US official: Indonesia could get billions in funding in return for normalisation
![Indonesian Muslims stage a protest outside the US ambassador's office in Indonesia against US President Donald Trump's announcement to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Jakarta on December, 8, 2017 [Dasril Roszandi / Anadolu Agency]](https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20171208_2_27364188_28592899.jpg)
Indonesian Muslims protest outside the US ambassador’s office in Indonesia against US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Jakarta on December, 8, 2017 [Dasril Roszandi / Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | December 23, 2020
Indonesia could see billions of dollars in additional funding from the US if it agreed to normalise ties with Israel, a US official has said.
Bloomberg quoted Chief Executive of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Adam Buehler, as saying that the agency could double its investments in Indonesia, which currently amount to about $1 billion, if Jakarta establishes diplomatic relations with Israel.
“We are talking to Indonesia about this … if they are ready for it, we will be happy to provide them with financial support that is greater than what we actually offer now.”
The US official said he would not be surprised if the aid provided by the agency to Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country, increases by one or two billion dollars if Jakarta establishes diplomatic relations with Israel.
US and Israeli leaders say that they expect more countries to join the wave of normalisation which began in August with the announcement that the UAE had agreed to sign a peace deal with the occupation state. This was quickly followed by Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
The United States hopes that Oman and Saudi Arabia will sign similar deals in the future, although Buehler said it is not likely that USAID will provide assistance to the two countries because the rules do not allow the agency to invest in high-income countries.
Late last month Indonesia reaffirmed its firm support for Palestinian independence.
A non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, Indonesia presents one of its main goals on the council as dealing with the Palestinian question. It has had no formal relations with the occupation state of Israel since it was formed on Palestinian land in 1948. In support of Palestine, Jakarta issued a tax exemption on Palestinian imports.
In turn, Israel has taken soft measures against Indonesia such as banning tourists from the country but has made overtures towards it in recent years in order to influence the process of normalisation.
With Biden’s New Threats, the Russia Discourse is More Reckless and Dangerous Than Ever
The U.S. media demands inflammatory claims be accepted with no evidence, while hacking behavior routinely engaged in by the U.S. is depicted as aberrational.
By Glenn Greenwald | December 23, 2020
To justify Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to Donald Trump, leading Democrats and their key media allies for years competed with one another to depict what they called “Russia’s interference in our elections” in the most apocalyptic terms possible. They fanatically rejected the view of the Russian Federation repeatedly expressed by President Obama — that it is a weak regional power with an economy smaller than Italy’s capable of only threatening its neighbors but not the U.S. — and instead cast Moscow as a grave, even existential, threat to U.S. democracy, with its actions tantamount to the worst security breaches in U.S. history.
This post-2016 mania culminated with prominent liberal politicians and journalists (as well as John McCain) declaring Russia’s activities surrounding the 2016 [election] to be an “act of war” which, many of them insisted, was comparable to Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attack — the two most traumatic attacks in modern U.S. history which both spawned years of savage and destructive war, among other things.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) repeatedly demanded that Russia’s 2016 “interference” be treated as “an act of war.” Hillary Clinton described Russian hacking as “a cyber 9/11.” And Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) on MSNBC in early February, 2018, pronounced Russia “a hostile foreign power” whose 2016 meddling was the “equivalent” of Pearl Harbor, “very much on par” with the “seriousness” of the 1941 attack in Hawaii that helped prompt four years of U.S. involvement in a world war.
With the Democrats, under Joe Biden, [presumably] just weeks away from assuming control of the White House and the U.S. military and foreign policy that goes along with it, the discourse from them and their media allies about Russia is becoming even more unhinged and dangerous. Moscow’s alleged responsibility for the recently revealed, multi-pronged hack of U.S. Government agencies and various corporate servers is asserted — despite not a shred of evidence, literally, having yet been presented — as not merely proven fact, but as so obviously true that it is off-limits from doubt or questioning.
Any questioning of this claim will be instantly vilified by the Democrats’ extremely militaristic media spokespeople as virtual treason. “Now the president is not just silent on Russia and the hack. He is deliberately running defense for the Kremlin by contradicting his own Secretary of State on Russian responsibility,” pronounced CNN’s national security reporter Jim Sciutto, who last week depicted Trump’s attempted troop withdrawal from Syria and Germany as “ceding territory” and furnishing “gifts” to Putin. More alarmingly, both the rhetoric to describe the hack and the retaliation being threatened are rapidly spiraling out of control.
Democrats (along with some Republicans long obsessed with The Russian Threat, such as Mitt Romney) are casting the latest alleged hack by Moscow in the most melodramatic terms possible, ensuring that Biden will enter the White House with tensions sky-high with Russia and facing heavy pressure to retaliate aggressively. Biden’s top national security advisers and now Biden himself have, with no evidence shown to the public, repeatedly threatened aggressive retaliation against the country with the world’s second-largest nuclear stockpile.
Congressman Jason Crow (D-CO) — one of the pro-war Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee who earlier this year joined with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) to block Trump’s plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan — announced: “this could be our modern day, cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor,” adding: “Our nation is under assault.” The second-ranking Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin (D-IL), pronounced: “This is virtually a declaration of war by Russia.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), who has for years been casting Russia as a grave threat to the U.S. while Democrats mocked him as a relic of the Cold War (before they copied and then surpassed him), described the latest hack as “the equivalent of Russian bombers flying undetected over the entire country.” The GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee also blasted Trump for his failure to be “aggressively speaking out and protesting and taking punitive action,” though — like virtually every prominent figure demanding tough “retaliation” — Romney failed to specify what he had in mind that would be sufficient retaliation for “the equivalent of Russian bombers flying undetected over the entire country.”
For those keeping track at home: that’s two separate “Pearl Harbors” in less than four years from Moscow (or, if you prefer, one Pearl Harbor and one 9/11). If Democrats actually believe that, it stands to reason that they will be eager to embrace a policy of belligerence and aggression toward Russia. Many of them are demanding this outright, mocking Trump for failing to attack Russia — despite no evidence that they were responsible — while their well-trained liberal flock is suggesting that the non-response constitutes some form of “high treason.”
