Under the influence: Sunak and the Net Zero zealots who surround him
By Stephen McMurray | TCW Defending Freedom | December 1, 2022
Who are the people fuelling the British government’s obsession with Net Zero, an obsession that is fast leading to the country’s economic destruction – to ‘zero energy supplies, zero growth, zero food and zero hope’ as Stephen McMurray put it in TCW yesterday. The first part of his investigation into the elite and privileged group exerting their influence over Prime Minister Rishi Sunak concentrated on the ‘Friends of COP26’. Today his focus turns on the influence of the climate zealot MPs, peers and Sunak’s family ties.
AS noted, various Friends of COP26 have links to the UK government, but there is another group of Net Zero promoters linked to the UK parliament who may also have undue influence over Rishi Sunak. These are Peers for the Planet, members of the House of Lords who have even established their own limited company. They, too, wrote a letter to Sunak urging him to attend COP27. They have also previously written to him to push him to follow the Net Zero agenda.
Peers for the Planet is funded by various organisations, one of which is the Laudes Foundation. One of the members of the Laudes advisory council is Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, member of the WEF Global Future Council on the Future of Production and a Friend of COP26.
Baroness Haymanis the co-chair of Peers for the Planet. She is a shareholder in Standard Chartered Bank and Alphabet, Google’s parent company. She is also chairperson for the charity Malaria No More, the former president of which was the Net Zero obsessive and promoter of the Great Reset, King Charles III. In 2019 Malaria No More UK received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for more than $8million dollars.
Baroness Hayman has shares in LVMH Moet Hennessy SA, the Louis Vuitton company that specialises in luxury goods, wine and spirits. (The winemaking business is one of the worst industries for carbon emissions.) The company also owns luxury hotels.
The other co-chair of Peers for the Planet is Baroness Worthington, who has her own company, Worthington and Associates, which provides clients with ‘climate change communications and philanthropy advice’. She is also a director of Jupiter Green Investment Trustfocusing on ‘green solutions’.
Another group is the all-party Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group (PRASEG) comprising 125 MPs who are pushing for Net Zero. The chair of this group is Conservative MP Bim Afolami. Last year members attended the COP26 conference where, according to Mr Afolami: ‘It was a pleasure to join the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation [founded by Sir Chris Hohn, for whose hedge fund Sunak worked] to host senior politicians including the Chair of the Select Committee for BEIS, the Shadow Secretary of State for BEIS, the PPS to the COP26 President and leading authorities on climate change and geopolitics from Chatham House and the Climate Change Committee. We discussed the UK’s role in scaling global renewable energy and the challenges of encouraging a swift and just energy transition.’ Baroness Hayman was also in attendance.
It is surely inconceivable that Rishi Sunak, with his background in government and banking, would not be influenced by all these people, with their links to banking, investment funds, the World Economic Forum, Big Tech and Bill Gates. There are simply far too many powerful, influential people pushing the madness of Net Zero for him to ignore. However, he could also be under the influence of those closer to home.
Sunak’s sister, Raakhi Williams, has worked extensively for the Department of International Development and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development office. It was in this latter role that she was one of the chief organisers of COP26.
In a talk she later gave to schoolchildren she stated that she led the Adaptation-Loss Damage Day at the conference, pushing the need for climate reparations.
Her husband is Peter Williams, CEO of the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction who has consulted for the World Bank and the Gates Foundation and is dedicated to following the UNs sustainable development goals and, of course, pushing the Net Zero agenda. The board of the IIRR is filled with people with a background in banking.
The person in Rishi Sunak’s family who could assert the most influence over him is his father-in-law, N R Narayana Murthy, referred to by some as ‘India’s Bill Gates’. He is the billionaire founder of the IT company Infosys. Sunak’s wife Akshata is a shareholder and one of the wealthiest women in the UK. Infosys is part of the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders who wrote an open letter to the world leaders at COP27 emphasising how important it was to continue the push towards Net Zero and provide financial incentives to renewable energy companies.
Murthy is a regular at World Economic Forum conferences and co-chaired the forum in 2005 with Bill Gates amongst others.
Infosys formed an alliance with Microsoft to train IT specialists, with Bill Gates meeting Murthy at Infosys’s Bangalore premises in 2002. The company later joined forces with the Gates Foundation to fund a project to help teach computer science to children around the world.
Murthy has been on the advisory board of numerous organisations including the Ford Foundation, the UN Foundation and Unilever. Kate Hampton, Friend of COP26 and the CEO of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the charity arm of Sunak’s old hedge fund, was also on the advisory board of Unilever, and another Friend of COP26, Paul Polman, was its former CEO. Moreover, Sunak’s wife also worked there at one point.
Unilever was one of the main sponsors of COP26. They were also involved in COP27. They say, ‘An important part of Unilever’s own climate work is using our voice and influence for good. At COP27, we’re asking governments to take more ambitious climate action and start building resilience for the future by setting out stronger national plans with more ambitious targets that accelerate action and ensuring a fair and just transition to a net zero future by unlocking finance and investment for decarbonisation and resilience in developing countries . . .’
In other words, they are pushing for climate reparations.
Interestingly when Sunak was Chancellor he hired an ex-CEO of Unilever, Vindi Banga, to be the Chair of UK Government Investments (UKGI). Banga was a leader at the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact Summit. UKGI is supposed to be responsible for managing government assets in the best interests of the UK public. On the surface it would seem odd, therefore, that Banga is a partner in the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier and Rice (CD&R) who like to acquire British Companies for themselves. However, when you realise that Sunak thinks foreign investors buying up British companies is a good thing, it makes more sense.
CD&R were recently involved in the acquisition of the Morrisons supermarket group. This was controversial because Morrisons owns 339 petrol stations and, as CD&R own a company called Motor Fuel Group which has 921 petrol stations, it was thought that this could lead to a lack of competition and higher petrol prices.
Why would Mr Banga, an advocate of sustainable development i.e. Net Zero, be buying petrol stations? Perhaps it’s because CD&R’s Motor Fuel Group is going to spend $400million transforming petrol stations into EV charge stations and the more stations they acquire the more the public who own petrol cars will be forced off the road.
In conclusion, whether Sunak’s decision to go to COP27 was because he was cajoled by Friends of COP26, condemned by his buddies in the banking fraternity, harassed by MPs or peers, berated by his sister and brother-in-law or chastised by his father-in-law, it is clear that he is under the influence of Net Zero zealots from every angle.
The only people who he doesn’t seem to listen to are the citizens of the United Kingdom who are daily becoming more aware that the climate crisis is one big global money-making scheme for billionaires, bankers and investors, orchestrated by globalists like the World Economic Forum using the mainstream media to promulgate decades of fear-mongering propaganda based on dodgy computer modelling, voodoo science and preposterous predictions.
The whole scheme is then enforced by banking cartels refusing to loan money to anyone not buying into their apocalyptic vision, gleefully advocating that businesses which don’t comply should go bankrupt and forcing governments to legislate businesses and the public into submission. Meanwhile, behind the scenes they are investing in everything ‘green’ they can get their hands on to enrich themselves even further whilst the country hurtles towards economic and social Armageddon.
When someone is driving under the influence it is prudent to remove them from the vehicle and take away their access to it. Something similar needs to happen to Rishi Sunak and this political class of Net Zero apostles of the climate cult before we are driven over the edge and into the abyss from which there is no return.
Parent groups revolt over French power outage plan
RT | December 3, 2022
Closing schools to combat the energy crisis in France is unacceptable, French parents’ groups announced this week, after the government instructed regional authorities to brace for potential localized power outages.
Schools were not prioritized by planners in the event of limits to the energy supply network during the winter.
“Parents do not want school closures. We have seen the impact of closures on students,” Valerie Desouche, Deputy Secretary of the National Union of Autonomous Parents’ Associations (UNAAPE), told BFM TV on Thursday, referring to the lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic.
She added that it was “unthinkable” not to treat schools as a priority during the energy crisis.
“We want schools to be open at all costs,” Desouche said. “We can’t put children’s education second.”
