And yes you are right on "Чёрт с ними" - it's an idiomatic expression, sort of meaning "forget about them, nothing we can do". The slogan actually says "Чёрт с нами", which is "with us", not "with them". Noone actually says this, so it jumps out. And remember the cabal loves ambiguity, double meanings etc.
Reading "Чёрт с нами", it sort of means "we're beyond saving/redemption, nothing can be done".
I'm sorry, but this is an official parade in middle of city. These things were always organized by the party. These were not some dissidents trying to "awaken the masses".
The whole thing is presented as a joke, yes. But there is a saying in Russian "in every joke there is a part of truth". To most people there it was a funny joke. The top party officials knew what they were doing, at the end of the day it's to mock God.
One of the trucks has a slogan "Without sin you will not catch any fish" (wasn't translated in captions). The other essentially translates to "Without sinning first, you can't repent". These are not meant to "mock the powers that were". It's self-depracating jokes, embracing sinfulness, sort of like gay pride parades now.
Steaks Could Soon Become Champagne-Like Luxury By Aine Quinn + Follow
October 12, 2021, 10:00 AM CDT
Meat companies coming under pressure to curb greenhouse gases
The boss of Europe’s top meat processor said beef will become a luxury like champagne because of the climate impact of producing it.
“Beef is not going to be super climate friendly,” Danish Crown Chief Executive Officer Jais Valeur said in an interview with Danish newspaper Berlingske. “It will be a luxury product that we eat when we want to treat ourselves.”
Valeur said pork would be a more climate-friendly protein. Danish Crown is one of Europe’s largest pork producers, although it is also a player in the beef market.
Meat companies are coming under pressure to curb greenhouse gases, with 57% of all food industry emissions coming from making animal products, according to one study. Tackling methane emissions from livestock is one of the most critical climate challenges for producers.
China’s Power Shortfalls Begin to Ripple Around the World
Electricity crunch adds to a global energy squeeze that risks upsetting the post-pandemic economic recovery
HONG KONG—China is struggling with widespread power shortfalls, dealing a blow to the recovery of the second-largest economy and risking disruption to global supply chains and heightened inflationary pressure around the world.
The power crunch, on a scale unseen in more than a decade, highlights how some of Beijing’s changing policy priorities, including its effort to limit carbon emissions, can ripple through a global economy that has been reshaped by the pandemic.
“There’ll be a cascading effect,” said Mike Beckham, Oklahoma-based co-founder and CEO of Simple Modern, which makes products such as insulated water bottles and backpacks, “As we started to comprehend the ramifications of what’s happening, we realized that this is potentially bigger than anything we’ve seen in our business careers.”
Last week, one of Mr. Beckham’s main suppliers, based in Quzhou city in eastern China, was told by the local government that it could only operate four days a week, instead of the usual six. In addition, it must adhere to a power-usage cap, which cuts the capacity of the factory by about one-third as a result.
Mr. Beckham anticipates U.S. retail prices for many products could increase by as much as 15% next spring, as appetite from retailers stays strong.
The shortages reflect a combination of factors. Coal prices have surged because of a shortage of domestic coal supplies, made worse by import cuts from Australia and Mongolia. That has prompted power stations to reduce output to avoid losses because of official caps on their selling prices.
Meanwhile, from the top, Beijing is seeking to enforce energy-efficiency targets, leading to officially sanctioned reductions in energy usage by some industries.
At the same time, demand for electricity has soared since the end in April 2020 of China’s pandemic-induced shutdown, as factories increased production to meet rising consumer demand in the West.
The power crunch in China adds to a global energy squeeze that risks upsetting the post-pandemic recovery.
‘This is a system-shocking moment for both policy makers and companies’
— David Fishman of energy consulting firm Lantau Group Surging demand, swings in the weather and lackluster production have driven up natural-gas prices. The surge has hit output at European factories and household energy bills. It is also fueling anxiety in Europe and the U.S. over whether dwindling supply will be sufficient to power economies through the winter.
The U.K. government recently stepped in with subsidies to reopen a fertilizer plant closed by rising energy costs, which supplies a significant share of the country’s carbon dioxide, a byproduct needed in food processing. The French government said this week it would block any increase in household gas and electricity bills until the spring.
The China power crunch also risks heaping further pressure on global supply chains by pushing up prices for raw materials and essential components.
“Global markets will feel the pinch of a shortage of supply from textiles, toys to machine parts,” wrote Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura Holdings, in a note to clients on Monday. He added that the resulting supply shock will likely further push up global inflation, especially in developed markets such as the U.S. The power curbs have hit parts of China’s manufacturing bases, including those that produce semiconductor-related goods. A global shortage of semiconductors this year has already hit car makers and other industries.
