Offshore emissions

"Can someone explain how the deindustrialisation of the UK and Germany [et al] will save the planet? 

    "I still struggle to understand why they sacrifice their industries, jobs and prosperity only to outsource production to Asia, which increases global emissions. Does it make any sense to you?"

~ Michael A. Arouet

Summing up

"Just a reminder that as of now, Iran is still run by cruel theocrats, Venezuela is still run by far-left socialists, Russia is still run by a destructive dictatorship, and Ukraine is still run by a vibrant democracy that is is basically left alone to fight.

"Meanwhile, Donald Trump's priority is to invade Denmark and Minnesota. And to invite Putin to help run Gaza."

~ composite quote by Phillips O'Brien, Dan Smith, Clotilde I. & Alastair Twin

"The stakes could not be higher. As I speak there is despair in European capitals and delight in Moscow. That should tell you everything about the dangerous watershed we’ve now reached."

"On January 18, 2026, President Donald Trump sent a letter to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. This is not a gaffe or a joke; it is a declaration of how Trump understands power. It reads:

"This letter is sheer madness.

"A sitting US President openly declares that his commitment to peace depends on whether he personally receives a prize—petulant narcissism elevated to state doctrine. ...

"Worse, the letter rejects sovereignty itself. Questioning Denmark’s ownership of Greenland because 'boats landed there' is pre-modern barbarism. By that logic, no country owns anything—only whoever has the power to seize it. ...

"The phrase 'Complete and Total Control' is the tell. It is an explicit claim that world security requires American domination of foreign territory. No advocate of liberty, no defender of objective law, and no serious supporter of the American constitutional order can accept that premise.

"All of this is wrapped in a protection-racket view of alliances. ...

"It is a worldview that treats the United States as Trump’s personal property, international laws that prohibit aggression as optional, and force as the final arbiter of right. Such a worldview is incompatible with liberty. It is incompatible with objective law. And it is incompatible with the moral foundations of the American republic.

"Anyone still defending this man and his movement is not defending America. They are defending the ravings of a would-be king, stripped of reason, law, and moral restraint. And they should be ashamed."

~ Nicholas Provenzo from his post 'Mad Donald's Letter and the Mind of a Would-Be King'

"Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize."

~ Anne Applebaum from her article 'Trump’s Letter to Norway Should Be the Last Straw'

 

"For all of my life Russia has tried to decouple Europe from America and break the North Atlantic Alliance. It never succeeded. ... But now success is staring the Kremlin in the face. All thanks to Donald Trump. ... 

"Nobody should underestimate the catastrophic consequences for NATO if its leading member annexed the territory of a smaller member. It would be the abnegation of everything NATO is meant to stand for. Nobody denies Greenland is gaining in strategic importance to America. ... 

"But the crucial point is that, in security terms, America can have whatever it wants in Greenland without annexing an ally against its will. ... [T]he 1951 Greenland Defence Agreement (renewed in 2004).... gives the US the right to build as many bases as it wants and station unlimited numbers of military folk there. During the Cold War around 15,000 US person were based in Greenland. It’s now 200. 

"Trump claims Greenland is under threat from imminent takeover by China and/or Russia. It isn't, of course. They haven’t seen a Chinese ship up there for 12 years. But if Trump truly believes it, there's nothing to stop him from ramping up US military assets in Greenland back to Cold War levels or more. Moreover his European Nato allies are on side ... 

"The Trump administration depicts Greenland as a defenceless frozen waste in danger of being picked off by NATO’s enemies. It’s a nonsense. Greenland is a self-governing Danish protectorate. As such it is fully covered by NATO security guarantees, including the all-important Article 5 — which says an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. Yet Trump still wants to grab Greenland, all part of his mission not just to be Imperial President of the USA but Imperial Overlord of the whole Western Hemisphere. ... 

"Under Trump America is on the brink of becoming the enemy, not our most important ally. As a lifelong supporter of the US it is chilling to write and say such words. "The stakes could not be higher. As I speak there is despair in European capitals and delight in Moscow. That should tell you everything about the dangerous watershed we’ve now reached."

~ Andrew Neil

"Trump's letter to Norway's Prime Minister makes clear it is Trump — not America — with a psychological need to own Greenland."

~ John Bolton 

"[You say that] 'J6 should’ve been the last straw.' Pardoning the J6 criminals should’ve been the really last straw. 

"Republicans can’t get enough straw."

~ FT

"A lot of good people [sic] are on a hook over Donald Trump. They voted for him for understandable reasons [sic]: to stop Hillary or Kamala, to prevent court-packing, to move the embassy to Jerusalem, to reduce regulations. They rightly applauded [sic] his toughening of immigration policy. ...

"They began to feel invested in him. Sure, he was boorish and bombastic [and also utterly incapable of recognising Constitutional restraints - Ed.], but he was delivering most of what he was elected to do. Naturally, they bridled at criticism from people they disliked, some of which was indeed absurd.But he has plainly now lost his mind. There is no other way of reading 'I am going to threaten an ally with invasion because I didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize.' It is impossible to exaggerate how high the stakes are. If Putin had put an agent in the White House, what would would be doing differently? We are talking about the survival of the Western way of life, about the world order of which the United States is the chief exemplar and beneficiary. That, surely, matters more than 'liberal tears.' Doesn’t it? Because if it doesn’t, we are all damned."

~ Daniel Hannan

PS:

"The most [surely "one of the many"? - Ed.] irritating aspect of the Greenland farce is that it's a distraction from the tragedy of Iran."

~ Niall Ferguson

"The fate of a 2,500-year-old nation and its 93 million inhabitants rests, for now, in the hands of Donald Trump.

