The buffoon delivering a permanent energy crisis
By Andrew Montford | TCW Defending Freedom | October 4, 2022
In 2017 it was announced that windfarms had agreed to sell power to the grid at just £57 per megawatt hour. It heralded, said the cutters-and-pasters of press releases in the mainstream media, a new era of cheap renewable power. A few stubborn souls pointed out that there was no sign that windfarms were getting any cheaper to build and run, but such naysayers were shunned and insulted, and the establishment carried on as if nothing had happened.
Five years on, and the windfarms concerned are busily selling power into the open market at anything between four and ten times the prices they had agreed. Their agreements have gone unfulfilled. The extra cost to consumers is running into billions of pounds every year.
We were tricked, big time. But we live and learn by our errors. You’d have to be pretty slow on the uptake to fall for a multi-billion-pound trick like that a second time, wouldn’t you?
Unfortunately, this is precisely what Sir John Armitt, the chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, seems to have done. In fact, rather than being ‘once bitten twice shy’, he seems to be pleading ‘Bite me harder, and this time do it where is really hurts.’ Let me explain.
In an article in the Telegraph, Sir John says we need lots more renewable energy, and adds that the latest auctions ‘secured prices nine times cheaper than current high electricity prices set by gas generation’. Well, yes, but we have already seen that auction price contracts are a trick; the last round of agreements were abandoned the moment operators found they could get more in the open market. Does Sir John not know this? Can the chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission really be so divorced from the realities of the energy system? Moreover, he clearly understands that the price differential between gas-fired and wind prices is mostly temporary – a function of the war in Ukraine driving up gas prices – but still believes it should motivate permanent changes to the electricity system. What can he be thinking?
Sir John’s positions on other aspects of the energy system are equally mystifying. He seems to think there is a global market for gas. But a global market would have a global price, and that is simply not the case: European gas prices are (in dollar terms) currently 70 per cent higher than UK ones and 800 per cent higher than US ones (!) Does Sir John not understand this? How can he possibly think there is a global market? Is there nobody at the National Infrastructure Commission who can put him right?
Nor is the auction price trick the only example of Sir John failing to learn from experience. In one notable flight of fantasy in his article he says that ‘reducing prices, enhancing energy security and reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 all point in the same direction’. Huh? Between 2002 and 2020, a period when gas prices were broadly flat, electricity prices for consumers roughly doubled, a function of the inefficiencies that renewables impose on every other generator and on the grid as a whole. How can he think that more renewables will bring lower prices? He understands that the gas price spike is temporary! And as for security, the electricity grid has been severely destabilised by renewables (because they have no ‘inertia’, in the jargon). A million people were left in the dark in 2019, and the grid as whole is now in danger of falling over completely. But Sir John wants more!
In similar fashion, he says we should be furiously insulating our housing stock. Yet we simply cannot get away from the fact that most of the housing stock is old and, in our humid maritime climate, needs to breathe to prevent damp and mould. Has Sir John not learned from the fiasco the last time a crash insulation programme was tried? Two million homes were damaged. Lives were ruined. Is he even aware that this happened?
On and on he goes. We should use hydrogen to store energy, he suggests, without apparently a thought to the cost involved. Can the chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission really not understand that in going from electricity to hydrogen and back, two-thirds of the energy is lost? So when we start emptying the hydrogen store, it will set market prices, which will soar in response, probably to levels similar to what we see today, far, far higher than the economy can bear.
In other words, Sir John’s ideas will deliver a permanent energy crisis and a great depression. It is no more than you would expect from such an epitome of the British establishment: urbane, erudite, a consummate networker. And utterly incompetent.
Western regimes are intent on maintaining energy poverty in Africa
By Ekaterina Blunova – Samizdat – 05.10.2022
Sudanese-British billionaire Mo Ibrahim criticized the West on Monday for obstructing African nations’ effort to develop their own hydrocarbon reserves and constantly ignoring the energy poverty problems of the Global South. What’s behind the Global North’s political short-sightedness and who benefits from the controversy?
Even though Africa boasts roughly 12% and 9% of the world’s oil and natural gas reserves, respectively, most of the continent’s nations suffer from energy poverty. However, once the energy crisis hit Europe, EU governments immediately turned to the African continent, seeking to tap its resources while overlooking the continent’s longstanding problems.
“The West’s exploitation of Africa’s wealth is driven by two factors,” explained Dr. Mamdouh G. Salameh, an international oil economist and a global energy expert. “The first is the old racist view that African people are backward and inferior to Western people and therefore can’t defend themselves or protect their natural resources. In a nutshell, it is doable. The second factor is greed and profit, which are the core of the Western capitalist system of taking advantage of poor and helpless people and exploiting their resources without letting them benefit the slightest from their stolen resources. That is how Western empires were built in Africa and around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries.”