Steve Cooke, managing director of Cre8tive Brand Ideas Ltd., a Solihull, England-based distributor of promotional merchandise such as branded bags, clothing, pens and computer accessories, said he relies on suppliers who source 80% of their products from China. Already this year, rising freight costs and supply-chain bottlenecks have pushed up his costs and lengthened delivery times for his customers. He said he expects those pressures to intensify as the power crunch squeezes production.
“We rely so much on China, it’s incredible,” he said.
Over the past week, some residential areas in northeastern China experienced blackouts for hours. Traffic lights were even turned off. Factories in manufacturing regions were ordered to cut back on operating hours or even shut down for a week. In the southern cities Guangzhou and Shenzhen, officials canceled lighting show extravaganzas during the weeklong National Day holiday, which began on Friday. By Tuesday, 22 of China’s 34 provincial-level administrative units had experienced different degrees of load-shedding measures, according to IHS Markit.
Several banks over the past week lowered China’s growth forecast for this year toward or even below 8%, from around 8.5% previously, citing the power shortages as another threat to growth.
Many economists predict Beijing will ease its monetary policy to stabilize the economy, as China heads into the politically important 2022, when China will host a twice-a-decade Communist Party congress where President Xi Jinping could extend his term as China’s top leader.
‘This is the first time in my 15 years in China that the power cut has lasted so long’
— Thomas Broertjes, Guangdong furniture manufacturer China’s leadership has responded as shortages swept through the country. On Monday, Vice Premier Han Zheng, who supervises the nation’s energy policies, summoned leaders of the country’s top state-owned energy companies to a closed-door meeting and ordered them “to increase coal supplies by all means,” according to two people familiar with the discussion and a summary of the meeting seen by The Wall Street Journal. Participants were asked not to bring their cellphones to the meeting with Mr. Han.
Power rationing began in some Chinese provinces in late August but started to spread across the country in mid-September, when it began to hit households in northeastern China, which experienced sudden blackouts.
Newcastle thermal coal, a global benchmark for the variety burned to generate power, last week breached record levels set during the 2008 global financial crisis to top $201 a metric ton, up 141% from the start of the year. Prices of higher-grade metallurgical coal, used for steelmaking, are up 158% from the start of the year to a record $615 a metric ton in China, nearly twice its last high set in 2016.
In September 2020, Mr. Xi pledged that China would strive to reach peak carbon emissions before 2030, a broad goal that has flowed into wide-ranging efforts to curb energy consumption. The mission weighed on production of Chinese coal, already increasingly intermittent because of a spate of accidents at mining sites. Close to 60% of China’s power is generated by burning coal.
“For the coal industry, it will continuously be restricted by environmental and safety inspections,” said Shougang Fushan Resources Group Ltd. , a producer based in China’s biggest coal province. “The shortage in coal supply, especially coking coal supply, cannot be alleviated in a short period of time.”
Fueled by China’s economic boom, coal demand earlier this year rose by around 20% year-over-year, before ratcheting down to single-digit levels in more recent months, official data show. In comparison, coal supply has fluctuated between shrinkages in some months and low single-digit increases in others.
In some provinces, strict energy-efficiency targets also played a role in the power curbs. In August, China’s economic planning agency released a report card that identified a number of provinces as being off-track in meeting their energy-efficiency requirements. In mid-September, these provinces began to target some high-energy industries in their power rationing.
The domestic shortfall of coal has been exacerbated by an unofficial Chinese ban on imports of coal from Australia, previously a major supplier, since late last year over Canberra’s call for an independent global inquiry into the origins of Covid-19. Imports from Australia and other countries generally account for up to 10% of Chinese coal consumption.
In addition, lower-than-usual supply of renewable energy has exacerbated the power supply issue in some provinces. The southwestern province of Yunnan, which produces hydropower, has been struggling with droughts throughout the year. In China’s Northeast, output from wind farms was extremely low for a few days due to the weather.
Acute electricity shortages are also partly due to the rigid pricing of electricity, said Dan Wang, an economist at Hang Seng Bank in Shanghai. China’s government has long kept a cap on how much utilities can raise electricity prices, which are low by global standards. That reduced power plants’ appetite to generate power as prices of coal kept surging.
About 70% of coal-fired power plants in the county suffered losses as of June as coal prices soared, according to the China Electricity Council, which represents power generators.
Several regions, including Shanghai, Sichuan and Inner Mongolia, have eased price caps on on-grid tariffs, which are paid by companies to power plants. Starting Friday, industrial users in China’s manufacturing hub of Guangdong province will need to pay up to 25% more to use electricity during peak hours.
