The “new abnormal” since Covid officially came on the scene in March 2020 is characterized primarily by disjunction fueled by a state of permanent crisis. Apocalyptic official narratives shift weekly, with fear and confusion serving to distract and divide, and thereby weaken, a weary electorate.

In an effort to help my subscribers deconstruct this endless flurry of official propaganda and disinformation, I’m launching a monthly compilation of news and analysis called Monthly Fusion aimed at filling in background information and context that is missing from the dominant crisis du jour model of government, business and journalism.

Let me know how I’m doing by sharing new information and ideas in Comments below. If you are not already a subscriber, please don’t forget to subscribe & share.

Give a gift subscription

Share

PANDEMIC OIL PRICES, A SLIPPERY SLOPE

Crude oil hit a record $120 US per barrel on June 13, 2022, and could soar to $150 by year end. Interviewed at the Global Energy Show in Calgary in June, Cenovus Energy CEO Alex Pourbaix provocatively fretted, "I sure hope oil doesn't get to $200."

During the same week, Germany announced that it will need to return to coal fired generation sources to avoid a winter energy crisis because of the Ukraine war. Prior to Ukraine, Germany touted the fact that “the expansion of renewables is one of the central pillars of energy policy.”

However the green facade, with official declarations that Germany would be coal free by 2030, was disingenuous well before the Ukraine invasion. According to government statistics released in September 2021, coal had already “unseated wind power as the biggest energy contributor to the German network,” and energy prices were second highest in the world.

These developments have dealt yet another blow to the hopes of high level US and EU government officials that the pandemic could be used to launch an ambitious and lucrative $100 trillion Global Green New Deal. An analysis in February 2022 from the journal Nature concludes that “…the world at large has missed the opportunity to ‘build back better’ from COVID-19 by way of a green recovery.”

What makes this dramatic rise in oil prices so striking at a time when renewables are not ready to pick up the slack is that just two years ago, in April 2020, oil plunged below $0, hitting -$37.63 per barrel.

How is this possible? Why is it happening?

Oil prices are inherently volatile because it is the most traded commodity in the world, with total volume of about $1.7 trillion per year. Oil markets have been thrown into structural chaos due to the wild demand fluctuations of the pandemic because oil is bought and sold in the form of derivatives. As the COVID lockdown began, demand for oil plunged, and prices dropped below zero, exposing the fact that outstanding oil derivatives total between 25 and 50 times the value of the oil upon which they are, increasingly only tangentially, based.

This makes forecasting future oil prices nearly impossible even in good economic times, yet almost every sector of the global economy depends on oil – as a source of fuel and petrochemicals, for use in the production of textiles, fertilizers, medicines, plastics, steel and other durable consumer goods. A 2020 report by analysts at Visual Capitalist characterized the situation at the start of the pandemic.

“Oil is a geopolitical game, and big price swings always come with a geopolitical undercurrent. In a post-COVID-19 world, the outlook for all oil producers is grim.”

When prices are below zero and demand is artificially falling because of a global public health lockdown, there is no incentive to invest in capital intensive, long term exploration and production. Now that demand is surging, supply has to catch up, and prices are rising as investment and production ramp up again.

FIRST LARGE SCALE STUDY OF THE UNVAXXED

A preprint of one of the first large scale studies of people who have chosen not to be vaccinated for Covid-19 has been published and is awaiting peer review. A total of 305,000 unvaccinated people participated from September 2021 through February 2022, with survey results based on “a sub-cohort of approximately 18,500 Control Group participants who completed questionnaires on a monthly basis.”

The study shows that unvaccinated participants “had low rates of severe COVID-19, were infrequently hospitalized & used natural health products extensively,” and that “those who never wore masks reported the lowest levels of COVID-19.” However, secondary health impacts of being unvaccinated were considerable because of isolation due to “stigmatization by mainstream 'vaccinated' society.”

The full preprint report can be downloaded at Authorea.

CDC ANNOUNCES THAT 19 MILLION KIDS FIVE & UNDER ARE TO BE VACCINATED FOR COVID

On June 18, 2022, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), based on recommendations from its vaccine “Advisory Panel” signed off on administering Moderna and Pfizer Covid vaccines to 19 million kids five years and under across the US.

The approval was granted even though “questions remain about how effective the shots will be given the rapidly evolving virus.” After Pfizer informed the panel that a third dose would be required to provide full protection, panel member Paul Offit, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, opined publicly, “It does worry me that there was no protection after dose 2. I found it surprising.”

Cody Meissner, MD, Chief, Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease at Tufts University Children’s Hospital, “noted that the number of deaths from Covid in these young children appeared to be similar to the number of people struck by lightning,” adding, “I feel very strongly that parents should understand how strong these numbers are.”

For good measure, the Advisory Panel also dismissed natural immunity, recommending that “children should get vaccinated even if they were previously infected.”

The Panel’s approval vote, after presentations by Pfizer and Moderna “experts,” was unanimous, with Rochelle Walensky, the preening narcissist who heads the CDC, sharing a chirpy video on the CDC website and YouTube to personally deliver the announcement.

WORLD WAR III IS IN PROCESS

Alarm bells went off among knowledgeable foreign policy analysts the last week in June when Lithuania, a NATO member, announced that “a train from Moscow to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad was banned at the border” in order to enforce NATO sanctions against Russia.

Kaliningrad is an enclave of one million Russian citizens located between Lithuania and Poland. Russia was granted full control of Kaliningrad after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, and signed a 2003 agreement with Lithuania to allow supply and passenger trains to travel freely across Lithuania from Russia to Kaliningrad.

