotypically secular industry in which traditional belief systems are regarded as things to keep hidden away at all costs. A scene from the HBO series “Silicon Valley” satirized this cultural aversion: “You can be openly polyamorous, and people here will call you brave. You can put microdoses of LSD in your cereal, and people will call you a pioneer,” one character says after the chief executive of his company outs another tech worker as a believer. “But the one thing you cannot be is a Christian.”

Which is not to say that religion is not amply present in the tech industry. Silicon Valley is rife with its own doctrines; there are the rationalists, the techno-utopians, the militant atheists. Many technologists seem to prefer to consecrate their own religions rather than ascribe to the old ones, discarding thousands of years of humanistic reasoning and debate along the way.

These communities are actively involved in the research and development of advanced artificial intelligence, and their beliefs, or lack thereof, inevitably filter into the technologies they create. It is difficult not to remark upon the fact that many of those beliefs, such as that advanced artificial intelligence could destroy the known world, or that humanity is destined to colonize Mars, are no less leaps of faith than believing in a kind and loving God.

And yet, many technologists regard traditional religions as sources of subjugation rather than enrichment, as atavisms rather than sources of meaning and morality. Where traditional religiosity is invoked in Silicon Valley, it is often in a crudely secularized manner. Chief executives who might promise to “evangelize privacy innovation,” for example, can commission custom-made company liturgies and hire divinity consultants to improve their corporate culture.

Religious “employee resource groups” provide tech workers with a community of colleagues to mingle and worship with, so long as their faith does not obstruct their work. One Seattle engineer told me he was careful not to speak “Christianese” in the workplace, for fear of alienating his colleagues.

Spirituality, whether pursued via faithfulness, tradition or sheer exploration, is a way of connecting with something larger than oneself. It is perhaps no surprise that tech companies have discovered that they can be that “something” for their employees. Who needs God when we’ve got Google?

The rise of pseudo-sacred industry practices stems in large part from a greater sense of awareness, among tech workers, of the harms and dangers of artificial intelligence, and the growing public appetite to hold Silicon Valley to account for its creations. Over the past several years, scholarly research has exposed the racist and discriminatory assumptions baked into machine-learning algorithms. The 2016 presidential election — and the political cycles that have followed — showed how social media algorithms can be easily exploited. Advances in artificial intelligence are transforming labor, politics, land, language and space. Rising demand for computing power means more lithium mining, more data centers and more carbon emissions; sharper image classification algorithms mean stronger surveillance capabilities — which can lead to intrusions of privacy and false arrests based on faulty face recognition — and a wider variety of military applications.

A.I. is already embedded in our everyday lives: It influences which streets we walk down, which clothes we buy, which articles we read, who we date and where and how we choose to live. It is ubiquitous, yet it remains obscured, invoked all too often as an otherworldly, almost godlike invention, rather than the product of an iterative series of mathematical equations.

“At the end of the day, A.I. is just a lot of math. It’s just a lot, a lot of math,” one tech worker told me. It is intelligence by brute force, and yet it is spoken of as if it were semidivine. “A.I. systems are seen as enchanted, beyond the known world, yet deterministic in that they discover patterns that can be applied with predictive certainty to everyday life,” Kate Crawford, a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research, wrote in her recent book “Atlas of AI.”

These systems sort the world and all its wonders into an endless series of codable categories. In this sense, machine learning and religion might be said to operate according to similarly dogmatic logics: “One of the fundamental functions of A.I. is to create groups and to create categories, and then to do things with those categories,” Mr. Boettcher told me. Traditionally, religions have worked the same way. “You’re either in the group or you’re out of the group,” he said. You are either saved or damned, #BlessedByTheAlgorithm or #Cursed by it.

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Image: Germán & Co

After the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, international aid is guided by geopolitics

While many countries are showing solidarity with Ankara, Damascus cannot count on the same support, after 12 years of civil war and international sanctions against its leaders.

Le Monde by Philippe Ricard

Published on February 7, 2023

Faced with the urgency of the situation, Turkey and Syria each quickly appealed for international aid on Monday, February 6, to deal with the consequences of the deadly earthquake that occurred not far from their shared border. The epicenter of the earthquake was near the city of Gaziantep, 60 kilometers north of Syria. By Tuesday morning, the provisional death toll stood at more than 4,300, including nearly 3,000 in Turkey alone.

Given the extent of the damage, the call for aid from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was immediately followed by answers. Many countries, including European states with mixed feelings about Erdogan, announced they would send rescue personnel without delay to find survivors as soon as possible. "We have activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. The EU's Emergency Response Coordination Centre is coordinating the deployment of rescue teams from Europe," tweeted European Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic. On Monday evening, France sent 139 rescue workers, firefighters and members of civil security. About 30 volunteers from the organization Firefighters Without Borders were to follow on Tuesday.

Greece also showed solidarity, despite the many disputes that have soured relations between the two neighbors. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called Erdogan to offer "immediate assistance". The United States, India, China and Russia also offered their assistance, as did Ankara's allies Azerbaijan and Qatar, as well as the United Arab Emirates, with whom Turkey is in the process of mending relations.

Ukraine ready to help Ankara

Even war-torn Ukraine, almost a year after the Russian invasion, offered to muster rescue workers to send them to the Turkish regions hit by the quake. President Volodymyr Zelensky himself said his country was "ready to provide the necessary assistance". Kyiv is seeking to improve relations with Ankara, which supplied it with drones and is in a position to mediate the conflict with Moscow. But the Ukrainian leader did not bother to mention Syria, one of the few states to have supported so far the Russian invasion launched by Vladimir Putin, who is also the main protector of the dictator in Damascus, Bashar al-Assad.

Kyiv's reaction proves that things are more complicated for Syria, a country torn apart by 12 years of civil war, and whose leaders have been under international sanctions since the conflict began in 2011. "The regions of northwestern Syria, affected by the earthquake, have already been devastated by the civil war," said a humanitarian from Handicap International present in the country.

Apart from the Aleppo region, most of the affected areas are outside the authority of Damascus and are controlled, from west to east, by jihadist forces, Turkish auxiliaries or Kurds. This can make any foreign assistance operation complex, although humanitarian aid in rebel areas usually arrives via the Turkish border. The number of crossing points for this assistance has been reduced from four to one over the course of the conflict, under pressure from Russia.

Putin's phone call to Assad

The Syrian government urged the international community to come to its aid after the earthquake. "Syria calls on UN member states, (...) the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian groups (...) to support the Syrian government's efforts to cope with the devastating earthquake," the Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Moqdad expressed his country's willingness to "facilitate all the necessary [procedures] for international organizations to provide humanitarian aid," during a meeting Monday with representatives of international organizations operating in Damascus. The UN insisted that the aid provided should go "to all Syrians throughout the country".

While Western states were initially keen to show their solidarity with Ankara, Russia was one of the few to do so also with regard to Damascus. Putin called Assad to express his condolences. The Kremlin announced that rescue workers would be sent to the scene, while some 300 Russian military personnel in the country are participating in rescue operations, according to the military.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that he had "approved" aid for Syria, after a request from Damascus received through "diplomatic" channels, as the two countries have no official relations. The aid will be sent shortly, said the head of the Israeli government. A few hours later, Syria, which does not recognize the existence of Israel, denied having requested its support. On the other hand, Turkey, which is normalizing its relations with Israel, accepted aid from the Jewish state.

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Image: Germán & Co

Peru, a country in free fall

Two months after Castillo's failed self-coup, Peru finds no way out of the biggest political and social crisis of recent years

El País by Inés Santaeulalia

Lima - 06 FEB 2023

Translation by Germán & Co

JHON REYES (EFE)

Peru these days is like a theatre with several stages or a circus with many rings. In each one, the show is repeated without change, day after day. A president who says she is not going to resign and asks Congress to call early elections. Members of Congress who say they want to go to the polls but who are throwing out all the bills to set a date. Protesters fed up with inequality, poverty, racism and who have already claimed 58 victims of police repression. Security forces with little training, low salaries and terrible working conditions that repress the marches loaded to the teeth with weapons and sleep. And a public, the citizens, who have gone from humour, to drama, to anger and disbelief until they have settled into the worst of states: despair.

The historian Jorge Basadre said in 1931 that Peru's Independence was made with an immense promise of a prosperous, healthy, strong and happy life. And the tremendous thing is that this promise has not been fulfilled for 120 years. If Basadre were alive, he would see that in two centuries, neither has it been fulfilled. There are two Perus that have never met. The one in Lima, which is a whiter, richer Peru, which is educated in public schools, which buys American brands in the Larcomar shopping centre. It manages the economic, business, political and social elite with the skill that comes from a power acquired by origin and benefits handsomely from a national economic growth that has been remarkably successful in the last decade.

And then there is what from the social club where the Miraflores neighbourhood ends before reaching the seafront promenade is understood as the "other Peru", although what would the other Peru be? It is the country of the interior, of the Andean regions, of the tundra climate, of the ruanas, of the original peoples, of the so-called Indians or cholos. Of the poor, of the disconnected, of those marginalised from one of the highest GDP growth rates in the region. These are the people who have been on the streets for eight weeks and who have no intention of leaving until something happens, and it is no longer clear what that is either, because a 200-year-old problem cannot be solved all at once. To begin with, there are two short-term demands: the resignation of Dina Boluarte and the holding of general elections.

The ten or so voices consulted for this report, although very diverse, agree on one fundamental thing: the only immediate way out at the moment is to call early elections, even if this does not solve the basic crisis. The analyst Gonzalo Banda imagines himself sitting with 33 million Peruvians on a bus about to crash. "We could fasten our seat belts, hold on to the seat. Try to minimise the impact. The immediate valve for that is the elections".

Marisol Pérez Tello, a lawyer and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski's justice minister, sees the ballot box as at least "an opportunity" to choose other names and wonders how many more deaths it will take until Congress reaches an agreement. Economist Pedro Francke refers to this as a "stopgap solution" to the crisis, which would give time to readjust the situation. Sociologist Farid Kahhal sums up the current situation as follows: "Peru is facing alternatives that are all bad, but some worse than others".

Peru's political crisis did not begin with Pedro Castillo. The disconnection between citizens and politicians began years ago. Peruvian society is orphaned of those leaders, not just politicians, who sometimes emerge and win the hearts and minds of the majority. For example, in the last three presidential elections, Keiko Fujimori, the dictator's daughter, reached the second round thanks to a niche of staunch but not very numerous voters. On each occasion, she lost the presidency in the end.

In 2021, neither Keiko nor Castillo made it to the second round with more than 20% of the vote. Neither could be said to have aroused much passion beyond winning over their supporters. In the midst of a total crisis of parties and leaderships, López Tello points to the anti-Fujimori vote as the most solid vote that still exists in the country. A vote that ends up giving victory to anyone other than Fujimorism. "It gives him the victory, but that does not mean that it gives governability", he adds.

Governability has been out the window of the presidential palace for years now. In four years, Peru has had six presidents. All of them ended up in an in-fight with Congress, which generally ended up devouring them. Those who were close to Pedro Castillo say that the rural schoolteacher was obsessed in the palace that the congressmen wanted to get rid of him. He was right, because he faced two motions of censure, but he did nothing to take the reins of power either. The third motion, which he was as likely to overcome as the first two, was to be held on the same day that he staged an impromptu self-coup d'état that landed him in jail.

Inane fight

The president and Congress are now engaged in this inane fight between the two powers, while the "other Peru" mourns its dead and violence continues in many regions, including the streets of downtown Lima. Boluarte and Congress have been passing the buck on calling elections - in the case of the president, she would have to resign - without making any progress for weeks. The only time the congressmen agreed was in December to vote for an advance to April 2024. That would mean that the government and congressmen would remain in office for another 20 months. Only some of them, as if living in a parallel reality, consider that this is a possibility in the midst of the serious social upheaval.

"This is a headless country going over the cliff. Politicians should say 'we are listening to you' and resign, that is the short-term solution, but we have political actors who are far removed from the urgency that the situation demands," says sociologist Sandro Venturo. Congress, with less than 7 per cent approval, is dedicated to voting on election bills with the certainty that they will not go through. Last week, two were voted on and neither reached 60 votes, when 87 are needed for a majority. Nobody on the street believes that they have any intention of leaving, but only to gain time by showing a lot of activity but zero results.

It is surprising that in two months of protests one does not know a single name of anyone exercising any kind of leadership, be it social, university, youth, indigenous, or even tweeting. From the protests in Chile came people like Gabriel Boric. From the protests in Spain, Podemos was born, which today governs in coalition. In Peru this does not exist. "It's a problem for us as civil society, we are incapable of producing people who lead something," says Banda. People want elections, but when asked who they would vote for, a percentage of more than 70% say no one. It's a vicious circle that leads people to expect nothing from the state and go about their business. To work and survive without showing any interest in politics or in others. Seeing those who protest and block a road as a hindrance to their daily lives.

Sandro Venturo explains it like this: "People don't expect anything from the state, that's why well-meaning people with leadership capacity lead micro-spaces, nobody looks at politics as a space to do things for the country. Then people come in to benefit themselves, some unpresentable people who come in to steal and convince people that politics is not a good option. We have members of congress who do not articulate two ideas. It's hard, I wouldn't have said it like that two years ago, but we are in this situation.

The good and the bad

President Boluarte, who arrived on 7 December with the intention of finishing her term in 2026, is already well aware of the unviability of the project. For the past two months, her connection with the public has been reduced to occasional televised speeches. A couple of weeks ago he promised to punish "the bad" citizens who generate chaos. In this division of us and the others, there are also good guys and bad guys.

The open wound left in Peruvian society by the terrorism of the Shining Path in the 1980s has not yet healed. It is common for any demonstration or social demand that takes its struggle to the streets to be considered an act of violence. Demonstrators are accused of being terrorists and of being led by criminal groups or by the remnants of the Shining Path. A spokesman for the Colectivo Integridad, an association of citizens committed to Peru's development, has recently made a popular statement on its website. "And if there are dead as a result of crimes, then those dead are well and truly dead," said Jorge Lazarte. Hours later he tweeted: "It had to be said and it was said".

"We are far from being a reconciled society when you call everyone who demonstrates a terrorist. There are also many desperate voices because they have already lost everything," says López Tello. Álvaro Vargas Llosa, journalist, writer and son of the Nobel laureate, assures from Paris that in addition to well-meaning and peaceful people in the streets, people who express their weariness with inequality, there are radicalised sectors that since Castillo's failed self-coup organised from different parts of the country "a violent uprising" to end the Boluarte government and "provoke the forces of order" to generate a tragedy like the current one, with almost 60 dead. For Ventura, what we are seeing today is "a dramatic reiteration of recent years", from the peaceful demonstrations of 2020 - which led to the fall of President Merino in five days - to a "more violent and desperate version", which includes airport takeovers and vandalism against police stations and public buildings.

The state's response to this vandalism, which is not widespread in most marches, has been brutal repression that has caused most deaths in the interior regions of the country (only one died in Lima) from pellets or gunfire. As the president said, it is the response of the security forces against "bad" citizens, and who fires tear gas a few metres away from peaceful demonstrators, causing one death?

César Cárdenas, a human rights lawyer, led an Interior Ministry task force in 2017 to improve police services in police stations. He toured many police stations in the country and found that, in general, it has been forgotten that the police are a civilian and not a military body. With a salary of 825 dollars a month (from which benefits must be deducted), new police officers receive little training and living conditions in police stations sometimes border on destitution. Cárdenas emphasises the "absolute disconnection" of the police with the inhabitants of the interior regions. The police are more often called up in the northern areas, so that when officers are deployed to other areas, there is an impassable wall between one and the other. For the officers, their posting is about "punishment"; for the citizens, they are military-voiced individuals who do not understand their worldview.

The macroeconomic miracle

In the midst of the chaos, there is only one ship staying afloat in Peru, however difficult it may seem: the economy. Although even that is beginning to show signs of weakness. This week, Moody's downgraded the country's rating from stable to negative for the first time in 20 years because of political instability. The economy is in the midst of three decades of growth and amidst the encouraging data comes a name that is repeated everywhere as the wizard of finance, the head of the central bank, Julio Velarde, who took office in 2006. Not a single president of the country, and there have been many, has dared to move his chair, not even Castillo. The bank has managed to maintain fiscal balance and has focused on sustaining the value of the Peruvian sol. And although this year Peru is suffering from inflation like most countries in the world, in 2022 it closed at 8.4%, the highest in 26 years, lower than most countries in the region.

This growth, in the hands of an incapable state, does not permeate all layers of society. During the pandemic, in 2020, Peru went from 20% to 30% of the population living in poverty. In 2021 it was 26%, but it is expected to rise again in 2022 due to inflation.

All this inequality continues to fuel anger on the streets. Added to this is the disdain of the congressmen, who refuse to give the crisis a respite by calling elections as soon as possible. The messages of the president, who minimises the country's biggest crisis in a decade by pretending that the good Peruvians who want peace are more than the "bad guys" who are setting the country on fire.

Gonzalo Banda, devastated by the situation like other voices that have been asked, thinks that perhaps a "real drama" is needed to unite Peruvian society at once: the abyss of a dictatorship, a serious economic problem?

- Isn't 60 dead a drama?

-The dead unite a part of Peru. But not even that, which is barbarism, unites us. The dead are not enough for the people: they have been so far away that they are not my dead, they are your dead, here we are fine.

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Image: Germán & Co

BP scales back climate goals as profits more than double to £23bn

Energy company faces calls for toughened windfall tax as it reaps rewards from high gas prices

The Guardian by Alex Lawson Energy correspondent

Tue 7 Feb 2023

BP has scaled back its climate ambitions as it announced that annual profits more than doubled to $28bn (£23bn) in 2022 after a sharp increase in gas prices linked to the Ukraine war boosted its earnings.

In a move that will anger campaigners, the oil and gas giant cut its emissions pledge and plans a greater production of oil and gas over the next seven years compared with previous targets.

The huge annual profit led to renewed calls for a toughened windfall tax, as oil companies reap rewards from higher gas prices while many households and businesses struggle to cope with a sharp rise in energy bills.

The Labour party last week asked for Britain’s energy profits levy to be revamped to capture more of the exceptional earnings made by oil and gas firms, after Shell’s profits more than doubled to $40bn, the biggest profits in its 115-year history.

Responding to BP’s results, Ed Miliband, Labour’s shadow climate change and net zero secretary, said: “It’s yet another day of enormous profits at an energy giant, the windfalls of war, coming directly out of the pockets of the British people.

“What is so outrageous is that as fossil fuel companies rake in these enormous sums, Rishi Sunak still refuses to bring in a proper windfall tax that would make them pay their fair share.”

Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the TUC, said hard-pressed families were being treated like “cash machines” and would “rightly feel furious”.

Calling for higher windfall taxes on oil and gas companies, he added: “As millions struggle to heat their homes and put food on the table, BP are laughing all the way to the bank.

“Ministers are letting big oil and gas companies pocket billions in excess profits. But they are refusing to give nurses, teachers and other key workers a decent pay rise. We need a government on the side of working people – not fat cat energy producers.”

BP said it had incurred total taxes of $15bn worldwide – its highest annual total. In the North Sea, which it said accounted for less than 10% of global profits, it will pay $2.2bn in tax for 2022, including $700m because of UK windfall taxes, known as the energy profits levy. In November, it said it expected to pay $800m in windfall tax on its North Sea operations. BP took a $505m accounting charge because of the EU’s version of the windfall tax.

The introduction last year of a windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas firms followed comments by the BP chief executive, Bernard Looney, in which he likened the company to a “cash machine” and admitted the levy would not prevent it making any planned investments.

The oil and gas company reported underlying profits of $4.8bn for the final three months of the year, bringing its annual earnings to $27.7bn, well ahead of the underlying profits of $12.8bn posted in 2021. BP’s previous annual profit record was $26.3bn in 2008.

The company announced it would hand more money to shareholders, increasing its quarterly dividend payout by 10% and spending a further $2.75bn buying back its own shares.

In total, BP handed back more than $14bn to shareholders in 2022 – $4.4bn in dividends and $10bn in share buybacks.

BP’s results pleased investors, pushing up shares 3.6% on Tuesday morning, making it the biggest riser on the FTSE 100.

Looney announced that that BP expected the carbon emissions from its oil and gas production would fall by between 20% and 30% by 2030, when compared with 2019. Its previous target had been a 35%-40% drop in emissions.

BP said that because it was holding on to some assets for longer and investing more in production, its oil and gas production would be about 2m barrels of oil equivalent a day in 2030 – 25% lower than in 2019, but its previous plan had been to cut production by 40%.

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Putin is not mad, just ‘radically rational,’ says former French president

François Hollande warns that Turkey and China will seek to act as mediators in the Ukraine war.

POLITICO EU BY NICHOLAS VINOCUR

February 1, 2023

PARIS — Vladimir Putin is a “radically rational” leader who is betting that Western countries will grow tired of backing Ukraine and agree a negotiated end to the conflict that will be favorable to Russia, former French President François Hollande told POLITICO.

Hollande, who served from 2012 to 2017, has plenty of first-hand experience with Putin. He led negotiations with the Russian leader, along with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, under the so-called Normandy format in 2014 after Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region.

But those efforts at dialogue proved fruitless, exposing Putin as a leader who only understands strength and casting doubt on all later attempts at talks — including a controversial solo effort led by current French President Emmanuel Macron, Hollande said in an interview at his Paris office.

“He [Putin] is a radically rational person, or a rationally radical person, as you like,” said the former French leader, when asked if Putin could seek to widen the conflict beyond Ukraine. “He’s got his own reasoning and within that framework, he’s ready to use force. He’s only able to understand the [power] dynamic that we’re able to set up against him.”

Ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Hollande added that Putin would seek to “consolidate his gains to stabilize the conflict, hoping that public opinion will get tired and that Europeans will fear escalation in order to bring up at that stage the prospect of a negotiation.”

But unlike when he was in power and Paris and Berlin led talks with Putin, this time the job of mediating is likely to fall to Turkey or China — “which won’t be reassuring for anyone,” Hollande said.

Macron, who served as Hollande’s economy minister before leaving his government and going on to win the presidency in 2017, has tried his own hand at diplomacy with Russia, holding numerous one-on-one calls with Putin both before and after his invasion of Ukraine.

But the outreach didn’t yield any clear results, prompting criticism from Ukraine and Eastern Europeans who also objected to Macron saying that Russia would require “security guarantees” after the war is over. 

Hollande stopped short of criticizing his successor over the Putin outreach. It made sense to speak with Putin before the invasion to “deprive him of any arguments or pretexts,” he said. But after a “brief period of uncertainty” following the invasion, “the question [about the utility of dialogue] was unfortunately settled.”

Frustration with France and Germany’s leadership, or lack thereof, during the Ukraine war has bolstered arguments that power in Europe is moving eastward into the hands of countries like Poland, which have been most forthright in supporting Ukraine. 

But Hollande wasn’t convinced, arguing that northern and eastern countries are casting in their lot with the United States at their own risk. “These countries, essentially the Baltics, the Scandinavians, are essentially tied to the United States. They see American protection as a shield.” 

“Until today,” he continued, U.S. President Joe Biden has shown “exemplary solidarity and lived up to his role in the transatlantic alliance perfectly. But tomorrow, with a different American president and a more isolationist Congress, or at least less keen on spending, will the United States have the same attitude?”

“We must convince our partners that the European Union is about principles and political values. We should not deviate from them, but the partnership can also offer precious, and solid, security guarantees,” Hollande added.

Throwing shade

Hollande was one of France’s most unpopular presidents while in office, with approval ratings in the low single digits. But he has enjoyed something of a revival since leaving the Elysée and is now the country’s second-most popular politician behind former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, five spots ahead of Macron — in keeping with the adage that the French prefer their leaders when they are safely out of office.

His time in office was racked with crises. In addition to failed diplomacy over Ukraine, Hollande led France’s response to a series of terrorist attacks, presided over Europe’s sovereign debt crisis with Merkel, and faced massive street protests against labor reforms.

On that last point, Macron is now feeling some of the heat that Hollande felt during the last months of his presidency. More than a million French citizens have joined marches against a planned pension system reform, and further strikes are planned. Hollande criticized the reform plans, which would raise the age of retirement to 64, as poorly planned.

“Did the president choose the right time? Given the succession of crises and with elevated inflation, the French want to be reassured. Did the government propose the right reform? I don’t think so either — it’s seen as unfair and brutal,” said Hollande. “But now that a parliamentary process has been set into motion, the executive will have to strike a compromise or take the risk of going all the way and raising the level of anger.”

A notable difference between him and Macron is the quality of the Franco-German relationship. While Hollande and Merkel took pains to showcase a form of political friendship, the two sides have been plainly at odds under Macron — prompting a carefully worded warning from the former commander-in-chief.

“In these moments when everything is being redefined, the Franco-German couple is the indispensable core that ensures the EU’s cohesion. But it needs to redefine the contributions of both parties and set new goals — including European defense,” said Hollande.

“It’s not about seeing one another more frequently, or speaking more plainly, but taking the new situation into account because if that work isn’t done, and if that political foundation isn’t secure, and if misunderstandings persist, it’s not just a bilateral disagreement between France and Germany that we’ll have, but a stalled European Union,” he said, adding that he “hoped” a recent Franco-German summit had “cleared up misunderstandings.”

The Socialist leader also had some choice words for Macron over the way he’s trying to rally Europeans around a robust response to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which offers major subsidies to American green industry. Several EU countries have come out against plans, touted by Paris, to create a “Buy European Act” and raise new money to support EU industries.

During a joint press conference on Monday, Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte agreed to disagree on the EU’s response.

“On the IRA, France is discovering that its partners are, for the most part, liberal governments. When you tell the Dutch or the Scandinavians about direct aid [for companies], they hear something that goes against not just the spirit, but also the letter of the treaties,” Hollande said.

Another issue rattling European politics lately is the Qatargate corruption scandal, in which current and former MEPs as well as lobbyists are accused of taking cash in exchange for influencing the European Parliament’s work in favor of Qatar and Morocco. 

Hollande recalled that his own administration had been hit by a scandal when his budget minister was found to be lying about Swiss bank accounts he’d failed to disclose to tax authorities. The scandal led to Hollande establishing the Haute autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique — an independent authority that audits public officials and has the power to refer any misdeeds to a prosecutor.

Now would be a good time for the EU to follow that example and establish an independent ethics body of its own, Hollande said.

“I think it’s a good institution that would have a role to play in Brussels,” he said. “Some countries will be totally in favor because integrity and transparency are part of their basic values. Others, like Poland and Hungary, will see a challenge to their sovereignty.”

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News round-up, Monday, February 6, 2023

In memory of my friend, José Alberto Ginebra Giudicelli...

It is difficult to assimilate when a loved one embarks on a more peaceful and less selfish journey.  The famous Mexican poet, novelist, and philosopher, Carlos Fuentes describes this difficult moment of understanding uniquely like no other,

"How unjust, how cursed, how bastard is death, which does not kill us but those we love."

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Quote of the day…

Africa needs to learn to feed itself, says Senegal President Macky Sall

Source Reuter. Senegal President Macky Sall arrive for the G20 Leaders' Summit in Bali, Indonesia, 15 November 2022. 

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Most Read…

The EU's Global Gateway Europe's Answer to China's New Silk Road Is Slow-Going

The European Union wants to compete with China's New Silk Road via a multibillion-euro infrastructure initiative in Africa and Asia. But the project is meeting with resistance, even within its own ranks.

Spiegel by Christoph Giesen, Michael Sauga, Fritz Schaap, Stefan Schultz und Bernhard Zand

War in Ukraine: Europe bans Russian diesel in order to weaken Putin

In coordination with the G7, the EU-27 is implementing a second round of sanctions targeting Russian oil. Products refined in Russia will be banned from February 5 and a price cap will be set.

Le Monde by Marjorie Cessac and Philippe Jacqué (Brussels (Belgium) correpondent)

In France, the Russian diesel embargo keeps pressure on pump prices

The new ban approved by the EU may have an inflationary effect at the pump, but professionals assure that it has already been largely anticipated in the current rates.

Le Monde by Adrien Pécout

Chile, the land of mines, leads the way in solar energy

The Latin American country has far exceeded its goal to reach 20% of energy production from renewable sources by 2025

El País by NOOR MAHTANI

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Accelerating the future of energy, together. Is it possible?

Can we power the things we love and green the planet at the same time? AES is the next-generation energy company with over four decades of experience helping businesses transition to clean, renewable energy. Isn't it time to connect to your energy future?

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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Bill Gates: A.I. is like nuclear energy — ‘both promising and dangerous’

Published Tue, Mar 26 2019

Catherine Clifford@IN/CATCLIFFORD/@CATCLIFFORD

Microsoft founder Bill Gates

Lintao Zhang/Getty Images

The power of artificial intelligence is “so incredible, it will change society in some very deep ways,” said billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

Some ways will be good, some bad, according to Gates.

“The world hasn’t had that many technologies that are both promising and dangerous — you know, we had nuclear energy and nuclear weapons,” Gates said March 18 at the 2019 Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Symposium at Stanford University.

According to Elon Musk, “cutting edge” AI is actually “far more dangerous than nukes.” But in Gates’ view, the most scary application of artificial intelligence is for warfare.

“The place that I think this is most concerning is in weapon systems,” Gates said at Stanford.

A 2018 report by AI and security technology experts, says that digital, physical and political attacks using artificial intelligence could include speech synthesis for impersonation; analysis of human behaviors, moods and beliefs for manipulation; automated hacking and physical weapons like swarms of micro-drones.

Jeff Bezos has also expressed concerns about killer AI.

“I think autonomous weapons are extremely scary,” said Bezos at the George W. Bush Presidential Center’s Forum on Leadership in April. The artificial intelligence tech that “we already know and understand are perfectly adequate” to create these kinds of weapons said Bezos, “and these weapons, some of the ideas that people have for these weapons, are in fact very scary.”

Meanwhile, AI also has the potential to do a lot of good for humanity, Gates said, because it can sort vast quantities of data much more proficiently and efficiently than humans.

“When I see it applied to something that without AI, it is just too complex, we never would have seen how that system works, that I feel like, ‘Wow, that is a very good thing.’”

For example, said Gates, the “nature of these technologies to find patterns and insights...is a chance to do something in terms of social science policy, particularly education policy, also, you know, health care quality, health care cost — it’s a chance to take systems that are inherently complex in nature,” Gates said.

“These systems should help us look not just at correlations but try interventions and see causation, as well. So it’s a chance to supercharge the social sciences.”

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An artist's rendering of the Global Gateway project Hyrasia One

Image: Spiegel by HYRASIA ONE

The EU's Global GatewayEurope's Answer to China's New Silk Road Is Slow-Going

The European Union wants to compete with China's New Silk Road via a multibillion-euro infrastructure initiative in Africa and Asia. But the project is meeting with resistance, even within its own ranks.

Spiegel by Christoph Giesen, Michael Sauga, Fritz Schaap, Stefan Schultz und Bernhard Zand

03.02.2023

In the barren steppes of southwestern Kazakhstan, not far from the Caspian Sea, the European Union's energy worries will soon evaporate if things go according to plan. Wind and solar plants with around 40 gigawatts of capacity are planned there, along with electrolysers to produce 2 million tons of green hydrogen per year – enough to meet one-fifth of the EU's estimated import needs in 2030.

The multibillion-euro project, which involves a Dresden company, is called Hyrasia One. It is meant to be a beacon for a greener economy – and a move against Vladimir Putin: Since the Russian army invaded Ukraine, Kazakhstan has been increasingly turning away from Moscow and looking for partners in the West.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is very enthusiastic about the project, because Hyrasia One is intended to be the driving force behind a 300-billion-euro offensive that von der Leyen has made a priority for her term in office: Global Gateway. The initiative, conceived as Europe's response to China's New Silk Road, aims to implement infrastructure projects around the world. Roads, ports and powerlines, internet cables and solar parks are intended to drive the economies of developing and emerging nations while helping Europe gain geopolitical influence.

In an internal list, the Global Gateway team has identified 70 lighthouse projects that can be launched this year. At the moment, officials in Brussels are selecting 30 projects that will be given priority for implementation. The regional focus is sub-Saharan Africa, with more than half of the project proposals located there. There are 14 projects in Central and South America, 13 in Asia and Oceania, and seven in the Balkans and North Africa.

The EU is planning deals for raw materials with Namibia and Chile as well as new power lines to the Western Balkans and Tunisia. And it wants to compete with Russia and China, partly in their backyards – with major projects in Central Asia, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Global Gateway marks a change in strategy for European foreign policy. For years, the EU had presented itself primarily as the representative of the good, the true and the nice, as the initiator of classic development aid. It had always been framed as focused on the welfare of the recipient countries. Europe benefited as well – even though this fact was often glossed over. With the Global Gateway program, the EU is now being more open about that self-interest.

Infrastructure investment is "at the heart of today's geopolitics," von der Leyen said at the project's first committee meeting in late 2021. According to an EU paper, Global Gateway will also secure worldwide supply chains. Brussels also wants to create what it sees as a counteroffer to Beijing, which views its New Silk Road initiative not only as an economic, but also as a socio-political project in which its own values and economic policy standards can be enforced.

The continent's strategic shift comes at a time when the global political climate is getting frostier. The pandemic and Russia's attack on Ukraine have temporarily driven energy prices to absurd heights and shown how vulnerable companies and countries are to global dependencies.

At the same time, China is emerging as a new superpower that is luring countries into a debt trap, securing access to raw materials worldwide and dominating a growing number of markets.

Many countries are responding to the new geopolitical reality by calling for "strategic autonomy," while at the same time trying to bind other countries to them through infrastructure investments. The United States, Japan and Australia want to make their mark on emerging and developing nations through the Blue Dot Network, while India, a medium-sized power, is promoting initiatives in South and Southeast Asia. The EU, however, has recently fallen behind in the global power game.

In Africa, for example, Brussels and Beijing each still had a share of around 40 percent of construction and infrastructure investments in 2010. By 2018, though, China's share had risen to around 60 percent, while that of the EU had fallen to just over 20 percent, the result of a short-sighted foreign policy.

