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How The New Cold War Solved Global-Warming

How The New Cold War Solved Global-Warming

Authored by Nick Hubble via FortuneAndFreedom.com,

Is Russia really worse than climate change?

Good…

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How The New Cold War Solved Global-Warming

Authored by Nick Hubble via FortuneAndFreedom.com,

Is Russia really worse than climate change?

Good news, everyone. Vladimir Putin has single-handedly solved the problem of climate change. How? By invading Ukraine. To understand, let me take you back in time, to when a white policeman ended the pandemic…

Do you remember any significant event taking place in 2020?

Let me help you.

It was the year when the issue of racism in the United States became so important that it triggered a global protest movement. A white policeman killed a black man during an arrest, sparking international chaos and a global movement.

Well, believe it or not, that was also the year a pandemic began. But you wouldn’t know it from reading the news or health advice at the time of the George Floyd arrest. The pandemic was simply suspended to make way for the issue of racism. Black Lives Matter suddenly mattered more than saving the NHS.

Public health officials who had demanded we remain in our homes suddenly advocated gathering in large groups.

Medical experts who told us to limit our breathing recommended screaming at one other.

Advocating for social distancing was replaced with excuses for anti-social behaviour.

Well, it’s the same with Russia and climate change today.

Our attempt to punish Russia’s economy for the invasion of Ukraine has taken precedence over saving the planet.

The shift is equally swift and absolute.

The Germans are so desperate to avoid Russian gas and Russian pipelines that they are felling their own windmills to get at the coal underneath.

United States President Joe Biden is demanding oil companies produce more of what was the world’s most perilous substance before February – oil. He’s even releasing the dangerous stuff from the government’s reserves, presumably to try and fight the coming Russian winter with a little more global warming.

It’s not just the politicians. Bloomberg uncovered that business executives are already trying to hide their efforts to save the planet:

“Survey findings suggest that the stigma of so-called greenwashing is so feared that corporate executives will do anything to avoid being accused of it.”

Greenwashing and greenhushing have taken over from ESG as the themes most covered by the media. In case you didn’t know, because I didn’t, greenhushing is the practice of keeping your company’s environmental efforts secret to avoid any scrutiny.

How’s that for a shift!? From virtue-signalling PR stunts to undercover gardening in the space of a few months. Why? Because we need more energy to fight Putin, not less energy to fight climate change.

Are politicians urging you to shorten your cold showers to save polar bears and the Great Barrier Reef, or to stick it to Putin?

Are pipelines top of the news because of carbon or Crimea?

Are utilities commandeering thermostats to reduce emissions or save gas supplies?

In case advocating for fossil fuels to destroy the planet isn’t virtuous enough, these days, it’s acceptable to risk nuclear Armageddon just to look tough on Russia. Heck, the crazy Germans are keeping their nuclear power plants open, risking another Chernobyl, just to avoid a bit more Russian gas!

But the change has been social, too. Drivers are dragging protestors off their anti-emissions roadblocks. Defacing art is no longer considered acceptable for those trying to save the planet (unless the artwork is a sculpture of someone right-wing and racist). And some marketing genius at Porsche just came up with an absolute masterstroke:

‘Nine of us glued to the floor and some of us on hunger strike until our demands to decarbonise the German transport sector are met.

[Porsche] told us that they supported our right to protest, but they refused our request to provide us with a bowl to urinate and defecate in a decent manner while we are glued, and have turned off the heating.’

It makes me warm inside. Only the Children’s Crusade ended more ignobly than that.

The shifts we’ve seen would have seemed impossible just months ago, when saving the planet was considered more important than fighting Russia. How naïve we were.

But all this must beg the question for all the enthusiastic idealogues gluing themselves to the latest natural element non grata: what if they’re just a bunch of useful idiots?

What if the anti-Russia craze is just another financial fad designed to make politicians more powerful, the wealthy richer, conglomerates cosier and you more compliant?

We’ve seen a lot of financial fads play out over the past few decades. Tech stocks, house prices, bonds and plenty more assets all went the way of the Grand old Duke of York – all the way up, and all the way back down again. But it’s looking like climate change is the latest bubble to burst, and it’s replaced by the issue of Russia.

