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OPEC+ decision to cut oil counteracts Europe’s idea of price cap on Russian energy

US and Europe can no longer make condescending and hegemonic demands on energy producers

By Ahmed Adel | October 7, 2022

The European Commission is hoping to impose a cap on gas prices as the current energy crisis will inevitably deepen over the winter. However, European Union member states are divided over the proposed measures, which are designed to lower soaring inflation amid Moscow’s response to sanctions imposed for its military operation in Ukraine. 

Although France, Italy, Poland and 12 other EU countries urged the Commission to propose a broader price cap targeting all wholesale gas trade, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany – Europe’s biggest gas buyer – are among those opposed against the measure as they believe capping prices could endanger the security of supply as it undermines the EU’s ability to attract gas deliveries.

It is recalled that in early September, Russian President Vladimir Putin described the idea of a price cap as “stupid”, highlighting that the EU was “in no position to dictate”. After warning that the EU would “freeze” if such a cap was imposed, Putin said: “We will not supply gas, oil, coal, heating oil – we will not supply anything.”

While EU leaders are doggedly and obsessively calling for a price cap, industry experts show their scepticism, and in some cases concern on the repercussions of such an action. It is already noted that EU sanctions imposed against Russia are already affecting European economies far worse than the Russian economy.

In this light, chairman and CEO of French energy major TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanné, said on October 5: “Honestly, I am not sure that a price cap on Russian oil is a good idea.”

“What I am sure is that if we do that (cap), then Putin will say that ‘we don’t sell my oil’ – and the price will not be at $95, it will be at $150,” Pouyanné said.

For her part, Elisabetta Cornago, a senior energy researcher at the Centre for European Reform, explained that “It’s hard to picture such a level of market intervention. This is uncharted territory.” Another expert, Bram Claeys, a senior advisor at the Regulatory Assistance Project, said that the energy price cap would “quickly start costing billions” because it would force governments to continually subsidise the difference between the real market price and the artificially capped price.

Despite the scepticism from energy experts, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, maintains the need to introduce a ceiling on the price of Russian gas. At the end of August, she announced that the European Commission was taking quick and long-term measures to improve the situation amid rising electricity prices in the EU. 

However, it appears that Russia is already pre-emptively responding to price cap suggestions by convincing its partners in OPEC+ (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) to reduce oil production by 2 million barrels per day from November. This will cause a severe crisis, which will reverberate in Europe and the United States, especially as the OPEC+ decision was made just weeks before the US midterm elections.

For this reason, the White House angrily said in a statement that Biden was “disappointed by the shortsighted decision by OPEC+ to cut production quotas while the global economy is dealing with the continued negative impact of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.”

OPEC+ comprises of 24 members, many of them close partners with Russia, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and Venezuela, and not a single member is Western. In addition, the most influential members have significant differences with Washington, and unlike in decades past, are not afraid to push back to defend their own interests.

Washington is trying to impose the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels, or NOPEC bill, which is designed to protect US consumers and businesses from oil spikes. However, OPEC’s most influential members have warned that this legislation would cause chaos in the energy market.

Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said on October 5: “We will continuously prove that OPEC+ is here not only to stay but here to stay as a moderating force to bring about stability.”

It is recalled that when Biden arrived in Saudi Arabia earlier this year on a mission to urge one of the world’s largest oil exporters to ramp up production in a bid to help bring down gasoline prices, OPEC+ raised oil output by a minuscule 100,000 barrels per day in what was widely seen as an insult to Biden.

In this way, it is demonstrated that Western influence over energy is waning and that OPEC+ members are behaving more confidently in protecting their own interests. Putin has delivered on every warning he has made whenever a red-line was crossed, and there is little doubt that if Europe imposes a cap, he will counteract Europe’s economic aggression by significantly cutting energy flows, which will make prices soar. There is effectively very little Europe and the US can do to stop this and they must accept the fact that they are at the mercy of OPEC+ and can no longer impose their condescending and hegemonic demands over the organisation and its member states.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

October 7, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Cause of Mahsa Amini’s death revealed by coroner in Iran

Samizdat | October 7, 2022

Mahsa Amini, whose death in police custody led to mass protests in Iran, did not die due to physical violence, but from cerebral hypoxia, or lack of oxygen to the brain, a coroner’s report has determined.

The 22-year-old woman was arrested by the Islamic Republic’s morality police in Tehran on September 13 for wearing an “inappropriate” headscarf. Her family claimed she was tortured and collapsed after being hit on the head.

According to the forensic report, quoted by Iran’s official news agency IRNA on Friday, Amini’s death was “not caused by a blow to the head or vital organs of the body.”

The document said Amini had underlying conditions stemming from surgery on a benign brain tumor she had undergone when she was eight.

The report stated that the woman suddenly lost consciousness and collapsed while in custody, then regained consciousness before falling again.

“Due to the ineffective cardio-respiratory resuscitation in the first critical minutes, she suffered severe hypoxia and as a result brain damage despite recovery from cardiac functioning,” the report said, adding that the woman died due to “multiple organ failure caused by cerebral hypoxia.” It did not specify whether Amini had suffered any injuries.

The largest of the protests over Amini’s death have occurred in Iran’s western Kurdistan Province, where she was from. More than 150 people have died in clashes with police, according to the Iran Human Rights group, as cited by the Associated Press.

October 7, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

US admits Kiev killed Russian journalist Daria Dugina 

But it remains silent about Western possible involvement in the crime

By Lucas Leiroz | October 7, 2022

In a recent article published by The New York Times, it was reported that US intelligence believes Kiev authorized the terrorist attack that murdered Russian journalist and activist Daria Dugina, daughter of the political scientist and philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. With this, the prevailing narrative on the case in the US takes on an accusatory tone against Ukraine, but the silence remains on the connivance of Western countries, which refused to help the Russians to capture those responsible for the attack.

The article cites unidentified sources that confirm the Russian version that Dugina’s death was caused by an intelligence operation planned, authorized, and executed by Kiev’s agents. According to NYT’s sources, information confirming the Ukrainian authorship of the attack was shared among US officials recently, thus corroborating the suspicions previously showed not only by Moscow, but also by many experts around the world. 

The article, however, emphasizes that the operation was conducted exclusively by Ukrainian officials, with no US agents participating. Apparently, American intelligence did not take note of any planned Ukrainian attack and only obtained confirmation about the plans of its Ukrainian partners much later, with the Americans even “admonishing” Kiev for having conducted such a bold operation.

“The United States took no part in the attack, either by providing intelligence or other assistance, officials said. American officials also said they were not aware of the operation ahead of time and would have opposed the killing had they been consulted. Afterward, American officials admonished Ukrainian officials over the assassination, they said”, the article mentions.

It is curious to observe how the American media has suddenly changed its assertion, after months denying the veracity of the reports published by the Russian government on the case. Some Western journalists even spread conspiracy theories about the possible involvement of the Russian state itself in the attack, trying to create the story that Moscow had planned a false flag operation to justify a military escalation.

Over time, however, the veracity of the Russian explanation of the case became undeniable. Russia did not initiate any escalation in the conflict, which made the false flag plot lose credibility. And the very Ukrainian practice of murdering civilians became so well known that it could no longer be hidden. Thus, for the NYT disseminating this type of content precisely at this time serves American interests perfectly, as a large media vehicle is getting ahead in releasing an “official version” of the facts, preemptively taking control of the narrative.

It is important to emphasize that American intelligence does not act in defense of “press freedom” when it communicates data to the major newspapers. There are always well-defined strategies and clear objectives to be achieved. In this case, the objective is to isolate the blame for the attack in Kiev and to exempt Western countries from any co-responsibility before Russian investigations go even deeper and other data are revealed. Now, any eventual Western involvement could be called a “conspiracy theory”.

However, it is curious to think that there is such a lack of communication between the Ukrainian and American intelligences. The Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime not only serves as a proxy for American interests but is virtually guided by the US in all its decisions, with NATO agents acting among the strategists in Kiev. It is hard to believe that NATO was not even aware that an operation as complex as the one that killed Daria was being planned by its partners.

However, Western contribution to Daria’s assassination goes beyond that. Western countries refused to cooperate with Russia to capture Daria’s murderer even after Moscow published official data on the conclusion of its investigations. Daria’s assassin, the Ukrainian spy, member of the Azov Battalion Natalya Vovk, after committing the crime fled to Estonia and then to Austria. Russia asked for cooperation and asked European authorities to help find the killer but received no response. In fact, this can be interpreted as a form of “participation”, considering that Western countries deliberately prevented Russia from capturing a criminal responsible for the death of a civilian, even though there was sufficient evidence of Vovk’s involvement in the crime.

Now that the Americans have admitted that their proxies killed an innocent civilian – and assuming the narration that the Ukrainians acted alone to be true – the least the Europeans should do is a formal apology and start cooperating so that Ukrainian criminals do not freely cross their borders when they are wanted in other countries. And the US should commit to preventing Kiev from doing anything like that again.

It remains to be seen, however, if the West is really innocent in this case or if this NYT’s publication was just a strategic move to take control of the narrative before something more frightening is revealed in the near future.

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

October 7, 2022 Posted by | Deception | , | Leave a comment

Lavrov explains why Russia sees Ukraine as a threat

Samizdat | October 7, 2022

A call by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky for NATO members to deploy nuclear weapons against Russia is a reminder of why Moscow launched military action against his country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

“Yesterday, Zelensky called on his Western masters to deliver a preemptive nuclear strike on Russia,” Moscow’s top diplomat stated during a media conference on Wednesday.

In doing so, the Ukrainian leader “showed to the entire world the latest proof of the threats that come from the Kiev regime.” Lavrov said Russia’s special military operation had been launched to neutralize those threats.

He dismissed as “laughable” an attempt to downplay Zelensky’s words made by his press secretary, Sergey Nikoforov.

“We all remember how [Zelensky] declared in January Ukraine’s intention to acquire nuclear weapons. Apparently, this idea has long been stuck in his mind,” the Russian minister said.

On Thursday, Zelensky told the Australian Lowy Institute that NATO must carry out preemptive strikes against Russia so that it “knows what to expect” if it uses its nuclear arsenal. He claimed that such action would “eliminate the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons,” before recalling how he urged other nations to preemptively punish Russia before it launched its military action against his country.

“I once again appeal to the international community, as it was before February 24: Preemptive strikes so that [the Russians] know what will happen to them if they use it, and not the other way around,” he said.

His spokesman then claimed that people interpreting Zelensky’s words as a call for a preemptive nuclear strike were wrong, and that Ukraine would never use such rhetoric.

October 7, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Whodunit?

By Way of Deception, Thou Shalt do War

By Doug E. Steil | Aletho News | October 7, 2022

With the mainstream crying Russia, which makes zero sense… (I have the keys to the taxi I’m driving, which pays my bills but to turn it off, I’ll blow it up also:

On 25 July 2022, Gazprom announced it will reduce gas flows to Germany to 20% of the maximum capacity, or 50% of the current throughput. The company shut down the pipeline for 10 days because of maintenance.

On 31 August 2022, Gazprom halted any gas delivery through Nord Stream 1 for three days, officially because of maintenance. On 2 September 2022, the company announced that natural gas supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline would remain shut off indefinitely until the main gas turbine at the Portovaya compressor station near St Petersburg was fixed from an engine oil leak.

And the alternative mainstream crying USA, which makes more sense, but the plethora of memes and ease in which the ‘almost mainstream’ talks about this option… including the infamous ‘thank you USA’ tweet from the (Jewish) former Polish foreign minister, Sikorski, who then deleted it (after millions of views and re-tweets)… it all looks remarkably ‘black or white’; and this, as always, should be a red flag.

Who? How? Why? are the questions everyone is asking… but no one asked when?

So when did this happen?

On 26 September 2022, Danish and Swedish authorities reported a number of explosions at both Nord Stream lines (only string A in NS2): the resulting damage causing a series of gas leaks. The European Union considers the incident to be intentional sabotage.

Anything else occured on September 26, 2022?

Rosh Hashanah 2022 began in the evening of Sunday, September 25 and ended in the evening of Tuesday, September 27.

Ah… but what is Rosh Hashanah ?

Rosh HaShanah (Hebrew: רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה, Rōʾš hašŠānā, lit. “head of the year”) is the Jewish New Year. The biblical name for this holiday is Yom Teruah (יוֹם תְּרוּעָה, Yōm Tərūʿā), literally “day of shouting or blasting.” It is the first of the Jewish High Holy Days (יָמִים נוֹרָאִים, Yāmīm Nōrāʾīm; “Days of Awe”).

Literally day of shouting or BLASTING?

Who suffers most with Nordstream being blown up? Germany. Do a little google search for « germans to freeze this winter »…  there are thousands of articles… most written even before september…

Nordstream was a way for Germany to get gas direct from Russia, without paying expensive transit costs through Eastern European middlemen… Eastern European middlemen.

October 7, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

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.”

Its purpose was to force North Vietnam, using the threat of a massive nuclear strike, to accept US terms for ending the war. Wikipedia states that Duck Hook called for the nuclear bombing of military targets throughout North Vietnam. This included “the saturation bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, the bombing of dikes to destroy the food supply of much of the population of North Vietnam, air strikes against North Vietnam’s northeast line of communications as well as passes and bridges at the Chinese border …”

Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s criminal accomplice, told the president that the US had to be prepared to use nuclear weapons. In a memo to Nixon, Kissinger wrote: “To achieve its full effect on Hanoi’s thinking, the action must be brutal.”

Eventually, because of doubts about its strategic effectiveness and fear of a violent popular reaction, Duck Hook was not implemented. But Nixon continued to threaten Vietnam and the Soviet Union with nuclear war.

This history proves that 1) the claims that Putin is breaking a previously unquestioned taboo on the use of nuclear weapons are fraudulent; and 2) that the US, if confronted with the prospect of military defeat, would certainly resort to nuclear warfare.

Knowing that the US would use nuclear weapons if confronted with a desperate military situation, the Biden administration’s relentless efforts to push Putin into a corner and force capitulation are totally reckless.

October 7, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Serbia furious over latest anti-Russia sanctions

Samizdat | October 6, 2022

The Serbian government has slammed the latest package of EU sanctions targeting Russia’s oil exports, describing it as the “first EU sanctions package” against Serbia.

Restrictions on the maritime transportation of Russian oil would make it too expensive for Serbia and severely hit the nation’s economy, government officials said on Thursday. In a scathing statement, Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin called the EU “the place of our future humiliation and suffering.”

Belgrade will now be “forced to buy more expensive Iraqi oil and thus lose hundreds of millions of euro,” he argued, accusing neighboring Croatia, which is an EU member state, of lobbying for the new measures.

Vulin said the only “consistent” feature of EU policy is “revenge on free nations,” and decried the fact that Western Balkan nations had not been exempted from the latest batch of anti-Russia measures.

The EU “introduced not the eighth package of sanctions against Russia but the first sanctions package against Serbia,” the minister said. He argued that this was why it is “better to be a militarily and politically neutral country” rather than a member of a club of nations that allows the “[psychological] complexes” of its members to run the show.

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic was equally critical of the new sanctions, saying they were introduced “at the expense of the lives and living standards” of all Serbian people. “It will cost us hundreds of millions of euro,” Brnabic told Serbia’s Happy TV broadcaster.

“What they thought they would do to Russia they did to us on Wednesday, because we depend on the oil pipeline in Croatia,” the prime minister added, accusing Brussels of “using energy for political blackmail and retribution.”

On Thursday, the EU announced the eighth package of restrictions on Russia which include a price cap and “further restrictions” on the maritime transportation of Russian crude oil and petroleum products to third countries. Serbia imports Russian oil by sea through a Croatian port terminal on the island of Krk, from which it is then transported through a pipeline to Serbian territory.

The new measures would make such imports at least 20% more expensive, according to Serbian media. In June, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic warned that Serbia would not be able to import Russian oil after November 1 due to EU sanctions.

October 6, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

New York Times sacks Gaza journalist for expressing support for Palestinian resistance

MEMO | October 6, 2022

Palestinian photojournalist, Hosam Salem, has been fired by the New York Times for expressing support for Resistance against Israeli occupation. The Gaza- based journalist has been working as a freelancer for the American outlet since 2018, but was dismissed after a dossier compiled by a pro-Israel group, accusing Salem of anti-Semitism, was presented to the Times.

Since joining the Times, Salem has been covering critical events in Gaza, such as the weekly protests at the border fence with Israel. He carried out an investigation into the Israeli killing of field nurse Razan Al-Najjar and, more recently, the May 2021 Israeli offensive on the Gaza strip, which killed at least 254 Palestinians, including 66 children, 39 women and 17 elderly people.

Details of his dismissal were revealed by Salem himself on Twitter. He said that the decision to fire him was made based on a report prepared by a Dutch editor – who obtained Israeli citizenship two years ago – for a website called “Honest Reporting”. The anti-Palestinian group is a staunch supporter of Israel and is often accused of peddling false narratives in Western media about Israel’s human rights violations.

Salem said that the dossier used by the Times to dismiss him used examples of social media posts in which he expressed support for Palestinian Resistance against Israeli occupation. “My aforementioned posts also spoke of the resilience of my people and those who were killed by the Israeli army – my cousin included – which “Honest Reporting” described as ‘Palestinian terrorists,'” said Salem on Twitter.

Salem claims that the editor of the dossier later wrote an article stating that he had succeeded in sacking three Palestinian journalists working for the Times in the Gaza Strip, based on allegations of anti-Semitism.

“Not only has “Honest Reporting” succeeded in terminating my contract with The New York Times, it has also actively discouraged other international news agencies from collaborating with me and my two colleagues,” Salem continued, while warning of the silencing of Palestinian voices.

“What is taking place is a systematic effort to distort the image of Palestinian journalists as being incapable of trustworthiness and integrity, simply because we cover the human rights violations that the Palestinian people undergo on a daily basis at hands of the Israeli army.”

October 6, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Doctors Call for Investigation Into FSMB Attacks on Physicians, Ties to Big Pharma

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 4, 2022

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Dr. Emanuel Garcia, a New Zealand doctor who said he believes he lost his medical license for questioning and speaking out against the official COVID-19 narrative, also believes that the U.S.-based Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) played a role.

“We desperately need a real and deep investigation into this private entity that is pulling strings worldwide,” Garcia told The Defender.

Garcia — a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist who received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986 — is board-certified in psychiatry and neurology by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He has lived in New Zealand since 2006.

Garcia was a public health consultant psychiatrist until the end of October 2021, when he resigned from his position at the Hutt Valley District Health Board rather than get a COVID-19 vaccine, he said.

His medical license came up for renewal with the Medical Council of New Zealand at that same time.

Garcia reapplied for his license to keep it — but instead of receiving a successful renewal notice from the country’s medical council, Oct. 29, 2021, he received a letter stating that the council had “resolved” to suspend him from practicing because, “Dr. Garcia’s conduct raises one or more questions about the appropriateness of his conduct or the safety of his practice.”

In an interview with The Defender, Garcia said:

“Apparently, the chief psychiatrist of my hospital reported me to the medical council because I made these videos wherein I spoke about natural immunity, the early treatment, how ridiculous it was to try to eliminate a respiratory environment.”

The council found fault with Garcia’s lack of “adherence” to the council’s May 6, 2021, guidance statement, “COVID-19 Vaccine and Your Professional Responsibility,” and his lack of “adherence” to other statements made by the council.

Council Chair Dr. Curtis Walker said there was no place for “anti-vaccine messages” in a medical professional’s practice — or on their social media.

In its letter, the council listed complaints about Garcia’s behavior, including that he wrote an open letter to the prime minister titled, “Another Disastrous National Lockdown,” posted videos about COVID-19 on Voices For Freedom, YouTube and Odysee, and voiced opinions about the handling of COVID-19 on social media that did not align with the council’s statements.

Garcia called the letter “a farce.” He said none of the things he did were “great” or “revolutionary” — in his mind, he was pointing out “basic things” to the public as he witnessed the unfolding of the COVID-19 pandemic and the New Zealand government’s response to it.

Garcia didn’t fight the suspension because he was “sick of their duplicity” and “wanted out.”

“My lawyers were advising me to fight and to sign a so-called ‘voluntary undertaking’ which would have muzzled me,” he said.

If he had signed the voluntary undertaking, Garcia would have agreed to not say anything that ran counter to the council’s statements on COVID-19. The idea was, he said, that doctors who signed a voluntary undertaking were signaling to the council that they were willing to “play by their rules” and that the council, therefore, would “be more lenient with the punishment they dole out” — such as fines or suspension of the doctors’ license.

“I refused,” Garcia said. “I gave a lot of talks at parliament during the protests here in New Zealand, and I spoke freely — unfettered.”

Garcia said he chose to retain his freedom of speech and was able to “fully disengage” from the council through the use of common law, or equity law, to legally sever his professional ties to the council.

“According to the rules and principles of equity, I exercised my equitable right to annul, abrogate and cancel my registration with the Medical Council of New Zealand,” Garcia said.

Soon afterward, Garcia learned about the council’s connection with the International Association of Medical Regulatory Authorities (IAMRA), which is the international arm of the FSMB.

“The Chair-Elect of the IAMRA, Joan Simeon, just happens to be the CEO of the Medical Council of New Zealand, and the Secretary of the IAMRA, Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, just happens to be the President and CEO of the FSMB,” Garcia said.

Doctors worldwide who have “questioned things” have come under attack by their medical boards — and these medical boards “all come under the aegis of the FSMB,” Garcia said.

Garcia told The Defender :

“We have to do something different. We have to create an entirely new medical system that is out of the grip of these board-run matrices, one that honors basic medical precepts and practices rather than following algorithmic guideline-driven procedures engineered by bureaucrats.

“There is an opportunity for a magnificent renaissance of healthcare and it WON’T happen within the existing totalitarian system, it has to come from us.”

FSMB report targets practitioners of alternative medicine

Most doctors have not heard of the FSMB and are unaware of its influence, according to Garcia. He, himself, was unaware until his colleague, Dr. Bruce Dooley, a U.S.-trained medical practitioner who also lives in New Zealand, told him about it.

Dooley recently spoke out publicly about his knowledge of the FSMB.

In an “explosive” Sept. 24 interview with FreeNZ’s Liz Gunn, Dooley explained that the FSMB and IAMRA are private “registered charities with ‘hidden and anonymous’ donors who oversee disciplinary action of licensed medical doctors.”

Dooley — who trained at Jefferson Medical College (now called Sidney Kimmel Medical College) in Philadelphia, has a master’s in immunology and virus research from Villanova University and is a medical practitioner licensed in Hawaii, Florida and New Zealand — said the FSMB and IAMRA particularly target clinicians working beyond the Big Pharma paradigm, whom they label as “fringe” or “quack.”

“Big money must not be allowed to beat integrity and experience,” said a New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out With Science spokesperson in a Sept. 28 press release about Dooley’s interview with Liz Gunn.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, while he was the president of the Florida chapter of the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM), Dooley witnessed first-hand the FSMB’s attack on doctors who practice complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).

ACAM is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating physicians and other healthcare professionals on the safe and effective application of integrative medicine.

At the rate ACAM was growing during the late 1990s, the “world’s medical scene” would have become a “totally different thing” if the FSMB had not attacked integrative doctors 25 years ago, Dooley told The Defender.

“We had 1,200 members,” Dooley said, as doctors from New Zealand, Australia and Europe who were exploring integrative medicine were joining ACAM in large numbers and bringing with them their financial resources.

“We had a million dollars in the bank,” he added.

As a leading CAM practitioner, Dooley testified about the value of CAM during the Clinton administration for the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy.

During this time, Dooley also investigated the FSMB by attending its annual meetings as a paying conference participant. He noted how during conference sessions, FSMB leaders encouraged doctors to harass their fellow doctors who were offering natural health treatments.

Moreover, Dooley obtained a report produced by the Special Committee on Health Care Fraud (later renamed the Special Committee on Questionable and Deceptive Health Care Practices) showing that the FSMB perceived CAM and doctors who practiced it to be a “risk to public health.”

The FSMB’s governing body in April 1997 accepted the committee’s report as policy.

The report — which is no longer available on the FSMB website but which Dooley shared with The Defender — negatively labeled CAM as “questionable” practices that could constitute “health care fraud.”

The report said:

“In April 1995, Federation President Robert E. Porter, MD, established a special committee on health care fraud. The need for such a committee arose from the proliferation of unconventional and unproven medical practices and promotions in the United States, some of which may be questionable and thereby pose a risk to public health, safety and welfare.”

But according to Dooley, the committee’s motivation was not to ensure public well-being but to ensure that Big Pharma continued to get money. Natural and integrative medicine treatments, such as CAM, were getting in the way of profits for pharmaceutical companies.

The committee’s report said, “It has been estimated that up to $100 billion is lost to health care fraud in the United States annually.”

The committee members added:

“Medical interventions that do not conform to prevailing scientific standards are becoming increasingly popular.

“It is estimated that in 1990, Americans made 425 million visits to providers of ‘unconventional’ medicine, exceeding the number of visits to all U.S. primary care physicians, at a cost of approximately $13.7 billion.”

According to Dooley, the committee’s statements are essentially anti-competitive. “It’s such an anti-competitive piece,” he told The Defender, adding:

“Basically, the end says to the medical councils, ‘Look, we’ve got to stop this. This questionable medicine stuff is growing too fast. You need to get on board with us to pretty much slap down these doctors.’”

Now, 25 years later, Dooley said, the FSMB is employing a similar tactic against doctors who share what the FSMB calls “misinformation” or “disinformation” about COVID-19.

Some doctors, like Garcia, who questioned the pharma-driven global response to the COVID-19 pandemic had their licenses suspended.

Moreover, the FSMB actively seeks to influence federal and state legal policies, thus suggesting it may have played a direct role in generating California’s new law, signed last week, that punishes doctors who share “misinformation” or “disinformation” about COVID-19 with their patients.

The FSMB’s report obtained by Dooley openly stated:

“Through its Legislative Services Department and government relations firm, the Federation monitors federal legislative initiatives to identify proposals that could impact state medical boards.

“Upon the identification of such measures, the Federation develops strategies to intervene and oppose measures that could negatively affect state medical boards. The committee supports and encourages the Federation in its legislative efforts to protect the authority of state medical boards to regulate the practice of medicine, both conventional and unconventional.”

Indeed, the FSMB’s current website says it plays a “crucial role” in advocating for federal and state policies that “positively impact the health and safety of patients and the medical regulatory system.”

Could Sherman Anti-Trust Act be key to exposing FSMB?

Dooley agreed with Garcia that there needs to be a full and transparent investigation into who exactly funds the FSMB.

An effective way to accomplish that, he said, would be for a group of doctors who practice CAM or who have lost their licenses due to sharing COVID-19 “misinformation” to form a class-action lawsuit against FSMB for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Dooley said he voiced this idea in the late 1990s, to a class-action law firm. “After I went to two of their [FSMB’s] meetings, I actually took tapes and everything they had given out.”

“They’re quite arrogant, and they just tape everything. People are talking about ‘quack this’ and ‘how to get the quack’ in your area,’” he said.

Dooley said he told the law firm:

“Look at this. This is anti-competitive. I can get 100 doctors together who have all been ‘beaten up’ by their medical boards, all in the same way. Then we can, under discovery, find out who supports this ‘monster.’

“Because that’s the only way you’re going to get their books.”

Garcia and Dooley participate in New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out With Science, a group that has written letters to the New Zealand government expressing concern about the Pfizer COVID-19 shot, “as well as the implication from our regulatory bodies that we would be considered incompetent in our duties if we provided fully informed consent about this procedure.”

Garcia told The Defender that New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out With Science steering committee member, Dr. Matt Shelton — a primary care medical doctor since 1985 and a lecturer and examiner in integrative medicine — has had his license suspended twice.

The Defender contacted Shelton, but he was unable to give an interview by deadline.

In a Sept. 28 press release for Dooley’s interview with Liz Gunn of FreeNZ, New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out With Science said it “agrees with Ontario Supreme Court Judge Pazaratz,” who asked if “misinformation is even a real word … or has it become a crass, self-serving tool to pre-empt scrutiny and discredit your opponent?”

Watch Dooley’s interview with Liz Gunn on FreeNZ here:

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

October 6, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Maine Board Licensure in Medicine Suddenly Withdraws ‘Misinformation’ Allegations Against Dr. Meryl Nass

The Defender | October 6, 2022

On Sept. 26, the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine (Board) suddenly withdrew six accusations alleging misinformation against Dr. Meryl Nass. On Sept. 30, the Board withdrew more factual allegations regarding “misinformation.” The board has now dropped all charges regarding so-called “misinformation” on the cusp of the hearing set for Oct. 11, 2022, at 1 p.m. (EDT). With no patient complaints, the Board is now resting its prosecution on the prescribing of hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin and on picayune record-keeping issues that are well within the standard of care.

The Board suspended Nass, a physician of impeccable credentials, on Jan. 12, 2021, without even a hearing. The Board accused Nass, a scientific advisory board member of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), of “unprofessional” and “disruptive” behavior based on her public criticism of government COVID-19 policies and early treatment of COVID-19.

Prior to her suspension, Nass never had a malpractice case or a prior Board action against her in over forty years of practice. Between October and December 2021, there were four complaints to the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine. Two from strangers regarding “misinformation” they saw on the internet, one complaint from a physician regarding prescribing a “deworming medication” (ivermectin) and one from a midwife regarding her prescribing hydroxychloroquine. Without a hearing, the Board ordered her license immediately suspended, demanded a neuropsychological evaluation and implied that she was mentally impaired or a substance abuser and incompetent to practice medicine.

Nass’s Maine counsel, Gene Libby and Tyler Smith, have moved to dismiss all charges and asked the Board to apologize to her for its unfounded case intended only to silence Nass and like-minded physicians who used effective early treatments for COVID-19 — as opposed to no treatment at all until patients were hospitalized.

Nass’s testifying experts will include Professor Emeritus in Epidemiology at Yale Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D., pulmonary and critical care specialist Paul Marik, M.D., inventor of mRNA vaccine technology Robert Malone, M.D., intensive care specialist Pierre Kory, M.D. and surgeon Steven Katsis, M.D. of the Oklahoma Medical Board.

You can read two of the Board’s recent notices withdrawing various complaints (second and third notices), Nass’s opening statement to the Medical Board, and defense counsel’s timeline of events that led to her suspension.

Children’s Health Defense is supporting Nass’s defense. “The Board’s attempts to censor physicians like Nass have no role in medicine or science; they present a grave danger to the health and human rights of all Americans,” said CHD president and general counsel Mary Holland.

If you want to view Nass’s hearing on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022, at 1:00 p.m. eastern, you can watch here.

October 6, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

The Online Safety Bill Will Only Reinforce the Regime of Government Propaganda and Censorship

Dr. Mark Shaw | The Daily Sceptic | October 6, 2022

I switched on the TV on Saturday morning at 6:30am expecting to get a mixture of different short news stories, but what followed was 26 minutes of a film on the news story of the tragic death of Molly Russell – you can watch it here.

It began with melancholic music, which continued in the background. Molly’s father said that he could see how, if one was exposed to the sort of online content his daughter was exposed to, “it could destroy you”. He described the “toxic corporate culture” at the heart of social media platforms. You could feel the father’s pain and grief. The reporter, BBC’s Angus Crawford, said the coroner ruled that “social media did play a part in Molly Russell taking her own life”.

I am truly sorry for the Russell family’s loss, but the way this story has been presented here feels wrong. The general presentation bears the hallmarks of propaganda techniques I will describe later. There is little other content than what I have described above and it is repeated ad nauseum. In Molly’s death the coroner ruled that “social media played a part” but there was no mention in this media report of any of the possible multitude of other factors that may have been involved. Such a one-dimensional synopsis may even be harmful in itself because it might misrepresent the complexities underlying suicide, giving false hope or belief, with the potential to exacerbate the myriad of other factors that can lead to mental health problems and self-harm, regardless of the reporter’s intent.

It is right that the media should devote a fair amount of news discussion to the very important subject of suicide, but this should be delivered responsibly, sensitively, without pulling at the heart-strings, and provide balanced, accurate reporting that doesn’t dumb down debate or put suicide down to singular causes. The Suicide Prevention Resource Centre lists the eight major risk factors for suicide. It seemed to me that Molly’s father and indeed Molly herself were being exploited in connection with a drive to restart the upcoming Online Safety Bill. Might this particular news story coverage be a form of propaganda?

The Online Safety Bill was put on hold at the beginning of the Conservative leadership contest. It was due to have its second reading in the House of Lords. The Bill is complex and the details of what it constitutes can be found here. There are now, however, renewed calls for it to be brought back by a number of organisations in the wake of the inquest into Molly’s death. My concern is that the Online Safety Bill will effectively reinforce the tendency towards Government-approved media propaganda. To explore the potential minefield of issues that this subject raises I want to pursue the matter from a sceptical angle and understand more about the meaning and techniques of propaganda.

Propaganda might be defined as a special form of communication used especially in news media to manipulate public opinion by distorting the representation of reality. Some descriptions I’ve seen seem to embellish propaganda with a slightly positive spin, in that the ultimate aim may be for the greater good as, for example, suggested in the case of military war. I, however, can only see the term in a negative light because the whole ethos is based on deception, usually on a mass scale. The widespread use of propaganda undermines trust of those in power and eventually leaves the public confused and largely unable to establish what news is actually genuine.

