Poland ready to deploy all their MIG-29 jets to the Rammstein Air Base
Statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland regarding the statement by the US Secretary of State on providing airplanes to Ukraine – 08.03.2022
The authorities of the Republic of Poland, after consultations between the President and the Government, are ready to deploy – immediately and free of charge – all their MIG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America.
At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes.
The Polish Government also requests other NATO Allies – owners of MIG-29 jets – to act in the same vein.
Are Vaccine Passports About to Go Totally Global?
By Nick Corbishley – naked capitalism – March 1, 2022
As the world is transfixed by the escalating war in Ukraine and its economic fallout, big moves concerning vaccine passports are taking place behind closed doors.
An article published last Thursday by Politico, citing a source from the so-called Vaccine Credential Initiative (VCI™), reported that the World Health Organization is poised to convene member States and representatives of Covid-19 immunization credential technology groups to recognize different vaccine certificates across nations and regions. In other words, as countries around the world drop almost all of their COVID-19 public health measures, it looks like digital vaccine passports are going to be made not just universal but permanent (as I warned would happen in April 2021):
The WHO is bringing together the groups to develop a “trust framework” that would allow countries to verify whether vaccine credentials are legitimate, said Brian Anderson, chief digital health physician at MITRE and a co-founder of the VCI.
Why it matters: The effort would aid international travel by allowing proof of vaccination to be more easilyshared and verified, Anderson said. Many countries and regions have different standards for proof of inoculation, creating confusion for travelers and officials.
“It’s piecemeal, not coordinated and done nation to nation,” Anderson said. “It can be a real challenge.”
The WHO would say only that news on the topic should be coming “soon.”
The VCI is behind SMART Health Cards, which have become the de facto standard for digital vaccine credentials in the U.S., with dozens of states developing or adopting the technology. The group will participate in the initiative.
The Vaccine Credentials Initiative (VCI™) is one of a number of private partnerships working to harmonize vaccine passport standards and systems at a global level. The VCI™ is leading the development and implementation of the open-source SMART Health Card Framework and specifications. Its partners include U.S. government contractor MITRE Corporation, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Oracle, Sales Force and Mayo Clinic.
According to its own website, the VCI™ has helped to implement SMART health cards in 15 jurisdictions: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Hong Kong, Israel, the Cayman Islands, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Senegal, Qatar, Rwanda, North Macedonia and Aruba. It has also helped to “quietly” roll out digital vaccine certificates across 21 US states, as Forbes recently reported:
While the United States government has not issued a federal digital vaccine pass, a national standard has nevertheless emerged. To date, 21 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico offer accessibility to the SMART Health Card, a verifiable digital proof of vaccination developed through the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), a global coalition of public and private stakeholders…
And very soon, at least four more states will be rolling out access to SMART Health Cards. “We’ve seen a notable uptick in states that have officially launched public portals where individuals can get verifiable vaccination credentials in the form of SMART Health Cards with a QR code,” says Dr. Brian Anderson, co-founder of the VCI and chief digital health physician at MITRE.
Another global partnership seeking to standardize vaccine passports is the Commons Project Foundation (CPJ), which was founded by the Rockefeller Foundation and is supported by the World Economic Forum.
There is also the Good Health Pass Collaborative, which was founded last year by Mastercard, IBM, Grameen Foundation and the International Chamber of Commerce. The organization is the brainchild of the world’s largest digital identity advocacy group, the New York-based ID2020 Alliance, which itself was set up in 2016 with seed money from Microsoft, Accenture, PwC, the Rockefeller Foundation, Cisco and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The ID2020 Alliance’s goal is to “enable access to digital identity for every person on the planet.”
WHO Changing Course
This is all happening as the general messaging around vaccine passports in most countries is that they are on their way out, at least for domestic purposes, as we all return to some semblance of normality. The vaccine passports are moving to the backburner — at least that’s what we are being told. But at the same time, governments, companies and supranational governing entities are working behind the scenes to extend the use of vaccine passports for all international travel, in the process making them a permanent feature of the global legal landscape.
According to the Politico article, the World Health Organization, after publicly opposing vaccine passports for more than a year, is ready to lend its endorsement. If true, it represents a sea change in policy.
Just over a month ago, at the tenth meeting of the International Health Regulations (2005) Emergency Committee regarding the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the WHO reiterated its opposition to vaccine passports, urging states “NOT… to require proof of vaccination against COVID-19 for international travel as the only pathway or condition permitting international travel given limited global access and inequitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.”
Now, just over a month later, that opposition appears to be crumbling — and not just according to VCI™. On February 23, T-Systems, the IT services arm of Deutsche Telekom, announced in a press release that it had been chosen by the WHO as an “industry partner” in the introduction of digital vaccine passports as a standard procedure not only for COVID-19 vaccines but also “other vaccinations such as polio or yellow fever, across 193 countries” as well as presumably other vaccines that come on line in the future:
The World Health Organization (WHO) will make it easier for its member states to introduce digital vaccination certificates in the future. The WHO is setting up a gateway for this purpose. It enables QR codes on electronic vaccination certificates to be checked across national borders. It is intended to serve as a standard procedure for other vaccinations such as polio or yellow fever after COVID-19. The WHO has selected T-Systems as an industry partner to develop the vaccination validation services.
Garrett Mehl, Unit Head, WHO Department of Digital Health and Innovation, said: “COVID-19 affects everyone. Countries will therefore only emerge from the pandemic together. Vaccination certificates that are tamper-proof and digitally verifiable build trust. WHO is therefore supporting member states in building national and regional trust networks and verification technology. The WHO’s gateway service also serves as a bridge between regional systems. It can also be used as part of future vaccination campaigns and home-based records.”
Adel Al-Saleh, Member of the Deutsche Telekom AG Board of Management and CEO T-Systems, explained: “Corona has a grip on the world. Digitization keeps the world running. Digital vaccination certificates like the EU’s are key to this. We are pleased to be able to support the WHO in the fight against the pandemic. Health is a strategic growth area for T-Systems. Winning this contract underscores our commitment to the industry.”
The timing of the WHO’s purported policy reversal is certainly curious given that back in April 2021 the organization said it was not yet ready to commit to vaccine passports because it was not yet clear whether the vaccines actually prevented transmission of the virus.
“We at WHO are saying at this stage we would not like to see the vaccination passport as a requirement for entry or exit because we are not certain at this stage that the vaccine prevents transmission,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said at a UN news briefing. “There are all those other questions, apart from the question of discrimination against the people who are not able to have the vaccine for one reason or another.”
Now that we know for sure that the COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent transmission of COVID-19 in the Omicron era (and recent public health data from Scotland, whose disclosure the Scottish government has now terminated, England and Denmark suggest they may actually exacerbate it), the WHO apparently feels that now is an ideal time to endorse vaccine passports for global travel. This is happening less than two months after the region of the world with the highest per-capita take up of vaccine passports, Europe, was the epicenter of the Omicron wave. It’s also happening as concerns are quickly growing about the safety of the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19.
Closing All Borders for the Unvaccinated
If the WHO does reverse policy on vaccine passports and its 194 member countries follow the organization’s new guidelines and implement vaccine passport systems, it will presumably mean that anyone who is not up to date with their vaccine schedule will not be able to cross international borders in the future. And that would essentially mean the end of two fundamental ethical principles underpinning modern medicine: bodily autonomy (the right to make decisions over one’s own life and future); and bodily integrity (the right to self-ownership and self-determination over one’s own body). In other words, if we ever want to travel again we will no longer have any say over what goes inside out body.
And all this for the sake of non-sterilizing vaccines that offer virtually no protection against transmission or infection of COVID-19 and whose safety profile is looking increasingly suspect. There are plenty of other reasons why we should worry about the mandatory application of vaccine passports for global travel, including:
- The threat they pose to our privacy;
- The additional abilities and powers they grant to governments and corporations to track, trace and control the population;
- The not insignificant risk that our most personal data, including our health information and biometric identifiers, could be hacked, leaked or simply shared with third parties;
- The polarizing, discriminatory and segregational effects vaccine passports are already having across societies, affecting marginalized groups the most;
- The threat they pose to many of our most basic rights and freedoms.
