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Diplomatic Immunity, American-Style

BY LARRY ROMANOFF • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 28, 2022

In a recent podcast, Kevin Barrett stated that the rule of law has disappeared in the US. This is so obviously true to outsiders looking in, and is even more true of American official conduct abroad, but I find myself wondering about the extent to which Americans generally are aware of this and how it is perceived.

In days gone by, this lawlessness was usually deeply buried and obfuscated but today it seems there is no longer even a pretense of any rule of law. We see this most recently in the so-called “sanctions” the US so freely applies to countries and individuals, being no more than illegal rampaging and looting.

But there is another category that may not be as visible and yet is indicative of an extreme breakdown of the rule of law, this applying to the category of “diplomatic immunity”, real or imagined, where the US government absolutely treads on a one-way street. This article is only a brief introduction with a few examples of hundreds that could be cited.

Devyani Khobragade

On late 2013 an Indian diplomat, 39-year-old Devyani Khobragade, was the Deputy Consul-General in New York, and by all reports had an excellent reputation and was honorably discharging her consular duties. But then she was suddenly charged with submitting false documents to obtain a work visa for a housekeeper. She was arrested and handcuffed while dropping her daughter off at school, was taken to a police station and strip-searched, given a body cavity search, then put into a cell with drug dealers and held there until she was finally released on $250,000 bail.[1]

The Federal Prosecutor, Preet Bharara, claimed agents had arrested her “in the most discreet way possible”, having doing so in full view of her daughter, her daughter’s friends, and most of the teachers and students. He said “there can be no plausible claim that this case was somehow an injustice”, calling her treatment “standard procedure” even for diplomatic personnel, claiming further that during her strip and cavity searches she had been “accorded courtesies well beyond what other defendants are accorded, most of whom are American citizens.” He claimed these procedures were “standard practice for every defendant, rich or poor, American or not, in order to make sure that no prisoner keeps anything on his person that could harm anyone, including himself”. He said his office’s sole motivation was to uphold the law, protect victims and hold lawbreakers accountable, “no matter what their societal status and no matter how powerful, rich or connected they are”.[2][3][4][5] It staggers the imagination and leaves us numb and unable to respond when faced with such incredibly shameful lies.

The mess was later blamed on a “mistake”, a claim that the low-level agent who drew up the charges against Ms. Khobragade had confused two documents – Ms. Khobragade’s US visa application and that of the employment contract with her housekeeper – and “misunderstood” Ms. Khobragade’s salary as the amount she meant to pay her maid. Yet those two documents are in an entirely different format and could not possibly have been confused one with the other. It would appear that no visa fraud actually occurred after all, and it was further discovered Ms. Khobragade was after all attached to the UN as an advisor, which function unquestionably granted her full diplomatic immunity. The US State department repeatedly refused to acknowledge her diplomatic status but let her leave the country.[6]

However, and if all the claims had been true, this really would have been at most a simple issue of a wage mis-statement which is a misdemeanor offense and not a felony, and would normally be investigated by the Department of Labor. In fact, this is a common issue with many foreign household and agricultural workers in the US, and also occurs daily with restaurant workers, but never in the history of America has a restaurant or farm owner been arrested and strip-searched because of a low-level wage or visa dispute. And for such a minor offense the bail is usually around $5,000, not $250,000. So what really happened?

Well, only a few weeks before being abruptly arrested and strip-searched in New York, Ms. Khobragade had managed to make some powerful enemies in the US pharmaceutical industry about India’s treatment of US so-called intellectual property. The Indian government and courts have taken IP actions that angered the Americans, including denial to US firms of pharmaceutical patents that were not a true innovation, and permitting compulsory licensing for production of generic medicines. The US Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) was hysterical at India’s actions, referring to “unprecedented patent revocations and denials” and accusing India of being “an outlier in the global economy”. AmCham’s “Global IP Center” held a public event in New York at which it attacked India’s practices, and at which Ms. Khobragade was “outspoken” in defense of her country’s practices, and where she engaged in “debate” with US industry executives, demanding that in future an Indian representative be given a formal place at these events to present India’s side of the story. Shortly thereafter, US officials were busy cavity-searching, humiliating, and deporting the woman who dared confront the IP kings of AmCham and the US pharma industry.

Preet Bharara later confirmed in an autobiography that Devyani Khobragade was indeed strip-searched and cavity-searched, and acknowledged, “That could have and should have been avoided, given that no one would have sought pretrial detention.”[7]

 A bit too little and a bit too late.

The official position of all civilised nations toward a foreign diplomat resident in their countries is that “He is a diplomat and has the privileges of a diplomat. If you’re a diplomat and you commit any crime, the case is investigated and is forwarded to your embassy. That’s what the law says and we work within the law”. However, the official position of the American government toward foreign diplomats in the US is different. A State Department “guidance paper” for American law enforcement officials on how diplomatic immunity works even at the highest levels says that “diplomatic immunity is not intended to serve as a license for persons to flout the law and purposely avoid liability for their actions. The purpose of these privileges and immunities is not to benefit individuals but to ensure the efficient and effective performance of their official missions on behalf of their governments.”

In short, a foreign diplomat in the US has no immunity against prosecution by the US government for offenses real or imagined, but US citizens in other nations, diplomats or not, have full immunity even when clearly engaged in illegal activities that include drunk or reckless driving, espionage, and murder.

There are literally hundreds of cases where US consular officials in all countries regularly flout domestic labor and many other laws. American employment contracts in other countries are regularly violated with impunity, and typically specify that all staff issues including compensation will be decided exclusively by the US consular staff with no recourse to either domestic or US law – contract wording that is itself illegal, since no contract anywhere can eliminate recourse to local courts. But then, these are Americans, and their world is apparently different than ours. Americans in all countries violate both domestic tax laws and their visa status, in all cases being protected by the US government claiming “diplomatic status” for those who are clearly non-diplomats.

Raymond Davis

Here is another incident, this one from the other side of the fence. In January of 2011, CIA agent Raymond Davis was driving down a street in Lahore, Pakistan, when he stopped at a red light. A motorbike carrying two Pakistani Intelligence agents keeping Davis under surveillance due to suspicion of criminal activities, pulled in front of his car. Davis drew an automatic weapon and killed both men, claiming they had attempted to rob him and that he acted in self-defense.[8][9]

But the documented facts from multiple witnesses clearly proved that Davis initiated the violence. When the motorcycle stopped in front of his car, Davis first fired five shots through the windshield, killing one man and injuring the other, then got out of his vehicle, shot four more rounds into the two men as they lay on the pavement, then four more shots into one man’s back as he was trying to crawl away, killing him as well. Witnesses testified that Davis then walked back to his car, called for backup on a military radio, then took photos of the men he had just killed. One witness who watched from his restaurant across the street, said he was amazed at the American’s manner. “He was very peaceful and confident. I was wondering how he could be like that after killing two people,” he said.