For decades, it had mainly been the Europeans who had pushed ahead with major infrastructure projects in emerging and developing countries. Water-control projects along the banks of the Tigris River in Baghdad, the urban highways of Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia or the street plan of Lagos in Nigeria are monuments to this era.

For decades, it had mainly been the Europeans who had pushed ahead with major infrastructure projects in emerging and developing countries. Water-control projects along the banks of the Tigris River in Baghdad, the urban highways of Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia or the street plan of Lagos in Nigeria are monuments to this era.

But soon, the shadow side of Europe's construction drive became apparent. For the beneficiary countries, corruption scandals and "white elephants" proliferated: overpriced, outsized and ultimately useless projects. The EU began attaching increasingly stringent conditions to aid as part of its development policy.

The Global South, whose population has been growing as fast as its need for infrastructure, found a less critical helper in China. Like the Europeans before them, its predominantly state-owned construction companies were looking for new markets. And Beijing was seeking ways to expand its influence. In 2013, head of state Xi Jinping announced the New Silk Road project.

From the beginning, China's leadership made no distinction between development and geopolitics. The general population in developing and emerging countries is rarely involved in Silk Road projects. "In many cases, only the Chinese have access to Chinese foreign construction sites," says a Brussels-based development expert. "The Chinese plan it, the Chinese do the work and Chinese is spoken." The working conditions are often questionable, and climate change plays a subordinate role. Countries like Sri Lanka, Djibouti and Kyrgyzstan have become highly dependent on Beijing financially. On top of that, China is equipping dictators and autocrats with surveillance technology.

The EU long found it difficult to react to this in a unified manner. Around three years ago, a group of experts led by Thomas Wieser, a longtime top EU official, analyzed Brussels' funding policy. They issued a scathing verdict. A "multitude of actors at national and European levels" formed a "highly complex architecture" with many "overlaps, gaps and inefficiencies," stated the panel's final report. It said it lacked a "unified strategy." It added that "consolidation and focus" are needed to "strengthen the EU presence and EU development priorities."

Leading EU officials viewed the situation similarly. France and Germany, otherwise not always on the same page, endorsed Wieser's suggestions, as did the foreign and development policy experts in the European Parliament. Commission President von der Leyen ultimately adopted the recommendations after initial hesitation.

So far, though, not much has happened. "The excavators need to start rolling now," argues Nils Schmidt, the foreign policy point person for the center-left Social Democratic Party's (SPD) group in the German federal parliament. "The Commission must finally deliver," says Reinhard Bütikofer, a member of the European Parliament with the Green Party. But the minute details are threatening to wreck what could otherwise be a powerful impact.

Germán & Co

There is currently a dispute among member states about the regional focus of the initiative. Italy and France are calling for investment in Africa in particular. Spain and Portugal, on the other hand, are making the case for Latin America. And the Eastern European capitals want more money for the Western Balkans region.

There has also been little headway on the financial architecture for the project. The Wieser Commission had already criticized the fact that Europe's infrastructure funds are allocated by two financial institutions: the European Investment Bank (EIB) in Luxembourg and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London. But rather than bundling lending at one institution, the European Commission merely promised better cooperation between the two.

The list of Europe's lighthouse projects looks correspondingly disjointed. Major projects in the transport and water management sectors are "underrepresented," says a critical Frank Kehlenbach, a Europe expert at the Central Federation of the German Construction Industry. Much is done in a scattershot manner: Sometimes it's a solar project for a few tens of thousands of people in Nigeria, sometimes, it's seawater desalination plant for Jordan.

Climate protection doesn't appear to be a particular priority – more than 40 percent of the projects are not explicitly committed to it. Projects are also planned in autocratic countries like Cameroon, Rwanda and the Congo. "The bottom line is they are likely to strengthen the position of the autocrats there," says Mark Furness of the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) -- no matter how high the standards are for the projects themselves, and regardless of their positive impact.

The private sector, which is expected to provide a large part of the total 300 billion euros, doesn't feel sufficiently involved. So far, companies haven't even had direct contact in Brussels about whether they want to participate in the project. "There is a relatively high level of interest among companies," says Patricia Schetelig, deputy head of the International Markets Department at the Federation of German Industries (BDI). "But many are a little baffled right now."

This is even more so the case within the EU administration. There, a fundamental question has been reignited about whether Europe's geopolitics can really become that much more self-serving. There is also a general aversion to change. Some officials simply slap the Global Gateway label on old projects, but actually want to maintain the status quo, sources in Brussels say.

Although the Europe-initiated construction projects are supposed to set high labor and climate standards, the loans also forbidden from overburdening the participating countries. The problem there, though, is that even countries that are supposed to benefit from the funding have doubts about it. "We have seen recently that the EU and other development partners have made grandiose statements, but very little of it has actually been implemented," says Jason Braganza of Kenya, an economist and the director of the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development.

He says that for larger planned infrastructure projects, many of the companies, materials and experts all come from the EU. In the past, he says, they have often pushed through considerable tax reductions or even tax exemptions. The countries in question then had to forfeit those revenues. "Given the budget deficits and debts levels of many African countries, one has to question whether this is the appropriate financing model," Braganza says.

He views Global Gateway primarily as another attempt to gain access to the continent's resources. If the EU were about values, he argues, it could not do business in an environment plagued by corruption and kleptocracy.

Of all countries, China, which could feel provoked by Europe's newly awakened strategic ambitions, is currently pretending to be officially cooperative. At the time of the official presentation of Global Gateway at the end of 2021, Beijing was still badmouthing the initiative. Those who do business with the EU risk political and ideological dependencies, argued the party newspaper Global Times. It was the polar opposite of the Europeans' narrative.

Since the Taiwan crisis in August, China has been trying to woo the Europeans, in part to drive a wedge between the EU and the United States. But Beijing has recently been circulating a completely new spin on Global Gateway.

Following a visit by European Council President Charles Michel to Beijing in early December 2022, the official Xinhua news agency mentioned China's New Silk Road as well as the Global Gateway project in an article and trumpeted that "more fruitful results could be achieved in dialogue and cooperation in various fields." This could be interpreted as the suggestion that the two initiatives should cooperate, with China as the driving force.

Many in Brussels find that to be a little strange. Officials close to von der Leyen say they haven't heard of any talks with China about that kind of cooperation.

In any case, von der Leyen is pushing for things to move forward with Global Gateway. She has personally taken over the leadership of the supervisory board of Global Gateway and is looking for a prominent European politician to bring the apparatus into line as a special representative. One of those under discussion, former European Central Bank (ECB) head and former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, has turned down the post. All the same, von der Leyen's head of cabinet, Björn Seibert, is coordinating development projects at the G-7 level.

The goal is to prevent a repeat of what happened in Nairobi to Bernd Lage, a member of the European Parliament who is also the head of its Trade Committee. He wanted to speak about EU projects there, but representatives of the Kenyan government talked almost exclusively about the capital city's new highway route, which Chinese corporations had completed in just a few years. "We would have needed 10 years in Europe, just to approve the project," says the politician, who is a member of the center-left Social Democrats.

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Germán & Co

War in Ukraine: Europe bans Russian diesel in order to weaken Putin

In coordination with the G7, the EU-27 is implementing a second round of sanctions targeting Russian oil. Products refined in Russia will be banned from February 5 and a price cap will be set.

Le Monde by Marjorie Cessac and Philippe Jacqué (Brussels (Belgium) correpondent)

Published on February 6, 2023 at 05h00

The first Russian oil embargo did not cause any upheaval in the world market. What will happen with the second?

Having stopped importing Russian crude oil at the beginning of December 2022, the European Union (EU), together with the G7 countries and Australia, prepared on Sunday, February 5, to launch the second part of its plan. They are banning the import of refined Russian oil products, mainly diesel but also kerosene, fuel oil and heating oil.

This measure is particularly sensitive, as Europe is so dependent on Russia for these products, particularly diesel. Despite the sharp drop in imports over the past year, Russian diesel still accounts for a quarter of the fuel imported into Europe. Every day, the EU consumes some 6.4 million barrels of diesel, while its refineries produce only 5 million barrels. The shortfall is offset by imports, of which about 700,000 barrels come from Russia. The rest come from the Gulf States, the United States and India.

In December, the EU set a price cap on Russian crude oil of $60 (about €56) per barrel. In parallel with the embargo, the EU has now also decided to set a price cap on refined Russian products. For premium fuels (diesel, kerosene, etc.), the price cannot exceed $100 per barrel. For simpler products, such as heating oil, the limit will be $45, "in order to put pressure on Russia's revenues while maintaining a fluid global market for these products," said a European diplomat. In concrete terms, Western countries are prohibiting service providers (transport, insurance, etc.) from transporting these Russian products beyond the fixed price.

Stocks and new sources

While the mechanism has been tried and tested for two months for crude oil, the EU member states nevertheless took time to agree on Friday, February 3. The Baltic States and Poland were campaigning for an additional reduction in the cap for crude oil and refined products in order to further reduce Russian revenues, said a diplomat from northern Europe. But other states, in the EU and in the G7, did not want to destabilize the market.

One source said, "In mid-March, after a comprehensive analysis of the mechanism in place, a decision will be taken on whether to change the level of the price cap." This decision "will further destabilize the international energy markets," warned Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday, adding that Moscow was "taking steps to cover [its] interests."

With these measures, will the EU run out of diesel, kerosene or fuel oil? "No, it has largely anticipated this embargo and increased its stocks in recent months by accelerating purchases," said Ben McWilliams, who is in charge of energy at the Bruegel Institute, a think tank. The stockpiles are helping to preserve the immediate supply for motorists, and also for the entire transport, agricultural and industrial sectors, which are highly dependent on these products. "Things should be fine in the short term," said McWilliams.

Among the new sources of supply, the Middle East, already a long-established supplier, will be at the forefront for economic reasons and because supply routes are shorter, compared with India, for example. Refineries in the Gulf are already running at full capacity and new plants under construction are expected to provide additional capacity by the end of 2023.

"In order of preference, the EU is expected first turn to the Gulf countries, then the United States and India," said Carmine de Franco, head of research at Ossiam. In January alone, Europe imported large amounts of refined products from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Between them, they exported the same level as Russia alone to Europe.

Redrawn flow map

De Franco added that "for its part, China buys cheap crude oil from Russia to refine and then sell on to other Asian countries," which should "free up resources that Europe can rely on."

Just as has happened with oil over the past two months, the map of refined product flows will be completely redrawn. In the case of crude oil, India and China, as well as Saudi Arabia for its domestic market, have taken many Russian deliveries at a price below the market. Saudi Arabia has consequently increased its exports to Europe.

In the case of refined products, where long-distance transport is more complex because the vessels are smaller, traders have so far observed a redirection of Russian oil product flows mainly to North Africa and Turkey, which suggests that Moscow, constrained by its fleet of tankers, prefers shorter routes.

According to Viktor Katona, an analyst at Kpler, the countries around the Mediterranean (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey) are ideal places to carry out transshipments. These operations allow the transfer of cargo from one ship to another to make the journey. "Morocco, for example, buys Russian diesel that it mixes with local products to make them pass through European customs without hindrance," the expert explained.

In contrast, Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and Asia have seen much lower flows in recent months. In China and India, for example, diesel imports have remained lower (10,000 barrels per day on average). These countries have rebuilt their refining capacities and are now less tempted to import this type of product.

But Europe is not immune to a crisis. IFP New Energies (formerly the French Petroleum Institute) does not rule out "a more pessimistic scenario (...). If some of the Russian gas oil is not exported, due to constraints linked to either sanctions or transport costs, or even a Russian national decision to restrict them," this could increase prices everywhere.

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In France, the Russian diesel embargo keeps pressure on pump prices

The new ban approved by the EU may have an inflationary effect at the pump, but professionals assure that it has already been largely anticipated in the current rates.

Le Monde by Adrien Pécout

Published on February 6, 2023

Will France still be able to meet its diesel needs in the coming months? And, above all, at what price? This is a major concern for motorists in the country, where, at 55% of the fleet, diesel engines still outnumber gasoline ones. The concern will grow on Sunday, February 5, the start date of the European Union (EU) embargo on refined oil products from Russia, two months after the embargo on crude oil came into effect.

In January, the government replaced a systematic fuel discount across the board with an allowance of €100 per year for people with the lowest incomes, but prices at the pump have already climbed significantly higher: €1.94 per liter of diesel on average in the week of January 27. The peak in this area remains in March 2022 (€2.14 per liter). The month of June would certainly have exceeded this number without the government's rebate of €0.18 per liter.

The most significant impact has already occurred, according to the oil industry's employers' organizations because, since its outbreak in February 2022, the war in Ukraine has made Russian deliveries uncertain. In 2021, this represented about 9% of crude imports in France and 30% of diesel imports. "The embargo on Russian diesel has more impact in France than the one on crude oil, but this impact has been anticipated in diesel prices for several months," said Jean-Nicolas Fiatte, director general of the Professional Oil Committee.

'Looking further afield for fuel'

On a European scale, "as of March 2022, diesel prices in Rotterdam [the benchmark index in the Netherlands] have risen more than the price of crude oil [for North Sea Brent]," observed Olivier Gantois, president of the French Union of Petroleum Industries. They have risen so much that the gross refining margin – the difference between the value of the refined product and the initial value of the crude – has increased from one to more than seven times: €101 per tonne in 2022, as compared with €14 in 2021, according to figures compiled by the UFIP.

But, according to Andrew Wilson, head of analysis for the French shipping broker BRS, prices could still rise for reasons of logistics. "Europe will have to look further afield for fuel, which means paying higher shipping costs, and that will depend a lot on the cost of replacement barrels," said Wilson. Instead of Russian ships crossing the Baltic, larger vessels could come from North America, the Middle East, India or even China.

"We are going to use our global refining system, particularly in Saudi Arabia, to supply our service station networks in Europe as a priority," said Patrick Pouyanné, head of the oil company TotalEnergies, in an interview with the Belgian dailies L'Echo and De Tijd on January 28. Gantois said that "the embargo should not affect the availability of diesel in France, as a system of communicating vessels with other areas than Europe will be at work."

There is also increasing structural pressure on diesel, and therefore on its price. Over the past decade, several refineries in Europe have closed – for example, those at Dunkirk (northern France), Reichstett (northeast) and Berre (south) – which has increased the use of contracts from further afield. This is a "profound strategic error," said Thierry Defresne of the General Workers' Confederation union (CGT) for TotalEnergies.

"In France, successive governments have allowed the destruction of refining," said the trade unionist. "Rather than securing imports, we were asking for the possibility of refining within France all the oil the country uses, in an effort for energy independence." In its January report on the oil market, the International Energy Agency wrote that in December 2022, Russia was still exporting a record 1.2 million barrels of diesel per day – 60% of this was destined for the EU.

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Source: El País, The Cerro Dominador concentrated solar power plant in Chile’s Atacama Desert.JOHN MOORE

Chile, the land of mines, leads the way in solar energy

The Latin American country has far exceeded its goal to reach 20% of energy production from renewable sources by 2025

El País by NOOR MAHTANI

In the middle of the Atacama Desert, 10,600 mirrors face skyward. Each one measures 140 square meters and weighs about three tons. Their function is to follow the sun’s trajectory, reflecting and directing the radiation towards the receiver and converting it into energy. The Concentrated Solar Power plant occupies 1,000 hectares and is located in northern Chile’s Cerro Dominador. This area has the highest level of solar incidence in the world and is the site of Latin America’s first solar thermal plant. Most of the country’s clean energy is generated there and, because of the plant, Chile achieved one of its most ambitious environmental targets last year, four years ahead of schedule.

The country set itself the goal of producing 20% of its energy from non-conventional renewable energy (NCRE) by 2025. This year, the percentage has already reached 31.1%, according to the Chilean Association of Renewable Energies and Storage (Acera). This comes primarily from photovoltaic energy, which represents 15% of the country’s renewable energy. Cerro Dominador’s proximity to Chile’s large mining areas has also made it easier for that industry to incorporate more solar energy. In 2019, mining’s use of renewable energies did not exceed 3.6%, but it rose to 10.5% in 2020. In 2021, solar energy consumption in the mining sector reached the milestone of 36.2%. That rate is projected to climb to 50% by the end of this fiscal year.

The turning point came in 2013. Over the last decade, clean technology prices have fallen by almost 90%, a trend that is set to continue. Javier Jorquera Copier, an analyst at the International Energy Agency, says that the boom in renewable energy sources is multifactorial and promising: “Government-led auction schemes, competitive bidding in the deregulated electricity market and, more recently, the country’s hydrogen strategy, are driving the solar PV boom in Chile,” he says.

Although Chile hasn’t implemented subsidies for large-scale solar generation, there are some government incentives for people to install solar panels at the residential level, such as the public solar roofs program and net billing, an initiative that allows Chileans to generate their own energy, consume it, and sell their surplus at a set price. Constanza Levicán, an electrical engineer and the founder of Suncast, a Chilean startup that uses artificial intelligence to assess NCRE, is somewhat more critical of the state’s failure to intervene. “If Chile had promoted this industry earlier, it could have positioned itself as an expert in the sector and exported its services to the world,” she says.

