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Major Covid Vaccine Glitch Emerges: Most Europeans, Including Hospital Staff, Refuse To Take It

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | December 27, 2020

All is not going according to plan in the biggest global rollout of what is arguably the most important vaccine in a century, and it is not just growing US mistrust in the covid injection effort that was rolled out in record time: an unexpected spike in allergic reactions to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (and now, Moderna too) may prove catastrophic to widespread acceptance unless scientists can figure out what is causing it after the FDA’s rushed approval, and is also why as we reported yesterday, scientists are scrambling to identify the potential culprit causing the allergic reactions.

Making matters worse, Europe rolled out a huge COVID-19 vaccination drive on Sunday to try to rein in the coronavirus pandemic but even more Europeans than American are sceptical about the speed at which the vaccines have been tested and approved and reluctant to have the shot.

While the European Union has secured contracts [with] drugmakers including Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, for a total of more than two billion doses and has set a goal for all adults to be inoculated next year, this is looking increasingly like a pipe dream: according to recent surveys, the local population has expressed “high levels of hesitancy” towards inoculation in countries from France to Poland, with many used to vaccines taking decades to develop, not just months.

“I don’t think there’s a vaccine in history that has been tested so quickly,” Ireneusz Sikorski, 41, said as he stepped out of a church in central Warsaw with his two children.

“I am not saying vaccination shouldn’t be taking place. But I am not going to test an unverified vaccine on my children, or on myself.”

Smart: why take the risk of getting vaccinated when others will do it, resulting in the same outcome.

Surveys in Poland, where distrust in public institutions runs deep, show that fewer than 40% of people planning to get vaccinated. Worse, according to Reuters on Sunday, only half the medical staff in a Warsaw hospital where the country’s first shot was administered had signed up. And if the doctors don’t trust the vaccine, one can be certain that the broader population will refuse to take it.

The situation is similar in Spain, one of Europe’s hardest-hit countries, where 28-year-old singer and music composer German summarizes the skepticism of a broad range of the population, and plans to wait for now.

“No one close to me has had it (COVID-19). I’m obviously not saying it doesn’t exist because lots of people have died of it, but for now I wouldn’t have it (the vaccine).”

A Christian Orthodox bishop in Bulgaria, where 45% of people have said they would not get a shot and 40% plan to wait to see if any negative side effects appear – meaning only 15% of the population will actually volunteer for a vaccine in the near future – is in the tiny minority when it comes to taking the vaccine.

“Myself, I am vaccinated against everything I can be,” Bishop Tihon told reporters after getting his shot, standing alongside the health minister in Sofia. He spoke about anxiety over polio before vaccination became available in the 1950s and 1960s.

To be sure, the establishment is pounding the table on why the vaccines are safe despite the record short time in development (even though not even the “scientists” can explain what is behind the spike in vaccine allergic reactions), and claiming that the new technology behind the mRNA vaccine is all one needs to know… when it is precisely this new technology that is sparking the skepticism.

“We’ll look back on the advances made in 2020 and say: ‘That was a moment when science really did make a leap forward’,” said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, which is backed by the Wellcome Trust. Oxford also received $750MM from Bill Gates in June in the billionaire’s quest to vaccinate the world against Covid.

Only problem: nobody in Europe seems to care about these “scientific” justifications. Independent pollster Alpha Research said its recent survey suggested that fewer than one in five Bulgarians from the first groups to be offered the vaccine – frontline medics, pharmacists, teachers and nursing home staff – planned to volunteer to get a shot.

An IPSOS survey of 15 countries published on Nov. 5 showed then that 54% of French would have a COVID vaccine if one were available. The figure was 64% in Italy and Spain, 79% in Britain and 87% in China.

Since then things have gone far worse, and a more recent IFOP poll  showed that only 41% people in France would take the shot. This means that a vast majority will not.

Not even in Sweden, where public trust in authorities is absurdly and inexplicably high, is there a universal trust in the vaccine, with at least one in three saying they won’t get the shot: “If someone gave me 10 million euro, I wouldn’t take it,” Lisa Renberg, 32, told Reuters on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, in a paradoxical attempt to force more to sign up – not realizing that it will only have the precisely opposite effect – Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki urged Poles on Sunday to sign up for vaccination, saying the herd immunity effect depended on them. Critics have accused Warsaw’s “nationalist leaders” of being too accepting of anti-vaccination attitudes in the past in an effort to garner conservative support. Well… let’s check back on said attitude in 10 years and see if perhaps it was the right one.

For now, however, the more European governments pressure their populations to get immunized, the fewer the people who will actually sign up and the worse the vaccine rollout will be, that much we can be 100% sure of.

December 27, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | | 1 Comment

New frigates to project Canadian ‘power’ with cruise missiles

By Yves Engler · December 27, 2020

A recent report about the weapons on Canada’s new Navy frigates is frightening. Equally troubling is the lack of parliamentary opposition to expanding the federal government’s violent “maritime power projection” capacities.

Naval News recently reported on the likely arsenal of Canada’s new surface combatant vessels, which are expected to cost over $70 billion ($213-219 billion over their lifecycle). The largest single taxpayer expense in Canadian history,the 15 vessels “will be fitted with a wide range of weapons, both offensive and defensive, in a mix never seen before in any surface combatant.”

The 7,800 tonne vessels have space for a helicopter and remotely piloted systems. The frigates have electronic warfare capabilities, torpedo tubes and various high-powered guns. It will have a Naval Strike Missile harpoon that can launch missiles 185 kilometers. Most controversially, the surface combatants look set to be equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of striking land targets up to 1,700 kilometres away. US-based Raytheon has only ever exported these Tomahawk missiles to the UK and if the Royal Canadian Navy acquires them it would be the only navy besides the US to deploy the missiles on surface vessels.

“Canada’s New Frigate Will Be Brimming With Missiles,” is how The Drive recently described the surface combatant vessels. In the article War Zone reporter Joseph Trevithick concludes, “the ships now look set to offer Canada an entirely new form of maritime power projection.”

What has Canada’s “maritime power projection” looked like historically?

Over the past three years Canadian vessels have repeatedly been involved in belligerent “freedom of navigation” exercises through international waters that Beijing claims in the South China Sea, Strait of Taiwan and East China Sea. To “counter China’s” growing influence in Asia, Washington has sought to stoke longstanding territorial and maritime boundary disputes between China and the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and other nations. As part of efforts to rally regional opposition to China, the US Navy engages in regular “freedom of navigation” operations, which see warships travel through or near disputed waters.

A Canadian frigate has regularly patrolled the Black Sea, which borders Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Romania, Georgia and Ukraine. In July 2019 HMCS Toronto led a four ship Standing NATO Maritime Group exercise in the Black Sea. Soon after, it participated with two-dozen other ships in a NATO exercise that included training in maritime interdiction, air defence, amphibious warfare and anti-submarine warfare as part of sending “a strong message of deterrence to Russia.”

During the 2011 war on Libya Canadian vessels patrolled the Libyan coast. Two rotations of Canadian warships enforced a naval blockade of Libya for six months with about 250 soldiers aboard each vessel. On May 19, 2011, HMCS Charlottetown joined an operation that destroyed eight Libyan naval vessels. After the hostilities the head of Canada’s navy, Paul Maddison, told Ottawa defence contractors that HMCS Charlottetown “played a key role in keeping the Port of Misrata open as a critical enabler of the anti-Gaddafi forces.”

A month before the commencement of the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, Canada sent a command and control destroyer to the Persian Gulf to take charge of Taskforce 151 — the joint allied naval command. Opinion sought by the Liberal government concluded that taking command of Taskforce 151 could make Canada legally at war with Iraq. In 1998 HMCS Toronto was deployed to support US airstrikes and through the 1990s Canadian warships were part of US carrier battle groups enforcing brutal sanctions on Iraq. During the first Iraq war Canada dispatched destroyers HMCS Terra Nova and Athabaskan and supply vessel Protecteur to the Persian Gulf before a UN resolution was passed.

Historically the Canadian Navy’s influence has been greatest nearer to home. In a chapter of the 2000 book Canadian Gunboat Diplomacy titled “Maple Leaf Over the Caribbean: Gunboat Diplomacy Canadian Style” military historian Sean Maloney writes: “Since 1960, Canada has used its military forces at least 26 times in the Caribbean to support Canadian foreign policy. In addition, Canada planned three additional operations, including two unilateral interventions into Caribbean states.”

At the request of Grenada’s government Ottawa deployed a vessel to the tiny country during its 1974 independence celebration. In Revolution and Intervention in Grenada Kai Schoenhals and Richard Melanson write, “the United Kingdom and Canada also sent three armed vessels to St. George’s to shore up the [Eric] Gairy government”, which faced significant pressure from the left.

When 23,000 US troops invaded the Dominican Republic in April 1965 a Canadian warship was sent to Santo Domingo, noted Defence Minister Paul Theodore Hellyer, “to stand by in case it is required.” Two Canadian gunboats were deployed to Barbados’ independence celebration the next year in a bizarre diplomatic maneuver designed to demonstrate Canada’s military prowess. Maloney writes, “we can only speculate at who the ‘signal’ was directed towards, but given the fact that tensions were running high in the Caribbean over the Dominican Republic Affair [US invasion], it is likely that the targets were any outside force, probably Cuban, which might be tempted to interfere with Barbadian independence.” Of course, Canadian naval vessels were considered no threat to Barbadian independence.

Immediately after US forces invaded Korea in 1950, Ottawa sent three vessels to the region. Ultimately eight RCN destroyers completed 21 tours in Korea between 1950 and 1955.

Canadian ships transported troops and bombed the enemy ashore. They hurled 130,000 rounds at Korean targets. According to a Canadian War Museum exhibit, “during the war, Canadians became especially good at ‘train busting.’ This meant running in close to shore, usually at night, and risking damage from Chinese and North Korean artillery in order to destroy trains or tunnels on Korea’s coastal railway. Of the 28 trains destroyed by United Nations warships in Korea, Canadian vessels claimed eight.” Canadian Naval Operations in Korean Waters 1950-1955 details a slew of RCN attacks that would have likely killed civilians.

Canadian warships were also dispatched to force Costa Rica to negotiate with the Royal Bank in 1921, to protect British interests during the Mexican Revolution and to back a dictator massacring peasants in El Salvador in 1932.

Where do the political parties stand on new frigates “brimming with missiles”? The Stephen Harper Conservatives instigated the massive naval outlay and the Liberals have happily maintained course. The NDP has supported the initiative and the Bloc pressed for more shipyard work in Québec. The Greens have stayed silent.

Surely there must be at least one Member of Parliament who doesn’t think it’s a good idea to spend $200 billion to strengthen the federal government’s bullying naval capacities in support of the US Empire and Canadian corporations abroad.

December 27, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Negative Study of “Trump Miracle Drug” Actually Shows It Works

(Blog Report Below)

By Peter R. Breggin, MD and Ginger Ross Breggin | April 22, 2020

Today’s HuffPost happily proclaimed that once more President Trump had been proven by science to be wrong, this time about his support for the use of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment the coronavirus that is afflicting the world. Here is the HuffPost Morning Mail as it appeared in my inbox this morning:

HuffPost – TOP STORIES – Wednesday, April 22

NO BENEFIT AND MORE DEATHS FROM TRUMP MIRACLE DRUG 

A malaria drug repeatedly touted by President Donald Trump for treating the coronavirus showed no benefit in a large analysis of its use in U.S. veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers reported. With 368 patients, the study is the largest look so far of hydroxychloroquine with or without the antibiotic azithromycin. [AP]

The HuffPost mailing and AP article they published are a clear demonstration that some progressives would rather see patients die than acknowledge that the President might be right about something. But more serious issues about the misuse of science are involved.

