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Will NAC Become a Banned Supplement?

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | May 23, 2022

N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a form of the amino acid cysteine and a common dietary supplement, has been on the market for nearly six decades. Among its many benefits is helping increase glutathione and reduce the acetaldehyde toxicity1 that causes many hangover symptoms, but anyone who overdoses on acetaminophen (Tylenol) also receives large doses of NAC in the emergency room, as it helps prevent liver damage by increasing glutathione.

However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration suddenly cracked down on NAC in 2020, claiming it is excluded from the definition of a dietary supplement, as it was approved as a new drug in 1963,2 before it was marketed as a dietary supplement or as a food.

Retailers, including Amazon, pulled supplements containing NAC from their shelves in response, as the FDA’s move meant that NAC could no longer legally be marketed as a supplement, even though there are no fewer than 1,170 NAC-containing products in the National Institutes of Health’s Dietary Supplement Label Database.3

Draft guidance released by the FDA in April 2022 gives a glimmer of hope that NAC will continue to be available over-the-counter,4 but it’s still uncertain whether NAC will end up becoming a banned supplement.

FDA Announces ‘Enforcement Discretion’ for NAC Products

According to the FDA, their draft guidance, once finalized, will:5

“… explain our intent to exercise enforcement discretion with respect to the sale and distribution of certain NAC-containing products that are labeled as dietary supplements.

This enforcement discretion policy would apply to products that would be lawfully marketed dietary supplements if NAC were not excluded from the definition of “dietary supplement” and are not otherwise in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.”

In July 2020, the FDA sent out warning letters to seven companies that marketed NAC as a remedy for hangovers.6 Nine months after the FDA issued warning letters with their position that NAC supplements could not legally be sold, Amazon began removing products containing the supplement.7

The new verbiage suggests, however, that the FDA will not be enforcing their policy that NAC cannot be marketed as a dietary supplement, even though it’s technically still illegal to do so. And therein lies the problem. Steve Mister, president and CEO of the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), explained:8

“That still leaves some exposure for the industry for a state [attorney general] to say, ‘Well if it’s technically illegal under the federal law,’ we don’t care that FDA’s not enforcing it. We could do it. It also leaves you potentially exposed [to] a plaintiff’s attorney.”

Further, payment processing platforms, including PayPal, are among those that added policies prohibiting the sale of NAC products labeled as supplements following the FDA’s 2020 warning. It’s unknown whether PayPal will reverse its policy, or whether other major retailers, like Amazon, will begin to offer NAC supplements again.

Former FDA official Robert Durkin suggested that, in theory, the “draft guidance in and of itself should provide enough comfort to retailers to start marketing NAC-containing dietary supplements now.”9 Whether that will be the case in practice remains to be seen.

Two Citizen Petitions Filed With the FDA

After the FDA decided that NAC could no longer be marketed as a dietary supplement, CRN and the Natural Products Association (NPA) filed separate citizen petitions with the FDA requesting that the agency reverse its position.

The CRN letter in December 2020 challenged the FDA’s determination that NAC should be precluded from supplementary use.10 They then filed a citizen position petition June 1, 2021, requesting the FDA reverse its position and outlining why this sudden policy change is “legally invalid on multiple grounds.”11

The NPA filed a separate citizen petition with the FDA12 requesting that the agency not exclude NAC as a dietary supplement or, alternatively, that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issue a regulation finding NAC is lawful in supplements.

November 24, 2021, the FDA announced they were requesting more information about how NAC has been marketed as a dietary supplement,13 including information and data on the date that NAC was first marketed as a dietary supplement, reports of adverse events and details on how the products are marketed and sold.14 In their latest draft guidance, the FDA suggests it is still considering the petitioner’s requests:15

“… we have not yet reached a final decision on one petitioner’s request to issue a regulation to permit the use of NAC in dietary supplements, and we are considering initiating rulemaking to provide by regulation that NAC is not excluded from the definition of dietary supplement.

If, among other considerations, the FDA does not identify safety-related concerns as we continue our review of the available data and information, we are likely to propose a rule providing that NAC is not excluded from the definition of dietary supplement.”

FDA Acknowledges There Are No Safety Concerns

In a positive step, while the FDA stated that their full safety review of NAC is ongoing, its initial review “has not revealed safety concerns with respect to the use of this ingredient in or as a dietary supplement.” The agency further explained:16

“In addition, NAC-containing products represented as dietary supplements have been sold in the United States for over 30 years and consumers continue to seek access to such products. Accordingly, while the FDA continues its evaluation of the request to initiate rulemaking, the FDA issued this draft guidance to explain our policy regarding products labeled as dietary supplements that contain NAC.

Unless we identify safety-related concerns during our ongoing review, the FDA would intend to exercise enforcement discretion (as described in the draft guidance) until either of the following occurs: we complete notice-and-comment rulemaking to allow the use of NAC in or as a dietary supplement (if we move forward with such proceedings) or we deny the citizen petition’s request for rulemaking.

If the FDA determines that this enforcement discretion policy is no longer appropriate, we will notify stakeholders by withdrawing or revising the guidance.”

With the draft guidance suggesting that no safety concerns have been noted, and enforcement is unlikely, Marc Ullman, counsel to the law firm Rivkin Radler LLP, suggested it should be perceived as “a win for industry” and that Amazon should “rescind its ban” on NAC dietary supplements in response:17

“FDA has said there’s no safety issue and it’s not going to take enforcement action. I think it would be an incredible overabundance of caution for any retailer to say, ‘We shouldn’t get NAC back into commerce.'”