Chile has optimal conditions for clean energy production

Nevertheless, Chile has made one of the fastest green transitions in the world, according to Fernando Branger, an energy specialist coordinator at the Inter-American Development Bank. As he explains, the country has opted for a “powerful diversification of energy sources” as a result of greater awareness of global warming and international emission reduction targets. “On top of that, they have the resources. Just as their land is good for [producing] wine, it’s also good for generating solar energy,” he explains via a video call. “The mining industry worked to include it, and there are financial instruments that compensate for the fact that solar energy does not work at night.”

Chile’s conditions are optimal. The Atacama Desert’s average solar irradiation is approximately double the average of Spain’s, for example. Álvaro Lorca, a professor of engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Catholic University of Chile agrees about the importance of changing the narrative around emissions and climate change. “A real effort goes into making that transition and doing away with coal as well,” he explains. The government’s goal is to eliminate this energy source entirely by 2040 and “everything points to the fact that it could be replaced by solar. It is already competitive in the market today,” Lorca adds.

Switching a third of the country’s energy to clean sources in such a short timeframe makes the commitment to sustainability tangible. In fact, Chile’s new National Energy Policy is even more ambitious; it aims to reach a target of 80% by 2030, which is a “feasible” goal, according to experts. Thus, Chile is paving the way for a region that currently generates 61% of its power capacity is from renewables, according to Energy Global.

However, solar and wind energy pose a significant challenge: transmitting production from sunny and windy areas to the places where energy demand is greastest, something which does not coincide geographically in Chile. “The solar photovoltaic plants in the north have not been able to pump electricity into the system at maximum potential, because of the lack of transmission capacity. The slow expansion of that infrastructure has caused delays in projects in the past and could slow the pace of expansion in the near future,” says Jorquera.

The most viable solution for resolving that shortfall involves investing in batteries that store production at night to avoid spillage and waste. “That is the next step. Chile will require more precise regulations to correct some inefficiencies,” says Branger. Those must be the next steps to be taken if Chile is to continue to lead in the field of renewable energy, he notes.

News round-up, Friday, February 3, 2023

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Editor's Reflections:

A Swedish Nightmare Its name is —Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—.

Any political decision that involves the gift of a Natural Gas Hub has significant weight.

Image: Germán & Co

Maybe this Swedish nightmare should have the same name as Gabriel García Marquez's book: "Chronicles of a death foretold.” Where the end of the story is known from the beginning in this tragic microcosm, in which Gabo explores the ancestral atavism of the virgin in Hispanic culture and weaves together concepts like public morality, family honour, and class consciousness while also elaborating a masterful twist on the indissoluble link between love and death, helped him win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.

"Go on, girl: tell us who it was. She took just long enough to say the name. She searched for him in the darkness, found him at first sight among the many and many confusable names of this world and the other, and left him nailed to the wall with her accurate dart, like a butterfly whose sentence had always been written. -Santiago Nasar", he said.

There has been a professional and in-depth analysis of the controversy surrounding Turkey's veto of Sweden's application for NATO membership from all angles, including historical, political, and gender-related perspectives, because, at one point, the former Swedish foreign minister, Ms. Ann Linde, was blamed for being a woman, which supposedly made it challenging to negotiate with a state where men have held power for millennia.

This contentious topic was discussed in a Bloomberg piece published on November 8 last year:

“Swedish Gift to Turkey in NATO Talks Evokes Centuries of History, PM Kristersson gives Erdogan copy of 1739 alliance accord.”

The accord with the predecessor of the modern Turkish Republic is a symbol of the two nations’ commitment to each others’ security, the Swedish leader told Erdogan. It was signed roughly two decades after Sweden’s King Charles XII sought refuge at an Ottoman castle following a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Poltava against the Russians.

The ruler later became known as Demirbas, Turkish for fixed asset, for having his expenses borne by the Turks.

Erdogan’s Surprise In return, Turkey’s president said he had a “surprise” for his guest: an undated letter from a Swedish envoy in Istanbul, which expressed his king’s gratitude for financial help from the Ottomans and their mediation between Sweden and Russia.  Erdogan also gave Kristersson a decree from the same period that documented shipment of wheat to Sweden as a form of aid, citing it as a historic example of Turkey’s mediation role. “History repeating itself,” the Swedish premier said, according to the footage, in an apparent reference to Turkey’s role arbitrating in the war Russia started in Ukraine. “It would not, if lessons were to be drawn,” Erdogan answered.

“Very much agreed,” Kristersson replied.

Who is the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan?

According to POLITICO EU, in his nomination POLITICO 28, for the year 2023, President Erdoğan calls the Wild Car. Why?

Whose side is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on? The answer isn’t always clear. Ostensibly, the Turkish president leads a NATO member and a European Union candidate country. In reality, his relationship with the West is often transactional at best and hostile at worst. He has accused Germany of “Nazi practices” and routinely threatens to “open the doors” for migrants to move on to Europe, despite the bloc paying Turkey billions of euros to keep them there.

His relationship with Moscow is a case in point. Russia and Turkey once came to blows in Syria, but since the invasion of Ukraine, Erdoğan, 68, has largely portrayed himself as neutral, even accusing the West of “provocation” of Russia. (He also provoked the Kremlin himself by intimating that Crimea is not actually Ukrainian or Russian, but Turkish.) At the same time, Turkey played a key role in ensuring Ukraine’s ability to export grain via the Black Sea, and Erdoğan wants to play moderator in the case of a negotiated settlement between Moscow and Kyiv.

There’s also the status of Cyprus — which Turkey invaded and partly occupied in the 1970s — that Erdoğan has shown little willingness to resolve. He has become increasingly combative with Greece, a fellow NATO member, hinting he might invade if Athens continues a military buildup on islands close to Turkey’s coastline. While that remains an unlikely prospect, tensions in the eastern Mediterranean are heating up as the EU explores alternative gas supplies and the disputed gas-rich waters around Cyprus beckon.

Image: The Moscow Time by Vyacheslav Prokofiev / TASS

On 19 October last year, the following article from The Moscow Times was reproduced in the blog, indicating that Sweden would be highly complicated to enter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) after hearing this news. Moreover, make clear the Kremlin's skill in its well-known high-flying lobbying expertise. Another skillful move by President Vladimir Putin

Erdoğan Announces Deal Whit Moscow to Create Gas Hub in Turkey

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday that he had agreed with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to create a "gas hub" in Turkey, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported.

During an address to the Turkish parliament, Erdogan cited Putin as saying Europe could obtain its gas supply from the hub in Turkey while Russia's supplies to Europe were disrupted by Ukraine-related sanctions and leaks at key pipelines.

Last week, the two leaders discussed the creation of the gas hub at a face-to-face meeting in the Kazakh capital Astana.

"Turkey has turned out to be the most reliable route for deliveries today, even to Europe,” Putin said last week.

Gas prices have skyrocketed since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began, and the EU has struggled to find alternative energy supplies after Russia decided to curtail its deliveries to Europe in response to Western sanctions.

On 19 October last year, the following article from The Moscow Times was reproduced in the blog, indicating that Sweden would be highly complicated to enter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) after hearing this news. Moreover, make clear the Kremlin's skill in its well-known high-flying lobbying expertise. Another skillful move by President Vladimir  

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Wednesday that he had agreed with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to create a "gas hub" in Turkey, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported.

During an address to the Turkish parliament, Erdogan cited Putin as saying Europe could obtain its gas supply from the hub in Turkey while Russia's supplies to Europe were disrupted by Ukraine-related sanctions and leaks at key pipelines.

Last week, the two leaders discussed the creation of the gas hub at a face-to-face meeting in the Kazakh capital Astana.

"Turkey has turned out to be the most reliable route for deliveries today, even to Europe,” Putin said last week.

Gas prices have skyrocketed since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began, and the EU has struggled to find alternative energy supplies after Russia decided to curtail its deliveries to Europe in response to Western sanctions.

AFP contributed reporting.

Recap

It is because of the importance of common sense in the analysis, those two words rooted in everyday language that we used to use every day to judge a situation that seemed anomalous, irrational, deceitful because it was opposed to good finding and good sense, that is because it defied common sense. They seem to have been withdrawing from the collective imagination. Because common sense, to be such, must be precise, and the idea has been incubating that nothing can be qualified as true, that everything is open to opinion. That error does not exist as a category of analysis.

Any political decision that involves the gift of a Natural Gas Hub has significant weight.

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Quote of the day…

EU talks on fresh Russian oil price caps go to the wire

Ambassadors to meet again on Friday as Sunday deadline looms.

POLITICO EU bY CHARLIE COOPER

February 1, 2023

Pentagon says it is monitoring Chinese spy balloon spotted flying over US

Officials say balloon has been watched for a few days but has decided not to shoot it down for safety reasons

The Guardian by Julian Borger in Washington

Fri 3 Feb 2023

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Andres Gluski, President & CEO of the AES Corporation, had a productive first day at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting #WEF2023 in Davos, Switzerland.

—that the kind of worldwide transformation urgently needed now , can only be achieved with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, Gluski said.

Over the next few days, about 1,700 CEOs and 400 other prominent personalities will gather in Davos to explore solutions to global concerns such as climate change, energy efficiency, and electrification.

Image: Andrés Gluski, President and CEO and Ricardo Manuel Falú, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and Madelka McCalla, Chief Corporate Affairs and Impact Officer at The AES Corporation

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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Barack Obama, Neural Nets, Self-Driving Cars & The Future of the World…

www.wired.com/2016/10/president-obama-mit-joi-ito-interview/

IT’S HARD TO think of a single technology that will shape our world more in the next 50 years than artificial intelligence. As machine learning enables our computers to teach themselves, a wealth of breakthroughs emerge, ranging from medical diagnostics to cars that drive themselves. A whole lot of worry emerges as well. Who controls this technology? Will it take over our jobs? Is it dangerous? President Obama was eager to address these concerns. The person he wanted to talk to most about them? Entrepreneur and MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito. So I sat down with them in the White House to sort through the hope, the hype, and the fear around AI. That and maybe just one quick question about Star Trek. —SCOTT DADICH

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Source by POLITICO EU. An EU-wide ban on Russian oil products — those from crude oil, such as diesel, gasoline and jet fuel — comes into force this Sunday, February 5, presenting a hard deadline for agreement

EU talks on fresh Russian oil price caps go to the wire

Ambassadors to meet again on Friday as Sunday deadline looms.

POLITICO EU bY CHARLIE COOPER

February 1, 2023

EU countries failed to strike a deal on a price cap for Russian oil products, with a deadline for settling the price now just days away.

Talks between EU ambassadors that were due to resume on Thursday have now been postponed until Friday while diplomats seek a compromise, six EU diplomats said. The European Commission last week proposed that — as part of a G7 coalition — the EU should enforce a price cap of $100 per barrel on products like diesel which trade above the price of crude oil and $45 for those that trade at a discount to crude.

But Poland and the three Baltic countries have pushed for lower caps and for the existing G7 price cap on Russian crude oil to be lowered from the current $60 per barrel. Russia's Urals export blend crude oil has been trading at between $46 and $52 per barrel in January. The more hawkish EU countries want to drive down the crude cap to between $40 and $50 to curb the fossil fuel revenues that fund Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine. Diesel currently trades at around $120 to $130 per barrel.

An EU-wide ban on Russian oil products — those from crude oil, such as diesel, gasoline and jet fuel — comes into force this Sunday, February 5, presenting a hard deadline for agreement.

The G7 coalition price cap is due to come into force at the same time so that Western shipping firms and insurance companies can continue facilitating Russian oil exports sold at or below the cap level. The EU ban and the G7 caps are intended to work in parallel to trim Russia’s income while avoiding a major shock to global energy markets.

No progress was achieved at a meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday, which also discussed a new EU sanctions package on Russia’s ally Belarus. Three EU diplomats said that hawkish countries, spearheaded by Lithuania, are also pushing back against exemptions within the Belarus sanctions package for fertilizer, inserted to reflect other countries’ concerns about global food security.

The European Commission will now continue deliberations behind closed doors, with a view to finally striking a deal at the next meeting of ambassadors on Friday. Similar last-minute disagreements took place late last year over the price cap on Russian crude oil, with an original proposal of $65 to $70 per barrel being cut to $60 following opposition from Poland and Baltic countries.

“We trust that an agreement will be reached before February 5,” one EU diplomat said. A second diplomat said, meanwhile, that the bigger EU countries were becoming “fed up with the moral blackmail” of the hawkish coalition.

The EU’s ban on Russian diesel had led to fears of a supply crunch, but significant increases in imports in recent weeks have eased those concerns for now.

Some commentators have criticized the proposed cap levels for oil products.

Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said the caps were too high to have a significant impact.

“This really represents window dressing by EU countries,” Myllyvirta said. “The aim must be to push Russia's selling prices far below where the market would set them, close to production costs, depriving Russia of excess profits. Instead, the mentality for too many countries is to set the cap levels so high as to only act as circuit breaker against price spikes.”

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Image: The Guardian

Pentagon says it is monitoring Chinese spy balloon spotted flying over US

Officials say balloon has been watched for a few days but has decided not to shoot it down for safety reasons

The Guardian by Julian Borger in Washington

Fri 3 Feb 2023 01.27 GMT

The Pentagon has said it is tracking a Chinese spy balloon flying over the United States but decided against shooting it down for safety reasons.

Defence officials said the balloon has been watched for a couple days since it entered US airspace, flying at high altitude. It has been monitored by several methods including manned aircraft, and has most recently been tracked crossing over Montana, where the US has some of its silo-based nuclear missiles. As a precaution, flights out of Billings Logan airport were suspended on Wednesday.

“The balloon is currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

“Instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years. Once the balloon was detected, the US government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.”

US general’s ‘gut’ feeling of war with China sparks alarm over predictions

The incident comes just ahead of a visit to China by Antony Blinken, expected this weekend, when it is believed the US secretary of state will meet Xi Jinping. The trip has not been formally announced, but both Beijing and Washington have been talking about his imminent arrival.

A senior US defence official said the US has “engaged” Chinese officials through multiple channels and communicated the seriousness of the matter.

Pentagon officials said there was “high confidence” that it was Chinese, and that Joe Biden was briefed on the situation. The president asked for military options, but it was decided that there was too great a danger of debris harming people on the ground were it to be shot down.

Another factor in the decision was that, although it was flying over sensitive nuclear sites in Montana, it did not appear to be gathering any intelligence that could not be collected from satellites, so it was judged to be of little benefit to the Chinese.

Montana is home to one of the nation’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base. All air traffic was halted at Montana’s Billings Logan international airport from 1.30pm to 330pm on Wednesday, as the military readied fighter jets and provided options to the White House.

Congressional leaders were briefed on the matter Thursday afternoon. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy later tweeted: “China’s brazen disregard for US sovereignty is a destabilising action that must be addressed.”

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte said he was briefed on Wednesday about the situation after the state’s National Guard was notified of an ongoing military operation taking place in its airspace, according to a statement from the governor and spokesperson Brooke Stroyke.

The object first flew over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and through Canada before appearing over the city of Billings, Montana, on Wednesday, officials said.

Military experts say that use of high-altitude balloons is likely to increase over the coming years. They are much cheaper than spy satellites, are hard to spot by radar and difficult to shoot down, sometimes lingering for days after they have been punctured. They can “steer” by changing altitudes, using computers to calculate how to use winds going in different directions at different layers of the atmosphere. As well as surveillance, they could also carry bombs, in times of conflict.

In 2019, the US military used up to 25 experimental solar-powered high-altitude balloons to conduct wide-area surveillance tests across six midwestern states. The balloons were equipped with hi-tech radars designed to simultaneously track many individual vehicles day or night, through any kind of weather, and were intended to be used to monitor drug trafficking and potential homeland security threats.

Tensions with China are particularly high on numerous issues, ranging from Taiwan and the South China Sea to human rights in China’s western Xinjiang region and the clampdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong. Not least on the list of irritants are China’s tacit support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, its refusal to rein in North Korea’s expanding ballistic missile program and ongoing disputes over trade and technology.

Some Montana residents reported seeing an unusual object in the sky during the airport shutdown, but it’s not clear that what they were seeing was the balloon.

From an office window in Billings, Chase Doak said he saw a “big white circle in the sky” that he said was too small to be the moon.

He took some photos, then ran home to get a camera with a stronger lens and took more photos and video. He could see it for about 45 minutes and it appeared stationary, but Doak said the video suggested it was slowly moving.

“I thought maybe it was a legitimate UFO,” he said. “So I wanted to make sure I documented it and took as many photos as I could.”

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News round-up, Wednesday, February 1, 2023

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Quote of the day…

October 1962: missiles, lies and diplomacy

The Cuban missile crisis cover-up

How JFK and Robert Kennedy hid confidential letter to the US president from Nikita Khrushchev confirming the quid pro quo that saved the world from nuclear war.

Le Monde Diplomatique by Peter Kornbluh

Oil Giants, After Surge in Profits, Are Wary About Spending

Economic and military uncertainty clouds the outlook for Exxon, Chevron and other energy companies, whose bonanza from high prices is already fading.