I have been evaluating drug studies in depth since the early 1990s when a federal judge in Indiana confirmed my appointment as the single medical expert to develop the scientific basis for all the more than 150 combined product liability suits against Eli Lilly & Co for its allegedly fraudulent testing and development of Prozac. The suits claimed that Prozac was causing violence, suicide and mayhem. As we demonstrated in our book, Talking Back to Prozac, the research used by Eli Lilly to get FDA approval was junk science; but it was pure gold compared to the research that claims to debunk Trump’s support of hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID–19.

The study can be found here, along with often cogent criticism of it at the end.

My reanalysis of the skewed data used for the study raises a strong possibility that hydroxychloroquine by itself and in combination with azithromycin (the Z-pack) was saving lives. Yes, the drugs could have been saving lives in this study and are probably continuing to do so around the world.

How is it possible that a study which claims to show that a drug which supposedly caused an excessive death rate might instead have proven that the drug was saving lives? Because the patients getting the treatment with hydroxychloroquine were much more ill—much nearer to death and much more likely to die—than the patients who did not receive the drug.

Federal government approval for hydroxychloroquine was only “authorized” for “emergency use.” In line with this, President Trump has repeatedly said, in effect, “If people are going to die anyway, why not try it?” That is also what the FDA essentially approved it for—people in an “emergency” condition. Although the guideline does not define emergency use, it would certainly rule out using it routinely and probably not at all for patients who were not deathly ill.

The study itself recognizes this flaw far into their discussion (p. 12):

Baseline demographic and comorbidity characteristics were comparable across the three treatment groups. However, hydroxychloroquine, with or without azithromycin, was more likely to be prescribed to patients with more severe disease, as assessed by baseline ventilatory status and metabolic and hematologic parameters. Thus, as expected, increased mortality was observed in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine, both with and without azithromycin. (bold added, p. 12)

It was expected that more patients would die while taking the drugs because they were being given to much sicker patients! The authors claim to have found a statistical way to overcome this fatal flaw, but there is no way to do so. Control groups would be needed in which patients who had equally bad prognoses were divided into medication treatment and non-medication treatment groups.

The study had no control groups at all.

In addition, many patients were put on the medications after attempting to treat them without the drugs. Of course, the patients on medication had a higher mortality rate—many were patients who were already getting worse on the non-drug treatments. Furthermore, the patients doing badly on no-drug treatment do not show up as no-drug failures in the study.

Furthermore, there is strong evidence that the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin was saving lives. There was “no significant difference“ in the death rates from any cause for the patients on the drug combination compared to the patients on no drugs (p. 11). In other words, although the patients taking the drug combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin were probably the sickest of the sick, there was no significant increase in deaths among them compared to the much less sick patients who received no drug treatment. This suggests that the drug combination had a lifesaving impact.

My initial analysis indicates that this study probably contains significance evidence for a reduction in fatalities on the medications; but it would take a complete re-evaluation starting with the draw data to be sure.

Beyond what I have said here, this article has seemingly countless additional flaws; but there is no need to go any further that what I have observed.

When I went to the link for the article, I was startled to read the following declaration by the journal to which it had apparently been submitted:

This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer review… It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

This article has not been peer reviewed and not officially published as yet. In fact, if there is an honest peer review, this article will be rejected for publication.

I want to conclude with an historical anecdote about Huff Post. I have nostalgia for the “newspaper” that was once called Huffington Post. Before it was created, founder Arianna Huffington invited me to join the new blogsite that she was creating and of course I happily agreed. Arianna and her conservative assistant, Andrew Breitbart, had been calling me and my wife Ginger on occasion for advice on Arianna’s columns. I viewed Arianna as an independent thinker, and I was proud to be included as a founding blogger on what would become her newspaper.

I did write several blogs for Huffington Post, but as the blogsite morphed into a progressive political screed, I found the increasing censorship intolerable. The editors did not like my criticism of psychiatric drugs, psychiatry, or drug companies. A few times, Arianna intervened on behalf of my freedom of speech; but she eventually sold her newspaper. The editors then invited a state Commissioner of Mental Health, an establishment enforcer, to supervise my blogs and I chose not to try to write for them any longer.

We have now reached the point that science is literally being created to meet the needs of progressive media and politics. That is very dangerous and could lead to science being viewed with the same disrespect and even disdain as the progressive media is increasingly viewed.

December 27, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Pony Problem: Why The Hunter Biden Scandal Is No Dead Horse

By Jonathan Turley | December 23, 2020

President-elect Joe Biden has a pony problem. During the primary, Joe Biden bizarrely responded to a woman who asked why voters should believe that he could win a national election by saying “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.” That encounter came to mind when Biden this week mocked Fox reporter Peter Doocy, who violated the virtual news blackout on the Hunter Biden story by asking about the scandal. Biden immediately walked off stage and then stopped and said “Yes, yes, yes. God love you, man — you’re a one-horse pony, I tell you.”

Like many kids this Christmas, many voters are still angling for a pony. Biden has spent months mocking the Hunter Biden story – and anyone asking about it. When CBS News reporter Bo Erickson asked Biden about his son’s scandal, Bo Erickson drew a similar rebuke from Biden. He simply asked ‘Mr. Biden, what is your response to the New York Post story about your son, sir?’ Biden’s response was again a personal attack: “I know you’d ask it. I have no response, it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask.” Biden also blew up at a question that referred by the scandal by a NBC reporter and at a Fox reporter who asked about his son.

It is just not working. The media openly worked to bury the Hunter Biden scandal before the election, but the ponies keep finding their way back. The problem is when you have one reporter like Doocy who refuses to be corralled and insists on an answer to a serious question.

