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You must obey, or you’re going nowhere

By Niall McCrae | TCW Defending Freedom | November 21, 2022

‘Stay at home’, that constantly repeated edict of the Covid-19 lockdown, was but a trial run for an emerging regime of restricted movement. The direction of travel (or rather, not travel) is indicated by recently proposed zoning schemes in Oxford and Canterbury, the United Nations’ Smart Cities plan for every need fulfilled within a 15-minute journey, and by the G20 Leaders’ Declaration last week.

Ye olde England was never really free – not for the commoners. In the Middle Ages, if a peasant ventured into a village beyond his own community, he would risk a severe beating. Gradually horizons widened, hastened by the advent of the railways. However, it’s a relatively recent phenomenon for citizens to lose their sense of ownership of where they live. Decades of uncontrolled immigration have put paid to strong communities steeped in heritage and homogeneity.

Yet while the English Channel is crossed by about a thousand illegal migrants every day, each receiving housing and services at taxpayers’ expense, the freedom of ordinary Britons is being steadily curtailed. Your ability to travel will depend on your digitally recorded status, as determined by your assets, occupation and – most importantly – your compliance with public health provisions.

In response to the purported Covid-19 pandemic, governments around the world closed their borders, some re-opening them only after mass vaccination. My other half is planning to visit family in New Zealand, a country that isolated itself with strict quarantine for returning Kiwis (a facility that was later confined to the vaccinated). Now she can return freely, and will go as soon as possible, because she knows what’s coming around the corner.

The International Health Regulations (IHR) set by the World Health Assembly (part of the World Health Organisation) are likely to include a global digital health passport when revised in Geneva next year. There is no doubt that this will happen, whatever the opposition from the critically thinking minority of society, because this was one of the pledges made at the G20 Leaders’ conference in Bali.

Hosting the meeting, Indonesian health minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin called for a universal health passport, building on the success of digital Covid-19 certificates. The declaration signed by all 20 leaders stated under point 23:

‘We acknowledge the importance of shared technical standards and verification methods, under the framework of the IHR (2005) to facilitate seamless international travel, interoperability, and recognising digital solutions and non-digital solutions, including proof of vaccination.’

Some critics asked rhetorically why Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum and global vaccinator Bill Gates were present. Answer: because they are running the show (or at least, they are its public faces). The Bali Declaration is a manifesto for the Great Reset and global security state. Covid-19, Net Zero, funding war in Ukraine and unlimited migration are prominent themes justifying development of technocratic control of population and resources.

The G20, which first met in 2008 amidst the global economic crisis, is ensconced with the unelected elitist organisation of the World Economic Forum. Earlier this year, in one of its typical hub-and-spoke diagrams, the WEF placed digital identity at the core of all human activity. No identity, no entry – and no existence. According to this document, the introduction of digital Covid certificates was a boon, as ‘these passports by nature serve as a form of digital identity’.

If you refuse vaccination, you will be in effect imprisoned at the World Health Organisation’s pleasure. And this pseudo-immunological discipline will be for whatever diseases that our global masters decide. Whether you’re flying to Thailand or taking the Eurostar to Paris, you may need a jab against monkeypox or a new strain of polio. Furthermore, these vaccines will all be of mRNA spike protein technology. Is a week on the Costa Brava worth the potential risk to health?

As experienced with Covid-19, vaccine passports will not only be for foreign travel. They could become ubiquitous for domestic movement too. Some jurisdictions, including Wales and Scotland, made Covid-19 vaccination a requirement for football matches and other public gatherings. English care workers were dismissed for failing to comply with ‘no jab, no job’. In Europe it was much worse: unvaccinated people were barred from shops. Across the world the media message was shrill: anyone refusing the ‘miracle of science’ should be banished from society.

Vaccination will be a key feature of the data by which your life will be controlled. A fully-fledged digital surveillance system will be linked to a central bank digital currency. This is for your safety and convenience, apparently. As the Bali Declaration asserted, ‘we will advance a more inclusive, human-centric, empowering, and sustainable digital transformation’. We know from Covid-19 that most people will comply with little complaint, unwittingly accepting their enslavement and genetic engineering.

Welcome to the New World Order. You may not like it, but your politicians do.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | 4 Comments

For the Love of Money

Pfizer’s quest for blockbusters by hook or by crook

Author’s Note: The following post is an excerpt from The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, by John Leake and Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH. Please note that a special and very handsome hardcover edition, published by Skyhorse with a forward by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will be released tomorrow (November 22).

By John Leake

Long before COVID-19 arrived, I was a close observer of the pharmaceutical industry. My great grandparents believed that pharmaceutical labs were at the forefront of progress, relieving suffering and extending life, and for the most part they were right. My paternal great grandfather owned a large chain of drugstores and was a benefactor of UT Southwestern Medical School. At the time of my birth, my maternal great grandmother gave me a generous gift of Pfizer stock. She had been impressed by Pfizer’s key role in discovering how to mass produce penicillin during World War II (in which her son was killed in action). Eighteen years later her gift paid for my university education. And then, in 1998, Pfizer received FDA approval to sell Viagra.

