The Drought (1964)

the Machiavellian war strategy in the supply chain of the natural gas market ...

-Hopefully, …the economic giant of the East will wake up and use the unique key that its economic and political power confers on it to find a definitive way out of this situation that is wreaking havoc on the global economy.

El Caribe, Santo Domingo, September 15, 2022

Rapid adaptation to change has always been a virtue in human beings. Why is this the case? The answer is simple because so-called human life is not a continuum of happiness and unhappiness or of stability and instability; fortunately, it is not... On the contrary, life's itinerary is complex, with encounters and mis encounters, loves and dislikes, in short .... Sometimes, our ecosystem, jaded by pollution, reveals itself by provoking natural disasters of enormous proportions... And not to mention the aberrations in so-called human beings' minds that lead to excesses that infringe all the moral canons of coexistence imaginable... Our existence is constantly subject to complex tests through extreme and always unforeseen changes, they say... which is perfectly accurate... In the unique minds of science fictions writers throughout the history of humanity, they have managed to visualize the plagues and changes in political systems that would affect us mercilessly over time...

According to the journal Plos Pathogens of the University of Kent (England), on Friday, 17 November 2019, in Wuhan, China, the SARC-COv-2 virus was detected for the first time. An organism with a simple structure composed of proteins and nucleic acids capable of reproducing only within specific living cells, using its metabolism, according to the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) definition, all this concerning the Coronavirus.

Our affective behavior is the cruelest change humanity has undergone due to the Coronavirus This small monster surely awoke in us the paranoia of terror in a most malicious way…, let us know. Indeed it did, that being in the company of other individuals of our species, by then already submerged by the sophistic evolution of the 2.0 world, where genuine expressions of affection, handshakes and hugs... that do so much good to the intangible of the so-called soul, have been replaced by immaterial faces that flow at an infinite density (billions) per second, devoid of any merciful human contact, would cause us to die. What cruelty we have been subject to…  How many of our loved ones are not whit us today? Due to a mistake made by a human error in a laboratory in the isolated province of Wuhan in the millennian China.

Not even in the mind of that genius of science fiction chronicler, James Graham Ballard (JG Ballard, Shanghai, British International Treaty 1930-London, UK 2009) in his short story The Drought (1964), did he fail to visualize what would affect in the future the colony of individuals inhabiting a small, remote and sick planet, called: Earth.

Not only the human sensory system has been affected by these new living conditions, but also the industry in all its processes, a consequence of the forced confinement of human beings, which prevented them from going to their workplaces usually, is suffering from the shortage of raw materials and components to keep the production chain in operation to supply the basic needs that man requires for his subsistence.

The lack of supply of essential goods and the excessive costs of international sea freight transport triggers the poison known as inflation. Global Accumulative Inflation from January 2020 to December 2021 went from 1.9% to no less than 3.5%, practically doubling in one calendar year. By the end of the period, the prediction is close to 7%, according to World Bank indicators. In other words, in a brief time of three years, cumulative inflation has tripled. There are not national economy or family wallet that can deal with this -financial storm-.

In addition to this adverse economic situation initially, caused by the SARC-COv-2 virus, this economic setback has been exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine since February of this year, which has hurt the fossil fuel market, specifically on the stable and safe purchase price of natural gas from the Tsarist domain. The reason for this is Russia's brilliant military strategy in the economic order in this conflict, using the systematic cuts of natural gas to its customers on the continent as a new element of warfare, known under the concept: Natural gas is the new "Russian winter" as an element of war…

This clever (Machiavellian) strategy on the part of the imperial government of Russia has deepened the economic crisis to levels unprecedented in contemporary history, accelerating the inflationary process in such a way that it has the finances of almost all nations in check, (weakened by extraordinary expenditures (issuing public debt) through subsidies and investments in the health sector aimed at coping with the pandemic times) that drift to the fragile economy of hundreds of millions of families around the world, who are unable to cope with their basic financial commitments, payment of electricity bills, settlements on mortgage commitments, etc...

There is no doubt about the concern of the political authorities regarding the current economic crisis that it is urgent and necessary to resort to emergency measures to deal with this unsustainable economic situation. However, these political actions in financial matters must be based on objective rationality and the true origin of the crisis; the current inflationary process is the result of the pandemic and the recent armed conflict. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has directly impacted the natural gas market, causing a disruption in prices due to a strategically planned restriction in supply.

Given this, the electricity industry has no direct responsibility for the background of the current economic crisis (neither does the political authority); on the contrary is one of the most affected parties because its production costs have increased exponentially. A financial intervention in the electricity industry through a cap price or increasing of taxes are not the most innovative economic measure because they (the electricity industry) do not have any tools to influence the price of natural gas. It is a governmental issue where politicians are responsible for finding mechanisms to solve the situation. In this sense, some European government officials have put forward reasonable proposals intended at contributing to the relief of electricity supply to both the population and industry without risking, firstly, social peace and, secondly, the financial health of the energy sector, which could lead to a domino effect on other sectors of the economy, based on state guarantees, which could be one of the logical alternatives at this point.

Finally, we must be incredibly careful with the so-called -all in- of all installed electricity generation capacity to the system, as far as the nuclear fleet is concerned, many nuclear power plants in Europe have not been dispatched for years, their current condition is unknown. I insist that we must be extremely cautious here. We must not look back too far: ...- In a detailed report on his visit, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that artillery attacks around the Zaporiyia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, must cease immediately. "This requires an agreement by all relevant parties for the establishment of a protective zone" around the plant, the report: "We are playing with fire, and something very, very catastrophic could happen," warned Rafael Grossi, IAEA director general to the UN Security Council, days after leading an inspection visit to the plant. (Los Angeles Time, underwritten by Hanna Arhirova of Associated Press, 6 September 2022) events to realize the risks of such an action, the worst that could happen is to throw the current crisis back into another horror, as described by the great science fiction writers of the last century.

As an epilogue to these reflections, in the search for wisdom and good sense to prevail over the empire of destruction, in a call for clemency to the gods, in an inshallah of supplication, I have to recall that China, the forgotten ally of the West during the Second World War, was one of the determining factors in bringing the conflict to an end. Now, equally, China, this undesirable economic situation is causing many financial holes in its public finances. Hopefully, out of necessity or common sense, the economic giant of the East will wake up and use the unique key that its economic and political power confers on it to find a definitive way out of this situation that is wreaking havoc on the global economy.