By Jo Nova
The world is backing away from renewables
Wow. What a turnaround. President Macron, a man of The Blob, has come right out and blamed the Spanish Blackouts on renewables. No system, he says, can be so dependent on renewables. Everyone knew this, but few in power would say the words.
Back in 2017 this was the man who had a plan to shut down 14 nuclear reactors in France. Today he plans to push through a law to reverse that. At the same time, the current French renewable energy targets have just been dropped by 20%. Instead of building 150GW of unreliable power, the new target will be about 120GW.
Back in April, Spain finally celebrated 100% renewable energy, and within days suffered a national blackout that caused at least five deaths and left thousands without lighting and the internet, and panic-buying petrol and food. The blackout spread as far as Portugal and Southern France.
Macron blames renewable energy for Spain’s national blackout
— By Kieran Kelly, The Telegraph
French president says European neighbour’s deadly power cuts were caused by shift towards net zero
In response to a large-scale power cut that left millions in the dark in April, the French president said no country could rely so heavily on renewable energy.
But Mr Macron said: “The Spanish power outage is not related to interconnections, but rather to the fact that no system, at least with current technology, can support such dependence on renewable energy. Stability in the energy mix is needed because otherwise, shocks that are too big occur. But it’s not just about interconnections. Networks are needed.”
Spain generates about 60 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources, including wind, hydropower and solar power, according to Red Eléctrica de España, its electricity grid operator. Around 20 per cent comes from nuclear power plants.
Supposedly renewable energy is free and nuclear plants are wildly expensive.
If renewables were cheaper, France would know — yet France chooses the nukes.
The French rebirth of nuclear power started a few years ago. But the plan to close these power plants still needs to be expunged.
Spain is aiming for 80% renewables by 2030 and the UK Labour government is aiming for 95% “clean”. But Australia is larger, hotter, and more sparsely populated, with tons of coal and gas, and has no interconnector cables to anywhere, yet we’re aiming for 82%. Fifty shades of crazy.
Photo: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service
It’s fascinating that even Macron is more sensible and competent than Australian Government “leadership”.
Imagine that.
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And they are making very good profits as the rock solid backbone of European reliables. So of course they will build more nuclear. It’s called profit. And for a Rothschild banker like Macron, you take both sides in every war.
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Please forward this information to Alpinocchio, ( he no longer deserves the Albozo tag) BOB & Co.
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We transitioned from the Lucky Country to La La land in recent decades. Things won’t change under Albo & co. Especially with the mainstream media confounding people to keep them oblivious to the latest energy policy backflips in Europe.
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The majority of Aussies vote Left…..ALP / Greens /Teals. The usual “opposition” did nothing to reverse course when in govt, and are now in total disarray, which explains to some extent WHY they lost in 2022 and 2025. This leaves only one sensible choice…One Nation. However…
We don’t know for sure they will follow through with THEIR promises. But, since we do know that the two major blocs have been hopeless (and worse) for nearly 18 years, ON needs a chance to show how much netter they are, or else to disappoint.
Maybe ON goes into coaltion with the Nationals?
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ON have something few other parties have apart from a couple of other relatively like sided parties. They are people of Conviction. You don’t have to check the deets before you speak if you aren’t lying. That’s why ON is cutting through. I agree that they need to coalesce with the Lib/Nats, not as one but as a Coalition. At this point that may be asthe senior member! That’ll rankle the old Libs who hate her so much.
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Give the Nats another try. For forty years they let themselves be muzzled by their bigger partner.
Watch and see how many Liberals and Nationals look to PHON for their future. Because without being on side with PHON there is no future.
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I think that’s a typo Jo. Don’t you mean no power cables? We have plenty of undersea internet cables.
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[Noted. I’m guessing “interconnector” was the intention. – Raquel]
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Britain would already be having constant blackouts without all it’s interconnecting power cables to the countries of Europe, we have none to anywhere. Britain is currently getting 17% of it’s power through those cables at 8.30pm UK time.
https://gridwatch.co.uk/demand
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The reason Spain was able to restart it’s grid so quickly was because of it’s interconnections to Frances nuclear power plants. It would take us a weeks to get the grid back up and running and that’s only providing we don’t shut down Eraring.
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If “us” is NSW maybe so, however there are other coal plants and gas plants around the country.
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I’m sure we can run a cable or two across the sea floor under the Tasman Sea to yous fellas if you ever need a kick-start for your flat battery – heck we’re firing rockets into space with micro-satellites for Uncle Sam and suing orchardists in Gansu Province, Ch!na for growing copyrighted apples (ENVY™️) and pumping 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of untreated sewage from Wellington into Cook Strait, and hence, both the Pacific and the Tasman… laying a few more cables surely can’t be that hard.
/s for sewage
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There should be a laugh emoji. I love the cable joke!
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We’ll list you in the phone book.
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Another problem with Spain is that it has an (effectively) open borders policy.
So how, with renewables, are they going to generate enough electricity as Africans continue move in and settle the country?
They will need a lot more power, and from reliable sources like coal, gas or nuclear.
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The BBC was excited today that China emissions dropped 0.3% last year. That’s well within the margin of error/dishonesty. Regardless, China is moving energy intensive activities abroad and has a ‘captive’ power plant agreement, whereby they will not commission any new fossil fuel powered electricity production abroad unless it is tied to an industrial facility, instead of the grid. I’m sure that already amounts to more than the 0.3% reduction.
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I’m not sure how China’s emissions could have dropped seeing as they are commissioning new coal fired plants every week or so and not de-commissioning old ones.
Methinks someone is telling porkies.
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I am dead sure it can’t possibly be the BBC.
They never twist the truth – except for Trump, and deniers, and Brexiteers, and the Right, and monarchists …
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It’s interesting that the Left were or are never opposed to nuclear power (or coal or gas) in past or present communist countries. They were and are only opposed to it in Western countries…
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And – in the UK – they made the regulations …
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MUST be orders from on-high.
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Perhaps France could become the power house of Europe and build enough nuclear reactors to power all of the renewables-based countries.
They could make a fortune on electricity exports which would help offset their dysfunctional economy and the high cost of their unrestricted people imports.
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The French even have Vineyards and other Agriculture adjacent to their Nuclear Powerr Plants.
No radioactive wine or cheese as far as I’m aware.
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When cycling close to a French nuclear power plant a few years ago, one of the cyclists remarked “look at all that smoke!” I commented that it was a nuclear plant and that was water vapour. Silence…
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Macron has at last understood the laughable lunacy from Spain and yet our clueless Labor govt hasn’t even understood the last few decades of all the lies and coverups.
And with B O Bowen pulling the levers we’re well on the road to serfdom and fully supported by the loony Greens and Teals parties.
When will these crazy people check the capacity factors for toxic, unreliable W & S and wake up? Or don’t they really care about destroying thousands of klms of our pristine Aussie environments at all?
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Was looking at a YouTube (on iron-air batteries) which showed much the same discharge time as lithium-ion batteries. Pumped hydro was better in turns of the amount of energy that might/could be supplied during times when renewables didn’t supply, but the best solution was methane (which was supposedly ruled out because of CO2).
The number of people who think that a slight increase in CO2 will bring disaster is incredible.
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Pumped Hydro is basically “perpetual moton for eh times.
Methane, from fermenting biomass works at MICRO scale. As a “fuel” for interbal combustion egines it is marginal, at best, (But better than Hydrogen)
Key factors in ALL fuels:
Transportability
Storability
Energy per Kilogram.
Iwas party to the construction and testing of a 44 gallon “drum-digester, back in the late 1970sRealtively easy to build, load and “run”, but capturing all of tthe methane a dn getting it to “do” anything apart from make bubbles in the “sludge” was a challenge. To be of any use, you need some method of separting the desirable” gases Methane? from the less desirable like amonia and CO2Can such a system be scaled-up to “industrial” performance.
Location?
Close enough to a reliable source of “fuel” (human / animal excrement and “biomass. Preferably somewhere handy for local distribution of “exhausted fuel”.