Pfizer initially developed the drug to treat high blood pressure and angina pectoris. However, as Pfizer’s researchers discovered in clinical trials, the drug was better at inducing erections than managing angina. And so, the company repurposed the drug for erectile dysfunction and launched a massive, global PR and marketing campaign—including seeking moral approval from Pope John Paul II and contracting the war hero and 1996 presidential candidate Bob Dole to be the brand’s poster gentleman—that succeeded in making Viagra a blockbuster. Fortunately for me, I still owned a large chunk of Pfizer stock. The price spiked in late 1998 and reached an all-time high in April of 1999. I sold my entire remaining position, which financed my early years as a freelance author, before my first book was published.

So, I learned firsthand why pharmaceutical companies seek to develop blockbuster drugs with fanatical zeal. Formulating a safe and effective new medicine to address a large, unmet need is very difficult and expensive. Performing clinical trials and obtaining FDA-approval is an arduous process that normally takes several years. Thus, if an opportunity for a new blockbuster presents itself, a big drug company like Pfizer will go to extreme lengths to seize it.

Three years after the release of Viagra, I learned that Pfizer was not the entirely respectable company my great grandmother had believed it to be. I arrived at this realization through my interest in British spy novels. In 2001 I lived in Vienna, around the corner from the Burgkino (Burg Cinema) which still played the 1949 film noir classic The Third Man on its big screen every weekend. I spent many a dreary winter Sunday afternoon watching the film. Based on the novella and screenplay by Graham Greene, The Third Man is a crime story about Harry Lime—an American running a medical charity in Vienna, who makes a killing selling penicillin on the bombed out, impoverished city’s black market. To increase his profits, he cuts the drug with other substances, thereby destroying its efficacy and causing the patients (including children) to die horribly from their infections.

In the film’s most iconic scene, the good guy (played by Joseph Cotton) meets his old friend Harry Lime (played by Orson Welles) on the Giant Ferris wheel in the Vienna Prater amusement park and tries to appeal to his conscience. At the wheel’s apex, the charismatic Harry opens the door, points down to people walking on the ground below, and says:

Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax. … Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don’t, why should we? They talk about the people and the proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It’s the same thing. They have their five-year plans, and so have I.

I sensed that Graham Greene might have based the story on something he’d witnessed or heard about. Doing some research, I learned that Harry Lime was probably based on the British spy Harold “Kim” Philby, with whom Greene worked in British intelligence during World War II. Greene, it seems, discovered that Philby was a Soviet double agent long before he was exposed as such in 1963. Instead of ratting out his friend, he kept it to himself and left the intelligence service in 1944. Several pieces of evidence suggest that when he wrote The Third Man a few years later, he based it on his conflicted friendship with Philby.

John le Carré was also fascinated by Graham Greene and Kim Philby, and his thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy—one of my all-time favorites—was inspired by the Philby story. His novel The Constant Gardener was published in 2001, and I read it with great interest. The story wasn’t set in Cold War Europe, but in Kenya, where a British diplomat’s wife is brutally raped and murdered. Upon closer examination, the diplomat realizes that she was about to reveal a horrifying crime committed by a pharmaceutical company, which murdered her in order to prevent the exposure.

The novel’s plot was reminiscent of a controversial drug trial performed by Pfizer in Kano, Nigeria in 1996 during a meningococcal outbreak. For the trial of its new antibiotic, trovafloxacin, Pfizer gave 100 children this new drug. The control group of 100 other children received the standard anti-meningitis treatment at the time—a drug called ceftriaxone. However, for the control group, Pfizer administered a substantially lower dose of ceftriaxone than the drug’s FDA-approved standard.

When the reduced dosing in the control group was discovered, it raised the suspicion that Pfizer did this in order to skew the trial in favor of its new drug. Five of the children who received trovafloxacin died, while six who received the reduced dose of ceftriaxone died. Other children apparently suffered grave injuries from the administration of the experimental antibiotic without their informed consent. The investigation and litigation that ensued was the stuff of a thriller, involving private investigators, bribery, blackmail attempts, and disappearing records. Thirteen years later, in 2009, Pfizer settled out of court with the plaintiffs.

In his author’s note, le Carré claimed that nobody and no corporation in the novel was based on an actual person or corporation in the real world.

But I can tell you this. As my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard.

In 2009, the same year that Pfizer settled with the trovafloxacin plaintiffs, the New York Times reported that a U.S. federal judge assessed Pfizer with the “largest health care fraud settlement and the largest criminal fine of any kind ever” for its illegal marketing of Bextra and three other drugs. The U.S. Department of Justice was unequivocal in characterizing Pfizer’s officers as guilty of grave criminal conduct at the expense of the American public.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

BBC’s jab travesty and the critics who will not be fobbed off

By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | November 21, 2022

Has the BBC’s complaints system finally come up against a foe that won’t be put off? A brief history of complaints about the travesty of a BBC documentary, Unvaccinated, proudly promoted in July, suggests it may well have.

The programme, presented by Professor Hannah Fry, signalled its bias from the start. Tom Coveney, BBC Commissioning Editor, Science, set the scene with this promotion:

‘With Covid infections on the rise again, there couldn’t be a more important time to examine the reasons why so many adults are still not getting the vaccine. It’s an explosive debate that goes to the heart of modern life and growing mistrust in the establishment . . . Hannah will bring seven unvaccinated participants together under one roof to unpack the long-held opinions, beliefs and fears that have prevented them from getting the vaccine . . . They will come face to face with leading experts, confronting the latest science and statistics to emerge in the field and dissecting how misinformation spreads on social media.’

