Society's ChildS


Oil Well

Energy crunch is pushing European gas prices higher

rubles gas russia payments
© Getty Images / Peter Dazeley
Natural gas prices in Europe rose to the highest level in almost four months on Tuesday as the continent's energy crisis intensifies.

Benchmark futures tied to TTF, the European wholesale gas price, jumped 8% to over $1,800 per thousand cubic meters or €175 per megawatt hour in household terms. That is the highest level since the beginning of March and five times more than it was this time last year.

Comment: More on the potential crisis from RT:
Electricity prices in Europe have hit their highest level on record, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing the rising cost of natural gas amid the uncertainty over Russian supplies.

German baseload power for delivery next year, which is the benchmark European price, traded at €325 ($334) per megawatt hour (MWh) on Monday, thus surpassing the previous record set in December, the newspaper writes. Last July, the price stood at just over €81 ($83) per megawatt hour. The equivalent contract in France has doubled to €366 ($377) per MWh since the start of the year, the FT adds.

Electricity prices are influenced by the cost of natural gas, which is used to generate power. Gas prices in Europe exceeded $1,800 per thousand cubic meters for the first time since early March on Tuesday, as oil and gas workers in Norway have gone on strike over pay, thus affecting output.

According to the FT, the situation has been exacerbated by maintenance problems at a large number of France's nuclear plants, due to which neighboring countries have been burning additional gas to generate electricity for the country.

Also, the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany is scheduled to close for maintenance next week. Moscow already had to reduce the flow via the pipeline by 60% last month over technical issues caused by Western sanctions, but many in the EU fear that after the planned shutdown the gas flow will not be switched back on.

Germany triggered the second stage of its three-level emergency plan last month. The third stage would require the rationing of gas to households and industrial sites. A housing cooperative in Saxony has already reportedly introduced hot-water rationing, with similar warnings issued in Hamburg as well.



Bad Guys

Civilians urged to evacuate Lysychansk, Ukraine, after Russia begins artillery strikes

Slovyansk
Shelling in Sloviansk, near Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, Ukraine
The head of the Donetsk regional military administration has urged civilians to evacuate the eastern Ukrainian town of Slovyansk after an artillery strike hit the central market.

Pavlo Kyrylenko said at least two people were killed and seven wounded as a result of the shelling on July 5. He posted a video on social media showing smoke rising from a commercial area and photos of firefighters dousing flames.

"The Russians are again purposefully hitting places where civilians are gathered. This is pure terrorism. The terrorist state must be brought to justice," Kyrylenko wrote on Telegram.

Comment: In the real world, things are looking pretty dire for Ukraine.
russia ukraine donetsk kharkiv July
© Institute for the Study of War



Megaphone

Best of the Web: Unbearable inflation sparks GLOBAL wave of protests

protests harare inflation
© AP Photo/Tsvangirayi MukwazhiFILE -Health workers led by nurses take part in a demonstration over salaries at Parerenyatwa Hospital in Harare, on June, 21, 2022
Rising food costs. Soaring fuel bills. Wages that are not keeping pace. Inflation is plundering people's wallets, sparking a wave of protests and workers' strikes around the world.

This week alone saw protests by the political opposition in Pakistan, nurses in Zimbabwe, unionized workers in Belgium, railway workers in Britain, Indigenous people in Ecuador, hundreds of U.S. pilots and some European airline workers. Sri Lanka's prime minister declared an economic collapse Wednesday after weeks of political turmoil.

Economists say Russia's war in Ukraine amplified inflation by further pushing up the cost of energy and prices of fertilizer, grains and cooking oils as farmers struggle to grow and export crops in one of the world's key agricultural regions.


Comment: As noted elsewhere whilst there is a Western fomented energy crisis occurring, energy costs have still been falling, just not for the consumer, however energy companies continue to post record profits.

In addition, Western sanctions have been blocking shipments of critical gas pipeline parts, fertilizer, grain, and this is coupled with Ukraine's refusal to demine its ports to allow for the safe shipment of goods the world desperately needs.

As we saw with the lockdowns, the initial impact caused by these issues pales in comparison to the real harm they will cause in the near future.


Comment: Some footage of the protests occurring right now:

Spain:


Italy:


South Korea:


Netherlands:





Attention

2 cops injured in Philadelphia amid ANOTHER shooting incident during July 4th celebrations

shooting philadelphia
The Philadelphia authorities are investigating a "security incident" that left two police officers injured by gunfire and caused panic among thousands of people attending Independence Day celebrations on Monday night.

The incident occurred around 10pm near the Philadelphia Museum of Art as crowds of people watched fireworks following a concert on the final day of the Wawa Welcome America Festival. Footage circulating online shows panicked revelers running away for cover, but it was not immediately clear if anyone was injured amid the chaos.

The authorities confirmed that a highway patrol officer suffered a graze wound to the head, while a member of a bomb squad was shot in the shoulder. Both were rushed to a hospital in stable condition, according to local media.

Comment: And just a day prior in Denmark: 3 dead in shooting at shopping centre

See also: 16 injured in New York subway shooting, 4 suspicious devices found (12th April 2022)


Briefcase

The case for the lab-leak theory

wuhan
I have covered genomic research for years and written several books on the topic. I have a reputation as a strong supporter of biotechnology. But I had not realised just how risky some of the experiments being done on viruses have become in recent years, let alone that they are happening in the centre of a large city.