Vice President of the Federation of Parents for Public Education (PEEP) Laurent Zameczkowski also urged that schools be prioritized, saying “During the health crisis, we did everything to keep the schools open, and now the energy crisis will be the reason [to shut them down]?”
The group released a statement on Wednesday, arguing that “energy austerity cannot be done at the expense of the health and the future of students.”
According to France Info radio, the government plan entails potential outages between 8am and 1pm and between 6pm and 8pm that could last for up to two hours. Priority sites include hospitals, police stations and fire stations, but not schools, which could be forced to cancel some lessons.
“We are not saying that there are going to be power cuts, but that it is not impossible,” government spokesman Olivier Veran said on Thursday. France, together with many other European countries, has been looking for ways to conserve energy and been bracing for possible outages as Western states try to curb Russian oil and gas exports as part of sanctions over the Ukraine conflict.
Switzerland, Facing an Unprecedented Power Shortage, Contemplates a Partial Ban on the Use of Electric Vehicles
It turns out that you can have battery-powered cars, or you can have renewable energy, but you can’t have both.

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | December 1, 2022
The Swiss Confederation usually imports electricity from France and Germany to keep the lights on over the winter, but this year neither country has any power to spare. Many French nuclear power plants are down after years of postponed maintenance, while in Germany we suffer from a superfluity of idle wind turbines and a (self-imposed) shortage of natural gas.
The Federal Council of Switzerland has therefore published draft legislation, which outlines four tiers of escalating measures to conserve electricity and avert potential blackouts. The first prescribes a lot of temperature restrictions for things like refrigerators and washing machines. The second includes more unusual rules, such as the demand that heating in clubs and discotheques “be set to the lowest level or switched off completely,” and that “streaming services … limit resolution of their content to standard definition.” The third foresees cutting business hours, banning the use of Blue Ray players and gaming computers, and also limiting the use of electric cars, which should be driven only when absolutely necessary. A fourth and final tier mandates closure of ski facilities, casinos, cinemas, theatre and the opera.
A lot of these rules look unenforceable, but they said the same thing about contact restrictions during the pandemic. It turns out that the state really can prevent you from socialising with people in your own home if it wants to, especially when there’s no shortage of prying neighbours eager to snitch.
Feasibility isn’t the point, though. It’s the optics here that are most astounding. Electric vehicles, which politicians have heavily subsidised as one of their primary policy responses to climate change, are just now crashing against that other great arm of the green agenda, namely renewable energy. You can’t drive everyone into ever greater dependence upon the electrical grid, while also orchestrating an energy transition to wind (which hardly blows in Germany, except in the north) and solar (which generates no meaningful power in the depths of the Central European winter). Gas from Russia was the magic ingredient that kept the whole renewables charade going, and we’re out of that now. There’s no way to cover up the failure; not even the green-friendly German media has any excuse or messaging angle here.
Protesters rally near derailed train with NATO hardware
RT | December 3, 2022
A group of Greek protesters gathered near a train carrying NATO equipment that derailed on Friday. The demonstrators were rallying against the presence of US military bases in Greece and the involvement of Western countries in the Ukraine conflict.
The train went off the tracks near the port of Alexandroupolis in northeastern Greece. According to local media, it was heading to the Balkan and Baltic states as part of NATO’s campaign to ramp up defenses against Russia.
It was transporting tanks, armored vehicles, and a number of containers.
The accident happened when the train was moving at a slow speed, and a wheel on one car leaned to the side due to the heavy cargo and slipped off the track, local media reported. Following the accident, cranes and other equipment were moved in to salvage the military hardware. There have been no reports of any injuries or damage to the equipment.
According to footage posted to social media, roughly a dozen people held a protest close to the train. The participants cried out a slogan: “Alexandroupolis is the port of the people, not the stronghold of the imperialists.”
“No participation in the war in Ukraine“ and “let the military bases and the Americans get out,” they said.
In May of this year, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias claimed that the port of Alexandroupolis would play a crucial role in supporting the US military presence in the country. Moreover, amid the Ukraine conflict, the city has become a key hub for US forces, who have been using it to deliver war material. In August, The New York Times reported, citing unnamed US officials, that the equipment was meant solely for use by American units on NATO territory, and not for Ukraine.