China’s economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission said Wednesday it would increase coal production, import more coal, increase domestic gas production and pass through some higher energy costs to end-users.
During an internal meeting led by a top official of the economic planning agency on Thursday, coal-production facilities were instructed to continue operation throughout the national holiday from Oct. 1 to Oct. 7, according to a summary of the meeting seen by the Journal.
Mr. Han, the vice premier, has ordered officials to control excessive consumption from high energy-consuming industries such as aluminum, steel, cement and petrochemicals.
“This is a system-shocking moment for both policy makers and companies,” said David Fishman, Shenzhen-based manager at the energy consulting firm Lantau Group. Ramping up gas and coal supplies are short-term solutions but Beijing would need to think about diversifying its energy sources long-term, he said.
“This is the first time in my 15 years in China that the power cut has lasted so long,” said Thomas Broertjes, a manager at Foshan Oufeng Furniture Co. in Guangdong. About two weeks ago, the local government began sending daily messages to the factory manager to announce whether they are allowed to operate that day.
China last suffered major electricity shortages in the early 2000s, in large part driven by rapid industrialization. Electricity demand dropped sharply after the global financial crisis that began in 2008.
The power shortage, on top of ongoing shipping bottlenecks and strict limits on travel into China, has also prompted Mr. Beckham of Simple Modern to evaluate the viability of moving some production back to the U.S. as the business environment in China has grown increasingly unpredictable.
“The party in China always prioritizes its objectives. As an outsider, it’s often hard to understand their motives,” he said.
—Jason Douglas in London and Paul Ziobro in New York contributed to this article.
Sorry, assumed most would have seen the other threads on this and the legislation Dems are trying to ram though.
The # of the Code jumped out at me.
The NBA’s Anti-Vaxxers Are Trying to Push Around the League—And It’s Working
Conspiracy theories in the locker room. Mask police in the arena. Superstars trying to avoid the shot. After bringing back the culture from Covid, basketball confronts its own civil war
By MATT SULLIVAN
AntiVaxx in the NBA
Photo Illustration by @photoeditorjoe
One by one, the basketball players — non-vaccinated star here, fully-inoculated veteran on mute down there, a full-on anti-vaxxer front-and-center — logged into the video conference. The annual summer meeting of the powerful NBA union had gone virtual again on August 7, and high on the agenda for the season ahead was a proposed mandate from the league office that 100 percent of players get vaccinated against Covid-19.
One response echoed from squares across the screen, according to players and an executive on the call: “Non-starter. Non-starter.”
The NBA had relied on science above all to lead the sports world through the Covid nightmare, from the league’s outbreak-driven shutdown to a pandemic-proof playoff bubble in Disney World to game after game with fans back in the stands. But after two plagued seasons of non-stop nasal swabbing, quarantining and distrust, unvaccinated players were pushing back. They made their case to the union summit: There should be testing this year, of course, just not during off-days. They’d mask up on the court and on the road, if they must. But no way would they agree to a mandatory jab. The vaccine deniers had set the agenda; the players agreed to take their demands for personal freedom to the NBA’s negotiating table.
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This month, league officials caught a break: Two of America’s most progressive cities, New York and San Francisco, would require pro athletes to show proof of one Covid-19 vaccination dose to play indoors, except with an approved medical or religious exemption. Which meant that one of the NBA’s biggest stars — one known for being receptive to conspiratorial beliefs — would be under heavy pressure to get a shot. And if Brooklyn Nets superstar Kyrie Irving could be convinced to take the vaccine, then maybe, just maybe, the whole league could create a new kind of bubble together.
When asked directly about Irving’s vaccination status — or his plans to change it — multiple people familiar with his thinking declined to answer directly. But one confidant and family member floated to Rolling Stone the idea of anti-vaxx players skipping home games to dodge the New York City ordinance… or at least threatening to protest them, until the NBA changes its ways.
“There are so many other players outside of him who are opting out, I would like to think they would make a way,” says Kyrie’s aunt, Tyki Irving, who runs the seven-time All-Star’s family foundation and is one of the few people in his regular circle of advisors. “It could be like every third game. So it still gives you a full season of being interactive and being on the court, but with the limitations that they’re, of course, oppressing upon you. There can be some sort of formula where the NBA and the players can come to some sort of agreement.”
A spokeswoman for Irving declined to respond to a list of questions regarding his vaccination and playing status, and Irving did not immediately respond to a message from Rolling Stone. But as teams return to pre-season training camps next week, fifty to sixty NBA players have yet to receive a single vaccine dose, league sources tell RS. Most are considered merely reluctant skeptics. Some of the holdouts, however, amount to their own shadow roster of anti-vaxxers mounting a behind-the-scenes resistance to Covid protocols — and the truth.