What gets a good mark in a University course may not “upscale” very well. Sewage treatment plants? The dried “exhausted fuel” grows tomatoes REALLY well.
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Scrubbing that ammonia , either wet or with gypsum , looks easy.
And the CO2 recovery to produce the carbonate is fairly routine.
On a farm scale the problem has been insufficient feedstock.
But big CAFOs have had success with it.
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I have a dream. One day people will be brave enough to call intermittent energy by its name.
It is not renewable. It is intermittent.
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It is intermittent… it is ruinable (its production filthy & tox!c) and deadly, eg. Spain, battery fires in homes & on roads, eagles & hawks & bats, exploding turbines & eviscerated panels, slave labour and children – it’s always the children…
The Trump Admin’s takedown of the previous lot’s ironically, yet accurately, named ‘Endangerment Act 2009’ – which endangered humanity by its very actions – is cause for celebration today 13/2/2026: good things happen on Black Fridays (even if the USA is always a day behind us) 😃
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Its intermittent and ruinable, nice work.
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Ruinous?
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Well, I’m sorry, but he’s wrong! Ruinables can run Australia and will be cheaper, that is still in the mainstream media today!
“Origin Energy chief executive Frank Calabria’s cautiously optimistic outlook on short-term power prices follows a landmark quarter for the nation’s energy transition, during which wind, solar, hydro and battery discharges supplied more than half of the eastern seaboard’s main grid for the first time…The head of Australia’s largest power retailer says growing contributions from renewables and batteries are cutting the cost of generating electricity.”
Of course the blame for our prices being high in the first place is Russia!!
“Electricity bills have gone up hundreds of dollars a year across parts of Australia since 2022, largely due to the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ”
…and there’s a little bit of propaganda to discredit real electricity generators in there-
“Record-breaking output from renewables, paired with a rare stretch of no major unexpected coal-fired power station outages, helped stabilise the grid and drive a 44 per cent reduction in the wholesale price of electricity ”
Not what Macron was saying at all!
https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/major-power-retailer-sees-hope-of-bill-relief-as-renewables-shine-20260212-p5o1uk.html
[Thumbs up from me KP. I saw the /sarc – Jo]
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Calabria and Origin are just gaming the system. They’re private enterprise so they’re smarter than the government. Calabria picks his times to criticise then later praise. Probably hanging out for more subsidies or support systems. There was a time when you had faith that the politicians and perhaps the bureaucrats/public service would do best by the taxpayer. Those days are long gone. Just look what happened in Victoria over the last 12 years. Huge money going into questionable infrastructure but a lot going straight to the CFMEU. It was other peoples money spent by other people, so no responsibility required. The same applies to the whole carbon transition religion performed by “our” federal government.
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Errr ? I strongly suspect he has included Roof Top Solar in that statement….
….which is NOT a grid supply generation source. !
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The ABC has discovered Trump’s action against the “endangerment finding” and reports a planned legal action in response.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-13/trump-revokes-basis-of-us-climate-regulation-ends-vehicle-emissi/106339598
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Hope he sues them.
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It is very patent that actual detailed reporting in the Aus MSM of the Spanish Experience and its’ long-tail fallout is completely minimal.
Most people are absolutely unaware of what actually happened, let alone the causes and hyped solutions. One has no need to wonder why reporting is so throttled down.
And we note that the Minns Govt is extremely quietly hunting down synchronous inverters to install into the NSW renewabubble grid to avoid the Spanish Experience. The cost for this is astronomical – and supply is a very, very long wait, since half the renewabubble world is now doing the same. In Macron’s language, quelle surprise !
Renewabubble grids are based on academic hypotheses, not theory or even empirical evidence. The proof of this is in the constant addition of “new” stuff to try and make these grids somewhat reliable. That is, when a grid falls over, new gizmos are added to avoid a repeat failure. The hypothesis is constantly and expensively modified. This is symptomatic of accountability-free Public Service “planning”.
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The trouble with synchronous inverters is that they remain untried in a grid failure scenario. Are they afraid of finding out that they do not work?