Indeed, the Biden team has been signalling that they intend to quickly fulfill demands for aggressive retaliation. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Biden “accused President Trump [] of ‘irrational downplaying’” of the hack while “warning Russia that he would not allow the intrusion to ‘go unanswered’ after he takes office.” Biden emphasized that once the intelligence assessment is complete, “we will respond, and probably respond in kind.”
Threats and retaliation between the U.S. and Russia are always dangerous, but particularly so now. One of the key nuclear arms agreements between the two nuclear-armed nations, the New START treaty, will expire in February unless Putin and Biden can successfully negotiate a renewal: sixteen days after Biden is [tentatively] scheduled to take office. “That will force Mr. Biden to strike a deal to prevent one threat — a nuclear arms race — while simultaneously threatening retaliation on another,” observed the Times.
This escalating rhetoric from Washington about Russia, and the resulting climate of heightened tensions, are dangerous in the extreme. They are also based in numerous myths, deceits and falsehoods:
First, absolutely no evidence of any kind has been presented to suggest, let alone prove, that Russia is responsible for these hacks. It goes without saying that it is perfectly plausible that Russia could have done this: it’s the sort of thing that every large power from China and Iran to the U.S. and Russia have the capability to do and wield against virtually every other country including one another.
But if we learned nothing else over the last several decades, we should know that accepting claims that emanate from the U.S. intelligence community about adversaries without a shred of evidence is madness of the highest order. We just had a glaring reminder of the importance of this rule: just weeks before the election, countless mainstream media outlets laundered and endorsed the utterly false claim that the documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop were “Russian disinformation,” only for officials to acknowledge once the harm was done that there was no evidence — zero — of Russian involvement.
Yet that is exactly what the overwhelming bulk of media outlets are doing again: asserting that Russia is behind these hacks despite having no evidence of its truth. The New York Times’ Michael Barbaro, host of the paper’s popular The Daily podcast, asked his colleague, national security reporter David Sanger, what evidence exists to assert that Russia did this. As Barbaro put it, even Sanger is “allowing that early conclusions could all be wrong, but that it’s doubtful.” Indeed, Sanger acknowledged to Barbaro that they have no proof, asserting instead that the basis on which he is relying is that Russia possesses the sophistication to carry out such a hack (as do several other nation-states), along with claiming that the hack has what he calls the “markings” of Russian hackers.
But this tactic was exactly the same one used by former intelligence officials, echoed by these same media outlets, to circulate the false pre-election claim that the documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop were “Russian disinformation”: namely, they pronounced in lockstep, the material from Hunter’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information.” This was also exactly the same tactic used by the U.S. intelligence community in 2001 to falsely blame Iraq for the anthrax attacks, claiming that their chemical analysis revealed a substance that was “a trademark of the Iraqi biological weapons program.”
These media outlets will, if pressed, acknowledge their lack of proof that Russia did this. Despite this admitted lack of proof, media outlets are repeatedly stating Russian responsibility as proven fact.
“Scope of Russian Hacking Becomes Clear: Multiple U.S. Agencies Were Hit,” one New York Times headline proclaimed, and the first line of that article, co-written by Sanger, stated definitively: “The scope of a hacking engineered by one of Russia’s premier intelligence agencies became clearer on Monday.” The Washington Post deluged the public with identically certain headlines.
Nobody in the government has been as definitive in asserting Russian responsibility as corporate media outlets. Even Trump’s hawkish Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, crafted his accusation against Moscow with caveats and uncertainty: “I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.”
If actual evidence ultimately emerges demonstrating Russian responsibility, it would not alter how dangerous it is that — less than twenty years after the Iraq WMD debacle and less than a couple of years after media endorsement of endless Russiagate falsehoods — the most influential media outlets continue to mindlessly peddle as Truth whatever the intelligence community feeds them, without the need to see any evidence that what they’re claiming is actually true. Even more alarmingly, large sectors of the public that venerate these outlets continue to believe that what they hear from them must be true, no matter how many times they betray that trust. The ease with which the CIA can disseminate whatever messaging it wants through friendly media outlets is stunning.
Second, the very idea that this hack could be compared to rogue and wildly aberrational events such as Pearl Harbor or the 9/11 attack is utterly laughable on its face. One has to be drowning in endless amounts of jingoistic self-delusion to believe that this hack — or, for that matter, the 2016 “election interference” — is a radical departure from international norms as opposed to a perfect reflection of them.
Just as was true of 2016 fake Facebook pages and Twitter bots, it is not an exaggeration to say that the U.S. Government engages in hacking attacks of this sort, and ones far more invasive, against virtually every country on the planet, including Russia, on a weekly basis. That does not mean that this kind of hacking is either justified or unjustified. It does mean, however, that depicting it as some particularly dastardly and incomparably immoral act that requires massive retaliation requires a degree of irrationality and gullibility that is bewildering to behold.
The NSA reporting enabled by Edward Snowden by itself proved that the NSA spies on virtually anyone it can. Indeed, after reviewing the archive back in 2013, I made the decision that I would not report on U.S. hacks of large adversary countries such as China and Russia because it was so commonplace for all of these countries to hack one another as aggressively and intrusively as they could that it was hardly newsworthy to report on this (the only exception was when there was a substantial reason to view such spying as independently newsworthy, such as Sweden’s partnering with NSA to spy on Russia in direct violation of the denials Swedish officials voiced to their public).
Other news outlets who had access to Snowden documents, particularly The New York Times, were not nearly as circumspect in exposing U.S. spying on large nation-state adversaries. As a result, there is ample proof published by those outlets (sometimes provoking Snowden’s strong objections) that the U.S. does exactly what Russia is alleged to have done here — and far worse.
“Even as the United States made a public case about the dangers of buying from [China’s] Huawei, classified documents show that the National Security Agency was creating its own back doors — directly into Huawei’s networks,” reported The New York Times’ David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth in 2013, adding that “the agency pried its way into the servers in Huawei’s sealed headquarters in Shenzhen, China’s industrial heart.”