The Central African Countries suffer from severe energy poverty because they neither have the infrastructure (refineries, oil and gas pipelines) to benefit from their vast energy resources and also distribute energy, nor do they have the financial means to build such infrastructure, according to the oil economist. The deplorable state of Africa’s energy infrastructure stems from the fact that the West is by no means interested in the continent’s sustainability, Salameh highlighted.
“The ultimate beneficiary from Africa’s energy poverty, particularly refined products, is Western oil companies,” the energy expert said.
One glaring example is the 4,128 km-long Trans-Saharan gas pipeline. It is supposed to link Nigeria to Algeria, passing through Niger and bring Nigerian and Algerian gas exports to Europe while simultaneously benefiting energy-poor African countries from Nigeria’s and Algeria’s plentiful gas reserves estimated at 206.53 trillion cubic feet (tcf) and 159 tcf respectively, the oil economist explained.
Although this pipeline was conceived in the 1970s, it is still at the drawing board stage despite many memorandums of understanding signed over the years, the latest in mid-February, Salameh pointed out, forecasting that “it won’t see the light of day even in the next 10 years.”
“Western countries have consistently ignored Africa’s energy resources for years declining to offer investments as long as they didn’t need these resources at the time,” he said. “But in the aftermath of the Ukraine conflict and having introduced sweeping sanctions against Russia, the European Union is trying to curry favor with African hydrocarbon producers to reduce its dependence on Russia’s gas and oil supplies.”
The unfolding energy crisis offers new opportunities for Africa to develop oil and gas infrastructure and step up production of hydrocarbons. However, while African business leaders and policy-makers are brushing off the dust from their long-delayed energy projects, Western politicians and environmentalists have raised concerns about climate change issues, insisting that Africa’s consumption of fossil fuels could make matters far worse.
“The West puts so much importance on the climate change agenda in Africa,” said Salameh. “I would hazard two explanations for the West’s attitude. The first explanation is that the West is under the misjudged and erroneous view that any future energy assets – like investing in oil and gas production and building pipelines will end up after 2030 as stranded assets. The second explanation is a more sinister one, with the West wishing to keep African energy resources underground in order to satisfy its own appetite for energy in the future.”
Last month, US climate czar John Kerry discouraged investors from funding long-term gas projects in Africa, warning that they would be unable to recoup their investments beyond 2030. According to Kerry, it will be important to capture the emissions from gas after 2030, as the world is set to reach net-zero emissions in 2050.
On October 3, Sudanese-British billionaire Mo Ibrahim lambasted the West for hypocrisy and a double-standard approach at the “Reuters impact” conference in London. Ibrahim drew attention to the fact that the “Global North” is preventing African nations from developing their own gas reserves over climate change fears, while at the same time seeking opportunities to gain from African resources themselves.
This is not the first time that Ibrahim has lambasted Western policy-makers over their Africa policies. In July 2022, the billionaire’s foundation released “The road to COP27: Making Africa’s case in the global climate debate,” dedicated to the forthcoming 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt scheduled for November, 6-18. The report highlighted that “the current climate agenda is failing Africa” and placed the emphasis on the continent’s people’s right to energy access, given that a staggering 600 million Africans are still lacking it.
“The green agenda is hampering African countries from fully tapping and exploiting their hydrocarbon resources,” said Salameh. “This is a double-edged approach in that it enhances energy poverty in Africa while simultaneously depriving the EU of Africa’s energy resources (…) If African countries don’t have the infrastructure, the technical know-how and the financial resources to benefit from their own vast hydrocarbon resources, how would anyone expect them to develop green energy?”
Meanwhile, the Western green agenda for Africa is “faulty,” according to the energy expert: Africa accounted for only 3.8% of the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuels and industry in 2020, which is the smallest share among all world regions.
On the other hand, climate groups who call for an abrupt end to fossil fuels and a sudden adoption of renewable energy fail to recognize the obvious lack of logic in this, continued Salameh.
“On their own, renewables aren’t capable of satisfying global demand for electricity and energy because of their intermittent nature,” the oil economist explained, characterizing a total energy transition as an “illusion.”
The current energy crisis in Europe clearly indicated that the Old Continent can’t rely on renewables alone. Furthermore, EU member states had to restart their coal plants after resorting to an anti-Russia energy embargo over the latter’s special military operation in Ukraine.
“While denying Africa’s right to push ahead with its own energy endeavors, the West would be eager to offer investments and technological know-how to the continent in exchange for receiving the lion’s share of the regional hydrocarbon wealth. The West doesn’t care whether African countries are experiencing severe energy poverty or not as long as it gets its hands on these reserves,” Salameh concluded.
Orbán: ‘Sanctions were not decided democratically’
Free West Media | October 5, 2022
Hungarian President Orbán has once again positioned himself as a committed advocate of genuine European interests and persists in his criticism of the EU’s sanctions policy against Russia.
At least in Hungary, citizens will be able to vote on the sanctions that are causing massive damage to Europe, after Orbán confirmed that there would soon be a referendum on this.
“The sanctions were not decided in a democratic way, but decided by Brussels bureaucrats and European elites,” he said in the Budapest parliament. “Although Europe’s citizens are paying the price, they have not been asked,” he added, underlining that “the sanctions imposed are causing enormous damage to Europe.”
Orbán recalled that since the war began, Russia has earned 158 billion euros over the last six months from energy exports at increased prices. That is more than Russia’s total annual export earnings for 2021 in half a year. Half of this, 85 billion euros, was paid for by the EU countries.
Orbán considers this situation to be intolerable: “European companies are unable, or only with difficulty, to pay the sanctioned energy prices. We are waiting for an answer, the whole of Europe is waiting for an answer from Brussels on the question of how much longer we have to go through with this. If this continues, all of Europe will be ruined. It’s time to talk openly about this with our American friends while it’s not too late.”
They denounce Meloni, but the despots of the Covid State are the real fascists
By Paul Collits | TCW Defending Freedom | October 5, 2022
ACCORDING to the dictionary, fascism is: ‘A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc, and emphasising an aggressive nationalism and often racism.’
That’s all right as far as it goes. But I would add two other elements – the reach of fascism (and totalitarianism more generally) into people’s private lives, and the corporatist state model as fascism’s operating system.
The election in Italy – technically the home of fascism – of a Right-wing politician, Giorgia Meloni, was all too much for the dreary Left. Here in Australia, the Guardian’s Van Badham has given us the headline: The election of Italy’s fascist-adjacent Giorgia Meloni is a public reminder that women can be just as awful as men
I have previously noted Badham in the context of women in politics. Here our interest is in Meloni’s other defining characteristic, her alleged fascism. Comparing perceived Right-wingers to Hitler is, of course, an old trick. But fascism is again all the rage with Meloni’s election.
Two of fascism reporting’s traditional attributes are the frequent misuse of the term (do most journalists even know what it means?), and the clueless irony of accusations of fascism by those who exhibit all the signs of being, well, fascists themselves.
I was not familiar with Badham’s Covid writing, and a quick internet search suggests I would not find it rewarding. More broadly, the Guardian has been at the forefront of Covidmania, what with all the death reporting (which it still runs) and the modern Left’s endless appetite for lockdowns and all the rest.
It is becoming tedious to report that (of course) the Guardian is funded by Bill Gates. So, no prizes for guessing the rag’s line on anti-vaxxers, and on all matters Covid.
Only this week, it reported on the vaccine review conducted by ‘respected’ public servant Jane Halton, aka Bill Gates’s girl in Canberra. Her conclusions? Keep the vaccines coming! We aren’t out of the woods yet. A ‘twindemic’ is coming this British winter.
Jane reckons we are not yet at ‘Covid stable’. Yes, the commissars of the Covid State do actually talk like this. She says we should keep advertising the (unnecessary, dangerous and ineffective) vaccines ‘till 2024’. Why stop at 2024?
Seriously, how does this woman have the gall to keep telling blatant, self-serving porkies? (To see why I say self-serving, just search her CV; she has a massive interest in prolonging the narrative).
To say that the Guardian’s reportage of Covid remains breathless would be to indulge in understatement. (‘Twindemic’ and ‘Covid stable’ are vying for Covid Bulls**t Term of the Week at this point).
Mercifully, the Guardian is still keeping us informed of Gates’s moods, with one recent headline stating: ‘The strain is the worst of my lifetime’: How Bill Gates is staying optimistic.
Thank God Bill is staying optimistic. He has doubled his wealth in his proclaimed ‘decade of vaccines’, and now, in effect, runs global public health. The New World Order is running to plan. No wonder he is optimistic. And to have the Left media on side as well!
The point is that fascism as an ideology has far more in common with the Left than with the conservative or libertarian versions of ‘the Right’. The American conservative writer Jonah Goldberg realised this some time back, when he published his excellent book Liberal Fascism.
Fascism has more in common with anyone (like the World Economic Forum) supporting public-private partnerships, than with Meloni-type pollies – since fascism is, above all else, an ideology of the corporate state, big government and of global crony capitalism.
The irony of Left-wing media siding with Big Capitalism is exquisite, or would be if it were not so deadly. The Covid State IS fascism, nothing more and nothing less.
The ‘fascist-adjacent’ Meloni actually wants to get rid of the vile Green Passes (vaccine passports) in Italy. Hint to the Left – this is precisely why she was elected.
This is despite Meloni’s apparent support for elements of the Covid State in the past. It would be hilarious if Badham accidentally spoke the truth about Meloni. Perhaps Badham is like the broken clock, right twice a day. But for the wrong reasons, and she would not understand if I tried to explain it.
Supporting Covid policies in the past is the only link to fascism that I can see in Meloni, and it is tenuous at best. The alt-media as a jury is still very much out on the new Italian PM, not least because of the Covid stances referred to above. She also sounds too good to be true.
But it seems Meloni has clearly seen the error of her Covid policy ways. (Like the economist John Maynard Keynes, who is famously said to have stated: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’) Fact is, Meloni’s party alone in Italy stood up for freedom when it mattered in 2021.
Nicholas Farrell in the Spectator last year saw the irony, and was bemused by the non-opposition from Leftists to the Green Pass.
He wrote: ‘Here is your starter for ten. Which Italian political party believes that individual liberty is sacred? Answer: The party invariably defined by the international media as “far Right” or “fascist” and jointly Italy’s most popular party in the opinion polls – in other words, the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy).
‘Here in Italy, birthplace of fascism, the 44-year-old leader of the Right-wing Fratelli d’Italia – Giorgia Meloni – has been busy promoting distinctly anti-fascist values. In defence of human liberty, she has spoken out passionately against the decree issued on 22 July by Italian Premier Mario Draghi which will introduce the “Green Pass” to Italy.
‘As of this Friday, all Italians over the age of 12 will be banned from most enclosed public spaces and many open-air ones as well, unless they are equipped with this digital pass that proves they have had at least one Covid vaccine.’
But the legacy media cannot resist all the ‘far Right’ nonsense in its reportage on the Italian election. Here is Roberto Saviano in the Guardian: ‘The Brothers of Italy (a delightfully sexist name for a political party) leader denies she is a fascist, but clings to the Mussolini-era slogan “God, homeland, family”’.
It is hard to say which is the more ludicrous – bagging the support for nation, religion and family as dangerous, or branding it as fascist.
For patriots, deplorables, populists and conservatives everywhere, such a motto might be summarised thus: ‘Not all that we want, but a fine start’.
Throw in some ‘climate inaction now’, ‘woke comes here to die’ (with apologies to Ron DeSantis) and ‘crush the Covid State’ and we might just have a platform worth supporting. And a platform that is not remotely fascist, by the way, on any definition.
Saviano also claims that Hungarians have lost all their rights under Meloni’s assumed mentor, Viktor Orban, another hate-figure for the Left and globalists everywhere.
Lost rights? This is rich coming from the Covid State’s chief media promoter. Here is the irony again. It is the truly fascist Covid Class that has disempowered people across the world. The Guardianistas obviously don’t do irony, or read dictionaries.
Sliding doors
The publication of Prozac Nation was a societal inflection point that ushered in multiple pharmacological disasters
By Toby Rogers | October 5, 2022
I. The Promise
In the late 1980s/early 1990s my parents spent a small fortune to send me to what was, at the time, the top-ranked small liberal arts college in the country. While the Ivies train up the future ruling class, small private liberal arts colleges offered something far more alluring.
Hanging in the air at these small private colleges was a promise that went something like this: the social sciences, particularly psychology and sociology, have figured things out. If we just follow their wise teachings, we will emerge in a utopian society where there is depth and meaning, people are decent and real with each other, differences are worked out (through “I” statements and “position switching” amongst other tools), and above all people are happy.
I imagine it began with Freud and Jung, accelerated with Foucault and Butler, but it was also present in the pragmatic psychologists including Barry Schwartz and the later happiness researchers.
The promise co-opted the central notion of many 20th century revolutions — that a new man and new woman were being born from the ashes of the old system and that we would find better ways of relating to each other than any society heretofore.
This promise was EVERYWHERE — from the new student orientation to the mandatory date rape prevention workshops to resident advisor trainings to student clubs and late-night conversations in the common areas of the dorms. A better world was possible and we were the ones to usher it in. The promise was going to radiate out to the rest of society like a pebble dropped into a pond.
It’s heartbreaking to reflect on this now because: 1.) the promise was never fulfilled (perhaps because it was always just a fantasy); and, 2.) to the extent that this vision soldiers on in some form it has taken an incredibly dark turn and now resembles fascism more than anything else.
II. An inflection point
Elizabeth Wurtzel was a fierce talent. Yes, she went to Harvard but she was the embodiment of the promise. A third wave feminist, she was unabashed in her celebration of sexuality and pleasure. As a writer she was a sorceress — able to pull magic, truth, and wisdom out of thin air.
Ms. Wurtzel popularized the Pain & Suffering Memoir genre with the publication of her book Prozac Nation in 1994. The book was raw, confessional, and witty. It felt like she had discovered capital T Truth. She went inside, as the psychologists (and Buddhists) had trained us to do, explored her emotional pain with all of its searing intensity, and redeemed it by giving it meaning. Ms. Wurtzel modeled how to be vulnerable, ironic, and strong. By the end of the book she was our friend and shrink. She had gone through the dark night of the soul and had come out on the other side, victorious.
I loved Prozac Nation and I’m devastated by what has transpired since.
III. The misuse of a once-in-a-generation talent
There was always a strange sleight of hand involved in Prozac Nation. In spite of the extraordinary psychological heavy lifting for over three hundred pages — the remedy in the end was a magic little pill.
In retrospect, Elizabeth Wurtzel and all of us got played by the most corrupt industry in the history of the world.
The success of Prozac Nation was not an accident. For a while, the book was everywhere — on magazine covers, on all of the chatty morning shows, and in doctors’ waiting rooms. It was part of a wave of books including Listening to Prozac that assured the public that the scientists have it figured out and this magic little pill will make all of your troubles go away. I am almost certain that behind the scenes Pharma spent millions of dollars to promote this book and turn Ms. Wurtzel into a household name.
With the success of Prozac Nation an entire generation abandoned the century-long promise of the social sciences and said, “just write me that script doc.”
The tragedy of Elizabeth Wurtzel is that Pharma took a spectacularly talented thinker and writer and used her to betray her whole generation. The end result has been the gradual enslavement of Generation X (and the rest of society) to the cartel.
IV. The demise of Elizabeth Wurtzel
Things did not turn out well for Ms. Wurtzel. Her next book was Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. Apparently, the Prozac had stopped working so she resorted to snorting upwards of 40 crushed Ritalin tablets a day — and when that didn’t work she turned to cocaine. That led to rehab and another memoir — this time about dealing with addiction (More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction). By this point she had lost the plot to her own story. She managed a brief reset by going to Yale Law School (always the best) and working for super lawyer David Boies for a few years. At 47 she developed breast cancer and she wrote about that in her trademark style. At 52 she was dead from leptomeningeal cancer.
(Photo credit: Dan Callister/Shutterstock)
In all of her brilliant writing, Ms. Wurtzel never criticized the white coats nor their pharmaceutical handlers in spite of the myriad ways that they failed her. Ms. Wurtzel blamed the BRCA gene mutation for her breast cancer and praised the heroic doctors and scientists who identified it and treated it (with a double mastectomy and reconstruction surgery).
The BRCA gene mutation very well could be the cause of her death. But there is another explanation that is also plausible — one that is not allowed in the mainstream media. Prozac is a fluoride compound (fluoxetine). Fluoxetine is 18.5% fluoride by weight.
Fluoride is toxic. Ms. Wurtzel’s miracle pill was actually depositing poison into her bone marrow, brain, thyroid gland, lymph nodes, fatty tissue, and vital organs, day after day, year after year.
It never cured her depression — any gains were short-lived and supplemented by drugs and alcohol.
The entire story of Prozac Nation was based a toxic and deadly lie.
V. The legacy of Prozac Nation
Things did not turn out well for the rest of us either.
Psychiatrist David Healy figured out the scam early on and went to great lengths to alert others with books including Let Them Eat Prozac (2002) and Pharmageddon (2004). He was later joined by Peter Gøtzsche (Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime, 2017) and many others.
But it took 30 years before the mainstream media admitted what was knowable on the first day — these products do not work as advertised. Even the usually reliable Pharma mouthpiece, The Guardian, was recently forced to admit that the entire theory of the case in connection with Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors was just glorified marketing copy:
The study in Molecular Psychiatry on which that article is based is (here). If you click through to read The Guardian article you’ll see defenders of the status quo at the end explaining that ‘it works even though there is no evidence that it works.’ Sound familiar?
By this point, about 1 in 5 American women and 1 in 10 men are on these drugs. They are given to pregnant women even though they are linked with autism (see literature review in my thesis). People are on them for decades in spite of no safety studies on long term use. They create dependency and once started, it is very difficult to stop.
It was not a foregone conclusion that Prozac would take off in the United States. German regulators (who actually examined the underlying data) rejected it and it was only approved in Sweden through outright bribery. But FDA regulators were primed to look the other way. In the meantime, Ms. Wurtzel made mental illness and these magic fluoride capsules sexy and cool. One can see how this set the stage for normalizing the other mass poisoning events that followed.
The adoption of SSRIs followed a pattern. Pharma pushed them, the FDA blessed them based on shoddy studies, the media and trusted messengers promoted them, and society gobbled up that snake oil like candy. Anyone who questioned the grift was shunned.
There was just too much money to be made for anyone to do the right thing. Once the pattern was set, more pharmacological disasters soon followed.
Next we were told that opioids, including OxyContin®, were not addictive. Once again the FDA blessed them based on shoddy data, the media promoted them, and society took these pills in massive quantities. On average, every year the U.S. now loses more Americans to opioids than died in combat in the entire (decade-long) Vietnam War.
Now it is happening yet again with Safe & Effective™️ Covid-19 shots that disable and kill at an astonishing rate. There is just so much money to be made from poisoning society that Pharma (+ the media and the political system that they own) cannot resist.
And millions of people who once believed in the promise of a better society are now mindless zombies who just want more pills, more injections, and more drugs to cure the human condition. But even that’s not enough — they want a society where Pharma idolatry is enshrined in law and everyone is forced to obey (setting up Pharma totalitarianism is basically the entire purpose of the California Democratic Party at this point).
VI. Sliding doors: imagine if Elizabeth Wurtzel had chosen differently
Hindsight is 20/20 and Ms. Wurtzel is not here to defend herself. But she was so incredibly talented. One can imagine a world where she might have chosen differently. Imagine if she had said, now wait, hang on, you’re telling me that several millennia of philosophy and a century of psychology are nonsense and that these drug dealers can solve the human condition with fluoride? That seems far-fetched.
One can imagine a world where Ms. Wurtzel used her fierce intellect to actually read the junk science clinical trials and study the FDA sham regulatory process instead of just surfing the zeitgeist. Any amount of honest due diligence would have quickly raised extraordinary doubts.
But the promise of magic pills was irresistible — for Ms. Wurtzel, society, and the drug dealers in white coats who stood to gain billions of dollars.
I want to be clear that it is not the responsibility of a 26 year old creative writer to save civilization. There should have been some adults in the room at her publisher (Houghton Mifflin) or the FDA who could have tapped the brakes on the rush to promote a fluoride compound as some sort of miracle cure. Ms. Wurtzel was uniquely influential but there were hundreds of thousands of others who also made ethically questionable choices in connection with this product. Furthermore, Ms. Wurtzel’s impulsiveness suggests that she may have already had some neurological damage, perhaps from the 10 to 13 shots that were common for Generation X. So perhaps she physically could not have chosen otherwise.
On the other hand, warrior mamas and Covid critical thinkers perform proper due diligence every day. As a result we are attacked by the mainstream media, hunted by the cartel, censored by the Stasi, and blacklisted by corporations and government. I guess if Elizabeth Wurtzel had chosen otherwise we never would have heard of her and they would have promoted someone else to fill that trusted spokesmodel role.
Here’s what I cannot figure out. Was the promise (that I began this article with) always a lie? Is the human condition such that we are always at the mercy of primitive instinct? Conservative Presbyterians believe in the doctrine of “total depravity” — that human beings are always flawed and fallen and the best we can hope for is divine grace that cannot be earned. Are they right?
I confess that I still believe in the promise (even though the last two years have shown me mountains of evidence that it’s not possible). I want to believe in a world where people are decent to each other, where we can find better ways to relate to each other that reduce strife and provide meaning and connection. It’s a far cry better than the alternative — magic pills & injections that are actually deadly, promoted by an entire society built on lies.
RT wins court case against Google
Samizdat | October 4, 2022
Google has been ordered by Moscow’s arbitration court to restore RT’s YouTube channels, which were blocked by the tech giant following the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
The decision was announced on Tuesday as the court found in favor of ANO TV-Novosti, RT’s founding company, against Google LLC, Google Ireland Limited and the Russian Google division. They have been ordered to restore access to some 27 blocked channels.
If they fail to do so, a court penalty of 100,000 rubles per day ($1,694) will be imposed on Google until access to all of the channels is restored. Every week, the amount of the daily penalty will double.
Google now has 30 days to appeal the court’s verdict.
The lawsuit against Google was filed back in May when the court, at RT’s request, took interim measures to “make sure it is possible to enforce the judicial act” against the company and seized all financial assets and movable and immovable property of the tech giant’s Russian division to the value of 500 million rubles ($8.4 million).
Similar amounts have also been seized from the company in two other pending lawsuits filed by Russian television companies NTV and the GPM Entertainment Television, which have also had their content blocked on YouTube.
YouTube administrators restricted access to all RT and RTD channels in early March, shortly after Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine.
According to a March report from Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media watchdog, there have been some 54 cases of YouTube restricting content belonging to Russian channels.
Following the launch of Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine, Western governments and private tech companies began a censorship campaign against Russian media they deem to be ‘state-controlled’. The European Union completely banned RT and Sputnik from its airwaves. RT America was forced to cease operations amid US sanctions on Moscow, while Google removed RT’s and Sputnik’s apps from its Play Store, and YouTube blocked access to all of the broadcasters’ channels.
Informed Consent Action Network obtains CDC V-Safe data
ICAN | October 3, 2022
ICAN has now obtained CDC data for the approximate 10 million v-safe users.
As explained in our prior update, v-safe is a new smartphone-based CDC program that allows users to register after getting a Covid-19 vaccine and provide health check-ins.
ICAN wanted to obtain this data. So, it deployed its legal team, headed by Aaron Siri, to obtain the v-safe data.
After suing the CDC twice, and following months of legal wrangling, the CDC finally capitulated, resulting in a court order that required it to produce this data. The first batch of data, containing 144 million rows of health entries by v-safe users, has now been obtained by ICAN and you can search it using a user-friendly interface that ICAN worked around the clock to create.
This first batch of data includes the responses v-safe users provided to pre-populated ‘check-the-box’ fields. It does not include data from the fields that allowed free-text responses. It nonetheless reveals shocking information that should have caused the CDC to immediately shut down its Covid-19 vaccine program.
Among numerous alarming results, out of the approximate 10 million individuals that registered and submitted data to v-safe, 782,913 individuals, or over 7.7% of v-safe users, had a health event requiring medical attention, emergency room intervention, and/or hospitalization. Over 25% had an event that required them to miss school or work and/or prevented normal activities.
There were also 71 million reports of symptoms in the pre-populated fields from the approximately 10 million users. This is an average of over 7 symptoms reported per v-safe registrant. Reported symptoms include, for example, over 4 million reports of joint pain, a very concerning immune reaction. While around 2 million of these joint pain reports were mild, over 1.8 million of the reports were for moderate joint pain and over 400,000 were for severe joint pain. Since v-safe only included less than 4 percent of people that received a Covid-19 vaccine, tens of millions of Americans likely had an immune reaction to the Covid-19 vaccine in their joints that resulted in debilitating pain and potential long-term harm.
There were also approximately 13,000 infants under 2 years of age who were registered for v-safe. For these 13,000 children, there were over 33,000 symptoms experienced that were significant enough to report, with the most common symptoms being irritability, sleeplessness, pain, and loss of appetite. These are very concerning since babies cannot speak and hence these symptoms are how they often communicate that something is wrong.
These data also reflect a disproportionate amount of negative health impacts, including medical events, following the Moderna vaccine versus the Pfizer vaccine. There was also a disproportionate number of negative events reported by women versus men. This is consistent with what was seen in Pfizer’s initial post-authorization safety report sent to the FDA (a report which likewise had to be obtained by lawsuit) which similarly showed a disproportionate number of neurological events experienced by women following the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine.
But please do your own research. The data is voluminous (one of the files, alone, is over 23 gigabytes) and so ICAN worked diligently and around the clock to get it into a user-friendly format for you to review, which you can do here.
And remember, the data produced thus far is only from the pre-populated fields within v-safe, which supplied v-safe registrants with only a limited number of options to choose from. There are also numerous free-text fields within v-safe where registrants were able to enter additional information. No doubt a lot of the detailed and interesting information is in these free-text fields. ICAN’s legal team continues to litigate to obtain that data.
This is a big win in the nearly two-year-long fight for transparency from our federal health agencies on the real safety data for Covid-19 vaccines. As additional v-safe data is produced, ICAN will immediately bring it to your attention and make it available.
Roger Waters says he’s on Ukrainian ‘kill list’
Samizdat – October 4, 2022
British rock star Roger Waters, a co-founder of Pink Floyd, has allegedly been placed on a Ukrainian “kill list” after speaking out against Western military meddling and calling on Kiev to make peace with Russia.
In an interview with Rolling Stone published on Tuesday, the 79-year-old pushed back against accusations that he’s been repeating Russian talking points about the conflict in Ukraine. “Don’t forget, I’m on a kill list that is supported by the Ukrainian government. I’m on the fu**ing list, and they’ve killed people recently… When they kill you, they write ‘liquidated’ across your picture. Well, I’m one of those fu**ing pictures.”
Waters gave the example of Darya Dugina, the Russian journalist murdered in August after appearing on the Ukrainian Mirotvorets list. As the musician noted, her entry on the list was marked “liquidated” after she was killed in a car-bombing. Others who have questioned or criticized the Kiev regime, such as photojournalists Andrea Rocchelli of Italy and Andrei Stenin of Russia, have also been killed after appearing on the Mirotvorets list. The site lists personal information on its blacklist targets, which also include politicians and NGO activists.
Mirotvorets, or “Peacemaker,” is an independent database of individuals whom anonymous moderators consider to be threats to Ukrainian national security. The site denies being a kill list; rather, it claims to be a source of information for law-enforcement agencies and “special services” about pro-Russian terrorists, separatists and war criminals, among others. It allegedly has links to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.
Waters stirred backlash earlier this year, when he suggested that US President Joe Biden was a “war criminal” for fueling the Ukraine crisis and sent an open letter to the wife of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, urging her to help “stop the slaughter” by pushing for a negotiated peace deal with Russia. He later sent an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking for guarantees that Russia wouldn’t expand beyond Crimea and the Donbass region.
Pressed by Rolling Stone on why he isn’t supportive of Ukraine’s resistance against Russian forces, Waters said, “Because it’s an unnecessary war, and those people should not be dying. And Russia should not have been encouraged to invade Ukraine.” He also dismissed reports of Russian war crimes in Ukraine as Western propaganda.
Two concerts that Waters had scheduled for next April in Krakow, Poland, may be canceled because of his push for a negotiated peace in Ukraine, the musician said late last month. “Draconian censoring of my work will deny them the opportunity to make up their own minds,” he said of his Polish audiences.
The wide-ranging Mirotvorets kill list also includes Faina Savenkova, a 13-year-old girl in the Lugansk People’s Republic who called for the United Nations to end the fighting that has dragged on in her region since 2014.
The EU prioritises the Abraham Accords
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | October 4, 2022
At the UN General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, defined Israel’s security concerns as the motivating factor behind supporting the two-state paradigm, even as the US has been repeating that it does not envisage any resolution in the immediate future. With the Abraham Accords being the main driving force behind US-Israeli decisions, Lapid’s nod towards the failed international consensus holds no substance for the Palestinian people. In practice, Lapid’s words are no different from refuting the paradigm – the Israeli government’s colonial settlement expansion has determined the pace.
However, the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief, Josep Borrell, claimed encouragement at Lapid’s words. “This is also what we want to push for. We want the resumption of a political process that can lead to a two-state solution and a comprehensive regional peace,” Borrell stated at the EU-Israeli Association Council meeting on Monday.
The EU’s position statement regarding the meeting, however, indicates full agreement with the Abraham Accords, which are mentioned prior to the bloc’s adherence to the two-state compromise. Referencing the normalisation agreements, the EU’s statement partly reads, “In this regard, the EU will seek to encourage and build upon the recent establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and a number of Arab countries, with a view to enhancing the prospects to reach a comprehensive settlement in the Middle East Peace Process.” Giving prominence to the Abraham Accords in this way suggests that the EU was not as averse to the Trump administration’s politics as it sought to portray. Only US President Joe Biden made it easier for the EU to retain its two-state diplomacy, while overtly agreeing to policies which were previously ridiculed only because the US had Donald Trump as President.
Since the US is actively engaging with Arab countries through the normalisation framework and trying to get the Palestinian Authority on board as well, the Abraham Accords have gained more recognition in international circles. The EU, however, is clearly stating that it will be using the agreements to “enhance” the possibility of a resolution, knowing full well that the agreements only serve to solidify Israel’s diplomatic ties and, in return, bolster its impunity.
In his virtual address to the meeting yesterday, Lapid’s commitment to the two-state paradigm included an assertion that Jerusalem would remain Israel’s undivided capital, which goes against international resolutions. However, Lapid’s best card was the Israeli government’s economic concessions to the PA, spoken of without the context of Israel knowing it is facing a gradually changing Palestinian society which will not wait upon its leadership to determine the way forward to legitimate resistance against colonialism.
The EU’s press release describing the meeting states the intent to “build upon the momentum generated at the UN General Assembly” in terms of the so-called peace process. Yet, Palestinians know that the veneer of concern was nothing more than a bid to deflect criticism from the fact that the EU chose, yet again, to engage with a colonial entity which specialises in breaking international law and committing war crimes. With the Abraham Accords subtly taking centre stage, and with full agreement on behalf of the EU, it should at least be made clear that no independence and no Palestinian State can be reached, unless a radical change in politics is implemented.
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From the Archives
Registered Israeli foreign agent driving contrived campus antisemitism crisis
By Wyatt Reed | The Grayzone | December 17, 2023
Lawsuits accusing top US universities of harboring antisemitism all originate from one source: a corporate law firm that fielded the pro-settler ex-US ambassador to Israel, and which was registered as a foreign agent of an Israeli principal as recently as 2021.
The firm now represents professional Israel lobby activists posing as victimized “Jewish students” and seeking to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists. … continue
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