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Survival should come before ideology. The trick is to acknowledge that you are in danger.
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As Lenin might say: Who, whom?”. “WHO gets to do what to WHOM?
WHO gets to decide who lives and who dies, is imprisoned / exiled, tortured, etc.??
And on which excursion of “situational ethics” this occurs.
A brief perusal of recorded history clearly indicates that “politics” is seriously “red; in tooth and claw”.
Despite all the hypocritical blathering, the “power game” is a BLOOD SPORT.
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pity on those who believe in the telegraph
the true story is here, or here, or here
why not repeal the law of gravity instead?
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You try to discredit the article and the telegraph, but did you actually read it?
https://archive.md/ERWEP#selection-3569.21-3569.354
The Telegraph does not propose an opinion or make claims. It quotes Macron and it states the Spanish govt’s explanation.
Are you claiming that the Telegraph has falsely quoted Macron as saying,
“The debate about Spain is a false one. Its problem is that it has a 100 per cent renewable energy model that its own domestic grid cannot support.”
“The Spanish power outage is not related to interconnections, but rather to the fact that no system, at least with current technology, can support such dependence on renewable energy. Stability in the energy mix is needed because otherwise, shocks that are too big occur. But it’s not just about interconnections. Networks are needed.”
Or do you agree that is what he said?
Your links try to explain it by dancing around the issues and instability of the Iberian grid with renewables, using phrases like “it’s complex”.
As for the cause of blackout.
See the two part report shared by Paul Miskelly on this blog.
https://watt-logic.com/2025/07/16/voltage-inertia-and-the-iberian-blackout-part-1-the-theory/
https://watt-logic.com/2025/07/16/voltage-inertia-and-the-iberian-blackout-part-2-a-faulty-solar-inverter-crashed-the-spanish-grid12088/
From part 2 link. (selected quotes and my bolding)
BTW – Assuming the Spanish govt explanation it was solar generators shutting off supply because wholesale prices had gone too low is the simple and contained explanation. That is still a consequence of a renewables feast and famine grid. But see above reports for the proper details.
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Strop laid it out fairly clear. I’ll simplify it.
Their grid lost voltage control and had inadequate reactive power available. That crashed their grid. End of story.
Synchronous grids have spinning generation: Steam turbine driven alternators. These things provide voltage and reactive power, at frequency, and are dispatchable, unlike solar/wind/inverter driven generators.
If you do the maths, the maximum penetration into a grid by intermittent generators is equal or less than their capacity factors, otherwise instability exists. A synchronous grid can only backup or stabilize a fixed amount of instability, and a non-synchronous generator cannot backup anything because it is 2 steps behind reality at best. The connected load drives all generators. Solar/Wind/Inverter driven generators follow the synchronous frequency pulse. The synchronous pulse is seconds to minutes behind the actual connected load. If total real and reactive power of all generators cannot match the connected load in 4 to 90 seconds, the grid will collapse from loss of voltage or frequency stability. At scale, this means MW to GW solutions in seconds. Or it goes black.
The only thing wind/solar can do is offset fuel costs of a synchronous generator, and then only if it is economically desirable and frequency/voltage stability, wise to do so. That is all W/S can do, ever. W/S are always expendable and subservient to synchronous generation. Prove me wrong.
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” The maximum penetration into a grid by intermittent generators is equal to or less than their capacity factors, otherwise instability exists. ”
As the Broken Hill fiasco proved.
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Perhaps this might be of interest to the small (nuclear) modular reactor will never happen group(s)
Perhaps a bit on the small side for adding in a distributive manner to the grid, but everything started somewhere.
https://min.news/en/science/b3fc3ebc66a3f29a8e0447fbda105a5a.html
Anyone want to post it to reneweconomy?
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Sheesh … they are on a mission. Totally truthy and neutral … Peter Fitzroy truth.
And then there’s this:
They accept that the source they are using was only preliminary and anyway none of us trust the culprits investigating themselves … but hey mungle it around and we can make it say anything we like.