In 2013, the Guardian revealed “an NSA attempt to eavesdrop on the Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev, as his phone calls passed through satellite links to Moscow,” and added: “foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts.” Meanwhile, “Sweden has been a key partner for the United States in spying on Russia and its leadership, Swedish television said on Thursday,” noted Reuters, citing what one NSA document described as “a unique collection on high-priority Russian targets, such as leadership, internal politics.”
Other reports revealed that the U.S. had hacked into the Brazilian telecommunications system to collect data on the whole population, and was spying on Brazil’s key leaders (including then-President Dilma Rousseff) as well as its most important companies such as its oil giant Petrobras and its Ministry of Mines and Energy. The Washington Post reported: “The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.” And on and on.
[One amazing though under-appreciated episode related to all this: the same New York Times reporter who revealed the details about massive NSA hacking of Chinese government and industry, Nicole Perlroth, subsequently urged (in tweets she has now deleted) that Snowden not be pardoned on the ground that, according to her, he revealed legitimate NSA spying on U.S. adversaries. In reality, it was actually she, Perlorth, not Snowden, who chose to expose NSA spying on China, provoking Snowden’s angry objections when she did so based on his view this was a violation of the framework he created for what should and should not be revealed; in other words, not only did Perlroth urge the criminal prosecution of a source on which she herself relied, an absolutely astonishing thing for any reporter to do, but so much worse, she did so by falsely accusing that source of doing something that she, Perlroth, had done herself: namely, reveal extensive U.S. hacking of China].
What all of this makes demonstrably clear is that only the most deluded and uninformed person could believe that Russian hacking of U.S. agencies and corporations — if it happened — is anything other than totally normal and common behavior between these countries. Harvard Law Professor and former Bush DOJ official Jack Goldsmith, reviewing growing demands for retaliation, wrote in an excellent article last week entitled “Self-Delusion on the Russia Hack: The U.S. regularly hacks foreign governmental computer systems on a massive scale”:
The lack of self-awareness in these and similar reactions to the Russia breach is astounding. The U.S. government has no principled basis to complain about the Russia hack, much less retaliate for it with military means, since the U.S. government hacks foreign government networks on a huge scale every day. Indeed, a military response to the Russian hack would violate international law . . . .
As the revelations from leaks of information from Edward Snowden made plain, the United States regularly penetrates foreign governmental computer systems on a massive scale, often (as in the Russia hack) with the unwitting assistance of the private sector, for purposes of spying. It is almost certainly the world’s leader in this practice, probably by a lot. The Snowden documents suggested as much, as does the NSA’s probable budget. In 2016, after noting “problems with cyber intrusions from Russia,” Obama boasted that the United States has “more capacity than anybody … offensively” . . . .
Because of its own practices, the U.S. government has traditionally accepted the legitimacy of foreign governmental electronic spying in U.S. government networks. After the notorious Chinese hack of the Office of Personnel Management database, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said: “You have to kind of salute the Chinese for what they did. If we had the opportunity to do that, I don’t think we’d hesitate for a minute.” The same Russian agency that appears to have carried out the hack revealed this week also hacked into unclassified emails in the White House and Defense and State Departments in 2014-2015. The Obama administration deemed it traditional espionage and did not retaliate. “It was information collection, which is what nation states—including the United States—do,” said Obama administration cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel this week.
But over the last four years, Americans, particularly those who feed on liberal media outlets, have been drowned in so much mythology about the U.S. and Russia that they have no capacity to critically assess the claims being made, and — just as they were led to believe about “Russia’s 2016 interference in Our Sacred Elections” — are easily convinced that what Russia did is some shocking and extreme crime the likes of which are rarely seen in international relations. In reality, their own government is the undisputed world champion in perpetrating these acts, and has been for years if not decades.
Third, these demands for “retaliation” are so reckless because they are almost always unaccompanied by any specifics. Even if Moscow’s responsibility is demonstrated, what is the U.S. supposed to do in response? If your answer is that they should hack Russia back, rest assured the NSA and CIA are always trying to hack Russia as much as it possibly can, long before this event.
If the answer is more sanctions, that would be just performative and pointless, aside from wildly hypocritical. Any reprisals more severe than that would be beyond reckless, particularly with the need to renew nuclear arms control agreements looming. And if you are someone demanding retaliation, do you believe that Russia, China, Brazil and all the other countries invaded by NSA hackers have the same right of retaliation against the U.S., or does the U.S. occupy a special place with special entitlements that all other countries lack?
What we have here, yet again, is the classic operation of the intelligence community feeding serious accusations about a nuclear-armed power to an eagerly gullible corporate media, with the media mindlessly disseminating it without evidence, all toward ratcheting up tensions between these two nuclear-armed powers and fortifying a mythology of the U.S. as grand victim but never perpetrator.
If you ever find yourself wondering how massive military budgets and a posture of Endless War are seemingly invulnerable to challenge, this pathological behavior — from a now-enduring union of the intelligence community, corporate media outlets, and the Democratic Party — provides one key piece of the puzzle.
WHO continues to go full Ministry of Truth
By Charles Rotter | What’s Up With That? | December 23, 2020
‘Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’.
Orwell’s 1984
The climate wars which reached fever pitch a decade ago gave us a window into this sort of behavior by government bureaucrats.
The Internet and new media have given us additional visibility into the unrepentant behavior of those who would lie to us for our own good. I cannot overstate my disgust with those who have completely destroyed the credibility of the medical establishment.
God help us if something serious actually occurs.
Here is the WHO rewriting history and definitions to further their agenda.
Orwell did not envisage how simple it would be for the Ministry of Truth to rewrite history when it’s on the Internet.
Here is the current page where this content resides.
Notice in this video embedded below, this lying bureaucrat claims: “We have no therapeutics” and postulates a case fatality rate of 1%.
Covid-19 relief package asks Americans to fund their own oppression while stuffing the pockets of the powerful
By Helen Buyniski | RT | December 22, 2020
The massive ‘Covid-19 relief plus’ bill passed by Congress is a slap in the face to Americans from politicians whose backhands never seem to tire. Is a single $600 payment the going price of a human soul these days?
