Spain and Portugal achieve net zero way ahead of schedule

 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: To watch our ally of 80 years, the USA, turn on us with ferocity and blithely team up with our declared enemy really is the end of days

 

Trump’s embrace of Putin is a Molotov-Ribbentrop crisis for Europe:

The new regime in Washington is testing pro-American sympathies to breaking point

 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard20 February 2025 6:50pm GMT

We are at that moment in Animal Farm when the gentle carthorse Clover looks through the window to see the pigs playing cards and drinking a toast with men.

The pigs are all perfectly at ease and sitting back in chairs around a table, no doubt a rougher surface than the luxurious polished table used to host America’s Marco Rubio and Russia’s Sergei Lavrov in Saudi Arabia this week. The Russian press reports that the meeting was a love-fest of jokes and bonhomie, with a “very tasty lunch”.

George Orwell’s scene was an allegory of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, when Europe’s great power alignment suddenly and violently shifted. The liberal democracies woke up on Aug 23 1939 to discover that the Soviet Union had reached a non-aggression deal with Nazi Germany. Days later, Hitler and Stalin carved up Eastern Europe between them. The Nazis could then turn their concentrated fury on France and Britain without having to worry about a second front.

Britain had started to re-arm as early as 1935. Neville Chamberlain hurled money at the Royal Air Force in the late 1930s, with Spitfire squadrons arriving just in time. Defence spending had risen to 9pc of GDP by 1939.

This time, Europe’s democracies have indulged the same pacifist illusions as they did in the run up to 1939 but have milked the peace dividend even longer. Military spending by EU states was 1.9pc of GDP in 2024, a full 17 years after Vladimir Putin declared political war on liberal civilisation and all its works at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 – “a good speech” said one Angela Merkel, audibly, in the front row.

He then set about restoring the tsarist empire to the borders of Catherine the Great with an unswerving consistency. Austria is not even part of Nato and behaves accordingly.

Some are rising to the challenge. Denmark has given its stock of munitions to Ukraine and even the trade unions back a war tax to raise defence spending to 4pc of GDP. “We are in a very, very critical period in world history,” said Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the Danish foreign minister.

Poland’s military budget is already up to 4.7pc. “We’re that afraid,” said his Polish counterpart Radosław Sikorski at last week’s Munich forum.

Lithuania aims for 5pc to 6pc of GDP by next year, alarmed by intelligence warnings that Putin may seize the Suwalki Gap, which runs through its territory from Belarus to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

They all know that Putin has a narrow window of time to attack if the Ukraine war is quickly settled on Russian terms. His advantage is temporary: a greatly enlarged army heading for 1.5m by 2026 and an industrial war economy firing on all cylinders but untenable for much longer.

Fears are growing that Donald Trump will order the US military to pull its Nato tripwire forces out of the Baltics in order to seal the “deal of the century” with the Kremlin. Will he swallow the bait as the smooth McKinsey-trained head of Russia’s investment fund, Kirill Dmitriev, dangles the offer of hydrocarbon riches – real or imagined – in Russian Arctic waters?

The issue runs deeper in any case. Maga America has a greater natural affinity for Putin’s Right-wing cultural Weltanschauung than it does for the liberal democracies. After the battering of the last two weeks, some of us are forced to conclude that Britain and Europe are now the real enemies for this new Washington and, furthermore, that the US is anything but isolationist under Donald Trump.

He will not let us carry on being different. He will force-feed us his Maga ideology. His oil-fracking energy secretary was in London this week describing our renewables as “sinister”. Will we face sanctions for trying to do something about CO2 emissions? Perhaps, yes. Particularly for that.

I do not wish to dissect every post by Trump on Truth Social, or dwell on the speech by JD Vance. I think Britain should repeal all its hate legislation and stop misusing police resources on thought crimes. It should stop dividing us into categories and return to colour-blind liberalism. But one can agree with elements of Vance’s anti-woke critique while entirely rejecting the larger message behind it.

We are told repeatedly by Trump’s circle that he does not really mean what he says, or that we should not overreact to what he is very clearly doing. Let us hope they are right, but it is becoming harder by the day to have confidence in such assurances, or to believe that either Republicans or plutocrats will lift a finger to stop him – and I say this as a defender of Pax Americana for half a century.