Minutes later, four Americans in a Toyota jeep with fake registration plates left Davis’ home and made a frantic but unsuccessful attempt to reach Davis and rescue him. Finding their vehicle trapped in a traffic jam, they crossed the median and traveled against the oncoming traffic, colliding with a motorcycle and killing the driver. After the accident, they fled the scene and drove at high speed to the US Embassy, jettisoning many bits of evidence along the way including 100 bullets, knives, gloves, a blindfold. Witnesses later told police that one American opened the door to their vehicle, displayed a rifle and threatened to kill anyone who got in their way.

Davis also attempted to escape in his vehicle but was apprehended and charged with double murder, espionage and the illegal possession of a firearm. Although Davis was part of the CIA’s Global Response Staff, he was at the time doing some contract espionage work for Xe Services, the private company formerly known as Blackwater that was involved in a multitude of scandals in Iraq that included mass murders and many other crimes. Items recovered from Davis’s car included a Glock handgun, an infrared light, a portable telescope, GPS equipment, two mobile phones, a satellite phone, 9mm ammunition, multiple ATM and military ID cards, multiple ID cards from several different US consulates, facial disguise and makeup, and a camera. According to Pakistani officials, Davis’ camera contained photos of “prohibited areas such as installations along the border with India”, stating “This is not the work of a diplomat. He was doing espionage and other activities”.[10][11][12][13]

Then-US President Obama demanded that Pakistan free “our diplomat” under the Vienna convention rules, and the State Department exerted fierce and unrelenting pressure on Pakistan to release Davis. US officials insisted Davis was a diplomat doing “technical and administrative work” at the embassy and had to be treated as such, though he was a common criminal in the country on a tourist passport, had no diplomatic credentials and no consular functions. Pakistani officials demanded the US turn over for questioning the men in the Embassy who had attempted to rescue Davis and had killed the motorcyclist, but the Americans refused and spirited the men out of Pakistan. Davis was released after the families of the two killed men were paid $2.4 million in what is called “blood money”.

Joshua Walde

In another incident, in August of 2013 an American diplomat, Joshua Walde, an information management officer at the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, was driving his SUV at a high rate of speed when he made an illegal turn, crossed the highway center line, and rammed into a full mini-bus, killing a father of three whose widow was six months pregnant, and seriously injuring eight other people.[14] (15) US Embassy officials in Nairobi took advantage of Walde’s diplomatic immunity and rushed the American and his family out of Kenya the next day, leaving the crash victims with no financial assistance. Officials noted that embassy employees are typically evacuated “for medical evaluations” after traumatic events but also are flown out of a country “to avoid any possible retribution”. Hilary Renner, a State Department spokeswoman in Washington, said the embassy extends “its deepest condolences” to the family of the dead man, and “wishes a speedy recovery” to those injured.

Anne Sacoolas

More recently we had the case of Anne Sacoolas, the wife of an American employed at a UK consulate, who was formally charged in the death of British teenager Harry Dunn. Sacoolas was driving her car on the wrong side of the road, perhaps while impaired, and crashed into Dunn’s motorcycle, killing him. Sacoolas spoke later to the police, but then immediately headed for the airport and left the UK, claiming “diplomatic immunity” when of course she had none. However, the Americans refused to release her to return to the UK to stand trial.[16][17] Once safe at home in the US, Ms. Sacoolas offered to perform some “community service” as penance. Here are some media details if you are interested in more information:[18][19][20][21][22][23]

Julia Bravo

A current case is that of an American soldier in Italy, a young woman named Julia Bravo, who has been charged with vehicular homicide. Prosecutors in Pordenone, in Italy’s Northeast, charged the 20-year-old female soldier stationed at the US Air Force’s Aviano Air Base with vehicular manslaughter in the auto death of a young boy in Italy.

According to witness testimony, Bravo had left a disco in the small hours of the morning, was subsequently seen driving erratically on the road, drove over and through a traffic circle, crossed a median, crashed through a group of road signs at high speed and hit a group of young boys walking on the roadside, killing one of them instantly. According to an eyewitness who had been partying in the same club, Bravo was so drunk “she couldn’t even turn the ignition on”, and at first drove off in the opposite direction of her military base. The police said her blood-alcohol level was four times the legal limit.

The dead boy’s mother said, “We all know that the soldiers on the Aviano base in this area do what they like, that they don’t respect the rules. There have been many incidents in the past that involved American troops. They have the freedom to do whatever they like and not be punished.” The mother told the Corriere della Sera newspaper that she wanted the soldier tried in Italy. “I don’t trust the American justice system.” However, the chance of that appears slight since the US Embassy is apparently exerting enormous pressure on the Italians to have the woman sent to the US for a “prosecution” which will never take place.[24][25][26][27][28]

However, being American, our sympathies must lie with the perpetrator. Her lawyer told the Italian media that his client was “extremely emotionally exhausted” from expressing her remorse and apologising to the family.

Capt. Richard Ashby

There have been many such occurrences involving US military personnel in countries throughout Europe and Asia, and invariably with the US applying immense diplomatic and military bullying to prevent Americans from being subject to the laws of any country. One notable case occurred some years back where a Capt. Richard Ashby, flying a military jet aircraft in Northern Italy, was displaying what he boasted as a “daredevil stunt” and severed the cables of a cable car line at an Italian ski resort, sending 20 people to their death. The military restrictions prohibited flight below 1,000 feet above ground level and at speeds more than 500 mph. Ashby was flying his aircraft at little over 300 feet and at more than 1,000 Kph when the accident occurred.[29][30][31]

Italian prosecutors had wanted four US airmen, including Ashby and his co-pilot, Capt. Joseph Schweitzer, and three officers from the US base at Aviano, to face charges of manslaughter and endangering the safety of transport, but the Americans bullied the Italians into surrendering the prisoners to an American court. Naturally, all were found not guilty of all charges. The Italians were infuriated, but there was nothing to be done. People still ask today why has no one has even been held to account for that tragedy.[32][33]

Epilogue

One of the distressing features of today’s world is that it is not only the US that has apparently abandoned any pretense of adhering to a rule of law; most other Western nations are as guilty, and some perhaps even more so.

Think of Canada during the recent truckers’ protest in Ottawa. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau first had the nation’s law enforcement agencies track down the ownership of the vehicles and extort the insurance companies into canceling the insurance on all the trucks. When that failed, they used every manner of access to determine the identity of all protesters and forced the banks to freeze the accounts of all participants. When that still failed to frighten off the protesters, Trudeau had the local governments begin seizing the semi-trailers and selling them ($150,000 to $200,000 each) “to pay the costs of monitoring the protest”. All actions were openly and reprehensibly illegal, against all manner of law and justice, but seemingly of no concern.

It is incredible, unbelievable, that the government of any civilised country, the so-called democracies and “free nations”, could behave in such a manner, and yet this is where we are. The few examples in this essay are of rampant criminality and the immunity that comes with uncontrolled power in the hands of the wrong people. It is no longer a matter of law but of power to do. The US government recently confiscated the entire assets of Afghanistan’s central bank and arbitrarily decided to “donate” the money to American 9-11 victims. That is not different than seizing the assets of Russia’s central bank, and keeping the money, not different than seizing a $100 million yacht owned by an innocent individual, and selling it and keeping the money – because he’s Russian.

We see articles today warning us of the impending degeneration of the US and the West into totalitarian fascism, but that’s a delusion: we’re already there, but nobody seems to know. If you are on the wrong side of the political fence today, your life could easily become miserable and short. Dissidence is no longer a requirement; innocent questioning of the official narrative will be sufficient. By the time everyone wakes up, it will be too late and we will be in the middle of World War Three.

Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. ([Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons]).

His full archive can be seen at https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com

Notes

[1] https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/10/01/devyani-khobragade-whose-arrest-led-to-india-us-spat-made-envoy-to-cambodia.html#:~:text=Devyani%20Khobragade%20was%20charged%20and%20arrested%20by%20US,by%20paying%20her%20less%20than%20the%20stipulated%20wages

[2] IFS officer Devyani Khobragade, who was stripped searched in US, promoted after 7-month wait

https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2018/oct/27/ifs-officer-devyani-khobragade-who-was-stripped-searched-in-us-promoted-after-7-month-wait-1890490.html

[3] Who is Devyani Khobragade, the Indian diplomat at the center of the firestorm?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-devyani-khobragade-advocated-for-womens-rights-but-underpaid-her-nanny/2013/12/20/13e23688-69a2-11e3-8b5b-a77187b716a3_story.html

[4] Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade leaves US under immunity

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/10/devyani-khobragade-to-leave-us-under-diplomatic-immunity

[5] U.S. officials made a mistake that led to Indian diplomat’s arrest and strip search over visa application for maid

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2529122/Devyani-Khobragades-arrest-strip-search-result-mistake-US-officials-claims-lawyer.html

[6] Devyani Khobragade: Diplomat row charges dropped in US

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-26554245

[7] Preet Bharara says diplomat was strip-searched, could’ve been avoided

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/former-prosecutor-preet-bharara-says-diplomat-devyani-khobragade-was-strip-searched-could-ve-been-avoided/story-QsrVh6iiCF4RIirCRke1qM.html

[8] American who sparked diplomatic crisis over Lahore shooting was CIA spy

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/20/us-raymond-davis-lahore-cia

[9] US gives fresh details of CIA agent who killed two men in Pakistan shootout

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/21/raymond-davis-pakistan-cia-blackwater

[10] CIA killer Raymond Davis released by Pakistani authorities

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/03/pkst-m18.html

[11] CIA contractor Ray Davis freed over Pakistan killings

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-12757244

[12] Revealed: What CIA agent was really doing in Lahore as it emerges even Pakistan officials are ‘worried for his safety’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1359324/CIA-agent-Raymond-Davis-Lahore-Pakistan-officials-worried-safety.html

[13] Pakistan defiant in face of US pressure to free CIA agent

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/21/raymond-davis-cia-agent-pakistan

[14] https://www.rt.com/news/us-diplomat-flees-kenya-accident-979/

[15] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/02/diplomat-kenya-car-crash/2612229/

[16] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9280351/Harry-Dunns-family-lawyer-hits-diplomat-Anne-Sacoolas-offers-pay-funeral.html

[17] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/case-against-anne-sacoolas-over-death-of-harry-dunn-can-go-ahead-in-us-judge-rules/ar-BB1dKA18

[18] Anne Sacoolas to face UK court over death of Harry Dunn

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/13/harry-dunn-anne-sacoolas-to-face-criminal-trial-in-the-uk-over-teenagers-death

[19] ANNE SACOOLAS has reached a “resolution” with Harry Dunn’s family after the teenager was killed in a car accident with her behind the wheel in 2019.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10079907/anne-sacoolas-us-diplomat-wife-harry-dunn-death/

[20] Anne Sacoolas: Harry Dunn suspect ‘willing to do community service’

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-56326406

[21] Case against American woman accused of killing a UK teenager can go ahead in the US, judge rules

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/17/us/harry-dunn-anne-sacoolas-damages-intl/index.html

[22] The fugitive: US spy’s wife Anne Sacoolas is pictured driving HER children on the school run in America after fleeing Britain following car crash that killed teenager Harry Dunn

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7971307/Pictured-Anne-Sacoolas-fled-justice-road-crash-killed-Harry-Dunn.html

[23] US woman who killed teen biker Harry Dunn wouldn’t face prosecution in America, lawyer claims

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/09/uk/anne-sacoolas-harry-dunn-community-service-intl-gbr/index.html

[24] U.S. servicewoman in Italy charged with vehicular homicide in drunk driving accident

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/aug/23/julia-bravo-us-servicewoman-italy-charged-vehicula/

[25] American service member, 20, is arrested in Italy for hitting and killing 15-year-old boy with her car while ‘driving drunk’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11137855/American-soldier-arrested-Italy-hitting-killing-15-year-old-car-drunk.html

[26] Drunk US soldier kills boy in Italy

The American airwoman hit the 15-year-old while driving four times over the legal blood alcohol limit

https://www.rt.com/news/561418-american-pilot-drunk-driving-italy/

[27] US soldier held in Italy for allegedly killing 15-year-old while driving four times over legal alcohol limit

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/soldier-italy-drunk-driving-teen-killed-b2150353.html

[28] US soldier under house arrest in Italy after driving drunk, killing teen

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2022/08/24/US-soldier-under-house-arrest-in-Italy-after-driving-drunk-killing-teen

[29] 20 die as US warplane hits cable car in Italian resort

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/20-die-as-us-warplane-hits-cable-car-in-italian-resort-1142753.html

[30] 20 Die in Italy As U.S. Jet Cuts A Ski Lift Cable

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/04/world/20-die-in-italy-as-us-jet-cuts-a-ski-lift-cable.html