On at least eight occasions over the past three weeks, Trump encouraged Iranian protesters to go into the streets, assuring them that the United States had their back and that “help is on the way.” He threatened that if the Iranian regime killed protesters, the U.S. was “locked and loaded” to take action.

“If they start killing people like they have in the past,” he warned, “we will get involved. We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts. And that doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts.”

Despite Trump’s threats, the Islamic Republic commenced what is almost certainly its bloodiest killing binge since its inception, in 1979. The regime itself admitted to 2,000 deaths; human-rights organizations believe that the figure could be higher than 12,000. This death toll likely dwarfs the number of protesters killed by the shah over the 13 months leading to the 1979 revolution.

Trump now confronts a fateful choice. He can make good on his promise and risk the always-unpredictable consequences of military action, or he can face the shame of having given false encouragement to freedom fighters and emboldened one of America’s fiercest adversaries.

If Trump chooses not to act, his encouragement of the Iranian people to rise up, his repeated promises of U.S. support, and his subsequent abandonment of them will be remembered as one of the most callous examples of presidential betrayal in modern history. Expressing moral support for protesters was the right thing to do. But inciting them to rise up and promising intervention, only to watch them get mowed down by the thousands, will be counted as an act of cruelty."

~ Karim Sadjadpour from his article 'Trump’s Fateful Choice in Iran'

PPS:

"We just reviewed Trump’s recent National Security Strategy and Greenland isn’t even mentioned once. Remember this when Trump officials talk about how conquering Greenland is a top national security priority. They are lying to you."

~ Trump Lie Tracker

"Trump supporters continue to lie for him." [updated]

"Trump supporters continue to lie for him. Tariffs are not about fentanyl, national security, or even jobs.
    "They're about consolidating power for the sake of using it arbitrarily."

~ Keith Weiner

***

* * * * 

UPDATE:

"Trump’s demand to annex Greenland either through money or the military is becoming the catalyst for the possible destruction of the Atlantic Alliance. Trump could not do more to serve the geopolitical interests of Russia and China if he was an actual puppet of Moscow and Beijing."

~ Richard Ebeling

"As an American, I have one thing to say to my many European friends: Do not back down in this confrontation. Up to now, both the EU and the major European powers have sought to appease Trump by offering him concessions, flattery, personal gifts, and other forms of tribute. This strategy has not worked and should be abandoned immediately.

"Donald Trump is fundamentally a bully who wants to dominate everyone around him. Trying to placate him with concessions is a fool’s errand ...

"What makes any European think that conceding Greenland will mollify Trump? He will simply come back for more, later. ... [And a]t this point, Trump’s America has amply demonstrated that it will not be a reliable ally when push comes to shove. It has already abandoned Ukraine, and stated in November’s National Security Strategy that Europe has fallen behind the Western Hemisphere in terms of American priorities.  

"Europeans should keep in mind that those countries that stood up to Trump’s threats in 2025 ... all did well and did not have to succumb. ...

"It may be the case that the world will have to risk suffering a global recession as more countries stand up to Trump and retaliate against his policies. But a U.S. politician who wants to weaponise trade and use it as a lever for territorial expansion needs to be taught a painful lesson."

~ Francis Fukuyama from his column 'Don’t Back Down, Europe: Trump’s tariff threats against allies should be the last straw.'

"Liberal democracy is a superpower that can make a country, or a continent, great. The world needs to have at least one such liberal democratic power, to a serve as a refuge, a protector, and an example for the rest of the world."

 

"To my friends in Europe, I want to extend an apology—and an urgent warning.

"I am profoundly sorry that Americans are failing you in this dangerous and difficult time, after you have stood with us over so many years. I didn’t vote for this, I didn’t want it, I fought against it. But I am an American, and this is my country’s choice and its policy—and I am heartily ashamed of it.

"Now the warning: Europe needs to become one of the great powers of the world, and do it fast—or you will get carved up by them….

"Yet it is absurd to think of Europe as a nonentity with no standing in the world. The countries of Europe, excluding Russia, represent 700 million people. Europe is composed of advanced and developed societies, great centres of science and culture—and taken all together, it is the world’s third-largest economy, on a par with the US and China. Europe also makes up a large part of NATO, the world’s most powerful military force. Even without the US, you are more than a match for poor, backward, depleted Russia—and the UK and France have their own nuclear forces, which provide a deterrent against other nuclear powers….

"Liberal democracy is a superpower that can make a country, or a continent, great. The world needs to have at least one such liberal democratic power, to a serve as a refuge, a protector, and an example for the rest of the world. If it is not going to be America—for who knows how long—then it had better be Europe."

~ Robert Tracinski from his post 'Dear Europe: Become a Great Power—or Get Carved Up by Them'—which he reckons is "one of the most important things I wrote this year."

"The end is nigh – not for the world, but for the climate industrial complex."

"The end is nigh – not for the world, but for the climate industrial complex. It has been a decline brought about mainly by the sheer reality of energy economics in the developing world.

"Published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the “World Energy Outlook 2025” reads like an obituary for the fantasy of global decarbonisation, acknowledging the undeniable truth that nations prioritising prosperity must unapologetically embrace coal, oil and natural gas.

"For years, the IEA and Western think tanks insisted that hydrocarbons were in structural decline, predicting a fatal drop in demand after 2030. Yet in the very document meant to track progress toward realising an absurd net-zero objective, the IEA concedes that demand for oil and natural gas will continue to grow well beyond 2035 and may not peak until 2050.

"The key insight of the IEA report is that emerging markets, excluding China, are becoming the primary drivers of growth in global energy consumption. This is a massive, structural shift. No longer will the trajectory of energy markets be dictated by the policies of Paris, Berlin or Washington but rather by the sovereign choices of nations whose citizens are desperate for better lives."

