Saudi Aramco CEO: ‘The Energy Transition Is Failing. Policymakers Should Abandon the Fantasy of Phasing Out Oil and Gas’

The climate alarmist cult is in planetary disarray, with their once-unquestionable ‘scientific theories’ and ‘environmental policies’ getting rejected at a rapid pace in many parts of the world.

European farmers and Canadian Provincial Premiers and conservatives everywhere in the western world are getting increasingly vocal about the shortcomings of the so-called ‘Green New Deal’.

In this context, it’s reassuring to see some measure of pushback from people who have real skin in the game, like Big Oil moguls.

The world’s biggest oil producer is the Saudi company Aramco. Its CEO, Amin Nasser, just came out yesterday (18) and said that the energy transition envisioned by the ‘global warming’ crowd is failing.

He went ahead and in a rare show of honesty, advised that policymakers should abandon the ‘fantasy’ (ouch!) of phasing out oil and gas, as he is sure demand for fossil fuels is expected to continue to grow in the coming years.

CNBC reported:

“’In the real world, the current transition strategy is visibly failing on most fronts as it collides with five hard realities’, Nasser said during a panel interview at the CERAWeek by S&P Global energy conference in Houston, Texas.

‘A transition strategy reset is urgently needed and my proposal is this: We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas and instead invest in them adequately reflecting realistic demand assumptions’, the CEO said to applause from the audience.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/03/saudi-aramco-ceo-energy-transition-is-failing-policymakers/

Germany announces €500 million military aid package for Ukraine

Berlin will raid its own stocks and buy ammo from foreign suppliers to keep Kiev fighting, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has said

Germany will supply Ukraine with €500 million ($543 million) worth of weapons and ammunition, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced on Tuesday. Despite shortages of manpower and ammo at home, Berlin has pledged to spend €7 billion on military aid for Kiev this year.

“We have once again put together an aid package worth almost half a billion euros,” Pistorius told reporters at a meeting of the so-called Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base on Tuesday.

The package will include 10,000 artillery shells from Bundeswehr (German military) stocks, with deliveries to begin “immediately,” Pistorius said. 100 infantry vehicles and 100 unarmored vehicles will also be sent, the minister added.

Germany will also purchase 180,000 shells from non-EU suppliers as part of a larger initiative led by the Czech Republic, and another 100,000 directly from defense contractors, Pistorius announced.

Germany is Ukraine’s second-largest Western backer, behind only the US. To date, Berlin has given Kiev €22 billion ($23.7 billion) in assistance, including €17.7 billion in military aid, according to figures compiled by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. When aid transferred via the EU is included, Germany has handed over a total of €28 billion to Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in February.

Scholz and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed a “long-term” security pact last month, under which the German chancellor pledged to give Ukraine an additional €7 billion in military aid this year, and continue arming Kiev for the next decade.

However, this outlay has hurt Germany’s own military readiness. A parliamentary report published last week identified shortages of ammunition, spare parts, tanks, ships, and aircraft, as well as an aging and shrinking workforce.

While these issues predated the conflict in Ukraine, the report found that they have become “even greater” since Scholz began pulling weapons and equipment from German stocks to send to Kiev. Despite Scholz’ announcement of a €100 billion rearmament program in 2022, German soldiers told the New York Times last year that they still lack adequate ammo for training exercises, live in substandard barracks, and have not gotten to fire the Bundeswehr’s latest howitzers, all of which have been sent to Ukraine.

https://www.rt.com/news/594512-germany-military-aid-ukraine/

https://www.rt.com/news/594512-germany-military-aid-ukraine/

BlackRock Seeds Ethereum-Backed Digital Liquidity Fund With $100 Million

Having surpassed Microstrategy in the size of its holdings amid the furious success of spot bitcoin ETFs…

…the world’s largest asset manager has taken “the next step forward” toward a single ledger, instantaneous settlement and ending illicit activities, in the view of CEO Larry Fink.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has filed United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Form D for the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund. This marks the launch of BlackRock’s first tokenized asset fund.