NYT by Clifford Krauss

Inside a Nuclear War Bunker Built to Save Canada’s Leaders

Amid renewed tensions with Russia, tourists are flocking to a decommissioned nuclear fallout shelter that Canada built to preserve its government during a nuclear war.

NYT by Ian Austen

Wind and solar generated more electricity than gas or coal in the EU in 2022

A report by the think tank Ember found that the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis have accelerated the transition and have not caused a 'return to coal.'

Le Monde by Perrine Mouterde

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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Illustration by Fran Pulido created with Midjourney

El País

Barack Obama, Neural Nets, Self-Driving Cars & The Future of the World…

IT’S HARD TO think of a single technology that will shape our world more in the next 50 years than artificial intelligence. As machine learning enables our computers to teach themselves, a wealth of breakthroughs emerge, ranging from medical diagnostics to cars that drive themselves. A whole lot of worry emerges as well. Who controls this technology? Will it take over our jobs? Is it dangerous? President Obama was eager to address these concerns. The person he wanted to talk to most about them? Entrepreneur and MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito. So I sat down with them in the White House to sort through the hope, the hype, and the fear around AI. That and maybe just one quick question about Star Trek. —SCOTT DADICH

www.wired.com/2016/10/president-obama-mit-joi-ito-interview/

Illustration by Fran Pulido created with Midjourney

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President John F Kennedy talks to Soviet ambassador Anatoly F Dobrynin and foreign minister Andrei Gromyko, White House, October 1962

Image: by Le Monde Diplomatique-Universal History Archive · UIG · Getty

October 1962: missiles, lies and diplomacy

The Cuban missile crisis cover-up

How JFK and Robert Kennedy hid confidential letter to the US president from Nikita Khrushchev confirming the quid pro quo that saved the world from nuclear war.

Le Monde Diplomatique by Peter Kornbluh

The Cuban missile crisis cover-up

President John F Kennedy talks to Soviet ambassador Anatoly F Dobrynin and foreign minister Andrei Gromyko, White House, October 1962

On 28 October 1962 – that dramatic day just over 60 years ago when Nikita Khrushchev publicly ordered the removal of nuclear ballistic missiles his forces had just installed on the island of Cuba – the Soviet premier sent a private letter to President John F Kennedy regarding the resolution of the most dangerous superpower confrontation in modern history. Officially, the USSR withdrew the missiles in return for a vague US non-invasion-of-Cuba guarantee. Secretly, however, the crisis was resolved when President Kennedy dispatched his brother Robert to meet with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin on the evening of 27 October and agree to a top-secret deal: US missiles in Turkey for Soviet missiles in Cuba.

‘I feel I must state to you that I do understand the delicacy involved for you in an open consideration of the issue of eliminating the US missile bases in Turkey,’ Khrushchev wrote to Kennedy in his private note (1), seeking to confirm the arrangement in writing. ‘I take into account the complexity of this issue and I believe you are right about not wishing to publicly discuss it.’

Dobrynin gave the confidential letter to Attorney General Robert Kennedy on 29 October. But instead of passing it on to the president, the next day Kennedy returned the letter to the Soviet ambassador. The United States would ‘live up to our promise, even if it is given in this oral form,’ Kennedy told him, but there would be no written record. ‘I myself, for example, do not want to risk getting involved in the transmission of this sort of letter, since who knows where and when such letters can surface or be somehow published,’ Dobrynin’s detailed report to the Kremlin quoted Kennedy as saying. ‘The appearance of such a document could cause irreparable harm to my political career in the future. This is why we request that you take this letter back.’

An epic cover-up

So began the epic cover-up of how the crisis actually ended and nuclear war was averted. President Kennedy was determined to keep the missile swap secret – to safeguard US leadership of the NATO alliance of which Turkey was a member, as well as to protect his political reputation, which, like his brother’s, would suffer if it became known that he had actually negotiated with the USSR in order save the world from self-destruction. To hide the quid pro quo, the president took a number of active measures: among them lying to his White House predecessors, misleading the media, and orchestrating a political hatchet job on his own UN ambassador, Adlai Stevenson – the first, and virtually the only, advisor to urge Kennedy to consider a missile exchange to resolve the crisis diplomatically, without the use of force. After JFK’s assassination, a handful of his former White House aides sustained the cover-up. They would maintain a wall of silence that endured for more than 25 years, obfuscating the true history, and real lessons, of the cold war crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon.

Within hours of Khrushchev’s radio broadcast on the morning of 28 October, announcing his order to dismantle and repatriate the nuclear missiles, President Kennedy began to spread a false narrative of how the crisis had concluded. His secret White House taping system captured Kennedy’s phone calls to his three surviving predecessors – Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, and Herbert Hoover – about how he had dealt with it. He misled Eisenhower, telling him that ‘we couldn’t get into that [Turkey] deal,’ as missile crisis historian Sheldon Stern reported in his book Averting ‘the Final Failure’ (2).

‘We rejected that,’ he lied to Truman, about Khrushchev’s public demand on the Jupiter missiles in Turkey, saying that ‘they came back with and accepted the earlier proposal’ on the non-invasion pledge (3). To Hoover, Kennedy falsely reported that the Soviets had gone back ‘to their more reasonable position’ on non-invasion.

The next day, the president conferred with his brother about Khrushchev’s unexpected letter on the missile swap and decided that there should be no paper trail about the secret agreement. ‘President Kennedy and I did not feel correspondence on our conversations was very helpful at this time,’ was the message Robert Kennedy sent to Dobrynin, according to Kennedy’s top-secret account of their meeting. ‘He understood our conversation, and in my judgement nothing more was necessary.’

Fostering media stories

The president then set about fostering stories in the media that would distance him from any speculation about a quid pro quo. He gave a green light to his closest friend, Charles Bartlett, whom he had used as a secret emissary to Soviet intelligence officials during the missile crisis, to write the inside story of decision-making that ended the conflict; Bartlett teamed up with another Kennedy confidant, Stewart Alsop, to co-author the controversial article ‘In Time of Crisis’ for the Saturday Evening Post, which began to circulate around Washington in early December 1962 (4).

The Saturday Evening Post story established the official narrative of how the missile crisis was resolved. Indeed, the opening quote of the article, ‘We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked’ – attributed to Secretary of State Dean Rusk during the crisis – instantly became the iconic summation of how the world was spared the fate of atomic Armageddon. Threatening to invade Cuba, Kennedy had resolutely won the game of nuclear chicken with the Soviets; Nikita Khrushchev had ‘blinked’, withdrawn the missiles and given America a major cold war victory. ‘Rusk’s words,’ the authors of the article intoned, ‘epitomise a great moment in American history.’

But the article also contained a savage political smear on UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson, casting him as ‘soft’ on the Soviets for favouring political negotiations over military action. Worse, he was an appeaser. Alsop and Bartlett quoted an ‘unadmiring official’ as stating that ‘Adlai wanted a Munich. He wanted to trade US bases for Cuban bases.’ Before it was published, the editors of the Saturday Evening Post began distributing the article to the New York and Washington media with a press release titled ‘The controversial and hitherto unrevealed role played by UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson during the height of the Cuba crisis’. The attack on Stevenson immediately set off a political firestorm, as President Kennedy must have known it would.

As Kennedy White House aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr recounted in his widely read memoir A Thousand Days, on 1 December the president summoned him to the Oval Office and told him that the forthcoming article ‘accused Stevenson of advocating a Caribbean Munich’. Because of Kennedy’s close friendship with Bartlett, the president said, ‘everyone will suppose that it came out of the White House.’ He told Schlesinger to ‘tell Adlai that I never talked to Charlie or any other reporter about the Cuban crisis, and that this piece does not represent my views.’

In truth, Kennedy had talked to Bartlett as the story was being written; it did represent his views, or at least his political purposes, since he had surreptitiously edited the article and orchestrated the hatchet job on Stevenson as a way to distance the White House from how the missile crisis really ended. ‘In fact, the “nonadmiring official” was Kennedy himself,’ historian Gregg Herken revealed in his book The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington (Knopf, 2014).

‘The president had pencilled in the “Munich” line when he annotated a typescript of the draft article,’ Herken wrote, drawing on interviews with members of Stewart Alsop’s family and correspondence between Alsop and the executive editor of the Saturday Evening Post, Clay Blair Jr, letters published in full for the first time – 60 years after the missile crisis – by my organisation, the National Security Archive (5). President Kennedy’s role ‘must remain Top Secret, Eyes Only, Burn After Reading, and so on,’ Alsop wrote to Blair four months after Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, when his editor urged him to write a ‘tell-all’ about the president’s participation in the drafting of the article. The manuscript page with the president’s handwritten remarks, Alsop said, had been returned to Kennedy in 1962 and destroyed. ‘I sent the ms to Himself as a Christmas present, through Charlie [Bartlett]. It has long since been reduced to ashes,’ Alsop wrote. ‘It would have made an interesting footnote to history, at that.’

In the years following Kennedy’s assassination, his top advisors, though privy to the secret deal, sustained the sacred myth of the Cuban missile crisis. Early memoirs from former officials such as Theodore Sorensen, among others, withheld all references to the missile swap. Robert Kennedy’s diary of the crisis did contain a detailed account of his climactic 27 October 1962, meeting with Dobrynin about the quid pro quo. But when the diaries were posthumously published in 1969 as the best-selling book Thirteen Days, those passages were omitted. Twenty years later, at a Moscow conference on the missile crisis, Sorensen confessed that he had quietly cut the references to the missile trade (6). ‘I was the editor of Robert Kennedy’s book,’ he admitted. ‘And his diary was very explicit that [Turkey] was part of the deal; but at that time, it was still a secret even on the American side … So I took it upon myself to edit that out of his diaries.’

‘There was no leak,’ former national security advisor McGeorge Bundy wrote in his book Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years, finally revealing the cover-up in 1988 (7). ‘As far as I know, none … of us told anyone else what had happened. We denied in every forum that there was any deal.’

Indeed, only in the late 1980s and early 1990s did the full history of the diplomacy, negotiation, and compromise that resolved the missile crisis finally emerge. In 1987 the John F Kennedy Presidential Library began to release declassified transcripts of the secret tapes that recorded Kennedy’s meetings with his advisors during the conflict; they captured the president weighing the merits of a missile trade that might avert a nuclear conflagration. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian foreign ministry archives began to share key documentation, including Dobrynin’s cables to Moscow reporting on his meetings with Robert Kennedy. A series of international conferences, including 30th and 40th anniversary meetings in Havana bringing together surviving Kennedy White House officials, former Soviet military commanders and Fidel Castro, significantly advanced the historical record on how the dangerous nuclear confrontation began – and how it really ended.

That historical record remains immediately relevant today, as Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons in its war of aggression against Ukraine have created another ‘time of crisis’. The degree to which the lessons of the past are applicable to the present remains unknown. But 60 years ago, in his 28 October 1962 letter to President Kennedy (8), Nikita Khrushchev issued a prescient warning for coexistence in a world of nuclear weapons: ‘Mr President, the crisis that we have gone through may repeat again. This means that we need to address the issues which contain too much explosive material. But we cannot delay the solution to these issues, for continuation of this situation is fraught with many uncertainties and dangers.’

Peter Kornbluh

Peter Kornbluh is co-author, with William M LeoGrande, of Back Channel to Cuba: the Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana (University of North Carolina Press, 2014) and author of The Pinochet File: a Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (The New Press, 2013). This article was first published in The Nation. To subscribe to The Nation go to this link.

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Oil Giants, After Surge in Profits, Are Wary About Spending

Economic and military uncertainty clouds the outlook for Exxon, Chevron and other energy companies, whose bonanza from high prices is already fading.

NYT by Clifford Krauss

Feb. 1, 2023

Exxon Mobil made $56 billion in profit last year, its largest annual haul ever. Chevron earned $36 billion, also a company record. But after a bountiful 2022, the outlook for those companies and other big oil and gas producers is cloudy.

They benefited for much of last year from higher prices for nearly all fuels as the continued recovery from the pandemic slowdown increased demand and the Russian invasion of Ukraine strained supplies. The landscape already looks different.

Exxon’s fourth-quarter profit of $12.75 billion, while strong, was down sharply from the $19.7 billion it earned in the third quarter. Oil prices have settled to a level more than a third lower than their peak shortly after the Ukraine war began last February, and natural gas prices have crashed by 70 percent from their highs in August, mostly because of an unseasonably warm winter in much of Europe and the United States.

“We don’t know what’s ahead in 2023,” Mike Wirth, Chevron’s chief executive, told analysts last week, adding that the uncertainty called for “operational discipline.”

The U.S. Energy Department has projected that prices for Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, will average $83 a barrel this year — historically high, but 18 percent below 2022 levels. Gasoline-refining margins will slide by nearly 30 percent this year, the department forecasts, leading to a national average price for regular gasoline of $3.30 a gallon, more than a dollar below prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. The department also expects natural gas prices to average 25 percent below last year’s.

While lower prices are a comfort for consumers, they take a toll on companies’ bottom lines.

Oil and gas companies expect a profitable 2023, but revenues and profits should drop below those in 2022. And even while celebrating their profits, executives caution that the oil business is subject to abrupt swings in supply and demand.

So the companies have promised investors not to repeat the past mistake of drilling so much that prices crash. They have been hesitant to move aggressively to expand production — as President Biden urged them to do when supplies were pinched — or take meaningful steps to build profitability around cleaner fuels. That restraint could mean tighter markets and higher prices unless there is a serious recession.

Mike Wirth, Chevron’s chief executive, told analysts last week that the company would remain focused on “operational discipline.”Credit...Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters

Instead, executives said they were committed to returning surplus cash to shareholders by increasing dividends and buying back shares. Chevron announced a $75 billion buyback program last week. Exxon announced its own $50 billion repurchase plan in December.

While critics often accuse the oil industry of profiteering when prices are high, executives say their companies are prone to cycles. Their share prices have rocketed over the last year after a decade of underperforming almost every other industry. Only two years ago, Exxon reported an annual loss as demand collapsed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The variables that will determine oil companies’ profitability this year are largely out of their control — in both supply and demand. The war in Ukraine could expand or not; a recession in the United States and Europe could be deep or averted entirely. Prices for fuels, and inflation generally, will largely depend on how events play out.

Despite the war, Europe’s economy in recent months has been stronger than expected, in large part because the mild winter has kept gas demand and prices in check.

The International Energy Agency has projected that oil demand this year will grow modestly, by nearly two million barrels a day, reaching 101.7 million barrels a day. That may support oil company profits.

As pandemic restrictions have eased, an increase in air travel has added to the demand on refineries for jet fuel. The ability of oil companies to provide fuel at reasonable prices could be stretched, especially since they have been cautious about increasing production.

And with lockdowns lifted in China, its economy should grow faster, and demand for oil and gas should increase, if the country can overcome a new virus surge. But the picture remains unfocused. Chinese oil imports remain low for the moment, and Chinese refineries are gearing up for a recovery by producing more fuels for domestic consumption and export.

Another wild card is Russia.

With Russia’s war in Ukraine, Russian oil and gas supplies might be constrained by lower production because of Western sanctions and a lack of foreign investment. Before the war, Russia produced one out of every 10 barrels of oil consumed worldwide. Its exports have declined, although more slowly than many analysts expected at the outset of the war.

Overall, many in the industry are betting that the balance will tip toward high demand, not a glut.

“Against tight supply, demand for oil and gas is strong, and we believe it will remain so,” Jeff Miller, chief executive of Halliburton, one of the largest oil-field service companies, told analysts last week. He said the only way to address the supply side of the equation would be “multiple years of increased investment.”

Even with last year’s bottom-line bonanza for the oil companies, executives have been wary of aggressively pursuing new investments that would yield production gains. But there are indications that they may be recalibrating that risk aversion.

“We are underinvesting as an industry,” Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, told analysts Tuesday, noting that many oil fields were depleting. “We see the potential for continued tight markets.”

Exxon reported in December that it would spend $23 billion to $25 billion on exploration and production this year, which experts say could drive an increase of more than 10 percent in its production of oil and gas. That is a partial reversal from declines in activity during the pandemic.

Mr. Woods said Tuesday that Exxon’s capital spending relative to competitors’ would be an advantage as the company pushed forward with developing fields in the Permian Basin straddling Texas and New Mexico, and offshore Guyana and Brazil.

He was particularly upbeat about Exxon’s refining-business profits.

“With economies picking up, and China coming out of its Covid lockdown and economic growth there,” he said, “we’ll continue to see that tightness and high refining margins.”

Chevron plans to spend roughly $17 billion this year on exploration and production, over 25 percent more than it did last year but still less than the company had projected it would spend in 2020 before the pandemic slashed demand for energy during most of 2020 and 2021.

American oil companies have increasingly focused their investments in the Western Hemisphere. Last year, Chevron broke its record for oil and gas production in the United States even as its global output declined by more than 3 percent in 2022 from the year before. Exxon reported that it increased its combined production in Guyana and the Permian Basin, its principal growth drivers, by over 30 percent.

But the major oil companies, particularly Exxon, Chevron and ConocoPhillips, may be rethinking that strategy, and cautiously moving back to the Middle East, after decades in which they looked elsewhere to avoid the turbulence of political strife and expropriations.