~ Vijay Jayaraj from his post 'IEA publishes climate-change era’s obituary'

Ukraine betrayed. Again.

"After months of alternately sucking up to Vladimir Putin and seemingly expressing anger towards him, it turns out the Trump administration has been secretly negotiating with Russia for a while now, cutting the Ukrainians out of the process, and a report at Axios* says they’re now planning to present the plan to Ukraine and force it on them. As for Europe, 'We don’t really care about the Europeans.' I tried to warn them."

~ Robert Tracinski from his post 'Tyranny Is Unaffordable'

* The report is behind a paywall. The Guardian reports the plan "would require Kyiv to surrender territory and severely limit the size of its military.

The draft plan, reported on Wednesday as Russian drone and missile strikes killed at least 25 people in the city of Ternopil, was reportedly developed by Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin adviser Kirill Dmitriev, would force draconian measures on Ukraine that would give Russia unprecedented control over the country’s military and political sovereignty. The plan is likely to be viewed as surrender in Kyiv.

"Capitalism created Poland's miracle, and socialism created Venezuela's catastrophe."

"Capitalism created Poland's miracle, and socialism created Venezuela's catastrophe."

~ Young Americans for Liberty [chart from the Our World in Data website]

"Over recent decades, the world trading system has drifted into a distorted, sub-optimal equilibrium"

"[O]ver recent decades, the world trading system has drifted into a distorted, sub-optimal equilibrium, shaped by regulatory and political asymmetry, integration clubs and rule-based inertia. ...

"So, while tariffs fell, supply chains over-concentrated. The post-1990s decline in tariffs between different economic structures enabled deep global supply chains. This increased efficiency — but also vulnerability, dependency, and strategic exposure.

"In turn, non-tariff barriers [in the form of excessive internal regulation] rose, especially in the European Union. It seemed like a good idea at the time – for some people – but the reduction in market access for outsiders and entrenching of the local status quo was less transparent. ... the expansion of the European Union from 9 members in the 1980s to today’s 27 ... has privileged trade for insiders, whilst diminishing the relative position of external players. ... amounting to a reversal of the principle of mutual recognition [and] the foundation of liberal trade ... [along with] a deeper recalibration of the global trade order towards more explicit trading blocs (which crucially will need to deregulate internally to grow) ...

"This will not be painless. The transition out of a long-standing but sub-optimal equilibrium rarely is."

~ from the uncredited post 'Europe is in trouble – and it’s not just trade'

"All of this helps to explain why a forcible annexation of Greenland would ultimately also harm U.S. interests [as well]."

"All of this helps to explain why a forcible annexation of Greenland would ultimately also harm U.S. interests. To trade in the most stable and powerful military alliance in modern history for control over a frigid and sparsely populated island—plus a place for Trump in the history books—is a bad deal for the American people. But that doesn’t mean that the Trump White House will see things the same way."

~ Yascha Mounk from his post 'They Really Just Might Invade Greenland'

‘US Imperialism Has No Clothes’

“The American imperialism directed towards Denmark and Canada is not just morally wrong. It is strategically disastrous. The United States has nothing to gain from it, and much to lose. There is nothing that Americans cannot get from Denmark or Canada through alliance. The very existence of the base at Pituffik shows that. Within the atmosphere of friendship that has prevailed the last eighty years, all of the mineral resources of Canada and Greenland can be traded for on good terms, or for that matter explored by American companies. The only way to put all of this easy access in doubt was to follow the course that Musk-Trump have chosen: trade wars with Canada and Europe, and the threat of actual wars and annexations. Musk-Trump are creating the bloodily moronic situation in which the United States will have to fight wars to get the things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking. And of course wars rarely turn out the way one expects.
    “Much effort is spent trying to extract a doctrine from all this. But there is none. It is just senselessness that benefits America’s enemies. Hans Christian Andersen told the unforgettable tale of the naked emperor. In Greenland what we saw was American imperialism with no clothes. Naked and vain.”

~ Timothy Snyder from his post ‘The Imperialism Has No Clothes’

 

"Europe is at a critical turning point in its history."

“President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, My dear colleagues,

"Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened. Washington has become the court of Nero ...

"This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

"The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin—but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

"Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media. 

"This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution. 

"I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor. 

"Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops. 

"Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military-service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign. 

"Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it. 

"And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin. 

"The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it. 

"What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force. 

"This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favour of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada; yours are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe; his is Taiwan and the China Sea. 

"At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called 'diplomatic realism.' 

"So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second-largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated. 

"Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war. 

"The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands ...  

"It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books. ...

 

"Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. ... But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament. 

"We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left. 

"They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly ...  They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin. ...

"Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react. 

"Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical. 

"The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks. 

"But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads. 

"The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again. 

"Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost. 

"The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century. 

"Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.”

-Claude Malhuret speaking to the French Senate Tuesday March 4 2025.

 

'A Day of American Infamy' [update 2]

"In August 1941, about four months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill aboard warships in Newfoundland’s Placentia Bay and agreed to the Atlantic Charter, a joint declaration by the world’s leading democratic powers on 'common principles' for a postwar world. ...
    "The Charter, and the alliance that came of it [including the supply of military equipment to Britain by Lend-Lease] is a high point of American statesmanship. On Friday in the Oval Office, the world witnessed the opposite. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s embattled democratic leader, came to Washington prepared to sign away anything he could offer President Trump except his nation’s freedom, security and common sense. For that, he was rewarded with a lecture on manners from the most mendacious vulgarian and ungracious host ever to inhabit the White House.
    "If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky. Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly — either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance’s disingenuous provocations — this was a day of American infamy.
    "Where do we go from here?"