CoinTelegraph's Derek Andersen reports that. according to the filing, BlackRock created the fund in 2023, but has yet to launch it. Form D is used to obtain various exemptions. BlackRock indicated that it is seeking an exemption under the Investment Company Act Section 3(c), which exempts it from certain SEC regulations. The fund was created under the jurisdiction of the British Virgin Islands.

The fund will have a $100,000 minimum investment and be offered by Securitize, a U.S. digital assets securities firm, which will also conduct the sale of the tokens. The form shows $525,000 in sales commissions, and indicates the size of the fund as “indefinite.” The form was signed on March 14.

The fund will be tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain with an ERC-20 token called BUIDL, which currently has one holder and a $0 on-chain market cap, according to Etherscan.

That website also indicated that the fund received a transfer of $100 million on March 4.

https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/blackrock-seeds-ethereum-backed-digital-liquidity-fund-100-million

Bill Gates-Backed Company Seeks To Deploy Small Modular Nuclear Reactors In U.S.

A company founded by Bill Gates is planning on being the first to build a new generation of nuclear power plants based on small modular reactors (SMRs) in the United States. These plans usually have a power capacity of 300MW or less, which is about 1/3rd of regular reactors.

TerraPower has officially "joined the race" against Russia and China to develop lower-cost nuclear reactors, according to FT this week.

CEO Chris Levesque said they are seeking US regulatory approval for their innovative liquid sodium-cooled reactor this month. The Natrium reactors could be constructed at nearly half the cost of traditional water-cooled nuclear reactors.

TerraPower, which has secured nearly $1bn in private investments, has also partnered with the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation to explore the deployment of Natrium reactors in the UAE for electricity and hydrogen production.

With up to $2bn in promised support from the US government, the company is advancing its inaugural project in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Despite pending permits, construction near a former coal power site will start in June, focusing on preliminary, non-nuclear structures. TerraPower aims to activate the plant by 2030, according to the report.

Levesque told FT: “When you use liquid sodium as a coolant instead of water it’s a game-changer. Natrium plants will cost half of what light water reactor plants cost . . . and we are moving our project along pretty aggressively.”

FT reports that American firms are striving to match their counterparts in Russia and China, who have already operationalized two Small Modular Reactor (SMR) plants. These include a floating plant in Pevek, Russia, and another in Shidao Bay, China.

Meanwhile, the U.S. nuclear sector is hindered by elevated interest rates, surging expenses, and a scarcity of the enriched uranium needed for new reactors - not to mention the far left 'woke' crowd who continues to protest due to 'safety concerns' about what is really the safest, most efficient and greenest way to generate power…

FT notes that in November, rising costs led NuScale, an Oregon company, to scrap its plans for America's inaugural SMR after utilities balked at a proposed 50% price hike.

TerraPower has yet to quote prices for its Natrium-generated power. Its Kemmerer reactor, initially a demonstration, aims for full-scale commercial operation. In October 2022, TerraPower and PacifiCorp, part of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, announced plans to explore the deployment of five more Natrium reactors by 2035.

“Sodium-cooled reactors operate at lower pressures, which requires fewer safety systems. That reduces problems that could go wrong with the plant and reduces costs because they can be built with simpler materials while maintaining safety,” concluded Adam Stein, director of nuclear energy innovation at The Breakthrough Institute.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/bill-gates-backed-company-seeks-be-first-deploy-small-modular-nuclear-reactors-power-us

The WA Government is offering families a one-off cash payment. All you have to do to claim it is get a Digital ID.

The WA Government is offering families a one-off cash payment. All you have to do to claim it is get a Digital ID.

The cost of living relief payment of $250 for each secondary student, and $150 for each primary student and kindergartener is intended to assist parents with purchasing school essentials.

But the payment is not means-tested, so rich and poor alike, if you have school-aged children, you can claim – provided you get a Digital ID and sign up for the government’s ServicesWA app.

https://citizenwatchreport.com/the-wa-government-is-offering-families-a-one-off-cash-payment-all-you-have-to-do-to-claim-it-is-get-a-digital-id/

Old flip flop Don

Trump: U.S. Will ‘100%’ Stay in NATO if Other Nations Pay Their ‘Fair Share’

Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday in an exclusive interview with GB News host Nigel Farage that if he is reelected, the United States will stay in NATO if other nations pay their “fair share.”