Sir Keir Starmer is right to stay calm and try to defuse this terrifying inter-allied crisis on his visit to the White House. But we of The Telegraph parish, readers and writers alike, will all have to look into our souls if, as now seems painfully plausible, Britain is singled out for tariff warfare along with Europe on the pretext of our VAT taxes.

Worse yet if Trump does this while reaching a cosy commodity deal with Putin along with a grand bargain with Xi Jinping to protect Elon Musk’s interests in China. That would test one’s pro-American sympathies to breaking point.

Europe shares much of the blame for the disintegration of the Western alliance system. It failed to re-arm after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. Germany rewarded Putin months later by launching the Nord Stream 2 project, which had no purpose other than depriving Kyiv of strategic leverage by re-routing Siberian gas through Baltic pipelines. In return, Germany enjoyed a sweetheart gas deal at sub-market prices.

Britain could have rebuilt its military hardware at ultra-low borrowing costs during the secular stagnation of the 2010s, when it had ample spare capacity. It could have rebuilt its decaying infrastructure and revived its economy at the same time. The multiplier effect would have let us do these things without pushing the debt ratio any faster. Britain pursued austerity instead. Now it faces a greater task, in a hostile bond market.

Europe was even more destructive. Germany cut public investment and military spending to the bone for 15 years. It relied on mercantilist export surpluses of 8pc of GDP to drive growth, a policy that has left Germany in the cross-hairs of Trump’s trade warriors.

The eurozone debt crisis – self-inflicted because the European Central Bank did not then have political approval to back-stop debts – turned into a wider depression because Brussels over-egged austerity and used bailouts to impose drastic spending cuts. There was no exemption for military spending.

Defence as a share of GDP in 2015 was Hungary 0.5pc, Belgium 0.8pc, Germany 1.0pc, Spain 1.0pc, Italy 1.2pc, France 1.8pc –and that was after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Military budgets crept up slowly thereafter but not enough to prevent further disarmament.

Europe thought it could keep free-riding on Uncle Sucker forever, despite warnings that this would end badly. There was much talk along the way of a European army and endless euro-speak meetings about procedures, modalities and the architecture of EU defence, but never anything real. That is why Europe today finds itself utterly naked.

But nobody expected it to end this badly and this suddenly. To watch an ally of 80 years turn on us with ferocity and blithely team up with our declared enemy really is the end of days.

AKA The Bay of New Spain . . . among the better educated

 

An English nautical chart dated 1775 labels it "the Bay of Mexico", now glossing "Mexico" as an alternative name for New Spain:

 

 

Clown countries Norway, Ireland, and Spain to recognize "Palestinian State", which doesn't exist anywhere

 Norway, Ireland and Spain to recognize Palestinian statehood

There's a solution to the Boston mayor's no-whites-invited holiday party

 

A series of Russian businessmen meets with sudden unexplained deaths

 Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Russia’s second-largest oil producer Lukoil, died on Thursday after falling from a hospital window in Moscow

Gazprom executive, Alexander Tyulakov, was found dead in his garage near St Petersburg

Sergei Protosenya, a former top manager of Russia’s largest liquefied natural gas producer Novatek, was found dead with his wife and daughter at a villa in Spain

Former Lukoil manager, Alexander Subbotin, was found dead in the basement of a house outside Moscow 

Vladislav Avayev, an ex-vice president of Gazprombank, was found dead in a Moscow apartment, also with the bodies of his wife and daughter

Story.

Who ya gonna believe: Law & Order: SVU, or Ann Coulter?

 Ann Coulter, December 14, 2019, here:

. . . according to “Law & Order: SVU,” the main demographic with a sexual fetish for pre-pubescent Hispanic girls is: handsome, married American white men. ... Reviewing my years of research on child sex crimes, I see that this has happened NEVER. It’s kind of the opposite. I ended up with so many immigrant child rape cases for “Adios, America!” that most of them had to be left on the cutting room floor — or the book would have been twice as long. ... But for William Edward Ronca, there would not be a single confirmed case of a white man in the Western Hemisphere impregnating a girl 10 years old or younger. 

