Author: Christine Schier

After months of urgent appeals to the Biden Administration to release the $7 billion of Afghan assets frozen by the Treasury Department in order to alleviate the acute humanitarian crisis, President Biden finally issued an executive order on the issue on Feb. 11. Of the $7 billion in funds of the Afghanistan Central Bank (DAB) that have been frozen in […]

The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and the Schiller Institute (SI) will be convening a seminar on Thursday, February 10, 2022 from 2 PM to 4 PM CET, which can be followed at https://schillerinstitute.com/. Among the topics to be addressed by a panel of six speakers will be: What are the causes of the Afghan humanitarian crisis? What are the […]

Just prior to attending the opening ceremony of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games in Beijing on Feb. 4, President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin held wide-ranging talks, saw to the announcement of 15 economic and policy deals, and issued a “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New […]

To understand the profound importance of the document signed by Presidents Xi and Putin on Feb. 4, and why it represents such a dire threat to the modern-day British Empire, it is instructive to read what the Daily Telegraph, a leading mouthpiece of that Empire and the City of London, has to say about it (cf. item above). Under the […]

At 4:00 p.m. on Feb. 4, the following headline appeared on the Bloomberg News website: “Russia Invades Ukraine.” Note that it was then midnight in Moscow, and that President Vladimir Putin was not in the country, but in Beijing. For a full 30 minutes, this headline remained on the website, before it was finally removed, with the news agency posting […]

Although the ECB left interest rates unchanged on Feb 3 and President Christine Lagarde has attempted to show that the glass is half-full, by saying that the ECB won’t “rush decisions” on a policy course, “the markets” see the glass as half-empty, and continue to factor into prices a four-time interest hike this year through a sell-off of bonds. Thus, […]

One week long of extreme cold, and Germany would run out of natural gas reserves. According to a study carried out for the Economic Ministry back in 2015 by the Becker Büttner Held consultancy, gas storage facilities must be at least 40% full by Feb. 1 of each year in order to suffice for seven days of very cold winter […]

A new study by researchers at the Dutch Wageningen University & Research confirms that the European Union’s “farm to fork” and biodiversity strategy, a key component of its “Green Deal”, will lead to a severe drop in production, a doubling of food imports and skyrocketing prices. That is hardly surprising given the main goals of the farm to fork (“F2F”) […]

A government report released late last year warned that the lights could go out in Switzerland by 2025, as the amount of electricity produced by renewables, solar, wind and even hydro-power will not make up for the loss of shutting down all nuclear power stations by 2035. Prospects also look dim on further imports from the European Union, due to […]

The Geneva-based Transmutex company is working on a new generation of nuclear power plant that burns thorium rather than uranium. As the company’s website explains, it is a “breakthrough energy process” based on using particle accelerators and thorium, which occurs abundantly in rocks. It is inherently safe, burns existing long-lived waste, is cost competitive and produces no carbon emissions. A […]