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Is the Real Covid Pharmaceutical Bonanza Just Getting Started?

BY NICHOLAS WILLIAMS | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which is not a manufacturer of a Covid vaccine and thus did not benefit from Covid vaccine sales, recently announced second quarter 2022 results that surpassed expectations. This has enabled an upward adjustment in the profit forecast for the full year 2022. The Telegraph reported that GSK shares are up 44% from last spring.

Sales of GSK’s shingles vaccine, Shingrix, was the main driver of growth. Shingrix sales more than doubled in the second quarter, being April to June 2022, pushing up total GSK sales by 13%.

Shingrix is a relatively new shingles vaccine that my doctor tells me is considered an improvement on Zostervax, the traditional shingles vaccine. However, Shingrix is not cheap. A two dose course in Hong Kong costs £600, in the U.K. £440 and in the U.S. around $300. Allowing for distributor and retail margins, I estimate that GSK’s income would be about one third of the retail price. Let’s assume therefore that GSK earns £150 per two dose course on a worldwide average basis.

According to GSK, sales of Shingrix doubled to £731M, an increase of £366M in one fiscal quarter. At £150 per course, this equates to an unexpected increase in sales and thus vaccine recipients in one fiscal quarter of 2.4 million from the expected quarterly run rate.

When asked the reason for this surprising jump in Shingrix sales, GSK’s CEO stated: “It comes after countries started to shift their focus away from Covid towards other jab campaigns.”

Nobody seems to have questioned this statement. In the period in question, April to June 2022, Covid vaccine programmes were still highly active and indeed many programmes across the world were on to their third or fourth booster.

Though extremely painful, shingles is not life threatening and generally affects people over 50. It affects persons who have previously had chickenpox, often in their childhood, and is triggered mainly by overwork, lack of sleep or similar stress-related reasons. Shingles attacks the nervous system, especially nerve endings, and hence is often intensely painful.

Vaccination against shingles is not routinely given to all over-50s in most countries. Despite this, according to GSK, in the middle of a continuing Covid campaign, countries opted to shift their focus to vaccinating against shingles?

Is this likely? If indeed there was a shift to more usual vaccination programmes, would vaccination against shingles have been prioritised? Additionally, given the cost of this vaccine, and weighing up the public benefit, would most countries or patients really switch to Shingrix from the much cheaper Zostervax?

All of this seems unlikely. So what has driven a 50% increase in sales of a very expensive vaccine not part of the usual standard vaccination programme?

Further, taking the USA as an example, the ratio of Shingrix to Zostervax sales is 50-50.  In most other countries, Shingrix has less than 50% of the market. If 2.4 million people in one quarter had the Shingrix vaccine, how many more had Zostervax? It is not inconceivable that some 5 million more people than usual were vaccinated against shingles in one quarter.

Can this really be explained by countries restarting their normal vaccination programmes, and for no particular reason adding a shingles vaccines into the standard mix?

I may have the answer. In my 50s I twice had shingles. I can vouch for how painful it is. Since then I have had the traditional shingles vaccine jab every few years and had been shingles free for 15 years. I have also consciously improved how I manage my business travel and lifestyle to reduce travel stress and tiredness, which had been the previous drivers in my case.

In March and April 2021 I had my first and second Pfizer Covid jabs. On the day following the second jab I developed a chickenpox like rash and started to experience nerve pain. As I am something of a shingles veteran, I immediately thought “I am getting shingles!” And this is, indeed, what developed quite badly over the next few days.

I rang my doctor who said, “It can’t be shingles, you are vaccinated.” However, after examining me the next day he agreed I was right. I asked what had brought this on? Could it be the Covid jabs? He replied: “I cannot explain why, but it is not likely to be connected to the Covid jab.  Just unfortunate timing.”

My doctor then prescribed the usual medication for shingles and it cleared up in a week or so (for some it can take many weeks). My doctor then suggested I spend £600 having the new and better Shingrix vaccine, “as obviously your body is now immune to the traditional vaccine”. In his defence, this was very early days for assessing vaccine side-effects.

I decided I would not spend £600. Instead, I set about researching on the internet.

Since then it has transpired that shingles is a recognised reaction to the Pfizer vaccine in older people. Shingles is an inflammation of the nerves and nerve endings. The mRNA vaccines are now known to affect the nervous system in a number of different ways. It appears that triggering shingles is one of them (or else it is a result of a temporary depression of the immune system, as some have suggested).

Significantly, my doctor has confirmed he has now had other patients who contracted shingles after Covid vaccination. Most took up his £600 offer of Shingrix. It does not take much to imagine what a multiplier effect such advice and take-up across the world would have on the sales of Shingrix and the profits of GSK.

Something must be happening across the world for sales of an existing single product to double in a quarter by 2.4 million. In the absence of any other new factors, one can conclude that the drive in sales must have been due to one side-effect of the Covid vaccines. Equally one can imagine the booster effect for the makers of Zostervax too.

Whilst not all pharmaceutical companies have produced enormously profitable Covid vaccines, the emerging medical toll, side-effects and general aftermath of these vaccines and lockdowns is only just emerging. I suspect all pharmaceutical companies will now share in a second Covid profits bonanza driven by medications prescribed to deal with the collective aftermath of Covid. GSK has lit the way.

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

Gavin Newsom Sics California’s Medical Boards on Doctors who Challenge the Coronavirus Party Line

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | October 1, 2022

On September 8, I wrote about California Governor Gavin Newsom having AB 2098 — legislation that “tells the state’s medical boards to punish doctors who challenge the coronavirus orthodoxy” — on his desk for him to either veto or sign into law. The punishment the state medical boards could impose under the legislation includes revoking doctors’ medical licenses.

Here is an update. On Friday, Newsom signed into law this bill directing the prosecution of an attack on free speech, medical freedom, and the pursuit of better health.

The coronavirus orthodoxy, or party line, the legislation seeks to protect has repeatedly been wrong — from promoting “social distancing” and mask wearing that have not been shown to provide a net benefit in countering coronavirus to advocating that everyone take the “safe and effective” coronavirus “vaccine” shots that turned out to be both exceedingly dangerous and ineffective. The coronavirus orthodoxy also demanded that much of the economy and social interactions be shut down for an extended period of time in a supposed effort to reduce the spread of the not-very-threatening-to-most-people coronavirus. In short, the coronavirus orthodoxy is an enemy of wellbeing.

Newsom’s decision to sign AB 2098 into law is not surprising given that he has been one of the governors most adamant in imposing a coronavirus crackdown.

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , | 2 Comments

PayPal to expand its speech restriction rules in November

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | October 1, 2022

On the heels of its censorship spree in the UK – that received backlash so great it got the attention of lawmakers – PayPal is rolling out a new agreement that gives itself more censorship powers and the ability to strip income from those who don’t abide to its speech rules.

Violation of the “Acceptable Use Policy constitutes a violation of the PayPal User Agreement and may subject you to damages, including liquidated damages of $2,500.00 U.S. dollars per violation,” PayPal writes.

PayPal’s clause about taking users’ funds for a violation of its rules has long been established. But, as published on September 26th and to be effective on November 3rd, 2022, PayPal will add restrictions to its acceptable use policy that go beyond illegal activities and fraud and into the realm of policing speech.

The updated policy prohibits users from using PayPal for activities that:

“Involve the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion, (a) are harmful, obscene, harassing, or objectionable … (e) depict, promote, or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.) … (g) are fraudulent, promote misinformation … or (i) are otherwise unfit for publication.”

Big Tech platforms are increasingly finding ways to punish people’s speech under the guise of banning 🛡 “misinformation,” and making themselves as the arbiters of truth in deciding what is and isn’t true.

Backlash at PayPal in the last week caused it to backtrack on its censorship of the Free Speech Union, its founder Toby Young, and his news website The Daily Sceptic after pushback from both sides of the British political spectrum.

Critics argued that the removal of the accounts was view-point discrimination.

PayPal never gave a specific reason for the suspension of the accounts. They only said that the accounts had violated the acceptable use policy.

After the accounts were removed, a spokesperson for the financial services provider said: “Achieving the balance between protecting the ideals of tolerance, diversity and respect for people of all backgrounds and upholding the values of free expression and open dialogue can be difficult, but we do our best to achieve it.”

PayPal was accused of ignoring the fact that defending someone’s right to free speech is not the same as promoting their views.

“Forgive me if I don’t leap for joy,” Young told The Telegraph after the accounts were reinstated. “The last two weeks have been a nightmare as I’ve scrabbled to try to stop The Daily Sceptic and Free Speech Union going under. PayPal’s software was embedded in all our payment systems, so the sudden closure of our accounts was an existential threat.”

PayPal has a strong history of censorship. In June, it banned the account of evolutionary biologist Dr. Colin Wright who researches the differences between the sexes.

Free speech advocacy groups have criticized PayPal for the lack of transparency and its lack of due process when freezing or closing accounts. The groups argue that the company should give users details on the policy that has been violated and an opportunity to appeal the decision.

When Dr. Wright asked why his account was suspended, he was told to “submit a subpoena.”

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Twitter hides all videos in search results for Italy’s next Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 29, 2022

Twitter is suppressing video searches for Giorgia Meloni, who was this week elected as Italy’s first woman Prime Minister.

At the time of writing, when Twitter users type her name in the search bar and choose “Videos” no results come up. An archive of the search captured the censorship here.

“No results for “‘Giorgia Meloni’” Twitter says.

The Twitter blockade follows YouTube saying it made an error when it deleted a video of Meloni’s family values speech.

Giorgia Meloni is the head of the conservative populist Brothers of Italy party and won her race to become Prime Minister last Sunday.

The Brothers of Italy party has seen a meteoric rise in popularity since 2018, when it received only 4 percent of the vote.

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Decoding the Pentagon’s online war against Iran

Photo Credit: The Cradle
By Kit Klarenberg | The Cradle | October 1, 2022

The civil unrest in Iran in response to the recent death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while she was waiting at a Tehran police station, although rooted in legitimate grievances, also bears the hallmark of a western-sponsored covert war, covering multiple fronts.

Mere days after the protests erupted on 16 September, the Washington Post revealed that the Pentagon had initiated a wide-ranging audit of all its online psyops efforts, after a number of bot and troll accounts operated by its Central Command (CENTCOM) division – which covers all US military actions in West Asia, North Africa and South and Central Asia – were exposed, and subsequently banned by major social networks and online spaces.

The accounts were busted in a joint investigation carried out by social media research firm Graphika, and the Stanford Internet Observatory, which evaluated “five years of pro-Western covert influence operations.”

Published in late August, it attracted minimal English-language press coverage at the time, but evidently was noticed, raising concerns at the highest levels of the US government, prompting the audit.

While the Washington Post ludicrously suggested the government’s umbrage stemmed from CENTCOM’s egregious, manipulative activities which could compromise US “values” and its “moral high ground,” it is abundantly clear that the real problem was CENTCOM being exposed.

#OpIran

CENTCOM’s geographical purview includes Iran, and given the Islamic Republic’s longstanding status as a key US enemy state, it’s perhaps unsurprising that a significant proportion of the unit’s online disinformation and psychological warfare efforts were directed there.

A key strategy employed by US military psyops specialists is the creation of multiple sham media outlets publishing content in Farsi. Numerous online channels were maintained for these platforms, spanning Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and even Telegram.

In some cases too, fake journalists and pundits, with numerous “followers” on those platforms emerged, along with profile photos created via artificial intelligence.

For example, Fahim News claimed to provide “accurate news and information” on events in Iran, prominently publishing posts declaring “the regime uses all of its efforts to censor and filter the internet,” and encouraging readers to stick to online sources as a result.

Meanwhile, Dariche News claimed to be an “independent website unaffiliated with any group or organization,” committed to providing “uncensored and unbiased news” to Iranians within and without the country, in particular information on “the destructive role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in all the affairs and issues of Iran and the region.”

Their respective YouTube channels pumped out numerous short-form videos, presumably in the hope they would be mistaken for organic content, and go viral on other social networks. The researchers identified one instance in which media outlets elsewhere had embedded Dariche News content into articles.

An army of bots and trolls

Some of the fake news organizations published original material, but much of their output was recycled content from US government-funded propaganda outfits such as Radio Farda and Voice of America Farsi.

They also repurposed and shared articles from the British-based Iran International, which appears to receive arm’s length funding from Saudi Arabia, as did several fake personas attached to these outlets.

These personas frequently posted non-political content, including Iranian poetry and photos of Persian food, in order to increase their authenticity. They also engaged with real Iranians on Twitter, often joking with them about internet memes.

Pentagon bots and trolls used different narrative techniques and approaches in an attempt to influence perceptions and engender engagement. A handful promoted “hardliner” views, criticizing the Iranian government for insufficiently hawkish foreign policy while being excessively reformist and liberal domestically.

One such bogus user, a purported “political science expert,” accrued thousands of followers on Twitter and Telegram by posting content praising Shia Islam’s growing power in West Asia, while other “hardliner” accounts praised the late General Qassem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), slain in an illegal US drone strike in January 2020, as a martyr, and encouraged the wearing of hijabs.

The researchers state the purpose of these efforts was unclear, although an obvious explanation is the Pentagon sought to foster anti-government discontent among conservative Iranians, while creating lists of local “extremists” to monitor online.

Orchestrated opposition

Overwhelmingly though, Pentagon-linked accounts were viciously critical of the Iranian government, and the IRGC. Numerous Pentagon bots and trolls sought to blame food and medicine shortages on the latter, which was likened to ISIS, and posting videos of Iranians protesting and looting supermarkets captioned in Pashto, English, and Urdu.

More sober posts criticized Tehran for redistributing much-needed food to give to Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, while others highlighted embarrassing incidents, such as a reported power outage that caused the country’s chess team to lose an international online tournament.

Furthermore, multiple fake users claimed to seek “justice for the victims of #Flight752”, referring to the Ukraine International Airlines flight accidentally shot down by the IRGC in January 2020.

Using hashtags such as #PS752 and #PS752justice hundreds of times, they blamed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei personally for the incident.

Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine in February, these accounts used Persian versions of widely-trending hashtags #No_To_Putin and #No_To_War – themselves overwhelmingly disseminated on Twitter by pro-Ukraine bot and troll accounts, according to separate research.

The users condemned Khamenei’s verbal support of Putin and accused Iran of supplying drones to Moscow, which it was claimed were used to kill civilians.

They also pushed the narrative that Iran’s collusion with Russia would result in adverse political and economic repercussions for Tehran, while making unflattering comparisons between Khamenei and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“One has sold Iran to Russia and ordered their peoples’ murder,” one account tweeted. “The other is wearing a combat uniform alongside his people and has stopped the colonization of Ukraine by Russia with all his might.”

Scattershot fury

There were also cloak-and-dagger initiatives intended to damage Iran’s standing in neighboring countries, and undermine its regional influence. Much of this work seems to have been concerned with spreading panic and alarm, and creating a hostile environment for Iranians abroad.

For instance, accounts targeting audiences in Afghanistan claimed that Quds Force personnel were infiltrating Kabul posing as journalists in order to crush opposition to the Taliban. They also published articles from a US military-linked website that claimed on the basis of zero evidence that the bodies of dead refugees who’d fled to Iran were being returned to their families back home with missing organs.

Yet another damaging false narrative perpetuated by this cluster in late 2021 and early 2022 was that the IRGC was forcing Afghan refugees to join militias fighting in Syria and Yemen, and that those who refused were being deported.

Iraq was a country of particular interest to the Pentagon’s cyber warriors, with memes widely shared throughout Baghdad and beyond depicting IRGC influence in the country as a destructive disease, and content claiming Iraqi militias, and elements of the government, were effective tools of Tehran, fighting to further Iran’s imperial designs over the wider West Asia.

Militias were also accused of killing Iraqis in rocket strikes, engineering droughts by damaging water supply infrastructure, smuggling weapons and fuel out of Iraq and into Syria, and fuelling the country’s crystal meth epidemic.

Another cluster of Pentagon accounts focused on Iran’s involvement in Yemen, publishing content on major social networks critical of the Ansarallah-led de-facto government in Sanaa, accusing it of deliberately blocking humanitarian aid deliveries, acting as an unquestioning proxy of Tehran and Hezbollah, and closing bookstores, radio stations, and other cultural institutions.

Several of their posts blamed Iran for the deaths of civilians via landmine, on the basis Tehran may have supplied them.

Laying the ground

Other CENTCOM psychological warfare (psywar) narratives have direct relevance to the protests that have engulfed Iran.

There was a particular focus among one group of bots and trolls on women’s rights. Dozens of posts compared Iranian women’s opportunities abroad with those in Iran – one meme on this theme contrasted photos of an astronaut with a victim of violent spousal abuse – while others promoted protests against the hijab.

Alleged government corruption and rising living costs were also recurrently emphasized, particularly in respect of food and medicine – production of which in Iran is controlled by the IRGC, a fact CENTCOM’s online operatives repeatedly drew attention to.

Women’s rights, corruption, and the cost of living – the latter of which directly results from suffocating US sanctions – are all key stated motivating factors for the protesters.

Despite the rioters’ widespread acts of violence and vandalism, targeted at civilians and authorities alike, such as the destruction of an ambulance ferrying police officers away from the scene of a riot, they also claim to be motivated by human rights concerns.

Establishment and fringe journalists and pundits have dismissed as conspiracy theories, any suggestions that protests in Iran and beyond are anything other than organic and grassroots in nature.

Yet, clear proof of foreign direction and sponsorship abounds, not least in the very public face of the anti-hijab movement, Masih Alinejad, who for many years has encouraged Iranian women to ceremonially burn their headscarves from the confines of an FBI safehouse in New York City, then publicizes the images online, which travel round the world and back via social media and mainstream news outlets.

A regime-change war by other means

Alinejad’s activities have generated a vast amount of fawning and credulous media coverage, without a single journalist or outlet questioning whether her prominent role in the supposedly grassroots, locally-initiated protest movement is affiliated with foreign hostile interference.

This is despite Alinejad posing for photos with former CIA director Mike Pompeo, and receiving a staggering $628,000 in US federal government contracts since 2015.

Much of these funds flowed from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the US government agency that oversees propaganda platforms such as Radio Free Europe, and Voice of America, the latter of which has produced a Farsi-language show fronted by Alinejad for seven years.

These clusters of social media posts may appear innocuous and authentic in an age of click-bait and viral fake news, yet when aggregated and analysed, they form a potent and potentially dangerous weapon which it turns out is one of many in the Pentagon’s regime-change arsenal.

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

US lawmakers call for sanctions against Algeria

Ties between Moscow and Algiers have been stronger lately, with Algeria gearing up to join the BRICS group in the near future

The Cradle | October 1, 2022

Twenty-seven members of Congress sent a letter addressed to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on 30 September calling for sanctions to be imposed against Algeria over its arms deals with Russia.

In the letter, the 27 US lawmakers, led by Republican Congresswoman Lisa McClain, showed concern over what they referred to as a growing relationship between Moscow and Algiers.

The arms agreements in question, which were signed last year, were reportedly worth around $7 billion and included the sale of Russia’s Su-57 warplanes to Algeria, which Moscow has not provided to any other state.

According to the concerns highlighted in the letter, the deal makes Algeria the third largest recipient of Russian weapons in the world.

The lawmakers have called for the sanctions to be imposed under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), passed by Congress in 2017.

Under this act, sanctions are imposed on any country to engage in transactions with either the intelligence or defense departments of the Russian government.

“This recent Algeria-Russia arms purchase would clearly be categorized as “a significant transaction” under CAATSA. Yet, no sanctions available to you have been crafted by the State Department,” the letter to Blinken states.

“Therefore, we ask that you immediately begin implementing sanctions against those in the Algerian government who are involved in the purchase of Russian weapons,” it concludes.

Some have speculated that Israel may be behind this targeting of Algeria from within the US Congress, for the reason that Tel Aviv would not want a bolstered Algerian military south of the Mediterranean, especially given the North African country’s stance against the occupation and support for the Palestinians.

Algeria and Russia have historically enjoyed a smooth relationship. The Soviet Union was the first country to establish diplomatic relations with Algeria following its independence from French colonial occupation in 1962.

Relations have been stronger between the two countries recently, with both working for Algeria to eventually become a member of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) group of emerging economies.

The BRICS group of emerging economies represents a beneficial alternative to the dominant US and western-led economic system, especially for countries negatively affected by western sanctions.

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia, Wars for Israel | , , | 3 Comments

Nasrallah Charges US With ‘Satanic’ Meddling, Use of Troll Armies Against Iran Amid Protests

Samizdat – 01.10.2022

Iran has faced two weeks of civil unrest following the death of a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini in religious police custody under suspicious circumstances. Tehran released CCTV footage debunking protesters’ claims that the woman was beaten into a coma, and accused the US and others of trying to foment a color revolution.

Hezbollah secretary general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has ripped Washington for engaging in a “satanic” campaign to try to bring down the Iranian government and divide the Islamic world.

“The constant incitement against Iran and the painting of its people as an ‘enemy’ is a satanic deed aimed at ripping the nation apart,” Nasrallah said in a televised address Saturday.

“The United States exploits any incident in Iran in order to provoke the nation against the Islamic establishment, the latest of which is the protests that have broken out following Ms. Amini’s tragic death,” Nasrallah said. “US-backed vandals took advantage of the unclear circumstances surrounding her death to challenge the Islamic Republic after America’s campaign of so-called ‘maximum pressure’ failed dismally,” he added.

Saying that the Islamic Republic was “stronger and braver” than ever, Nasrallah suggested that successive US administrations have recognized their inability to defeat Iran militarily, and have instead “bet on disputes at home” to try to divide and destabilize the country.

“Western and Persian Gulf media outlets are working to incite people against [the Iranian government]. US administrations have established troll armies across social media platforms to undermine Iran, but all to no avail,” he said.

Cities across Iran have been rocked by more than two weeks of protests following Amini’s death. The young woman died in a hospital in Tehran on September 16, three days after being detained by Iran’s Guidance Patrol, better known as the ‘morality police’, for breaking hijab rules. Demonstrations began a day after her death, with demonstrators and provocateurs on social media accusing police of causing her death by severely beating her.

Iranian authorities tried to defuse the situation by releasing security cam footage appearing to show that Amini was not subjected to any form of physical abuse while in Guidance Patrol custody. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi ordered a special investigation into the case and expressed condolences to Amini’s family.

However, the violence has not subsided, and scores of people, both protesters and police, have been wounded or killed in violent street clashes in the past two weeks.

US media have made no secret of America’s role in fomenting the violence. Last week, Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad boasted in an interview with the New Yorker magazine that she was “leading this movement,” and expressed confidence that “the Iranian regime will be brought down by women.” Alinejad works for Voice of America Persia and Radio Farda, the US government-funded branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The journalist has spent years calling on Washington to slap more sanctions against her birth country, and pro-Iranian media have accused her of ties to the CIA.

The protests in Iran began just one day after Iran was formally admitted into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a nine-member Eurasian economic and security bloc of nations which also includes China, Russia and India, among others.

Last week, the information portal of the BRICS group of nations charged the West with seeking to foment a color revolution in the Islamic Republic.

On Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani accused Western powers and media of openly supporting the violent unrest.

“In the recent riots, political leaders of America and, sometimes, Europe, as well as their media and hostile Persian-language outlets backed by the West abused a sad event that is being investigated, and went the extra mile in support of rioters and disruptors of national security under the pretext of support for human rights,” Kanani wrote in an Instagram post.

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | 1 Comment

Western-imposed Green Agenda Would ‘Cripple’ Africa’s Energy Security, Energy Expert Warns

Samizdat – 01.10.2022

The African Development Bank Group estimates that more than 640 million Africans have no access to energy, with the continent enjoying an overall electricity access rate of just over 40 percent. Multinational energy giants have systematically underfunded local energy projects, all while searching for new sources of oil and gas for Western markets.

Despite its untold riches in energy and other natural resources, Africa remains the least developed continent on the planet when it comes to access to the benefits of this wealth by ordinary citizens. The International Energy Agency has estimated that among Africa’s 54 nations, only nine – Algeria, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Libya, South Africa and Tunisia, enjoy electrification rates of 85 percent or above.

Even countries endowed with large reserves of oil and gas like Nigeria, Angola, Sudan, Congo and Uganda have been unable to provide the vast majorities of citizens with access to these resources, with 38 percent of Nigerians, 57 percent of Angolans, and 71 percent of Ugandans lacking access to electricity.

For nations with smaller energy reserves, and those without proven oil and gas assets, the figures are even gloomier, with just 9 percent of Chadians and residents of the Democratic Republic of the Congo hooked up to the electricity grid, while only 12 percent of Liberians, 14 percent of the residents of Niger, and 18 percent of Somalis enjoy access.

The causes of the continent’s stunted energy status are multifaceted, ranging from the legacy of colonialism to decades of plunder of energy rich nations’ resources by foreign multinationals, to a dearth of capital for domestic investment, to efforts by Western powers and international institutions they control to force the region to reject fossil fuels in favor of renewables.

The problem has only been exacerbated by the global energy crisis caused by Western nations’ efforts to sanction or restrict Russian oil and gas purchases. In August, Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper reported that European states have made a push to fix the energy shortfall by outbidding developing nations for contracts from other global suppliers, driving poorer countries out of the market.

Last year, Nigerian Environment Minister Mohammad Mahmood Abubakar accused the developed West of deliberately defunding Africa’s natural gas projects on the grounds that they contribute to the global climate crisis, notwithstanding the fact that the entirety of Sub-Saharan Africa produces just 0.55 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.