The question yesterday was a good one. Doocy yelled out “Mr. President-elect, do you still think that the stories from the fall about your son Hunter were Russian disinformation and a smear campaign like you said?” Biden’s response of “yes, yes, yes” seemed to continue a discredited claim (indeed, “disinformation”) put out by figures like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff who assured the pubic that the allegations against “this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin.” Some 50 former intelligence officials, including Obama’s CIA directors John Brennan and Leon Panetta, also insisted the laptop story was likely the work of Russian intelligence. Cable hosts and journalists laughed at the laptop story as fake news to justify the blackout on coverage before the election.

Then the pony showed up again. After the election, it was confirmed (as some of us discussed in columns before the election) that Hunter Biden is under federal investigation. The laptop appears to be genuine. The emails appear to be genuine. And Doocy continued to ask the obvious questions.

Biden is still hoping that he can continue to mock and the media will continue to do the rest. One reporter yesterday did raise the scandal but only to ask if Biden discussed it with Attorney General candidates (the campaign already said that Biden was going to allow the Justice Department to reach its own conclusions). There are other obvious questions, including whether a key business associate of the Bidens, Anthony Bobulinski, is lying. Either Tony Bobulinski or Joe Biden is lying. Bobulinski is repeatedly praised by Hunter Biden in the emails and identified as the person in control of transactions for “the family.” He has directly contradicted Joe Biden’s denial of any knowledge or involvement in his son’s dubious dealings.

There is a reason why Biden may not want to answer that question. If he calls Bobulinski a liar, Biden would be hit with a defamation lawsuit within days. He would then be forced to go under oath. Such depositions present their own dangers. Just ask Bill Clinton. So it is not a pesky pony but a sworn deposition that Biden may be trying to avoid.

The same problem exists on other questions. For example, not only were Joe and Jill Biden included as “office mates” with controversial Chinese investor (and associate of Hunter) Gongwen Dong, but emails also refer to unsecured loans going to the Biden family and shares going to “the big guy.”  The “big guy” appears to be Joe Biden. Moreover, Biden spent the election denying that his son did anything wrong and that he made no money from China. The question is when Biden learned of the federal investigation and whether he was aware of the dealings over multimillion dollar unsecured loans (as well as alleged gifts like a valuable diamond givento his son). Answering those questions falsely could trigger a congressional investigation and then more ponies would show up.

That is the problem with a bunker press strategy of denial and isolation. Like water, truth has a way of coming out. Clearly many in the media will continue to be in the bag for Biden. However, horses tend to gather where the water is found. First, there was one pony (Doocy). Then another showed up (Erickson). Before you know it, you have a herd and a threat of a stampede. Then it could be too late.

In the mocking comment to Doocy, Biden was clearly trying to say a “one-trick pony.” That trick however was once called “journalism” back in the day when reporters doggedly demanded answers, particularly on questions like influence peddling. So many of us still hoping for ponies – and even some answers – for Christmas.

December 27, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | 1 Comment

Rhodes Scholars Surge in Biden’s Potential Cabinet

By Matthew Ehret | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 27, 2020

With Trump’s ascension to the presidency in 2016, the Rhodes Scholars that had permeated the U.S. Deep State over many years found themselves choking on humble pie as they were removed from the drivers’ seat of world affairs for the first time in decades. The paradigm of post-nation state unipolarism that had been carefully built up over the post-WWII period had somehow been successfully challenged by an outsider as the republic was slowly returned to its patriotic traditions as a nation committed to non-interventionism, industrial progress and protectionism.

In the last few days, it has become clear that these Oxford-trained Rhodes Scholars have re-emerged as leading voices in Biden’s cabinet, and since a general understanding of this problem is so lacking today (leading many patriots to be duped into believing that the evil Chinese are at the heart of their woes), I think some preliminary words are needed as a matter of historical context.

Cecil Rhodes’ Vision Revisited

Every year since its creation in 1902, over 30 talented young American scholars have been rewarded each year with the privilege of an all-expenses paid brainwashing in the halls of Oxford University on the dime of the riches left to posterity by the deceased race patriot diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes before being re-deployed back to their home nations.

Rhodes’ early disciples included such luminaries as Lord Alfred Milner, Sir Halford Mackinder, George Parkin, W.T. Stead and the Canadian oligarch Vincent Massey (to name a few). His early backers included high level figures among the British intelligentsia including Prince Edward Albert and Lord Nathaniel Rothschild who saw that a new strategy was needed to halt the spread of American System policies around the world in the wake of Lincoln’s victory over the South during the Civil War.

At the time, anyone with half a brain knew that the unipolar days of the British Empire were coming to an end as a new multipolar system of win-win cooperation was emerging… and this was a prospect deemed intolerable by many devout social Darwinists among the British ruling class.

These early Rhodians interfaced closely with London’s Fabian Society throughout the 20th century and became the new disciplined elite that gradually infiltrated every branch of society. This new breed of imperial managers exerted its influence in much the same way earlier Jesuit operations had been formed and deployed across Europe beginning in the 16th century.

For anyone confused as to the purpose of this Rhodes Scholarship program, one need look no further than Rhodes’ 1877 Confessions of Faith and 7 wills which called for domination of the “inferior races” to Anglo-Saxon superiority, and the ultimate recapturing of America and the creation of a new Church of the British Empire:

“Let us form the same kind of society, a Church for the extension of the British Empire. A society which should have its members in every part of the British Empire working with one object and one idea we should have its members placed at our universities and our schools and should watch the English youth passing through their hands just one perhaps in every thousand would have the mind and feelings for such an object, he should be tried in every way, he should be tested whether he is endurant, possessed of eloquence, disregardful of the petty details of life, and if found to be such, then elected and bound by oath to serve for the rest of his life in his Country. He should then be supported if without means by the Society and sent to that part of the Empire where it was felt he was needed.’