The new demonstration comes after this past spring Greek railway workers refused to transport US and NATO armored vehicles from Alexandroupolis to the borders of Ukraine, with several activists throwing red paint on the Western equipment.
Macron wants more Twitter censorship to stop people saying “crazy things” about vaccines, pandemics, and war
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 2, 2022
French President Emmanuel Macron criticized Twitter’s owner Elon Musk for relaxing content censorship policies on the platform, arguing that content on Twitter needs more regulation. Macron made the comments in an appearance on ABC News ahead of his visit to The White House.
Macron said that democracies are under “very strong pressure” from forces like social media where users can say “crazy things about a vaccine, a pandemic, the war.”
This week, Musk said he would relax content moderation policies surrounding topics like the coronavirus.
Good Morning America and ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos said, “He’s making it worse, isn’t he?”
“I think this is a big issue,” Macron responded. “I think it deserves to be largely engaged. What I push very much for, want, is exactly the opposite – more regulation.”
Macron further argued that speech in a democracy has to be “based on respect and political order.”
The French President added: “You can demonstrate, you can have free speech, you can write what you want – but there is responsibilities and limits. The limits is you cannot go in the streets and have racist speech, or antisemitic speech, you cannot put at risk the life of someone else. Violence is never legitimate in democracy.”
Macron also criticized former US President Donald Trump, whose Twitter account was recently restored after an almost two-year ban after the January 6, 2021, riot at the US capitol.
“When in one of the biggest democracies and oldest democracies in the world, you can have a leader and supporters deciding on purpose to refuse the results because this is the one they didn’t want to see, this is just the beginning of the end of the democracy,” Macron said.
Earlier this week, regulators in the European Union warned Musk that Twitter could be banned in the region or face fines if it does not enforce content censorship policies. Musk was also warned about the arbitrary reinstatement of previously banned accounts. The new owner said he would grant “general amnesty” to banned accounts that had not broken the law or spammed.
New Zealand admits it has direct access to Facebook takedown portal where it can flag content for censorship
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | December 2, 2022
New Zealand’s government has officially admitted that it has partner access to Facebook’s controversial content takedown portal.
This portal is designed specifically for government agencies to flag content to Facebook for censorship. According to The Intercept, which reported on the portal in October, government partners can also use the portal to “report disinformation directly” to Facebook.
And in a recent response to a New Zealand Official Information Act (OIA) request, which asked whether the government has partner access to Facebook’s takedown portal, the New Zealand government confirmed that the Department of Internal Affairs has access. While this was the only government department that was confirmed to have access to the portal, the OIA response also said “we cannot advise if any other government agency has access to the takedown portal.”
We obtained a copy of the OIA response for you here.
The OIA response didn’t detail how much content had been censored via this Facebook takedown portal. However, other reports on similar types of backdoor content takedown arrangements between governments and Big Tech have shown that governments regularly use them to target legal content such as parody accounts, accounts questioning the effectiveness of Covid vaccines, and so-called election misinformation.”
Publicly, the New Zealand government has endorsed the censorship of legal content with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saying “disinformation” should be regulated like guns, bombs, and nuclear weapons. Big Tech companies have also agreed to a censorship pact in the country where they suppress “misinformation” and “harmful content.”
Most other governments haven’t admitted that they have access to these portals. However, last year The White House did admit that the United States (US) Surgeon General’s Office is flagging posts for Facebook to censor.
The Intercept’s report on this Facebook content takedown portal claimed that several other United States (US) government agencies have access to the portal, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Documents released as part of 2021 lawsuits suggest that the California Secretary of State’s Office of Elections Cybersecurity (OEC) also has access to the Facebook takedown portal and a similar type of portal on Twitter.
Rumble files lawsuit to challenge New York’s social media censorship law
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | December 1, 2022
Free speech video sharing platform Rumble and its subscription platform Locals have sued New York Attorney General (AG) Letitia James to challenge a social media censorship law that they say would force platforms to target constitutionally protected speech.
