Russia threatens to cut gas exports due to Ukraine’s theft
RT | November 22, 2022
Russia’s energy giant Gazprom said on Tuesday that Ukraine was diverting natural gas supplies transiting to Moldova, and the company has threatened to curtail deliveries through a key pipeline in response.
“The volume of gas supplied by Gazprom to the ‘Sudzha’ gas measuring station (GMS) for transit to Moldova via Ukraine exceeds the physical volume transmitted at the border of Ukraine with Moldova,” Gazprom’s statement read.
Moldova paid for some November gas supplies on Monday, according to Gazprom, which said that Kiev had kept 52.52 million cubic meters of gas meant for Moldova on its territory.
The Russian energy company further warned that if the transit imbalance persists then it would begin slashing gas supply to the Sudzha GMS for transit via Ukraine from 10 am (7am GMT) on November 28, “in the amount of the daily underderlivery.”
The Sudzha transit line through Ukraine remains the only route to supply Russian gas to western and central European countries after the Nord Stream network was damaged by a suspicious explosion in September.
Meanwhile, land-locked Moldova, which has been suffering massive blackouts lately, has called for international assistance as soaring energy costs and skyrocketing inflation are set to put a huge strain on consumers in one of Europe’s poorest countries.
According to the French Foreign Ministry, support is all the more important as Moldova is facing an unprecedented energy crisis as winter approaches.
Putting an End to Volodymyr Zelensky’s Follies
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 22, 2022
One week ago, the Ukrainian government may have deliberately attacked neighbor Poland in an attempt to draw the NATO alliance into its war with Russia. The incident involved a missile that hit a grain processing site inside Poland and killed two farmers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately blamed Russia for the incident even though he surely must have known that the missile had been fired from Ukraine, meaning that he may have been using a so-called “false flag” to create a false narrative of what had occurred. He also immediately called upon NATO to intervene, citing Article 5 of the NATO treaty which requires all members of the alliance to come to the aid of any individual member that is attacked. An attack on one is an attack on all. Poland is a NATO member and it currently hosts a permanent US military base.
The US mainstream media, most particularly the Associated Press and NBC News, immediately repeated the tale being told by Zelensky, but the “blame the Russians” narrative began to unravel. The remains of the missile revealed that it was of a type used for air defense that is in the Ukrainian arsenal, but not currently used by the Russians, and both Moscow and Washington surely had access to satellite imagery that would demonstrate the actual flight path of the missile that struck Poland.
Those in government and the media who wanted to be supportive of Zelensky began to suggest that the Ukrainian missile must have somehow malfunctioned to land in Poland, making it an unfortunate accident. But others more familiar with the performance characteristics of the weapon were skeptical, seeing something possibly more sinister in the tale.
By last Thursday the story had effectively disappeared in much of the mainstream media as it no longer conformed to the acceptable narrative that it was a Russian-launched missile, which Zelensky has since continued to insist to be the case. President Joe Biden, who was at the G-20 Summit conference in Indonesia at the time, to his credit, responded to the news by stating that there was no intelligence to confirm that the missile had come from Russia and that its apparent trajectory did not support that view. Ironically, Biden had authorized an additional $37 billion in aid for Ukraine the day before the incident in Poland took place.
Biden’s message seeking to deescalate the potential crisis was repeated by Pentagon and intelligence personnel during the day, though Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin emphasized that the US would continue to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” He also added that even though the missile was Ukrainian, the incident was Russia’s fault. He did not explain why that was so. NATO’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg also promoted the same line as Austin, commenting that the incident was “likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory… This is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears responsibility for what happened in Poland yesterday because this is a direct result of the ongoing war.”
Given the fact that Zelensky has been saying and doing everything possible to draw the US and NATO into fighting Russia on his behalf, I believe that the missile strike was quite plausibly a deliberate “false flag” attempt to start a much broader war. That such a war could easily turn nuclear reveals just how reckless Zelensky can be. One NATO country foreign diplomat based in Kiev told the Financial Times that “This is getting ridiculous. The Ukrainians are destroying [our] confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile.”
To be sure, Zelensky is capable of anything and no lie is too mendacious for the former comedy actor who is now basking in the glow of his celebrity. Hollywood personalities like Sean Penn and Ben Stiller are increasingly making the pilgrimage to Kiev to shake hands, embrace and do photo ops. And Zelensky’s calendar is also featuring some trips to the United States. On November 30th, he will reportedly be in New York City at a “live event” hosted by the New York Times with Sam Bankman-Fried, Larry Fink (CEO of Blackrock), and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as the main speakers.