In another will, Rhodes described in more detail his intention: “To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world. The colonization by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour, and enterprise and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, these aboard of China and Japan, [and]  the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.”

Describing his thinking to his disciple W.T. Stead, Rhodes wrote: “Please remember the key of my idea discussed with you is a Society, copied from the Jesuits as to organisation”.

A Calamitous 20th Century

As generations passed, the continuity of purpose that transcended individual lives of players on the stage was maintained by certain organizations that grew out of the original Rhodes/Milner Round Table movements and which had branches in every part of the Anglo-Saxon part of the British Empire. By 1919 after the Round Table had taken control of Canadian and British governments during 1911 and 1916 coups, this group created  the Royal Institute for International Affairs (aka: Chatham House). By 1921, an American branch was set up called the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) staffed with Rhodes Scholars and Fabians which has maintained a continuity of intention to the present day. This organization spawned dozens of influential sub organizations which always interface with a form of “central command”.

A young student of Harvard’s William Yandell Elliot (himself a Rhodes Scholar who operated the Oxford Branch of Harvard) was none other than Sir Henry Kissinger who stated gushingly at a May 10, 1981 Chatham House event:

“The British were so matter-of-factly helpful that they became a participant in internal American deliberations, to a degree probably never practiced between sovereign nations… In my White House incarnation then, I kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged than I did the American State Department… It was symptomatic”.

While the Rhodes Scholar hives managed to permeate ivy league schools, media outlets, private corporations, elected offices and the civil service during the 20th century as laid out by Professor Carrol Quigley’s posthumously published The Anglo-American Establishment, the prize of the presidency remained an elusive trophy… until the day that one of Quigley’s students returned from Oxford and became Governor of Arkansas.

Clinton Opens the Floodgates

With Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory, Rhodes Scholars like Strobe Talbott (Assistant Secretary of State and co-architect of Perestroika) and Robert Reich (Secretary of Labor), were joined by Rhodies Ira Magaziner, Derek Shearer (Senior Economic Advisors), Susan Rice (Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs), Kevin Thurme (Health and Human Services Chief of Staff), George Stephanopoulos (Communications Director) and dozens of other Rhodes Scholars. These individuals were funneled into positions of influence aiming to oversee the “end of history” celebrated by neocon thinker Francis Fukuyama as the Soviet Union disintegrated.

While some Rhodies remained in positions of power during the period of the Straussian controlled opposition of 2000-2008, the Rhodes Hives again enjoyed vast policy-shaping influence under the Obama-age where the architecture for one world government was built on the wreckage of troublesome nation states like Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

Despite the set back caused by a populist deplorable who wrestled the reins of power away from these self-professed experts in 2016, a Rhodie is a stubborn creature if nothing else, and as we have discovered in past months, both Talbott and Rice have been revealed to be two figures at the heart of the Russiagate plot designed to undo the results of 2016. While still serving as Brookings Institute President in 2015-17, it was Talbott who interfaced with MI6’s Sir Richard Dearlove and Christopher Steele in the months before the elections by cooking up and circulating the dodgy dossier and it was Rice who was revealed to be at the center of the “unmasking” entrapment operation conducted on a bewildered Michael Flynn in January 2017.

Revenge of Rice and the Rhodies

With the recently announced appointment of Susan Rice as director of Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, it has become apparent that the Rhodies are drooling at the prospect of correcting the “aberration” of Trump by re-ascending to the inner sanctum of Washington D.C., bringing in droves of Clinton-Obama era unipolar zombies with them.

Beyond Rice, other Rhodes Scholars emerging into positions of control include National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan who graduated from Oxford’s Magdalene College and worked under Strobe Talbott at the Brookings Institute’s Center for the Study for Globalization at Yale in 2000. During this time, Rice had also come to work as Senior Fellow at Brookings followed by a stint as UN Ambassador from 2009-2013 and National Security Advisor from 2013-2017, while Sullivan went onto become Biden’s top security aid during the Obama years.

Describing her love of Oxford, Rice delivered remarks at Rhodes House in 1999 saying:

“To be at Rhodes House tonight with so many friends, benefactors and mentors is a personal privilege. It is like a coming home for me for much of what I know about Africa was discovered within these walls, refined at this great university with generous support of the Rhodes Trust.”

It is worth keeping in mind that as she spoke those words, Rice had recently demonstrated her imperial worldview by coordinating the destruction of a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory in 1998 and threatening South Africa with economic destruction unless it gave up its desires for producing generic and affordable AIDS medication in the same year. Her work to carve up Sudan, promote military intervention across the Arab and African worlds under R2P and supranational organization’s like Soros’ International Criminal Court (ICC) that issued an arrest warrant for President Bashir would have made Cecil Rhodes proud. We should not forget that the Sudan-Libya-Egypt alliance under the combined leadership of Mubarak, Qadhafi and Bashir, had moved to establish a new gold-backed financing system outside of the IMF/World Bank to fund large scale development.

Pete Buttigieg

As of this writing, Rhodes Scholar Eric Garcetti (LA Mayor) has been pulled from the Biden cabinet due to a growing mountain of scandals, and corruption in his local state which have turned him into political poison for the time being.

The other Rhodes Scholar mayor Pete Buttigieg, has been more fortunate however and has been given the keys to Transport portfolio as of December 15, although had first been poised to take the position of US Ambassador to China. While many Trump supporters are being induced to hate and fear China as the “natural enemy of the USA”, it was in fact Buttigieg who demonstrated that his disdain for Trump was only paralleled by his disdain for China when he said in May 2020: “Beijing sees an opportunity to call into question the American project and liberal democracy itself. One thing they’re banking on is four more years of Trump.”

As I laid out in my previous report, Soros himself has repeatedly labelled the two greatest threats to his “open society” as 1) Xi Jinping’s China and 2) Trump’s USA.