A report from the Inter-American Children’s Institute explained that Latin America is second only to Asia in the sexual exploitation of women and children because sex abuse is “ingrained into the minds of the people." ... Incest and child rape are not native American habits. Nor is child rape common in Spain. This isn’t genetic. Bestial behavior toward women and children is a hallmark of primitive, peasant cultures — the cultures we are importing by the million. The hallmark of civilized cultures is to arrest and imprison child rapists. But the brain-dead writers of “Law & Order: SVU” invent little stories to demoralize the defenders of civilization, so we can let the incest and child rape flow!

 

The biggest cuck of the moment is Rod Dreher of The American Conservative, prophet of coming soft totalitarianism to The West

Rod Dreher retweets a whiny guy with kids who thinks boomers are dogshit, a Canadian who is intimidated by a Russian circus act training with a bear, and a Russian propaganda map of Ukraine showing "the advance of our troops".

All in the last 24 hours.

He's in Spain and Hungary enjoying the cafe life for Lent.

 

Meanwhile in 79% fully vaccinated Spain: Spread of COVID-19 "has raised concerns", lol

European nations are seeing Covid cases explode, with nations bringing in tough new measures and warnings of widespread lockdowns:

While Spain’s vaccination rates are positive – with 79 per cent of the population having both jabs – the Covid rates are rising.

The country has reported 88.6 cases per 100,000 over 14 days, a jump of 67 per cent, according to El Pais.

This is much lower than other badly hit European destinations such as Germany and Belgium, but the spike has raised concerns about the efforts to slow the spread.  

Spain achieved the 79% fully vaccinated threshold on Oct 10. Even that level did not eradicate cases, and now they are rising again.

 

 

 

 

 

The vaccine peddlers like Anthony Fauci insisted multiple times that the 50% level would prevent a surge in cases. Europe is 57% fully vaccinated, yet look at that headline.

Boosters will be the next panacea. And Eric Topol now insists we must have 90-95% vaccinated.

"The science has changed" is simply sanctification of moving the goalposts.

Meanwhile Africa, hardly 7% fully jabbed, is making monkeys of the wizards of smart. 

But no one asks, Why?

Welcome to The Planet of the Apes.

 

Yale History Department Chair pretends 800 years of Muslim plunder, domination, Sharia Law, persecution and violence in Spain didn't exist to inform ANY of Christopher Columbus' presuppositions about his world

 

Al-Andalus in 1000 A.D.

 

 You have to be a total loser to buy this history by omission.

Shhhhh, don't tell The Vaccine Church about The Netherlands or Spain, wouldn't want to upset their faith or anything

 

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Coronavirus deaths in Africa's "ivermectin" states are a fraction of what they are in their counterpart countries Brazil, Peru, and Spain

Brazil: 3.3m sq mi; population 213m

Nigeria: 357k sq mi; population 211m; deaths 0.42% of Brazil's

 

Peru: 496k sq mi; population 33m

Angola: 481k sq mi; population 32m; deaths 0.45% of Peru's

 

Spain: 195k sq mi; population 47m

Kenya: 224k sq mi; population 48m: deaths 4.3% of Spain's

 

Nigeria, Kenya and Angola, all of which have widely used ivermectin for years against parasitical disease, all have enviable COVID records compared with their similarly sized counterparts Brazil, Spain and Peru

 

 

The constant drumbeat in the US is how coronavirus hurts people of color proportionally more than it does whites, when these African countries which widely prescribe ivermectin have done astoundingly better than their counterpart countries by population in the West, as shown in these case graphs. And Nigeria has the added disadvantage of the three comparisons of being far more densely populated than Brazil but Brazil is 2nd worst in the world for COVID deaths.

Deaths

Brazil v Nigeria: 295k v 2k

Spain v Kenya: 74k v 2k

Peru v Angola: 50k v 0.5k

Sweden remains among the very worst states for deaths per million of population from COVID-19

Case positivity rates for SARS-CoV-2 in countries with 1+million tests and in US states with the most tests

Ranked by most tests performed:

USA 15.1%

Germany 6.2%

Italy 8.7%

Spain 10.6%

UK 12.5%

France 12.8%

WHO says epidemic control is predicated on the case positivity rate falling to 10% and lower.

New York 29.8%

California 7.3%

Florida 7.6%
Texas 7.9%
Illinois 18.3%
New Jersey 45.6%
Pennsylvania 20.5%
Michigan 16.6%
Georgia 13.8%
Colorado 19.3%

Coronavirus data update for Sun Apr 26, 2020

Johns Hopkins reports right now 5,184,635 tests completed in the US with 940,797 confirmed cases of infection.