Among other ‘harms’, the Bill creates incentives for social media companies to remove online content that is supposedly ‘legal, but harmful’. Is the targeting of this content simply a way of circumventing a democratic justice system for political purposes, by setting up a parallel system of censorship outside the courts of law to suppress online speech? Justice should be seen to be done and the suppression of legal content must surely be anathema to the idea of fair treatment for all members of society.

Recent articles in the Daily Sceptic and TCW have demonstrated the dire effects propaganda has in relation to the Covid pandemic regime. News of the many confirmed deaths and injuries from the Covid vaccines have been buried and the professional bodies relating to healthcare (the GMC), and law (the SRA) have made it almost impossible for concerned parties to dare speak out or whistleblow. Wouldn’t the Online Safety Bill close the partially open door that challenges the mainstream media narrative and Government diktats? Isn’t a far greater harm the one where Dr. Hoenderkamp’s child patients (in the Daily Sceptic article) with confirmed post-vaccine heart damage will live with the possibly lasting consequences for the rest of their lives, and will forever wonder why they were essentially coerced into receiving a medical intervention that, based on their clinical need, was completely unnecessary? All this because they and many other children and young adults and their parents potentially do not obtain and are prevented from receiving properly informed consent – and this even before such a Bill is on the books? Isn’t the far greater harm the one in which the public have not been given all the information and warnings from experts about lockdowns and the COVID-19 vaccines because those dissenting voices and the potential whistleblowers cannot afford to do so for fear of the proposed consequences of the Bill, which will only make the situation worse?

The full list of propaganda techniques is long but here are some apposite Covid-related examples that demonstrate further harmful effects:

  • ad hominem – ‘to the person’; used against scientists opposing lockdowns and emergency inoculation;
  • ad nauseum – tireless repetition of slogans such as ‘save the NHS’, ‘safe and effective’, ‘don’t kill granny’, etc.;
  • emotional appeal and agenda setting – e.g. the death by suicide of Molly Russell;
  • appeal to authority – the deployment of the Chief Medical Officer (U.K.), Fauci (U.S.), celebrities and even the Queen (to encourage vaccine uptake);
  • appeal to fear – the instruction that, despite decades of study showing no clear benefit from mask-wearing in relation to airborne viruses, it was suddenly made compulsory in public places;
  • appeal to prejudice – that non-mask wearers and the unvaccinated will spread disease;
  • bandwagon technique – reinforcing people’s natural desire to be on the winning side, be team players and win the battle against those who refuse to join up (vaxxers v anti-vaxxers);
  • black and white fallacy – presents only two choices, e.g. lockdowns or no action, when a middle ground could have been reached as with the Great Barrington Declaration.

The obvious problem with propaganda is that it never works both ways, it only works the way those in power dictate. I don’t want a Bill that bans governments from saying that the Covid vaccine is 95% effective, extremely safe and will prevent transmission of the virus. All these claims were made by the Government at the beginning of the pandemic and have now been proved wrong. I just want the opposing views to be heard. If there is to be an Online Safety Bill, I would demand that it essentially work almost directly in the opposite fashion – by outlawing media censorship (not just online) of experts with contrarian views and by emphatically protecting whistleblowers.

An Online Safety Bill will only be practical and feasible if it can robustly answer the following:

  • How does the source making an accusation that content is harmful prove just that; what is the evidence?
  • Does the evidence stand up to scrutiny and does it take into account the possibility that things can change over time or that present unknowns will later come to light?
  • How can we be sure that those responsible for scrutinising the evidence are unbiased and accountable?
  • ‘Harmful’ to whom and to what proportion of the recipients? Might some content that is harmful to a minority be beneficial to the vast majority, and who decides?

Ofcom will be appointed as the state regulator of social media but, as I explained in my previous article, this regulatory body is clearly failing in the things it already has a duty to fulfil and should be scrapped in its current form. In business, lawyers warn that the new online rules will have a chilling effect and hit businesses unnecessarily hard.

Thus, in conclusion, I can see no way in which an Online Safety Bill can be made workable without undermining free speech and being far more harmful than any ‘misinformation’ it manages to suppress. The proposals, rather than being kicked into the long grass, should be scrapped altogether.

Dr. Mark Shaw is a retired dentist.

October 6, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Climate groups demand Big Tech censor climate change “misinformation”

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 6, 2022

Several climate change advocacy groups, including Friends of Earth and Greenpeace, have asked social media companies to treat “misinformation” about climate change like they do “hate speech” and opinions about Covid that go against government-backed authorities.

In a letter released on Tuesday, the groups also asked social media companies to be transparent about how they tackle climate disinformation and suggested that the company should report it under Europe’s Digital Service Act, which requires platforms to moderate “harmful” content.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

The groups also demand that the platforms disclose data on content moderation of climate-related content.

“Social media companies bear responsibility for the role in amplifying and perpetuating climate disinformation but transparency, that would quantify the exact extent, has been lacking from platforms,” wrote the advocacy groups.

Most social media companies started moderating climate change content in 2020. However, critics still feel these companies are not doing enough and want even more censorship.

October 6, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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