Russia is threatening retaliation in response to the US inspired blockade by Lithuania. Military options are on the table. Russia has first strike nuclear weapons stationed in Kaliningrad, inside NATO territory. Under the terms of NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense agreement, any member nation that is attacked by a non-NATO power automatically triggers a united military response. This is driven primarily by the US, with President Joe Biden vowing “to defend every inch” of NATO territory.

I have written twice in the past month about the very real threat that the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine could end in a mushroom cloud.

Nagasaki Poems

State of the Union – from humility to nuclear hubris

DEATH INSURANCE & THE GREAT UNRAVELING

Annual reports for 2021 now being published by US and European life insurance companies are showing historically high benefit payouts for death by the largest firms.

In the US alone, more than 260 million people were vaccinated in 2021. Writing on Substack, reporter Margaret Menge documents that One America, the fifth largest life insurance company in the US, paid out 163% more for deaths of working people ages 18-64 in 2021, with total claims of $6 billion paid for "non-pandemic-related morbidity" and "unusual claims adjustments."

One America fired their CEO, but as they did so, Pfizer and Moderna stocks were tanking. Former Blackrock Executive Edward Dowd is predicting that Moderna will go to zero and Pfizer under $10 per share by year end 2022.

Right on cue, Pfizer stock plunged abruptly on June 30, 2022, as the company sought FDA approval for their patented anti-Covid drug Paxlovid. Their case was not strengthened by triple vaccinated Dr. Anthony Fauci’s admission a few days earlier that he suffered much worse symptoms after his recent case of Covid rebound while taking Paxlovid.

ABORTION & THE ONGOING US CIVIL WAR

With the US Supreme Court overturning its 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision on June 30, 2022, protests erupted across the United States. More than 180 protestors were arrested by Capitol Police after blocking an intersection near the Supreme Court.

Abortion, aka “family planning,” is a $4 billion per year industry in the US, with more than 2,600 businesses and 28,000 employees. It is a key Democratic constituency and donor base, just as anti-abortion evangelicals are for Republicans. Neither party has a vested interest in de-escalating the now fever pitch political battle over abortion, especially with mid-term elections only five months away.

The Court’s ruling returns decisions on abortion to individual states, which are already dividing along Republican and Democratic lines. A NY Times headline observes, “Abortion decision roils midterms,” while the Guardian reports that “Democrats hope to tap anger over Roe in November midterms.”

Here are links to hear the women hosts of two popular US TV shows offering their pro and con arguments.

The View, Part 1 and Part 2 (2.42 million viewers)

The Ingraham Angle, Answered Prayers (2.41 million viewers)

JULIAN ASSANGE

On June 17, 2022, after a lengthy appeals process, British Home Secretary Priti Patel, in what investigative journalist Glen Greenwald characterized as “a shining moment of US and UK fraud,” signed an extradition order to allow Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to be sent to the US to stand trial for 18 charges under the deeply flawed, but ultimately unappealable, 1917 Espionage Act.

The decision represents an almost certain death sentence for this generation's most consequential journalist and will be the de facto death of freedom of speech and the press in the West.

There are face saving options available to the US. Mexican president Lopez Obrador has offered Assange asylum in his country and vowed to raise the issue directly with US President Joe Biden at a July 12, 2022, meeting in Washington.

SPAIN’S FAKE VACCINE PASSPORT SCANDAL

Although it has received scant media attention in the EU and even less in the US, Spanish police have dismantled a criminal network that sold fake COVID-19 vaccination certificates to a client list totaling over 2,200 people. Clients included major celebrities and José María Fernández Sousa-Faro, president of European pharmaceutical giant PharmaMar.

The network of underground operatives selling the fake vaxx certificates was reportedly run by “French nationals of African extraction,” with a VIP price between €1000 and €2000.

The undercover police operation code named “Operation Jenner,” is a national scandal in Spain, where it is clear that no one, especially so called elites, trusts either the vaccine nor the arbitrary rules used to force people into being injected against their wills.

WUHAN BLUES

In a special May 26, 2021, White House press statement, President Joe Biden announced that US intelligence agencies would conduct a “90 day sprint” to investigate the origins of Covid-19.

In a follow up press briefing August 27, 2021, Mr. Biden announced that nothing could be definitively determined due to China’s intransigence. Not to be deterred, Scranton Joe vowed to continue working “with like-minded partners around the world to press the PRC.” (People’s Republic of China)

A criminal coverup continues today. “When the NIH was asked [by the Boston Globe in May 2022] to release its 2020 Strategic Plan for COVID-19 Research, it did so—with all 290 pages fully blanked out.”

A TALE FORETOLD – VERSAILLES ON THE POTOMAC, RADICAL CHIC ON THE HUDSON

I’ve been rereading books by Lewis Lapham and Tom Wolfe from the 1970’s to the ‘90’s, that make it blindingly clear that the US has had brilliant social-political analysts warning lucidly for decades about the degradation of the American idea.

In The Wish for Kings, 1993, Lapham dissects an American oligarchy that promotes the "courtier spirit" over democratic dialogue. Courtiers – lawyers, politicians, celebrities, corporate brass – much like the court of Versailles under Louis XIV, promulgate "welcome lies" and sustain the illusion of progress, aided by a "timid and reactionary news media."

Here is a link to a Booknotes interview with Lapham.

In 1970, Tom Wolfe published Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. He coined the term “radical chic” based on his attendance at a reception at conductor Leonard Bernstein’s Park Avenue home to raise money for the Black Panther Party. Wolfe’s sharply observed characterization of “the conflict between black rage and white guilt” could not be more timely in 2022.

Wolfe’s 1976 book, Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine, focused on “the contradictions between cushy class and angry consciousness,” yielding his infamous description of the 1970’s as the “Me decade,” a decade that has “now turned rancid with narcissistic violence.”

Share

Give a gift subscription