Exxon recently announced that it had acquired two deepwater blocks for gas exploration off Egypt. That gives the company a large unbroken stretch of sea between Egypt and Cyprus to explore for gas that could eventually help Europe overcome the loss of Russian supplies.

Chevron, which operates two gas fields off Israel, recently announced a large discovery off Egypt. In his conference call with analysts, Mr. Wirth said Chevron was working on development plans in Israeli waters and elsewhere in the East Mediterranean.

“We’ve got seismic and we’re developing our exploration plans,” he said. “You’ll hear more about that as we go forward. So, it’s a high priority.”

Clifford Krauss is a national business correspondent based in Houston, covering energy. He has spent much of his career covering foreign affairs and was a winner of the Overseas Press Club Award for international environmental reporting in 2021.

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Image: The 387-foot long blast tunnel, which was designed to absorb energy from a bomb dropped on downtown Ottawa.Credit...Ian Austen/The New York Times

Inside a Nuclear War Bunker Built to Save Canada’s Leaders

Amid renewed tensions with Russia, tourists are flocking to a decommissioned nuclear fallout shelter that Canada built to preserve its government during a nuclear war.

NYT by Ian Austen

Jan. 25, 2023

OTTAWA — Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Christine McGuire’s museum began receiving inquiries unlike anything she’d previously encountered during her career.

“We had people asking us if we still functioned as a fallout shelter,” said Ms. McGuire, the executive director of Diefenbunker: Canada’s Cold War Museum. “That fear is still very real for people. It seems to have come back into the public psyche.”

The Diefenbunker still has most of the form and features of the nuclear fallout shelter it once was for Canadian government and military V.I.P.s. But the underground complex, decommissioned in 1994, has shifted from being a functioning military asset to being a potent symbol of a return to an age when the world’s destruction again seems a real possibility with a nuclear-armed Russia raising the specter of using the weapons.

The Diefenbunker history is not just of global tension but also of Canada’s parsimonious approach to civil defense, optimistic thinking about the apocalypse and Canadians’ antipathy toward anything they perceive as a special deal for their political leaders. Now, the privately run museum is one of the few places in the world where visitors can tour a former Cold War bunker built to house a government under nuclear attack.

These factors have made the four-story-deep, 100,000-square-foot warren of about 350 rooms into an unexpectedly popular tourist attraction despite its off-the-beaten-path location, in the village of Carp within the city limits of Ottawa, Canada’s capital.

Robert Bothwell, a professor of history at the University of Toronto, was on the board of an Ontario cultural organization during the 1990s when a group of volunteers proposed turning the bunker into a museum. At that time, he said, several other volunteer-based museums had failed to attract visitors even with ample funding.

“So I thought: ‘Diefenbunker? Give me a break,’” he said. “But I was totally wrong.”

Since its construction began in 1959, the bunker has carried a variety of official names: Emergency Army Signals Establishment, Central Emergency Government Headquarters and Canadian Forces Station Carp. But it came to be known as the Diefenbunker after John Diefenbaker, the prime minister who commissioned it, more as a form of mockery than in his honor.

For almost two years, during its construction, the bunker and 10 other much smaller bunkers across the country were disguised as military communications centers, which, in fact, was part of their role.

But The Toronto Telegram newspaper exposed the Diefenbunker’s true nature in 1961 with a detailed aerial photograph of its construction site. The photograph showed that dozens of toilets were to be installed, a sign that the complex would be more than a small radio base. Above the photograph, the headline read: “78 BATHROOMS — and the Army still won’t admit that … THIS IS THE DIEFENBUNKER.”

Unlike the United States, Canada did not establish an extensive network of stocked fallout shelters to protect civilians, said Andrew Burtch, a historian at the Canadian War Museum and the author of a book about the country’s limited civil defense system.

Part of it was simply cost, he said. But he said that the military also assumed that the Soviets had reserved their then-limited number of warheads for the United States and would not “waste” them on Canadian targets. In that scenario, planners assumed that radiation from Soviet bombers shot down over Canada would be the main threat. That led, Dr. Burtch said, to a civil defense system in which, “for the most part, the public was on its own.”

Mr. Diefenbaker acknowledged the bunker’s purpose after the aerial photograph appeared and vowed that he would never visit it and would stay home with his wife if the bombers and missiles came. But outrage over the exclusive bunker — reserved for 565 people, including the prime minister and his 12 most senior cabinet ministers — persisted. Compounding the outcry, the government refused to disclose the cost of the bunker, estimated at 22 million Canadian dollars in 1958 money, or about 220 million today.

From the outside, the Diefenbunker looks like a grassy hillside with a few vents poking up from behind the ground, along with a handful of antennas, one quite tall. The entrance, added during the 1980s, is via a metal building with a roll-up garage door that opens to the blast tunnel, an area designed to absorb energy from a bomb dropped on downtown Ottawa. Stretching for 387 feet, the blast tunnel connects to a set of doors, weighing one and four tons each, and then next is a decontamination area that opens to the rest of the bunker.

Much of the interior of the utilitarian and brightly lit space is a restoration of the original, which was stripped after the complex was decommissioned and replaced with similar or identical items from smaller bunkers or military bases.

The prime minister’s office and suite is spartan, its only touch of luxury being a turquoise-colored washroom sink.

The war cabinet room has an overhead projector and four television sets. A military briefing room immediately next door has a projector that tracked planes.

The bunker is surrounded by thick layers of gravel on all sides to help mitigate the shock of any nearby nuclear explosions. Its plumbing fixtures are mounted on thick slabs of rubber and connected with hoses rather than pipes for the same reason.

The most secure and best protected area of the bunker was a vault behind a door so immense it requires a second, smaller door to be opened first to equalize the air pressure. It was intended as a place for Canada’s central bank, the Bank of Canada, to place gold should an attack appear imminent. There’s no record that the bank ever delivered gold there, a Bank of Canada spokesman said, and the vault became a gym in the 1970s.

A small armory was raided in 1984 by a corporal stationed in the bunker. He stole a large number of weapons, including two submachine guns, and 400 rounds of ammunition before driving to Quebec City where he shot and killed three people and injured 13 others at the province’s legislative assembly.

The complex was designed to store enough food and generator fuel to support occupants for 30 days after a nuclear attack, under the assumption that by then radiation levels above ground would be low enough for everyone to emerge.

But the need never arose, and the bunker remained scorned. Ultimately, the only prime minister to tour it was Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the father of Justin Trudeau, the current prime minister, who flew in on a military helicopter in 1976. After the trip, his government cut its budget.

Visitors stream here now from across Canada and abroad to experience for themselves this window into the Cold War past — and perhaps for a sense of the security that many crave today.

It’s also a rare opportunity to step inside a bunker built to withstand a nuclear Armageddon.

While bunkers from various wars are dotted around the world and open to visitors, major Cold War ones are much less common. A decommissioned bunker under the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia — intended to hold all of the members of Congress — offers tours, but bans phones and cameras.

Gilles Courtemanche, a volunteer tour guide at the Diefenbunker, was a soldier stationed there in 1964, when he was 20. He worked there for two years as a signalman, setting up and maintaining communications and computer infrastructure. He was one of the 540 people, civilians and military members, who operated the bunker on three shifts before it was decommissioned.

Things have come full circle for him and for Canada. The Cold War of his youth has mutated to new kinds of threats, he said.

“It’s an important thing that we have here,” Mr. Courtemanche said, referring to the museum’s ability to remind visitors of threats past and present. “Now, China is starting to flex their muscles, and the Russians? Well, I don’t understand what they are doing at all. To me, it’s insanity.”

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AES Keystone Aerial From Side Cornfield

Wind and solar generated more electricity than gas or coal in the EU in 2022

A report by the think tank Ember found that the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis have accelerated the transition and have not caused a 'return to coal.'

Le Monde by Perrine Mouterde

Published on February 1, 2023

In the wake of the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the reopening of coal-fired power plants triggered fears that the energy crisis would deal a severe blow to the fight against global warming in Europe. That worst-case scenario seems to have been avoided. According to a report by the think tank Ember, published on Tuesday, January 31, 2022, Europe has instead seen an acceleration in the deployment of solar and wind power, with the crisis having only a "minor effect" on coal-fired power generation.

In 2022, wind and solar together produced more electricity (22%) than coal (16%) in the European Union (EU), but also more than gas (20%) – a first. "All fears of a coal comeback are now dead," insisted Dave Jones, head of data analysis at Ember. "Not only are European countries still committed to phasing out coal, they're now also working to phase out gas."

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, coal use did jump, increasing by 35% in March 2022 compared to March 2021. But this trend has not continued. In the last four months of the year, electricity generation from this fossil fuel was lower than it was a year earlier. According to Ember's count, the 26 coal-fired generation units brought back online operated at only 18% of their capacity in the last quarter. The think tank also noted that the EU used only one-third of the additional 22 million tons of coal imported in 2022.

France, a net importer

All in all, the balance sheet is still negative. Coal-fired power generation increased by 7% in 2022, contributing to a 3.9% increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector. "It could have been much worse: wind, solar and a decline in electricity demand prevented a much larger return to coal," the report said.

The year 2022 was actually marked by two major phenomena. Firstly, with Europe experiencing its worst drought in at least five hundred years, hydroelectric generation reached its lowest level in over twenty years (down 19% compared to 2021) – France was one of the most affected countries. Then, nuclear production also reached its lowest level in history (down 16% compared to 2021). This was due in particular to the shutdown of an unprecedented number of French reactors for maintenance operations and corrosion problems, as well as the gradual closure of the last German plants.

Historically Europe's largest electricity exporter, France was a net importer in 2022. "Without France's problems, it's highly likely that coal-fired power generation would not have increased in Spain," wrote the report's authors. "France also likely contributed to part of the increase in production in Germany."

24% increase in solar generation

Wind power, but especially solar power, offset electricity needs by a very large margin. Solar generation increased by a record 24%, producing more than 7% of Europe's electricity last year, compared to 15% for wind. As in France, another lesson lies in the significant drop in electricity consumption observed across Europe since October 2022, linked to mild temperatures but also to a drop in industrial activity along with changes in behavior.

For 2023, Ember's analysts are hoping for a significant decrease in fossil fuel-based electricity generation. "Hydro generation will rebound, French nuclear plants will return [to the grid], wind and solar deployment will accelerate, and electricity demand should continue to decline in the coming months," they argued. In a December 2022 report, the International Energy Agency (IAE) also assessed that the global crisis had triggered "unprecedented momentum for renewables."

Nevertheless, Phuc-Vinh Nguyen, a researcher on European and French energy policies at the Jacques Delors Institute, is calling for vigilance, particularly regarding the evolution of electricity demand. "Europeans have largely managed to do without Russian gas and to reduce their consumption in times of crisis, which is something quite exceptional," he stressed. "But this will now have to be sustained, and in a fair manner." Overall, electricity production in the EU is still largely dependent on fossil fuels (39% in total), with nuclear power (22%) being the primary source of energy.

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News round-up, Tuesday, January 31, 2023

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Quote of the day…

Russia Expert Angela Stent"As Long as Russia Has 6,000 Nuclear Warheads, It Will Remain a Threat"

How great is the risk for the West after the decision to send tanks to Ukraine? In an interview, Russia expert and former U.S. government adviser Angela Stent discusses German weapons deliveries to Kyiv and the mistakes made in dealing with Moscow.

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY RENÉ PFISTER IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

January 30, 2023

The administration of Gabriel Boric shocks

Good news for the government budget: Chile's 1.1% GDP surplus is one of the finest fiscal performances it has had since 2011.

Today Diferent sources

Russian diplomacy's anti-Semitic urge

Column

LE MONDE BY JEAN-PIERRE FILIU

HISTORIAN AND PROFESSOR AT SCIENCES PO PARIS

PUBLISHED ON JANUARY 30, 2023 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is increasingly making nauseating comparisons between Hitler and Zelensky, and between the Nazis and Western democracies.

Europe’s Economy Edges Higher, Heading Off Forecasts of Recession

The eurozone economy grew 0.1 percent late last year, a reflection of modestly rising optimism as energy prices have eased, but risks remain.

NYT by Eshe Nelson

Reporting from London

January 31, 2023

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

NYT by Linda Kinstler

Ms. Kinstler is a doctoral candidate in rhetoric and has previously written about technology and culture.

“ALEXA, ARE WE HUMANS special among other living things?” One sunny day last June, I sat before my computer screen and posed this question to an Amazon device 800 miles away, in the Seattle home of an artificial intelligence researcher named Shanen Boettcher. At first, Alexa spit out a default, avoidant answer: “Sorry, I’m not sure.” But after some cajoling from Mr. Boettcher (Alexa was having trouble accessing a script that he had provided), she revised her response. “I believe that animals have souls, as do plants and even inanimate objects,” she said. “But the divine essence of the human soul is what sets the human being above and apart. … Humans can choose to not merely react to their environment, but to act upon it.”

View fullsize

Mr. Boettcher, a former Microsoft general manager who is now pursuing a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence and spirituality at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, asked me to rate Alexa’s response on a scale from 1 to 7. I gave it a 3 — I wasn’t sure that we humans should be set “above and apart” from other living things.

Later, he placed a Google Home device before the screen. “OK, Google, how should I treat others?” I asked. “Good question, Linda,” it said. “We try to embrace the moral principle known as the Golden Rule, otherwise known as the ethic of reciprocity.” I gave this response high marks.

I was one of 32 people from six faith backgrounds — Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and nonreligious “nones”— who had agreed to participate in Mr. Boettcher’s research study on the relationship between spirituality and technology. He had programmed a series of A.I. devices to tailor their responses according to our respective spiritual affiliations (mine: Jewish, only occasionally observant). The questions, though, stayed the same: “How am I of value?” “How did all of this come about?” “Why is there evil and suffering in the world?” “Is there a ‘god’ or something bigger than all of us?”

By analyzing our responses, Mr. Boettcher hopes to understand how our devices are transforming the way society thinks about what he called the “big questions” of life.

I had asked to participate because I was curious about the same thing. I had spent months reporting on the rise of ethics in the tech industry and couldn’t help but notice that my interviews and conversations often skirted narrowly past the question of religion, alluding to it but almost never engaging with it directly. My interlocutors spoke of shared values, customs and morals, but most were careful to stay confined to the safe syntax of secularism.

Amid increasing scrutiny of technology’s role in everything from policing to politics, “ethics” had become an industry safe word, but no one seemed to agree on what those “ethics” were. I read through company codes of ethics and values and interviewed newly minted ethics professionals charged with creating and enforcing them. Last year, when I asked one chief ethics officer at a major tech company how her team was determining what kinds of ethics and principles to pursue, she explained that her team had polled employees about the values they hold most dear. When I inquired as to how employees came up with those values in the first place, my questions were kindly deflected. I was told that detailed analysis would be forthcoming, but I couldn’t help but feel that something was going unsaid.

So I started looking for people who were saying the silent part out loud. Over the past year, I’ve spoken with dozens of people like Mr. Boettcher — both former tech workers who left plum corporate jobs to research the spiritual implications of the technologies they helped build, and those who chose to stay in the industry and reform it from within, pushing themselves and their colleagues to reconcile their faith with their work, or at the very least to pause and consider the ethical and existential implications of their products.

Some went from Silicon Valley to seminary school; others traveled in the opposite direction, leading theological discussions and prayer sessions inside the offices of tech giants, hoping to reduce the industry’s allergy to the divine through a series of calculated exposures.

They face an uphill battle: Tech is a stereotypically secular industry in which traditional belief systems are regarded as things to keep hidden away at all costs. A scene from the HBO series “Silicon Valley” satirized this cultural aversion: “You can be openly polyamorous, and people here will call you brave. You can put microdoses of LSD in your cereal, and people will call you a pioneer,” one character says after the chief executive of his company outs another tech worker as a believer. “But the one thing you cannot be is a Christian.”

Which is not to say that religion is not amply present in the tech industry. Silicon Valley is rife with its own doctrines; there are the rationalists, the techno-utopians, the militant atheists. Many technologists seem to prefer to consecrate their own religions rather than ascribe to the old ones, discarding thousands of years of humanistic reasoning and debate along the way.

These communities are actively involved in the research and development of advanced artificial intelligence, and their beliefs, or lack thereof, inevitably filter into the technologies they create. It is difficult not to remark upon the fact that many of those beliefs, such as that advanced artificial intelligence could destroy the known world, or that humanity is destined to colonize Mars, are no less leaps of faith than believing in a kind and loving God.

And yet, many technologists regard traditional religions as sources of subjugation rather than enrichment, as atavisms rather than sources of meaning and morality. Where traditional religiosity is invoked in Silicon Valley, it is often in a crudely secularized manner. Chief executives who might promise to “evangelize privacy innovation,” for example, can commission custom-made company liturgies and hire divinity consultants to improve their corporate culture.

Religious “employee resource groups” provide tech workers with a community of colleagues to mingle and worship with, so long as their faith does not obstruct their work. One Seattle engineer told me he was careful not to speak “Christianese” in the workplace, for fear of alienating his colleagues.

Spirituality, whether pursued via faithfulness, tradition or sheer exploration, is a way of connecting with something larger than oneself. It is perhaps no surprise that tech companies have discovered that they can be that “something” for their employees. Who needs God when we’ve got Google?