[31] Cable Car Plunges in Italy, Killing at Least 14 People

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/23/world/europe/italy-cable-car.html

[32] US pilot who killed twenty on ski gondola acquitted

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/03/ital-m06.html

[33] Cavalese cable-car disaster: It’s 20 years since a US aircraft killed 20 people in the Dolomites and still no one accepts responsibility.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/cavalese-cable-car-disaster-us-aircraft-deaths-trentino-20-1998-italy-dolomites-lake-garda-responsibility-air-force-a8184771.html

August 28, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

The narrative managers have done their best to memory-hole the Nurenberg Codes

By Helen of desTroy | August 28, 2022

You would be forgiven for not knowing that last Friday was the 75th anniversary of the Doctors’ Trial, one of 13 Nazi war crimes trials conducted at Nuremberg after World War II and the event that birthed the Nuremberg Codes, the most important medical ethics document of the modern era. The Codes set ground rules for requiring informed consent from experimental test subjects; they anchor international agreements like the Helsinki Declaration, the Geneva Convention and the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and have been codified into law in the US and other countries.

Sixteen doctors were found guilty at Nuremberg of murder and torture for carrying out a euthanasia program on mentally and physically disabled German citizens deemed “unworthy of life” and experimenting on concentration camp inmates; nine were jailed and seven were executed. Yet the expected flood of commemoratory articles and events marking the anniversary of the Allies’ crowning (if illusory) moment of moral superiority over those Evil Nazis™ has not materialized. It’s downright unnatural for the US and Europe to miss a chance to give the dead Nazi horse a good beating, but any attempts to even discuss the Nuremberg Codes in the last two years have been squelched by militant fact-checkers. Meanwhile, a coterie of corrupt “public health professionals” and the international financial cartels who control them have pulled off perhaps the most shocking and deadly crime against humanity ever committed.

The Big Lie

Mentioning Nuremberg during Covid-19 was asking to be pilloried in the “respectable” press as an anti-science, horse-paste-guzzling right-wing extremist. Fact-checkers came out of the woodwork to reflexively deny that the Nuremberg Codes applied to any aspect of the Covid-19 response, from forced masking to vaccine mandates, sometimes issuing two denials in a single day in their compulsion to keep the claim from spreading. One particularly tenacious fact-check even took issue with the claim “It was the doctors on trial in Nuremberg,” arguing that because the other 12 trials put Nazi Party officials, lawyers, and corporate executives in the dock, the statement “lacked context.”

This display of ideological lockstep was supposed to intimidate anyone who wasn’t already 100% allied with society’s enlightened institutions in defense of The Science™ against the irrational, emotionally-driven forces of ignorance. Those still on the fence about getting their “Warp Speed” car-crash of a shot were shamed by peer pressure psyops like the UK’s “Clap for our carers,” while social media was seeded with controlled but approachable “experts” who carefully crafted the illusion of overwhelming consensus that the measures being taken in the name of “stopping the spread” were not only scientifically but morally beyond reproach.

But this wasn’t an organic moment of unity. These “fact-checkers” have all received big money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the eugenics enthusiasts who have rapidly become the most powerful force in global health policymaking and who also control huge chunks of the education, agriculture, and “green” energy spheres. Most fact-checking organizations pay lip service to the rules set by the International Fact-Checking Network, which while it sounds like an upstanding professional association that’s been around a while was actually launched less than a decade ago. The IFCN, which admits it doesn’t follow its own code of principles, has been funded since its 2015 beginnings by the Gates Foundation, the Omidyar Network, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Google, Facebook, the US State Department, and CIA cutout the National Endowment for Democracy, among others. It’s hard to think of a worse group of stewards for a gaggle of helpless facts, aside from perhaps the Wikimedia Foundation, about which more later.

The IFCN is run by the Poynter Institute, a “journalism education” nonprofit funded by many of the same entities as its IFCN subsidiary. Loaded down with enough conflicts of interest to make that code of principles swoon, Poynter selects, sponsors, and trains journalists, prioritizing obedience to authority, ideological inflexibility and a total absence of shame. They are then turned loose to mow the internet’s epistemological lawn in military fashion, doxxing some popular opposition voice while merely tagging others for later deplatforming, arrest, or worse. The tactic’s resemblance to the work of Ukrainian vigilante website Mirotvorets, unofficially operated by the country’s Ministry of Information, is unlikely to be an accident, given that Omidyar and Soros both poured billions of dollars into 2014’s Maidan Square color revolution, which was itself choreographed by the State Department’s Victoria Nuland, who knows the value of a well-placed bullet or a warm cookie.

It’s easy to see why Gates just had to buy the industry for himself. If these fact-checkers could reinvent the most corrupt government in Europe, whose military was exposed by dozens of major western media outlets as a hive of neo-Nazi thugs, as a democratic paradise, surely they could spin the vaccine tycoon’s Final Solution as the solution to all humanity’s problems. The Covid-19 experiment saw the closest collaboration yet between the fact-checkers, Big Tech and governments around the world to construct an epistemological roach motel that users could enter easily but would face growing barriers – warning screens, computer failures, personal attacks, deplatforming, financial hardship and a lowered social credit score – if they tried to leave.

It’s no exaggeration to say Poynter’s army of fact-checkers set the narrative of Covid-19 for the public from Day One (or should we call it Year Zero?). The IFCN’s “Coronavirus Alliance” launched in January 2020, before most Americans even knew what a coronavirus was. While the first Twitter users in the western hemisphere were stumbling across bizarre videos of Chinese people dropping to the ground and convulsing, explained in the accompanying broken-English text to be the result of an unknown virus, the fact-checkers were implementing orders from their paymasters. One of the first narrative touchstones, the red and white 3D model of the coronavirus, soon became as ubiquitous as the footage of planes hitting towers on 9/11, triggering intense fear and doubt directed both at the outside world and at the self. After all, they might be an “asymptomatic carrier,” and the only way to be sure was to isolate from their loved ones. As with 9/11, this unfamiliar terror pushed the individual to seek solace in an increasingly totalitarian state that insisted its ‘tough love’ – locking us in our homes, forbidding us from earning money, and keeping us from our families – was for our own good. Frightened and confused, many turned on the TV and sucked down its narcotizing propaganda. Even CNN’s ratings went up that first pandemic year, as Chris Cuomo demanded Americans “sacrifice the me to the we” and compared binge-watching Netflix to landing on the beaches of Normandy while his brother mass-murdered elderly New Yorkers.