In 2021, the European Investment Bank stopped financing hydrocarbon development projects in Africa altogether as part of an “ambitious new climate strategy and energy lending policy.” The same year, the World Bank announced plans to shift resources from energy projects to “combating climate change.”

“Africa’s oil and gas sector is experiencing underproduction and underinvestment as major international majors exit portfolios in key hydrocarbon producing countries such as Nigeria and Angola,” says N.J. Ayuk, chairman of the African Energy Chamber, a Johannesburg-based nonprofit advocating energy development in Africa, for Africans.

“Projects operated by majors in the deep-water projects are cost intensive. But also, capital restrictions by Western financial institutions are crippling the African gas market. Without finance, energy poverty rates will go up dramatically,” Ayuk says.

Characterizing energy poverty as the “single most important issue” facing the continent, the expert dismisses Western-backed institutions’ efforts to push Africa toward renewable energy, pointing out that as things stand, underdevelopment of hydrocarbon resources means that 45 percent of the continent relies on highly polluting hard biomass for energy.

As for renewable sources of energy like solar, wind and hydrogen power, Ayuk warns that the push being made in this direction threatens to “cripple” the continent.
“Many existing power grids in Africa remain underdeveloped, such that an intermittent supply of energy can threaten the stability of an entire grid,” the observer says, referring to the tendency for renewable energy to depend heavily on weather conditions.

“Such is the case in Kenya, which is widely considered to be at the forefront of Africa’s energy transition, building momentum in the renewable sector with the 310 MW Lake Turkana wind farm and 50 MW Garissa solar PV station. Some 15 percent of Kenya’s installed capacity comes from solar and wind, but as our 2022 Outlook reports, they have experienced severe voltage instability. Better system management, upgraded infrastructure, and long-term power storage technology are needed to solve these problems, but implementing these things on a nationwide or continent-wide scale won’t happen overnight,” Ayuk explains.

Another problem is Africa’s “near-complete” dependence on foreign equipment and expertise for its renewables capacity, with the majority of solar cells and windmills made in China, Europe or the United States, who also provide training and tech related to the installation, maintenance and repair.

“Economically, this means fewer home-grown jobs for Africans in this sector until such capacity can be developed. It also ensures [insecurity] of supply in case war or politics cripples the ability to import key raw materials and workers,” Ayuk stresses.

What Is To Be Done?

An alternative to listening to foreign dictates on energy policy is to focus on domestic resources, and to partner with those nations which are ready to help Africa secure its energy independence.

For Ayuk, this means intra-African natural gas pipelines capable not only of working to diminish energy poverty, but stimulating a drive toward industrialization which will translate to jobs. To stimulate development, African nations will need to stimulate capital investments and reduce taxes, and to work conscientiously to focus on infrastructure for domestic use, instead of export.

“Energy demand across Africa is expected to triple within the next 20 years – faster than anywhere else in the world – as a result of population growth, rising incomes, and rapid urbanization. To meet such rapidly accelerating demand, Africa needs the ability to make use of its existing natural resources and human capital, and to employ tried-and-true solutions that will reliably keep the lights on when the wind won’t blow and the sun won’t shine. Mitigating climate change must remain part of the equation, but the perfect cannot be allowed to be the enemy of the good when so many people are starting from zero,” the analyst says.

Russia can play an important role in improving Africa’s energy security, the observer believes, with Moscow needing to step up its game on the fulfillment of memorandums already signed, and to engage in the financing of gas projects, as well as sharing the country’s substantial expertise on the construction of infrastructure.

Earlier this year, Nigerian Minister of Petroleum Resources Timipre Sylva announced that Russian investors had expressed an interest in the financing of a massive gas pipeline project running from Nigeria to Morocco. If implemented, the prospective 5,600+ km piece of infrastructure would connect nations along the entire West African coast to natural gas, serving as a catalyst both for electrification and for regional economic development.

Nigeria has over 206 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves valued at trillions of dollars, but has long been starved of capital for the development of these resources.
Speaking to Sputnik last week, Sylva expressed confidence that Nigeria and Russia would be able to cooperate to help stabilize the global supply of energy.

However, last month, Biden administration climate envoy John Kerry warned against long-term gas projects in Africa, claiming countries that make investments would be unable to recoup their investments beyond 2030, and that the continent should instead focus on cleaner energy sources.

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

US helicopters circled over Nordstream for weeks

Free West Media | October 1, 2022

More and more disturbing details are coming to light in connection with the bombing of the Nordstream pipeline in the Baltic Sea.

The Arabic news channel Al Mayadeen reported that weeks before the attack, US helicopters were circling over the sea area where the fatal explosions took place on September 26 with a striking frequency.

This can be reconstructed using the flight data from the online service “Flightradar24”. According to this, at the beginning of September, just under a month before the attack, a US Navy Sikorsky MH-60R “Seahawk” helicopter was circling for hours on several consecutive days – especially on September 1, 2 and 3 later over the area of the damaged natural gas pipelines not far from the island of Bornholm.

According to the aircraft tracking portal, the US helicopter flew from Gdansk to the area where the Nordstream pipelines were several times.

On September 10 and 19, US helicopters also flew over Nordstream 1, and on the nights between September 22 and 25, several helicopters stayed for hours over the site of later explosions. The helicopters that were in the air on the night of September 22 to 23 and 25 to 26 left particularly confusing flight tracks.

On the latter night, a multi-purpose MH-60R “Strike Hawk” helicopter circled for nine hours over a sea area about 250 kilometers from Bornholm, from about 5:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Central European Time. Among other things, the “Strike Hawk” can fight underwater targets.

No repair work possible

No repair work will be taking place on Nordstream Pipelines 1 and 2. Such tasks would have to be commissioned and paid for by Russia, because Russia owns the pipelines. And the EU would have to lift its sanctions against Russia to carry out the work. This is not to be expected in the foreseeable future.

The time window for a possible repair closes in October. Because the tubes are currently full of salt water. Without immediate action, this salt water will corrode the tubes, which are protected against its effects only on the outside, but not on the inside. This information is also available to the federal government, which appears to have written off the entire Nordstream project.

With the demise of Nordstream, the German economy lost billions in value.

The German Bild newspaper summarized the Western dilemma in a quote from an alleged “Russia expert” as follows: “The question is not of a technical, but of a political and legal nature. A number of sanctions against Russian gas supplies will have to be lifted for repairs. The ships that can carry out the construction work must obtain permission for such work. Gazprom needs to be able to pay for the repairs. The necessary technological solutions must also be made available.”

These problems will never be overcome in time – that is, in a few weeks.

So far, more than half of the natural gas in the pipeline has leaked. It stands to reason that the rest will escape as well. And then Nordstream would be history.

October 1, 2022 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , | 4 Comments

History Repeats Itself: The Time US Sabotaged a Soviet Gas Pipeline and Bragged About It

By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat – 01.10.2022

Blasts rocked the Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines on Monday, with each pipeline reportedly hit with the force of over 500 kg of TNT – which when combined is equivalent to the explosive power of a micro nuke. The Kremlin called the incident an act of terrorism, while Russian intelligence has pointed to a Western trace.

In his address before lawmakers and the nation on Friday on the entry of four new territories into the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin said that the attacks against Nord Stream were the next logical step for the US and its allies after exhausting anti-Russian sanctions. “It seems incredible but it is a fact – by causing explosions on Nord Stream’s international gas pipelines passing along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, they have actually embarked on the destruction of Europe’s entire energy infrastructure,” the Russian president said.

Officials in Denmark, Sweden and Berlin have not ruled out deliberate sabotage, and NATO paid lip service to “support” for “investigations underway to determine the origin of the damage.” A Pentagon official refused to comment on a Flightradar24 analysis showing US military helicopters circling for hours in the areas where the explosions hit prior to the incident. Meanwhile, former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski tweeted and then deleted a “Thank you, USA” message alongside a picture of a massive methane leak emanating from one of the damaged pipelines, and boasted that “now, $20 billion of scrap metal lies at the bottom of the sea.” Meanwhile, some Western officials and media continue to claim that Russia sabotaged its own pipelines.

The attacks against Nord Stream are not the first time that a ‘Western trace’ has been suspected in the sabotage of gas pipelines operated by Moscow.

In the summer of 1982, the Urengoy-Surgut-Chelyabinsk pipeline carrying natural gas south and west toward Ukraine, where it can be taken further west toward Europe, was rocked by a massive explosion. The explosion’s causes were unknown, and Soviet media never reported on the incident.

In 2004, former Reagan special assistant for national security affairs and National Security Council official Thomas Reed published an autobiography entitled ‘At the Abyss’ in which he alleged that the Central Intelligence Agency had sabotaged the pipeline by adding a virus into software the USSR had purchased from a Canadian company to operate the infrastructure.

“The pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space,” Reed recalled.

The former official said the act of sabotage was aimed at disrupting the USSR’s gas infrastructure, “its hard currency earnings from the West and the internal Russian economy,” and that the scheme was thought up by National Security Council technology and intelligence advisor Gus Weiss.

Portions of the operation were disclosed earlier, in a 1996 paper in CIA journal Studies in Intelligence by Weiss. In it, the former official recalled how, at an economic summit in Ottawa in 1981, French President Francois Mitterrand had informed Ronald Reagan that a KGB double agent named Vladimir Vetrov had come forward to provide French intelligence with 4,000 documents and photographs related to alleged Soviet efforts to get their hands on Western technologies which the US and allies refused to sell due to sanctions and embargoes. The collection of documents was dubbed the ‘Farewell Dossier’.

In January 1982, Weiss said, he proposed the pipeline sabotage idea to CIA director William Casey. “Reagan received the plan enthusiastically” and “Casey was given a go,” Reed wrote in his account.

Reed recalled that when the explosion occurred, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) – the organization tasked with aerospace early warning, initially feared a Soviet “missile liftoff from a place where no rockets were known to be based. Or perhaps it was the detonation of a small nuclear device. Before these conflicting indicators could turn into an international crisis, Gus Weiss came down the hall to tell his fellow National Security Council staffers not to worry.”

As has long been the case with the Nord Stream pipelines, the United States had adamantly opposed Soviet projects to deliver gas from Siberia to Western Europe, characterizing them as a means for Moscow to project influence over the Europeans. In 1982, the Reagan administration banned pipeline equipment sales to the USSR, prompting the European Economic Community – forerunner to the European Union, to issue a formal protest over Washington’s interference in the bloc’s economic affairs. Germany, France, Italy and the UK declared the restrictions illegal, and promised to defy the ban. Washington eventually reneged, and the first gas deliveries from Urengoy to Western Europe began in January 1984.