Another Rhodie named Bruce Reed who had originally entered Washington as part of the first 1992 Rhodes Scholar infusion as the Clinton-Gore campaign manager and later director of Clinton’s Domestic Policy Council, has been tapped as the top tech advisor to Biden where he has openly called for cracking down on free speech online by cancelling Federal Internet law Section 230. This law currently keeps website owners free of prosecution for content published on their sites. It’s cancellation would crush what dwindling free speech exists on social media. The argument advanced by Reed has been that Section 230 has been used by Russian and Chinese operatives to infiltrate the information ecosystem and manipulate western elections. With its repeal, Facebook and other social media sites will be forced to censor all “illicit” thought crimes under fear of federal prosecution.

Reed had earlier teamed up with Biden in drafting the infamous 1994 crime bill which placed countless petty criminals to long-term sentences, benefiting the prison cheap labor complex. During the Obama years Reed worked as Biden’s Chief of Staff and lead handler.

Blinken, Rhodes and Soros

While Biden’s pick for Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is not himself a Rhodes Scholar, he is a life-long friend and classmate with Robert Malley (a Rhodes Scholar who had formerly acted as Special Assistant to Obama serving as “point man in the middle east” at the NSC). Earlier, Malley had been special assistant to Bill Clinton on Arab Israeli Affairs and was always deeply enmeshed with George Soros’ operations from day one of his entry into politics. Since 2016, Malley has acted as President and CEO of the International Crisis Group (ICG) founded by George Soros and Lord Malloch Brown in 1994 as a tool to promote global humanitarian wars under the guise of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Joining Soros, Malloch-Brown and Malley at the ICG, we should not be surprised to find none other than… Jake Sullivan.

Additionally, Blinken’s father Donald Blinken made a name for himself as Soros’ point man in Hungary from 1994-1998 where he served as US Ambassador facilitating the growth of Soros’ Open Society Foundation. He was later rewarded by the Hungarian speculator with a “Donald and Vera Blinken Open Society Archive” (OSA) at Budapest’s Central European University. The Soros-funded university was created in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Blinken was instrumental in that operation.

President Viktor Orbán knew exactly what he was doing when he expelled this foreign anti-nation state brainwashing operation from Hungary’s borders in 2018. At the time, Central European University President Count Michael Ignatieff screamed “This is unprecedented. A U.S. institution has been driven out of a country that is a NATO ally.”

A Segue on Count Ignatieff

It is noteworthy that Ignatieff is himself the son of Rhodes Scholar globalist George Ignatieff and great grandson of Count Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev (founder of the Russian Okhrana secret police) whose family was rewarded handsomely for services rendered to London-centered oligarchy during the overthrow of the Czarist system in Russia (sort of a precursor to today’s modern Color Revolutions). This story is partially told in Cheney Revives Parvus’ Permanent War Madness by Jeff Steinberg (2005).

As a sidenote, Michael Ignatieff’s great grandfather on his maternal side is none other than George Parkin, the first controller of the Rhodes Trust from 1902-1922 and the man whose Oxford lectures and books inspired Cecil Rhodes and Milner to devote their lives to the cause of Empire. Michael is also a global board member of Soros’ Open Society Foundations headed by none other than Mark Malloch Brown (as of December 4, 2020).

As I laid out in my recent report, not only did these two upper level managers come to light as coordinators of the Dominion/Smartmatic vote fraud operation underway within the USA, but both have also pioneered the new age of regime change color revolutions beginning with Marcos’ 1986 ouster during the Peoples’ Power revolution in the Philippines, through the Balkans, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Moldova, Bolivia, etc.

Some Final Thoughts

While the Rhodes Trust has been close to the causal nexus of much of recent world history, no one should assume that every Rhodes Scholar is guilty by association. It is an undeniable fact that some Rhodes Scholars have broken with their training and have gone on to live useful lives and I see no reason to assume, for instance, that actor/singer Kris Kristofferson played a nefarious role in anything (though some of his film choices were a bit weak).

Similarly, Canada’s John Turner did some very useful things in his short stint as Canadian Prime Minister which earned him the ire of many unipolarists then promoting NAFTA, Maastricht and the Euro. Even Bill Clinton was induced to break from his profile on a few occasions and support some good things that ran contrary to the world government agenda under the positive influence of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown (whose convenient death in 1996 alongside 34 journalists and business executives in Croatia ended that pesky issue- a story for another time).

The key thing to hold in mind is that longer waves of history are shaping the present more than most historians would care to admit. Anyone taking an intention-driven approach to historical analysis will come to recognize quickly enough that events that took place centuries ago have an active impact on the events playing out today.

How and why is this so? Because history is shaped by IDEAS. Good ideas that are in tune with the truthful nature of reality vs bad ideas that are out of tune with said reality. But this battle over ideas (and ideas about ideas e.g.: Plato’s higher hypothesis) is where the causal nexus of universal history is found. With this in mind, we can see clearly how certain people use their influence to conspire and create cultural and political institutions that transmit those ideas and organizing principles across many generations. Sometimes we find these forces to be acting in harmony with natural law (as in the case of Benjamin Franklin and his international network of co-thinkers) and sometimes very much in defiance of natural law.

Today’s battle between the opposing paradigms of the multipolar alliance led by Russia and China on the one hand vs the unipolarist/post-nation state worldview on the other has everything to do with these longer forces of history. The only way to comprehend the color revolution playing out within the USA, or the anomalous emergence of Rhodes Scholars shaping the possible Biden presidency, is by recognizing this higher reality. This exercise may cause you to think about thinking differently, and at first may be uncomfortable, but just as the figure released from the cave who slowly accustoms his/her eyes to the light of the sun and reality, the satisfaction of enjoying a higher order of truthfulness is incomparably more pleasant to a life believing in the shadows cast by an elite class of puppeteers.

