At G7, Joe Biden and Boris Johnson sign charter committing to defend against “disinformation”
A sign of more censorship to come?
By Tom Parker | Reclaim the Net | June 10, 2021
At the 2021 G7 summit, an annual meeting attended by seven wealthy democracies, US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed a charter that vows to collectively defend against a series of “new and old challenges” including “disinformation.”
The charter is a “revitalized” version of the original 1941 Atlantic Charter declaration that was released by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941 and provided a broad statement of US and British World War II aims.
This new version of the charter says that it will build on “the commitments and aspirations set out eighty years ago,” affirm the US and UK’s “ongoing commitment to sustaining our enduring values and defending them against new and old challenges,” and counter “the efforts of those who seek to undermine our alliances and institutions.”
It contains eight broad commitments with the third commitment containing a pledge against disinformation.
“We oppose interference through disinformation or other malign influences, including in elections, and reaffirm our commitment to debt transparency, sustainability and sound governance of debt relief,” the charter states.
We obtained a copy of the new Atlantic Charter for you here.
This new version of the Atlantic Charter doesn’t detail how the duo plan to fight what they deem to be disinformation but follows both countries signaling that they plan further crackdowns on online content based on censorship buzzwords such as disinformation and “misinformation.”
During a recent press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters “the President’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19, vaccinations, and elections.”
She added: “His view is that there’s more that needs to be done to ensure that this type of misinformation; disinformation; damaging, sometimes life-threatening information is not going out to the American public.”
In the UK, efforts to censor disinformation are coming through a new draft “Online Safety Bill” which intends to block social media sites in the country if they fail to take down disinformation or “legal but harmful content.”
Poland wants to end political censorship online
Poland is one of the few countries pushing to support free speech on monopoly platforms
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim the Net | June 10, 2021
According to Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Big Tech corporations have amassed so much power that they control politics, and the solution is for governments around the world to introduce laws limiting that power.
Polish legislators are working on a bill that would make it illegal for online platforms to censor content that does not break Poland’s laws.
“Today, who sets these rules is really the master of destiny for society and for nation-states,” Morawiecki said in a recent interview with Newsweek. “So today, platforms and communication networks and intellectual property are even more important than the land and the buildings and the technology assembly lines and all the materials that go into creating these digital realms.”
The PM argued for a new approach focused on protecting the power of governments, as well as the well-being of society, accounting for the way the internet and social media has transformed the social, political, and economic environment.
“These dynamics do not make it easier to grasp the elements of the moving parts of the complicated interdependent economic jigsaw puzzle that is our modern age,” Morawiecki said.
“And this is why it is so much more difficult to understand who sets the rules today, because it is no longer the governments that can have this competence over the setting of the rules.
“Huge international corporations in the area of the digital world, in particular, are setting the rules very often that are suitable for themselves, which may not always be a social good.
“This is another form of dominance over the rest of the sectors they operate in, but it may also create dominance over other areas of the lives of citizens in a society.
“And this is why states should now be very active in eliminating censorship and eliminating monopolistic powers of those companies, as well. And this is one of the reasons we started to work on this anti-censorship regulation.”
Morawiecki and members of his political party PiS (Law and Justice Party) are pushing for the introduction of a new legislation to push back against Big Tech. They recently proposed a bill that would allow the government to fine social media companies for censoring legal speech in Poland. Additionally, the legislation would allow social media users in Poland to appeal censorship they deem unfair to the Free Speech Council, which will be formed when the bill passes. A social media platform found guilty of removing legal speech could be fined as much as $13.35 million.
In February, Hungary’s Justice Minister Judit Varga said she was working on a new law to “regulate the domestic operations of large tech companies.” She argued that mainstream online platforms “limit the visibility of Christian, conservative, rightwing opinions,” adding that the “power groups behind global tech giants” are so powerful that they can influence national elections.
In February, Poland’s Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta echoed the conservative Hungarian government’s sentiments, saying the Polish government was focusing on protecting conservatives.
“We see that anonymous social media moderators often censor opinions which do not violate the law but are just criticism of leftists’ agenda,” he told the Financial Times. “This creates important risks of infringing freedom of speech.”
Morawiecki added that the new legislation is being discussed in parliament, and the government is not only looking at domestic legislation but also discussing it with the European Commission (the legislative arm of the European Union).
“We are in discussion with the European Commission in two aspects of this area. One is vis-à-vis the freedom of speech and eliminating the censorship issue,” said the Polish PM.
“The other one is in taxing companies where they do business—so not letting them go to tax havens like Luxembourg or Cyprus or Switzerland, and not paying taxes at all or very little taxes paid in these other tax haven countries, because I think that Big Tech companies minimizing their tax burden this way is not sustainable for our economies.”
SUCCESS IS CONFRONTATION
By Paul Robinson | IRRUSIANALITY | JUNE 11, 2021
Yes, you read the title correctly, “Success is confrontation.” So says one-time US Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker in an article for the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), one of the more reliably Russophobic think tanks in Washington. “Success is confrontation.” Think about the implications for a while.
The subject of Mr Volker’s article is the forthcoming meeting between America’s president Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Volker wants you to know how should measure the meeting’s “success”. The basic answer is that the meeting will be a success from the American point of view if it fails utterly, miserably, and totally. The worse the outcome, the better it will be.
Now, with relations between two heavily armed nuclear powers about as bad as anyone can remember, one might imagine that success would be if the leaders of the two powers found some way of patching up their difficulties, or at least reaching agreement on some minor matters of mutual interest while leaving major differences between them unresolved. But Mr Volker views things rather differently.
For you see, if the meeting between Biden and Putin ends without a major bust-up, or worse produces some minor agreements that overall contribute to “predictability and stability”, that will be a victory for Putin. And what is good for Putin must by necessity be bad for America. As Volker puts it,
It is surely not in the interests of the US, the EU, NATO, and other allies to see a summit in which Putin leaves convinced that he has blunted the United States and faces no consequences for his behavior. It would send a signal that authoritarians can get away with aggressive acts at home and abroad, and that the US and the West will not take any meaningful action to stop them. … any outcome that seems reassuring and benign on the surface actually works in Putin’s favor.
Consequently, Volker concludes that:
For the US, therefore, the best possible outcome is not one of modest agreements and a commitment to “predictability,” but one of a lack of agreement altogether. Success is confrontation.
Volker points out that Biden and Putin might discuss issues such as climate change, Iran, and Afghanistan. Is it really better that they fail to reach agreement on those issues? Whose interests would that actually serve? I damned if I have an answer. And Volker doesn’t provide one either. His view seems to be that the world can go to hell in a handcart as far as he’s concerned, if the alternative is failure to confront the evil dictator Putin. Frankly, it’s nuts.
In fact, it’s obvious that Volker doesn’t want the meeting to go ahead at all. He writes that, “an ideal scenario would have the US Administration announce tough, new sanctions against Russia and its enablers in Western Europe in advance of the Geneva summit.” Of course, were that to happen, Putin would cancel the meeting there and then. But I guess that’s the point. Volker thinks it’s wrong not only to come to agreement with the Russians but even to talk to them. To reverse-quote Churchill: In the eyes of Volker, “War, war is always better than jaw jaw.”
One can argue that one should prepare for the possibility of conflict. But the idea that one should actively prefer it to agreement on the international stage, especially when dealing with the largest country in the world, a nation endowed with some 1,500 nuclear warheads, is, in my opinion, quite staggeringly irresponsible.
Now, you might say that this is just one guy’s opinion. We can ignore it. It doesn’t mean anything. But Volker isn’t just some guy. From 2017 to 2019, he was the US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations – so in effect America’s point guy for its relationship with Ukraine and for negotiations concerning a peace settlement for that country’s civil war. On the basis of this article, one shudders to think what advice he was giving the Ukrainian government. Certainly not advice conducive to peace, I imagine. It’s more than a little scary.
So, this is more than just one man. This article is a window into the way that an influential part of the American foreign policy establishment thinks. It rejects negotiation. It regards compromise as dangerous. It openly prefers conflict. “Success is confrontation” – the worse the better. Wow!
Israeli forces shoot dead 16-year-old Palestinian boy
Defense for Children International Palestine | June 11, 2021
Ramallah — Israeli forces shot dead a 16-year-old Palestinian boy today in the northern occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces shot Mohammad Said Mohammad Hamayel, 16, with live ammunition around 4:30 p.m. today during a protest in the village of Beita, located southeast of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. The bullet entered the right side of Mohammad’s chest and exited the left side, striking him in the left arm, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Mohammad was taken to the Beita field hospital where he was pronounced dead.
“Israeli forces frequently use live ammunition for crowd control to disperse protesters, ignoring their obligation under international law to only resort to intentional lethal force when a direct, mortal threat to life or of serious injury exists,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. “Systemic impunity has fostered an environment where Israeli forces know no bounds.”
When Mohammad was killed, Beita village residents were protesting against a new illegal Israeli outpost recently established on the village’s land. In the last month, Israeli settlers have established a new illegal outpost, Evyatar, on lands belonging to Beita and two other Palestinian villages, Qabalan and Yatma, Haaretz reported this week. The outpost, which already has around 40 structures, was established on a hill that was the site of an Israeli army base in the 1980s, according to Haaretz.
Since 2013, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 168 Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory with live ammunition and crowd-control weapons, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
Mohammad is the eighth child from the occupied West Bank shot and killed by Israeli forces this year. On May 5, Israeli forces shot and killed 16-year-old Said Yousef Mohammad Odeh in Odala, a neighboring village about one mile north of Beita. Israeli forces reportedly confronted Palestinian youth at the village entrance prior to Said’s shooting. Said did not pose any threat to Israeli forces at the time he was shot, according to information collected by DCIP.
Under international law, intentional lethal force is only justified in circumstances where a direct threat to life or of serious injury is present. However, investigations and evidence collected by DCIP regularly suggest that Israeli forces use lethal force against Palestinian children in circumstances that may amount to extrajudicial or wilful killings.
Israeli forces are rarely held accountable for grave violations against Palestinian children, including unlawful killings and excessive use of force. According to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization, around 80 percent of complaints filed with Israeli authorities by Palestinians for alleged violations and harm by Israeli soldiers between 2017 and 2018 were closed with no criminal investigation opened. Of complaints where a criminal investigation was opened, only three incidents (3.2 percent) resulted in indictments. Overall, the chances that a complaint leads to an indictment of an Israeli soldier for violence, including killing, or other harm is 0.7 percent, according to Yesh Din.
An outpost is an emerging illegal Israeli settlement initially established as small communities on hilltops throughout the West Bank, generally located nearby or in between larger permanent illegal settlements. They house a few families or several settler youths living in trailers and other temporary shelters with only basic infrastructure. Funding and support from private donors and the Israeli government help to construct roads and infrastructure and eventually transform the outpost into a permanent Jewish-only Israeli settlement.
Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law. Israel’s policy of settling its civilians in occupied territory is a serious violation of international humanitarian law and amounts to a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
THIRD member of FDA advisory body resigns, calls Alzheimer’s drug approval ‘worst in recent US history’
RT | June 10, 2021
Three scientists from a FDA advisory committee have resigned after the US food and drug regulator rammed through the approval of a controversial drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease in the face of near-unanimous opposition.
Ten out of 11 members of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Advisory Committee voted against approving the drug aducanumab, with one voting “uncertain,” during the hearings in November 2020. On Monday, the FDA granted it accelerated approval anyway.
“This week, the aducanumab decision by FDA administrators was probably the worst drug approval decision in recent US history,” wrote Aaron Kesselheim of Harvard and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts – who became the third member of the committee to resign in protest this week.
The agency switched to accelerated approval “at the last minute,” based on the “debatable premise” that the drug’s effect was likely to help patients, but “this pivotal question was not discussed at the Advisory Committee meeting, and its premise was specifically excluded from discussion,” Kesselheim wrote. Furthermore, some of the questions asked of the committee were “worded in a way that seemed slanted to yield responses that would favor the drug’s approval.”
Kesselheim, who has served on the committee since 2015, said it was “clear to me that FDA is not presently capable of adequately integrating the Committee’s scientific recommendations into its approval decisions.”
Two neurologists serving on the committee – David Knopman of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and Joel Perlmutter of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri – resigned on Wednesday.
Developed by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Biogen and Japan’s Eisai, aducanumab – also known by the trade name Aduhelm – was touted as the first treatment that directly targets the cause of Alzheimer’s disease, instead of merely helping to ease its symptoms. Biogen’s stock surged at the news that the intravenous treatment – the cost of which is estimated at $56,000 a year – had been greenlit by regulators.
Aduhelm is a monoclonal antibody designed to remove a substance called amyloid from the brain of Alzheimer’s patients. Doctors are not in agreement whether this is the cause or the symptom of the disease that presently afflicts an estimated six million Americans. Clinical trials were halted in 2019 after the drug was not shown to be effective, but Biogen “re-analyzed” the data and told the FDA that some patients who received higher doses had shown a slower rate of decline than others.
The FDA then argued that the drug “is reasonably likely to predict a clinical benefit to patients,” even if it did not show clear clinical benefits in slowing down the progression of Alzheimer’s.
Aduhelm was the final straw for Kesselheim, whose letter also cited an earlier incident with the drug called eteplirsen, approved in 2016 for treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy against the advisory recommendations.
“For both eteplirsen and aducanumab, the decisions by FDA administrators to ignore the Advisory Committee’s clear recommendations led to their approval of two highly problematic drugs that offered little evidence that they would meaningfully benefit patients suffering from these devastating conditions,” he wrote, adding that the dual debacles “demonstrate that the agency needs to reassess its decision-making processes.”
BBC Victoria Falls Complaint Escalated
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | June 10, 2021
You will recall the BBC’s fake news story of how the Victoria Falls was drying up due to climate change:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56902340
I submitted this short complaint at the time:
I have now received this response:
In short, they are just saying “Look, there was a drought, so go away!”
You will have noticed that they have not actually answered any of the points I made.
Needless to say, I have now resubmitted my complaint, as follows:
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for your response, but it does not address my complaint.
You state that there was a drought in the region 2019, but this is not in dispute. According to the Zimbabwe Tourism Office in December 2019:
Historical data provided by the Zambezi River Authority, who monitors the water level flows in the region daily, provide evidence that the annual mean water levels of the river have in fact been lower in at least six prior examples of a period spanning 1914 to the current date period.
Whilst Zimbabwe has indeed experienced an extensive drought over the course of this year, the water levels of the Zambezi and indeed the flow levels over Victoria Falls, have remained above those recorded over the drought period of 95 / 96.
https://www.zimbabwetourism.net/news-update-on-the-state-of-vic-falls/
In other words, such droughts are common, and the 2019 one was not as bad as that of 1995/96. They are normal meteorological events, and nothing to do with climate change, as you claim.
To recap, your report states:
In our monthly feature, Then and Now, we reveal some of the ways that planet Earth has been changing against the backdrop of a warming world. Here, we look at the effects of global heating on Victoria Falls,
In 2019, however, Victoria Falls was silenced. In a drought described as the worst in a century, the flow of the Zambezi was reduced to a relative trickle and the Falls ran dry.
A single extreme weather event cannot, in isolation, be viewed as a consequence of climate change.
But the region is recording a sequence of extreme droughts that reflect what climate modellers have predicted will occur as a result of an increase in greenhouse gases in the world’s atmosphere as a result of human activity.
As already noted, there was nothing unusual about the 2019 drought, nor have you provided any evidence that extreme droughts are increasing in the region. The predictions of computer modellers are therefore irrelevant.
It is therefore misleading and inaccurate to claim that this perfectly common event is an “effect of global heating”.
Also your claim that it was the worst drought in a century is also false, as we know 1995/96 was much worse.
Moreover you grossly mislead readers with your image of the Falls supposedly drying up. This is something that happens every year between October and December.
Again according to Zimbabwe Tourism:
The seasonal rise and fall of the Zambezi River changes the look of Victoria Falls on a daily basis. The western side of the falls is lower than the eastern side and therefore carries the most water all year round. This fluctuation is less noticeable at Devil’s cataract and the Main Falls. From Livingstone Islands onwards, this ebb and flow becomes more apparent and at low water, this portion of the Falls dries up almost completely.
https://www.zimbabwetourism.net/news-update-on-the-state-of-vic-falls/
Although water levels are low during dry season, it is inaccurate for you to claim:
The flow of the Zambezi was reduced to a relative trickle and the Falls ran dry
There was still plentiful water at the time of year, it is simply that the eastern end is at a higher elevation that the water stops flowing over.
Worse still your image contrasts January 2019 with December 2018, with the caption “how the falls have changed over time”. But the two months are totally different in terms of water levels. As already noted, December always sees low lake levels, coinciding with the dry rock face you show.
According to Lonely Planet:
Every single year the Eastern Cataract of the Victoria Falls exposes a dry rock face, normally between the months of October to December,” explains Wilma Griffith, a marketing executive at the Wild Horizons Lookout Café, a restaurant overlooking the Batoka Gorge. “Historical figures show that on or around 14 November the river is at its lowest and then gradually starts to rise again around 14 December, once the localised rains start having an impact on the Zambezi.”
November and December are the end of spring and the beginning of summer in the southern hemisphere, but it can take time for the post-winter rainfall in the DRC and Angola to travel downstream to Victoria Falls, and eventually to in the Indian Ocean.
https://www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/victoria-falls-drought-climate-change
By January the heavy spring rains upstream lead to a large rise in lake levels, as the chart below from the Zambezi River Authority shows:
http://www.zambezira.org/hydrology/river-flows
The correct comparison should have been between December 2018 and December 2019. Instead your readers are left with the false impression that the drying up from January 2019 and December 2019 was not a natural event that occurs every year, but something to do with climate change.
To summarise:
- You have claimed that the “drying up” of the Victoria Falls in December 2019 was the effect of “global heating”.
- You also erroneously claim that the 2019 drought was the worst in a century
- You dishonestly publish a flagrantly misleading comparison of photos of the Falls, comparing the dry season in December 2019 with the wet season in January 2019.
But you fail to disclose:
- There have been many worse droughts there in the past
- The drought of 1995/96 was much worse
- The aforesaid “drying up” is a normal annual event, which occurs every dry season because the eastern side of the falls is at a higher elevation, and not because the river dries up to a trickle.
- The Falls were back in full spate by January 2020, just as they are every year as a result of spring rainfall, and just as they were a year previously.
There is no evidence whatsoever that climate change, which you ludicrously label global heating, has had any impact whatsoever on the Victoria Falls.
Is a “Climate Lockdown” on the horizon?
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | June 10, 2021
If and when the powers-that-be decide to move on from their pandemic narrative, lockdowns won’t be going anywhere. Instead it looks like they’ll be rebranded as “climate lockdowns”, and either enforced or simply held threateningly over the public’s head.
At least, according to an article written by an employee of the WHO, and published by a mega-coporate think-tank.
Let’s dive right in.
THE REPORT’S AUTHOR AND BACKERS
The report, titled “Avoiding a climate lockdown”, was written by Mariana Mazzucato, a professor of economics at University College London, and head of something called the Council on the Economics of Health for All, a division of the World Health Organization.
It was first published in October 2020 by Project Syndicate, a non-profit media organization that is (predictably) funded through grants from the Open society Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and many, many others.
After that, it was picked up and republished by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), which describes itself as “a global, CEO-led organization of over 200 leading businesses working together to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world.”.
The WBCSD’s membership is essentially every major company in the world, including Chevron, BP, Bayer, Walmart, Google and Microsoft. Over 200 members totalling well over 8 TRILLION dollars in annual revenue.
In short: an economist who works for the WHO has written a report concerning “climate lockdowns”, which has been published by both a Gates+Soros backed NGO AND a group representing almost every bank, oil company and tech giant on the planet.
Whatever it says, it clearly has the approval of the people who run the world.
WHAT DOES IT SAY?
The text of the report itself is actually quite craftily constructed. It doesn’t outright argue for climate lockdowns, but instead discusses ways “we” can prevent them.
As COVID-19 spread […] governments introduced lockdowns in order to prevent a public-health emergency from spinning out of control. In the near future, the world may need to resort to lockdowns again – this time to tackle a climate emergency […] To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently.
This cleverly creates a veneer of arguing against them, whilst actually pushing the a priori assumptions that any so-called “climate lockdowns” would a) be necessary and b) be effective. Neither of which has ever been established.
Another thing the report assumes is some kind of causal link between the environment and the “pandemic”:
COVID-19 is itself a consequence of environmental degradation
I wrote an article, back in April, exploring the media’s persistent attempts to link the Covid19 “pandemic” with climate change. Everybody from the Guardian to the Harvard School of Public Health is taking the same position – “The root cause of pandemics [is] the destruction of nature”:
The razing of forests and hunting of wildlife is increasingly bringing animals and the microbes they harbour into contact with people and livestock.
There is never any scientific evidence cited to support this position. Rather, it is a fact-free scare-line used to try and force a mental connection in the public, between visceral self-preservation (fear of disease) and concern for the environment. It is as transparent as it is weak.
“CLIMATE LOCKDOWNS”
So, what exactly is a “climate lockdown”? And what would it entail?
The author is pretty clear:
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.
There you have it. A “climate lockdown” means no more red meat, the government setting limits on how and when people use their private vehicles and further (unspecified) “extreme energy-saving measures”. It would likely include previously suggested bans on air travel, too.
All in all, it is potentially far more strict than the “public health policy” we’ve all endured for the last year.
As for forcing fossil fuel companies to stop drilling, that is drenched in the sort of ignorance of practicality that only exists in the academic world. Supposing we can switch to entirely rely on renewables for energy, we still wouldn’t be able to stop drilling for fossil fuels.
Oil isn’t just used as fuel, it’s also needed to lubricate engines and manufacture chemicals and plastics. Plastics used in the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels, for example.
Coal isn’t just needed for power stations, but also to make steel. Steel which is vital to pretty much everything humans do in the modern world.
It reminds me of a Victoria Wood sketch from the 1980s, where an upper-middle class woman remarks, upon meeting a coal miner, “I suppose we don’t really need coal, now we’ve got electricity.”
A lot of post-fossil utopian ideas are sold this way, to people who are comfortably removed from the way the world actually works. This mirrors the supposed “recovery” the environment experienced during lockdown, a mythic creation selling a silver lining of house arrest to people who think that because they’re having their annual budget meetings over Zoom, somehow China stopped manufacturing 900 million tonnes of steel a year, and the US military doesn’t produce more pollution than 140 different countries combined.
The question, really, is why would an NGO backed by – among others – Shell, BP and Chevron, possibly want to suggest a ban on drilling for fossil fuel? But that’s a discussion for another time.
AVOIDING A “CLIMATE LOCKDOWN”
So, the “climate lockdown” is a mix of dystopian social control, and impractical nonsense likely designed to sell an agenda. But don’t worry, we don’t have to do this. There is a way to avoid these extreme measures, the author says so:
To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently […] Addressing this triple crisis requires reorienting corporate governance, finance, policy, and energy systems toward a green economic transformation […] Far more is needed to achieve a green and sustainable recovery […] we want to transform the future of work, transit, and energy use.
“Overhaul”? “reorienting”? “transformation”?
Seems like we’re looking at a new-built society. A “reset”, if you will, and given the desired scope, you could even call it a “great reset”, I suppose.
Except, of course, the Great Reset is just a wild “conspiracy theory”. The elite doesn’t want a Great Reset, even if they keep saying they do…
… they just want a massive wholesale “transformation” of our social, financial, governmental and energy sectors.
They want you to own nothing and be happy. Or else.
Because that’s the oddest thing about this particular article, whereas most fear-porn public programming at least attempts subtlety, there is very definitely an overtly threatening tone to this piece [emphasis added]:
we are approaching a tipping point on climate change, when protecting the future of civilization will require dramatic interventions […] One way or the other, radical change is inevitable; our task is to ensure that we achieve the change we want – while we still have the choice.
The whole article is not an argument, so much as an ultimatum. A gun held to the public’s collective head. “Obviously we don’t want to lock you up inside your homes, force you to eat processed soy cubes and take away your cars,” they’re telling us, “but we might have to, if you don’t take our advice.”
Will there be “climate lockdowns” in the future? I wouldn’t be surprised. But right now – rather than being seriously mooted – they are fulfilling a different role. A frightening hypothetical – A threat used to bully the public into accepting the hardline globalist reforms that make up the “great reset”.
Many thanks to all the people on social media who brought this to our attention.
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From the Archives
A history of US threats to use nuclear weapons
By David North | WSWS | October 5, 2022
The Biden administration and the media present Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons in response to military setbacks as an unprecedented break with long-established and hitherto unquestioned rules of international statecraft. This narrative is a lie.
In fact, the United States and other imperialist powers have not only considered on several critical occasions using nuclear weapons to reverse military defeats. They have directly threatened to drop atom bombs in order to extract concessions from their enemies.
There are the well-documented demands of General Douglas MacArthur for the dropping of nuclear bombs on China, President Eisenhower’s weighing of France’s request for the detonation of nuclear devices at Dien Bien Phu, and President Kennedy’s threats during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Far less known and even more serious were the use of nuclear threats by President Nixon against the USSR and Vietnam. Operation Giant Lance was initiated on October 27, 1969, according to Wikipedia, to force a settlement of the Vietnam War on terms favorable to the US.
According to Wikipedia, Nixon “authorized a squadron of 18 B-52 bombers to patrol the Arctic polar ice caps and escalate the nuclear threat … to coerce both the Soviet Union and North Vietnam to agree on favorable terms with the US, and conclusively end the Vietnam War.”
Nixon made use of what was referred to as the “madman” tactic to convince the Soviet Union that he was capable of ordering a nuclear strike. Another operation, related to Giant Lance, was “Duck Hook.” … continue
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- WATCH: Climategate Flashback October 6, 2022
- Federal Bureau of Intimidation: The War on Political Freedom October 5, 2022
- Richie Allen
- Website and downtime October 2, 2022
- Some Good News To Brighten Your Monday September 26, 2022
- Richie In Conversation With Mark Bajerski Friday September 23rd 2022 September 23, 2022
- A Message From Your BBG September 22, 2022
- Consent Factory
- The Morning After October 3, 2022
- If Americans Knew
- Not A Lot Of People Know That
- UK Left Behind, As China and India Charge Ahead, Says The Delusional AEP October 7, 2022
- AEP Wants Charles To Campaign At COP27 October 7, 2022
- Drill, Europe, Or Sink! October 7, 2022
- Biden blasted for seeking out foreign oil: ‘Bizarre and wrong’–Michael Shellenberger October 6, 2022
- No Tricks Zone
- Sebastian Rushworth M.D.
- Do high protein diets shorten lifespan? July 31, 2022
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