To this day, Russian officials have never conceded that the 1982 explosion was the result of CIA interference. In the 1990s and 2000s, when relations between Russia and the US still looked rosy, engineers and ex-KGB agents came forward to tell media that industrial negligence or even shoddy workmanship, and not sabotage, was to blame.

The CIA never directly confirmed its involvement in the Urengoy-Surgut-Chelyabinsk pipeline explosion. However, in a page on the CIA’s official website, the agency did boast that “flawed turbines were installed on a gas pipeline” as part of a broader US technological sabotage campaign against the USSR.

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 2 Comments

US ‘Probably Responsible’ for Blasts Targeting Nord Stream Pipelines, Ex-Swiss Intel Officer Claims

Samizdat – 01.10.2022

There are “more and more signs” that the United States is “responsible” for the sabotage on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, believes ex-Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud.

Poland and Ukraine may be the culprits as well, as countries that vehemently lobbied for the transit of gas through their territories and opposed the pipeline to begin with, the former NATO adviser said on French radio station Courtoisie’s program, Ligne Droite.

However, the United States also made no secret of its vested interest in rupturing all ties between Russia and European countries, Baud added.

Jacques Baud, who was a Colonel in the Swiss Army and formerly worked for the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service, earlier stated that since the Second World War, it had always been US policy to prevent Germany and Russia or the USSR from working more closely together.

Baud, who formerly was head of “Policy and Doctrine” in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York, underscored in a spate of interviews that “nobody cares about Ukraine” in the West, and NATO, the EU and its allies have “instrumentalized Ukraine for the purpose of US. strategic interests.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted on Friday that the United States had nothing to do with the recent attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. During a joint press conference with his Canadian counterpart, Melanie Joly, he stated:

“I really have nothing to say to the absurd allegation from President Putin that we are, or other partners or allies are somehow responsible for this, but we will get to the bottom of what happened, and we’ll share that information as soon we have it, but I don’t want to get ahead of the investigation.”

Blasts rocked the Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines on September 26, with the Kremlin calling the incident an act of terrorism, while Russian intelligence has pointed to a Western trace.

Operator Nord Stream AG called the destruction on the offshore gas pipelines “unprecedented”, adding that it was “impossible” to calculate the amount of time needed to rectify it.

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said on Wednesday it was investigating the pipeline blasts as an act of international terrorism. On September 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the US and its allies are no longer satisfied with sanctions targeting Moscow and had begun to destroy the pan-European energy infrastructure. Putin spoke as he expressed his full support for the incorporation of the Donbass and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions into Russia, and signed a decree to that effect.

Boasting a capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year, the 1,224-kilometer (760 miles) main gas supply route to Europe, Nord Stream 1, had earlier been suspended since the end of August. Problems with the repair of turbines had plagued the pipeline as fallout from western sanctions on Russia in response to its ongoing special military operation in Ukraine.

The construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, stretching from the coast of Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany, was completed in September 2021, however the German government stopped its certification in February. After Russia recognized the sovereignty of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR and LPR), German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stated that “the project is actually frozen.”

October 1, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , | 4 Comments

Nord Stream explosions are a ‘tremendous opportunity’ – US

Samizdat | October 1, 2022

The US views the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines as a “tremendous opportunity” to wean the continent off of Russian energy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Friday. With winter approaching, Blinken said that the US wants Europe to decrease its fuel use.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, Blinken boasted that the US is now “the leading supplier of [liquefied natural gas] to Europe.” In addition to shipping its own fuel to Europe, Blinken said that the US is working with European leaders to find ways to “decrease demand” and “speed up the transition to renewables.”

“It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from [Russian President] Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs,” Blinken declared.

The US likely stands to gain the most from the destruction of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, which were damaged by a series of explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm earlier this week. Washington has for years been trying to convince European leaders to swap Russian gas for its LNG, and the severity of the damage to the undersea conduits now means that Europe is “indefinitely deprived” of Russian gas via this route, Russian energy operator Gazprom stated on Friday.

In a speech on Friday, President Vladimir Putin blamed the explosions on “the Anglo-Saxons,” a Russian colloquialism for the US-UK transatlantic alliance.

“It’s obvious to everyone who benefits from it,” Putin explained. “Those who benefit are the ones who have done it.”

While the way is now open for the US to sell its more expensive LNG to Europe, the shortfall cannot be covered overnight. US exporters warned throughout the summer that they will not be able to ship enough gas to meet demand on the continent, and many of Europe’s import terminals are still under construction or in planning.

Meanwhile, energy bills are skyrocketing across Europe. In Germany, which faces the prospect of rapid “deindustrialization,” protesters took to the streets to demand the re-opening of Nord Stream 2, just days before the explosions. Food shortages have been predicted in Germany and firewood is in hot demand across the continent as citizens struggle to heat their homes.

“There’s a lot of hard work to do to make sure that countries and partners get through the winter,” Blinken said, suggesting, as EU leaders have also done, that Europe work to “reduce demand” for gas.

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia | , | 7 Comments

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