Of course, it’s understandable. As American philosopher Eric Hoffer famously wrote, “Every great cause starts as a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

We don’t need to guess where we were at in that sequence back in 2021. Green tech investors made off like bandits. I watched them, jealously. But, as every good communist knows, after the racket come the consequences.

In 2022, the winds began to change. The green tech bubble imploded quite badly. Coal and oil stocks boomed instead as the Russia narrative delivered stock returns.

What will 2023 bring? What racket will replace the “Russia” one?

It depends on who or what we all decide to obsess about. Or what the media, social media, and politicians decide we should obsess about.

But one thing’s for sure. Vladimir Putin will suddenly matter a lot less, just as saving the planet is unpopular today.

Tyler Durden Thu, 12/29/2022 - 05:45

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Fighting the Surveillance State Begins with the Individual

It’s a well-known fact at this point that in the United States and most of the so-called free countries that there is a robust surveillance state in…

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It’s a well-known fact at this point that in the United States and most of the so-called free countries that there is a robust surveillance state in place, collecting data on the entire populace. This has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by people like Edward Snowden, a National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower who exposed that the NSA was conducting mass surveillance on US citizens and the world as a whole. The NSA used applications like those from Prism Systems to piggyback on corporations and the data collection their users had agreed to in the terms of service. Google would scan all emails sent to a Gmail address to use for personalized advertising. The government then went to these companies and demanded the data, and this is what makes the surveillance state so interesting. Neo-Marxists like Shoshana Zuboff have dubbed this “surveillance capitalism.” In China, the mass surveillance is conducted at a loss. Setting up closed-circuit television cameras and hiring government workers to be a mandatory editorial staff for blogs and social media can get quite expensive. But if you parasitically leech off a profitable business practice it means that the surveillance state will turn a profit, which is a great asset and an even greater weakness for the system. You see, when that is what your surveillance state is predicated on you’ve effectively given your subjects an opt-out button. They stop using services that spy on them. There is software and online services that are called “open source,” which refers to software whose code is publicly available and can be viewed by anyone so that you can see exactly what that software does. The opposite of this, and what you’re likely already familiar with, is proprietary software. Open-source software generally markets itself as privacy respecting and doesn’t participate in data collection. Services like that can really undo the tricky situation we’ve found ourselves in. It’s a simple fact of life that when the government is given a power—whether that be to regulate, surveil, tax, or plunder—it is nigh impossible to wrestle it away from the state outside somehow disposing of the state entirely. This is why the issue of undoing mass surveillance is of the utmost importance. If the government has the power to spy on its populace, it will. There are people, like the creators of The Social Dilemma, who think that the solution to these privacy invasions isn’t less government but more government, arguing that data collection should be taxed to dissuade the practice or that regulation needs to be put into place to actively prevent abuses. This is silly to anyone who understands the effect regulations have and how the internet really works. You see, data collection is necessary. You can’t have email without some elements of data collection because it’s simply how the protocol functions. The issue is how that data is stored and used. A tax on data collection itself will simply become another cost of doing business. A large company like Google can afford to pay a tax. But a company like Proton Mail, a smaller, more privacy-respecting business, likely couldn’t. Proton Mail’s business model is based on paid subscriptions. If there were additional taxes imposed on them, it’s possible that they would not be able to afford the cost and would be forced out of the market. To reiterate, if one really cares about the destruction of the surveillance state, the first step is to personally make changes to how you interact with online services and to whom you choose to give your data.

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Stock Market Today: Stocks turn higher as Treasury yields retreat; big tech earnings up next

A pullback in Treasury yields has stocks moving higher Monday heading into a busy earnings week and a key 2-year bond auction later on Tuesday.