Was FDA’s Ban Fueled by COVID-19 Treatment Hopes?

The FDA’s crackdown on NAC coincided with research suggesting COVID-19 treatment as a new indication. According to one literature analysis,18 glutathione deficiency may be associated with COVID-19 severity, leading the author to conclude that NAC may be useful both for its prevention and treatment.

Previous research has shown NAC inhibits the expression of proinflammatory cytokines in cells infected with highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza virus. Proinflammatory cytokines also play a crucial role in COVID-19 severity.19 Considering many COVID-19 cases also involve blood clots in addition to excessive oxidative stress, and NAC effectively addresses both, I believe NAC should be included in the standard of care for COVID-19. As noted in the FASEB Journal :20

“COVID-19 may cause pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, cardiovascular alterations, and multiple organ failure, which have been ascribed to a cytokine storm, a systemic inflammatory response, and an attack by the immune system. Moreover, an oxidative stress imbalance has been demonstrated to occur in COVID-19 patients.

N-Acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) is a precursor of reduced glutathione (GSH). Due to its tolerability, this pleiotropic drug has been proposed not only as a mucolytic agent, but also as a preventive/therapeutic agent in a variety of disorders involving GSH depletion and oxidative stress …

Thiols block the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 thereby hampering penetration of SARS-CoV-2 into cells. Based on a broad range of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory mechanisms … the oral administration of NAC is likely to attenuate the risk of developing COVID-19, as it was previously demonstrated for influenza and influenza-like illnesses.

Moreover, high-dose intravenous NAC may be expected to play an adjuvant role in the treatment of severe COVID-19 cases and in the control of its lethal complications … including pulmonary and cardiovascular adverse events.”

Another study published in 2021 compared consecutive patients hospitalized with moderate or severe COVID-19 pneumonia.21 One group received only standard care and the other group received 600 milligrams of NAC twice daily for 14 days. There were 42 in the NAC group and 40 in the control group. Treatment with NAC led to lower rates of severe respiratory failure and significantly lower mortality rates.

NAC Offers a Multitude of Benefits

NAC has been described as an “old drug with new tricks” because scientists are continually uncovering new ways to use it.22 Along with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and mucolytic properties, NAC may be a useful adjuvant for a variety of chronic diseases and other medical conditions, including:23

  • Polycystic ovary disease
  • Male infertility
  • Sleep apnea
  • Acquired immune deficiency syndrome
  • Influenza
  • Parkinsonism
  • Multiple sclerosis
  • Peripheral neuropathy
  • Stroke outcomes
  • Diabetic neuropathy
  • Crohn’s disease
  • Ulcerative colitis
  • Schizophrenia
  • Bipolar illness
  • Obsessive compulsive disorder
  • As a chelator for heavy metals and nanoparticles

Recently, it was found that NAC may also prevent strokes in people with hereditary cystatin C amyloid angiopathy (HCCAA), a rare genetic disorder.24 People with HCCAA have an average life expectancy of just 30 years, and most die within five years of their first stroke,25 so reducing their incidence could prove to be essential to increasing survival.

The finding is even more significant because it was conducted by researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), which is notoriously against supplements. NAC appears to work by preventing the formation of amyloid-producing proteins, which promote amyloid deposits linked to strokes.26

It could also have potential for Alzheimer’s as, according to the CHOP researchers, the process of protein deposition that occurs in HCCAA is similar to what occurs in Alzheimer’s, although at an accelerated pace, which is why dementia occurs later in life than Alzheimer’s.

With so many potential health benefits, the root of the motivation to ban NAC as a supplement likely lies in protecting the finances of pharmaceutical companies. Hopefully in this case, however, the FDA will determine that NAC should be allowed to exist under the dietary supplement definition, ensuring widespread access to this important compound will continue the way it did for decades.

Sources and References

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

What it means that Hillary Clinton did it

By David Zukerman | American Thinker | May 22, 2022

The Wall Street Journal ran a scathing editorial on May 20, called “Hillary Clinton Did It“.

This editorial began: “The Russia-Trump collusion narrative of 2016 was a dirty trick for the ages — and now we know it came from the top — candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.” The editorial quickly explained: “That was the testimony Friday by 2016 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook in federal court [in Washington, D.C.], and while this news is hardly a surprise, it’s still bracing to find her fingertips on the political weapon.” (Also not surprisingly, The May 20 print edition of The New York Times did not include a story on Mook’s testimony.)

Mook’s testimony was heard at the trial of attorney Michael Sussman, charged with lying to the FBI in calling to their attention a story that Donald J. Trump, by means of connections with Russia’s Alfa Bank, was colluding with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The lie at issue was not the false claim about a Trump-Alfa connection, but the charge that Sussman brought this matter to the FBI as a good citizen, and not as a representative of the Clinton campaign.

As the Journal editorial noted: “Prosecutors say [Sussman] was working for the Clinton campaign.” The editorial pointed out, “Mr. Mook said Mrs. Clinton was asked about the plan [to call attention to the Trump-Alfa ties] and approved it. A story on the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations thus appeared in Slate, a left-leaning online publication.”

After that, the Journal explained how the Clinton campaign used the self-generated news of the investigation and the initial Slate article that came of it, both of which they had planted, as the basis for making tweet after tweet to the press about the Slate report to churn up mass coverage about it in the press and convince the public that the investigation was about something serious.