Rumble and Locals are being represented by the free speech nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and are joined in the lawsuit by constitutional law professor Eugene Volokh, the co-founder of the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
“The law is titled ‘Social media networks; hateful conduct prohibited,’ but it actually targets speech the state doesn’t like — even if that speech is fully protected by the First Amendment,” FIRE said in a statement.
The law forces a wide variety of internet platforms to publish a policy detailing how they’ll respond to posts that are deemed to “vilify, humiliate, or incite violence” based on protected classes such as religion, gender, or race.
It also requires platforms to create a way for visitors to complain about “hateful content” and requires them to respond to complaints directly. Platforms that refuse to comply can be investigated by the AG’s office, subpoenaed, and fined up to $1,000 per violation.
It comes into force on Saturday, December 3, 2022.
As is often the case with censorship laws, this Social Media Networks; Hateful Conduct Prohibited law doesn’t define “vilify,” “humiliate,” or “incite.”
Rumble suggested that this means it would “cover constitutionally protected speech like jokes, satire, political debates, and other online commentary.”
FIRE noted that the law’s scope is “entirely subjective” and suggested that it could target a wide range of First Amendment-protected speech such as “a comedian’s blog entry ‘vilifying’ men by mocking gender stereotypes” and most comments on almost any website “that could be considered by someone, somewhere, at some point in time, as ‘humiliating’ or ‘vilifying’ a group based on protected class status like religion, gender, or race.”
FIRE added: “Bloggers, commenters, websites, and apps around the country are ensnared by the New York law due to its broad definition of ‘social media networks’ as for-profit ‘service providers’ that ‘enable users to share any content.’ This vague wording means that the law can impact virtually any revenue-generating website that allows comments or posts and is accessible to New Yorkers — but no government entity can legally compel blogs or other internet platforms to adopt its broad definition of ‘hateful conduct.’”
“New York politicians are slapping a speech-police badge on my chest because I run a blog,” Volokh said. “I started the blog to share interesting and important legal stories, not to police readers’ speech at the government’s behest.”
Rumble Chairman and CEO Chris Pavlovski added: “New York’s law would open the door for the suppression of protected speech based on the complaints of activists and bullies. Rumble will always celebrate freedom and support creative independence, so I’m delighted to work with FIRE to help protect lawful online expression.”
This law is one of several attempts by New York to encroach on the First Amendment and push for the censorship of constitutionally protected speech. Other laws and proposals from the state have pushed to ban the sharing of violent crime videos online, ban gendered language in law, and allow officials to sue platforms that are suspected of “contributing” to the “knowing or reckless” spread of “misinformation.
US federal government pays $5M for software to turn citizens into online “misinformation” responders
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | December 2, 2022
Journalism group Hacks/Hackers was awarded $5 million by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop software that would encourage ordinary Americans to warn their friends and family about misinformation in their online speech. Users of the software would confront alleged misinformation by replying with text recommended by the software.

Hacks/Hackers has been tasked with developing the “Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust (ARTT), a suite of expert-informed resources that are intended to provide guidance and encouragement to individuals and communities as they address contentious or difficult topics online,” the NSF group said in an October 24 article.
According to a video demonstration of the software, the tool will tell users if a social media post is “harmful” and, if it is, it “suggests relevant responses through tailored response examples or templates” that users can copy and paste as responses.

“Every day there are motivated citizens, like librarians, health communicators, and amateur volunteers, who engage with the misinformation that is posted by their peers and make efforts to share reliable information to empower their communities,” the video said.
Another video by ARTT claimed that social media efforts to fight misinformation are not as effective in influencing users’ views as efforts made by friends.
“That’s why we want to focus on these peer connections when it comes to having these conversations online … Instead of coming to you from the platform, it’s actually coming to you from a friend,” the video said.
The group led by Hacks/Hackers is also working on Wikipedia tools, which will determine those that are a “credible source” on Covid vaccines and prevent sources that are not credible from being cited on Wikipedia.

The list of credible sources has started to be organized, with outlets like the Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian classified as “reliable,” and outlets like The Federalist and The Daily Wire classified as “unreliable” or “conspiracy.”