~ Bret Stephens from his editorial 'A Day of American Infamy 

PICS: Bottom, war leader Winston Churchill at the White House 3 January 1942, wearing his air-raid suit (Imperial War Museum); top, a war leader at the White House with two thugs (Getty Images) 

UPDATE 1: 

"What does seem clear is that Trump is putting an end to the foreign policy the United States has pursued since the end of World War II. Indeed, his worldview seems to rest on two assumptions that run directly counter to the way in which, for all the serious differences between them, every president since 1945 has thought about America’s role in the world.
    
"The first is that Trump has a fundamentally zero-sum view of the world. America’s relationship with allies like Japan or the United Kingdom has been based on the assumption that both sides would benefit from the partnership. In particular, America would provide its allies with a security guarantee; in return, it would enjoy international stability, reap the benefits of free trade, and have huge sway over the rules governing the world order. Even if the United States might be a net contributor in the short run, expending more for its military budget than its partners, these alliances would over the long run serve the country’s 'enlightened self-interest.'

"Trump, by contrast, seems to believe that every deal has a winner and a loser; since American allies in Europe or East Asia are not unhappy about the current arrangements, this must mean that it is his nation that’s the sucker. ...

"The second assumption shaping Trump’s foreign policy is his belief that spheres of influence are the natural, and perhaps even the morally appropriate, way to organise international relations. ... [and] that maintaining an alliance structure that ignores spheres of influence is naive, needlessly costly, and fundamentally sentimental. ...

"Panama and Greenland are in America’s sphere of influence, and so Trump believes that he is entitled to make outrageous demands on them. Conversely, he seems to regard Ukraine as falling into Russia’s natural sphere of influence ...

"If Trump gets his way, the world will become much more transactional. America’s erstwhile allies in the western hemisphere will either need to learn to stand on their own feet or to pay financial tribute to their protector. Those which happen to be located in the vicinity of the world’s most powerful authoritarian countries will need to accommodate themselves to the diktat of Beijing or Moscow ..."

~ Yascha Mounk from his post 'Help Me Understand... The New World Order'

UPDATE 2:

"In light of the events of the past week [which includes the US siding with Russia and North Korea on a UN resolution condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and a three-ship Chinese naval circumnavigation of Australia], the Washington faction of NZ's Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade faces a new and major problem. ...

    "President Donald Trump’s affection for dictatorial regimes; the brutality of his transactional approach to international affairs; and his apparent repudiation of the 'rules-based international order' in favour of cold-eyed realpolitik; makes it difficult for America (and its increasingly apprehensive allies) to retain their footing on the moral high-ground.
    "It is difficult [therefore] to criticise the transactional elements of the relationships forged between China and the micro-states of the Pacific – the Cook Islands being only the latest in a succession of Chinese-initiated bilateral agreements negotiated in New Zealand’s 'back yard' – when the United States is demanding half of Ukraine’s rare earths in part-payment for the American munitions supplied to counter Russian aggression.
    "What those three Chinese warships have produced, however, is a much more compelling argument for aligning New Zealand’s defensive posture in general and its military procurement in particular with Australia’s. In the much colder and more brutal world that is fast emerging from the collapse of the 80-year-old Pax Americana, only the Australians can be relied upon to protect us – and only then if they are satisfied that the Kiwis are pulling their weight."

 ~Chris Trotter from his post 'What Are We Defending?'

COP 29: "The entire event was a monument to the contradictions of modern climate policy."

"Picture this: COP29, the annual climate circus where the world’s leaders gather to wag fingers and wring hands over carbon emissions, is hosted in none other than Azerbaijan—a country whose economy runs on fossil fuels like a muscle car guzzling premium gas. ...
    "[Azerbejani president Ilham] Aliyev ... point[ed] out that [Europe's] energy 'security' conveniently overrides their green ambitions ... only meeting Europe’s insatiable demand for natural gas because, you know, someone has to keep the lights on over there. The subtext? 'We’re saving you from freezing, so maybe chill with the climate scolding.'
    "Notably missing from the conference were key world leaders, a snub that suggests even they couldn’t stomach the irony. Or maybe they were too busy figuring out how to reconcile their Net Zero pledges with their growing reliance on oil-rich nations like Azerbaijan. Either way, the hypocrisy runs both ways. ... 

    "The Western delegates who flew to Baku in private jets to wag their fingers about emissions are no less hypocritical. There they sat, nodding politely as Aliyev defended fossil fuels while quietly hoping he keeps shipping that sweet, sweet natural gas their way.  ... The entire event was a monument to the contradictions of modern climate policy. ...

     "Azerbaijan hosting COP29 is the perfect encapsulation of why no one takes these climate conferences seriously anymore. They’re not about saving the planet; they’re about playing politics, appeasing donors, and virtue signaling on a global stage. Aliyev’s speech was a reminder that behind all the lofty rhetoric is a steaming pile of contradictions."

~ Charles Rotter from his post 'Azerbaijan’s COP29 Speech: A Masterclass in Irony So Thick, It’s Flammable'

'"Whenever the EU tries to make itself more competitive, it fails'