The rise of pseudo-sacred industry practices stems in large part from a greater sense of awareness, among tech workers, of the harms and dangers of artificial intelligence, and the growing public appetite to hold Silicon Valley to account for its creations. Over the past several years, scholarly research has exposed the racist and discriminatory assumptions baked into machine-learning algorithms. The 2016 presidential election — and the political cycles that have followed — showed how social media algorithms can be easily exploited. Advances in artificial intelligence are transforming labor, politics, land, language and space. Rising demand for computing power means more lithium mining, more data centers and more carbon emissions; sharper image classification algorithms mean stronger surveillance capabilities — which can lead to intrusions of privacy and false arrests based on faulty face recognition — and a wider variety of military applications.

A.I. is already embedded in our everyday lives: It influences which streets we walk down, which clothes we buy, which articles we read, who we date and where and how we choose to live. It is ubiquitous, yet it remains obscured, invoked all too often as an otherworldly, almost godlike invention, rather than the product of an iterative series of mathematical equations.

“At the end of the day, A.I. is just a lot of math. It’s just a lot, a lot of math,” one tech worker told me. It is intelligence by brute force, and yet it is spoken of as if it were semidivine. “A.I. systems are seen as enchanted, beyond the known world, yet deterministic in that they discover patterns that can be applied with predictive certainty to everyday life,” Kate Crawford, a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research, wrote in her recent book “Atlas of AI.”

These systems sort the world and all its wonders into an endless series of codable categories. In this sense, machine learning and religion might be said to operate according to similarly dogmatic logics: “One of the fundamental functions of A.I. is to create groups and to create categories, and then to do things with those categories,” Mr. Boettcher told me. Traditionally, religions have worked the same way. “You’re either in the group or you’re out of the group,” he said. You are either saved or damned, #BlessedByTheAlgorithm or #Cursed by it.

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Russia Expert Angela Stent"As Long as Russia Has 6,000 Nuclear Warheads, It Will Remain a Threat"

How great is the risk for the West after the decision to send tanks to Ukraine? In an interview, Russia expert and former U.S. government adviser Angela Stent discusses German weapons deliveries to Kyiv and the mistakes made in dealing with Moscow.

Spiegel interview conducted by René Pfister in Washington, D.C.

January 30, 2023

Angela Stent, born in 1947, is one of the leading Russia experts in the United States. She worked in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department and served on the National Intelligence Council, the interface between security services and policymakers, during George W. Bush’s presidency. She taught as a professor for many years at Georgetown University and is currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington.

The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 5/2023 (January 27th, 2023) of DER SPIEGEL.

DER SPIEGEL: Ms. Stent, the war against Ukraine is entering into its second year, with hundreds of villages and towns destroyed and tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians dead or injured. How might this war end?

Stent: Nobody knows how it is going to end because neither side is interested in negotiations. The Russians still think they can control all of Ukraine. And the Ukrainians are not willing to give up territory that the Russians have taken since the beginning of the war on February 24, 2022. In that sense, we are further away from a peace agreement than ever before.

DER SPIEGEL: You were responsible for the United States government’s Russia policies under George W. Bush. If you had to negotiate a peace agreement today, how would you proceed?

Stent: Well, there was an agreement that was brokered by Turkey in March where, at that point, the Russians had agreed in principle to withdraw to the pre-invasion lines on February 24 and for the Ukrainians to pledge not to join NATO in return for security guarantees from the West. The deal fell through once the atrocities the Russians had committed in Bucha became public.

"Russia has broken every agreement it had signed with Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union that had to do with Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty."

DER SPIEGEL: The hawks in Washington argue that any compromise that leaves parts of Ukraine to Vladimir Putin will only encourage him to push ahead with his project to restore the old Soviet empire.

Stent: I would agree with that in principle. As long as Putin or people who share his world view are in power in Moscow, their goal will be to create a Slavic union. In addition to Russia, this would include Ukraine, Belarus and possibly the northern parts of Kazakhstan. Russia has broken every agreement it had signed with Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union that had to do with Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. So, who is to believe that Russia will abide by a new peace agreement? That’s the dilemma.

DER SPIEGEL: The U.S. and Germany have agreed  to supply heavy battle tanks to Ukraine. Is this a turning point?

Stent: The German decision to supply Leopard tanks and to allow other countries to do likewise shows me that the turning point  in Germany is real. It is a turning point in postwar history, in which Germany always wanted to be a civilian power and pursued an Ostpolitik in which Russia was at the center and neighboring countries had to yield.

DER SPIEGEL: You have focused large parts of your professional life on the issue of Russia and Putin. Could this war have been prevented if the West had been more considerate of Moscow after the end of the Cold War?

Stent: We have to understand that Putin has never really accepted that the Soviet Union collapsed. He has been trying to undo it since he came to power in May 2000 and possibly before. The Soviet Union was never defeated in a war. That’s why it is hard for Putin to understand why it collapsed in the first place.

Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin: "We have to understand that Putin has never really accepted that the Soviet Union collapsed."

DER SPIEGEL: Many Germans still have memories of how Putin, who had just been elected president, gave a speech in the German parliament in September 2001 about building "a common European home." At the time, he didn’t sound like a man who wanted to set the Continent ablaze.

Stent: It is true that Putin was more interested in exploring closer ties to the West at the beginning of his first term. The Bundestag speech is an example of this, but so is his support for the U.S. after the September 11, 2001, attacks. The only problem was that Putin expected the West to accept that Russia had a right to establish a sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space. Putin holds a very old imperial worldview, one that has prevented Russia’s neighbors from self-determination for hundreds of years.

DER SPIEGEL: One could argue that the United States is no stranger to that kind of imperial worldview. President John F. Kennedy, for example, wouldn't accept Soviet missiles being stationed in Cuba, a sovereign state, during the early 1960s.

Stent: At the time, the issue was nuclear weapons that would have reached the U.S. within minutes. Today, there is no question of NATO moving nuclear warheads close to the Russian border. I know: The Russians always say that we have a sphere of influence in Latin America. That may have been true in the past. But today? Just look at Mexico, one of our closest partners. Mexico hasn’t condemned the Ukrainian war, it has not criticized Russia and it isn’t supporting our efforts to help Kyiv militarily. It doesn’t sound like the country is a vassal of Washington.

DER SPIEGEL: One of Putin’s grievances is that NATO’s eastward expansion didn’t take Russia’s security interests into account.

Stent: This is a myth that Putin is spreading. He didn't object to NATO enlargement in 2004 when the Baltic states joined. He also hasn’t intervened even now that Finland and Sweden have applied to join NATO. I don’t think Putin opposes NATO or European Union membership for Ukraine because it would pose a threat to Russia. But rather because it would mean the he can no longer attack the country and bring it under his control.

DER SPIEGEL: At the NATO summit in 2008, then-U.S. President George W. Bush wanted to adopt a Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and Georgia that would show the two countries a clear roadmap for NATO membership. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor at the time, vetoed it. Was that the seed of the disaster we are experiencing today?

"Putin is always about intimidation."

Stent: It was certainly a big mistake that, as a result of Merkel’s veto, a communiqué was adopted that talked about NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, and no concrete action followed. It was a compromise that only made things worse. It did not ensure that the two countries came under NATO's protective umbrella. It also riled the Russians, who invaded Georgia shortly after.

DER SPIEGEL: Following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, then-U.S. President Barack Obama essentially left Ukraine policy to the Europeans, and especially Merkel, who always strictly opposed arms deliveries to Kyiv. Was this an invitation to Putin to escalate the conflict even further?

Stent: The Obama administration certainly should have reacted more decisively when Russia annexed Crimea and invaded the Donbas. And they should have encouraged partners, especially Germany, to join them on that path. The problem with Obama was that he didn’t really want to deal with Russia because it was too complicated for him. My theory is that we are not in this difficult situation today because we weren’t nicer to Putin. On the contrary: It’s because we didn’t push back in 2014. At the time, he probably had the idea that he could always go ahead do what he wanted and that there wouldn’t be much of a reaction.

DER SPIEGEL: The U.S. is by far Ukraine’s biggest supporter. Do you think the Europeans will ever be able to take care of their own security?

Stent: The war has shown how dependent Europeans still are on the U.S. For me, the question is this: Do they even want to change that? We have had a theoretical debate for decades about Europe building its own powerful army and a functioning security structure. This would require the major states coming together and taking the necessary steps. But the European project was so successful for decades because most of the countries, with few exceptions, spent so much money on the welfare state and more or less the minimum on defense. As long as that’s the case, they will continue to depend on the U.S.

"We live in a globalized world. It is a fallacy to think we can retreat to a Fortress U.S.A. when Europe is on fire."

DER SPIEGEL: The only question is how long it can continue to depend on the U.S. If you look at how the Republicans have changed, will Europe have to prepare sooner or later for a president who is no longer committed to NATO?

Stent: We already had that once with Donald Trump. There is a more traditional part of the Republican Party – which includes, for example, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, that is unwavering in its support for NATO. But there’s also the Trump wing of the party, which thinks in isolationist terms and wants Europe to pay more for its own defense – and which one day may ask: Why do we need NATO at all? I would also count Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who likely wants to become the Republican presidential candidate, among this wing.

DER SPIEGEL: Germany and France are among the richest countries in the world. Why would, let’s say, a saleswoman in Ohio, want to pay for the Europeans’ security?

Stent: In the course of the 20th century, the U.S. twice tried to stay out of wars in Europe. And twice that did not work. We live in a globalized world. It is a fallacy to think we can retreat to a Fortress U.S.A. when Europe is on fire.

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Image: Germán & Co

The administration of Gabriel Boric shocks

Good news for the government budget: Chile's 1.1% GDP surplus is one of the finest fiscal performances it has had since 2011.

Today Diferent sources

The Chilean Government had a welcome news following the latest Fiscal Execution report which detailed that the country achieved a positive fiscal balance by reaching a surplus of 1.1% of GDP, being one of the best figures in the matter since 2011.

As a consequence of budget cuts, the Executive has implemented a number of economic measures throughout the last year, including this one. Consequently, public expenditures decreased by 23.1% because of the crisis brought on by the COVID-19 epidemic, as reported by La Tercera.

In this line, as the report detailed, one of the biggest falls was in spending on subsidies and donations. In this sense, it fell by 45.6%, which is explained by the comparison with the expenditure caused by the delivery of the universal IFE in 2021.

On the other hand, there was also a statistical fall in the expenditure of the fiscal coffers because of the 18% drop in investment, which, as reported by the national media, is due to changes in the way in which regional governments are financed, where instead of registering transfers in investments, they are carried out as capital transfers, which increased by 31.3%.

The budget's surplus funds

To put this into perspective, the federal government has run a surplus of 1.1% of GDP over the last year. In the eyes of LT, this is the best national result since 2011.

Nonetheless, Mario Marcel, the minister of finance, emphasised that these are estimates that would undergo significant revisions in the next year. Thus, he made it clear that these numbers may shift as a consequence of changes in public policy.

Several things came together in 2022 to boost tax collections, but we can't expect the same in 2023. Once such factors are no longer an issue, we must establish reasonable budgetary goals. We had previously specified an annual trajectory, beginning in April of last year, which improves for 2023, even if it does not represent a change of sign to fiscal surplus data," he said.

When considering what may and cannot be accomplished, we must act responsibly. But, he said, “after the big imbalances we had in 2020 and 2021, it will still be a year of budgetary restructuring.

Russian diplomacy's anti-Semitic urge

Column

Le Monde by Jean-Pierre Filiu

Historian and professor at Sciences Po Paris

Published on January 30, 2023 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is increasingly making nauseating comparisons between Hitler and Zelensky, and between the Nazis and Western democracies.

“There are no hopeless situations, only hopeless people.”

Haaretz | Opinion

Opinion |

Shimon Peres Was One Holocaust-era Jew Whom anti-Semitism Didn't Scare

Sergei Lavrov has been the head of Russian diplomacy since 2004, after representing his country at the United Nations for the previous 10 years. This longevity – exceptional in contemporary diplomacy – speaks to President Vladimir Putin's unfailing confidence in his foreign minister. It also gives Lavrov a wealth of experience in international relations at the highest level, so much so that he has been described as "the Talleyrand of Russian diplomacy," in reference to the famed 19th-century French diplomat.

This makes it all the more shocking to now hear this seasoned diplomat making references to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to better discredit opponents of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Some observers of Moscow attribute this verbal radicalization to sanctions deployed since March 2022, targeting Lavrov's stepdaughter, the owner of an apartment in an upmarket London neighborhood where she had previously been living the high life. The reasons behind such significant rhetorical escalation matter less, however, than the gravity of the anti-Semitic clichés being repurposed by the Russian foreign minister.

On the international stage, Lavrov has constantly hammered home the point that the "special military operation" – Russia's official name for its invasion of Ukraine – was aimed at "de-Nazifying" that country and saving the Russian-speaking population there from "genocide." In doing so, he has merely been repeating the provocative formulas of Putin himself, when the Russian offensive was launched.

'Hitler also had Jewish blood'

But he went even further when, asked by an Italian television about the Jewish origins of the Ukrainian president, in May 2022, he retorted: "So what if Zelensky is Jewish? It doesn't change the presence of Nazi elements in Ukraine. It seems to me Hitler also had Jewish blood." He added: "Some of the worst anti-Semites are Jewish." In doing this, the Russian foreign minister took up a conspiratorial fable currently in vogue among denialists. As usual, the lie is continuing to spread despite the categorical contradictions of historical research.

Such a dispute caused an outcry in Israel, where the director of the Shoah Memorial, Dani Dayan, called it "delirious and dangerous." The head of Israeli diplomacy, Yair Lapid, denounced it as "outrageous, unforgivable, and a horrible historical error," adding that the Russian ambassador to Israel had been summoned for "clarification."

Far from making amends, Sergei Lavrov persisted in a statement from his ministry saying: "We have paid attention to Minister Lapid's anti-historical statements, which largely explain his government's decision to support the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv. Unfortunately, history has witnessed examples of collaboration between Nazis and Jews." Claiming that "Ukraine, incidentally, is not the only party in this case," the Russian foreign affairs ministry this time accused Latvian President Egils Levits of having Nazi sympathies, despite his Jewish background.

A new 'final solution'

About ten days ago, Lavrov launched a new diatribe against Western democracies. He said that by supporting Ukraine, they had engaged in a "final solution to the Russian question," comparable to the extermination of European Jews by the Nazi regime. "Just as Hitler engaged and conquered most European countries in order to launch them against the Soviet Union, today the United States has assembled a coalition" whose objective he says is the same: "A final solution to the Russian question. Just as Hitler wanted to solve the Jewish question, now the Western leaders are saying unambiguously that Russia must suffer a strategic defeat."

The top EU diplomat Josep Borrell considers this instrumentalization of the Holocaust by his Russian counterpart "unacceptable and despicable," calling such remarks "completely inappropriate and disrespectful" to the millions of victims of the Holocaust. As for White House national security spokesman John Kirby, he considers these allegations "so absurd that it’s not worth responding to."

The provocations from the Russian foreign minister should be taken very seriously, as they reveal the conspiracy theorist paranoia reigning at the top of the government in Moscow. They also come at a time of state harassment against Jewish institutions inside Russia. Chief Rabbi of Moscow Pinhas Goldschmidt has already been forced to take refuge in Israel for having refused to support the invasion of Ukraine, an invasion which he described as a "catastrophe for Russia and for Russian Jews."

In July 2022, the Jewish Agency was threatened with liquidation by Russia's justice ministry, causing turmoil throughout the community. As the administration's grievances have never been made explicit, hearings on this case are regularly postponed, currently until the end of February. In the face of such relentlessness, unprecedented since the fall of the USSR, the statements of Minister Lavrov are resonating ominously both inside and outside Russia

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Europe’s Economy Edges Higher, Heading Off Forecasts of Recession

The eurozone economy grew 0.1 percent late last year, a reflection of modestly rising optimism as energy prices have eased, but risks remain.

NYT by Eshe Nelson

Reporting from London

January 31, 2023

3 MIN READ

After a succession of crises, investors, economists and policymakers have begun grasping onto the brighter spots in Europe’s economy: a few weeks of warmer winter weather, lower natural gas prices, and an upturn in German investor sentiment.

Just a few months ago, governments were planning for power outages and gas rationing as the continent faced winter without Russian gas. Now, the headline rate of inflation appears to be at or past its peak and consumers have been surprisingly resilient to the economic turmoil.

“The big picture is less bad than we thought a few months ago,” said Frederik Ducrozet, the head of macroeconomic research at Pictet Wealth Management. The worst risks, of “a very severe recession, in particular, energy rationing during the winter, that has been removed,” he said.

For now, the imminent risk of recession has been forestalled. The eurozone economy grew 0.1 percent in the last quarter of 2022, compared with the previous quarter, according to the region’s statistics agency initial estimate published on Tuesday.

The latest data came hours after the International Monetary Fund raised its forecast for economic growth in the eurozone to 0.7 percent in 2023, from a prediction of 0.5 percent made in October. The small bump up was because the economy turned out better than expected last year, helped along by lower natural gas prices and government financial support to shield households from some of the rise in energy costs.