December 27, 2020 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , | 1 Comment

Russia can refuse to pay $50 billion bill to Yukos oligarchs, country’s top court rules, as foreign legal battle rages

RT | December 27, 2020

Moscow is set for a showdown with Western judges and 1990s Russian oligarchs, over a new ruling enabling the country to refuse to pay what is considered to be the biggest legal settlement in history, over a collapsed oil empire.

The Constitutional Court, one of Russia’s highest judicial authorities, ruled on Friday that the decision of an international tribunal in the long-running dispute over the now-dissolved energy giant Yukos is incompatible with Russian law. The case has been heard by a court in The Hague, which claims jurisdiction under the terms of the Energy Charter Treaty, and awarded the company’s former shareholders a $50-billion payout from the Russian government earlier this year. Moscow claimed a win in November on the other side of the Atlantic, when a US court, which had been hearing the case simultaneously, decided to throw it out.

However, as Russia signed but never ratified the Treaty, which hands powers to international tribunals, the Constitutional Court has now determined it is not bound by the terms of The Hague judgement. The ruling states that, while the country’s government of the day began the process of signing up to the pact in 1994, they did not have the authority to make national laws inferior to international agreements, or to “challenge the competence” of Russian courts. Therefore, the jurists conclude, adhering to the Dutch court’s demands would be “unconstitutional.”

The claimants in the case are oligarchs who lost cash when Yukos, once among Europe’s largest firms, collapsed. They say that a multi-billion dollar tax bill and the arrest of its CEO and founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, on fraud charges amounted to state ‘appropriation’ of its assets. However, Russian authorities insist that the shareholders cannot be considered “legitimate,” and that the Dutch judges had steamrolled over the country’s laws against corruption and fraud when ruling in their favour.

As far back as July 2014, The Hague ordered Moscow to cough up $50 billion to compensate the plaintiffs. After exhausting the appeals process in February this year, Russia’s lawyers asked the Dutch Supreme Court to consider the case and overrule the decision. However, at the start of December, it similarly backed the oligarchs.

Russia has insisted that the judgements are “politically motivated,” and in December the country’s Justice Minister, Konstantin Chuychenko, told journalists that the case was part of a “legal war that has been declared on Russia.” He added that “Russia must adequately defend itself and, sometimes, even attack back.”

Now standing at around $50 billion, around the same ballpark as Russia’s annual military budget, the colossal settlement is thought to be the largest award in history. If the country now rejects the bill, it would spark one of the most serious impasses in international legal history, and leave Western states deciding whether to respect Russia’s constitutional ruling, or to enforce the demands by confiscating assets.

Yukos’ former shareholders have already sought to have Western governments take control of Russian property overseas as an insurance policy in case Moscow refuses to pay up. However, in November, a judge in the simultaneous hearing in the US refused that request, saying that “the Russian Federation is a sovereign country with economic tendrils that cross the globe, not an insecure potential debtor that must be required to post security lest there be no assets to seize at a later date.”

Not all countries have taken the same approach, however, and in 2015 Russia’s diplomats slammed France and Belgium for confiscating state cash in overseas banks, and even buildings, to be held as collateral in the case. Moscow again rejected the court’s authority and said their move was “an openly hostile act.” Tim Osborne, a British lawyer representing the former shareholders, said at the time that such seizures were necessary because Russia “has no regard for international law or the rule of law.”

At its height, Yukos produced 20 per cent of Russia’s oil, placing it firmly among the ranks of the world’s most valuable enterprises. It had been formed by the privatization of former state assets after the fall of the Soviet Union, with Khodorkovsky acquiring the assets for a fraction of their worth at an auction that one economist, Andrey Illarionov, called “the swindle of the century.”

Khodorkovsky claims his arrest on fraud charges and the subsequent collapse of Yukos was tied to his political activism and his personal animosity towards Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin, however, claims that the oligarch, once said to be Russia’s wealthiest man, had admitted his guilt to him privately in exchange for a pardon in 2013.

Khodorkovsky insists that he has renounced any claims to his former empire and that, should a settlement be reached in the Yukos case, he would not stand to benefit. However, Russian authorities are said to suspect that a number of claimants have close financial ties to the former oil magnate.

December 27, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Russophobia | , | 1 Comment

New York Can’t Buy Its Way Out Of Blackouts

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~ PA Pundits ~ December 26, 2020

New York City will soon be home to the world’s biggest utility-scale battery system, designed to back up its growing reliance on intermittent renewables. At 400 MWh this batch of batteries will be more than triple the 129 MWh world leader in Australia.

The City of New York’s director of sustainability (I am not making this title up), Mark Chambers, is ecstatic, bragging: “Expanding battery storage is a critical part of how we advance momentum to confront the climate emergency while meeting the energy needs of all New Yorkers. Today’s announcement demonstrates how we can deliver this need at significant scale.” (Emphasis added)

In reality the scale here is incredibly insignificant.

In the same nonsensical way, Tim Cawley, the president of Con Edison, New York’s power utility, gushes thus: “Utility scale battery storage will play a vital role in New York’s clean energy future, especially in New York City where it will help to maximize the benefit of the wind power being developed offshore.”

This puts the Con in Con Edison.

Here is the reality when it comes to the scale needed to reliably back up intermittent renewables. For simplicity let us suppose New York City is 100% wind powered. Including solar in the generating mix makes it more complicated but does not change the unhappy outcome very much.

NYC presently peaks at around 32,000 MW needed to keep the lights on. If Mr. Biden makes all the cars and trucks electric it might be closer to 50,000 MW but let’s stick to reality.

This peak occurs during summer heat waves which are caused by stagnant high pressure systems called Bermuda highs. These highs often last for a week and because they are stagnant there is no wind power generation. Wind turbines require something like sustained winds of 10 mph to move the blades and more like a whistling 30 mph to generate full power. During a Bermuda high folks are happy to get the occasional 5 mph breeze. These huge highs cover many states so it is not like we can get the juice from next door.