Beliefs and fears, misinformation and social media all nicely flagged up, the BBC’s presumption as to where blame lay for an implicitly indicated irrational vaccine hesitancy was clear. Though rationally based scepticism or reasonable doubts about safety were not expected to be part of this investigation, the extent of its bias, its dismissal of safety concerns and neglect of evidence still came as a shock when it was aired.

An outraged Professor Norman Fenton immediately identified its base bias – the gross inaccuracy on which the programme was premised of a massive underestimation of the number of unvaccinated people in the UK.

In further posts Fenton listed the programme’s many serious omissions, including the BBC’s failure to disclose the Pfizer links of its two key experts, its silence on the failure of the vaccination to stop infection or transmission of Covid, as well as on reported data on adverse reaction and the true (low) risk of Covid based on world-wide data.

One of the unvaccinated participants, feeling cheated and betrayed, exposed the fundamental production deception. The purpose of the show was not to understand why they were not vaccinated but ‘to change our minds’.

But it has taken a forensic examination of the programme, minute by minute, by a group of doctors and scientists led by the indefatigable retired consultant paediatrician, Dr Rosamond Jones, to reveal the full extent of the programme’s glaring inaccuracies and convenient data cherry-picking. You can read their formal letter of complaint to the BBC (plus the subsequent correspondence) here.

The programme, they wrote to BBC Complaints early last August (two weeks after Unvaccinated‘s transmission), threatened ‘to seriously undermine the ethical process of obtaining legally valid informed consent to medical treatment, and thus trivialised the proper practice of medicine, in the name of entertainment’. It should have sent shivers running through the Corporation. How had a piece of such blatant propaganda in the guise of documentary got off the drawing board? Whose heads would roll?

No such thing. True to BBC form came back a casually brief and dismissive reply from Deborah Dawson of the Complaints Department thanking them for ‘sharing their views’.

Dr Rosamond A K Jones, MBBS (Hons), DObst RCOG, MD, FRCPCH and the other 20 signatories were not having that. Writing back on September 6 they reiterated their complaints: not only was the whole thrust of the programme ‘to try and correct the participants of their misinformation and see if they would change their minds’, they said, their listed complaints were not ‘different views’ but factual errors and lack of balanced evidence, and would the BBC answer all the points individually?

It took six weeks for Complaints Manager, Mr Paul Kettle, to complete his attempt. Resorting to tautology to discount any duty to be balanced and impartial or to consider the factual biases by omission detailed, he said that since the omitted matters were not in the programme, they could not be a matter of discussion. Noticeable too in his reply is the underlying reason for ignoring those with whom they disagree – an assertion that ‘scientific consensus’ (i.e. the views of WHO) is on their side. It can hardly be stated, however, that the science of the new technology mRNA and DNA vaccines is settled, with still incomplete trials and long-term safety data.

Kettle’s efforts to defend the programme’s specific assertions on male fertility, safety for pregnant women and myocarditis risk come across as a painful exercise of contortion with the evidence, the final gem of a defence being that since no one on the programme was under 21 it could not matter that it failed to mention the heightened myocarditis risk for vaccinated young males.

Signing off ‘In line with BBC Editorial Guidelines, this programme appropriately reported the latest science and statistics’ repeated that other favourite BBC tautology. Any further complaint, if they dared was implied, would take them into the next area of the BBC complaints labyrinth – the Executive Complaints Unit (ECU)

Well they have dared and they won’t be daunted Dr Jones’s covering email to ECU shows.

‘I wrote with a number of medical colleagues to the complaints department on August 4, regarding a documentary Unvaccinated shown on BBC2 on July 20. We detailed a number of instances throughout the programme of either bias or frank misinformation.

‘This was particularly serious, as the programme appeared to be actively promoting a prescription-only medication and we pointed out in our complaint that requires an especially high level of care in the accuracy and completeness of information.

‘The first reply was woefully inadequate, only answering one of the various queries we raised so we wrote again. This time we got a more detailed response but still perpetuating many of the inaccuracies or omissions which we had highlighted. Attached below is a third letter addressed to the ECU. Hopefully you will be able to resolve the issues involved and avoid the need for a referral to Ofcom.’

You can read the full letter here. 

Twenty one senior doctors and scientists await their reply.

But if ‘BBC Complaints’ at whichever state of their deliberately tortuous process think they can dispose of these highly qualified experts with their usual stonewalling tactics of delay and dismissal, they are mistaken. They are trying to ignore people who know what they are talking about and are determined not to be fobbed off. The longer they resist, the worse this pro-vaccination propaganda effort will look. The data and information are now clear that the vaccines did not work as promised. Every week that goes by, efficacy and safety claims erode while evidence of inadequate or absent safety data and of risk and injury builds.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

How Blackrock Investment Fund Triggered the Global Energy Crisis

“Adherence to UN 2030 Sustainability Agenda”. Colossal disinvestment in the trillion-dollar global oil and gas sector.