For the moment, the WHO’s legal framework – the so-called International Health Regulations (IHR) – does not grant the organization inspection, policing or enforcement powers against its member States. In other words, it cannot force member States to follow its guidelines. But that could also be about to change. As the Politico article reports, talks are under way to establish a “global pandemic treaty” that will give the WHO more powers to “strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.”
The U.S. government, the WHO’s biggest donor, “has been involved in backdoor discussions with the WHO on the treaty and how to strengthen the organization,” notes the article. The proposed amendments “would require swift action by countries and the WHO during an emergency and give the WHO greater powers to act during a crisis.” In other words, the WHO could soon be given much sharper teeth when it comes to shaping global health policy.
This process officially began on December 1, 2021 when the 194 members of the World Health Organization (WHO) agreed to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument granting the WHO greater powers. According to the European Council, “an intergovernmental negotiating body will now be constituted and hold its first meeting by 1 March 2022 (to agree on ways of working and timelines) and its second by 1 August 2022 (to discuss progress on a working draft). It will then deliver a progress report to the 76th World Health Assembly in 2023, with the aim to adopt the instrument by 2024.”
As I note in my upcoming book Scanned: Why Vaccine Passports and Digital ID Will Mean the End of Privacy and Personal Freedom, while there is a case to be made for establishing pandemic control processes and standards at a global level, especially given how badly many national governments have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and how poorly they have coordinated their containment efforts, giving so much power to a largely unaccountable, heavily conflicted institution comes with huge risks:
[A] centralized global pandemic response under the auspices of an organization like the WHO will mean that health authorities will be even less answerable to local populations. One thing that is clear is that the WHO, in its current form, is not the body to do it.
The organization has already done a shoddy enough job of combatting the current pandemic. For example, it failed to recognize that the COVID-19 virus was an airborne disease until far too late. It also fought, at every step, to discourage national health authorities from using cheap, off-patent medicines… in the early treatment of COVID-19 patients. The WHO is also heavily conflicted by the donations it receives from private companies, many in the pharmaceutical industry, and private trusts, such as the Gates and Rockefeller foundations, both at the forefront of efforts to push global digital identity on the world’s population. Those donations now account for 80 percent of the organization’s funding.
It seems those companies now want more bang for their buck. The Global Business Coalition — whose members include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, BusinessEurope, the Confederation of Indian Industry and others across six continents — recently sent a letter to the WHO requesting even more of a say in the agency’s decisions. “The current pandemic represents a paradigm shift in the way governments, business, and civil society forge deep bonds to respond to emergency situations and to develop sustainable health policies,” the coalition wrote.
GoFundMe admits violence allegation from Mayor was enough to shut down speech
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | March 8, 2022
GoFundMe said it shut down the Freedom Convoy’s fundraising page because the office of the mayor told executives that the protesters were committing “violent” acts, according to testimony during a House of Commons public safety committee hearing last week.
The admission raises the alarm on the issue of how the mere accusation of violence is enough to get speech shut down.
During the hearing, GoFundMe lawyer Kim Wilford said that the company had “reached out” to Ottawa’s mayor Jim Watson’s office about the Freedom Convoy.
The mayor’s office told GoFundMe that there were “reports of harassment, violence, damage occurring.”
“Based on this credible information we made informed decisions that this campaign no longer complied with our terms of service and we removed it from the platform,” Wilford said.
However, most of the 197 arrested protesters have been charged with mischief. The two people who were arrested for uttering threats and carrying a concealed weapon were not part of the actual convoy, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
Watson’s office claimed that before meeting with GoFundMe, on Feb. 3, fights had already broken out, residents were being harassed and masks were being ripped off citizens.”
CPC MP Doug Shipley said during the hearing, that all MPs were “given briefings” about the protests, but “nowhere ever did I see in any of the reports shared that there was violence, threatening behavior and damage and destruction.”
Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, Marco Mendicino, countered by claiming that the lack of criminal charges “doesn’t mean it [violence] did not happen.”
Dutch internet providers block RT, Sputnik – media
RT | March 8, 2022
Several major Dutch internet providers have reportedly begun blocking websites belonging to RT English, RT UK, RT DE, RT France, RT Spanish, as well as Sputnik.
According to the ANP news outlet, the Netherlands’ Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) targeted the said Russian media, as they are on the EU’s sanctions list, which the bloc enacted in response to Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.
It is said that the ACM on Monday sent a list of undesirable media to internet providers,including VodafoneZiggo, KPN, and T-Mobile.
A VodafoneZiggo spokesperson told journalists that the company was indeed going to block the websites “as soon as possible, probably Tuesday,” with T-Mobile expected to comply soon as well.
KPN, while agreeing to restrict access to the Russian media, has made it clear that it is “fundamentally” against the idea of blocking any websites in general. A spokesperson for the provider clarified that KPN does not think it is up to them to “determine what is good and what is bad.” The company would want to see “net neutrality” instead.
Last Wednesday, the European Commission ruled that all RT channels, as well as Sputnik, be banned in all 27 member states over allegations of “systematic” disinformation regarding Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
Commenting on the move, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said that “systematic information manipulation and disinformation by the Kremlin is applied as an operational tool in its assault on Ukraine.” The official went on to claim that the Russian outlets posed a “significant and direct threat to the Union’s public order and security.”
Meta, Google, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok are complying with the ban already, not displaying RT and Sputnik’s material in the EU member states.
On February 24, Russia launched a military offensive against Ukraine, with President Putin citing the need to “demilitarize and denazify” the country as well as to prevent Kiev from being dragged into NATO. Moreover, according to the Russian president, the Ukrainian government’s policies toward the Russian-speaking population in the Donbass republics were tantamount to “genocide.” Ukraine and the West, however, suspect that the Kremlin in fact wants to install a pro-Russian puppet government in Kiev, coming up with pretexts for an aggressive and “unprovoked” war.
Ukraine faces defeat
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MARCH 8, 2022
Belying the predictions of western media, Russia’s special operation in Ukraine is entering a successful endgame on the political and diplomatic track much sooner than one would have thought.
A close reading of the outcome of the 3rd round of peace talks in Belarus last night is that the Ukrainian negotiators have sought some more time to come up with a full response to the Russian terms for ceasefire.
Ukraine has signalled willingness to be a neutral country ruling out NATO membership. The main sticking points narrow down to: a) recognition of Crimea as part of Russia; and, b) sovereignty of Lugansk and Donetsk.
They are non-negotiable demands. But they are a bitter pill for the Ukrainian leadership to swallow. The Ukrainian stance is that these demands are “practically” impossible.
But, as Vladimir Medinsky, leader of the Russian team, told RT, “In my opinion, there is a big difference between impossible and ‘practically impossible’… I hope that eventually we will find a solution.”
The Russian side feels encouraged albeit yesterday’s talks produced no tangible results. They are in no hurry to rush into major military offensives.
Indeed, the pattern throughout has been that the Russian generals would apply coercive military power to create synergy to kickstart a parallel political / diplomatic track to attain Moscow’s objective (which is not about territorial conquest.)
The western analysts who expected the Russian generals to behave like Patton or MacArthur with a massive attack on Kiev instead witnessed a confusing Russian strategy — slow, halting operations, without excessive force and with a distinct preference to avoid fighting by encircling and bypassing pockets of resistance, and avoiding set battles.
Putin revealed yesterday that “conscripts aren’t and won’t be taking part in hostilities, and there will be no additional call-up of reservists from the reserve… Missions are carried out only by professional troops.”
The Ukrainian side realises that the Russian strategy is winning, as Russian forces are encircling Kiev from the northwest, west and east, Black Sea ports are no longer accessible, and the forces in the east are entrapped. Yesterday, Zelensky acknowledged the grim situation.
After the third round in Belarus, he hastened to assure that talks will continue until a settlement! In his words,
“Today the third round of negotiations took place in Belarus, and I would like to say ‘the third and final one,’ but we are realists. Therefore, we will talk, we will insist on negotiations until we find a way to tell our people, ‘this is how we will come to peace.’”
Russians are in no tearing hurry. They eschew triumphalism, and instead allow enough space for the Ukrainian side to take some really hard decisions on surrender — while military pressure is kept up on Kiev. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said yesterday, “We keep the door open to diplomatic options. As soon as there are corresponding signals, we will be acting on them.”
Importantly, the two sides have agreed on a roadmap for creating humanitarian corridors and Russian side has announced a ceasefire. Also, these corridors will be operated in close coordination through a hotline.
The Russian statement says that a “continuous communication link shall be established between the Russian and Ukrainian sides for mutual exchange of information about the preparation and implementation of the evacuation of civilians and foreign citizens.”
The Russian side since conveyed all relevant details to foreign embassies, appropriate UN and OSCE agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other concerned international organisations. The humanitarian corridors will be:
- from Kiev and adjacent regions to Gomel (Belarus);
- from Sumy along two routes to Poltava (central Ukraine) and to Russia;
- from Kharkov to Russia or to Lvov, Uzhgorod and Ivano-Frankovsk (all three in western Ukraine); and,
- from Mariupol along two routes to Russia and Zaporozhe (on the Dnieper river in southeastern Ukraine.)
This joint work and the lull in fighting sets the stage for the crucial meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Kuleba in the Turkish resort of Antalya on Thursday. The very fact the talks have been elevated to foreign minister level signals hope that a critical mass may be accruing.
Thoroughly disillusioned with the betrayal by the US and NATO, Zelensky is inching toward an agreement with Moscow. It is futile to pre-judge the outcome, but there is a game changer. The major European countries — UK, France, Germany, Netherlands — have rebuffed Washington’s hawkish proposal to impose sanctions on Russia’s oil exports.
Oil exports are Russia’s principal source of income, therefore, this is a strong rejection of Washington’s efforts to isolate Russia. French President Macron captured the zephyr in his remark yesterday:
“It is impossible to build a lasting peace if Russia doesn’t participate in building a comprehensive security architecture on our continent, because history and geography mandate this. Our responsibility is to preserve all the ties that we can preserve. We must continue to talk with the Russian and Belarusian peoples. We need to do this with help from representatives of the world of culture, the scientific and technical community, non-governmental organisations.”
On Sunday, in an op-ed in the New York Times, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson also wrote: “We have no hostility toward the Russian people, and we have no desire to impugn a great nation and a world power. Ukraine had no serious prospect of NATO membership in the near future. This is not a NATO conflict, and it will not become one.”
Meanwhile, major European countries, especially Germany, are ruling out EU membership for Ukraine, either — which, ironically, was the issue that had precipitated the US-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 triggering the catastrophic slide toward conflict involving Russia.
China urges Pentagon to open up about ‘biolabs’ in Ukraine
RT | March 8, 2022
China’s foreign ministry has called on the US to disclose information on the Pentagon’s alleged biological laboratories in Ukraine “as soon as possible”.
On Monday, the Russian military said Ukrainian authorities had been destroying pathogens studied at its laboratories. Moscow claimed that 30 US-financed Ukrainian biolabs have been actively cooperating with the American military.
Kiev has denied developing bioweapons. According to the website of the US embassy in Kiev, the US Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program only “collaborates with partner countries to counter the threat of outbreaks” of infectious diseases. In 2020, the embassy called such theories about US-funded biolabs in Ukraine “disinformation.”
Speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday, however, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian claimed that, according to his country’s information, the laboratories in Ukraine are just “a tip of an iceberg” and that the US Department of Defense “controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world.” This is done under the pretext of “cooperating to reduce biosecurity risks” and “strengthening global public health,” Zhao said.
It is the first time that Beijing has disclosed the alleged figure. Zhao said that according to data “released by the United States itself,” there are 26 US laboratories in Ukraine. In light of Russia’s military offensive in the country, he urged “all parties concerned” to ensure the safety of the labs.
“In particular, the United States, as the party which knows these laboratories best, should publish the relevant details as soon as possible, including which viruses are stored and which research has been carried out,” he said.
He claimed the US “has been exclusively obstructing” the establishment of an independent verification mechanism. Such behavior, Zhao said, “further aggravates the concerns of the international community.”
According to a report in The Rio Times, the US embassy in Ukraine deleted all information about Pentagon-financed bio-labs in the country from its website on February 26. However, journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva claimed embassy staff forgot to remove a document showing that the Pentagon is funding two new biolabs in Kiev and Odessa.
“Ukraine has no control over the military biolabs. The Ukrainian government is not allowed to release sensitive information about the program,” the Brazilian news outlet claimed.
Over the past 20 years, the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine, jointly established with the United States, invested over $285 million in about 1,850 projects carried out by scientists who, according to Gaytandzhieva, previously worked on the development of weapons of mass destruction.
US authorities are yet to comment on the latest claims.
US bans Russian energy imports
High gas prices displayed at a Mobil station on March 7, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. © Mario Tama / Getty Images
RT | March 8, 2022
US President Joe Biden has announced a ban on Russian oil and gas imports in response to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine on Tuesday, a move that threatens to send global gas and oil prices even higher than the record-setting costs the commodities are already fetching.
The president called on the nation to use the events as an opportunity to transition to renewable energy, insisting that if “no one has to worry about the price at the gas pump in the future, tyrants like Putin won’t be able to use fossil fuels as weapons against other nations.”
Biden warned oil and gas companies against jacking up prices unnecessarily, declaring that while “Putin’s war against ukraine is causing gas prices to rise… it’s no excuse to exercise excessive price increases or padding profits or any kind of effort to exploit the situation or American consumers.”
“Russia’s aggression is costing us all, and it’s no time for profiteering or price-gouging,” Biden said, hailing the blanket ban on all imports of Russian oil and gas as “another powerful blow to Putin’s war machine.”
Americans will have to pay “the price of freedom” in the coming weeks as the sanctions are expected to send energy prices soaring worldwide, Senator Chris Coons (D-Delaware) told CNN on Tuesday ahead of the sanctions announcement.
The Democratic senator warned that the price of oil could very well double to $300 per barrel, with gas prices more than tripling to $10-$14 per gallon.
The repercussions from the price shock will be felt worldwide, he continued, as costs continue to surge. Acknowledging that “the strength of our sanctions, of the costs we’re imposing on Putin… are more successful and more sustainable when they’re coordinated,” he praised the administration for working together with Europe on the looming import ban instead of pushing ahead unilaterally.
“We have to realize that it’s a global integrated market, it is tough to just turn on the taps and increase production quickly – it’s not like phoning up Amazon,” he explained, cautioning “we are going to see increased gas prices here in the US, in Europe they will see dramatic increases in prices, that’s the cost of standing up for freedom and of standing alongside the Ukrainian people. We need to see the cost and benefit here.”
The senator also admitted the White House has been in negotiations with its once-sworn enemies in Venezuela and Iran, two major oil producers Washington is suddenly seeing in a new light for their potential to bail out countries soon to be running on empty in the absence of Russian energy supplies, but argued the focus should be on Canada first. However, he acknowledged Putin “had Western Europe over a barrel” – literally and figuratively – regarding the highly sought-after commodities.
Russia is the second-largest oil exporter in the world, while the US is the largest oil consumer. While Moscow supplies only about 7% of US oil, Europe is much more heavily reliant on the nation for its energy supplies.
Fresh polls claim that Americans are willing to pay more at the pump in order to stick it to Putin. A Quinnipiac survey conducted over the weekend, which found 71% of Americans supported a ban on Russian oil even if it led to higher gas prices. More than half of respondents (56%) even suggested the US hadn’t gone far enough with its sanctions and called for tougher moves.