Then you don’t have do go far to realize that the IEEFA have no idea about power generation. This is an all time classic:
Ha ha ha, they failed to dispatch 2 GW in 30 seconds but it’s all so confusing what was holding them back … how about this for a suggestion? They didn’t have the 2GW available at 30 seconds notice, and they were hoping the interconnection to France would save them but that dropped out.
OMG you have to shake your head … I suppose the saving grace is that almost no one reads this junk. We know that Peter never bothers to read the links he posts up.
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A couple of years ago, I played with the idea that France could flip Germany in GDP. Because Germany was backing renewables, while France was confident in nuclear. I think this might actually happen?
Imagine BMW and VW and MB building their cars in France.
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Why would they build their cars in France when they are doing it a lot cheaper in Chinausing coal fired generation.
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Or they could just buy the electricity from France.
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Electricity in China is about half the price of electricity in France … that would be the most obvious reason.
Labour is also cheaper, land is mostly cheaper, tax is lower, regulations are less complicated and not as onerous. Unions in China are almost non-existent.
What is more likely is that German industry will eventually move East into places like Poland where they can have their own nuclear reactor, less regulations and quite a few cost savings.
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When is Albanese going to see sense, stop fighting Tories, and do the same as Macron?
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Albo Akbhar and friends know it’s a hoax. And destroying Australia. The old presumption that the Prime Minister was acting entirely in the best interests of Australia are long gone. For avowed communists like the Labor party and Greens, destitution and then revolution is the dual aim. It’s what allows mediocre people to rise to the top.
After 38 years of Armageddon tomorrow, it’s amazing that anyone believes it but anyone under 50 has been taught that Heating Armageddon is the truth. Even the Australian yesterday reporting on Trump’s move could not help but put in a picture of Greenland with the claim that Greenland is suffering extreme heat. Except the 50,000 people on Greenland who live at sea level on the SE coast would love the weather a bit warmer and no one lives on the top at 3.5km of ice.
You are not allowed question man made Climate Change. But the game is over. And 300,000 windmills have achieved absolutely nothing in reducing CO2, the entire and sole aim.
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It still amazes me. The alleged problem is growing CO2. But no one refers to CO2. They all refer to ‘nett zero’ in the presumption that if fossil fuel burning goes down, CO2 stops. But why not measure CO2? Because burning fossil fuel has zero effect on CO2. This is obvious to Blind Freddy.
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He should be called Micron as he is such a little ponce.
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We are wasting treasury on pointless subs that will easily defeated by AI driven drone submersibles. The $360 billion could build six or seven nuke power stations.
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Nuclear submarines are the most potent weapons and surveillance platforms of all because they are extremely difficult to detect, can settle on the bottom for very long periods desalinating water and purifying the air inside, and not needing refuelling (fuel rods of enriched uranium) for decades.
The Morrison Coalition Government entered into a contract with a US firm, Anduril, to design and build for the RAN a large unmanned long distance capability submarine called Ghost Shark. There is at least one other Australian firm that has designed and built a torpedo dimension drone submersible also for defence.
Nuclear submarines are considerably faster even underwater than conventional diesel-electric models.
Nuclear submarines will be “mother ships” meaning bases for these unmanned submarines in addition to be weapons platforms and for survellance intelligence gathering.
The drones add to capabilities for the crewed RAN ships surface and submerged, known as force multipliers. The Coalition contract with Boeing Australia that has resulted in design and building of now several Ghost Bat drone jet fighter aircraft is another large step forwards for defence capacilities, another force multiplier that can fly alongside F-25 Lightning stealth jets, F-18 Super Hornet fighter jets and other RAAF aircraft or be ground controlled. Consider one F-35 with two Ghost Bats MQ-28 and all three with weapons.
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The worms have turned, the United Nations connected organisations and unelected mostly left leaning executives are being rejected by sensible conservative thinking leaders of member countries, with the exception I believe of those with vested interests in wealth creation ventures established to take advantage of of climate hoax and other UN influence, HREC and immigration turned colonising, etc.
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Amazing how politicians can notice the obvious … after they run out of other options.
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