The concluding paragraphs of the editorial are worth quoting in full:

In short, the Clinton campaign created the Trump-Alfa allegation, fed it to a credulous press that failed to confirm the allegations but ran with them anyway, then promoted the story as if it was legitimate news. The campaign also delivered the claims to the FBI, giving journalists another excuse to portray the accusations as serious and perhaps true.

Most of the press will ignore this news, but the Russia-Trump narrative that Mrs. Clinton sanctioned did enormous harm to the country. It disgraced the FBI, humiliated the press, and sent the country on a three-year investigation to nowhere. Vladimir Putin never came close to doing as much disinformation damage.

The harm done to the United States by the perfidy of the Clintonistas cannot be overemphasized. That “three-year investigation to nowhere” represented the Clinton-Obama attempted takeover of the government. (Call it the COAT campaign.) With congressional Republicans unwilling to prevent the COAT campaign, the Trump administration was blocked from putting U.S.-Russia relations on a rational, mutually beneficial footing, to the point that, under the present Senate leadership, the specter of war with Russia is no longer an unthinkable thought. The COAT campaign succeeded in keeping the Ukraine pot boiling, with the water first heated by Obama’s stirring up of anti-Russian feelings in Ukraine, leading to the Maidan revolution that ousted the legitimately elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , | 1 Comment

Biden Regime’s Ministry of Truth Stumbles

But it is only on “pause” and we will be seeing it again

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 24, 2022

Finally some good news – maybe! The Department of Homeland Security’s recently launched Disinformation Governance Board has gone into what has been described as the “pause” mode and its controversial Director Nina Jankowicz has resigned, citing “vile personal attacks and physical threats.” Its status will reportedly be reviewed over the next 75 days and it will likely be rolled out more quietly next time around and under a different name.

The Board was developed to counter what was held to be unfair criticism of policies being promoted by the government. Ironically, however, it has recently become clear that the White House itself has been doing much of the lying. It uses the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other government agencies to spread false information, referred to as disinformation, to dupe the public into believing that there is something good and noble about America becoming heavily involved in the war in Ukraine, with all that entails. And, of course, since the evildoers must be excoriated as that drama is playing out, good old Russia fits in admirably, particularly as the Democrats still like to pretend that it was Moscow’s interference that defeated Hillary in 2016.

A lie is a lie, but it is the ultimate irony when a government that is caught lying on a regular basis sets up an inquisition that seeks to identify and take action against ordinary citizens who are accused of spreading “disinformation.” Of course, critics on the right immediately discerned that the disinformation will consist of anything that challenges the official government line on various issues, up to including pandemics, white supremacist domestic terrorism, aborting unwanted babies, and even the march to war. Although the inept President Joe Biden Administration can rightly be accused of elevating deceit to a steady diet of malapropisms, one can trace the rise of egregious lying by heads of state to the Gulf of Tonkin incident and, more recently, to the criminal deceptions carried out by the George W. Bush Administration. Those lies led to the invasion of Iraq, which cost trillions of dollars, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans, and which is still producing unrest in the region.

So now we were to be confronted by the Disinformation Governance Board, so designated under the august authority of the Department of Homeland Security to root out disinformation and those who are seeking to disseminate falsehoods about what our noble elected officials are doing to us in Washington. Followers of George Orwell inevitably, and almost immediately, dubbed the new creation the Ministry of Truth.

The official launch documents in late April claimed that the DGB would be “protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, & civil liberties” against the “threat of disinformation.” Its focus would be on “homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia,” meaning that it would be discrediting any source that complains about the flood of aliens crossing the US southern border or casting doubts on the necessity of supporting America’s Ukraine “allies.” In a follow-up briefing DHS elaborated that it would monitor threat “disinformation spread by foreign states such as Russia, China and Iran, or other adversaries such as transnational criminal organizations and human smuggling organizations.”

And the board was to be headed by one Nina Jankowicz, a weird, highly politicized concoction who sang about her mission in a tweet entitled “You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation” while confirming that she would be the first executive director of the DGB. She has also written a book entitled “How To Be A Woman Online.” She has worked for the National Democratic Institute, the Democratic Party affiliate of the National Endowment for Democracy that promotes democracy worldwide. She has also been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

In an NPR interview responding to a question concerning Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, Jankowicz ridiculously opined that “I shudder to think about, if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would be like for the marginalized communities around the world…” Glenn Greenwald further described the new Disinformation Czar as having “herself ratified and helped spread virtually every disinformation campaign concocted by the union of the Democratic Party and corporate media over the last five years. Indeed, the only valid basis for calling her a ‘disinformation expert’ is that she has spread disinformation with such gusto. The most notorious of those was the pre-election lie that the authentic Hunter Biden laptop was ‘disinformation.’ She also decreed falsely that the origins of COVID were definitively proven to be zoonotic and could not have come from a lab leak, was a frequent and vocal advocate of the fraudulent Steele Dossier, and repeatedly pronounced as true all sorts of Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy theories which Robert Mueller, after conducting an intense 18-month investigation, rejected as lacking evidence to establish their truth.”

Jankowicz’s boss Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas nevertheless claimed that she was “eminently qualified,” a “renowned expert,” and politically “neutral.” But to put that in context, her rather thin actual work history, heavy on being a Democratic Party apparatchik tied to the Clintons, oddly includes a stint as a Fulbright-Clinton fellow in 2017 serving as an adviser on disinformation to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. She sports the US and Ukrainian flags next to her picture on her twitter page.

