Replies

Russia takes over Nestle’s assets in the country

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/09/18/nestle-takeover/3141789740761
*************************************************

Swiss food giant Nestlé is weighing its options after the Kremlin took control of its Russian assets, placing them under temporary external administration.

“Nestlé takes note of Russia’s presidential decree, published yesterday, that places Nestlé Russia under temporary external administration. The company is assessing the situation and its options,” the company said in a press release. “Nestlé is committed to taking all necessary steps to protect its rights and ensure continuity of business operations in the interests of all stakeholders, particularly its employees.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called Switzerland an “unfriendly country.”

“We are talking about European firms from unfriendly countries. And, of course, their status as such was one of the factors taken into account when making the decision,” Peskov to Russian news agency TASS. “These are unfriendly countries that are actively involved in military operations against our nation and have been involved in strikes by the Kiev regime on our civilian economic infrastructure.”

Shares of Nestlé traded 2.2% lower on Friday,......

Moscow also took over the assets of French retailers Auchan and Lemana Pro. Their Russian assets will be transferred to shell company L.E.V. Management.

Switzerland is historically neutral and is not a member of the European Union, though it has adopted the EU’s sanctions against Russia since it invaded Ukraine in 2022. It has promoted a new neutrality initiative that voters will decide on this month.

Russia has criticized Switzerland for giving aid to Ukraine, and it has said it no longer views Switzerland as neutral.

China’s Net Zero Advantage

Beijing is pursuing a climate strategy that weakens the West while strengthening its own competitive position

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-netzero-advantage-climate

Excerpt:

In its competition with China, the United States holds a natural advantage: abundant oil and cheap natural gas. Reliable energy powers factories, data centers, transportation networks, and military operations. It lets the United States combine technological innovation with industrial scale, an advantage that China, dependent on imported oil and gas, cannot easily reproduce.

But China has found a partial answer: the Net Zero movement. For years, a large, influential, and well-funded Western network has campaigned to restrict the production and use of fossil fuels. Many of the same campaigning organizations also oppose nuclear power, the largest source of emissions-free electricity in the United States. Climate advocates seek to persuade the American government to surrender its energy advantage voluntarily. Beijing agrees.

Over the past two decades, therefore, an alliance in all but name has taken shape. On one side stands the Chinese party-state. On the other stands a Western climate community much broader than its activist core: environmental organizations and the philanthropies that finance them, research institutes and international agencies, journalists who cover the transition to renewable energy, officials drawn from the movement’s own ranks, and the investors, asset managers, and financial institutions whose returns depend on the policies the movement secures.

......But if Chinese money is shaping American energy policy, the organization under the most serious scrutiny is Energy Foundation China, a California charity that keeps a San Francisco address and a large office in Beijing. By its own account, its China office is registered with the Beijing public-security bureau and supervised by the National Development and Reform Commission, the ministry that writes and administers China’s five-year plans. That self-description, and a report by the national-security group State Armor, was enough to prompt a December 2025 letter from 26 state attorneys general, led by Montana’s Austin Knudsen, asking the Justice Department to investigate the foundation as an unregistered foreign agent. The attorneys general likewise relied on Energy Foundation China’s published statement that the Beijing office is “supervised by” the NDRC.

Energy Foundation China’s chief executive, Zou Ji, is a Chinese national. He previously served as deputy director general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, an NDRC agency, and was a member of the Chinese negotiating team in the years leading to the Paris Agreement. He also sits as a special adviser to the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, the State Council advisory body chaired by a Chinese vice premier. Other senior staff have come out of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Beijing Municipal Ecology and Environment Bureau, and the National People’s Congress system. The foundation partners with Chinese ministries and state institutes.

By its own account, its principal business is moving Western philanthropic money into the Chinese policy system. Its major donors include the Hewlett Foundation, ClimateWorks Foundation, Climate Imperative, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and similar houses. Energy Foundation China grants that money onward to Chinese government research bodies and universities: the National Center for Climate Change Strategy, the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and others.

.....The grounds for suspicion, however, are obvious. An American charity, financed by American and European philanthropy, operates in Beijing under the industrial-planning ministry, is led in part by former Chinese officials, disburses Western money to Chinese government institutes, and then writes smaller checks to organizations that work on U.S. energy and climate policy.
.....

Energy Foundation China another CCP organization. They are HQd in San Francisco probably because less scrutiny by Governor Hair Gel or Sacramento versus if they were in another state. California is a captured market relating to the climate change hoax.