The complex choreography of the Covid-19 response could not have unfolded as it did without premeditation. The plot was lifted – not plagiarized, as the authors were the same – from Event 201, the tabletop coronavirus simulation sponsored by the Gates Foundation at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Public Health Security. This took place just a month after the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board – the product of an unholy marriage between the WHO and the World Bank earlier that year – released a report demanding all UN member countries “conduct at least two system-wide training and simulation exercises” by the following September, “including one for covering the deliberate release of a lethal respiratory pathogen.” Video of Event 201 shows players uninterested in minimizing harm from the virus instead exploring how the “emergency” might be used to stifle undesirable narratives and ram through major changes in society. The “real” pandemic – simulation number two, by the GPMB’s counting – played out months later exactly along the exercise’s script. The WHO, Gates, the World Economic Forum and Big Business took the reins, filling the power vacuum left while individual governments, seemingly baffled by the outbreak despite having repeatedly run their own simulations, ran around in circles.

How to treat an Infodemic

The crisis was planned and then used to crack down on unauthorized views under the reasoning that humanity was in the midst of an infodemic – a surfeit of information encouraging irresponsible beliefs – and careless talk could cost lives. Spreading dissenting opinions could infect friends and loved ones with the virus of doubt, which while perhaps less deadly than the virus itself (with its 99.7% survival rate), could cause society to fracture at a time when all humanity had to unite or be destroyed by the invisible enemy. Reading or hearing “disinformation” about Covid could reduce one’s likelihood of getting vaccinated, putting one’s very life at risk.

Convincing test subjects to discard their self-preservation instincts and their critical capacity and embrace the most absurd statements as gospel truth was the main goal of the first part of the Covid-19 experiment, and given the single-mindedness with which the WHO zeroed in on the “infodemic” before it had even officially declared the real virus to be a pandemic, it’s hard to believe they were making it up as they went along, especially given that the term was allegedly invented during the original SARS outbreak in 2003 (by a Washington Post writer no less) and then apparently put on ice until almost two decades later. Seeking input on how to respond to this new threat, the WHO reached out to professionals of all stripes, with more than a quarter of advisory input coming from academics eager to test out their juiciest hypotheses on real people with no repercussions. Everyone who used social media in 2020 to discuss the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath thus became a test subject, “nudged” and prodded for the Public Good, and some of those experiments – particularly those aimed at developing an FBI-style psychological profile of believers in “conspiracy theories” so they can be locked up as domestic terrorists or institutionalized as incurable monsters are very much ongoing.

Those early academic papers describe a chaotic infosphere in which the WHO’s narrative failed to dominate on its merits alone. The academics rose to the challenge, burnishing their half-baked speculations with scientific-looking graphs and charts. Their solutions ranged from Orwellian – deploying “freedom of expression officers” to censor and label rogue content as much as European human rights law would allow; re-education programs for “influencers,” teachers, priests, and other likely “superspreaders,” who could then be suspended from social media entirely if they refused to get their minds right – to the lesser evils of sending in fact-checkers as the equivalent of UN peacekeeping troops to help “inoculate” social media users against the disinformation they were about to see. With distrust in public and private institutions hitting new highs, society didn’t just need a vaccine against the scary new virus, it needed one against “disinformation” as well! But like the Covid vaccines themselves, these digital inoculations didn’t come with an informed consent notice, and the clinical trial results aren’t looking good.

Experiment #1: Shock “therapy”

As the WEF’s Klaus Schwab himself admitted in his pandemic tome The Great Reset, Covid-19 is the least deadly ‘pandemic’ in the last two millennia. But he’s quite open about wanting to use the largely self-inflicted Covid-19 “crisis” to bring about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a transhumanist “green” dystopia lovingly crafted for “stakeholder capitalists” and inspired by technocratic parasites like Yuval Noah Harari. This is no experiment for the “good of society,” nor are any efforts made to “avoid unnecessary mental and physical suffering,” as Nuremberg demands. If anything, the experiment’s designers deliberately ratcheted up the suffering, believing this was necessary to unfreeze the fixed ideas of western civilization – free will, individuality, rationality, democracy (not to be confused with Our Democracy™) in our minds and replace them with the WEF’s preferred picks: obedience, “equity” (a Newspeak term meaning equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity), credulity, communitarianism. The group has admitted on its own website that the lockdowns and the rest of the “touchless torture” the Covid response has supposedly required constitute the “world’s biggest psychological experiment.”

The Great Reset is an especially noxious experiment in that it violates the minds and bodies of test subjects on multiple levels, burrowing down into the way we think in its megalomania. It’s the spiritual offspring of CIA-funded Canadian psychiatrist Ewen Cameron, who “de-patterned” his patients’ personalities with high-voltage electroshock, induced coma, and mega-doses of LSD, then attempted to’ ‘build them back better’ by playing their comatose forms 16 hours of tape-recorded messages at a time; and Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago economist and godfather of neoliberalism whose students, the so-called “Chicago Boys,” conducted campaigns of economic “shock therapy” on third-world nations the US worried were too left-wing, assisting far-right leaders in seizing power, further impoverishing the masses with austerity programs, terrorizing what political opposition remained with death squads and disappearances, and privatizing all state-run industries so as to attract foreign investors. Neither Cameron’s patients, most of whom came in with simple problems like anxiety or depression (and one of whom wasn’t even seeking treatment but just looking for a job) and left as husks no longer able to even use the bathroom themselves; nor the inhabitants of Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Indonesia, Russia, or any of the long list of other countries subject to some variation on Chicago School shock treatment over the years, were ever told they were part of an experiment, let alone asked if they wanted to be.

The Great Reset has not only targeted the entire world with economic shock therapy, triggering a massive depression the current financial system is unlikely to ever shake off (spoiler alert: another experiment coming…) – it funneled unprecedented amounts of fear into populations already thrown off balance by the blinding speed of policy shifts. First scolded for “selfishly” wearing a mask, then attacked for “selfishly” not wearing one; informed their city would be “locking down” at 10pm, when a peek out the window yielded crowds of restive youths hanging out on the corner with nary a cop in sight; told vaccinations were mandatory for school, then told their child could have just “masked up” when little Polly drops dead of a heart attack not 24 hours after her first shot of Moderna; the average person soon lapsed into learned helplessness and became a shut-in, depatterning daily in the glow of the television as they degenerated into an obedient vegetable, capable of “masking up” and socially distancing but little else. Despite leaving a horrific trail of devastation in their wake, the experimental lockdowns were praised by the WEF for the slight dip in carbon emissions they caused, all but guaranteeing phase II of the nonconsensual clinical trials – climate lockdowns – will be rolled out within the year.