Yes, Zelensky will be side-by-side with THAT Sam Bankman-Fried, if he shows up, who has also been much in the news lately for his having pulled off the largest currency fraud in history, creating losses for investors totaling multi-billions of dollars as a consequence of the collapse of his exchange-trading company FTX! And it just might be that Zelensky and Bankman-Fried already know each other. Bankman-Fried has been a major financial supporter of Democratic Party politicians, having donated $40 million for “get out the vote” projects in the recently completed election cycle. He is second only to George Soros as a Democratic Party funder, and also has separated donated to causes like unconditionally supporting Ukraine that the Democrats overwhelmingly favor. In April he hosted a conference at his $40 million home in the Bahamas which featured appearances by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton and he has also been a generous supporter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
There has been considerable speculation that the unregulated and unmonitored flow of billions of dollars of US taxpayer provided money through Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government provided a perfect mechanism for large scale money laundering. Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson has been following the FTX-Ukraine story closely and observes that “The financial collapse of FTX… is exposing evidence that the Democrats, some Republicans, the Ukrainians and FTX organized an elaborate financial kickback scheme. The scheme involved promising members of Congress who sent money to Ukraine a hefty contribution from a Democrat benefactor. In this case, the owner of FTX [Sam Bankman-Fried]. Once the US dollars were credited to Ukraine’s account, President Zelensky and his partners diverted some of the proceeds to purchase crypto currency from FTX. FTX, in turn, sent some of those funds back to the cooperating members of Congress and the Democrat National Committee.”
Other reporting reveals that Bankman-Fried had established a crypto donation “partnership” with the Ukrainian government which provided an estimated $60 million in “assistance” to Zelensky. The Ukrainian government website that reported some details of the arrangement mysteriously was “disappeared” two days before the FTX disaster was made public. The FTX tale, if it turns out to be largely verifiable, underlines just how corrupt a “money pit” called Ukraine is. Hunter Biden gets a well-paid sinecure place on a company board to get to his father and now Ukraine may be directly involved in a massive financial fraud. And Joe Biden obligingly is sending billions of dollars more to that crook Zelensky.
But the real issue is the war. Even assuming that the Ukrainian missile strike on Poland was due to some malfunction, Zelensky comes out of the process smelling really bad as he has worked assiduously at blaming Russia, which clearly is not true. He is using his contrived narrative to dramatically expand the war by creating a situation which would bring NATO directly into the conflict and which could easily go nuclear. Indeed, he is attempting to compel NATO participation. But potentially far worse, if it was a deliberate “false flag” provocation to bring about that end, his tactics should be harshly condemned by all the parties that are currently supporting Ukraine. Beyond that, the US and NATO, burdened with such an “ally,” should take immediate steps to disengage from supporting the fighting and call for a negotiated settlement of the conflict. Joe Biden, if he has any integrity left, and whoever is pulling his strings should not hesitate to take that step.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Russian Embassy in Washington Condemns US Reaction to Murder of Russian POWs by Ukrainians
Samizdat – 22.11.2022
MOSCOW – The Russian Embassy in Washington on Tuesday condemned the US reaction to the video believed to be showing a massacre of Russian prisoners of war by the Ukrainian military, saying that the US authorities enable a growing sense of impunity of neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
Earlier in the day, US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack said that the US was monitoring reports of the shooting of Russian prisoners of war in Donbass. She urged all parties to respect international law.
“We noted the statements of Ambassador-at-Large on International Criminal Justice Beth van Shack on the murder of captured Russian military personnel by Ukrainian neo-Nazis. The official refused to directly condemn the massacre of our unarmed soldiers, despite the confirmation of the authenticity of the relevant video materials by American journalists, who did not hush up the tragedy,” the Russian embassy said in a statement.
The US is nurturing an increased sense of permissiveness and impunity of neo-Nazi sympathizers in Ukraine by turning a blind eye to the violence of that kind.
“We have repeatedly stated that by supplying weapons to Kiev, by teaching criminals and mercenaries the art of war, by transferring intelligence the United States are becoming a side of the conflict. Russian-U.S. relations are thusly driven into a dead end,” the statement read.
Last week, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the Ukrainian military deliberately killed 10 captured Russian soldiers.
On November 17, a video was circulated on the internet showing Ukrainian soldiers shooting surrendered Russians lying heads down. The Russian Human Rights Council said it would send the video to the OHCHR, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, and other international human rights organizations.
On November 18, the Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal investigation into the execution of Russian POWs by the Ukrainian military.
On November 19, UN Spokesperson Farhan Haq said that the United Nations was calling for a full investigation of all reported human rights violations related to the execution of Russian POWs by Ukrainians.
Canada tells world leaders to clamp down on online “misinformation”
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | November 21, 2022
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino are doing the rounds, insisting on the need to fight online harassment and misinformation.
At the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, Trudeau said that Canada wants to regulate online “harassment and violence.” He added that Canada’s social media platforms have a responsibility to “address online harassment and violence to ensure trust in technology.”