By F. William Engdahl | Global Research | November 16, 2022

Most people are bewildered by what is a global energy crisis, with prices for oil, gas and coal simultaneously soaring and even forcing closure of major industrial plants such as chemicals or aluminum or steel. The Biden Administration and EU have insisted that all is because of Putin and Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. This is not the case. The energy crisis is a long-planned strategy of western corporate and political circles to dismantle industrial economies in the name of a dystopian Green Agenda that has its roots in the period years well before February 2022, when Russia launched its military action in Ukraine.

Blackrock pushes ESG

In January, 2020  on the eve of the economically and socially devastating covid lockdowns, the CEO of the world’s largest investment fund, Larry Fink of Blackrock, issued a letter to Wall Street colleagues and corporate CEOs on the future of investment flows. In the document, modestly titled “A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance”, Fink, who manages the world’s largest investment fund with some $7 trillion then under management, announced a radical departure for corporate investment. Money would “go green.” In his closely-followed 2020 letter Fink declared,

“In the near future – and sooner than most anticipate – there will be a significant re-allocation of capital…Climate risk is investment risk.” Further he stated, “Every government, company, and shareholder must confront climate change.” [i]

In a separate letter to Blackrock investor clients, Fink delivered the new agenda for capital investing. He declared that Blackrock will exit certain high-carbon investments such as coal, the largest source of electricity for the USA and many other countries. He added that Blackrock would screen new investment in oil, gas and coal to determine their adherence to the UN Agenda 2030 “sustainability.”

Fink made clear the world’s largest fund would begin to disinvest in oil, gas and coal.  “Over time,” Fink wrote, “companies and governments that do not respond to stakeholders and address sustainability risks will encounter growing skepticism from the markets, and in turn, a higher cost of capital.” He added that, “Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects… we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.” [ii]

From that point on the so-called ESG investing, penalizing CO2 emitting companies like ExxonMobil, has become all the fashion among hedge funds and Wall Street banks and investment funds including State Street and Vanguard. Such is the power of Blackrock. Fink was also able to get four new board members in ExxonMobil committed to end the company’s oil and gas business.

The January 2020 Fink letter was a declaration of war by big finance against the conventional energy industry. BlackRock was a founding member of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (the TCFD) and is a signatory of the UN PRI— Principles for Responsible Investing, a UN-supported network of investors pushing zero carbon investing using the highly-corrupt ESG criteria—Environmental, Social and Governance factors into investment decisions. There is no objective control over fake data for a company’s ESG. As well Blackrock signed the Vatican’s 2019 statement advocating carbon pricing regimes. BlackRock in 2020 also joined  Climate Action 100, a coalition of almost 400 investment managers  managing US$40 trillion.

With that fateful January 2020 CEO letter, Larry Fink set in motion a colossal disinvestment in the trillion-dollar global oil and gas sector. Notably, that same year BlackRock’s Fink was named to the Board of Trustees of Klaus Schwab’s dystopian World Economic Forum, the corporate and political nexus of the Zero Carbon UN Agenda 2030. In June 2019, the World Economic Forum and the United Nations signed a strategic partnership framework to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.  WEF has a Strategic Intelligence platform which includes Agenda 2030’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

In his 2021 CEO letter, Fink doubled down on the attack on oil, gas and coal. “Given how central the energy transition will be to every company’s growth prospects, we are asking companies to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net zero economy,” Fink wrote. Another BlackRock officer told a recent energy conference, “where BlackRock goes, others will follow.” [iii]

In just two years, by 2022 an estimated $1 trillion has exited investment in oil and gas exploration and development globally. Oil extraction is an expensive business and cut-off of external investment by BlackRock and other Wall Street investors spells the slow death of the industry.

Biden—A BlackRock President?

Early in his then-lackluster Presidential bid, Biden had a closed door meeting in late 2019 with Fink who reportedly told the candidate that, “I’m here to help.” After his fateful meeting with BlackRock’s Fink, candidate Biden announced, “We are going to get rid of fossil fuels…” In December 2020, even before Biden was inaugurated in January 2021, he named BlackRock Global Head of Sustainable Investing, Brian Deese, to be Assistant to the President and Director of the National Economic Council. Here, Deese, who played a key role for Obama in drafting the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, has quietly shaped the Biden war on energy.

This has been catastrophic for the oil and gas industry. Fink’s man Deese was active in giving the new President Biden a list of anti-oil measures to sign by Executive Order beginning day one in January 2021. That included closing the huge Keystone XL oil pipeline that would bring 830,000 barrels per day from Canada as far as Texas refineries, and halting any new leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Biden also rejoined the Paris Climate Accord that Deese had negotiated for Obama in 2015 and Trump cancelled.