Experiment #2: Hackable animals

Given the mountain of evidence against them, it’s perfectly logical that the ruling class would have tried to build up an impenetrable fort of bullshit using their captive fact-checking industry to deflect accusations of war crimes under the Codes. Several patterns pervade the apologist coverage, starting with the idea that these brand new mRNA Covid vaccines, tested on under 100,000 people by Pfizer and Moderna combined (and none who were pregnant or nursing) before receiving their coveted emergency authorization, are somehow not experimental procedures. They use the synonym investigational instead, as ‘experimental’ tends to trigger thoughts of, well, human experimentation, authoritarian regimes, the very Nuremberg Nazis the media establishment is trying its best to keep the average reader away from. But the effect is the same – mRNA vaccines of any kind weren’t tried on the general population until the end of 2020, and the torrent of side effects and death that has been unleashed in the meantime suggests neither Moderna nor Pfizer had informed consent from these gen-pop guinea pigs.

That’s a big deal, because Pfizer knew before it sought emergency authorization that more vaccinated test subjects had died than unvaccinated subjects – it even fudged the numbers for the FDA. Some 1,200 trial participants died in the 90 days following their injection, and Pfizer made sure to vaccinate the placebo group at the end of the trial in order to make sure further comparisons didn’t spoil its story. Indeed, it was so sure its vaccines were going to leave a pile of bodies behind that it refused to even sell them to countries whose governments wouldn’t shield them from liability for the damage caused. One should have expected this from a company with the dubious distinction of paying the largest fine in Justice Department history in 2009 for healthcare fraud, off-label prescribing, misleading marketing and miscellaneous criminality. Nevertheless, they won the “Warp Speed” lottery under Albert Bourla, a veterinarian with a doctorate in the biotechnology of reproduction who was for some reason promoted to CEO of the entire (human-focused) drug company a year before the Covid-19 outbreak. Given that his primary achievement prior to Operation Warp Speed was developing a “vaccine” that chemically castrated boars without ruining the meat, it becomes much more difficult to see the utter disaster the mRNA vaccines have created for both male and female fertility as an accident.

Still questioning authority? The fact-checkers then attempt to distance vaccine mandates – along with health passports, mask mandates, lockdowns and the other psychological aspects of the experiment conducted on the unwitting populace – from the Nuremberg zone by categorizing them as “public health interventions,” not research, or experiments. The Codes simply do not apply. Never mind that public health interventions are supposed to be evidence-based, and no western democracy has ever engaged in anything like the Covid lockdowns before, or that the CDC pulled the six-foot social distancing rule out of its ass, or even that the only “science” backing closing schools to “stop the spread” was a computer model from a 16 year old’s science project. Lockdowns arguably killed more people than Covid-19, and they have cut short many more lives by impoverishing, immiserating, and isolating millions. Arguing public health measures can’t be experimental because they’re public health measures is merely a last-ditch effort to wall the Codes off in a museum, inapplicable to anyone but those nasty Nazis who were – as the narrative managers never tire of reminding us – a unique and special case.

Discouraging cross-time contextualization is very important to the fact-checkers, who aren’t hesitant to shoot the messenger if all else fails. Anyone talking about the Nuremberg Codes in the context of Covid-19 is dismissed as an “alt-righter”, a “covid crazy,” dangerous “extremists,” “anti-vaxxers,” or even actual Nazis who apparently got confused about whose side their team was on back in WW2. In war, dehumanizing the enemy is key to beating him, and this is nothing if not a two-pronged war being fought in our brains and our bloodstreams. “Drawing a link between this final rollout of these vaccines and what the Nazi doctors were doing is morally grotesque,” the British Medical Association’s Dr Julian Sheather told FullFact ; he didn’t explain why, and it’s not apparent why one should not draw parallels between the two cases. According to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), whose own creators admit it contains less than 1% of all adverse events associated with a given vaccine, the Covid shots have already caused nearly 30,000 deaths, over 170,000 hospitalizations, nearly 16,000 heart attacks (a common sight now on sports fields, where 60 times more athletes than normal are flatlining mid-game), and nearly 5,000 miscarriages in the US alone. Using tech entrepreneur Steven Kirsch’s calculations, the numbers are much higher: at least 478,000 Americans have been killed by Covid vaccines, to say nothing of millions permanently disabled, unable to work or function on a basic level. Worldwide, the number of deaths approaches 12 million.

Read more at Kirsch’s site

While the number of victims the Nazi doctors left behind is not so meticulously recorded, especially given the high levels of typhus and malnutrition contributing to the mortality rate in the camps, one source has them consigning between 70,000 and 100,000 “unfit” Germans to death between 1939 and 1941 while sterilizing hundreds of thousands more – a detail that once again should send a chill down the spine of anyone who’s noticed the declining birthrates around the world. If the figures aren’t comparable, that’s only because the mRNA vaccine has been so much more efficient in its killing. There’s nothing “morally grotesque” about pointing that out. But since “everybody knows” the Nazis were the pinnacle of Evil™, the realization that Pfizer and Moderna’s death toll might have their doctors beat must be prevented at all costs. Thus even bringing up Nuremberg in relation to Covid-19 is deemed to be “trivializing” the crimes of the Nazis, even when the intention is to draw attention to the seriousness of their modern descendants’ crimes, and efforts are made to further poison the dialogue by suggesting there’s something antisemitic about the whole business.

In Part II: the war on “conspiracy theories,” why Nuremberg is to be memory-holed, infodemic terrorism, and more…

August 28, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

7 nations ready to revoke recognition of Kosovo – Belgrade

Samizdat – August 28, 2022

Belgrade has managed to convince seven nations to withdraw their recognition of Kosovo, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Saturday, addressing the nation. The president did not name specific countries that had told Belgrade they would do so but still praised the development as an achievement of Serbian diplomacy, demonstrating that Serbia enjoys the support of the majority of the world.

“At this moment, in my drawer and in the drawer of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, there are seven documents confirming Kosovo’s derecognition,” Vucic said during his address. He then said that Pristina in particular seeks recognition from Vietnam and Kenya, adding that Belgrade “also worked” with these nations. It remained unclear, however, if the positions of these two nations on Kosovo had changed in any way.

Instead, Vucic said that his nation’s diplomats “did not sit idly by” in the face of Kosovo’s “constant” attempts to win over the international community for its cause. “Now, the number of countries that have withdrawn their recognition has increased from four to seven,” he added.

Serbia’s foreign minister, Nikola Selakovic, said in May that four nations had withdrawn their recognition of Kosovo but did not name them either. These nations would be named when necessary, he said at that time.