“While always ensuring and defending free speech, we must make it clear that it cannot be OK to bully and attack people online,” Trudeau said.
At the G7 summit in Germany, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told other interior and security ministers there is a need to tackle disinformation. On November 17, he tweeted that “the G7 stands united” when it comes to “addressing the rise of mis and disinformation online.”
On November 19, Mendicino tweeted that Canada will host a G7 summit next year to fight “disinformation.”
“Taking a leading role at the G7, Canada has invited counterpart interior and public safety ministers here for a summit to tackle disinformation, which is one of the most pervasive threats to all our democracies right now,” he tweeted.
He added that a summit in Canada would help “flip the script, and to get ahead of the curve of disinformation.”
“This is where we think that Canada and the G7 can show leadership,” he continued.
According to Mendicino, the “marketplace for disinformation” is bigger than the “marketplace for reliable information,” and Canadians need to be helped to distinguish between the two.
He continued to say that, to fight disinformation, online platforms should ensure they are “adhering to the terms and conditions of their own user agreements.”
During the summit, he suggested the education of high school students on how to identify disinformation, as well as online scams and fraudulent emails and texts.
“You won’t answer the question” – Senator Rand Paul confronts FBI on scooping up online user data
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | November 19, 2022
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) confronted FBI Director Christopher Wray about the collusion with social media companies and whether the FBI scoops up private information to identify users.
“Is Facebook or any other social media company supplying private messages or data on American users that is not compelled by the government or the FBI?” Paul asked Wray. “No warrant, no subpoena, they’re just supplying you information on their users?”
“I don’t believe so, but I can’t sit here and be sure of that as I sit here,” Wray replied.
“Can you give us a yes or no by going back to your team and asking? Because it’s a very specific question. Because if they are, it’s against the law,” Paul said, invoking the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. “This was done to protect the privacy of people so we could feel like we can send an email or direct message to people without having that information given over. It’s a very specific question: Will you get with your team of lawyers and give us a specific answer? Because this is the law. If you’re doing it, then we need to go to court to prevent you from receiving this information.”
“Well, I can tell you that I’m quite confident that we’re following the law —, ” Wray started.
“Well, that’s not the answer, ” Paul responded.
“ — but what I will also follow up with you to make sure we get you more information; more detailed information,” Wray added.
“Is the FBI obtaining anonymous social media data and then using technical methods to pierce the anonymous nature of the data?” Paul questioned.
Wray paused before asking, “Anonymous social media data?”
“So you purchase data,” Paul said. “People purchase data all the time and we sort of tolerate it for advertising and things because it’s anonymous data. Are you purchasing what is said to be anonymous data through the marketplace and then piercing the anonymous nature to attach individual names to that data? Are you purchasing data and then piercing the anonymous nature of that data?”
“So the manner in which we use — we usually use the term commercial data — is probably longer than I can explain here. But again, let me —, ” Wray said appearing to dodge the question.
“So you will not answer the question of whether or not you’re attaching names to anonymous data,” Paul stated.
“I think it’s a more complicated answer than I can give here,” Wray responded.
“So, so far we’re 0 for 2 at getting you to answer this, but you’re pledging you will actually answer the question because you have to realize the frustration; we’ll write you a letter and your team of lawyers will write back with a 15-page letter that says nothing and you won’t answer the question. These are very specific. This is whether you’re obeying the law, whether we can have confidence. I want to have confidence,” Paul said.
“We are obeying the law,” Wray responded.
“Well, you’re saying that, but you won’t tell us the answer,” Paul stated. “You aren’t telling me the answer. And the answer is: Are you collecting data not compelled by a warrant? That would not be in compliance with the law. But you won’t answer that you’re not collecting that data.”
Eventually, Paul asked, “Are you getting tips and leads from social media companies?”
“We get tips and leads from companies, absolutely,” Wray acknowledged.
“You may think this is jolly well to get all this stuff without a warrant that people volunteer to you, but many of us are alarmed that you’re getting this information that are private communications between people because it is against the law – it’s against the law for Facebook or social media companies to give it to you, but it’s also against the law for you to receive it,” Paul ended.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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From the Archives
A sample of vaccine and injectable medication tragedies during my lifetime
This is what happens when you demand speedy production in an era of politicized regulation
By Meryl Nass, MD | February 12, 2022
All these tragedies have been due to failures of testing or failures in manufacturing processes. Most occurred before vaccine manufacturers were given virtually complete protection from liability in 1987.
With the duration of patent exclusivity determining how much new products earn, products are rushed to market as quickly as possible, most using a shortened path for FDA review. Recalls and market removals of approved products are much more common than they used to be. We can only expect more of these disasters in the future, especially if the products are mandated for everyone. … continue
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