At over 5,500 pages (around twice the length of the previous longest bill, passed in 1986), the bill has passed both House and Senate without being read by the vast majority of those voting in favor. Congressional leaders took the must-pass nature of the $900 billion package of long-overdue Covid-19 assistance as a green light to lard the attached $1.4 trillion ‘omnibus’ bill with controversial legislation that would never pass otherwise. Some of this has already been revealed, to the horror of the American people.
The spurious add-ons aren’t the typical harmless-yet-ridiculous pork one finds in some mega-bills, either. One disturbing section dramatically expands copyright law to the point that anyone caught in “unauthorized streaming” of copyrighted content more than once could face 10 years in prison – even if they didn’t know the content was protected.
In an unconscionable giveaway to major entertainment conglomerates, the bill creates a new “copyright claims court” to further skew copyright law against independent content creators, who already face frequent content takedowns on YouTube and other platforms for what is technically (and legally) “fair use.” This court will be staffed with taxpayer-funded attorneys, who – the bill specifies – can only be paid as much as the highest-paid senior federal employee. That’s a relief!
Coupled with last year’s dramatic expansion of what counts as ‘copyrighted material’ in Europe, which could potentially criminalize even reaction GIFs and memes, the move is an assault on artists and ordinary internet users alike at a time when people have been presented with no choice but to live their lives online.
Adding insult to injury, the bloated aid package will lavish Israel with a whopping $3.8 billion in grants and foreign aid – much of it earmarked for purchasing weapons frequently used to violate international law – and dump hundreds of millions more on such paragons of human rights as Egypt and Sudan.
Americans, meanwhile, get a pitiful $600 each as many states remain economically shut down with no end to the ‘new normal’ in sight. The eviction moratorium that was set to expire at the end of the month has been extended to the end of January, staving off the flood of destitute Americans into the streets for another month. While $25 billion has been set aside for rental assistance, that’s just over a third of what Americans owe, and the procedure for accessing that money is (perhaps deliberately) complex.
The porkstravaganza isn’t entirely evil, of course. Many of the provisions merely represent garden-variety greed and venality ($193.4 million for HIV/AIDS relief workers to buy and insure “official motor vehicles,” the foundation of a ‘Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority’) while others are just baffling (the creation of an educational campaign warning people not to store portable fuel containers near an open flame). There’s $325 billion in small business aid – for those businesses that haven’t closed their doors for good yet – and $15 billion for those cultural venues that have been lucky enough to hang on. But the overall tenor of the legislation is, as the hive-mind of Twitter put it earlier this week, “let them eat cake” – and the cake has already been left out in the sun for a few days.
Nevertheless, many Americans, driven to desperation by nearly 10 months of grinding government-enforced poverty, are willing to embrace the bill solely because of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it $600 payment. Worse, they’re attacking those few members of Congress who had the spine to vote against this phone-book-sized insult masquerading as a relief bill. Congress is supposed to have 72 hours to read any proposed legislation, a rule which was unsurprisingly waived as if the relief measures would simply evaporate if they weren’t passed immediately.
Americans – and the politicians who are supposed to represent them – shouldn’t be forced to choose between groveling for crumbs from the ruling class table and getting nothing at all. If the government and its corporate masters insist on keeping the economy shut down, it’s their responsibility to pay the people to sit on their hands, that is, unless they want those hands picking up pitchforks and torches instead.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
Just Say No To COVID Travel Bans
By Jordan Schachtel | December 22, 2020
We’ve seen this movie before, and it ended with the largest power grab in world history.
“It’s just a travel ban.”
“It’s just two weeks to stop the spread.”
“It’s just for non-essential workers.”
“Just wear a mask. It will allow for society to reopen.”
“It’s just a ‘pause’ on non-essential activities and businesses.”
2020, the year that will be defined by corona hysteria and unprecedented global power grabs, is coming to an end, and the simulation is apparently resetting. The conversation surrounding coronavirus mania has somehow reverted back to square one, with:
“It’s just a travel ban to the UK.”
Social media and news feeds are now rife with prominent politicians, “public health experts,” commentators and reporters discussing the merits of a travel ban to the United Kingdom, after reports surfaced that the Brits have discovered a new strain of the coronavirus, which is being advertised as 70% more infectious (!) than the last variant. According to the “public health experts,” it’s time to panic again, and take dramatic action to stop this virus.
Over 40 countries have now decided — following the reported discovery of the new variant of the coronavirus — to impose travel bans from the United Kingdom. With that has come a new pressure campaign in the United States, led by the likes of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and other lockdown advocates, to launch a new round of travel restrictions.
It seems that so many across the political spectrum have learned absolutely nothing from the pandora’s box of tyranny that was opened up at the beginning of the year, following the failure of travel bans to stop the spread of a respiratory virus with a 99.9% recovery rate.
Like it or not, the United States is a very interconnected nation, serving thousands of international flights per day. The U.S. is not New Zealand. We are not a tiny island nation that can just cut itself off from the rest of the world at a moment’s notice. If there’s a virus reportedly spreading across the Atlantic, it’s probably already here, too.
Additionally, many in the corona hysteria space seem to not understand the rudimentary science behind mutations. They’re seemingly too busy panicking and demanding further restrictions to be thoughtful about what to do next.
If a virus has mutated into an even more transmissible form, that can mean that the virus has become less lethal. This also means that mitigation and suppression pseudoscience measures, such as lockdowns, masks, curfews, and the like have even less of a chance of working this time around, given that they did not work to slow or stop the spread with a less transmissible variant.
If a disease with an approaching 99.9% recovery rate is becoming more transmissible, and possibly even less lethal, the idea that we should take dramatic, sweeping action to “fight” it is absolutely preposterous. Before corona madness, anyone who advocated for a travel ban to stop seasonal influenza or the common cold would have been laughed out of the room. The discourse surrounding “stopping the spread” of a virus has become so nonsensical and pointless, yet at the same time, these people and organizations are credentialed as “experts,” when their record of absolute failure would demonstrate otherwise.
We need to stop the spread of corona hysteria by rejecting any and all restrictions in the name of fighting a virus. Stop empowering government bureaucrats and “public health experts” to run roughshod over our lives. As we observed over the course of the year, a travel ban can fast transform into a devastating lockdown, when the travel ban inevitably fails in its mission. The only path forward involves advocating solely for a full reopening and a restoration of individual rights, not more restrictions in the name of stopping a virus that we have no control over.