"Whenever the EU tries to make itself more competitive, it starts from the assumption that large-scale public investment and EU-level coordination are the primary drivers of innovation and economic growth. ...But this EU view of the economy underestimates the role of markets and entrepreneurship in fostering genuine economic dynamism. That is also the biggest difference from other, more economically successful world regions.
    "At best, the EU’s economic policies do not work without causing any further harm. At worst, its plans often create additional layers of bureaucracy and regulation. These can stifle the very innovation and agility they seek to promote.
    "The EU’s repeated return to this style of economic strategy reveals a persistent belief in the efficacy of state-sponsored industrial policy. Yet ... [a]ttempts to pick winners or direct the course of technological progress from Brussels have a poor track record. When was the last time the EU created a genuinely world-leading industry that can stand on its own without protection or subsidies? Actually, has this ever happened?
    "What all the EU’s grand strategies tend to overlook is the importance of economic fundamentals. Issues like labour market flexibility, tax competitiveness and regulatory burdens ... 
    "A more effective approach might start by asking what barriers are preventing European firms from innovating and scaling up. It might look at why Europe has struggled to produce tech giants on the scale of those in the US or China. The answers likely lie in areas like Europe’s cultural attitudes towards entrepreneurship and failure.
    "Addressing these fundamentals could do more to boost European competitiveness than any amount of centrally planned investment. But that would require political courage, which might mean tackling vested interests and long-standing national practices.
    "It is all very well the EU wants to become more competitive – and it should. ... But before embarking on yet another grand plan, Europe’s politicians should reflect on the lessons of ...  similar past initiatives – and why they all failed.
    "And perhaps, just perhaps, they will realise that the EU’s own policies and regulations might have played their part in the slowing dynamism of the European economy. In which case, another grand plan designed in Brussels would be the last thing the continent needs."

~ Oliver Hartwich, from his op-ed 'Brussels sprouting same old stale economic plans'

By detaining Pavel Durov, says Will Duffield in this guest post, France threatens both free speech and Telegram’s unique neutrality.

France Detains Telegram Founder Pavel Durov

Guest post by Will Duffield

On August 24, French police arrested Telegram founder Pavel Durov moments after his plane touched down at Le Bourget airport outside Paris. He remains detained on “an arrest warrant alleging his platform has been used for money laundering, drug trafficking and other offenses,” according to French television network TF1. Although Durov has not been officially charged, his unprecedented arrest threatens Telegram’s unique neutrality.

Telegram is an instant messaging platform particularly popular in post-Soviet states. It allows its 900 million users to communicate via one-to-one, optionally encrypted, chat, and in large public channels. Durov created Telegram in 2013 as his previous social media platform, a Russian Facebook analog called VKontakte, was being expropriated by Putin-friendly oligarchs. Then, recounting resistance to FSB demands for Euromaidan channel data, police intimidation, and a Douglas Adams-inspired “so long and thanks for all the fish” resignation from VK, he was celebrated in the West as a dissident.

A 2014 New York Times profile titled “Once Celebrated in Russia, the Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile” quoted Durov saying, “me myself, I’m not a big fan of the idea of countries,” and characterized him as “Neo from the ‘Matrix’ movies … moving from country to country … One day he is in Paris, another in Singapore.”

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the attendant return of great power geopolitics has made stateless nomadship much more difficult. Everyone and everything—even social media platforms—have been expected to pick sides. Nevertheless, Telegram has remained uniquely neutral, and, until now, unmolested.

Since 2022, social media, and to an extent the entire internet, has been steadily separating into Russian and Western spheres. Both shifting user attitudes and state sanctions have played a role. The EU sanctioned the owners of VKontakte, prohibiting payments to the platform. At the same time, Russia banned Meta for “extremist activities” after Facebook and Instagram relaxed their hate speech rules to allow Ukrainian invective against Russian invaders. While WhatsApp has remained popular in both Russia and the West, its maximum group size, 1,024, is far smaller than Telegram’s 200,000 user limit, making Telegram the preferred platform for public conversation. Although there are a few prominent Russian state accounts on Twitter, and some Russians still lob insults at American volunteers on Instagram, division is the rule. Telegram is the exception.

Everyone on both sides of the war uses Telegram. They were already using it when Russia’s full invasion began and quickly pressed their favorite social media app into wartime service. Heads of state, government agencies, military units, and civilians all began to coordinate, troll, boast, and propagandize on Telegram. Ukraine’s security services set up chatbots to allow the reporting of Russian troop movements. Overnight, Telegram became simultaneously a digital Switzerland and a battlefield.

The unique circumstances of its birth had, until August 24, allowed the platform to remain awkwardly neutral throughout the two-and-a-half-year conflict. Although Russia tried to ban the platform in 2018, it didn’t stick, and by 2022 the Russian state itself had become too reliant on the platform—both for external and internal communication—to abandon it.

It didn’t have the same sort of moderation controversies as Meta when used by combatants because it did less to restrict violent speech to begin with and didn’t offer concessions to one side over the other. Indeed, Durov merely tried to assure Ukrainians that their data would be secure against wartime hacking. This isn’t to say Telegram isn’t unmoderated. But its combination of channel-based communication and largely reactive moderation—relying on user reports—creates a more laissez-faire moderation paradigm than more centralized, web-first platforms.

Because Durov had already left Russia and taken Telegram with him, it didn’t fall under the sanctions that affected the Russian-based internet and European services operating in Russia. Indeed, last year, I contrasted perceptions of the platform’s independence with perceptions of TikTok, writing “TikTok isn’t a small founder-run operation like Telegram, which while born in Russia, escaped its orbit and is now registered in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Dubai.” However, Durov’s refusal to limit Russian use of Telegram and the platform’s commitment to light-touch moderation as other social media platforms have grown more restrictive, has gradually soured attitudes towards Telegram among many Western elites.

In the Second World War, Swiss neutrality was often disdained by the Allies, especially later in the war. Nevertheless, a neutral Switzerland had undeniable value, not only to journalists and spymasters but to many downed airmen as well. Likewise, even if a neutral Telegram offers Russia access on equal terms, it allows for the observation of Russian chatter and activity, the identification of captured soldiers, and the simple maintenance of pacific and familial ties between friends and family separated by the conflict. It is also the only place where ordinary Russians can get an uncensored view of their country’s awful military misadventure. These are all goods worth safeguarding.

Telegram’s neutrality might have become an annoyance, but this shift alone doesn’t explain Durov’s perplexing arrest. Telegram has long been more pugnacious in its relations with courts and regulators than most publicly traded platforms, but it is far from unique in offering encrypted messaging. In fact, end-to-end encrypted chat makes up a much smaller portion of its use than competing services. While Telegram’s “secret chats” are end-to-end encrypted, its massive public channels are not. If Telegram’s encryption is at issue, WhatsApp owner Mark Zuckerbeg and Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike and many other tech luminaries should avoid France.

More generally, it is hard to see how France has jurisdiction over Telegram. Telegram isn’t a French company. France might have personal jurisdiction over Durov as a French citizen, but operating a social media platform offering encryption isn’t a criminal act in France. To the extent that Durov’s arrest is related to Telegram’s platform policies rather than Durov’s private activity, France has just taken a hostage. France shouldn’t follow in the footsteps of Turkey and India.

Absent official clarity, speculation and likely misinformation abound. Some have claimed, without evidence, that Durov’s arrest is the roundabout work of the American State Department. Durov’s arrest is much more likely to have been prompted by French anxieties about Russian disinformation campaigns targeting Francophone Africa, where eight countries have experienced coups in the past four years. many of which brought them closer to Russia. Durov’s refusal to suppress such campaigns may have been the trigger for his arrest. It is also worth noting that while Telegram isn’t uniquely encrypted, it is simply the communications platform of choice—for everyone—in the parts of the world from which organised crime comes to Western Europe.

On August 26, Jean-Michel Bernigaud, Secretary General of Ofmin, a French child protection agency, muddied as much as he clarified in a Linkedin post saying, “At the heart of this issue is the lack of moderation and cooperation of the platform (which has nearly 1 billion users), particularly in the fight against pedophilia.” He, confusingly, attached a link to a documentary about pedophiles’ use of Instagram. French President Emmanuel Macron [already attached to Jacinda Ardern's anti-free speech attacks on social media] tweeted that he had “seen false information regarding France following the arrest of Pavel Durov,” and proclaimed France’s commitment to “freedom of expression,” “the spirit of entrepreneurship,” and “the rule of law,” but offered no greater clarity as to why his country had arrested Durov.

France owes Durov, Telegram users, and the internet as a whole, a rapid explanation. Its actions are already damaging its reputation as both a friend of liberty and a safe place to do business. More importantly, Durov’s opaque arrest threatens Telegram’s unique neutrality and potentially the safety of its users on both sides of the conflict. The appearance of capture can be just as damning as the real thing. If France is truly an ally committed to a free internet, it should free Pavel Durov.

* * * * 

Will Duffield is an adjunct scholar in the Cato Institute’s Center for Representative Government, where he studies speech and internet governance. His research focuses on the web of government regulation and private rules that govern Americans’ speech online.

His post first appeared at the Cato At Liberty blog.

To AUKUS, or not to AUKUS?

"Economists think that the more interconnected countries are by trade and investment, the less likely warfare will occur between them. [See for instance the NOT PC posts 'Free Trade Is the Path to Peace & Prosperity' and 'The Horsemen of non-apocalypse']
    "On many occasions countries have consciously intensified those interconnections as an alternative to war.
    "Examples include the federation of the American states into the USA following a confederation after customs conflict between Maryland and Virginia; the European Coal and Steel Community (which evolved into the EU) tying up the French and Germany industries after three painful wars; ASEAN which was started after the Indonesian confrontation of Malaya ended; recently India has improved its physical and trade links with its neighbouring China and Pakistan.
    "Alas, economic relations between China and the US have deteriorated. That this occurred under both President Trump and President Biden suggests a structural tension arising from jostling over their places in the world. ...
     "One can explain the First World War and the follow-up Second World War as a consequence of Germany catching up in economic size to Britain and trying to find a comparable place in the world. (Neither noticed that the US was already bigger.) We may be grateful that moving from one global hegemon, Britain, to a second, the US, did not involve conflict between the two (although the two world wars accelerated the transfer from a weakened Britain). 
    "It is unlikely that China is going to be the next global hegemon. Rather, we are moving to a multipolar world where there is none. There is a plausible economic model which predicts that world economic output, and hence power, is moving to where the populations are – the situation before British industrialisation. It occurs because of the ease with which technology and capital can transfer between countries.
    "That does not mean that Chinese productivity will catch up to the American level – not in this century anyway. Factors like the resource base and social organisation mute the economics. ...
    "So behind today’s incipient economic warfare and military machinations we face a multipolar world whose shape is uncertain. ... The challenge for the world, then, is how to get from the current world order, in which the US acts the hegemon, to a multipolar world in which the US is but one of four or so big economies. Full multipolarity may be less than a quarter of a century away.
    "The US does not seem to see the issue this way. It is largely preoccupied with the short-term task of trying to maintain its current hegemony in a world whose order it sees as not too different from the immediate post-war one. ....
    "New Zealand may have little influence over the evolving world order. In so far as we have, we should be putting our effort in assisting it to move towards the reality of multipolarity. Ultimately New Zealand is having to balance its short-term interests against its long-term ones. I am not sure our friends always understand this."

~ Brian Easton from hist post 'Trading Towards A Multipolar World'

Bring back the slow-news days ...

"A comedian asked today if his audience was getting bored from all these slow-news days. Let’s consider the tumult:
    "Over the weekend, President Joe Biden did what he said he would not do and quit his race for a second term as US president. He also endorsed Kamala Harris for the bid. Overnight millions and millions of mega-donor and celebrity donations poured in for Kamala and the Democrats now that their favorite fossil was out of the race. ..
    "Suddenly, former President Trump has a real campaign to run against veritable competition, and reports started emerging that his campaign people are now doubting hopeful VP Vance is up to the new job because he was supposedly picked to electrify the MAGA faithful, but with the new fight for independent voters, the race becomes a different beast. ... Democrats have swung from all-out despair to surging hope over the course of a weekend. ...
    "That graze by a bullet and deaths caused by the assassination attempt have finally united a divided congress to the task of dividing the Secret Service from its leader. ...
  