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Updated at 11:52 am EDT U.S. stocks turned higher Monday, heading into the busiest earnings week of the year on Wall Street, amid a pullback in Treasury bond yields that followed the first breach of 5% for 10-year notes since 2007. Investors, however, continue to track developments in Israel's war with Hamas, which launched its deadly attack from Gaza three weeks ago, as leaders around the region, and the wider world, work to contain the fighting and broker at least a form of cease-fire. Humanitarian aid is also making its way into Gaza, through the territory's border with Egypt, as officials continue to work for the release of more than 200 Israelis taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7 attack. Those diplomatic efforts eased some of the market's concern in overnight trading, but the lingering risk that regional adversaries such as Iran, or even Saudi Arabia, could be drawn into the conflict continues to blunt risk appetite. Still, the U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six global currencies and acts as the safe-haven benchmark in times of market turmoil, fell 0.37% in early New York trading 105.773, suggesting some modest moves into riskier assets. The Japanese yen, however, eased past the 150 mark in overnight dealing, a level that has some traders awaiting intervention from the Bank of Japan and which may have triggered small amounts of dollar sales and yen purchases. In the bond market, benchmark 10-year note yields breached the 5% mark in overnight trading, after briefly surpassing that level late last week for the first time since 2007, but were last seen trading at 4.867% ahead of $141 billion in 2-year, 5-year and 7-year note auctions later this week. Global oil prices were also lower, following two consecutive weekly gains that has take Brent crude, the global pricing benchmark, firmly past $90 a barrel amid supply disruption concerns tied to the middle east conflict. Brent contracts for December delivery were last seen $1.06 lower on the session at $91.07 per barrel while WTI futures contract for the same month fell $1.36 to $86.72 per barrel. Market volatility gauges were also active, with the CBOE Group's VIX index hitting a fresh seven-month high of $23.08 before easing to $20.18 later in the session. That level suggests traders are expecting ranges on the S&P 500 of around 1.26%, or 53 points, over the next month. A busy earnings week also indicates the likelihood of elevated trading volatility, with 158 S&P 500 companies reporting third quarter earnings over the next five days, including mega cap tech names such as Google parent Alphabet  (GOOGL) - Get Free Report, Microsoft  (MSFT) - Get Free Report, retail and cloud computing giant Amazon  (AMZN) - Get Free Report and Facebook owner Meta Platforms  (META) - Get Free Report. "It’s shaping up to be a big week for the market and it comes as the S&P 500 is testing a key level—the four-month low it set earlier this month," said Chris Larkin, managing director for trading and investing at E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley. "How the market responds to that test may hinge on sentiment, which often plays a larger-than-average role around this time of year," he added. "And right now, concerns about rising interest rates and geopolitical turmoil have the potential to exacerbate the market’s swings." Heading into the middle of the trading day on Wall Street, the S&P 500, which is down 8% from its early July peak, the highest of the year, was up 10 points, or 0.25%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which slumped into negative territory for the year last week, was marked 10 points lower while the Nasdaq, which fell 4.31% last week, was up 66 points, or 0.51%. In overseas markets, Europe's Stoxx 600 was marked 0.11% lower by the close of Frankfurt trading, with markets largely tracking U.S. stocks as well as the broader conflict in Israel. In Asia, a  slump in China stocks took the benchmark CSI 300 to a fresh 2019 low and pulled the region-wide MSCI ex-Japan 0.72% lower into the close of trading.
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iPhone Maker Foxconn Investigated By Chinese Authorities

Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that manufactures iPhones on behalf of Apple (AAPL), is being investigated by Chinese authorities, according to multiple…

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Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that manufactures iPhones on behalf of Apple (AAPL), is being investigated by Chinese authorities, according to multiple media reports. Foxconn’s business has been searched by Chinese authorities and China’s main tax authority has conducted inspections of Foxconn’s manufacturing operations in the Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Jiangsu. At the same time, China’s natural-resources department has begun onsite investigations into Foxconn’s land use in Henan and Hubei provinces within China. Foxconn has manufacturing facilities focused on Apple products in three of the Chinese provinces where authorities are carrying out searches. While headquartered in Taiwan, Foxconn has a huge manufacturing presence in China and is a large employer in the nation of 1.4 billion people. The investigations suggest that China is ramping up pressure on the company as Foxconn considers major investments in India, and as presidential elections approach in Taiwan. Foxconn founder Terry Gou said in August of this year that he intends to run for the Taiwanese presidency. He has resigned from the company’s board of directors but continues to hold a 12.5% stake in the company. Gou is currently in fourth place in the polls ahead of the election that is scheduled to be held in January 2024. The potential impact on Apple and its iPhone manufacturing comes amid rising political tensions between politicians in Washington, D.C. and Beijing. Apple’s stock has risen 16% over the last 12 months and currently trades at $172.88 U.S. per share.  

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