Attempts by governments to shape their message by discrediting alternative viewpoints are not exactly new. Here in the US, suppressing contrary views is nearly as old as the republic. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 gave the president power to deport potentially “dangerous” foreigners and made it a crime to print “any false, scandalous, and malicious writing” about the government. President John Adams supported these laws because he wanted to prevent a war with France, quite the reverse of what the Biden regime is seeking to do as it mobilizes against Russia. Vice President Thomas Jefferson was openly disgusted by the unconstitutional acts, which probably contributed to his election as president in 1800.

The Acts were subsequently allowed to expire and were never reviewed by the Supreme Court, but there is also the later example of the Committee for Public Information which was used by the government to support the war party line in World War One. There followed the Espionage Act of 1918, which is still in effect, that was used liberally by President Woodrow Wilson to silence critics of American entry into the war. The definition of what constitutes “espionage” was deliberately made infinitely elastic and the Act is still in use against whistleblowers and presumably also Julian Assange.

Given the language connected with the launch of the Disinformation Government Board, it might reasonably be assumed that it would have surely sought to suppress “malicious writing” and speech relating to the Biden sponsored wave of illegal immigration along the country’s southern border that has driven America’s foreign-born population to a record 46.6 million people. And, in addition to an increase in arriving Afghans, which was actually written into the bill proposing $33 billion more for Ukraine, there will surely be more Ukrainian migrants. Jewish organizations in the US, Europe and Israel are already actively bringing in co-religionists. Given political realities, displaced Ukrainian Jews will likely be quietly given refugee status granting them full benefits to include housing and welfare payments.

Not surprisingly, the surging wave of immigration is highly unpopular among working people who are already established, even among many Democrats, and the Biden response will be to compel the bad vibes go away, literally, by openly labeling critics as liars peddling disinformation. Whether there will be actual criminal or civil penalties attached to the process remains to be seen when the board is most likely resurrected under another name.

And, of course, the likes of Senator Rand Paul, Congressman Tom Massie, journalist Tucker Carlson and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard would have their views on the developing catastrophe in Ukraine challenged and denigrated, to include possibly arranging for their banning from social media sites, which is already being done to some critics. The fact is that we do not know at this point exactly what the new Board will eventually be empowered to do, but one can count on the results being bad, destructive both of the First Amendment and of honest journalism in the United States.

The ability of the government to collude with corporate America to diminish personal liberty of the citizenry cannot be understated. We have already seen corporations that operate on the internet proactively terminating accounts that it considers politically unacceptable. Consortium News, a perfect respectable site of long standing that has a splendid record of investigative journalism, was recently delisted by PayPal, which took the further step of confiscating its nearly $10,000 of funds with the threat that the money might be retained by PayPal as an additional punishment.

The reality is that the government can unleash its thousands of lawyers to make a case against nearly every citizen who is politically active. Which is why the Biden Administration has already been criminalizing and/or sanctioning any foreign organization that has “interfered in or undermined public confidence in United States elections,” as if the two major parties are not already doing that quite effectively all by themselves. If that is truly a crime why aren’t Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell being sanctioned?

In my own experience, I have dealt with threatened punishment regarding my contributing to and participating in the activities of an Iranian NGO and a Russian information site. Neither organization can plausibly be regarded as a threat to the United States, though they both were highly critical of US government policies, as am I. In one case, American participants in a conference overseas organized by the Iranians were warned that they would be arrested upon return, which currently appears to be “due process” in the US. In the case of the Russian site, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) advised that any American writing for the site could be fined as much as $311,562!

The unfortunate reality is that the real damage is being done through the employment of government driven restrictions punishing ordinary citizens who are exercising their right of free speech and free association. It is easy to claim that a foreign news service or NGO is “undermining confidence in US elections” as it is a charge that one need not have to prove. Indeed, it is unprovable and it is a weapon that can be used to manage dissent and to narrow the bounds of acceptable discourse. The question becomes whether and to what extent the successor to the now paused Disinformation Governance Board will attempt to apply similar standards to Americans. One might suggest that the barring of dissident US journalists and political figures from social media sites and from funding mechanisms like PayPal is the first shot to be fired in a long struggle over what is “truth” that will play out over the next two years.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 2 Comments

The green agenda’s role in global inflation

By Ben Pile | TCW Defending Freedom | May 24, 2022

AS inflation rises and the prospects for our return to normality following the pandemic fade ever more into the distant future, criticism is rightly focusing on financial institutions and regulators. They claim that printing money, which has inevitably caused prices to rise, was necessary to mitigate the economic chaos of lockdowns. But now they appear to be behind a third act of immense self-harm to help to steer the world to inflation and deliberately prevent economic recovery. The rise in energy prices the world has seen were not the result of an unforeseeable supply crisis, but engineered by those charged with managing the economy.

In a recent interview, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey admitted to Sky News his discomfort at the UK rate of inflation heading towards 10 per cent. ‘We are being struck by historically large shocks,’ explained Bailey, removing himself and his organisation from the spotlight. ‘Who of us thought there would be a war in Europe of the sort that we’re seeing?’ he asked rhetorically.

As it happens, many people have been predicting such a conflict. Analysts, be they critics of Nato or Moscow, have long and for different reasons warned that Ukraine risks becoming the point of renewed east-west tension, and many Ukrainians themselves have spoken about the grim inevitability of war, at least since 2014. But this article is about energy and climate policy, not war. I raise the issue here because, like me, you might have expected the Governor of the Bank of England to have kept a watching brief on geopolitics.