The climate scaremongers: BBC’s campaign against fossil fuels
By Paul Homewood | TCW Defending Freedom | March 4, 2022
As political pressure mounts for the UK fully to exploit North Sea oil reserves and begin fracking, the BBC is doubling down in its campaign to fight fossil fuels.
There is nothing new in this, of course: we have become used it down the years. But now they don’t even attempt to disguise it, so convinced are they of their moral superiority in the matter.
Last week they published two articles attacking critics of Net Zero. The reports were full of the opinions of the BBC’s chums in the Green Blob, such as Greenpeace, Carbon Brief and the Committee on Climate Change, but gave scant mention of opposing views.
The first report, ‘Climate change: Can the UK afford its net zero policies?’ was an attempt to take down the arguments of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG), made up of about 20 Conservative MPs, who have perfectly legitimately drawn the public’s attention to the very real costs of Net Zero.
The article begins by portraying the NZSG as a tiny bunch of ultra Right-wing Brexiteers – you know, the ones who should be ignored!
The rest of the article carries on in the same one-sided vein, with grossly misleading and inaccurate comments and a failure to present the other side of the argument.
It starts by claiming that our energy bills are only £159 a year higher on average because of climate policies. But this does not reflect the full cost of those policies, which in total are estimated to cost £17.6billion this year. That is not £159, but £650 per household.
Much of this cost is paid by the public sector and industry/commerce, meaning higher taxes and prices. Either way, the public end up paying.
The BBC then go on to claim that we should be building wind farms, because they are cheaper than gas power stations.
They imply that you can simply swap wind for gas, ignoring the fact the former is highly intermittent. Currently we need reliable, dispatchable generation, such as gas, to turn on when wind power fails to meet demand. When this is factored in, wind power is nearly double the cost of gas power.
Next the BBC turns its attention to claims that fracking will reduce energy prices in the UK. They argue that we cannot affect global prices of gas, which totally misses the point. Even if UK gas is sold at world prices, the country will still benefit hugely, and in particular government revenues will be boosted. Moreover it will greatly enhance our energy security.
The NZSG have rightly raised the question of how much we will all have to pay for Net Zero, something which the public has been kept in the dark about. The BBC’s response quotes the ultra optimistic calculations of the Committee on Climate Change, which have already been proved to be false and give a cost of ‘only’ £344billion by 2050.
Anybody who claims what the economy will look like three decades hence is a charlatan. But what we do know about is the crippling cost being imposed on the public in the short term. Things like heat pumps, insulation and electric cars will cost us tens of thousands of pounds. The new hydrogen networks being proposed will drive our energy bills up yet further.
For some reason, the BBC makes no mention of any of this.
But won’t the costs of climate change far outweigh all of this? The BBC think so:
‘The UK government’s latest report into the risks of climate change warns that based on a conservative estimate of a 2C temperature rise by 2100, flooding for non-residential properties across the UK is expected to increase by 27 per cent by 2050 and 40 per cent by 2080. At 4C this increases to 44 per cent and 75 per cent respectively.’
Leaving aside the fact that these claims are pure make-believe, does the BBC really think that eliminating the UK’s 1 per cent of world emissions will have the slightest effect on the climate?
The second BBC article, ‘Government climate advisers say cut fossil fuels to lower energy bills’ is by our old friend Roger Harrabin, ‘BBC environment analyst’. Again it does little but report the views of the Committee on Climate Change and others in the Green Blob, who are campaigning for more renewable energy.
As in the first article, it repeats the claim that energy prices won’t drop if we develop shale and North Sea gas reserves as the amounts are so insignificant. However, a recent study by the Warwick Business School estimated that our shale reserves could easily supply a quarter of the UK’s gas consumption over the next twenty years – a hardly insignificant amount at a time when North Sea gas output is expected to halve.
But for ideological reasons, the Committee on Climate Change would like to throw this all away!
John Kerry worries about Ukraine war’s effect on emissions
Joe Biden’s Climate Tsar, the gaffe-prone John Kerry, put his foot in it again last week. In an interview with a Middle East TV station he said he was worried that the Ukraine war would have ‘massive emissions consequences’, and that it could divert the world’s attention away from climate change.
This is the same John Kerry who flew in a private jet to Iceland last year to collect an Environmental Award. When asked why he chose private jet, he responded it was ‘the only choice for someone like me’.
It was only the other day that Kerry was full of praise for India’s climate efforts, despite the fact they continue to burn more and more coal. He was impressed by Prime Minister Modi’s promise to build lots of solar farms, which Kerry claimed would make India compliant with the 1.5C goal set at Glasgow, a goal which requires global emissions to be cut in half in this decade.
Evidently arithmetic is not John Kerry’s strong suit!
While Modi’s plans would increase wind and solar output tenfold by 2040, this will not be enough to even meet the rising demand for energy in India, which is projected to increase by 69 per cent by then. This means that fossil fuel consumption will continue to grow as well.
Even with all of this investment in renewables, wind and solar together will still only be supplying 20 per cent of India’s energy in 2040.
BP Energy Review & International Energy Agency Outlook
While John Kerry strolls around with his head in the clouds, the Indian Government have long realised that you cannot run a modern economy just on the wind and the sun.
Selling the UK steel industry down the river
As I explained a few weeks ago, the UK operates an Emissions Trading Scheme, a cap and trade system, applying to electricity generators, energy intensive industry and domestic aviation.
The scheme is designed to cut the use of fossil fuels by forcing companies to purchase carbon allowances if they dare to use them.
As a direct consequence of government policy, the price of these allowances has in effect quadrupled in the last couple of years. (Although the UK system was only introduced last May, it directly replaced a similar EU scheme, which it now tracks.)
Higher carbon prices have not only pushed electricity prices through the roof, but they are also hitting industry hard as well, not least the steel industry.
According to the Telegraph, steelmakers are now facing the prospect of cutting production thanks to a doubling of the carbon price in the last nine months.
Steel companies receive a set number of free allowances each year, but this quota is reduced each year. Once they have used these up, they must buy them on the market, which adds £175/ton to the cost of the steel produced. This amounts to a third of the price they sell the steel for, which is quite clearly unsustainable.
Indeed, so high are the carbon prices that firms can often be better off selling their allowances and producing nothing!
Cutting production however has its own problems for the steel industry, because its fixed costs are so high. In the real world, steel plants need to run at near to full capacity to be profitable. It makes no financial sense shutting down furnaces and rolling mills for days at a time.
In other words, they are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Furthermore there is little that steel firms can do to cut fossil fuel use. By definition, making steel is a highly energy intensive process. From personal experience I know that steel works have forever been looking at ways to reduce energy use on a daily basis.
It is true that electric arc furnaces, which melt scrap steel, don’t need the colossal amounts of coke required in blast furnaces, but higher electricity prices have already crippled their viability.
The inevitable result of government policy is that we will end up importing more steel instead of making it ourselves. It will be made in countries like China and India, where carbon emissions will be much higher than here. And more emissions will arise from shipping it halfway around the world.
The whole thing makes no sense whatsoever.
It is just another senseless sacrifice to the Great Green God.
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Book Excerpt
World War Two Was Not a Just War
By David Swanson | September 20, 2016
Excerpted from the just released book War Is Never Just.
World War II is often called “the good war,” and has been since the U.S. war on Vietnam to which it was then contrasted. World War II so dominates U.S. and therefore Western entertainment and education, that “good” often comes to mean something more than “just.” The winner of the “Miss Italy” beauty pageant earlier this year got herself into a bit of a scandal by declaring that she would have liked to live through World War II. While she was mocked, she was clearly not alone. Many would like to be part of something widely depicted as noble, heroic, and exciting. Should they actually find a time machine, I recommend they read the statements of some actual WWII veterans and survivors before they head back to join the fun.[i] For purposes of this book, however, I am going to look only at the claim that WWII was morally just. … continue
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