Irving, who serves as a vice president on the executive committee of the players’ union, recently started following and liking Instagram posts from a conspiracy theorist who claims that “secret societies” are implanting vaccines in a plot to connect Black people to a master computer for “a plan of Satan.” This Moderna microchip misinformation campaign has spread across multiple NBA locker rooms and group chats, according to several of the dozen-plus current players, Hall-of-Famers, league executives, arena workers and virologists interviewed for this story over the past week.
The league’s virus-hunters denied a religious-exemption request from a vaccine-denying player in San Francisco this weekend, lighting a powder keg on a combustible mix of race, religion, class and clubbing in a time of Covid, aimed at some of the most influential role models in America. General managers remain confident they can get superstars vaxxed by opening night. And in a concession to the Delta variant, all courtside players and personnel will be required to wear masks on arena benches and around practice facilities for the foreseeable future, Rolling Stone can reveal. According to near-final medical guidance outlined to RS on Saturday, however, unvaccinated players have forced the league to cave on nearly every other demand.
“The NBA should insist that all players and staff are vaccinated or remove them from the team,” NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar tells Rolling Stone. “There is no room for players who are willing to risk the health and lives of their teammates, the staff and the fans simply because they are unable to grasp the seriousness of the situation or do the necessary research. What I find especially disingenuous about the vaccine deniers is their arrogance at disbelieving immunology and other medical experts. Yet, if their child was sick or they themselves needed emergency medical treatment, how quickly would they do exactly what those same experts told them to do?”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 05: Kyrie Irving #11 of the Brooklyn Nets looks on against the Milwaukee Bucks in Game One of the Second Round of the 2021 NBA Playoffs at Barclays Center on June 05, 2021 in New York City. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Steven Ryan /Getty Images)
Kyrie Irving recently started following and liking Instagram posts from a conspiracy theorist who claims that “secret societies” are implanting vaccines in a plot to connect Black people to a master computer for “a plan of Satan.”
Steven Ryan /Getty Images
Jonathan Isaac is known less by the average basketball fan for his play than for being that guy who stood up with his jersey on during the national anthem in the NBA bubble, while every other player on the court took a knee in a t-shirt declaring BLACK LIVES MATTER, amid a global reckoning on race and police killings. “I’m not going to sit here and point my fingers at one group of people,” Isaac, who is Black, tells RS. “I would do it again.”
The Orlando Magic’s 23-year-old starting forward is deeply religious — and proudly unvaccinated. When NBA players started lining up for shots in March, Isaac started studying Black history and watching Donald Trump’s press conferences. He learned about antibody resistance and came to distrust Dr. Anthony Fauci. He looked out for people who might die from the vaccine, and he put faith in God.
“At the end of the day, it’s people,” Isaac says of the scientists developing vaccines, “and you can’t always put your trust completely in people.”
Isaac considers un-vaxxed players to be vilified and bullied, and he thinks “it’s an injustice” to automatically make heroes out of vaccinated celebrities. He rejects the NBA’s proposal for a vaccine mandate and social distancing for players like him during team travel: “You can play on the same court. We can touch the same ball. We can bump chests. We can do all those things on the court. And then when it comes to being on the bus, we have to be in different parts of the bus? To me, it doesn’t seem logically consistent.
“If you are vaccinated, in other places you still have to wear the mask regardless. It’s like, ‘OK, then what is the mask necessarily for?’” Isaac continues. “And if Kyrie says that from his position of his executive power in the NBPA, then kudos to him.”
Enes Kanter — the veteran center, devout Muslim and outspoken liberal — senses a creep of the religious right upon his workplace, which just happens to involve players like Isaac sweating all over him and yelling in his face: “If a guy’s not getting vaccinated because of his religion, I feel like we are in a time where the religion and science has to go to together,” he tells RS. “I’ve talked to a lot of religious guys — I’m like: ‘It saves people’s lives, so what is more important than that?’”
Kanter’s current franchise, the Boston Celtics, had multiple players unvaccinated as of Thursday, he and a teammate say. The NBA claims that 90 percent of its more than 450 players — star veterans and players trying to make rosters alike — have received at least one shot, a rate lower than the conservative NFL. League officials provide weekly data and studies to teams with un-vaxxed players, many of whom they hope will be inoculated before the regular season begins on October 19. Inside practice facilities next week, vaccinated players expect to spend time convincing skeptical players to avoid a competitive disadvantage. “If you’re a player and you’re not vaccinated and you miss a week or two weeks,” Kanter says, “it could literally change the whole season — and we’re trying to win a championship!”
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You may be right! Hopefully this turns into world moving to be less dependent on China and decentralizing production of various goods.