We would be wrong, then. It turns out that the chief regulator of the UK economy (the sixth largest in the world) and his predecessor were far more concerned with the putative risks from climate change than with developments in geopolitics. The Bank of England’s webpages could have been written by an XR activist. ‘Climate change creates financial risks and economic consequences,’ it claims. ‘These risks and consequences matter for our mission to maintain monetary and financial stability.’ Endless volumes of reports and links to pages after pages make the case, citing equally endless scientific reports that I have always considered to be suspect.

Put simply, I do not believe that society’s sensitivity to climate is in any way equivalent to climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide. The planet may well be slightly warmer, but there exists very little evidence that this is creating economic risks. On the contrary, people everywhere are becoming much wealthier. (Or were, before the pandemic.) I shall spare the word count here, but I have written about it at length in many other places if you remain unconvinced. Suffice it to say that it is logically impossible for ‘risks’ to be growing as the BoE claim while an economy is growing, which it was, even in the world’s most seemingly climate-ravaged places.

But green ideology is a fetter on public institutions’ grasp of reality. And so we should look to the origins of green ideology to try to understand what is behind the BoE’s climate activism.

It is a common misconception that the climate agenda is driven by science. But it is a matter of historical fact that green ideology sprang from the very top of global society. In the 1960s, it was the Club of Rome, a think tank formed by wealthy industrialists and their pet academics that turned their fears about overpopulation and resource-depletion into a computer simulation that forecast civilisation’s imminent collapse. And so it is today with climate change, every earlier environmental scare story issued by that simulation now having been debunked by reality.

The heart of the contemporary green ‘movement’ is known by its ugly moniker, the ‘green blob’. The entirety of it, including those parts of it that dwell on streets, owes its existence completely to the grants given by about a dozen or so billionaires’ philanthropic foundations to organisations of various kinds. From Extinction Rebellion to academic research departments, none of it would exist but for the vast torrents of cash from the likes of Jeremy Grantham, Sir Christopher Hohn and Michael Bloomberg. And it is from here that the notion that ‘climate change creates financial risks and economic consequences’ springs from, and the belief that ‘financial stability’ is functionally dependent on ‘stable weather’ is forced into the machinery of the state.

Bailey’s predecessor at the Bank of England (2013-2020), Mark Carney, previously Governor of the Bank of Canada (2008-2013), had been so impressed by multibillionaire Michael Bloomberg’s selfless philanthropy (giving away a total of $11 billion of his $82 billion fortune, significantly to green causes), he fashioned a role for the tycoon in policymaking. As Governor of both BoE and BoC, Carney was also chair of the little-known intergovernmental agency, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), where he oversaw its greening, bringing the notion of financial stability being predicated on ‘stable weather’ to financial institutions the world over. Green ideology is an infectious rot. Under the FSB, a Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) was established, and an array of corporate and financial bigwigs appointed to steer it, including Bloomberg as its chair.

Put simply, TCFD aimed to support the ‘E’ in ‘ESG’ with a system of
‘recommendations’ for voluntary disclosures that companies should make to investors, much as companies are required to make statutory disclosures about the state of their operations. ESG, short for Environmental, Social, and corporate Governance, is the fashionable green-woke successor to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), driving shareholders to change boardroom and culture using metrics that score companies’ commitments progressive values. TCFD’s recommendations build on the notion that, since financial stability is predicated on climatic stability, companies risk profiles are also dependent on weather. The logic here being that if a company does not have a business plan that is compatible with a changing climate, and moreover, compatible with a changing regulatory environment, investors deserve to be made aware of these risks.

This was good business. Ethical business, even. And other green billionaire philanthropists were eager to give their money away to this good cause, too. British hedge fund manager, Sir Christopher Hohn, used much of the $800 million pushed through his philanthropic outfit, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), to support organisations that campaign and lobby for these voluntary disclosures. CIFF founded the ‘Say on Climate’ campaign, which aimed to mobilise investors to press the companies in which they had an interest to adopt ‘climate transition action plans’, building on Hohn’s trademark shareholder activism. Between 2014 and 2020, CIFF made grants of over $23million to the Carbon Disclosure Project, and backed other shareholder and financial sector campaigning organisations partnered with the ‘We Mean Business Coalition’.

But as sure as push comes to shove, voluntary becomes compulsory. At the COP26 meeting in Glasgow last year, Mark Carney stood in front of a screen that declared the intention to make TCFD disclosures mandatory, and for policy frameworks to ‘wind down stranded assets’ – the green movement’s term for fossil fuel investments that will become obsolete when climate policy prohibits them. He was followed by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who declared that investment funds with assets under management worth $130 trillion were aligned to the UK’s new policies.

Sunak was an employee of Hohn’s investment fund, TCI, between 2006 and 2009. And as an alumnus of such a notable activist outfit as TCI, and as Chancellor, it is inconceivable that he was unaware of the effects on the economy that ESG was already having by last autumn. ESG had driven investors away from stock in companies that make useful stuff, such as coal, oil and gas, towards high-tech, social media and companies that produce mere vapour, such as Netflix. As Bloomberg reported at the time, in the era of ESG investing, capital investment in fossil fuels had halved since the Paris Agreement, and the cost of capital to fossil fuel companies had doubled.