In recent years in the city of Wuhan, in China, scientists were combining the genomes of coronaviruses taken from bats and making chimera (hybrid viruses) that grew up to 10,000 times more quickly than their parent viruses and were more than three times as lethal to 'humanised' mice. Whether similar experiments resulted in the Covid-19 pandemic is still unknown, but they could have done.

In researching our book Viral, updated and newly released in paperback, on the origin of Covid-19, the scientist Alina Chan and I concluded that it is highly likely the outbreak began in Wuhan. The earliest Covid cases in other parts of China, and other countries, link straight back to this modern and prosperous city on the banks of the Yangtze. For instance, a case in Beijing who fell ill as early as 17 December 2019 turns out to have travelled that day from Wuhan.

There is no longer much doubt that the first cases in Wuhan were in November or possibly October 2019. This fits with a leaked Chinese government document in 2020, which said an early case had been retrospectively identified on 17 November. Yet official Chinese sources still say the first known case was in December.

Comment: See also:


Hourglass

Distraught WWII vet warns 'everything we fought for is going down the drain'

Carl Spurlin Deke
100 year old hero says "Our country is going to hell."

A 100 year old World War Two veteran has issued a sobering warning that America is "going to hell" and that everything he and his generation fought for is "all going down the drain."

In an emotional interview, former marine Carl Spurlin Deke expressed his gratitude for his 100 years of life, noting "I've lived a good life. I've had a lot of love, happiness, smiling, telling everybody that everything was beautiful every day."

Comment: It would have been nice to have some context on specifically what Deke thinks is going downhill. He's not wrong, of course, but it would be nice to see specifically what he sees.


Pistol

New York to demand social media history for gun ownership

police guns
© Spencer Platt via Getty Images
People in New York who want a license for a gun will be required to hand over their social media history in order to pass a "character and conduct" test under new legislation.

The new program bears a chilling resemblance to China's social credit score system and raises the prospect that conservatives could be denied gun ownership based on their political opinions.

The move came in response to the Supreme Court striking down a law that required someone to prove they faced a unique threat before being allowed to conceal carry outside their homes.

Comment: Chances are quite good that the Westerners screeching about China's social credit system are rather poorly informed on what it actually is. What is slowly creeping in to the West is its own beast - you can't blame China for this one.

See also:


People 2

Colorado teacher forced to undergo gender ideology re-education training for giving a student detransition information

jeffco public schools
Colorado Public School teacher Phil Vagos was forced to undergo gender ideology re-education training after providing detransition information to a student.

The Daily Caller reports that in May of 2021, Vagos received an email from one of his students, a biological female who identifies as transgender, asking for "an extended semester" in order to pass the class. Vagos helped the student attain a passing grade by removing some "zero credit assignments" and closed the email exchange with a cautionary note about the transgender trend that has captured many of America's youth.

Vagos, a Jefferson County Public School teacher, wrote "And as much as I don't want to interfere in anything that isn't my business, given the PS of the email I thought it might be helpful for me to provide a link regarding the transitioning process that has become a recent trend among young people in the United States. I typically wouldn't do this, although you did mention that you are using an alternate name and gender outside of your parents' presence, which tells me that this might not be the result of a consensus of agreement between you and them."

Comment: See also:


Syringe

Is Tucker Carlson a "mainstream media propagandist"?

tucker carlson
Full-time Twitter performer and empire exposer Caitlin Johnstone is on Substack where she publishes almost a short piece a day. Sometimes she hits targets, other times she shoots blindfolded. Some of her pieces are built on facts and evidence, while others are ad hominem attacks, ideological assumptions, and all-or-nothing tribal missives. Sometimes they're a mix of all of the above.

You won't read much about other individuals here on this Substack unless they're part of the global cabal terrorizing humanity, but her very recent attempt to paint Tucker Carlson as a media "propagandist" who unleashed a "psychotic rant" about China to "manufacture consent for war" is so littered with false assertions it necessitates some remarks.

Her title laughably claims Carlson is "as much a propagandist as anyone in the Mainstream Media." One of Carlson's recent monologues paints China as an emerging powerhouse that has been busily buying economic influence if not financial servitude of nations around the world. While using some hyperbolic language, most of what he argues is based on fact.

China's belt and road initiative is a massive geopolitical strategic long-game of buying goodwill around the world rooted in China's desire to expand to other hemispheres of influence, and secure natural resources for their industries and supply chains. They are not busily doing this for compassionate and ethical reasons, and Carlson's assertion that this is "colonizing" other nations is not hyperbole. They are planting seeds of proliferation that all smart nations do that seek expansion, starting with state investment via private entities and loans, which will later be leveraged in any manner China desires, even militarily.

2 + 2 = 4

Teachers and parents in Glasgow sex education protest over 'pornographic' lessons in schools

sex education protest glasgow
© Daily RecordAround 200 people took part in the city centre protest.
Worried campaigners have demanded a ban on questionnaires asking intimate questions on the sex lives of teenagers being distributed in schools and a rethink on "inappropriate" content being used in sex education classes.

Hundreds of campaigners took to the streets of Glasgow to protest about 'pornographic' sex education lessons and surveys in schools.

Parents, teachers and pupils gathered in the city centre demanding a ban on the questionnaires being distributed to senior students.

They say cartoons displaying graphic sex acts being shown to young people in classrooms, and were only introduced this year, the Daily Record reports

Comment: See also: