Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Investigation Launched After ‘Mystery’ Surge in Deaths of Newborn Babies

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | May 16, 2022

Health authorities in Scotland have launched an investigation after a mystery surge in deaths of newborn babies, the second time the phenomenon has been recorded in the space of six months.

A report by the Herald newspaper highlights the “very unusual” spike in deaths of babies, with the alarm being raised after 18 infants died within four weeks of birth in March.

That same control limit was also breached in September last year, when 21 neonatal deaths were reported, the first time this had occurred since records began.

“The neonatal mortality rate was 5.1 per 1,000 live births in September and 4.6 per 1,000 in March, against an average of 1.49 per 1000 in 2019,” reports the newspaper.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) said the deaths could not have been down to chance, while the cause behind the previous spike in September also “remained a mystery.”

The report notes that vaccination uptake has increased in expectant mothers and that COVID infections during pregnancy are associated with a higher chance of premature birth, but found no “direct link” between COVID surges and the deaths.

PHS Scotland says COVID infections “did not appear to have played a role” in the September spate of deaths.

Edinburgh University’s Dr. Sarah Stock said, “The numbers are really troubling,” but admitted she didn’t know the cause of the deaths.

May 16, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Covid-hit Ardern’s unshakeable self-belief

By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | May 16, 2022

So Jacinda Ardern is vaccinated, boosted, wears masks, dutifully isolates – and she has Covid. She is urging us to follow her example. Her self-belief astounds. Words fail me.

I woke at 4am a day or two ago and lay wondering what I could say that might persuade people to reconsider their faith. I fell back to sleep and dreamed I went to a media conference about Covid. I pleaded with the press to realise that freedom of expression was at risk and the whole audience began to laugh at me.

In the morning, I recounted my dream to my family; my daughter reported that she had much the same dream. Of course this was not prophetic dreaming, it is the new normal we have been dreading and now must live every day. Stop the bus, I want to get off.

I have recently been to Wellington, dull party central of the hard-working civil service. It was the Full Monty of mass conformity. Masking was as near 100 per cent as makes no difference.

Now that 2million vaccinated Kiwis have caught Covid, Twitter feeds are full of people worried that the unmasked have been stealing their immunity. They are forming a society of the convinced against all evidence; Jacinda will surely be their hero and president.

This has happened despite increasing evidence that masking does not stop the spread of infection, and a great deal of evidence that it actively harms our health.

A recent study of mask wearing in Finland concluded: ‘According to our analysis, no additional effect seemed to be gained [from mask wearing], based on comparisons between the cities and between the age groups of unvaccinated children.’

It appears to me that science sprinkled on the media is like water off a duck’s back. Even without science, the media are training the public to be (like themselves) oblivious to the obvious. Look at a map of the world, and observe that many countries with the least Covid also have the least vaccination.

I am bombarded everyday with new data analyses which indicate that mRNA vaccination has been ineffective and dangerous. Rather than stopping infection, hospitalisation and death, it is associated with immune deficiency and excess all-cause mortality. The boosters take the biscuit. Are we like lemmings, driven to self-destruct when we are overpopulated?

Meanwhile we are bombarded with calls for censorship of social media and revocation of free speech. The NY Post reports that Nina Jankowicz, a Twitter user tapped by Joe Biden to head his new US agency of disinformation, is demanding the right to correct tweets which she considers false. Jankowicz is well qualified to correct everyone’s understanding of science: she has a BA in political science.

I want to wake up from this dream, but I know that even as I write there are people busy in biolabs around the world creating illnesses, probably with the express intention of mandating me to take their patented vaccine. In most cases, they are funded by government and trumpeted as heroes by the bought media.

As John Maynard Keynes said: ‘Capitalism is the astounding belief that the wickedest of men will do the wickedest of things for the good of everyone.’

Justin Fox, a commentator favoured by the World Economic Forum, author of The Myth of the Rational Market (or should it be World?), writes on May 1 in Bloomberg : ‘The vaccines have been spectacularly effective at preventing severe disease and death . . .’ and continues: ‘. . . scientists wildly underestimated the deadliness of the disease’.

Conceding that Covid vaccination is ineffective at preventing transmission, he mused with us that perhaps only repeated infection and the growth of natural immunity(a concept which NZ government scientists have labelled a conspiracy theory) could defeat Covid, but he left us with this parting shot of government folk wisdom: ‘Wearing masks on buses and subways ought be encouraged even after the mandates go away.’

If you can locate a coherent theme in his article, let me know. Justin Fox is also educated in political science, which says just about all that can be said about mainstream media Covid advice. Our Jacinda would be proud of him.

May 16, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

The Chinese Dimension of Russia’s Coal Business in a New Environment

By Petr Konovalov – New Eastern Outlook – 16.05.2022

Various projects to do away with coal and switch to other fuels that emit less combustion gases have long been discussed in developed countries. Some experts have even begun to predict the imminent demise of the entire global coal industry. One of the reasons for these forecasts has been statements by China, the world’s main coal consumer, that it also wants to reduce its use of coal as much as possible, along with Western countries.

However, despite all these claims, coal is still the cheapest and most transportable fuel, which no country with a developed industry can do without. The global coal trade continues to grow, generating good revenues for its main suppliers, including Russia.

In 2020, the Russian Federation produced about 401 million tons of coal, 199 million of which was exported to other countries.

In 2021, tensions between the PRC and Australia escalated, causing China to stop importing Australian coal and contributing to an increase in Chinese coal purchases from Russia.

By the end of 2021, Russian coal production was about 440 million tons per year, with 227 million tons exported. Thus, both Russian coal production and exports have shown significant growth. Of the above-mentioned coal exports, 129 million tons were sold to the Asia-Pacific region, which is particularly noteworthy because it is specifically this region that has major coal consumers such as China, South Korea and Japan, making the APR market particularly attractive for all coal exporters. China received 53 million tons of Russian coal, 20 million tons more than in 2020, earning Russia $7.4 billion.

In total, the Russian Federation accounted for more than 16% of the global coal market in 2021, 12% of the APR market and 15% of the Chinese market.

Since the Chinese coal situation came rather unexpectedly, the Russian Federation could not fully replace Australia on the Chinese market: most of Russia’s coal exports had already been allocated to other buyers and there was not enough time to multiply production. As a result, faced with an energy crisis, China started importing Australian coal again in late 2021, partly lifting the restrictions. However, the situation at the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022 still looked encouraging for the Russian coal sector. First, experience has shown that China cannot do without coal; Chinese decarbonization projects, which Beijing has been talking about for years, will not be implemented anytime soon – until then, the Celestial Empire will be importing coal. Second, having experienced power shortages without Australian coal, Beijing was able to see that its reliance on one supplier, Australia, was excessive. The tensions with Canberra in 2020-2021 are just one part of the larger political and economic confrontation between China and the West, and there could be many more conflicts ahead for the PRC and Australia. Therefore, to secure its energy sector, China needs to diversify its coal imports, including by further increasing supplies from Russia.

In February 2022, the media reported that Beijing and Moscow were negotiating an intergovernmental agreement under which coal supplies from Russia to China could be increased to 100 million tons per year.

However, at the end of February, a special operation by Russian troops in Ukraine began and the situation changed dramatically. The West has unleashed a torrent of sanctions on Russia, including Western countries starting to reduce imports of Russian hydrocarbons. In March 2022, for example, Russian coal shipments to the EU dropped by around 50%.

Although China is not an ally of the West, Russian coal exports to the Celestial Empire are also on the decline, as Chinese banks have reduced funding for related operations for fear of Western sanctions. The disconnection of a number of Russian banks from the SWIFT international payment system and the fact that most of the coal purchase contracts were in dollars also played a role: the Chinese side has had difficulty making payments.

Some pro-Western media have concluded that the Russian coal industry has suffered serious damage, that trade with China will not compensate for this damage, and that coal exports may not recover to their previous levels. However, such conclusions are rather premature.

Thus, despite the overall decline in the Russian coal exports to the PRC, exports of coking coal, a type of hard coal particularly valuable for the steel industry, increased in the first quarter of 2022. It can be assumed that the decline in Chinese purchases of other types of coal, which are used for winter heating, for example, may be due to the approaching summer period.

China now has a considerable supply of different types of coal, and in the run-up to the warm season, when there is no need for mass home heating, it can afford to reduce coal imports to explore new conditions. By autumn, however, it can be expected that Chinese-Russian coal cooperation will intensify.

As for sanctions-related difficulties, talks began as early as March between Russia and China on settlements in national currencies and on the use of CIPS, China’s equivalent of SWIFT.

It should further be noted that the Chinese side’s caution over the threat of Western sanctions is also a temporary phenomenon, as the PRC’s relations with the West are not good at all, and China may soon fall under its own sanctions regardless of its relations with Russia. Especially in view of certain features of Chinese foreign policy: on May 6, 2022, for example, some 15 Chinese planes entered the airspace of the partially recognized state of Taiwan, which the PRC considers part of its territory. The Taiwanese have scrambled their warplanes and put their air defense forces on alert. Fortunately, the incident ended peacefully. However, since Taiwan is under the protection of the US military, there is no doubt that the incident will further strain Chinese-US relations, and if it continues, the PRC will soon find itself in the same “sanctions boat” as Russia. In this case, Chinese coal imports from Australia are likely to suffer again.

It can therefore be assumed that China is seeking economic independence from the US and its allies, including from Australian coal supplies, and the Chinese leadership is already working out how to circumvent Western sanctions. One can fully expect that joint efforts in this area will soon allow Russia and China to move towards more intensive trade, including in coal and other energy sources.

May 16, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

What happens if US designates Russia ‘a state sponsor of terrorism’?

By Drago Bosnic | May 16, 2022

The designation “state sponsor of terrorism” is used by the US Department of State to unilaterally sanction countries which the US government claims to have “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism”. The State Department is required to maintain the controversial list under special acts passed by the Congress, imposing various restrictions aimed at the economies and international trade relations of the targeted countries.

As of late 2021, State Department lists Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria as “state sponsors of terrorism”, however, there were other countries formerly on the list, such as Iraq, Libya, South Yemen and Sudan. Designating a country as “a state sponsor of terrorism” can affect it in many ways, some of which include:

 – freezing of the targeted country’s financial and real estate assets in the US;

 – requiring the US to prevent efforts of the targeted country to secure World Bank or IMF loans;

 – prohibition on the export of so-called “dual-use products” (items that can be used both for civilian and military purposes);

 – requiring the US to impose economic and other sanctions against countries that continue to do business with the targeted country.

Since Russia started its special military operation in Ukraine, the more hawkish members of the US and NATO establishment have been insisting on the inclusion of Russia on this list. Some, such as the Baltic states, infamous for their virtually endemic Russophobia, already designated Russia as the “state sponsor of terrorism”. Luckily, actions taken by such microstates are largely inconsequential. However, what would happen if some of the larger and more significant NATO and EU members were to take the same course of action?

Considering the controversial designation is aimed not just against the targeted country, but also any third party doing business with it, this would effectively force member states to sanction each other, since many EU and NATO members simply cannot function without trading and dealing with Russia. This includes countries like Hungary, Austria and even Germany, the EU’s largest economy and arguably the most powerful member state. Without Russia’s oil, gas, food, rare earth metals and nonmetals, heavy machinery and many other commodities, these countries would collapse, economically and otherwise.

The designation also directly affects relations within NATO. In case the Congress was to add Russia to the list, possible sanctions wouldn’t just affect the aforementioned EU member states, but also some of the largest and most powerful NATO members, such as Turkey. Ankara has already been sanctioned for the purchase of Russia’s top-of-the-line S-400 surface-to-air missile system. However, the sanctions in the context of trading and dealing with a country designated “a state sponsor of terrorism” would be much more severe. Thousands of private Turkish companies are present in Russia, many of them in the construction business, which directly affects the troubled Turkish economy, currently dealing with enormous inflation and unemployment.

In terms of global relations and trade, such a move would affect the world in ways which are difficult to predict in the long term. However, in short term, it would certainly affect countries such as China and India, dozens of countries in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere, as all these countries would be affected by the third-party sanctions. In doing so, the US would effectively sanction around 80% of the world. This would lead to an uncontrollable escalation of economic collapse in many of these countries, especially in the Middle East and Africa. It would force the US to either implement sanctions on a case-by-case basis, or change the law completely, effectively blunting the effects of sanctions. This would also exponentially accelerate the process of dedollarization, as countries would seek other ways to do business with Russia without US interference.

However, the far-reaching consequences for the global economy would pale in comparison to the resulting security issues. Officially deeming a country with over 6,000 nuclear weapons “a terrorist state” pushes the planet to a brink of a world-ending conflict, as such a designation eases legal restrictions on the use of the US military against the targeted country. Such moves have resulted in rising tensions with North Korea and Iran in previous years. Within the framework of the designation, the US targeted and killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in 2020, to which Iran retaliated by targeting US bases in Iraq.

Even at the height of the Cold War, the US did not sanction the USSR with this designation, which is what makes this move even less logical, since the strategic military situation is still virtually unchanged, with both Russia and the US still relying on the mutually assured destruction (MAD) doctrine. Also, Russia is not without options for a reciprocal response, as it could easily designate the US itself as a state sponsor of terrorism. This designation would hardly just be a (geo)political one, as the US has been providing ample support to a wide range of terrorist actors from at least the 1980s to this very day. Former US State Secretary and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton openly admitted that Al Qaeda was in essence the mujahideen the US funded and armed to fight the USSR in the 1980s.

The same happened in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s, where the US openly worked with Neo-Nazi and terrorist groups to help dismantle former Yugoslavia. During the Arab Spring color revolution which swept through the Middle East and North Africa, the US directly supported dozens of terrorist groups, resulting in the destruction of Syria, Libya and Iraq. US and NATO attempts to rebrand these groups as the so-called “moderate democratic opposition” failed miserably as the terrorists exposed themselves by allying with the Islamic State and even posting videos of gruesome crimes against civilians and POWs. In short, the US should take a long, hard look in the mirror before it even begins contemplating the idea to designate anyone “a state sponsor of terrorism”.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

May 16, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

‘Finns & Swedes won’t benefit from NATO’

Samizdat | May 16, 2022

NATO membership won’t make Finland and Sweden more secure, but would likely see them fighting somebody else’s wars and hosting American bases, Dr. Jan Oberg, director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, has told RT.

“It’s a disastrous decision,” Oberg said on Sunday, following an official declaration by the Finnish government that it is planning to join the US-led military bloc. Hours later, a similar announcement was made by the ruling party in Sweden. The two Nordic nations stayed out of NATO during the Cold War, but their governments said Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has become a game-changer.

Finland and Sweden have failed to carry out “long-term consequence analysis,” he added. “Nobody seems to ask whether NATO is the right thing to join. After all these years since 1945, NATO has proven that it’s not able to deliver what taxpayers are paying for, namely stability, peace and security… and then Finland and Sweden say: ‘We’ll join this failed organization,’” he remarked.

“We have to ask ourselves: ‘Who caused the conflict [between Moscow and Kiev]?’ Everybody talks about the Russian invasion, which I deplore too, but underlying that is the conflict, which has to do with the NATO expansion,” the peace researcher said.

Making sure Ukraine becomes a neutral country that will never join NATO has been cited by Moscow as one of the main reasons for its ongoing military operation.

Oberg said he understood Russia’s concerns about the expansion of the bloc towards its borders. “If I was sitting in Moscow, I would feel that this was threatening,” he observed, referring to Finland and Sweden’s possible membership. “When you move troops up to the very border on both sides you increase tension; you decrease reaction time; you do all the things you shouldn’t do strategically if peace was your goal. Peace is not the goal of these people.”

The military-industrial complex – “those who sell weapons and profit from wars” – will gain from NATO adding two new members, he said. “The Swedish people and the Finnish people will not benefit from this. It’ll be completely new for them that they are now supposed to participate… in somebody else’s wars.”

With the US pushing for bases in Denmark and Norway, “are we to believe that there will not be American bases or American troops or something, you know, more permanent in Sweden and Finland?” he wondered.

NATO membership would also be “opening these countries for potential nuclearism that should never have been done in this particular area,” the peace researcher added.

Oberg said it was “appalling” that the governments in Helsinki and Stockholm didn’t put the issue to a referendum. “This is unheard of with such an important decision as joining NATO.”

While opinion polls have shown an overwhelming support for NATO membership in Finland, in Sweden the idea was backed by less than 50% of the public, he noted. “I’m amazed that there’s so little public discussion, so little uproar in terms of huge demonstrations in large cities in Sweden,” the scholar said.

He blamed the media, of which “80% to 90% is pro-NATO,” for this situation. “It’s very difficult to get into the media today with an alternative view… There’s no democracy and free media practice in this,” Oberg insisted.

Jan Oberg is a Danish-Swedish peace researcher, who received his doctorate from Lund University in Sweden. He taught courses in several countries, including Japan, Austria and Switzerland.

In 1986, the scholar co-founded the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Futures Research (TFF), an independent think tank aimed at promoting conflict-mitigation and achieving peace through peaceful means around the globe. He assisted on-the-ground work in ex-Yugoslavia, Georgia, Burundi, Iraq, Iran and Syria. In 2013, Oberg and TTF were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their activities.

May 16, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Europe looks to Israel for natural gas

Samizdat | May 16, 2022

Deliveries of Israeli natural gas via Turkey to Europe are being considered as an alternative to Russian energy supply, Turkish newspaper Yeni Şafak reported on Monday.

“Israeli gas is considered as an option, its route is planned via Turkey, through the Eastern Mediterranean,” the paper reported, adding that, in case of such an agreement, “it is expected that the Turkish ship will be on duty during transmission periods.”

The report also highlighted that “focusing on deep-water drilling for the extraction of oil and natural gas from the seas, Turkey has included a fourth drilling vessel in its fleet.”

The new drilling ship, which left South Korea on March 7, is expected to arrive in Turkey on May 19. “A new generation ship that will serve in the Eastern Mediterranean, will begin its first mission in July after two months of preparatory work, it will facilitate deep-sea exploration and dredging in the Mediterranean,” the newspaper said.

The ship can reportedly operate at depths of up to 3,600 meters, and is capable of drilling up to 12,200 meters.

In March, media reported that a Turkey-Israel gas pipeline was being discussed behind the scenes as one of Europe’s alternatives to Russian energy. The idea, first conceived years ago, is to build a subsea pipeline from Turkey to Israel’s largest offshore natural gas field, Leviathan. Gas would flow to Turkey and on to southern Europe looking to diversify away from Russia.

Industry officials, however, have warned of production restraints and geopolitical factors that could leave the plan dead in the water. Lebanon has claimed that the gas field extends into its waters.

May 16, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Did the CIA train Ukrainian torturers?

Journalist reports similarities between Ukrainian and American torture techniques

By Lucas Leiroz | May 16, 2022

Western media accuse Russia of perpetrating war crimes in Ukraine and committing human rights violations against civilians and prisoners. However, these same agencies are absolutely silent in the face of the evident practices of torture by Kiev’s agents against their enemies, which, curiously, present several similarities with the already known torture techniques applied by the CIA, according to a recent report by a journalist. The matter raises suspicions about a possible “instruction” that would be transmitted by American intelligence to Ukrainian neo-Nazis on “how to torture”.

On May 6, a meeting was held at the United Nations Security Council in order to discuss topics concerning the war crimes committed by Kiev against the population of Donbass during the eight years of conflict. Various evidence was presented, showing that such crimes are real and constitute indeed a serious problem in the region. The proofs included photos, videos, oral testimonies from residents of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as many other materials collected by journalists on the ground.

One of the journalist team’s leaders is the Dutch independent reporter Sonja van den Ende, who categorically claims that there is irrefutable evidence of the collaboration between Ukrainian official forces and neo-Nazi battalions in the execution of such crimes, showing that the practice is institutionalized and not restricted to isolated paramilitary groups. She also states that, despite the material presented, some Western countries – mainly US, UK, and France – showed an “arrogant” attitude, being disrespectful to the delicacy of the subject and ignoring the evidence of suffering of the people of Donbass, as well as despising the work of journalists.

These were some of her words: “I participated in the UN Security Council Arria-Formula meeting on 6 May 2022 (…) The goal of this meeting was to present to the United Nations (UN) members evidence about war crimes committed by the Ukrainian Army in cooperation with the Azov Battalion which was provided by us, journalists on the ground, in Donbass. The evidence was presented in the form of videos and oral testimonies, from residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, especially Mariupol, Volnovakha and Melitiopol (…) [However] They (Western countries) completely ignored us and didn’t ask any questions (…) I personally made some remarks at the end of the meeting. I asked them if they want WWIII and why they don’t listen to us, the journalists, who are working on the ground”.

More than simply ignoring the gravity of the facts, the representatives of the Western powers even tried to deny the irrefutable evidence of such crimes. Rodney Hunter, political coordinator for the US Mission to the United Nations, claimed that Russia was “misusing” the Council’s functions and “spewing falsehoods, disinformation, lies and false narratives”. He ignored the fact that the accusations were not simply “made by Russia” but corroborated by an international team of journalists.

In fact, this Western attitude was already expected by all analysts who study the Ukrainian case. Silence and disdain have already become central hallmarks of the way Kiev’s allies deal with the countless evidence of war crimes, genocide and torture committed by the Ukrainian armed forces and Russophobic neo-Nazi militias. Russia has been trying to resolve the case in international instances for a long time, but without success, as is the case with the lawsuit filed within the European Court and ignored by the judges. The impossibility of peaceful resolution was one of the reasons why the military operation became inevitable.

What seems most shocking, however, is the fact that the reports pointed out by Van den Ende state as a conclusion that there is a similarity in practices between the acts of torture witnessed in the Donbass and those practiced by US agents in other parts of the world. Some of the journalists who participated in the investigations in Donbass, including Sonja herself, had previously participated in similar activities elsewhere, investigating crimes of torture committed by Americans. These professionals see an extreme similarity of practices in both cases and believe that this is not a mere coincidence.

The Dutch journalist stated that the torture techniques she saw practiced in a secret Ukrainian prison in Mariupol are strikingly similar to those practiced by the CIA in clandestine detention sites around the world. These techniques include acts of extreme violence, such as the so-called “enhanced interrogations”, where the interrogated are physically hurt in order to give information – a practice that was already confirmed by the US Senate, in 2014, to have been used by the CIA against prisoners.

Furthermore, Van den Ende claims that she has found evidence that Ukrainian neo-Nazis practice the so-called “waterboarding”, a drowning technique that is also widely used by the CIA, which leads her to believe that the Azov Battalion and other Ukrainian nationalist militias have been specifically trained by the Americans on “how to torture” their detainees.

Considering the high level of proximity between US intelligence and Ukrainian neo-Nazis, it does not seem surprising that the US has in fact operated some sort of clandestine training, teaching torture techniques considered “efficient”. What is surprising is that international organizations remain silent in the face of such an absurd fact. Something so serious cannot in any way be ignored: sanctions must be applied against the US for its connivance with Ukrainian crimes in Donbass.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

May 16, 2022 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

Romania Accuses Eurovision of Changing Their Vote to Give First Place to Ukraine

EBU replaced the votes of six different countries

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | May 16, 2022

Romanian broadcaster TVR has accused the European Broadcasting Union of assigning a different set of scores to the ones they provided, incorrectly giving the highest score to Ukraine, which went on to win the competition.

The Ukrainian band Kalush Orchestra easily won the competition, finishing on 631 points, with the United Kingdom in second place with 466 points.

However, despite the margin of victory, the official Romanian Eurovision representatives complained that the EBU ignored their vote to give Moldova first place and instead awarded it to Ukraine.

“We were surprised to discover that the result of the Romanian jury’s vote was not taken into account in the calculation of the final ranking,” said TVR in a statement. “The organizers assigned a different set of points to the participants of the final, on behalf of the jury of our country. We specify that the Romanian jury decided to give maximum score to the representatives of Moldova.”

Representatives of each country also normally appear on the live broadcast to announce their country’s voting results, but Romania’s Eda Marcus was nowhere to be seen.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) responded by claiming they had noticed “irregular voting patterns” which “forced them to replace scores from six countries: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino.”

“In order to comply with the voting instructions of the competition, the EBU collaborated with its voting partner to calculate a replacement aggregate result for each country concerned, both for the second semi-final and for the grand final (calculated on the basis of the results of other countries with a similar voting history),” they said in a statement.

In the final vote tally, neither Romania or Moldova awarded any points to each other, something that would never happen in reality.

TVR said Eurovision organizers had “replaced the jury score in Romania with a ‘substitute’ calculated in a non-transparent way,” and had not even informed them of what they were doing during the competition.

Although part of the vote is also down to the viewing public, the claims suggest that there may have been some chicanery behind the scenes to ensure Ukraine won the competition, thereby fulfilling a preset narrative to support ‘the current thing’.

The Eurovision Song Contest is notoriously political and has been beset by similar voting scandals in the past.

May 16, 2022 Posted by | Deception | | Leave a comment

HOW IS THIS A THING? 15TH OF MAY 2022

Computing Forever | May 15, 2022 

Sources:

  1. NSW government to charge drivers by kilometre in latest CBD tax | 9 News Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_pS4NaT6nI
  2. Farmers – essential and non-essential journeys: https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/news/farmers-to-get-up-to-1000-to-grow-silage-41608276.html
  3. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/geo-engineering-research-the-government-s-view/uk-governments-view-on-greenhouse-gas-removal-technologies-and-solar-radiation-management
  4. https://www.gov.uk/vaccine-damage-payment

5. https://expose-news.com/2022/05/07/medicine-regulators-blame-covid-jabs-hepatitis-children/

6. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/25/top-us-scientists-back-100m-geoengineering-research-proposal

May 16, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

No sympathy for widows from the vaccine zealots

By Laura Perrins | TCW Defending Freedom | May 16, 2022

DEAR reader, I’m going to tell you something and you are not going to like it. People don’t care about you. Deep down, deep, deep down, people who don’t know you don’t really care about you. Not really. Not in any way that matters.

As many readers will know, all last week Mark Steyn interviewed victims of the Covid vaccine. They include widows whose husbands were killed by the vaccine, and survivors who were left with life-changing injuries from the vaccine. If you haven’t watched them, please do try to catch up on YouTube, or at Mark’s website.

As I sat through these testimonies, what struck me was the quiet dignity of the widows and survivors. They were all articulate and dignified. Some were careful to say they were not anti-vax; they just wanted to be listened to, their loss acknowledged and adequately compensated for by a government that forced them to take this vaccine. (And once we look at the propaganda and emotional blackmail it was coercion.)

Some other disgusting journalist took issue with Mark interviewing these victims, saying he was ‘exploiting’ them. Nothing could be further from the truth. The only reason Mark Steyn ended up with these interviews is because every other media outlet ignored them. The government ignored them, the vaccine manufacturers ignored them and the media, who usually would be all over stories like this, ignored them.

There was no rage or anger but plenty of bemusement, bewilderment and hurt as to why and how these victims could be treated like this. The most repeated phrase was that the victims were not scared about getting Covid themselves, but they did not want to spread it to others, they were told to get the vaccine, and they wanted to do the ‘right thing’.

At this point, I felt genuine pity for them. They trusted the government, they trusted the mainstream media and they were injured for it. I especially felt for Charlotte Wright whose husband, Dr Stephen Wright, had died leaving sons aged seven and one.

Those boys, Izaac and Elijah, will grow up without their father because he took a vaccine he did not need. Those boys were told, Daddy is not coming home, ever. To lose a father is bad enough. To lose a father because your government coerced him to have a vaccine is an outrage. Not even to compensate the family is evil.

We now know the vaccines do not stop transmission. As such, why healthy people who had no underlying conditions were told to take them should be subject to a public inquiry. In fact, the population were not just told to take them – they were shamed, bullied and threatened with dismissal from their jobs and civil society itself if they didn’t take them. Leading commentators – Andrew Neil, Piers Morgan, Claire Cohen – advocated for a system of apartheid and punishment for ‘vaccine refuseniks.’ These vaccine victims didn’t stand a chance.

At one point I did seriously consider getting the vaccine. I had just the baby and the government propaganda was seeping even into our No BBC house. I also worried about my husband. I worried that one of us would catch Covid and die leaving the four kids. It didn’t make any sense, but everyone breaks sometimes. Everyone. Luckily, a friend called me and told me to pull myself together and that I stood a much greater chance of being injured by the vaccine than Covid. So that moment passed.

Which brings me back to people not caring. When I considered getting this vaccine, what also stopped me is that for all the talk of ‘do the right thing’, I knew that if my husband died from it, no one other than close family and friends would care. Ultimately Matt Hancock was not going to call at my door and say, Don’t worry you are not going to starve to death even though your husband has died.

If I got injured and couldn’t drive, which would devastate the workings of the family, Claire Cohen wasn’t going to rock up and say, Don’t worry, I’ll do the school run. Childless Andrew ‘Punish refuseniks’ Neil certainly wasn’t going to take the baby if I could barely carry him. Neil had his house in the South of France to retreat to – so shut up and take your vaccine.

Ultimately, these people don’t care. They don’t care because they have never once recognised the injuries caused by the vaccine they so passionately advocated for. They don’t care because from my viewpoint they have never once written about it, or had the victims on their shows.

The same goes for the ordinary public. The bottom line is we all have a limited supply of sympathy and empathy to go around, and if we felt every loss we couldn’t get out of bed. But to advocate in such strong terms for a vaccine that has killed and injured people – that was morally abhorrent.

May 15, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Look Away Now: This Article Contains Dangerous Warning Signals

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | May 13, 2022

At the back end of February we wrote about the known problem of underreporting of adverse effects related to new and novel pharmaceutical products.

The article referenced Andreas Schöfbeck, a director of a large German medical insurer, who had taken a reporting action that had caused a bit of a stir.

His company’s data indicated that serious adverse effects (not just any side effects) are running at approximately 10 times the official rate reported by the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), the German vaccine regulator. Mr Schöfbeck got summarily fired for his troubles, despite only calling for further analysis.

What point is observing a warning signal if you do not act on it? After all, in the words of the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), his actions might have ‘made a lifetime of difference for others’. If it saves one life…

Two months on, a large study at the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin (a large medical research university owned by the Federal State of Berlin in Germany) has come up with data from a long-term observational study.

It looks like Mr Schöfbeck was on the money. In fact, the situation seems potentially even worse than Mr Schöfbeck postulated:

The number of serious complications after vaccinations against Sars-CoV-2 is 40 times higher than previously recorded by the Paul Ehrlich Institute. This is one of the results of a long-term observational study by the Berlin Charité.

They show that suspected cases are not officially reported. And so the numbers of serious vaccination reactions at the Paul Ehrlich Institute, at 0.2 reports per 1,000 vaccine doses, are also significantly lower than in the Charité study”.

Such underreporting rates are standard, and in fact inline with precedent: the MHRA expects factors of between 10x and 50x:

It is estimated that only 10% of serious reactions and between 2 and 4% of non-serious reactions are reported.

Mr Schöfbeck will be sleeping well tonight, safe in the knowledge that he has done his bit in reporting appropriate warning signals. He fulfilled his fiduciary duties to his customers and shareholders – and his moral duties to humanity – by following regulators’ exhortations to gather and report appropriate safety data.

No-one should ever lose their livelihood for such an act. As the MHRA says, it could make a lifetime of difference for others and surely on a human level, everyone has a moral duty to make known such life-threatening facts.

May 15, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Ukraine War

BY ISRAEL SHAMIR • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 14, 2022

The immediate beginning of the trouble was a Geneva summit between two presidents that apparently went wrong. We don’t know what went wrong. The pro-Western Russian officials ran away to Georgia and Israel; they are being replaced by anti-Western officials. This East-West break will not be reversed with ease.

Russians are very similar to Ukrainians. Both are stubborn fighters. Throughout the 20th century they chose different strategies: Russians became internationalists, Ukrainians preferred nationalism. The Ukrainian nationalism was anti-Russian, while Russians harbored no negative feeling towards Ukrainians. It was natural for Ukrainians to flirt with anti-Russian powers. Yet when Ukrainian officials began to declare themselves NATO allies, even the most international Russians became alarmed.

Both Rome’s Pope and Noam Chomsky were capable of understanding the immediate casus belli behind Ukraine: NATO had barked at Putin’s door, and he reacted. In December 2021 Putin diplomatically proposed that NATO withdraw to its mid-1990’s line, and moreover he suggested that peaceful discussion about NATO’s borders might prevent future conflict. Putin proposed an international agreement on NATO’s borders, a political solution that everyone could agree on. This proposal was disregarded with nonchalance; NATO refused to discuss the idea. Putin was rightfully irritated. Further attempts to argue across the West/East divide weren’t successful. The West declined Putin’s politics. And the war began.

NATO began shipping in armaments and ammunition, and deployed their spies. Their intelligence gathering allowed them to sink a big Russian ship named Moscow. They provided the coordinates in real-time for Russian ships and planes. From the very beginning it was clear that Russia fights NATO more than Ukrainians, who they consider to be brothers. This wartime pathos was quite an unexpected development. Putin had always been known as a soft leader; he refused to be drawn into wars. Russia has avoided war for many years under Putin’s rule; and generations of Russians have become used to a peaceful and prosperous life. Suddenly, by circumstances beyond their control, they have been switched to life under war and sanctions.

Fortunately for everyone, the war in Ukraine has practically dried up. The Ukrainian leadership desperately begs for UN help to keep the war going, as if the Azov Battalion and the rest of the violent, cruel, thuggish militants need to be paid to shoot people. US Democrats have drafted a nearly $40 billion Ukraine War aid package, which was recently single-handedly blocked by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. The Ukraine War has become a political football in the USA. Both the Neocons on the right and the Neoliberals on the left hope to ride this war into Congress.In hindsight there were plenty of warnings. Russians were blocked from the Olympic games by an international conspiracy of blatant hypocrisy. Russian athletes were accused of doping. Now, Western athletes also use doping, but they know how to get around the rules. The Norwegians claimed they have asthma, and they need special performance-enhancing drugs to heal it. The Americans had excuses of their own, and so did the athletes of many other nations. Russian RUSADA man Mr. Grigori Rodchenkov was bribed by the US to deliver proof of Russian doping. The Russians claim the evidence was falsified. In any case the Russian official defected westward, in a step unseen since the Cold War. Russia was tagged as a pariah throughout the games; she was not allowed to play her national anthem nor display her flag. Russians have been persecuted by the Olympic establishment for generations. There is an undeclared war against Russian athletes; here is the full story. The pattern is undeniable. Russian athletes are routinely penalized for activities that other nations practice with impunity. This has to stop.

Russians are unhappy with war as a solution for the Ukraine crisis. They speak of “betrayal”, and that means the political steam behind the offensive is getting thin. Instead, Russians think they can derail the NATO war and the international sanctions by judiciously withholding Europe’s gas and oil. The Arab Oil Embargo brought the US to its knees in the 1970’s using just that strategy. NATO exists to fight wars; bringing war to NATO simply feeds it. The only way to defeat NATO is to starve it. Russia has great quantities of oil, gas and wheat. She produces aluminum, iron, coal, steel, titanium and cheap electricity. The Russian economy has been called “bulletproof” because of its ability to withstand geopolitical shocks.

How exactly are sanctions hurting Russia? Banking freezes are simply pushing Russia into the waiting arms of China, which literally has an unlimited need for Russian energy and commodities. The US Petrodollar is on the cusp of being denominated in Roubles. Stories of boycotts by Twitter, Facebook and Pornhub underscore the ludicrous nature of Western sanctions. “EU blacklists Abramovich, targets energy, luxury sectors…” It seems that only Russia’s Jewish Mafia will be hurt by the international sanctions. The efficacy of Western sanctions is being wildly exaggerated by the Western media and the implacable coming of winter has always been a harbinger of Russian victory. As Biden says, “It will be a very Dark Winter.”

Germany needs Russian energy. It always has. It always will. There is simply no other option for Germany. As the home base of NATO, Germany is in a unique position to forge a lasting peace with Russia. Germans might benefit greatly from increased trade to the East along such routes as the China-Europe Railway Express, but they remain choked by their old millstones. The business of war is no longer profitable. The big players are now supplying China with everything it needs to manufacture the world’s wealth, and Russia is in a unique position to be a major producer. The rest of Europe is also conveniently located to benefit from the new Chinese empire, if they could only cease squabbling long enough to draw a profit. The dying Anglo-American empire is the only entity that profits from division along the Eurasian continent.

May 15, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment