NEW - Pope: Marxists and Christians have a "common mission."

https://www.disclose.tv/id/93kirw62pd/

In contrast, Poland's Pope John Paul II, in the fifth encyclical of his papacy, lashed out at atheism and Marxism, saying philosophies that reserve no place for God are really the "death of man."

@disclosetv

🗳 🇹🇼 🇨🇳 Pro-independence William Lai Ching-te of the DPP is set to win Taiwan’s presidential election. | Thomas Hon Wing Polin

"At this stage outsiders cannot know if there has been any polling chicanery, and it is futile to speculate. What is noteworthy and beyond doubt is that once again, the anti-DPP vote has been split -- severely this time -- after an earlier decision to field a joint ticket. The combined opposition vote would have easily beaten Lai’s tally.

Whether one or both opposition candidates were induced by the DPP or CIA/NED to split the ticket will never be investigated, not with the ruling party now gaining a third successive term.

What next? Chances are high that Beijing will reassess its policy towards Taiwan. For nearly two decades, the CPC had offered the island countless trade and economic privileges, most of them unilaterally. The centerpiece is the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), which allowed Taiwan to accumulate a whopping US$156-billion bilateral trade surplus last year. Its neutralization could mean the loss of 2-3 million local jobs. Some 40% of the island’s exports go to the mainland (attached post, below).

ECFA and other longstanding carrots clearly haven’t had the desired effect of bringing Taipei and Beijing closer. In fact, the opposite has happened during the past eight years of DPP rule. The separatists have not only been brainwashing Taiwan people to revile the mainland but even cooperate actively with intensifying US plans to contain and confront China. More of the same lies in store the next four years.

If carrots are proven ineffective, the stick logically comes into play.

Withdrawal of economic privileges for Taiwan would be a relatively easy first step. Beijing will likely consider a range of other options as well, short of igniting war. They will remind Taiwanese that they cannot continue to have their cake and eat it too.

Indeed, despite occasional PLA exercises, Taiwan people have been notably confident about Beijing’s moderation, taking for granted the mainland’s patience, underlying goodwill and desire for peaceful reunification. So much so that even after the Pelosi Provocation (visit) of August 2022, surveys showed them much less anxious about a mainland “invasion” than folks on the other side of the world.

China’s leaders may start driving home this lesson with increasing forcefulness: Support for anti-reunification forces will have real"

📎 Thomas Hon Wing Polin

Marijuana meets criteria for reclassification as lower-risk drug, FDA scientific review finds per CNN.

https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1746308895650570334

🇵🇦 Cost to jump Panama Canal line just got a whole lot cheaper

The cost for shippers to jump ahead of congestion at the Panama Canal has significantly dropped from multimillion-dollar record highs in recent months, as the backlog of vessels to cross has lessened as tankers avoid the canal altogether.

The Panama Canal has reduced its operating daily slots to a third of its usual transit due to ongoing drought conditions.

As of Jan. 11, the average auction price for Neopanamax slots, which allow for the largest class of tankers permitted to transit the canal, was $269,000, according to a Panama Canal Authority spokesperson. Vessels carrying liquefied natural gas are included in that class.

Canal slots had been auctioned as high as nearly $4 million last November. The decreased demand for the slots is due to vessels diverting away from the Panama Canal using alternate routes.

🔎 Source
#Panama

☠️ Blood Meridian

🛢 🚢 🌍 At least three large oil tanker firms said they stopped sending their ships through the southern Red Sea, evidence that overnight strikes on Yemen risk adding to disruption that’s already beset oil markets.

🔶️ Torm, which has a fleet of about 80 tankers said it would stay away until further notice. Hafnia, which owns 117 carriers and operates about 90 more, and Stena Bulk, with about 60 also stated their decision to pause.

🔶️ Oil prices rose after the strikes. Brent futures were trading at $79.84 a barrel, a gain of 3.1%, at about 2:39 p.m. in London.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-12/tanker-owner-torm-pauses-all-transits-through-southern-red-sea

https://archive.ph/8WGWa

🚀 🇨🇳 🛰 China to launch 26,000 satellites, vying with U.S. for space power

🔶️ China will start building this year its own version of StarLink, a satellite internet constellation using low Earth orbit, with plans of launching some 26,000 satellites to cover the entire world led by state-run companies. A commercial spacecraft launch site is being constructed for this “StarLink” near the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan.

🔶️ The launch site will be used mainly by the China Satellite Network Group, wholly owned by the Chinese government. The group was founded in 2021 after Beijing informed the ITU of its plan in 2020 to launch some 13,000 satellites to establish a high-speed internet network.

🔶️ China Satellite Network will launch about 1,300 satellites, or 10% of the planned number, from the first half of 2024 until 2029. This is hoped to pave the way for liftoff by 2035 to establish a network supporting high-speed 6G communications.

🔶️ Top executives of the group come from state-owned military-industrial complex enterprises linked to China's PLA: the chairman is from China Electronics Corp, which is in charge of IT for military use, while the president is from China Aerospace Science & Technology Corp (CASC), which develops rockets and other items.

🔶️ A space company partly owned by the Shanghai municipal government has a plan to put 12,000 satellites into low Earth orbit; it will launch more than 600 of them by the end of 2025.

🔶️ GalaxySpace (Beijing) Technology, a private company founded by people from the internet industry, plans to send up 1,000 low-orbit satellites. GalaxySpace will step up its project to build a satellite constellation with support from the government.