"This isn’t just the most tumultuous year of political chaos in the US, geopolitics has ramped up in the last couple of months to suddenly outweigh inflation as a concern for markets ... [with] the prospect of an increasingly fractious Europe, isolationist America and a slowdown in the pulse of world trade. ... after a roaring rally, money is rushing out of potential flashpoints - such as Taiwan's stock market - and into havens such as gold, which hit an all-time high last week….
    "'All of Trump's policies are likely to be inflationary - be it tax cuts, immigration, or re-shoring, and hence dollar bearish...so the [US] dollar is likely to depreciate against gold,' ...
    "China’s growth is slowing even more, resulting in rescue packages from the Chinese government. So is growth under Bidenomics. ...
    "At the same time more than $100 billion has been wiped from the market value of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co in less than a week after Trump sounded equivocal about his commitment to Taiwan's protection and chip industry. ...
    "Things are also only getting hotter in the Middle East ... Israel bombing Yemen with F-15s in reprisal to a drone attack in Israel by the Houthis ... Russia [moving] ships out of Crimean ports due to decimation of its Black Sea navy by the Ukraine ... Meanwhile, in the West, the Paris Olympics look like a police state, while Europe is gearing up for more war with the introduction of military conscription … In fact, Paris now hosts the largest military camp inside of Paris since WWII so that soldiers (not police) can reach any part of the Paris Olympics, which are scattered around the city, in thirty minutes. ...
    "And, of course, on Friday we had the biggest global internet crash in history. ... part of the mad mix of events that have happened all around the world in less than one week’s time. ..."

~ David Haggith from his post 'The Year of Chaos Roars!'

Few people truly understand the destructive present relationship between interest rates and central banks. Daniel Lacalle points out the toxicity in this guest post, and suggests a way out ...

Central Banks Are Wrong about Rate Cuts

by Daniel Lacalle

When we talk about monetary policy, people do not understand the importance of interest rates reflecting the reality of inflation and risk. Interest rates are the price of risk and manipulating them down leads to bubbles that end in financial crises, while imposing too high rates can penalize the economy. Ideally, interest rates would flow freely and there would be no central bank to fix them.

A price signal as important as interest rates reflecting the true amount of money would prevent the creation of bubbles and, above all, the disproportionate accumulation of risk. The risk of fixing rates too high does not exist when central banks impose "reference rates," as they will always make it easier for state borrowing—artificial currency creation—in the most convenient—what they call “no distortions”—and cheap way.

Many analysts say that central banks do not impose interest rates; they only reflect what the market demands. Surprisingly, if that were the case, we wouldn’t have financial traders stuck to screens [before every central bank announcement] waiting to decipher what the rate decision is going to be. Moreover, if the central bank only responds to market demand, it is a good reason to let interest rates float freely.

Citizens perceive that raising interest rates with high inflation is harmful; however, they do not seem to understand that what was really destructive was having negative real and nominal interest rates in the business cycle's earlier phase. That’s what encourages economic agents to take far more risks than we can take, and to disguise excess debt with a false sense of security. At the same time, it is surprising that citizens praise low rates but then complain that home prices and risky assets rise too fast!

Shifting the Blame

Inflation is a huge advantage for the currency issuer. It blames everyone and everybody for the rise in prices, except for the only thing that makes aggregate prices go up, consolidate that increase, and continue to rise, even at a more moderate rate: printing much more currency than the private economy demands and setting rates well below the real risk levels.

The benefit of statism is that it puts the blame for high interest rates on banks, just as it blames supermarkets for high and rising consumer prices.

Who prints currency and disguises risk? Of course, we look at the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Fed and the local Reserve Bank, who all dictate the increase in money supply through repurchases and fixed interest rates. However, central banks do not buy back state assets, print money, or impose negative real interest rates because they are evil alchemists. They do so because the state’s deficit—which is artificial monetary creation—remains unsustainable, public debt is atrophied, and state solvency is worsened by imbalanced public accounts. The central bank is not responsible for implementing fiscal policy. Thus, the state is the one that prints money out of nowhere and passes the imbalance to the citizens through inflation and taxes.

No wonder politicians are always so eager to shift the blame.

In a genuinely open unhampered economy, banks do not create money out of nowhere; they lend to real projects that are expected to be repaid with interest, and those loans have collateral. If commercial banks created money out of nowhere, none of them would go bankrupt. They only create money out of nowhere when regulation imposes risk-disconnected rates and eliminates the need for capital to sustain the government by accumulating its bonds and loans under the false construction that they are “no-risk assets.” Thus, the castle of cards built under the disguise of public-sector risk always creates inflation, financial crises, secular stagnation, and liquidity traps. The amount of money created goes to unproductive expenditure, destroys the purchasing power of the currency, impoverishes citizens, and at the same time decapitalises the most fragile companies, SMEs (small and medium enterprises). 

That’s what they call the social use of money. Seriously.

Hikes or cuts?

The ECB has announced a possible interest rate cut in June that is in danger of being premature and wrong. First, because money supply, credit demand, and supply are rebounding, and inflation remains persistent and above the 2% target. Furthermore, the underlying trend is a much higher inflation level than the ECB’s target, even after two changes in the CPI calculation. After a 20% accumulated consumer price level since 2019, calling victory on inflation after two changes in the calculation of CPI and still elevated core inflation is insane. If we see the rise in non-replaceable goods prices, we can understand why citizens are angry. Real non-replaceable goods’ CPI is probably closer to 4-5% per year.