Farage said, “You said this back in 2017 and 18 when you were president, you visited Brussels, and you commented that the Russians can do whatever they want if these countries don’t pay. You said it again recently. That’s now being used.”

Trump said, “They can use it, I don’t care if they use it. Because what I’m saying is a form of negotiation. Why should we guard these countries that have a lot of money, and the United States was paying for most of NATO? When I went there, I had already had it out with them. They then stopped paying again. But now they’re paying because of those comments that you saw two, three weeks ago. I don’t know if you know, but a lot of money’s come in since those comments were made.”

He continued, “NATO was not paying. I went to the first meeting early in my administration, and I saw what was going on, and I said, ‘You’re going to have to pay your bills, everybody.’ Then, at the second meeting, I hit them hard. The question was then asked by the head of a major country in front of everyone else: ‘So if we don’t pay our bills, are you going to protect us from Russia?’ I said, ‘You mean you’re delinquent? You’re not paying the bills? Then no, I’m not going to pay you. We’re not going to do it. We’re not going to defend you if you’re not paying your bills.’ It’s very simple. And hundreds of billions of dollars came flowing in.”

Trump added, “NATO became strong because of me. Now, NATO has to treat the U.S. fairly because if it wasn’t for the United States, NATO wouldn’t even exist. They took advantage of us like most countries do.”

Farage asked, “If they start to pay their bills properly and the club is fair, are places like Poland going to be defended? Will America be there?”

Trump said, “Yes. But the United States should pay its fair share, not everybody else’s fair share.”

Farage said, “Fair enough.”

Trump said, “I believe that the United States was paying 90% of NATO, that could be 100%. It was the most unfair thing, and don’t forget, it’s more important to them than it is to us. We have an ocean between some problems. They will take advantage. They took advantage of us on trade. They took advantage on the military.”

Farage asked, “So if they start to play fair, America’s there?”

Trump said, “Yes. 100%.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2024/03/19/trump-u-s-will-100-stay-in-nato-if-other-nations-pay-their-fair-share/

Owners of China-Based Company Charged with Conspiracy to Send Trade Secrets Belonging to Leading U.S.-Based Electric Vehicle Company

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/owners-china-based-company-charged-conspiracy-send-trade-secrets-belonging-leading-us-based

>>20593474

Interesting

“Quiet On Set” Documentary Exposes Pedophilia At Nickelodeon

Who, exactly, is programming children's minds in America?

Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV (streaming on Investigation Discovery) exposes a culture of pedophilia that existed at Nickelodeon during the time that millennial kids’ shows were getting produced there by a man named Dan Schneider.

The documentary aired as a two-part event and it’s now streaming, and some of its major revelations are getting around in the news cycle.

All That and The Amanda Show production assistant Jason Handy, who eventually went to prison for pedophilic acts, had an entire library of child images in his possession when law enforcement nabbed him in 2003.

“It was a picture of him naked masturbating, and he said he had sent it to her because he wanted her to see that he was thinking of her,” a woman from the documentary says about Jason Handy, referring to a photo that Handy sent to her Amanda Show actress daughter.

Another person who worked for Nickelodeon was actually a registered sex offender when he was working for the kid-targeting network, and not surprisingly he got convicted for a pedophilic offense connected to his presence at Nickelodeon.

Former child actor Drake Bell appears in Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV to share his allegations of being sexually abused by dialogue coach Brian Peck.

Drake Bell, 37, had his breakthrough as a teen star on Nickelodeon’s The Amanda Show from 1999 to 2002. The sketch show starred fellow kid actor Amanda Bynes and was created by Dan Schneider who executive-produced the show, among others. Drake Bell was reportedly abused during his Amanda Show tenure, according to Bell’s version of events. Bell went on to star on the Nickelodeon show Drake & Josh, which was also created by Dan Schneider. Brian Peck worked on The Amanda Show.