Amid other factors, this capital strangulation of the energy sector was the direct effect of ESG investing, green campaigning organisations, and governments and central banks actively working together to destroy the fossil fuel sector without making the policy explicit. This is indubitably the main factor behind the energy supply crisis that seemed to come out of nowhere last year to add to inflation woes by pushing energy prices up.

A few days ago, Bailey told MPs that ‘there isn’t a lot we can do’ to stop inflation rising. But there was a lot that the BoE could have done to stop it happening, but failed to do, and instead helped in no small way to engineer this global crisis. In late 2020, the BoE published an Interim Report and Roadmap for implementing the recommendations of the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, which boasted of the BoE’s and UK government’s leading roles in creating ESG policy, and which ‘advocates a move towards mandatory TCFD-aligned disclosures across non-financial and financial sectors of the UK economy’.

Here’s a clue, Andrew, if you’re reading, about how you might start to address the problem of rising prices. Remove from the Bank of England all traces of environmental ideology and sever all links with the green billionaires who have pushed the notion that climate change is a ‘risk’ to the economy. It isn’t. The much greater risk than weather to the economic wellbeing of millions of British people – and billions of people throughout the world in poorer economies – is green ideology. While the likes of Hohn and Bloomberg have made billions of dollars through creating an ESG bubble via their undemocratic and undue influence in public institutions, billions of people are suffering from the effects of starving the energy sector of investment, pushing up the price of energy, transport, and food.

Here is a short film I have made about the problem.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Can nuclear power achieve net-zero carbon?

By Donn Dears | Power For USA | May 20, 2022

Three steps are required to determine the number of new nuclear power plants needed to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050.

Step 1

Step one determines the number of new nuclear power plants needed to replace all the electricity generated by fossil fuels in 2021.

Today, there are 94 nuclear power plants in operation which generate 18.9% of the 4,116 billion kWh consumed in the United States. 

The amount of electricity generated by fossil fuels in 2021 is 2,512 billion kWh, which is arrived at by subtracting renewables and nuclear from the total.

Step one, therefore, is to establish the number of new nuclear plants needed to replace the 2,512 billion kWh generated by fossil fuels. On average, each existing nuclear plant generates 8.3 billion kWh in 2021.

  • Number of new nuclear power plants to replace fossil fuels = 304

Step 2

Step two is to determine how many new nuclear power plants are needed to supply the electricity needed when all light vehicles are battery-powered, and homes use electricity for heating rather than natural gas. The national renewable energy lab (NREL) has determined that total electricity consumption will double when all light vehicles are BEVs and homes rely on electricity for heating. Hydro can’t be doubled, and without increasing other renewables the additional electricity needed to be generated by nuclear will equal the amount generated by all methods in 2021, i.e., 4,116 billion kWh.

  • Number of new nuclear power plants  to double electricity consumption by 2050 = 497

Step 3

Step three is to determine the number of new nuclear power plants that will be needed to generate the electricity required to produce enough hydrogen to make steel and cement that meet net-zero carbon requirements. ( Cement will also require carbon capture and sequestration to be fully net-zero carbon.) There’s little reliable data on using hydrogen in the making of cement, while there is considerable data for using hydrogen in the making of steel. The estimate shown here for the number of additional nuclear plants is based on the amount of hydrogen required to make 62 million tons of steel, which excludes the amount of steel made using scrap in electric arc furnaces, and then doubling the number of nuclear plants to compensate for the production of cement. (The United States produced 87.9 million tons of steel in 2021.)

  • Number of new nuclear power plants required to generate the electricity used by electrolyzers to produce the hydrogen to make steel and cement = 80

The total number of new nuclear power plants to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050 is:

  • 304 + 497 + 80 = 881

Or, 31 new nuclear power plants every year between now and 2050.

This, in the face of the fact that the US hasn’t been able to build one new nuclear plant over the past ten years.

Additional considerations

Nuclear power plants are scheduled to be shut down beginning in 2032 unless their operating licenses are renewed, with all existing nuclear power plants shut down by 2064. While two units in Georgia are likely to be completed in the next year or two, both Diablo Units in California are scheduled for closure in 2025. There is no provision in the above calculations for additional nuclear power plants to replace any shut down before 2050.

Wind and PV solar have expected lives of 20 years. This means that:

  • All 54,244 wind turbines and all PV solar panels installed before 2022 will also have to be replaced with additional nuclear power plants before 2050.
  • All wind turbines and all PV solar panels installed between now and 2030 will also have to be replaced with additional nuclear power plants before 2050.

These additional nuclear power plants have not been included in the above calculations.

Conclusion

If nuclear power is used in an attempt to eliminate fossil fuels, it will require building at least 31 new nuclear power plants every year between now and 2050. 

  • However, not one new unit has been built during the past ten years, during which time there has been an ongoing effort to build 2 units in Georgia.

This reality check should give everyone pause, as it demonstrates that it’s not possible to eliminate fossil fuels using nuclear power.

Net-zero carbon cannot be achieved using nuclear power.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Economics | | 1 Comment

Biden Says Record-High Gas Prices Part of ‘Incredible Transition’ US Going Through

Samizdat | May 24, 2022

Following the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine on 24 February, the US and several of its allies cut off all imports of Russian oil and gas, which added greatly to soaring gas prices for Americans.

President Joe Biden has argued that the current record-high gas prices in his country are part of America’s major transition from fossil fuels.

“Here’s the situation. And when it comes to gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over,” he said during a joint press conference with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday.