The same day, Biden set in motion a change of the so-called “Social Cost of Carbon” that imposes a punitive $51 a ton of CO2 on the oil and gas industry. That one move, established under purely executive-branch authority without the consent of Congress, is dealing a devastating cost to investment in oil and gas in the US, a country only two years before that was the world’s largest oil producer.[iv]

Killing refinery capacity

Even worse, Biden’s  aggressive environmental rules and BlackRock ESG investing mandates are killing the US refinery capacity. Without refineries it doesn’t matter how many barrels of oil you take from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In the first two years of Biden’s Presidency the US has shut down some 1 million barrels a day of gasoline and diesel refining capacity, some due to covid demand collapse, the fastest decline in US history. The shutdowns are permanent. In 2023 an added 1.7 million bpd of capacity is set to close as a result of BlackRock and Wall Street ESG disinvesting and Biden regulations. [v]

Citing the heavy Wall Street disinvestment in oil and the Biden anti-oil policies, the CEO of Chevron in June 2022 declared that he doesn’t believe the US will ever build another new refinery.[vi]

Larry Fink, Board member of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum, is joined by the EU whose President of the EU Commission, the notoriously corrupt Ursula von der Leyen left the WEF Board in 2019 to become EU Commission head. Her first major act in Brussels was to push through the EU Zero Carbon Fit for 55 agenda. That has imposed major carbon taxes and other constraints on oil, gas and coal in the EU well before the February 2022 Russian actions in Ukraine. The combined impact of the Fink fraudulent ESG agenda in the Biden administration and the EU Zero Carbon madness is creating the worst energy and inflation crisis in history.

*

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Notes

[i] Larry Fink, A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance, Letter to CEOs, January, 2020, https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/2020-blackrock-client-letter

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Tsvetana Paraskova,  Why Are Investors Turning Their Backs On Fossil Fuel Projects?, OilPrice.com,

March 11, 2021, https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Why-Are-Investors-Turning-Their-Backs-On-Fossil-Fuel-Projects.html

[iv] Joseph Toomey, Energy Inflation Was by Design, September, 2022, https://assets.realclear.com/files/2022/10/2058_energyinflationwasbydesign.pdf

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Fox Business, Chevron CEO says there may never be another oil refinery built in the US, June 3. 2022, https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/chevron-ceo-oil-refinery-built-u-s

Copyright © F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 2022

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | 2 Comments

OVERPOPULATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE

OffGuardian | November 21, 2022

The big population news, reported late last month, is that we just crossed 8 billion humans on the planet.

This week, to coincide with the COP27 and G20 meetings, this news was parlayed into a climate change narrative.

DW asks “How can 8 billion people sustainably share a planet?” while Reuters reports that a population of 8 billion makes “climate justice harder”.

As usual, the most brazenly anti-human nonsense comes from the Guardian, whose environmental editor has a long piece headlined: “It should not be controversial to say a population of 8 billion will have a grave impact on the climate”

Which includes this paragraph:

So of course the rich must change their behaviour. But making climate breakdown all about consumption has become an excuse for countries to do nowhere near enough to reduce their populations.

How exactly countries should go about “reducing their population” is left delightfully vague.

What’s brilliant about all this is the sheer lack of reality behind every single aspect of the story.

  • The world is not over-populated, that is a myth.
  • Climate change “science” is a scam.
  • They don’t even know how many people there really are, the global population figure is a guess based on modelling and old census data.

But the most fun article on this story is from Reuters, who actually fact-checked a viral social media post claiming overpopulation is a myth, and every human on earth could fit in a square 50 miles across.

They don’t fact-check the guys math, they even admit he’s completely correct, but then they say the figures “lack context”, and ask the opinion of an “expert” who reassures everyone “nowhere on earth could support that population density”.

No kidding guys.

More This Week In The New Normal.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | 3 Comments

South Korea asks for Russia and China’s help

South Korea’s nuclear envoy Kim Gunn
RT | November 21, 2022

South Korea has turned to Russia and China for help in shutting down rival North Korea’s missile testing program, arguing that Pyongyang is threatening peace and stability across Northeast Asia and beyond.

Nuclear envoy Kim Gunn held a telephone call on Monday morning with the Russian and Chinese ambassadors to Seoul, Andrey Kulik and Xing Haiming, asking for “active cooperation” in persuading Pyongyang to refrain from “further provocations” and return to dialogue, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Kim argued that North Korea’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Friday violated UN Security Council resolutions and marked yet another dangerous saber-rattling incident from President Kim Jong-un’s regime.

Seoul made its appeal for help as its envoys prepared to lobby the UN Security Council for action at an emergency meeting on Monday in response to North Korea’s latest ICBM test. The South Korean diplomat “emphasized the need for the international community, including the United States, to unite and promptly take decisive countermeasures,” the ministry said.

As permanent members of the Security Council, Russia and China have the power to veto any resolutions that would punish North Korea for its strategic weapons tests. Russia has called in the past for de-escalation on the Korean Peninsula by both sides, meaning Pyongyang would halt nuclear-related tests and the US and South Korea would suspend their joint military exercises in the region. US officials have called that idea “insulting.”

Kulik warned last year that only diplomacy would bring peace to the peninsula. “We are convinced that step-by-step activities based on the principles of equality and a gradual and synchronized approach will make it possible to ensure the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and lay the foundation for a solid system of peace and security here,” the ambassador told TASS in an interview last December.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres issued a statement on Friday condemning North Korea for its latest ICBM launch. North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui responded on Monday by calling Guterres a “puppet of the US.” She defended North Korea’s weapons tests as a “legitimate and just exercise of the right to self-defense,” saying they came in response to “provocative nuclear war rehearsals” by the US and its allies.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | 2 Comments

Iran bans imports of French cars unless damage redressed

Press TV – November 21, 2022

Iran has banned the imports of French cars until France’s automobile manufacturers, namely Renault, Peugeot and Citroen, compensate the damage caused by leaving the Islamic Republic.

The withdrawal imposed a lot of costs on Iran’s automobile and parts manufacturing industry and left many investments in ruins after the US imposed new sanctions in August 2018, targeting the Islamic Republic’s car industry, trade in gold and other precious metals, and purchases of US dollars.

Although the withdrawal forced Iranian manufacturers to pool their resources and produce locally-made cars, compensation for the damage caused by the pullout is a central demand.

The ban announced by Ministry of Industry, Mining and Trade spokesman Omid Qalibaf comes as Iran is reintroducing foreign car imports in order to both improve the pool of quality automobiles and meet consumer demand.

Iran prohibited the import of Western cars in 2017 to counter the impending reimposition of US sanctions. The idea was part of Tehran’s efforts to develop a “resistance economy” that could both serve Iranians’ demands for cars, lessen dependence on foreign technology, and potentially boost export revenue.

“Those in the process of importing cars are dealing with the related issues and are concluding their contracts one by one, with the first cars expected to enter the country with the conditions that have been announced to the importers.

“However, what is certain is that French cars will not find a way to our market for now, because French companies such as Renault and Peugeot do not have a good history during the time of sanctions, when they easily left our country despite having committed to joint ventures and investments,” Qalibaf said.

Before the sanctions, French carmaker PSA Group had signed a framework deal with Iranian counterpart SAIPA to produce and sell vehicles for its Citroen brand in the country.

Under the agreement, Citroen and its Iranian partner would invest 300 million euros ($330 million) over five years in manufacturing, research and development, with the first of three planned new Citroen models due to be launched in Iran in 2018.

PSA Group, the maker of Peugeot and Citroen cars, had finalized a similar production deal with major Iranian automaker Iran Khodro under a 50-50 joint venture to invest up to 400 million euros ($451 million).

Renault had signed a new joint venture deal that included an engineering and purchasing center to support the development of local suppliers as well as a plant with an initial production capacity of 150,000 vehicles a year.

“In the middle of the road, however, they left the Iranian automakers alone and caused a lot of damage to our country’s automobile industry,” Qalibaf said.

“As long as the French car manufacturers do not compensate for these damages, they will not have any share in the large car market of our country, and the import of any car from France will be prohibited,” he added.

The ban, however, will not include South Korea, Japan and other countries, because they were not involved in any joint projects with Iranian industrialists when the new sanctions were imposed, Qalibaf stated.

The auto industry forms the second biggest sub-sector of the economy behind oil, accounting for some 10 percent of the gross domestic product and 4 percent of employment.

When the former Trump administration reimposed sanctions on Iran in August 2018, it reserved Washington’s first hammer blow for the car industry to hurt as many Iranians as possible.

However, the US pressures forced domestic manufacturers to mobilize their resources to fulfill some of the tasks which were an exclusive competence of foreign companies.

Last week, Venezuelan Minister of Transport Ramón announced the shipment of 1,000 cars built in Iran to Venezuela, stating that they were among 80,000 requests registered for the products of an Iranian car manufacturer in his country.

“We have a very high demand for Iranian car products, where we were able to register about 80,000 requests in the first stage,” he said in Tehran where he was at the head of a large delegation.

With the exports, Iran is staking out a niche in South America’s automotive marketplace which has a lot of space for growth and expansion, given the uneasy relationship of some of the countries of the region with the United States.

It followed the Iran-Venezuela 2022 Expo Fair held on Sept. 14-18 in Caracas where President Maduro announced the assembly of four Iranian models at Venirauto car manufacturing plant, a joint venture between the Venezuelan government and Iran Khodro.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | 1 Comment

Background to current US policy in Europe

By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 21.11.2022

It is said not in vain that one man’s problem is another man’s opportunity. And the military action in Ukraine against Russia, unleashed by the US and NATO, has clearly demonstrated this. Every day there is more and more evidence to show what huge dividends the US tycoons are reaping from the policies that the current President Joe Biden is pursuing for their benefit alone. Suffice it to say that Washington has already made tens of billions of dollars from the military actions it has unleashed in Ukraine. Not to mention the distraction from US domestic issues in financial, economic and politico-racial fields, that the White House is using against this backdrop.

The US instigated this armed conflict, a conclusion that most political analysts are now coming to. Its aim is to force Europe to submit to US sanctions against Russia and stop buying cheap Russian natural gas. Washington can now sell huge quantities of liquefied gas to Europe at its own prices, and there is no price cap on US hydrocarbons, unlike Russian hydrocarbons, and it is unlikely there will be one. Europe’s economy has suffered a blow, and vast wealth has migrated from Europe to the US, allowing US leaders to maintain their dominant position in the EU.

Ensuring control over Europe is a major strategic imperative for the US. Since the EU has a population of 450 million, while the US population is only 330 million, and their economies are comparable in size, the EU is theoretically in a position to break free from the US and assert itself as an equal or greater superpower on the world stage. A truly independent Europe would prefer to make mutually beneficial trade deals with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia, pushing back the US and ending US imperial domination of the planet.

It is only natural that the US does not want this to happen. By implementing its divide-and-conquer strategy, Washington is preventing Europe from achieving the cohesion and economic strength that would enable it to free itself from the US occupation that has persisted since after the World War II. Inflation in Germany reached double digits in October for the first time since 1990. Italy is also experiencing the highest inflation in 40 years. The rest of the Eurozone is also suffering. The source of the European crisis is the rise in energy prices caused by US sanctions against Russia. Businesses that produce goods and services have to pay more for energy, and they pass the costs on to consumers. Now most of the extra money paid for what has become ultra-expensive energy goes straight into US coffers. This is the main reason why the euro is falling against the dollar. Furthermore, the dollar has historically been strong in times of panic or uncertainty, and the US has a habit of deliberately provoking panic and uncertainty by organizing wars and crises, of which there have been many examples.

The EU is not an ally of the US, but a coalition of vassal states that have been under US military and economic occupation since the end of World War II. The US committed a holocaust against Germany during and immediately after that war, bombing entire cities where only civilians lived, starving millions of German prisoners of war and civilians during the first few years of the occupation. The mainstream media and academia, owned by the Americans and their satellites, fabricated a story of a mythical World War II victor that essentially turned reality upside down and portrayed the US as a generous rebuilder of Germany through the Marshall Plan. But the reality is that the Marshall Plan was only implemented after the Morgenthau Plan to kill millions of Germans had done its bloody work.

The US is far from being a generous ally. Instead, it has always been and remains a selfish occupier of Europe. The current US-induced destruction of Europe, based on depriving EU countries of cheap energy in order to damage them economically and subjugate them politically, could be called the new Morgenthau Plan. Nevertheless, the United States may have to provide aid packages or loans to help the EU escape hunger and frost this winter. If this happens, the motives will not be altruistic. Instead, Washington will seek to prevent Europeans from overthrowing the US occupation and exercising control over their own destiny.

Before the hostilities unleashed by the US in Ukraine, Russia provided the lion’s share of Europe’s cheap energy imports. However, by artificially supporting the armed conflict, which is now in its ninth month, Washington has broken this partnership, and gas is no longer flowing through Nord Stream. Businesses across Europe are not just limiting their energy consumption. They are shrinking or moving to other continents. Europe, according to economists, may well be on the way to de-industrialization. Eurozone industrial activity fell to its lowest since May 2020. The October PMI from S&P Global signaled a looming recession, falling in November and becoming the fourth monthly reading below 50, indicating an economic slowdown. In its latest analysis of the energy crisis in Europe, published on November 3, the IEA said the EU could face a shortfall of up to 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas during the summer of next year to replenish its gas storage capacity.

In a report entitled “Never Too Early to Prepare for Next Winter: Europe’s Gas Balance for 2023-2024” the IEA warns that the safety cushion provided by current storage levels, as well as recent lower gas prices and unusually mild temperatures, should not lead to unduly optimistic conclusions about the future. A look at the IEA report shows that the European Union will face a major challenge in meeting its energy needs in the coming years. Given the high costs of transporting gas over long distances, Russia could still make a significant contribution to solving this problem. With the world’s largest oil and gas reserves, Russia could provide Europe with the energy it desperately needs if it were not for persistent US sanctions. Unlike oil, natural gas is difficult to transport in large volumes and is therefore exported either by pipeline or by conversion into liquefied natural gas (LNG), but this is expensive and requires large investments. Russia does not currently have the infrastructure to export large volumes of LNG to Europe. Given current experience and looking to the future, European governments should clearly see the huge negative impact that sanctions against Russia have had and will have on global energy security. More should therefore be done to help curb US self-serving agendas and negotiate a multipolar world.

By constantly unleashing wars, the United States always reaps huge profits and the military-industrial complex comes first, as one would expect. It is not surprising that the US military budget is equal to that of the rest of the world combined. And this is further clear evidence that Washington does not want to live in a world where all contentious issues are resolved at the negotiating table, but aims only at military actions.

But lately, all of a sudden, the energy complex, whose owners are making exorbitant profits from oil and gas supplies, mostly to Europe, has become the most profitable sector in the United States. It is only natural that many people became interested and it was primarily the military who were concerned and who simply “pressed” Joe Biden. And now the US President has suddenly become “interested” in these huge sums and has decided to “clip the wings” of the oil and gas industry by imposing an additional tax on the profits of the owners of the energy complex. The simple conclusion from this is that unleashing Ukraine on Russia will continue at an accelerated pace, and Europe will be completely deprived of Russian gas. Even the gas coming through NATO member, Turkey.

By starting any military conflict, the US is not aiming to win. Above all, it is to destabilize the region so that it cannot be a US competitor for decades to come.

Today, a large proportion of the world’s elite keep their reserves in the EU. Naturally, the US will not completely destroy it. But if US companies gain a foothold and dominate the European market, it will force Europe to become even more involved in the Ukrainian conflict, to abandon Russian oil and gas completely, and it will be a huge prize for Washington to implement a policy of solving all issues only through war.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , | 1 Comment

Jen Psaki fails to squirm out of censorship deposition

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 19, 2022

Former White House Press Secretary Jen Paski’s motion to quash the subpoena to depose her in the lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana was denied. The lawsuit alleges that the Biden administration colluded with social media companies to suppress certain viewpoints on Covid and elections.

When she was the White House Press Secretary, Psaki made statements encouraging social media companies to censor more content. At one time, she said, “We engage with (social media companies) regularly and they certainly understand what our asks are.”

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit want her deposed so that she can say who within the government was engaging with social media companies and what they said.

Psaki filed a motion to quash the subpoena in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. She was allowed to file the motion in a different state because that is where she lives. Her lawyers argued that she had little information to give and that most of the information is available through the emails and other documents that were obtained by the plaintiffs. They also argued that the deposition would be a burden to her.

US Magistrate Ivan Davis was not impressed by the arguments, but did not reject her request. Instead he referred the motion back to Louisiana, where the lawsuit was filed, because the judge there is more familiar with the case. Davis also refused to stay his ruling so that the motion could be appealed in a district court in Alexandria.

Davis said that Psaki had failed to demonstrate how being deposed in her home state qualifies as an undue burden. If indeed she has little information to offer, it should not be a burden, the judge argued.

“How much time does it take to prepare a witness for deposition when she doesn’t really have anything to say?” Davis asked.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , , | 5 Comments

Western-led ‘international’ organizations have no future

By Drago Bosnic | November 21, 2022

On November 18, the Polish foreign ministry stated that it will not allow a Russian delegation to attend the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) summit next month. OSCE is one of the most prominent regional security organizations in the world and its stated goal is to establish a viable security framework that would prevent conflicts in Europe and beyond. However, the reality is a bit different from the organization’s publicly altruistic intentions. The Associated Press asked the Polish foreign ministry if Russia would be denied entry to the OSCE’s December conference and Spokesman Lukasz Jasina responded that it would.

Russia, one of the most important members of the organization, as well as a key player in European security, is being denied entry due to politics. The very fact that this is even possible calls into question the purpose of OSCE or any similar organization dominated by the political West. This year, Poland is chairing the 57-nation organization, with the annual ministerial conference scheduled to be held in the city of Lodz on December 1-2. When asked if Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would be attending the conference, Jasina responded, “We are not expecting a visit by minister Lavrov to Lodz.”

“Delegations should be adjusted to the current EU regulations and not include persons that are sanctioned by the European Union,” according to an announcement by the Polish OSCE Chairmanship. “…a number of Russian nationals were added to the list of sanctioned individuals, including Minister Lavrov,” it added.

OSCE should be excluded from EU regulations, as the very purpose of the organization is to be a forum for security dialogue between European and other countries and prevent any escalation or spillover of local conflicts. By denying Russia the opportunity to attend the December 1-2 confidence in Lodz, precisely this security dialogue is being prevented, eliminating the need for OSCE altogether. However, in recent months, certain events have led many to believe the organization is hardly a neutral one, as its actions have often been used to aid one side in a particular conflict.

For instance, the war in Donbass, which has been going on for nearly a decade, and which has taken the lives of around 15,000 local men, women and children by early 2022, pushed the role of OSCE into more of a gray area. Its mission in Donbass, which the organization itself claims to be “arms control, promotion of human rights, early warning, conflict prevention, crisis management” failed back in April. In fact, it has continually been failing for over 8 years, as the Kiev regime’s shelling of the people of Donbass never stopped. Worse yet, it turned out that OSCE didn’t just fail to prevent the conflict, but it might have even done certain things to facilitate it.

In a rather disturbing revelation by war correspondent Alexander Sladkov, the organization was using high-resolution cameras, originally placed to conduct ceasefire monitoring, to relay DNR and LNR positions to the Kiev regime forces which then used the provided data to target or correct their artillery fire. The OSCE mission provided their observation data, captured by cameras and other monitoring equipment they installed over the years. In essence, OSCE was spying and effectively waging war on the side of the Neo-Nazi junta. To make matters worse, the provided monitoring data also included the movement of regular Russian military personnel in the early days of the special military operation.

The report was heavily censored by the mainstream propaganda machine, making it virtually impossible for most people in Europe to see how a supposedly impartial international organization effectively became a party to the conflict which could not only undermine security in Europe, but the world as well. To make matters worse, these issues aren’t only limited to the OSCE, but many other apparently “international” organizations, including the United Nations. Back in February, twelve Russian UN diplomats were ordered to leave the US after being accused of being “intelligence operatives engaged in espionage.” The same pretext could be used to expel virtually anyone deemed a “security challenge” by the US, which would affect entire nations or groups of nations the ability to defend their interests at the UN.

The latest G20 summit held in Bali was also a clear indicator that the world is moving away from Western-led “international” organizations. While most members were trying to focus on actual global issues, the G7 members within the G20 were effectively trying to hijack the summit and make it entirely Ukraine-focused, which failed for the most part. All of this is happening at a time when BRICS is expanding across the world, with approximately a dozen major nations showing direct interest in joining the organization. The BRICS+ framework allows countries to maintain their sovereignty while becoming members of the world’s largest truly international organization.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

COLORADO GOVERNOR DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY OVER RSV

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | November 17, 2022

CENSORSHIP KILLS

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | November 17, 2022

‘Censorship kills’ is the rally cry for a global medical community under unfathomable pressure from big tech and government to stifle the Covid debate. Fortunately, legislators and the greater public are seeing through the authoritarian behavior and taking action.

REAL HOUSEWIVES STAR FED UP WITH CENSORSHIP

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | November 17, 2022

Real Housewives Star and business mogul, Bethenny Frankel, made waves on social media when she went off on how taboo it’s become to even question the possibility of suffering an adverse reaction from Covid-19 vaccines.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | 1 Comment