That's an infection rate of 18.1%, after stay-at-home has been observed more or less nationwide since mid-March. Average flu infection in the US, without stay-at-home, is 8%. So imagine how bad this could have been, and still might be.

Reports of infection rates as high as 31.5% in Chelsea, MA, are problematic. These are antibody tests, and so far have high false positive rates, meaning all the positives could be false, test populations which are much too small, and test populations which are not representative. People on the streets right now and people in grocery stores right now are not representative of the whole population. What's more, the antibodies detected by these tests could well be for non-COVID-19 coronaviruses, which means you've learned nothing about exposure to SARS-CoV-2.

There have been 54,001 deaths according to Johns Hopkins data right now, for a mortality rate of 5.74%.

Flu mortality averages 0.1%.

Therefore we are dealing with something at least 2.3 times more infectious than flu, and 57 times more deadly.

Global data indicates as of 0730 hours a mortality rate of 6.98%. Test data is too uneven globally to draw firm general conclusions. Mortality data from places like Iran at 6.31%, China at 5.53% and Russia at 0.92% just looks like lies in comparison to open, free societies, as follows.

The European big five, Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the UK have an average mortality rate of 11%, 1.9 times worse than for the US. Germany remains a standout with mortality of only 3.75%, however, which is 35% lower than in the US. Belgium has the most liberal counts of deaths, and so a very high mortality rate of 15.38%.

Norway is at 2.68%, Sweden 12.06% (oops, they followed herd immunity, and are now paying the price), Finland 4.15%, and Denmark 4.84%.

Switzerland 5.56% and Austria 3.56% really stand out relative to Hungary at 10.88%.

Canada reports in at 5.6% with Mexico at 9.43%.

Japan and South Korea come in at 2.72% and 2.26% respectively.

It's obvious to me right now that if America wants to return to some sense of normalcy after this debacle has been allowed to reach the stage that it has, the only plausible way forward is to ramp up testing for the disease massively, and provide masks to the general population which protect it while in public. Instead our president and lawmakers have been busy with other things, like bailing out businesses. They are not serious people, anymore than the people they represent, a minority of which is clamoring for herd immunity, and therefore massive casualties.

The pro-life anti-abortion party is infected with a pro-death coronavirus party. The real division in the Republican Party between the actual conservatives and the libertarian ideologues has been laid bare by SARS-CoV-2. The former want to save you, as do many liberals. The latter believe only in survival of the fittest.  

The idea that immunity will be built up for this disease in the US population so that this will be over once and for all strikes me as completely speculative at this point.

America has to prepare to live with this disease indefinitely.  

Death rate from COVID-19 remains a catastrophe in Italy, China and Iran less so if you can believe them, USA France and Spain form another group, South Korea Switzerland and Germany all are under 1%

The USA is, unfortunately, not looking more like South Korea.

If the USA gets 30 million COVID-19 cases, a mortality rate of 2.15% translates into 645,000 deaths, 21.5 times the number who die from flu in an average year with 30 million influenza cases (mortality rate of 0.1%).

They kept attacking Europe for 200 more years, as at Vienna in 1529 and again in 1683: Now they just invade through "immigration"

Islam remains The West's implacable enemy.

Pure insanity: 20% of total global bond market pays negative interest

Opinion: We haven’t seen interest rates this low since before Hammurabi, so what bonds should you buy?:

 

Some $13 trillion in bonds are paying negative interest rates, which means bondholders actually pay for the privilege of holding an issuer’s bonds. That represents more than 20% of a total global bond market value of $55 trillion, according to Bloomberg. Other bonds are paying positive rates so low they carry a real (after inflation) negative yield as well. ... Some civilizations, like the early Roman Catholic Church and Islam, were opposed to charging interest, but negative rates just didn’t happen, as far as Sylla knows, until the modern era. Now 14 European countries, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain, have negative interest rates on their two-year bonds.

 

In China, however, things are mostly wrong, very wrong

Chinese dissidents are being executed for their organs, former hospital worker says:

The world is beginning to wake up to the fact that virtually every organ transplant in China costs the life of an innocent human being. That’s why countries like Israel, Spain, Italy and Taiwan have already banned transplant tourism.