Dan Schneider, the overweight kid actor on the ’80s sitcom Head of the Class, lost his gig at Nickelodeon, who cut ties with Schneider in 2018 after allegations of on-set inappropriateness including anger issues and wanting women to massage him.

Brian Peck, meanwhile, was convicted for the sexual abuse of a child actor and he served 16 months behind bars. Bell was the victim who put Peck away.

Amanda Bynes has suffered from various public mental health struggles since her career as a child comedic actress, highlighting the toll that Hollywood takes on young impressionable souls.

Bell himself pleaded guilty to child endangerment for allegedly having an inappropriate texting relationship with an underage female fan.

Various other people from the child entertainment industry appear in the documentary. Actors from the ABC show Boy Meets World (1993-2000) previously discussed Peck’s creepy behavior after he guest-starred on Boy Meets World. Will Hollywood ever be fully exposed?

https://nationalfile.com/quiet-on-set-documentary-exposes-pedophilia-at-nickelodeon/

Friend and Business Partner of GirlsDoPorn Owner Michael Pratt Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/friend-and-business-partner-girlsdoporn-owner-michael-pratt-sentenced-14-years-prison

Tom Friedman’s strange case for a US military presence in Syria

The NYT columnist is still peddling the old 'we're fighting them there so we don't have to here' chestnut

An iconic New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, has just been squired around the Middle East by the commander of Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for operations in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and North Africa.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the military and American journalists have cultivated symbiotic relations since the Civil War. It’s in the nature of things. The press needs access, and the military needs public and congressional support. Quality time shared by the top U.S.military officer for this volatile region and the top foreign affairs columnist for the nation’s top broadsheet makes sense.

Among their whistlestops were U.S. installations in Syria. About 900 American troops are there, distributed in penny packets among seven bases. Some of these protect oil fields that supply U.S.-backed Kurdish authorities; others are in the far northeast, where they assist Kurdish units, help secure and supply the cluster of camps that house ISIS prisoners and their families and continue to hunt ISIS fighters; and still others in the southeast, at a road junction where the Iraqi, Syrian and Jordanian borders meet. This base was set up to interdict Iranian-backed forces attempting to entrench themselves in Syria and transport supplies to Lebanon.

In Friedman’s recap of this visit, he explained that the importance of these U.S. deployments lay in the need to fight the terrorists over there so we would not have to fight them over here.

Let’s say, for the moment, that there are several other rationales for maintaining troops in Syria. Iran, for example, does seek to use Syria as a land corridor to Lebanon and the Israeli-Syrian border, from which it can carry the fight to its enemy. Iran is 1,200 kilometers from Israel, so if it wants to reach out and touch someone without using ballistic missiles, it needs to be on Israel’s borders. Rendering this a bit more difficult than it might otherwise be makes a regional blow-up marginally less likely.

Maintaining a garrison at the oil fields is meant to secure them from capture by either ISIS or the Assad regime, against which the U.S. maintains heavy sanctions. Reserving the oil for use by Kurds, both for sale and consumption, reflects a longstanding policy that favors Kurdish autonomy in Syria. This policy preference, which owes in part to a romanticized image of Kurds as daring fighters fending off terrorist hordes to spare the U.S. an onerous burden, also dictates the use of U.S. forces in northeast Syria as a tripwire deterrent against Turkish attempts to suppress Syrian Kurds.

For many members of Congress, they seem to be something like T.E. Lawrence’s Bedouin insurgents in World War I, or U.S.-backed Montagnard guerillas in the Vietnam War. For them, abandoning the Kurds to the tender mercies of Turkey, or compelling them to seek protection from the Assad government, would be immoral and shred America’s reputation as a reliable ally. (See under: Munich.) Trump, marching to the beat of a different drum, pointed out that the Kurds “didn’t help us in the second world war, they didn’t help us with Normandy as an example… .”

The U.S. role in helping local forces and NGOs manage the ISIS detention centers and refugee camps as well as the slow process of the repatriation of Iraqi detainees, is meant to contribute to Iraqi stability, in which the U.S. has a stake. The fact that these bases are magnets for attack by Iran-backed militias is arguably a factor that outweighs any of these other considerations.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/tom-friedman-iraq-syria/