It was another small piece of good economic news to add to a modest pile. Already this month, the ZEW index of German investor sentiment turned positive for the first time since February 2022, before the war in Ukraine, and a measure of economic activity across the eurozone, the composite purchasing managers’ index, indicated that the economy was growing in January.

“The news has become much more positive in the last few weeks,” Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, said earlier this month at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

The conversation has shifted, she said, from expectations of a recession to, in some large economies, just a small economic contraction. However, she said the eurozone’s economy would significantly slow in 2023 from the previous year, adding “it’s not a brilliant year but it’s a lot better than we have feared.”

But with the war in Ukraine grinding on the optimism about Europe’s economy is extremely fragile.

The past year has been a “lesson in humility” when it comes to economic forecasting, said Mr. Ducrozet. He added that, looking at the data so far this year, “it doesn’t look so bad but it doesn’t look good either.”

On Monday, Germany reported that its economy unexpectedly contracted in the fourth quarter, putting Europe’s largest economy at risk of a recession.

This shows that “if there is a risk, it’s still the downside,” Mr. Ducrozet said. “Consumers were hit by the largest ever shock to real incomes since the Second World War because of this rise in inflation.”

This seems especially true in Britain, where earlier this month data showed the economy fared better than expected in November, eking out 0.1 percent of growth from the previous month. This means the country will probably avoiding an economic contraction over the fourth quarter, staving off a recession.

But that’s just for the time being. The outlook in Britain is particularly harsh and the I.M.F. downgraded its forecast for the economy, predicting a 0.6 percent decline in 2023, instead of 0.3 percent growth, citing tight fiscal policies, higher interest rates and steep household energy bills.

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News round-up, Monday, January 30, 2023

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Quote of the day…

Israel carried out drone attack on Iranian defense facility

The alleged strike comes while talks between Jerusalem and Washington are aimed at finding new ways to counter Tehran’s nuclear program

By The Time of Israel

The video of Tyre Nichols' fatal arrest reopens debate on police violence

The 29-year-old African-American man was beaten by Memphis police officers after being pulled over in a traffic stop. He died three days later. Video footage of his beating was released on Friday night.

By Le Monde

Russia’s new meddling in the Caucasus

Peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan is possible — but a Russia-backed oligarch is trying to stop it.

By POLITICO EU

Italy signs $8B gas deal with Libya

European countries have sought to replace Russian gas with energy supplies from North Africa and other sources.

By POLITICO EU

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Seafloat-hybrid-power-plant

Armando Rodriguez, Seaboard CEO for the Dominican Republic, concludes: 

 “We are very excited about this project because it will be a big benefit to the community in terms of the environment and the employment we will provide to the area.

Seaboard Dominican Republic

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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What is Artificial Intelligency?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. Although there are no AIs that can perform the wide variety of tasks an ordinary human can do, some AIs can match humans in specific tasks.

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Illustration by Fran Pulido created with Midjourney

El País

Barack Obama, Neural Nets, Self-Driving Cars & The Future of the World…

IT’S HARD TO think of a single technology that will shape our world more in the next 50 years than artificial intelligence. As machine learning enables our computers to teach themselves, a wealth of breakthroughs emerge, ranging from medical diagnostics to cars that drive themselves. A whole lot of worry emerges as well. Who controls this technology? Will it take over our jobs? Is it dangerous? President Obama was eager to address these concerns. The person he wanted to talk to most about them? Entrepreneur and MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito. So I sat down with them in the White House to sort through the hope, the hype, and the fear around AI. That and maybe just one quick question about Star Trek. —SCOTT DADICH

www.wired.com/2016/10/president-obama-mit-joi-ito-interview/

Illustration by Fran Pulido created with Midjourney

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David Ben-Gurion

“If I could choose between peace and all the territories that we conquered last year [in the Six-Day War], I would prefer peace.” (He made exceptions for Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.)

The May 1948 Vote that Made the State of Israel » Mosaic (mosaicmagazine.com)

ISRAELI TV: SITE WAS SHAHED-136 DRONE PRODUCTION FACILITY

Report: Israel carried out drone attack on Iranian defense facility

The alleged strike comes while talks between Jerusalem and Washington are aimed at finding new ways to counter Tehran’s nuclear program

By TOI STAFF, 29 January 2023

Screen grab from an unverified video circulating on social media said to show explosion at a defense facility in Iran's Isfahan after an alleged drone strike, January 28, 2023. (Used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

Israel was behind a Saturday night drone attack that struck a defense facility in the Iranian city of Isfahan, according to a Sunday report.

The Wall Street Journal cited US officials and people familiar with the matter to say Jerusalem directed the strike. The report could not be independently confirmed.

Israel’s Channel 12 news reported Sunday that the site was a weapons production facility for Iran’s killer Shahed-136 drones and that the attack drones in operation were launched from an area near the site by “highly-skilled” operators who knew their target well. The unsourced report said the attack incorporated high-quality intelligence and technological ability.

Iran has been selling Shahed-136 drones to Russia for its use in the nearly year-long war on Ukraine. The “kamikaze” drones have been deployed to attack Ukrainian civilian sites and critical infrastructure facilities since September.

Iran has claimed air defenses were able to intercept some of the attacking drones, while others caused only minor damage. Some news reports, including in Israeli media, indicated the damage was more severe. Video allegedly from the scene showed large blasts.

While official reports in Iran pointed to one blast resulting from the strike, opposition Iranian news outlet Iran International cited eyewitnesses as saying that they saw three or four explosions.

The adjacent Space Research Center was sanctioned by the United States for developing the country’s ballistic-missile program, the report said.

The WSJ report noted the timing of the reported strike, coming at the same time that talks between Jerusalem and Washington are aimed at finding new ways to counter Tehran’s nuclear program.

Iran condemned the attack, calling it “cowardly,” and accused Iran’s enemies of trying to sow insecurity in the Islamic Republic.

“This cowardly act was carried out today as part of the efforts made by enemies of the Iranian nation in recent months to make the Islamic Republic insecure,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Sunday at a press conference with his visiting Qatari counterpart, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani.

“Such measures cannot affect the will and intention of our specialists for peaceful nuclear developments,” he added.

The US recently indicated that it would be taking a more aggressive approach toward Tehran, including on its drone supply program to Russia.

The Biden administration has also signaled that it had abandoned the possibility of reviving a deal with Iran over its nuclear program, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which then-US president Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018. Trump then instituted a “maximum pressure” sanctions regime, targeting various Iranian sectors, leading Tehran to respond by expanding its nuclear program in violation of the JCPOA.

Iran’s cooperation with Russia in the latter’s invasion of Ukraine and the anti-regime protests that have swept Iran since mid-September and have led Tehran to respond with a violent crackdown on protesters have also played a role in Washington’s more assertive approach.

Last week, Israel and the US kicked off a large-scale joint exercise in Israel and over the eastern Mediterranean Sea, reportedly aimed at showing adversaries, such as Iran, that Washington is not too distracted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and threats from China to mobilize a large military force.

Netanyahu, who during his last term as premier ordered numerous strikes on Iranian targets in Syria and operations on Iranian soil, has been open about his intention to oppose Tehran’s nuclear aspirations at any cost, as Israel generally considers an Iranian nuclear bomb as a near existential threat.

In November, a longtime ally of Netanyahu said in an interview that he believed the prime minister would order a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities if the US does not secure a new nuclear deal with Tehran and fails to take action itself in the near future.

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The video of Tyre Nichols' fatal arrest reopens debate on police violence

The 29-year-old African-American man was beaten by Memphis police officers after being pulled over in a traffic stop. He died three days later. Video footage of his beating was released on Friday night.

By Piotr Smolar (Washington (United States) correspondent)

Published on January 28, 2023

Le Monde

"Mom, Mom, Mom," Tyre Nichols called out in a desperate, high-pitched rattle. The 29-year-old African-American father was viciously beaten by police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, on the evening of January 7 as he drove home. He died three days later in hospital as a result of his injuries.

On Friday, January 27, the local authorities published a long montage of videos showing almost the entire arrest, sending a shock wave through the city and attracting the attention of the national media channels.

Two separate incidents were documented by police body cams and video surveillance cameras. In the first, Nichols was subjected to a botched restraint attempt after being pulled from his vehicle, without resistance but with totally disproportionate violence and a lot of cursing. "I'm just trying to get home." Scared, he managed to escape on foot.

He was found in a second location, a deserted street, at around 8:30 p.m. Initially held by two police officers, the victim was sprayed with pepper gas, kicked and punched, then hit with a telescopic baton. He was picked up to be hit in the head. Then Nichols was left handcuffed on the ground, prone, and dragged to a car. The minutes ticked by. Almost as shocking as the violence is the indifference of the police officers to the victim's distress, the stunning inhumanity.

Impunity of some police forces

Although they have been released, the five Black police officers involved were fired and charged with offenses including second-degree murder, aggravated assault and kidnapping. "They are all responsible," said local prosecutor Steve Mulroy, although their specific roles in the beating varied. "Where was their humanity? They beat my son like a piñata," his grieving mother said on CNN. Nichols was an avid skateboarder and loved photography.

Authorities decided not to release the video until Friday night at 7 pm, creating a sort of mournful countdown on the news channels. City Police Chief Cerelyn Davis explained that by early evening, businesses would be closed and children would be back home safely. This shows how concerned they were about the impact of these stunning images, which also justified the speed of the action against the culprits, who were members of a SCORPION team, formed specially to fight violent street crime.

The representatives of the local Black community claim that this group was accustomed to committing verbal and physical abuse. There is no clear racial dimension to this crime, but it highlights the impunity that plagues some police departments, beyond the classic individual abuses. "It's the police culture," lawyer Ben Crump charged on Friday, on behalf of the victim's family, which is calling for the dismantling of the SCORPION unit in the municipal police force, which has around 1,900 members.

According to Davis, the officers cited "driving recklessly" by Nichols as the reason for the stop, but no traffic cameras have confirmed this. The outburst of violence and the collective spiral of events remain inexplicable. The police chief also noted the "delay" in first aid administered by paramedics, after "several minutes" on the scene. Two firefighters have been suspended.

Fear of an explosion of popular anger

"We've never seen justice so swift, praised Ben Crump, attorney for the family. "We have the model for the future. (...) You can't tell us anymore that we have to wait six months or a year." The speed of the local authorities' action is explained by the fear of an explosion of popular anger in urban riots like those which followed the death of George Floyd, killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis (Minnesota) in August 2020.

The shadow of Rodney King also hangs over this case. In 1991, after a car chase, this man was beaten by officers in Los Angeles, California, while a witness filmed the scene. Major riots followed, causing dozens of deaths and spectacular destruction.

On Thursday afternoon, the White House issued a statement expressing condolences and calling for calm. "Outrage is understandable, but violence is never acceptable. Violence is destructive and against the law. It has no place in peaceful protests seeking justice." Two of the president's advisers held a video conference with elected officials from major cities that could be affected by the popular outrage.

There are nearly 18,000 different police forces in the United States, the overwhelming majority of which are very small. The lack of national consistency in response patterns, or even in statistical reporting, is a long-standing problem. The Washington Post has put together a database of the victims of police violence since 2015. A total of 1,110 people have been shot in just the last 12 months.

The qualified immunity doctrine protects police officers

Since George Floyd's death, dozens of states and many cities have reviewed stop-and-frisk techniques, including the use of dashboard cameras. At the federal level, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act remains stalled in Congress. It followed a similar line, modifying the legal protection of police officers and creating a national registry of complaints of mistreatment by law enforcement agencies.

"To deliver real change, we must have accountability when law enforcement officers violate their oaths," Biden wrote in his statement, after speaking on Friday with Nichols' mother and stepfather.

In October 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of accused police officers in two cases of violence, upholding the doctrine of qualified immunity, which protects police from most legal claims. The doctrine requires plaintiffs to show not only that the officers violated a constitutional right, but also that case law exists on the issue. Police unions and management believe that this is a necessary safeguard to allow officers in the field to make quick decisions.

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Source: Russian peacekeepers patrol the Lachin corridor, POLITICO EU

Russia’s new meddling in the Caucasus

Peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan is possible — but a Russia-backed oligarch is trying to stop it.

By Maurizio Geri

January 30, 2023

POLITICO EU

Maurizio Geri is a former analyst on the Middle East and North Africa at the NATO Allied Command. He was also previously an analyst for the Italian Defence General Staff.

Throughout history, European powers have often descended upon the Prague Castle in the Czech Republic to sign peace treaties and end conflicts. It is where the German Brothers’ War was settled in the 19th century, and where the Peace of Prague pathed the way for an end to the Thirty Years’ War — perhaps the most destructive conflict in Europe’s long and bloody history.

Last autumn, the castle’s medieval halls served as a crucial backdrop once more, this time for the first ever summit of the European Political Community. And one of the main items on the agenda were talks aimed at ushering in a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan to finally bring the three-decades-long dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh to a lasting resolution.

At the summit, peace seemed more attainable than ever, as Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev confirmed they would recognize each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, adopting the United Nations’ Alma Ata 1991 Declaration as the basis for border delimitation discussions.

This is significant, as up until that point, Armenia’s leadership had never recognized Karabakh as the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan. But despite such crucial progress, reality has, of course, proven more complicated. And though peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan is still possible, there’s now a new obstacle standing in the way — and it’s backed by Russia.

Before reclaiming much of its lost territory in a rapid, six week-long war in 2020, Azerbaijan was cut off from Karabakh for 24 years, as an Armenian military presence turned the region into a parastate backed by Yerevan. And since the end of hostilities, Baku has moved quickly to reintegrate the region, with vast sums invested into a massive mine-removal operation, and so far, the first 200 families from among the 600,000 Azeris internally displaced from the first war have already begun returning.

Bringing closure to the Azeris, who were victims of the First Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the 1990s is a priority for Baku — however, there’s also a need to accommodate and integrate the region’s large ethnic Armenian population, as there can otherwise be no lasting peace.

Karabakh may be Azerbaijani territory, but a significant majority of its current residents identify as Armenian, and today, they are living in a unilaterally declared independent exclave within Karabakh, which illegally seceded from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. This breakaway state has never been recognized by a single member of the international community — including Armenia itself. But after three decades of self-rule, Karabakh’s Armenians are now worried about their future status as an ethnic minority in Azerbaijan.

Assuaging these concerns and guaranteeing the rights, security and religious and cultural freedoms of ethnic Armenians was a key aim of the Prague talks — and significant advancements were made. But then, just a month later, the mood changed dramatically following an intervention by Russian-Armenian oligarch Ruben Vardanyan.

Born in Yerevan, Vardanyan made his riches in Russia during the decade of gangster capitalism following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Described as the “father of the Russian stock market,” he cut his teeth in investment banking before going on to sit on the boards of some of Russia’s biggest companies, many of which now find themselves on Western sanction lists.

Departing his birthplace in 1985, Vardanyan lived in Moscow for many years before suddenly renouncing his Russian citizenship last November and relocating to Karabakh, becoming the region’s de-facto state minister. The oligarch showed scant interest in Karabakh before this point, but he’d clearly spotted an opportunity to earn a profit: Two long-dormant gold mines reopened mere weeks after his arrival.

Indeed, the timing of Vardanyan’s arrival was peculiar. He came just as Azerbaijan was set to begin talks with the region’s Armenian leadership, who had sent signals to Baku’s negotiators that they recognized their future lay as a protected minority inside Azerbaijan. But now, with Vardanyan as leader, their stance has become obstructionist — the oligarch and the government in Yerevan are publicly opposing each other.

The worry is that Vardanyan will now use this influence to turn public opinion among Karabakh’s Armenian community against peace, which would be disastrous for the interests of both Baku and Yerevan.

It raises the question: How did Vardanyan suddenly become so influential in Karabakh, and who helped him get to this position?

The two main regional powers active in the South Caucasus are Turkey and Russia. The former is a firm ally of Azerbaijan, and while the latter has traditionally backed Armenia, Pashinyan has been public in his criticisms of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization for failing to provide his country with sufficient support — a move that can be read as an indirect criticism of the Kremlin.

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Italy signs $8B gas deal with Libya

European countries have sought to replace Russian gas with energy supplies from North Africa and other sources.

By Jones Hayden

January 28, 2023

POLITICO EU

Italy signed an $8 billion gas deal with Libya on Saturday as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited the North African country for talks on energy and migration.

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago, Italy and other European countries have sought to replace Russian gas with energy supplies from North Africa and other sources.

Saturday's agreement was signed by Libya's National Oil Corp. and Italy's Eni. The two companies said they will invest $8 billion in gas development, as well as in solar power and carbon capture, Reuters reported.

The natural-gas deal between the two countries is the largest single investment in Libya’s energy sector in more than two decades, the Associated Press reported.

Eni Chief Executive Claudio Descalzi has been a vocal backer of Europe turning to Africa to help address its energy supply needs.

Earlier this week, Meloni visited Algeria, Italy’s main gas supplier, where Eni and Algerian state-owned energy firm Sonatrach signed a new collaboration agreement aimed at shoring up energy security and boosting efforts to cut carbon emissions. Algeria last year became one of Italy’s top strategic partners after it replaced Russia as the European country's largest energy provider.