Climate Lockdowns Are Coming: Part II
What About the Roads | October 16, 2020
In this three-part series we will exam the transformation from COVID lockdowns to climate lockdowns. In Part I we established a timeline of the dark side of the environmental movement and now we’ll be looking into the specifics of what a climate lockdown really means, and what impact current lockdown measures have had on the environment. In Part III we will see how it fits into the bigger picture of sustainable development as described by international organizations such as the United Nations and what can be done to derail this agenda.
As we saw in Part I of this series, the environmental movement has a dark streak running through it. Many of the architects of the movement hold a Malthusian, eugenics-obsessed view of the world and their fingerprints are all over the growing call for a global climate lockdown. A movement based on the best of intentions is once again being hijacked to centralize power and eviscerate human rights.
With that established it is time to closely examine what exactly Mariana Mazzucato is proposing when she threatens a climate lockdown. In her view, and those on whose behalf she writes, humanity must be willing to undergo a total restructuring of society at the hands of the elite in order to save the planet or continue to live in lockdown. The brave new world she envisions is a sort-of technocracy, a government based on the management of society by unelected technical experts. Ultimately, this vision is less about driving electric cars and switching to a plant-based diet and more about a hostile takeover of the world’s resources.
The Calls for A Climate Lockdown Begin
With Mazzucato’s questionable climate science already addressed it’s time to move on to investigating her criticisms of society as we know it. But first we need to understand where this message is coming from. Mazzucato’s story comes to us from Project Syndicate, a news organization which distributes “high-quality commentaries to a global audience.” The publishing of these commentaries is made possible by funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Mastercard Foundation, and the Google Digital News Initiative among others. Let’s just say her view doesn’t exactly represent the disenfranchised or any grassroots movement.
Mazzucato’s opinion piece is more of a threat than anything else. She believes we are living through a series of crises during the “disease of the Anthropocene,” an anti-human echo from her environmental forefathers, that center around the climate, economic and social inequality, and public health. Neither government nor the private sector are capable of addressing such catastrophic situations in her estimation so we must undergo a “green economic transformation” or else be locked down like prisoners until the problem is resolved.
What she has to say on what would happen during a climate lockdown itself is actually quite brief:
Under a “climate lockdown,” governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling. To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently.
The brevity of this proclamation is curious as these propositions for reducing carbon emissions and “going green” are nothing new. Environmentalists have been advocating for these changes for decades now, though notably without the need for literally confining people to their homes. The bulk of the article is dedicated to the overhaul of the economy, revealing her true message to the masses.
The Future In Her Eyes
This transformation entails building whatever an “inclusive, sustainable” economy is and requires that government assistance to the private sector be reigned in. Not by stopping the public-private revolving door, upholding justice through the legal system, enabling a free market, or simply ending taxpayer bailouts, but continuing all of these practices so long as the government attaches strict conditions to how that money is used. Governments should also add new taxes on raw materials and legislate “job guarantees” into existence somehow. Under this system the political and economical elite still siphon off money from the lower classes, but by dictating that “firms need to listen to trade unions and workers’ collectives, community groups, consumer advocates, and others” this fascist system will solve the problem of inclusivity.
The state must also continue to steer the course of finance through investments. When the financial crisis hit in 2008 it wasn’t the cozy relationship between Washington and Wall Street that kept money circulating through the financial sector rather than entering the larger economy, but “bad investments” on the government’s part. Bad because they didn’t invest long term in eco-friendly energy like wind power or support green infrastructure projects according to her. She gives no explanation as to how these investments would allow money to flow into Main Street.
When looking for positive examples of state investments she cites New Zealand’s “Wellbeing Budget” and the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB). The Wellbeing Budget is the name given to the New Zealand federal government’s fiscal budget for the year 2019 and represented a shift away from making monetary decisions based on GDP and towards spending based on “wellbeing”. It made for an excellent public relations move which portrayed a government concerned about the wellness of its people but in reality transferred many budgetary decisions to experts and bureaucrats rather than elected officials, a hallmark of a technocratic society. New Zealand has enacted one of the world’s harshest lockdowns in the name of the coronavirus which may be why it gets a nod here.
The SNIB is set to launch by the end of 2020 and while she doesn’t mention it in her article, Mazzacuto has played a key role in developing this institution. This state-owned institution will offer grants, soft loans, credit guarantees and co-investments to companies in pursuit of certain missions. These missions are still being finalized but aim to mimic the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals which center around climate change, shifting demographics, and economic inclusion. Like New Zealand’s Wellbeing Budget, the SNIB framework ultimately takes power out of the hands of the public and into the hands of a technocratic elite. The figures who will run the SNIB and direct it’s funds will be unelected and unaccountable to the public but will use taxpayer funds to steer the direction of the economy nonetheless.
These examples are the blueprints all nations should be using according to Mazzucato. In a follow-up interview with the Irish Times, she makes it unambiguously clear that central economic planning is the proper role of government:
This crisis, and the recovery we need, give us an opportunity to understand and explore how to do capitalism differently. This requires a rethink of what governments are for: rather than simply fixing market failures when they arise, they should move towards actively shaping and creating markets to take on society’s most pressing challenges… This will secure the direction of travel we want – green, sustainable, and equitable.
Given her connections to some of the world’s most powerful people it is highly unlikely that “we” refers to the common man. It seems clear that she is speaking on the behalf of the elite behind the scenes.
Mazzucato’s final claim, dropped out of nowhere and without citation or follow-up, is that an economy centered around renewable energy is the antidote to our otherwise disastrous future. She then menacingly reminds the reader that “radical change is inevitable,” so either go along with their plan, or face climate lockdowns while they do it anyway.
How Have Lockdowns Impacted The Climate So Far?
With much of the world under house arrest, carbon dioxide emissions declined in the first half of 2020 as one would expect. Correspondingly, air pollution dropped off in many industrialized areas. This was touted as a victory for the climate, especially when photos of the Himalayas, free of their usual smog in India, went viral. This was a relatively short-lived victory however as numbers began rising again in the second half of the year.
