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.
“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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
By Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 20, 2022
Yesterday I wrote about the FTX scandal, which involves a thirty-year-old living in the Bahamas, usually clad in shorts and flip-flops, who received billions from people all over the world with the promise he would make them rich by investing it in crypto currency. Nobody understood how exactly he was making billions for himself, and he never tried to elucidate it. In spite of no one having the foggiest notion about what he was doing, he was hailed as “this generation’s JP Morgan.”
The sudden fall of Sam Bankman-Fried coincided with the sentencing of former Theranos CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, who was ordered to serve 11 years in prison for defrauding investors of billions. Like Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes—who dropped out of Stanford in 2004 and styled herself after Steve Jobs with the same signature black turtleneck—was hailed as a Wunderkind who’d boldly entered a new frontier in her field.
As was the case with Bankman-Fried’s cryptic crypto exchange, no one understood how Holmes’s blood testing machine worked. She claimed that with just a small pinprick of blood from the finger (instead of the standard 3 ml drawn from a vein on the inside of the elbow) her machine could rapidly and accurately run a large panel of diagnostic tests. The machine was literally and figuratively a black box—purportedly containing proprietary technology that only Theranos engineers were authorized to examine.
To people who’d long worked in the field of blood testing for companies like Siemans, Abbott, and Roche, Holmes’s claims seemed incredible. How could her machine accurately run so many tests on such a tiny quantity of blood? The proposition sounded like magic.
The fact that no one knew anything about the machine didn’t stop investors from pumping billions into the fledgling company, and by 2014, the then thirty-year-old Holmes’s 50% stake was worth $4.5 billion. Were these investors simply naive, or was there something apart from the magic black box that gave them confidence?
Perhaps the most notable thing about Theranos was the attention it drew from the Department of Defense and retired US government eminences including George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry, Bill Clinton, and Sam Nunn. All were old Washington hands, and they understood that the US government was considering Holmes’s little black box to be (potentially) a strategic asset with military and civilian applications.
These guys knew from experience that if Uncle Sam gets out his checkbook for what appears to be new product of strategic value, the sums transferred can be astronomical. And why not? Such a market does not consist of picky and finicky consumers, but unaccountable bureaucrats spending taxpayer money with reckless abandon.
In 2015, Holmes’s company became the subject of a Wall Street Journal investigation, and soon her fraudulent empire began to crumble. Three years later (in 2018) she was charged for committing massive acts of fraud.
Facing off against Elizabeth Holmes was the young and heroic whistleblower, Tyler Shultz—grandson of George Shultz—who was a key witness in exposing the fraud. For his principled action, he was shunned by his grandfather and subjected to an intimidation campaign by Theranos officers and their heavy-hitting attorneys. The Wall Street Journal’s report on this component of the story reads like a cinematic thriller.
Just two years after Holmes was charged for fraud, SARS-CoV-2 arrived. At this time, two biotech startups with no history of licensed products—Moderna of Cambridge, Massachusetts and BioNTech of Mainz, Germany—claimed that their experimental mRNA platform could rapidly produce a safe and effective vaccine by simply plugging the SARS-CoV-2 gene sequence into their formula. No long and laborious process of culturing viruses in eggs like conventional flu vaccines—real Star Trek Next Generation stuff.
As was the case with Theranos’s black box, the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccines are largely veiled in secrecy. Even the FDA, which is supposed to be an impartial evaluator and adjudicator of product safety, requested 55 years in order to complete a FOIA request for information on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
In other words, We the People were obliged to pay for the mRNA vaccine program (transferring billions of taxpayer money to pharmaceutical executives) and many of us have been forced to receive the injections, but information about the precise nature of these products is not for us to know.
By Norman Fenton | November 13, 2022
Following on from our latest report highlighting multiple anomalies in the most recent ONS covid vaccine mortality surveillance report we have written the following self-explanatory letter to the Statistics Regulator (regulation@statistics.gov.uk):
Dear Sir/Madam,
Since the ONS began producing its covid vaccine mortality surveillance reports in 2021, we have been highlighting various anomalies in their datasets. This includes strong evidence that many of those dying shortly after vaccination were being misclassified as unvaccinated (https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.12472.42248) and systematic undercounting of deaths occurring within first two weeks of vaccination (http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.12472.42248).
We are especially concerned about the latest ONS dataset (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsbyvaccinationstatusengland) and have produced a detailed analysis which highlights the multiple glaring anomalies in it.
We show that, in addition to further definitive evidence of the misclassification and missing deaths, there is: a) gross underestimation of the population proportion unvaccinated, and b) mortality rates that are both nonsensical in various categories and completely incompatible with historical rates.
We believe that there are multiple violations of your code of practice (https://code.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Code-of-Practice-for-Statistics-REVISED.pdf). In particular, the dataset breaches the Quality and Value criteria numbered: Q 1.1, Q1.4 – 1.7, Q 2.4, Q 2.5, Q 3.2 – 3.5, V 1.1, V 3.2 – 3.3.
All of the anomalies in the dataset introduce bias in favour of analyses supporting vaccine ‘safety and efficacy’. The fact that these data are being used as continued justification for the efficacy and safety of the covid vaccines is therefore now a matter of national concern and scandal. We believe that an investigation into how and why the ONS dataset is so flawed and corrupted is required. In the meantime, we call for
1. the public withdrawal of the ONS dataset and
2. the retraction of any claims made by others that are based upon it.
Yours
Norman Fenton, Martin Neil, Clare Craig and Scott McLachlan
A slightly updated version of our report (with more detailed reference citations than the version on ResearchGate) is here.
Awkward Git’s Newsletter provides e-mail exchanges with the ONS about their vaccine safety u-turn:
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | November 19, 2022
Covid rates are dropping but you want to cling on to these new emergency powers – what to do? If Covid isn’t around, citizens won’t allow these powers to be extended will they?
Well Colorado have shown us the answer.
Governor Jared Polis signed a new Executive Order on 11 November which amended the emergency Covid rules to include Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), influenza and other respiratory illnesses.
The Order says that “Colorado has seen a sharp increase in pediatric RSV infections and hospitalizations, in addition to patients with influenza and COVID-19, over the last two months”.
It then goes on to list the number of hospitalisations and the intensive care capacity. Therefore “if cases continue to increase, we may continue to see bed shortages across all hospital beds in Colorado as our state experiences a rise in COVID, influenza and RSV hospitalizations simultaneously”.
Due to staffing shortages facing hospitals related to COVID-19, RSV, influenza, and other respiratory illness hospitalizations and an associated decrease in capacity, including pediatric intensive care unit capacity, and to allow clinical staff to focus on patient care by reducing staff time associated with completing utilization reviews, I direct the Colorado Division of Insurance, pursuant to authority in C.R.S. §§ 10-1-108(7) and -109, to promulgate emergency regulations to reduce the administrative burdens associated with discharging, transferring, and caring for patients by temporarily suspending those utilization review requirements necessary to protect insured patients, including any or all prior authorization and preauthorization requirements.
And that is how you create a perpetual state of emergency. Add all types of respiratory viruses that you are on the lookout for because every winter hospitals will be full of people with some type of respiratory virus.
I wonder why they waited until after the elections to sign this Order? Strange. Let’s see how quickly other states amend their emergency orders as well. Maybe they should add in rain for the spring and sun for the summer (climate change) just to make sure the emergency lasts all year.
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | February 16, 2023
Since 9/11, terrorism has become the ultimate entitlement program for America’s political elite. Whether it is illegally spying on Americans or blowing Somali dissidents to pieces, invoking terrorism provides all the cover needed for Washington policymakers. But the disastrous results of granting politicians a blank check to fight terrorism should have been undeniable almost 60 years ago.
Back in the 1960s, terrorism was what the communists did. Anti-terrorist moral fervor and ideological blinders propelled the U.S. into its biggest foreign policy blunder since World War II. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