The ECB rate hikes are signalled by many market participants as the cause of the euro zone’s stagnation, but curiously, no one mentions that the euro area was already experiencing massive stagnation due to negative interest rates earlier in the phase. Besides, if you need to have real negative rates to “grow,” you’re not growing but accumulating toxic risk. 

The ECB knows that the base effect, which played in favour of year-on-year inflation in 2023, will not be supportive in 2024. They also know that monetary aggregates were down a few months ago but are rebounding, and that the supply of credit has not collapsed. The ECB, like every other non-deluded central bank in the known world, knows that inflation is a monetary phenomenon and that there is no such thing as so-called cost-push inflation, “greedflation,” or similar statist excuses. None of those factors can cause aggregate prices to soar, consolidate, or continue to rise; it is only the destruction of the currency’s purchasing power that causes inflation.

Of course, no central bank will acknowledge that inflation is its fault, among other things, because no central bank increases the money supply at will but to finance an unsustainable public deficit. However, no central bank will challenge a financial structure that is based on the myth that public debt is risk-free. Central banks know that inflation is a monetary phenomenon, which is why they attack rising consumer prices with rate hikes and money supply reductions. They just do it mildly because governments benefit from inflation.

Eurozone cuts?

The problem of lowering interest rates now, when there is no evidence of having controlled inflation and achieved a target that already erodes the purchasing power of the currency by 2% annually, is to fall into the narrative that the eurozone is in a poor economic situation because of monetary policy when it is due to the wrong fiscal policy, the disaster of the Next Generation EU Funds, whose failure is already only comparable to the forgotten "think big" Juncker Plan, a shortsighted and destructive energy, agricultural, and industrial policy, and a taxation system that shifts innovation and technology to other countries.

The ECB is aware that interest rates are not high and that the system’s money supply has not decreased as expected. In fact, it continues to repurchase outstanding bonds and will not carry out a significant reduction in its balance sheet in real terms until the end of the year. Lowering interest rates now includes the risk of depreciating the euro against the dollar and thus increasing the euro area’s import bill in real terms, reducing the inflow of reserves into the eurozone, and further encouraging public spending and government debt that has not been contained in countries like Italy and Spain, which boast of “growing” by massively increasing debt and where inflation, moreover, is not under control. 

All this reminds us of the mistakes of the past when Greece boasted to be the EU’s growth engine, and many said that Germany was Europe’s “sick member.” The ECB cannot pretend to be the Bank of Japan for two reasons: the eurozone lacks the luxury of Japanese society’s dollar savings structure or its iron citizen discipline, and, above all, because the failure of Japan’s ultra-Keynesianism has brought the yen to a 35-year low against the dollar.

(To those who say that the euro and the ECB are Europe's main problem however, I recommend that you exercise your imagination of what Spain, Portugal, or Italy would be with their own currency and populist governments printing as if Argentina were Switzerland. You don’t have to imagine it; remember when these countries had an inflation rate of 14–15% and they destroyed savings and real wages with the falsehood of “competitive” devaluations? It wasn't that long ago.)

* * * * 

Daniel Lacalle, PhD, economist and fund manager, is the author of the bestselling books Freedom or Equality (2020), Escape from the Central Bank Trap (2017), The Energy World Is Flat​ (2015), and Life in the Financial Markets (2014). He is a professor of global economy at IE Business School in Madrid.
Ranked as one of the top twenty most influential economists in the world in 2016 and 2017 by Richtopia, he holds the CIIA financial analyst title, with a postgraduate degree in higher business studies and a master’s degree in economic investigation. He is a member of the advisory board of the Rafael del Pino Foundation and Commissioner of the Community of Madrid in London.
Lacalle is a regular collaborator with CNBC, Bloomberg TV, BBC, Hedgeye, Seeking Alpha, Business Insider, Mises Institute, and the Epoch Times as well as an occasional consultant for the World Economic Forum, Focus Economics, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other major news publications around the world.

His article first appeared at the Mises Wire.

How to fix the west's 'baby bust': make life affordable again

"Italy’s birth rate has declined every year since 2008, but the pandemic pushed it into a precipitous nose dive.... [Just like a range of European politicians] Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni blamed her nation’s baby bust on a lack of traditional family values. Sharing a stage with Pope Francis himself, Meloni revealed where she believes the solution lies, calling for a 'return to a country in which being fathers and mothers is a socially recognised value and not a private matter.'...
    [T]he European Values Study [however]... provides a wealth of data on Europeans’ attitudes to a wide range of ideas and values.... [It reveals that n]ot only is there no positive correlation between levels of traditional family values and a nation’s birth rate, there is actually a weak negative correlation between the two....



"Correlational data like this should not be used to draw definitive conclusions ... But this data should warn against a myopic focus on traditional family values for those politicians who see them as a solution to or shield against falling fertility rates.
    "Indeed, seated next to her on the conference stage in May, Pope Francis had a different message to share than Meloni. Asked to consider why Italy is becoming a nation of fewer and fewer children ... he did not blame a lack of traditional family values for Italy’s vanishing schools. Instead, Pope Francis pointed to 'prohibitively expensive houses,' 'sky-high rents,' and other high costs of parenthood.
    "European policymakers should pay attention to Pope Francis’ words. As we have recently argued in 'Works in Progress' magazine, the last great demographic wave to sweep the West – the Baby Boom – was delivered by progress in medicine, household technology, and access to housing that made becoming a parent easier, safer, and cheaper. What these developments represent are positive, material improvements to the way people live their lives, not shifts in their deeply held values."

~ Phoebe Arslanagic-Wakefield and Anvar Sarygulov, from their article 'The value of family: Traditional values don't deliver babies'