While air pollution dropped more plastic waste has ended up in our oceans than ever before. Disposable face masks have been worn, and disposed of, in the billions this year and are contributing to environmental degradation, littering in public places, and increasing the levels of microplastics in the oceans. Takeout dining has been a staple for many during lockdown which has meant single-use plastics have become more prevalent and sadly ended up in in the sea in increased numbers as well.
More studies and information will surely come out in the months and years ahead but as of now this is the picture we have of the climate in a locked down world and it isn’t very convincing that by continuing these practices the world will be free of man’s impact on it. The desire for clear skies, clean air, and habitable oceans are all noble and improvements can and will be made but the idea that in order to achieve these things we need society reshaped at the hands of a shadowy elite is still insane and speaks to a larger agenda at play.
The Big Picture
When looking into the environmental impact of lockdowns there is a chilling refrain in the mainstream media. The initial decrease in emissions is cheered on but the rebound is seen as a sign that while the current lockdowns are doing some good it just isn’t enough (see here, here, here, here, here, and here to see that message repeated).
What is needed according to these writers and groups is a reengineering of society. This Great Reset will come at the expense of the many, to the benefit of the few. In the final installment of this series we will see how climate lockdowns and the reconfiguration of society fits perfectly into the big picture that the elite have in mind.
Bezos set to shower Greens with $billions
By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D. | CFACT | December 22nd, 2020
“We’re in the Money” was a popular tune that caught the spirit of the last century’s Roaring Twenties. Now, one hundred years later, environmental groups can sing the same song — thanks to Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world.
Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, has announced that he is giving $793 million to 16 environmental groups to fight climate change and undertake other activities to save the planet. The largess comes from Bezos’s Earth Fund and is, he says, “just the beginning of my $10 billion commitment to fund scientists, activists, NGOs, and others.”
More than half of the donations are going to established, already well-funded green groups, with $100 million grants each going to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Nature Conservancy (TNC), the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Groups purporting to be battling climate change aren’t the only ones getting the loot. Bezos is also turning his attention to “environmental justice,” and groups cashing in include the lesser-known Dream Corps’ Green for All, the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender and Justice, and the Solutions Project.
With natural gas having displaced coal as America’s leading source of electricity, environmentalists now plan to join hands with the incoming Biden administration to go after the fossil fuel, citing its alleged effect on the climate. And Bezos’s money will be used in a variety of projects to demonize natural gas. Manhattan-based EDF, whose annual budget is a stately $230 million, will pocket an additional $100 million from Bezos over the next three years. Most of that money will fund a satellite EDF plans to have put in orbit to monitor methane emissions.
“Thanks to this and other funding, we will cut methane pollution from the oil and gas industry by 45 percent by 2025, which will be the same 20-year benefit of closing a third of the world’s power plants,” longtime EDF head Fred Krupp assured the Washington Post (Nov.17). “Solving the climate crisis involves investments in a wide segment of solutions,” Krupp, whose organization would be a recipient of such investments, went on. “The obstacle isn’t finding solutions; it is securing the funding to scale solutions quickly. Our hope is that this gift encourages other philanthropists to support climate solutions on the scale needed.”
Washington, D.C.-based WWI is also getting into the satellite business. It plans to use its $100 million from Bezos to develop a satellite-powered land-use and carbon-emissions monitoring system that will focus on emissions’ impact on forests, grasslands, wetlands, and agriculture. WWI also wants to use some of the money to convert 450,000 school buses to all-electric power systems by 2030.
WWF, whose U.S. affiliate has an annual budget of about $300 million and whose global budget comes to $900 million a year, wants to use the Bezos cash to—raise more money. It plans to leverage its $100 million grant from Bezos to extract another $850 million from its “global partners,” including investors, foundations, and governments.
The Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute, which will have to make do with a paltry $10 million, will use the money for a project to decarbonize buildings, with the goal of stopping the burning of natural gas in heaters, stoves, and boilers.
Other beneficiaries of Bezos’s Earth Fund include, according to the Post, the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, $43 million; ClimateWorks Foundation, $50 million; Eden Reforestation Projects, $5 million; Energy Foundation, $30 million; the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, $43 million; NDN Collective, $12 million; Salk Institute for Biological Studies, $30 million; the Solutions Project, $43 million; and the Union of Concerned Scientists, $15 million.
“We’ve Only Just Begun”
And remember: This is just the first tranche of Bezos’s donations to the greens. He has another $9.2 billion to pass out. With his fabulous wealth, Bezos has far eclipsed earlier celebrity benefactors of environmental causes such as CNN founder Ted Turner – once lovingly referred to by environmentalists as “Daddy Greenbucks” – and the late actor Paul Newman.
Many of the groups receiving Bezos’s money are little more than fronts for powerful corporate interests intent on profiting from the transformation from fossil-fuel-based energy to renewable energy. The Biden administration will use the climate to justify regulations on any activity deemed out of step with green orthodoxy. Flush with Bezos’s cash, environmental activists will make common cause with the Biden White House by launching lawsuits and disseminating propaganda to their hearts’ content.
Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments. Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Busines Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country. He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh. He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.
There Are Liars, Damn Liars And The United Nations
By Dr. John Happs | PA Pundits | December 16, 2020
When it comes to telling whoppers about climate change, weather extremes and any number of climate-related catastrophes, the United Nations has no equal. Their latest (2020) report proves this beyond any doubt.
Recently released is the UN’s report, dramatically titled: Human Cost of Disasters: An Overview of the Last 20 Years (2000-2019). This report stems from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and its Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).
The report Foreword tells us that:
“This report focuses primarily on the staggering rise in climate-related disasters over the last twenty years.”
This is followed by the not unexpected attack on developed nations:
“But the odds continue to be stacked against them in particular by industrial nations that are failing miserably on reducing greenhouse gas emissions to levels commensurate with the desired goal of keeping global warming at 1.5 ̊C as set out in the Paris Agreement.”
The hyperbole continued:
“It is baffling that we willingly and knowingly continue to sow the seeds of our own destruction, despite the science and evidence that we are turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people.”