POTUS then insisted that his administration’s actions helped “keep it [the gas prices] from getting worse — and it’s bad”.

“The price of gas at the pump is something that I told you — you heard me say before — it would be a matter of great discussion at my kitchen table when I was a kid growing up,” Biden said before admitting, “It’s affecting a lot of families.”

House Republican Steve Scalise was quick to respond by telling reporters that Biden is “saying the quiet part out loud now.” In an apparent nod to the Biden administration, Scalise added that “they’re causing you pain at the pump because it’s all part of their radical agenda.”

He spoke as the national average for a gallon of regular gas in the US stood at $4.56 as of Monday, which is more than $0.40 higher than it was just a month ago.

In some US states such as California, the average price for a gallon of regular gas has meanwhile already reached $6.06.

While Biden previously tried to cast the price increases as the fault of Russian President Vladimir Putin, labelling high gas prices “Putin’s price hike”, the recent polls show that Americans aren’t buying it.

A survey conducted by conservative pollster Rasmussen found that beliefs about the importance of rising gas prices were essentially unchanged since November 2021, but that a majority (51%) of American voters surveyed held POTUS responsible for higher fuel prices. Another 26% blamed oil companies for the price hike, while just 15% blamed Putin.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | 1 Comment

Russian oil shipments hit record high

Samizdat | May 24, 2022

Nearly 62 million barrels of Russia’s flagship Urals crude oil, a record amount, are currently in tankers at sea, according to data from energy analytics firm Vortexa, as cited by Reuters.

However, traders are reportedly struggling to find buyers for some of the cargo as EU countries fail to agree on a possible Russian oil ban. Other buyers have reportedly been shunning Russian crude due to fears of future sanctions.

According to Vortexa, the volume of Urals crude oil on the water is triple the average recorded before February 24, when Russia’s military operation was launched in Ukraine.

“The headline numbers, showing Russian exports are still relatively strong, don’t tell the full story,” Houston-based energy strategist Clay Seigle said, as quoted by Reuters. “Russian oil at sea is continuing to accumulate.”

The number of Urals cargoes at sea with no set destination constitutes 15% of the total, also a new high, Seigle said, adding that some of the oil could be in transit to undisclosed buyers, while others could be unsold cargoes.

Most barrels of Russian crude oil have reportedly headed to Asia, mostly to India and China, while volumes headed to Europe have also increased.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | 1 Comment

EU president accuses Russia of energy ‘blackmail’

Samizdat | May 24, 2022

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday accused Russia of “blackmailing” the EU with its oil and gas exports. However, the bloc is in the process of voluntarily cutting itself off from these energy resources, and Moscow has blamed global food shortages on Western sanctions.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, von der Leyen said the EU would “accelerate” its transition to green energy “because of Russia’s blackmailing us with fossil fuels.”

Yet hours before she spoke, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck announced that the EU’s 27 member states would “reach a breakthrough within days” to ban Russian oil imports, upon which many EU states depend. Germany, for example, relies on Russia for around a quarter of its imported oil, while the bloc as a whole sources 27% of its oil from Russia.

Von der Leyen has also promised to reduce the EU’s reliance on Russian gas by 66% this year and eliminate it entirely by 2027, as part of a green energy plan announced last week. At present, 40% of the EU’s gas comes from Russia.

Since the start of its military operation in Ukraine in February, and throughout waves of successive EU and US sanctions, Russia has continued to sell its oil and gas to the EU. Moscow has demanded, however, that importers buy its gas in rubles. More than half of Gazprom’s foreign clients have already opened ruble accounts with the Russian energy giant, according to Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.

Von der Leyen also accused Russia of using “food exports as a form of blackmail,” by allegedly blocking grain shipments out of Ukraine and refusing to export its own supply.

However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that the West’s economic sanctions are responsible for rising global food prices, and that Ukraine is free to export its crop through Poland. Peskov also accused Ukrainian naval forces of mining the Black Sea, making shipments “virtually impossible.”

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Is the US conspiring to sink Russian Black Sea fleet ships?

By Drago Bosnic | May 24, 2022

On 20 May, in an exclusive for Reuters, the US government announced it would be providing advanced anti-ship and land-attack missiles to the Kiev regime, in yet another major escalatory move aiming to prolong the conflict and make it as bloody as possible for both sides. While some might dismiss such statements as simply being a part of the information, or more precisely, disinformation war, they should be taken extremely seriously, as it certainly wouldn’t be the first time the political West, with the US at its helm, delivered advanced weapons to the Kiev regime. To make matters worse, an adviser employed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Anton Gerashchenko, stated that the US will be “sinking Russian ships in the Black Sea.” His exact (now deleted) tweet stated:

“The US is preparing a plan to destroy the [Russian] Black Sea Fleet. The effective work of the Ukrainians on [Russian] warships convinced [the US] to prepare a plan to unblock the [Ukrainian] ports. Deliveries of powerful anti-ship weapons are being discussed.”

The Ukrainian official was referring to the aforementioned Reuters report on the US plan to provide the regime with the old “Harpoon” anti-ship missiles, as well as the newer and more advanced NSM (Naval Strike Missile), which can be used both as an anti-ship or land-attack weapon. The “Harpoon” is a subsonic, all-weather, over-the-horizon, anti-ship missile developed and manufactured by Boeing Defense, Space & Security (historically McDonnell Douglas) with a range of up to 220-250 km (depending on the source), costing around $1.5 million apiece. The NSM, also a subsonic missile, has a dual, anti-ship and land-attack capability. The missile’s exact range is classified, but it can go as far as 200 km or more, depending on the flight profile. It costs up to $2.2 million per unit.

Three State Department officials and two Congressional sources told Reuters that the White House was still working on the details for providing the Kiev regime with these advanced weapons. According to the sources, logistical issues and “the possibility the US would have to remove a launcher from one of its ships to send to Ukraine are current obstacles to completing the transfer”. Rather disturbingly, when responding to a question from Newsweek, the State Department did not deny it was working on a plan to target the Russian Black Sea fleet. “As the conflict is changing, so too is our military assistance to deliver the critical capabilities Ukraine needs for today’s fight as Russia’s forces engage in a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine,” a spokesperson said.

However, the US DoD (Department of Defense) did issue a denial of the controversial claims made by the Ukrainian Internal Ministry’s official. “I can tell you definitively that that’s not true,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters last Thursday. Still, the Pentagon’s denial refers only to the Ukrainian official’s claim the US was going to enable Ukraine to sink the Black Sea fleet and did not apply to the proposed anti-ship missiles transfer, which further adds to the confusion regarding this very serious issue.

It also remains unclear how Ukraine would be able to target Russian ships by itself. The US and NATO would either need to provide Ukraine with the necessary ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities or, worse yet, directly provide ISR information on the location and possible movement of Russian Black Sea fleet ships, which the Kremlin might see as an act of war. The US government, including US President Joe Biden, and the military continue to give controversial and ambiguous statements, oftentimes denying what was clearly stated by their colleagues, which greatly contributes to the atmosphere of distrust and exponentially increases the likelihood of an uncontrollable escalation.

Gerashchenko’s claims that the attack would help to open up Ukraine’s ports are both false and misplaced, as the Kiev regime was the party which released hundreds of sea mines, many of which drifted apart as far as the Bosphorus, over 600 km to the south of Odessa. Russia currently controls the Black Sea and maintains a blockade. However, the blockade is not aimed against civilian shipping, but possible major NATO arms deliveries to the Kiev regime forces. The United Nations has called for an easing of restrictions in the Black Sea to allow food exports from Ukraine to help alleviate global food shortages.

Russia offered a diplomatic solution. Last Thursday, the Russian government proposed lifting the blockage in exchange for the removal of sanctions. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated the problem clearly goes beyond the military blockade and includes Western sanctions which are restricting fertilizer exports. “You have to not only appeal to the Russian Federation but also look deeply at the whole complex of reasons that caused the current food crisis. [Sanctions] interfere with normal free trade, encompassing food products including wheat, fertilizers and others,” Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko said.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | 3 Comments

The NHS just edited their Monkeypox page… to make it scarier

OffGuardian | May 24, 2022

Afew days ago the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) edited their Monkeypox page to alter the narrative in a few key ways.

Firstly, they removed a paragraph from the “How do you get Monkeypox?” section.

Up until a few days ago, according to archived links, the Monkeypox page said this, regarding person-to-person tranmission [emphasis added]:

It’s very uncommon to get monkeypox from a person with the infection because it does not spread easily between people.

… this has now been totally removed.

Secondly, they’ve removed this paragraph, which was present up until at least November of 2021 (and maybe much more recently, there are no archives between November and May) [emphasis added]:

[Monkeypox] is usually a mild illness that will get better on its own without treatment. Some people can develop more serious symptoms, so patients with monkeypox in the UK are cared for in specialist hospitals.

The new “treatment” paragraph reads [again, emphasis added]…

Treatment for monkeypox aims to relieve symptoms. The illness is usually mild and most people recover in 2 to 4 weeks […] You may need to stay in a specialist hospital, so your symptoms can be treated and to prevent the infection spreading to other people.

So, they remove that it will “get better on its own”, and again reinforce the idea of spreading the disease despite this being described as “very uncommon” as recently as last week.

They even add a line about self-isolating, which was never mentioned before:

as monkeypox can spread if there is close contact, you will need to be isolated if you’re diagnosed with it.

Finally, they now include a warning you can get Monkeypox by eating undercooked meat, which will doubtless feed into the anti-meat narrative too (oh, wait, it already is).

To sum up, history is being re-written a little here.

Before, monkeypox “did not spread easily between people”. Now it does.

Before, monkeypox would “get better on its own without treatment”. Now it won’t.

It’s early days to say that Monkeypox is going to be the “new Covid”, and maybe this rollout will stall and be forgotten in a couple of weeks, but there’s no doubt they are taking some tips from the Covid playbook so far.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 2 Comments

GAIN OF FUNCTION ON POX VIRUSES CONFIRMED

Amazing Polly | May 23, 2022

I cover the US’s leading Orthopox Virus researcher who conducted at least 2 rounds of gain of function research on viruses related to smallpox. Other revelations about bio-terror ‘research’ in here too. Support my work: https://amazingpolly.net/contact-support.php THANKS! References below.

NYT Mousepox Gain of Function: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/01/us/bioterror-researchers-build-a-more-lethal-mousepox.html

Buller Says Vaccine for Monkeypox (using smallpox vax) NOT recommended: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17661673

Buller paper on Monkeypox Outbreaks up to 2012: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23626656/

Judicial Watch re James Leduc / Wuhan: https://www.judicialwatch.org/wuhan-lab-fauci-grants/

National Biocontainment Training Center report by Leduc: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1022067.pdf

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video, War Crimes | , | 2 Comments