So for reliability we need, say, seven days of backup, which is 168 hours. Here’s the math:

32,000 MW x 168 hours = 5,376,000 MWh of stored juice needed to just make it. Mind you for normal reliability we usually add 20% or so. Did I mention electric cars?

It is easy to see that a trivial 400 MWh is not “significant scale.” It is infinitesimal scale. Nothing. Nada. Might as well not exist.

More specifically, 5,376,000 divided by 400 = 13,440 so only 13,439 more to go.

On the other hand, this measly 400 MWh battery array may well cost half a billion dollars, which is significant, especially to the New Yorkers who will pay for it. No cost figures are given because the system is privately owned, but EIA reports that the average utility scale battery system runs around $1.5 million a MWh of storage capacity. That works out to $600 million for this insignificant toy.

So what would it cost to reliably back up wind power, at this MWh cost and NYC’s scale? Just over $8,000,000,000,000 or EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS. I have not seen this stupendous sum mentioned in the media. Perhaps Con Ed has not mentioned it.

Then too, New York State has the same problem. Only much bigger if New York City is included, which it often is.

But hey, maybe the cost will come down a few trillion. Not if we create a seller’s market by rushing into intermittent renewables, which is certainly where we are headed. After all, this is just New York City. Imagine what backing up America with batteries might cost. Don’t bother because it is impossible.

I should also add that we have no idea how to make 5 million MWh of batteries work together. The tiny 400 will be a challenge. It may not be possible.

Maybe fracked geothermal, the reliable renewable, is the answer. Or how about coal, oil, gas and nuclear power? Too bad they are all out of fashion.

All of this battery backup hype is a scam, and not just in New York either. The papers are full of this con, from coast to coast. The utilities know perfectly well that these loudly touted battery buys are a hoax, but they are getting rich building the wind and solar systems the politicians are calling for.

The voters are oblivious to these impossible numbers, since they are told that intermittent wind and solar are cheaper than reliable coal, gas and nuclear. Only when the sun shines bright and the wind blows hard, which is not all that often.

Reality is just sitting there, waiting. It can’t work so it won’t work. At this point it is just a question of how and when we find out the hard way.

December 27, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Economics | , | 3 Comments

Iran has prepared initial plan for gas exports to Afghanistan

Press TV | November 9, 2020

Head of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) says the country has a plan in place for launching gas exports to neighboring Afghanistan.

“The initial plan has been prepared and diplomatic negotiations are ongoing,” said Hassan Montazer Torbati on Monday as he briefed reporters on the latest situation of Iran’s gas exports to neighboring countries.

Torbati said gas exports to Afghanistan would be commissioned to private contractors although he insisted that the government has already provided the full infrastructure needed for transfer of gas to its eastern neighbor.

Afghanistan is increasingly relying on Iran for its energy needs as the landlocked country moves to expand economic activity through opening a new trade route that passes through Iran to the Indian Ocean.

However, Iranian energy supplies, including electricity, are mostly available to western parts of Afghanistan where the security of transfer infrastructure can be properly guaranteed.

Iran has increased both the output and exports of natural gas in recent years despite a series of US sanctions that have specifically targeted the country’s energy sector.

Nearly a tenth of Iran’s current output of more than 700 million cubic meters of gas is exported, mainly through pipelines to Turkey and Iraq.

On exports to Turkey, where authorities have touted the discovery of a new gas reserves in the Black Sea, Torbati said Ankara would still need to import gas from Iran to respond to its growing energy demand.

He said talks on renewing a 25-year export agreement with Turkey that is set to expire in several years’ time would start in the near future.

December 27, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , | 1 Comment

India ramps up deepwater gas production

Oilprice.com | December 24, 2020

The beginning of production at what is now Asia’s deepest offshore natural gas field will increase the share of natural gas in India’s energy basket.

India set to strengthen natural gas production

A few days ago, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and BP announced the start of production from the R Cluster, an ultra-deepwater gas field in block KG D6 off the east coast of India. RIL and BP are developing three deepwater gas projects in block KG D6: R Cluster, Satellites Cluster, and MJ. Together, RIL said it expects the projects to meet over 15 percent of India’s natural gas demand by 2023.

What makes the find even more newsworthy is that it is located at a depth of more than 2,000 meters, making R Cluster the deepest offshore gas field in Asia.

Production ramp-up

By the end of next year, it is expected to reach plateau gas production of about 12.9 million standard cubic meters per day (mmscmd), per MoneyControl.com.

These projects will utilize the existing hub infrastructure in KG D6 block. RIL is the operator of KG D6 with a 66.67 percent participating interest. BP holds a 33.33 percent participating interest.

R Cluster is about 60 kilometers from the existing KG D6 Control and Riser Platform (CRP).

Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Limited, said in a press release that production from the natural gas field marked a “significant milestone” in India’s energy landscape for a cleaner and greener gas-based economy.

Looking ahead

Incidentally, RIL’s partner in this project, BP has been in India for over a century. BP is one of the largest international energy companies in the country.

RIL expects the next project, the Satellites Cluster, to come onstream in 2021, followed by the MJ project in 2022.

RIL expects peak gas production from the three fields to be around 30 mmscmd (1 bcf/d) by 2023. That combined production is expected to account for about 25 percent of India’s domestic production. As such, the development will help reduce the country’s dependence on imported gas.

RIL and BP will get only US $4.06 a unit for the new gas they have started to produce from the eastern offshore KG-D6 field even though they have discovered a higher rate in an open market auction, the Business Standard reported.

The operators had pricing freedom. However, they cannot sell gas at a rate higher than the cap the government notifies every six months. The cap for six months to March 31, 2021, is US $4.06 per mmBtu.

There is also a steel perspective to the news. Essar Steel, Adani Group and state-owned GAIL in November 2019 bought the majority of the initial five million standard cubic meters per day of gas from the KG-D6 block, the Business Standard reported.

December 27, 2020 Posted by | Economics | | Leave a comment