Any reader of this report will immediately see this is not a dispassionate, empirically-based document prepared by scientists who have carefully scrutinized the available literature on natural disasters. Rather it is the product of activists and alarmists, using hyperbole and silly phrases such as: “staggering rise in climate-related disasters”; “failing miserably on reducing greenhouse gas emissions” and “turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell.”
Apparently, the UN’s version of “the science and evidence” is not the same as the version embraced by the wider and more credible scientific community.
As always, the UN’s extreme alarmism is accompanied by the anticipated “tipping point” and “Last Chance” to avoid those “disastrous consequences” that simply never happen.
Here is a typical example:
“If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us.”
Anyone reading this UN report would do well to compare it with NOAA’s Dr. David Legates’s summary of the many failed predictions from climate alarmists.
In yet another tedious attempt to link carbon dioxide emissions with imaginary global warming and any natural disaster, we are told:
“This is clear evidence that in a world where the global average temperature in 2019 was 1.1oC above the pre-industrial period, the impacts are being felt in the increased frequency of extreme weather events including heatwaves, droughts, flooding, winter storms, hurricanes and wildfires.”
This should be enough for any sensible person to dismiss the report as more UN propaganda from officials who rely on the likelihood that few politicians will check their claims against actual data. The same UN officials know that the media, many politicians and Green NGO’s will continue to promote this alarmist nonsense.
The UN seriously expects everyone to believe that:
- We actually know what the pre-industrial global temperature was;
- We were able to measure the pre-industrial global temperature to an accuracy of 0.1oC;
- We have accurate records of global natural disasters over the last several centuries;
- Everyone will embrace the climate alarm nonsense that has been served up by the UN since 1988.
Incredibly, the UN produced a graph in 2020 that showed how climate-related disasters have actually declined:
Yet the UN’s latest report tells us there has been a “staggering rise in climate-related disasters.”
Director of the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) Dr. Benny Peiser has observed how:
“The UNDRR’s own data shows that climate-related disasters have actually been declining for 20 years.”
He added:
“The United Nations must immediately withdraw this report and apologize for misleading the public.”
I doubt there is much chance of that happening.
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. is a well-respected scientist and recognised expert on natural disasters. He has criticised the UN report, saying that its data on disasters from the last century are flawed and therefore unreliable.
Pielke, along with other reputable scientists, has acknowledged that there has been an increase in financial loss due to natural disasters but this is not attributable to any increase in extreme weather events. Common sense (and insurance companies) should tell us we are seeing an increase in population with more people having more wealth and more assets to lose.
Additionally, financial losses due to natural disasters will inevitably increase as more people with more wealth and assets choose to live in accident-prone areas such as bushland, floodplains, earthquake-prone areas, eroding and subsiding coastlines.
Despite this increase in financial loss, Dr. Bjorn Lomborg points out:
“When you adjust damage costs for size of economy, which even the UN Sustainable Development Goals insists you should, the relative cost of disasters is declining, not increasing.”
We have reliable data from the last 30 years showing how the relative cost of disasters has declined:
Additionally, the UN’s own data show the number of deaths from natural disasters has almost halved in the last 20 years, compared to the number of deaths between 1980 and 1999:
In fact the global population has increased by more than 70% since 1980 whilst the death risk has fallen by around 60%.
Returning to the UN report’s dramatic and factually incorrect statement:
“This is clear evidence that in a world where the global average temperature in 2019 was 1.1oC above the pre-industrial period, the impacts are being felt in the increased frequency of extreme weather events including heatwaves, droughts, flooding, winter storms, hurricanes and wildfires.”
This is sheer nonsense. So what do the real data show?
During recent decades, heatwaves in the US remain far less frequent and severe than was the case during the 1930s.
Here is the Annual Heat Wave Index for the USA (1895 – 2015)
Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Cold-related mortality remains a more significant and persistent problem, both in the UK and internationally. There are 20 times as many cold-related deaths as heat-related deaths worldwide, and the UK has had 35,000 cold-related deaths a year on average over the past 5 years.7
Gasparrini et al. (2015) in a study into Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperatures concluded:
“Most of the temperature-related mortality burden was attributable to the contribution of cold.”
Many of those deaths are attributable to people who have not been able to afford the rising costs of electricity or have no access to inexpensive, reliable electricity in their countries.
The UN report, with its obsession over imaginary dramatic global warming, ignores temperature data from satellites and radio-sondes. The UN also ignores reliable surface temperature data and paleo-data that contradict the report’s alarmism.
For instance, Rydval et al. (2017) constructed an 800 year paleo-temperature record for Scotland, showing no unusual recent warming:
https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/10093
Studies of past global temperature estimates show there is no evidence for any change in the globally-averaged near-surface temperature over the last 100 years.
There are over 90 peer-reviewed, published papers that dispute any claims of unprecedented global-scale modern warming.
In summary, there has been no detectable long-term increase in heat waves in the US or anywhere else in the world. Record high temperatures were recorded long before the widespread use of hydrocarbon fuels.
The UN report claims that we are seeing an increased frequency of droughts. This claim is also without any empirical foundation.
The Palmer Drought Index for the US has data going back over 100 years:
Apart from the 1930’s “Dust Bowl” years, there is no long-term trend in either dryness or wetness in the US and this remains true globally.
Cook et al. (2015) found that Mega-droughts during the past 2,000 years were worse and lasted longer than current droughts and data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show no trend in the proportion of the globe in drought since 1950:
The UN report claims that we are seeing an increased frequency of flooding. This claim is also without foundation.
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. observed:
“The good news is U.S. flood damage is sharply down over 70 years. Remember, disasters can happen any time…. But it is also good to understand long-term trends based on data, not hype.”
The UN’s current report contradicts the IPCC’s earlier report in which Hartmann et al. (2013) concluded:
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that globally there is no clear and widespread evidence of changes in flood magnitude or frequency in observed flood records.”
Hartmann et al. (2013) added:
“The results of this study, for North America and Europe, provide a firmer foundation and support the conclusion of the IPCC that compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking.”
Hirsch and Ryberg (2012) noted that, in none of the four regions defined in their study, was there strong statistical evidence for flood magnitudes increasing with increasing carbon dioxide levels.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02626667.2011.621895 The UN report said we are seeing an increased frequency of hurricanes. This claim is also without foundation.
Drs. Loehle and Staehling (2020) noted:
“We analysed the historical record of Atlantic basin and US landfalling hurricanes, as well as US continental accumulated cyclone energy to evaluate issues related to trend detection.”
They reported:
“Hurricane and major hurricane landfall counts exhibited no significant overall trend over 167 years of available data, nor did accumulated cyclone energy over the continental USA over 119 years of available data.”
https://www.thegwpf.com/no-trend-in-hurricane-activity-in-167-years-new-empirical-study-shows/
This is in agreement with findings from Drs. Pielke, Maue and Weinkle who reported:
“The analysis does not indicate significant long-period global or individual basin trends in the frequency or intensity of landfalling TC’s of minor or major hurricane strength. The evidence in this study provides strong support for the conclusion that increasing damage around the world during the past several decades can be explained entirely by increasing wealth in locations prone to TC landfalls, which adds confidence to the fidelity of economic normalization analyses.”
https://notrickszone.com/2020/01/10/distinguished-professor-time-to-retire-the-notion-hurricanes-are-slowing-down-much-less-attribution-claims/
Dr. Judith Curry points out that:
“Ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, any hurricane causing catastrophic damage has been seized upon by climate alarmists as evidence of the horrors of global warming.
As if the record-holding hurricanes from the 1920’s through the 1950’s never happened.”
She added:
“I used to be concerned about ‘consensus enforcement’ on the topic of climate change. Now I am concerned about ‘alarmism enforcement.”
The UN report says we are seeing an increased frequency of wildfires. This is also without foundation.
Long-term satellite monitoring provides reliable data on global wildfires and, in contrast to UN alarmism, NASA has shown that between 2003 and 2019 global wildfires have declined by around 25%.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/16/irrefutable-nasa-data-global-wildfire-down-by-25-percent/
NASA has produced maps with fire locations and extent. These are based on observations from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) carried on the Terra satellite.
The National Interagency Fire Centre (NIFC) has provided data that support MODIS observations:
The UN promotes alarmist political/ideological nonsense about natural disasters and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The UN’s obsession with “reducing greenhouse gas emissions” begs the question:
Why do we need to reduce emissions when current levels are amongst the lowest in 500 million years and all life on the planet would benefit from more atmospheric carbon dioxide?
Another question might be:
How do we know when the UN is telling lies?
Answer: Usually when they release a report about climate change.
Dr. John Happs M.Sc.1st Class; D.Phil. John has an academic background in the geosciences with special interests in climate, and paleoclimate. He has been a science educator at several universities in Australia and overseas and was President of the Western Australian Skeptics for 25 years.
The five key events in the fake pandemic
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | December 22, 2020
This article is a summary. I’ve written extensively on each of the five key events.
ONE: The false claim that a new virus was discovered and isolated.
No true isolation has been performed. The so-called genetic sequencing of the virus was actually a concoction, a cobbling together of pieces of data referencing segments of RNA. These segments were PRESUMED to be parts of the new virus—but researchers didn’t have the virus, so their presumptions amounted to fraud.
TWO: The erecting of a diagnostic test (PCR) for the virus they didn’t have. Obviously, no such test has meaning. It is built on the same sorts of absurd assumptions that led to the fictional discovery of the virus. However, strategically speaking, the test has produced millions of “positive results,” which are taken to mean “infected by the virus.” On this foundation of sand, the lockdowns were declared.
THREE: The Chinese lockdown of 50 million citizens, for no medical reason. This unprecedented event provided the model for other governments, and for the CDC and the World Health Organization. Now it was “acceptable” to imprison the global population and wreak economic devastation across the planet.
FOUR: The absurd computer prediction of 500,000 deaths in the UK and two million in the US, made by historically failed modeler, Neil Ferguson. His institute at the Imperial College of London is bankrolled by Bill Gates. Ferguson’s predictions were used to convince Trump and Boris Johnson that states of emergency and lockdowns were necessary.
FIVE: The forced premature deaths of millions of elderly people across the world—which were falsely called “COVID-19 deaths.”
These people were and are suffering from multiple long-term health conditions, made far worse by decades of medical treatment with toxic drugs. Terrified by a COVID diagnosis, then isolated from family and friends, they give up and die.
There are other important events, to be sure, but these are the key five.
The underlying fact that needs to be understood: what is called COVID-19 is not one condition. It is a variety of illnesses and effects stemming from different traditional causes RE-PACKAGED under the label, “COVID.”
Where authentic new conditions and causes may be involved, independent investigators need to look closely at such clusters of people, where they live. For example, the investigators should find out whether toxic vaccine campaigns were initiated in a community or region prior to declaration of the “COVID outbreak.”
TOPIC ARCHIVES:
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/virus/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/testing/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/pcr/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/lockdown/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/cases/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/neil-ferguson/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/old-people/
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/tag/nursing-homes/
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Pierre Omidyar: A Dangerous Billionaire-Backer of the “Resistance”
By Daniel Haiphong | American Herald Tribune | November 27, 2018
One of the most disturbing trends in the era of Trump has been the flock of billionaires that have come rushing into the Democratic Party to pose as leaders of an opposition movement to the “fascist” predations of the real estate mogul. These billionaires, which include capitalists such as George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, and Tom Steyer are the architects of a “Big Tent” strategy first outlined by Black Agenda Report Editor Glen Ford. This strategy was devised by the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign of 2016. The strategy has two components. The first component is the promotion of “diversity” to distract from the fact that the Democratic Party can no longer appeal to the interests of the poor or working-class, especially Black people who have been held in electoral captivity for a generation. Second, “Big Tent” Democrats actively seek an alliance of Wall Street, the military and intelligence apparatus, and Republicans to provide the financial and political strength behind the strategy.
The “Big Tent” strategy is called the “Resistance.” One of the chief billionaire-backers of the “Resistance” is Pierre Omidyar. Omidyar is the founder of the eBay corporation. His surplus profits have been used over the years to exert “soft power” influence over the U.S. state. … continue
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