Vucic made his remarks as Serbia and Kosovo reached a deal on freedom of movement. Belgrade agreed to allow holders of Kosovo IDs to freely travel to Serbia and Pristina said it would grant the same rights to the holders of Serbian IDs, including the Kosovo Serbs living in the northern part of the breakaway region. Vucic maintained that the measure was taken solely “for practical reasons” and does not constitute a step towards Pristina’s recognition by Belgrade.

The deal mediated by the EU followed weeks of tensions between Serbia and Kosovo. Certain issues straining relations between Pristina and Belgrade, including license plates, remain unresolved.

Less than a half of the UN member states have recognized Kosovo since the breakaway region unilaterally declared its independence from Belgrade back in 2008. Not all EU members recognize Kosovo either: Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain have not done this so far.

Out of the G20, 11 nations recognize it and eight do not. Those not recognizing the breakaway region’s independence include Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Argentina, Indonesia and Mexico.

August 28, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 2 Comments

The only school district in the US to require public school covid vaccinations just caved

Muriel Bowser’s Washington DC stunt has imploded

By Meryl Nass, MD | August 27, 2022

The criminal imposition of mandates to force children to get COVID vaccinations was floated in many school districts, especially those on the woke west coast. The reason I say it is criminal is because neither the manufacturers nor the USG are willing to risk being held liable for injuries. So they have made none of the “licensed” vaccine available, and so while the vaccines are technically licensed for kids 12 and up, it is not possible to procure the licensed product. So instead kids (and adults) are being injected with the EUA product, which is shielded from virtually all liability. One hopes fraud will pierce the liability shield, but so far there has not been a single case in which this has happened.

Schools on the west coast that imposed these mandates either withdrew them in the face of legal challenge (LAUSD challenged by the Health Freedom Defense Fund) or announced a year’s postponement last spring.

But that did not stop tough girl Muriel Bowser, DC’s mayor, from threatening to kick kids out of school as recently as yesterday if they weren’t vaccinated. (See below). She also brought us vaccines for 11 year olds without parental permission. Where is this sister getting her advice?

Children’s Health Defense sued Muriel over her minor consent to vaccination scheme, and she lost on March 18, 2022. She didn’t learn her lesson then. So she had to get another lesson.

The local media started going after her, with the headline below.

40 Percent of D.C.’s Black Teens Will Soon Be Barred From School Because They Aren’t Vaccinated

Maybe she was scared of the lawsuits. Maybe someone told her the police had won a lawsuit against D.C.’s COVID vaccine mandate a couple of days earlier. Maybe she just found out the vaccine program was experimental. Maybe expelling 40% of teens from school did not seem like a winning slogan for her next campaign?

Whatever it was, yesterday she flipped. The vaccine mandate to attend public school was postponed till January. Maybe by then she will have been recalled. We can only hope.

Who owns your children’s bodies? This twisted sister or you?

Then, a few hours later, this happened:

DC public schools push back student immunization deadlines

D.C. public schools are pushing back enforcement deadlines for students who fail to receive their required vaccinations, including against COVID-19.

According to the new attendance guidelines issued Friday, students age 12 or older will have until Jan. 3, 2023, to have received all the needed doses of a COVID vaccine before facing exclusion from school.

August 28, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Exhaustive study of German mortality data finds excess deaths tightly correlated with mass vaccination

eugypius | August 27, 2022

Excess mortality in Germany 2020–2022 is a preprint by Christof Kuhbandner (a psychologist at Regensburg) and Matthias Reitzner (a statistician at Osnabrück) that applies sophisticated actuarial analysis to the publicly available all-cause mortality data provided by the German government. It turns out that when you account for historical mortality trends, the virus no longer looks so dangerous, and the vaccines no longer look so great.

From the abstract:

In 2020, the observed number of deaths was close to the expected number with respect to the empirical standard deviation. By contrast, in 2021, the observed number of deaths was two empirical standard deviations above the expected number. The high excess mortality in 2021 was almost entirely due to an increase in deaths in the age groups between 15 and 79 and started to accumulate only from April 2021 onwards. A similar mortality pattern was observed for stillbirths with an increase of about 11 percent in the second quarter of the year 2021.

Something must have happened in April 2021 that led to a sudden and sustained increase in mortality in the age groups below 80 years, although no such effects on mortality had been observed during the COVID-19 pandemic so far.

What happened in April 2021 was the beginning of mass vaccination across Germany.

Here’s an overview of mortality deficit or excess by age bracket:

As I’ve said many times, the first year of the German pandemic was a total nothingburger. There was no heightened mortality trend save for among the oldest groups, briefly, in December. In 2021, however, the Year of Maximum Vaccination, the authors estimate almost 32,000 excess deaths. Mortality rose across the board, especially among youngs, with those in their 40s seeing 9% more deaths than expected by their model.

Here are the same figures visualised:

Just looking at that 2021 graph, you can tell there’s something really wrong here. If it’s virus doing all this killing, why is it hardest on people aged 15 to 79? How is it leaving the oldest Germans almost entirely unscathed?

The authors also provide a month-by-month breakdown for the 15-59 age-group:

They note that “The significant excess mortality in December 2020 continues slightly in January 2021, and then is mostly compensated until March 2021. That is, by the end of March, the cumulative excess mortality was close to zero.” These are what the funeral industry would call “pull-forward” deaths. In Germany, the virus mainly kills people who are about to die anyway, such that mortality spikes are followed by counterbalancing mortality deficits.

The authors continue:

In April and May 2021, a significant increase in excess mortality is observed, followed by a decrease up to August. However … the increase in excess mortality in April and May is not compensated for. In September there is again a significant excess mortality, which increases in November and is more than doubled in December 2021.

The April increase obviously coincides with the vaccine rollout, while the Fall increase aligns fairly well with the booster campaign. It’s noteworthy that dose 2 doesn’t seem as dangerous as dose 1 or 3; and that the mortality signal is very tightly correlated with the date of vaccination. As soon as you stop vaccinating, excess deaths recede.

As for people 60 and older, there are two distinct trends: Rising mortality coinciding, again, with the mass administration of doses 1 and 3 in the 60-79 bracket, and nothing special in the 80+ bracket:

The vaccines obviously do most of their harm by inducing adverse immune reactions, and thus they’re relatively safe in the very elderly, who have weaker immune systems. This makes the oldest Germans a useful control, as they are the most sensitive to virus-associated mortality, and the least sensitive to vaccine-associated mortality. Thus, to anyone who objects that it’s really the April case spike that’s making the vaccines look bad here, or that it’s Delta causing those problems in the Fall, the reply is simple: The olds aren’t dying in April or September 2021, just the youngs. What kills mainly the youngs and spares mainly the olds? The answer is not SARS-2.

