🇱🇧⚖️🌐 Anti-Israel Judge Nawaf Salam elected new president of ICJ

The new judge has previously claimed that critics of Israel are labeled antisemites "to intimidate and discredit them."

Lebanese Judge Nawaf Salam was elected by his peers to be the new president of the International Court of Justice, where he will be expected to serve a term of 3 years, according to a press release published by the Hague on Tuesday.

Salam has a history of making anti-Israel statements and will now be presiding over the case launched by South Africa against Israel, in which it claims that the IDF is committing genocide in Gaza.

Anti-Israel statements by the new judge:

In 2015, the now-president wrote, “Unhappy birthday to you, 48 years of occupation.” Months later, the Jewish News Syndicate reported that he wrote “Israel must stop violence and end occupation” and “Portraying the critics of Israel’s policies as antisemites is an attempt to intimidate and discredit them, which we reject.”

🔗 https://www.jpost.com/international/article-785552

⚖️ 🇸🇪 💥 Sweden closes probe into Nord Stream pipelines explosion

Swedish officials say the results of their investigation so far mean they do not have jurisdiction in the case.

Sweden has decided to close its investigation into the explosions on the underwater Nord Stream gas pipelines 18 months ago, officials said on Wednesday.

The Nordic nation's investigation was one of three probes into the September 2022 explosions that hit the pipelines, which were built to carry Russian natural gas to Germany.

Denmark and Germany are also examining the blasts, but officials say Sweden doesn't have jurisdiction to investigate.

The prosecution authority said the primary purpose of its investigation was “to establish whether Swedish citizens were involved in the act and whether Swedish territory was used to carry out the act. This would thereby risk damaging Swedish interests or security”.

Since Sweden and Swedish interests were not targeted, it said, “Swedish jurisdiction is thus lacking”.

🔗 https://www.euronews.com/2024/02/07/sweden-closes-probe-into-nord-stream-pipelines-explosion

🇪🇺🇺🇲⚡️The EU may consider sanctions against American journalist Tucker Carlson for his interview with Vladimir Putin - Newsweek

American states and European governments continue to spend White tax-money on buying Israeli bonds all while their own citizens are deprived of services and subject to increased taxation.

Israel has issued more than 6 billion dollars in bonds to fund its campaign against the people of Gaza, and Western governments have been buying them up in droves.

American states have purchased more than 1.6 billion dollars in Israeli bonds.

Arizona is buying up Israeli government bonds, despite the fact the state faces a 400 million dollar shortfall this fiscal year.

In Europe Germany has also purchased hundreds of millions in Israeli bonds, funding a war effort while its own population is subject to increased taxation and budget cuts.

Neoliberal governments care more about what is happening far off in the Middle East than they do about providing services and security to their own citizens.

They fund a nation-state with doggedly protects its proclaimed borders, while totally ignoring the borders of every White country and allowing in tens of millions of ethnic and racial foreigners.

It is time to defund Israel and fund Whites.

💸 🌲 🇺🇸 A new report showed that $13 billion was withdrawn last year from funds that invest in companies with environmental, social and governance principles.

🔶️ The investing strategy has become increasingly politicized after being used by companies to address E.S.G. issues among their employees, customers and other stakeholders. In a sign of the times, the phrase has been scrubbed from the World Economic Forum’s official program in Davos, Switzerland, after being on the agenda in previous years.

🔶️ Investors pulled $5 billion out of E.S.G.-focused “sustainable” investment funds last quarter, according to a new report by Morningstar. The withdrawals came amid a wider market rally at the end of 2023.

🔶️ For the full year, $13 billion was pulled from E.S.G. funds. All in all, it was the “worst calendar year on record,” wrote Alyssa Stankiewicz, Morningstar’s director of sustainability research.

🔶️ Even the bulls are changing their narrative. Larry Fink’s BlackRock, a longtime champion of the E.S.G. investment strategy, has grown quieter on the issue as political tensions rise, especially among Republican lawmakers. The brunt of the outflows last year were from a single iShares E.S.G. fund managed by BlackRock.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/business/esg-funds-withdrawals.html

https://archive.ph/Enl2c

💸 🌲 🇪🇺 European flows into ESG have held steady recently, but US investors have been pulling cash out of funds

🔶️ “More of the largest institutional investors in the world are more interested in what we have to say today than they were three years ago,” says David Blood, who founded sustainable investing specialist Generation Investment Management with former US vice-president Al Gore nearly two decades ago.

🔶️ But there is also clear evidence of scepticism about the way sustainable investing has been marketed and carried out. Investor support for environmental and social shareholder proposals has fallen sharply; the flow of US money into ESG-labelled funds has slowed after poor performance; prominent financial groups including Allianz, Lloyd’s of London and Vanguard have pulled out of net zero alliances; and JPMorgan Chase has redefined its climate goals to move away from that benchmark. Even supporters of sustainable investing warn of “greenwashing”, in which money managers overstate the environmental impact of their investments.

🔶️ The backlash raises the question of how much longer funds advertising themselves as ESG will be on the menu for investors. Fink himself said in June he no longer used the term as it had become “weaponised”.

https://www.ft.com/content/a76c7feb-7fa5-43d6-8e20-b4e4967991e7

https://archive.ph/Fn1uI

🌬 🌲 🇪🇺 European Wind giant Orsted is out with another shocker:

🔶️ Dividend suspended for 2023, 2024 and 2025
It exits several markets, including Norway
Slows down projects elsewhere
Guidance for wind installation cut by ~30% for 2030
Job losses: 800
Chairman out (but CEO still there)

https://www.ft.com/content/cb191b4d-6960-414a-9692-06489dc847fa

https://archive.ph/dKFeX

💸 🌲 📉 Regional banks are among the worst investment themes of the past year. However, what is happening with 'green' ETFs is a bloodbath. EV -27%, Clean Energy -35%, Solar Energy -47%.

📎 Vlad Bastion

🌬 🇬🇧 🌲Wind Farms Are Overstating Their Output — And Consumers Are Paying For It

🔶️ Dozens of British wind farms run by some of Europe’s largest energy companies have routinely overestimated how much power they’ll produce, adding millions of pounds a year to consumers’ electricity bills, according to market records and interviews with power traders.

🔶️ These extra costs are linked to a growing problem with Britain’s outdated electricity network: On blustery days, too much wind power risks overloading the system, and the grid operator must respond by paying some firms not to generate. This “curtailment” costs consumers hundreds of millions of pounds each year.

🔶️ Adding to that expense, some wind farm operators exaggerate how much energy they say they intend to produce, which boosts the payments they receive for turning off, according to nine people — traders, academics and market experts — most of whom agreed to discuss this controversial behavior only on condition of anonymity.

🔶️ In effect, they said, the grid has paid some wind farms not to generate power that they wouldn’t have produced anyway.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-uk-wind-farms-overstate-output/

https://archive.ph/xIiGj

🇮🇱🇵🇸⚡️- Israel has rejected Hamas' ceasefire proposal. Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to achieve a "complete and decisive victory" against Hamas.

⚡Hebrew Channel 13: Netanyahu: "Hamas' answer is actually 'no'"

🇮🇱 ❌️ 🇵🇸 Assassination in Rafah | Majdi Abd al-Aal, who served as the head of Hamas police's special forces.

🔶️ The strike on the police vehicle led to the death of al-Aal and three others, as confirmed by Hamas health officials in Gaza.

📎 I24