🔶️ Military-industrial complex enterprises CASC and China Aerospace Science & Industry Corp are pushing ahead with plans to launch more than 300 and 200 low-orbit satellites, respectively. Chang Guang Satellite Technology, backed by the provincial government of Jilin among others, began sending up low-orbit satellites in 2015 to provide high-definition images to customers. It plans to increase the number of satellites to 138 by 2025.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Aerospace-Defense-Industries/China-to-launch-26-000-satellites-vying-with-U.S.-for-space-power

https://archive.ph/jwSz5

📎 Byron Wan

🇨🇳 🤝 🇲🇲 China mediates a ceasefire between the 3 Brotherhood Alliance and Myanmar government.

🔶️ The alliance includes the ethnic Han force of MNDAA who captured all of Kokang region.

🔶️ Myanmar's government would be acknowledging MNDAA's gains, peace in Northern Myanmar only, not the rest.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/12/myanmars-military-ethnic-armed-groups-agree-to-china-mediated-truce

📎 Zhao DaShuai

🇮🇷🇺🇸Imágenes de la captura del "petrolero estadounidense" por parte del ejército iraní.

🇬🇧Images of the capture of the "American tanker" by the Iranian army.

▫️@ENTRE_GUERRAS▫️

📝 🇮🇱 🌍 The Regional War No One Wanted Is Here. How Wide Will It Get? | NYT

🔶️ From the outbreak of the Israeli-Hamas war nearly 100 days ago, President Biden and his aides have struggled to keep the war contained, fearful that a regional escalation could quickly draw in American forces.

🔶️ Now, with the American-led strike on nearly 30 sites in Yemen on Thursday, there is no longer a question of whether there will be a regional conflict. It has already begun.

🔶️ “This is already a regional war, no longer limited to Gaza, but already spread to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen,” said Hugh Lovatt, a Mideast expert for the European Council on Foreign Relations. Washington, he added, wanted to demonstrate that it was ready to deter Iranian provocations, so it conspicuously placed its aircraft carriers and fighters in position to respond quickly. But those same positions leave the United States more exposed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/world/europe/mideast-war-israel-yemen.html

https://archive.ph/DgbvE

⚓️ 🇺🇸 🇸🇴 Two U.S. Navy Sailors missing off the coast of Somalia

🔶️ On the evening of January 11, two U.S. Navy Sailors were reported missing at sea while conducting operations off the coast of Somalia. Search and rescue operations are currently ongoing to locate the two sailors. For operational security purposes, we will not release additional information until the personnel recovery operation is complete.

🔶️ Out of respect for the families affected, we will not release further information on the missing personnel at this time.

🔶️ The sailors were forward-deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet (C5F) area of operations supporting a wide variety of missions.

https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/STATEMENTS/Statements-View/Article/3644941/two-us-navy-sailors-missing-off-the-coast-of-somalia/

🇫🇮 🧱 🇷🇺 "Yesterday the Finnish government again extended the closed border regime with Russia for a month. So far the deadline has been moved to February 11, but with a high probability it will not end there, given the course of the Finnish authorities."

📎 Rybar Force

🇪🇺 EU’s energy security drive may have gone too far

Europe may have overplayed its energy security strategy. President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 attack on Ukraine exposed the European Union’s heavy dependence on cheap gas imported from Russia, chiefly via pipelines. To address the imbalance, the bloc rushed to add facilities to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) by sea from friendlier nations. But with renewable power set to depress fossil fuel demand, some of the newly built infrastructure risks becoming redundant.

Drastically cutting reliance on Moscow’s fuel, as EU nations agreed to do in March 2022, called for a Plan B. After identifying LNG as a key part of the energy mix, Europe rushed to upscale its capacity to turn billions of cubic metres of LNG imports, chiefly from the United States, back into a usable gaseous form.

By and large, this has been a success. Putin’s gamble that the EU would crack and collapse under the costly challenge of keeping its population warm and its factories open did not work. Between the start of the war and August 2023, the 27-nation bloc added six LNG terminals to its pre-existing network of around 20 regasification facilities and expanded one French site, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis’ (IEEFA) LNG tracker. That has added 36.5 bcm of regasification capacity. The rush to secure sufficient gas means the EU may end up with 19 more LNG terminals in 2030 than in 2022.

Even so, something in Europe’s energy security strategy is starting to look out of place. If all projects under construction are finalised, the EU’s LNG import capacity could balloon to nearly 350 bcm by the end of the decade, from just 160 bcm in 2021, according to forecasts from research firm Rystad Energy. Yet the bloc’s total gas demand is set to fall to 340 bcm by then, down 19% from 2021. That means Europe’s projected 2030 LNG capacity would be higher than all the gas the bloc may need.

All this is despite the fact that the region is likely to continue to rely on pipeline imports from Norway, North Africa and Azerbaijan for the bulk of its gas requirements, and also on some local production. The gap between local European production and pipeline imports versus estimated demand is forecast to be around 190 bcm by 2030, data published in the Shell LNG Outlook 2023 that also include Britain show. That is likely to be filled with LNG imports, but is only half the region’s projected regasification capacity.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/eus-energy-security-drive-may-have-gone-too-far-2024-01-11/

🇺🇸 🇮🇷 🇾🇪 Two U.S. Navy SEALS who are missing were attempting to interdict a ship carrying weapons from Iran to Yemen.

📎 Jason Brodsky