As the authors note:

The maybe most surprising fact is that [2021] produces in all age groups a significant mortality increase, which is in sharp contrast to the expectation that the vaccination should decrease the number of COVID-19 deaths. The only exception is the last age group [80+] … However, when interpreting this finding, it has to be taken into account that there wa sa huge mortality deficit in 2019 and until October 2020 which was compensated in November [and] December 2020 and January 2021.

It becomes very hard to doubt that the excess mortality of 2021 is vaccine related, when you compare the relative chronology of deaths and mass vaccination:

There are also more specific mortality correlations by age bracket. Thus the authors note the “further hint” that the vaccines are implicated in these deaths, “is the fact that the age group 0–29 has a peak in the excess mortality in June 2021 instead of April 2021,” precisely when these younger cohorts were lining up for their first dose.

A final intriguing finding relates to the relationship between official Corona death numbers and excess mortality. Nobody will be surprised to learn that the SARS-2 death toll is egregiously inflated, but the age-cohort patterns are worth a look:

The official figures are most accurate for those in their 60s and 70s. For those over 80 years old, they are almost entirely meaningless. This group saw less than 20,000 excess deaths in two-and-a-half years of Corona, while their official death count is approaching 100,000.

It’s no wonder that nothing—not lockdowns, not vaccines, not masks, not all the tests in the world—can drive down all-cause mortality in Germany. Most of the people the virus kills are on the verge of dying anyway, and if you spare them a death from SARS-2, they’ll just die of something else next month.

August 28, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | 1 Comment

Johnson Predicts Harsh Months for UK Due to ‘Eye-Watering’ Energy Bills

Samizdat – 28.08.2022

Outgoing UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in an op-ed that a few coming months will be tough for the British due to high energy prices.

“The months ahead are going to be tough, perhaps very tough,” Johnson wrote in an article, published by Daily Mail newspaper on Saturday. “Our energy bills are going to be eye-watering,” he said, adding “for many of us, the cost of heating our homes is already frightening.”

According to Johnson, the beginning of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine significantly affected the energy markets. However, he claims that the UK will emerge from the crisis stronger and more prosperous.

The UK prime minister said, referring to the confrontation with Russia, that “in this brutal arm-wrestle, the Ukrainian people can and will win. And so will Britain.”

The outgoing prime minister promised that whoever will be his successor, they will announce new measures of financial support for fellow citizens to tackle surging electricity prices.

On Friday, the UK energy regulator Ofgem announced an 80% increase in the energy price cap to 3,549 pounds ($4,194) per year starting October 1 due to rising global energy prices. Since its last revision in April, the energy price cap has stood at 1,971 pounds. In October 2021, the price cap was 1,277 pounds.

Ofgem chief executive Jonathan Brearley warned that energy prices are likely to continue to rise, and called on the country’s future prime minister to take new measures to tackle the problem.

August 28, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | | 1 Comment

Natural gas pipelines reach Zabol in Iran’s far east

Press TV – August 28, 2022

Natural gas pipelines have reached Iran’s far eastern city of Zabol near the border with Afghanistan as Iran’s Oil Ministry pushes ahead with an ambitious plan to make natural gas available to almost the entire population in the country.

Oil Ministry authorities and local officials attended a ceremony in Zabol on Sunday to celebrate the city’s connection to the Lane 7 of Iran’s nationwide gas pipeline network.

Reports in the local media said that the government had spent 2.5 trillion rials ($85 million) to finish the 219-kilometer gas pipeline connecting the provincial capital of Zahedan to Zabol, a large population center located 20 kilometers from the Iran-Afghanistan border.

Authorities said the arrival of gas to Zabol will enable all villages and towns in the relatively impoverished region to access natural gas through pipelines.

The inauguration came as the Oil Ministry launched several major gas projects, including the connection to the gas pipelines of 16 towns, some 1,091 villages and 1,959 manufacturing units.

Oil Minister Javad Owji said the gas projects opened on Sunday had cost the government some 10 trillion rials ($335 million).

Iran has one of the largest natural gas supply networks in the world. Official figures show that natural gas is currently available to more than 87% of the population in the country through a pipeline network that is more than 37,000 kilometers in length.

The Iranian government has an ambitious plan to further expand the pipeline network to supply natural gas to almost the entire population, including all villages with more than 20 households.

August 28, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , | 1 Comment

Hungary Says There Are EU Countries That Silently Oppose Anti-Russian Sanctions

Samizdat – 28.08.2022

Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto has stated that Budapest is not alone in its reluctance to slap sanctions on Russian energy exporters, but that other countries, who are under the influence of the “liberal mainstream,” don’t dare to pursue policies based on their own interests.

Speaking at the TRANZIT public forum in Tihany, Hungary on Saturday, Szijjarto said that he would like to clarify that his country is “not even willing to negotiate any further sanctions” pertaining to the oil and gas sector.

“And I want to say that we are not alone in this,” the top Hungarian diplomat stressed, recalling an episode during a recent EU ministerial meeting, which focused on “the issue of limiting oil from Russia.”

According to Szijjarto, during the gathering, “several colleagues” approached him and said, “Peter, you are against it [sanctions on Russian oil exports], right? We are with you.”

“Those who tell the truth are under such amazing pressure from the liberal mainstream that if there is no political stability of a certain level and, as a result, political courage in the country, they simply do not dare to act in their own interests,” the Hungarian foreign minister pointed out.

During the speech, Szijjarto also gave his thoughts on how long Europe will hinge on Russian oil and gas. He argued that “as long as gas cannot be transported by train or in a backpack, Europe will not be able to get rid of dependence on Russian energy resources.”

Last month, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban insisted that while the sanctions had failed to destabilize Moscow, “Europe is in trouble, economically and politically, and four governments have become victims: UK, Bulgarian, Italian and Estonian.”

“People will face a sharp increase in prices. And the better part of the world deliberately did not support us as well — China, India, Brazil, South Africa, the Arab world, Africa — everybody is aloof from this [Ukraine] conflict, they are interested in their own affairs,” Orban added.

Also in July, Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted that sanctions damage the country’s economy and many risks still remain, but that these restrictive measures inflict more damage on those who imposed them.

Sanctions against Russia were slapped by the US and its allies in late February, shortly after Moscow launched its special operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine. In the wake of the West’s anti-Russian restrictive measures, inflation skyrocketed in many Western countries, driving energy prices there to record numbers.

August 28, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment