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WEF back, learned nothing

By Alexander Adams | Bournbrook | May 24, 2022

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is back. After two years away, the elites reconvened in Davos, Switzerland, to resume plotting. Not, of course, that they would put it that way.

Open Forum Davos 2022 began on 23 May and runs until 26 May. It is a conference designed to increase international participation, “at a crucial turning point in history”. Every WEF statement reads part messianic prophecy, part threat, part vacant corporate babble. This year’s Open Forum promotion is no different.

Hand-picked stooges will promote WEF talking points and push pre-set agendas. There is no possibility of someone taking to the stage and suggesting more democratic accountability, nation independence and vitality through ideological diversity. “The activists will articulate how to turn words into action to fight the climate crisis. Gender equality will also feature prominently in the conversations.” The WEF knows that its multi-million-dollar programme of supporting environmentalist, gender-activist and pro-migrant groups will be amplified by globalist-friendly mass media outlets and clueless politicians in search of “relevance” and photo ops. The forum stresses youthfulness, promoting speakers such as “26-year-old Vanessa Nakate, author and climate advocate” and “Ievgeniia Bodnya, 27, who mobilized the Global Shaper Hub she leads in Kyiv to build the Support Ukraine Now”. Young, passionate women make perfect spokespersons. After all, should anyone male or older than them criticise their ideas, the opponents can be dismissed as relics of a failed era, ones who refuse to accept the coming wave of eco-awareness and migration justice.

The hypocrisy of the WEF is blatantly apparent in its support for Ukraine. It might seem to you paradoxical that a supra-national body which is dedicated to reducing the independence of nations has suddenly discovered its passionate commitment to the integrity of national borders, but WEF see no contradiction. The WEF writes:

“The Russian invasion into Ukraine was a tipping point for world security, the international economy and our global energy architecture. It is not possible to narrow down a war like this to one region while we live in a globalized world. We cannot keep radiation in one country’s geographical borders, or eliminate one country from the fragility of supply chains. This new type of hybrid war including its grave humanitarian crisis, the cyber attacks and economic hardships as well as disinformation and propaganda campaigns, geopolitical tensions about energy supply plus the threat of a nuclear war will have far-reaching effects.”

Every crisis is an opportunity for globalists to tighten their grip on control. Like the World Health Organisation, the WEF is committed to a totalising world view, so every problem will be solved by more globalisation, more migration, more universal regulation, more destruction of tradition. Like all totalising systems, its adherents use every circumstance as evidence of the system’s correctness; to succeed it simply needs more data, more co-ordination and better implementation of policies.

Open Forum Davos will include a panel on the mental health of young people. This is a savage irony, since it was WEF-trained national premiers (such as Justin Trudeau and Jacinda Ardern) who instituted the most draconian lockdowns and fear-propaganda campaigns that drove young people to despair. The WEF seeds its globalist totalising agenda through a Young Global Leaders programme.

In other words, the WEF has learned nothing from the last two years. The growing consensus that COVID lockdowns caused more suffering, disruption and inflation than targeted approaches to healthcare would have, suggests that unified global action made matters worse. If anything, the COVID-pandemic overreaction and reliance on international systems of food and energy supply have shown that independence, self-sufficiency and self-determination are vital for a resilient response to difficulties. Yet the WEF exists to advance the technocratic and scientism worldviews. Or perhaps we could call those worldviews temperaments, as they seem more rooted in emotion and moral psychology than any form of rationalism.

WEF doubles down, realises it was right all along.

May 25, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Davos reveals building blocks for “green” social credit system

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | May 24, 2022

This morning, on one of the WEF’s live-streamed panels, Alibaba Holdings President J. Michael Evans claimed that the company is working on an app that could track an individual users carbon footprint.

The former-Goldman Sachs vice-chairman told the audience of the “Strategic Outlook: Responsible Consumption” panel:

We’re developing, through technology, an ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint. What does that mean? That’s where are they travelling, how are they travelling, what are they eating, what are they consuming on our platform. So: An individual carbon footprint tracker.”

Now, to clarify, Evans was only talking about Alibaba’s platform… but that’s a big platform.

The Chinese company is the second-largest e-commerce company in the world after Amazon, with revenues in excess of 715 billion Yuan in 2021 (that’s over 110 billion USD).

And they’re not just an e-commerce platform. Through their financial and technological service companies, Alibaba runs the largest domain name market, email provider and cloud storage services in China, and the largest payment platform in the world.

Through Alihealth they supply online pharmacy services, as well as providing computer technology to hospitals and clinics. Since they bought AutoNavi in 2014, they own the biggest e-map navigation company in China too.

Essentially, in China if you want to pay for something on the internet, you probably use Alibaba. If you want to order something online from a small business, you probably use Alibaba. If you want to sell your stuff second hand, you probably use Alibaba.

If you want to register a domain, go to a pharmacy, check into a hospital, send an email, use a map or GPS… you get the idea.

Alibaba’s computing sector is also a market leader in AI services, being the first payment platform to start using facial recognition technology to confirm payments in 2017.

Other projects on the go include “CityBrain”, an AI designed to scan cities and provide “streamlined” traffic services. Warning of potential accidents as well as making public transport more efficient, a clear move toward “Smart Cities”.

The company also has previous [experience] when it comes to “individual carbon footprint” apps. In 2017 their payment platform subsidiary Ant Financial Services was named 6th in Fortune’s “Change the World” list for its Ant Forest app.

According to Fortune, Ant Forest is “the world’s largest platform for tracking individuals’ carbon footprints”, and here’s how it works:

Users earn points toward planting virtual trees by adopting earth-friendly habits. The company plants a real tree for every 17.9 kg of carbon saved.

They’re incredibly vague on how users “earn” these points, or what exactly these “Earth-friendly habits” are, but it doesn’t take a genius to make some educated guesses.

And while we’ve been focusing on the individual carbon footprint tracker, something else Evans says later in the panel is just as interesting:

The third thing, we call it “Green Travel”. So, we have within our business something called AMAP – a mapping, think Google Maps or Ways – plus travel destination business. So what we’re going to allow people to do is, first of all, calculate the best and most efficient route and also the most efficient form of transportation. And then, if they take advantage of those recommendations, we’ll give them bonus points which they can redeem elsewhere on our platform. So, they are incentivised to do the right thing, even while they are provided the opportunity to do the wrong thing.”

So let’s put these three facts together. It seems Alibaba currently has apps, either being used or in development, that:

  1. Monitor travel routes and methods and “reward” users for making the “correct choice”.
  2. Can track an individual’s “carbon footprint”, including what they eat and where.
  3. Have users “earn points” for “earth-friendly habits”.

Even individually these functions are worrying enough, but they combine to paint a very concerning picture of the future.

Further, combine that with what we know of the company’s reach through its subsidiaries: Smart Cities, banking, healthcare records, emails, internet activity and more.

How long before Alibaba decides to “reward” other “correct choices” that have nothing to do with the environment? Like vaccination, for example.

How long after that do they start punishing incorrect choices?

They already technically have access to the data they would need to construct this system. It would be naïve in the extreme to not see where this leads.

And, of course, it won’t just be China. If Alibaba is doing this then Google, Amazon, Apple and all the rest of them won’t be far behind.

May 25, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Russia makes move on foreign firms leaving the country

Samizdat | May 25, 2022

Lawmakers have approved a bill allowing Moscow to introduce control over foreign companies’ assets in Russia if their owners have ceased activities in the country “for no apparent economic reasons.” The legislation passed in the first reading in the Russian State Duma on Tuesday.

The bill applies to companies in which foreign equities account for 25% or more if they are of ‘major’ significance for the Russian economy. They could be the only supplier of ‘critically important industries’, produce goods of prime necessity, or be a local economic mainstay.

The legislation is primarily aimed at firms that have left Russia and decided to do so “based on the anti-Russian sentiments in Europe and the US,” a statement published by the State Duma says.

External control could only be imposed by a court for a period of up to 18 months, the bill says. The measure could then be lifted before the scheduled date if shareholders that together own more than 50% of the stock file a request with the Russian authorities and remove the causes that led to the court decision.

A court would be able to impose external control over a company’s assets for a number of reasons, including supply-side shocks, key supply chain breaches, as well as job slashing and “actions or inaction” that could lead to casualties or technogenic disasters.

Moscow has been mulling the seizure of foreign assets for months after many foreign companies halted operations in the country over the fighting in Ukraine. Consumer protection groups such as the Public Consumer Initiative (OPI) have been calling for the measure to be introduced against the likes of Apple, IKEA, Microsoft, IBM, Shell, McDonald’s, Volkswagen, Porsche, Toyota, H&M, and others.

Under the proposed bill, external management would not mean full nationalization. Foreign owners would have the opportunity to get their assets back and resume operations in Russia, or sell their shares.

May 25, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Is the pandemic treaty a step towards World Government?

By Dr Deborah Ancell | TCW Defending Freedom | May 25, 2022

Dear Prime Minister,

It’s the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) season and conspiracies about World Government abound. I have a new one for you.

You might recall my letter concerning the opaqueness of the first international tax, the United Nations Carbon Offsetting Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA)

CORSIA offsets aircraft carbon dioxide emissions and it’s hidden in the environmental provisions of the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organisation. CORSIA empowered the UN to raise taxes – something which appears to have escaped notice in signatory sovereign nations.

My concerns were that firstly, CO2 is not a pollutant and secondly, CORSIA is a Trojan horse for similar UN taxes on other industries such as shipping and information technology.

Taxation is the tool of national governments. When nations surrender tax powers to an international body, they undermine their sovereignty. CORSIA enables independent, non-political, commercial funding of UN development projects in developing nations and reduces their reliance on UN member-government funding.

CORSIA also provides developing world reparations, since it offsets (unevidenced) claims that underdevelopment results from historical emissions incurred during developed world industrialisation. As the first international tax, it’s an example of UN overreach which undermines national sovereignty.

Now another UN arm – the World Health Organisation – might also be attempting overreach. WHO is proposing a new ‘pandemic treaty’ to encourage more information-sharing in the event of another global health crisis.

The treaty would apparently give WHO ‘unprecedented, undemocratic jurisdiction over its 194 member nations, including the UK’. There would be almost unlimited authority to ‘order mandatory vaccines, digital health IDs, lockdowns, isolation, testing regimes, no-jab-no-job rules, or anything else it decided as policy, irrespective of dissenting voices’.

The treaty will not be voted on until the World Health Assembly in 2023. If the UK agreed to this, health sovereignty could also be undermined.

Combine these two sovereignty concessions and you have the beginnings of an independently-funded and legislating World Government. This prospect was promoted by now-deceased luminaries as diverse as discredited socialist millionaire Maurice Strong and capitalist banker David Rockefeller.

Strong, a promoter of CO2 as a cause of environmental harm, profoundly believed that the UN had the potential to be the World Government. Any such World Government would undermine democracies.

Similarly, Rockefeller founded and led the Trilateral Commission with its aim of a ‘New World Order’ to control population and resources. He is reported as stating that ‘the supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination (democracy) practised in past centuries.’ Scary!

Conspiracy theorists believe that today’s WEF, with its agenda to counter natural and anthropogenic climate change and its call for a Great (economic) Reset has a similar, shadowy agenda to these precursor pursuits.

As conspiracy theories go, this one is far-fetched – but can you assure me I’m wrong? Do you think that World Government is on the agenda at Davos today?

Yours sincerely,

Deborah Ancell

May 25, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

School shootings. I am sorry but this needs to be said.

By Merly Nass, MD | May 25, 2022

1. Normal people have no interest in killing children, especailly ones they do not know, especially in large numbers.

2. In my view, only people subject to mind control (please investigate Sirhan Sirhan or read about US intelligence agency attempts to create mind controlled assassins beginning in the 1950s) or people taking certain drugs are even capable of carrying out such an act.

3. School shootings are the most provocative and effective way to initiate a change in gun laws, which means taking away the guns from some or all of the people who privately own them.

4. The large number of American gun owners pose a daunting challenge to the globalists who wish to control them. Police and military will not be willing to enter the homes of gun owners to remove their guns or for other purposes.

5. Few Europeans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders own guns, and it is believed by many that the imposition of much harsher lockdowns on the citizens of these nations, compared to the US, was enabled by this fact.

6. There have been shortages of guns and ammunition in the US since the onset of the pandemic. Whether this is due to supply-demand, including increased purchases by the federal government, or to other market forces, is not clear.

7. There has been very little exploration into the past history of those who committed mass murders in the US in recent years, especially in schools. I want to know if any or all of these mass murderers may have been enrolled in black mind control projects.

8. I want a full accounting of the mind control programs paid for with taxpayer dollars in the US and elsewhere.

9. I want an investigation into the many thousands of self-reported “targeted individuals” (TIs) who complain of voices beamed into their heads and other forms of what can only be termed torture.

10. I want an investigation into the implants some of these people claim were introduced into their bodies.

11. We are being attacked in many perverse ways, and we must open our eyes, pull our power back, or the attacks will continue and will destroy us.

May 25, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

“I KNOW SO MANY ACTIVE PILOTS WITH MYOCARDITIS”

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | May 20, 2022

ARE BOOSTERS MAKING PEOPLE VULNERABLE TO COVID?

Newly released science is showing that the booster may increase your risk of catching COVID-19. Immune exhaustion and confusion may be to blame.

May 25, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Will NAC Become a Banned Supplement?

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | May 23, 2022

N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a form of the amino acid cysteine and a common dietary supplement, has been on the market for nearly six decades. Among its many benefits is helping increase glutathione and reduce the acetaldehyde toxicity1 that causes many hangover symptoms, but anyone who overdoses on acetaminophen (Tylenol) also receives large doses of NAC in the emergency room, as it helps prevent liver damage by increasing glutathione.

However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration suddenly cracked down on NAC in 2020, claiming it is excluded from the definition of a dietary supplement, as it was approved as a new drug in 1963,2 before it was marketed as a dietary supplement or as a food.

Retailers, including Amazon, pulled supplements containing NAC from their shelves in response, as the FDA’s move meant that NAC could no longer legally be marketed as a supplement, even though there are no fewer than 1,170 NAC-containing products in the National Institutes of Health’s Dietary Supplement Label Database.3

Draft guidance released by the FDA in April 2022 gives a glimmer of hope that NAC will continue to be available over-the-counter,4 but it’s still uncertain whether NAC will end up becoming a banned supplement.

FDA Announces ‘Enforcement Discretion’ for NAC Products

According to the FDA, their draft guidance, once finalized, will:5

“… explain our intent to exercise enforcement discretion with respect to the sale and distribution of certain NAC-containing products that are labeled as dietary supplements.

This enforcement discretion policy would apply to products that would be lawfully marketed dietary supplements if NAC were not excluded from the definition of “dietary supplement” and are not otherwise in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.”

In July 2020, the FDA sent out warning letters to seven companies that marketed NAC as a remedy for hangovers.6 Nine months after the FDA issued warning letters with their position that NAC supplements could not legally be sold, Amazon began removing products containing the supplement.7

The new verbiage suggests, however, that the FDA will not be enforcing their policy that NAC cannot be marketed as a dietary supplement, even though it’s technically still illegal to do so. And therein lies the problem. Steve Mister, president and CEO of the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), explained:8

“That still leaves some exposure for the industry for a state [attorney general] to say, ‘Well if it’s technically illegal under the federal law,’ we don’t care that FDA’s not enforcing it. We could do it. It also leaves you potentially exposed [to] a plaintiff’s attorney.”

Further, payment processing platforms, including PayPal, are among those that added policies prohibiting the sale of NAC products labeled as supplements following the FDA’s 2020 warning. It’s unknown whether PayPal will reverse its policy, or whether other major retailers, like Amazon, will begin to offer NAC supplements again.

Former FDA official Robert Durkin suggested that, in theory, the “draft guidance in and of itself should provide enough comfort to retailers to start marketing NAC-containing dietary supplements now.”9 Whether that will be the case in practice remains to be seen.

Two Citizen Petitions Filed With the FDA

After the FDA decided that NAC could no longer be marketed as a dietary supplement, CRN and the Natural Products Association (NPA) filed separate citizen petitions with the FDA requesting that the agency reverse its position.

The CRN letter in December 2020 challenged the FDA’s determination that NAC should be precluded from supplementary use.10 They then filed a citizen position petition June 1, 2021, requesting the FDA reverse its position and outlining why this sudden policy change is “legally invalid on multiple grounds.”11

The NPA filed a separate citizen petition with the FDA12 requesting that the agency not exclude NAC as a dietary supplement or, alternatively, that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issue a regulation finding NAC is lawful in supplements.

November 24, 2021, the FDA announced they were requesting more information about how NAC has been marketed as a dietary supplement,13 including information and data on the date that NAC was first marketed as a dietary supplement, reports of adverse events and details on how the products are marketed and sold.14 In their latest draft guidance, the FDA suggests it is still considering the petitioner’s requests:15

“… we have not yet reached a final decision on one petitioner’s request to issue a regulation to permit the use of NAC in dietary supplements, and we are considering initiating rulemaking to provide by regulation that NAC is not excluded from the definition of dietary supplement.

If, among other considerations, the FDA does not identify safety-related concerns as we continue our review of the available data and information, we are likely to propose a rule providing that NAC is not excluded from the definition of dietary supplement.”

FDA Acknowledges There Are No Safety Concerns

In a positive step, while the FDA stated that their full safety review of NAC is ongoing, its initial review “has not revealed safety concerns with respect to the use of this ingredient in or as a dietary supplement.” The agency further explained:16

“In addition, NAC-containing products represented as dietary supplements have been sold in the United States for over 30 years and consumers continue to seek access to such products. Accordingly, while the FDA continues its evaluation of the request to initiate rulemaking, the FDA issued this draft guidance to explain our policy regarding products labeled as dietary supplements that contain NAC.

Unless we identify safety-related concerns during our ongoing review, the FDA would intend to exercise enforcement discretion (as described in the draft guidance) until either of the following occurs: we complete notice-and-comment rulemaking to allow the use of NAC in or as a dietary supplement (if we move forward with such proceedings) or we deny the citizen petition’s request for rulemaking.

If the FDA determines that this enforcement discretion policy is no longer appropriate, we will notify stakeholders by withdrawing or revising the guidance.”

With the draft guidance suggesting that no safety concerns have been noted, and enforcement is unlikely, Marc Ullman, counsel to the law firm Rivkin Radler LLP, suggested it should be perceived as “a win for industry” and that Amazon should “rescind its ban” on NAC dietary supplements in response:17

“FDA has said there’s no safety issue and it’s not going to take enforcement action. I think it would be an incredible overabundance of caution for any retailer to say, ‘We shouldn’t get NAC back into commerce.'”

Was FDA’s Ban Fueled by COVID-19 Treatment Hopes?

The FDA’s crackdown on NAC coincided with research suggesting COVID-19 treatment as a new indication. According to one literature analysis,18 glutathione deficiency may be associated with COVID-19 severity, leading the author to conclude that NAC may be useful both for its prevention and treatment.

Previous research has shown NAC inhibits the expression of proinflammatory cytokines in cells infected with highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza virus. Proinflammatory cytokines also play a crucial role in COVID-19 severity.19 Considering many COVID-19 cases also involve blood clots in addition to excessive oxidative stress, and NAC effectively addresses both, I believe NAC should be included in the standard of care for COVID-19. As noted in the FASEB Journal :20

“COVID-19 may cause pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, cardiovascular alterations, and multiple organ failure, which have been ascribed to a cytokine storm, a systemic inflammatory response, and an attack by the immune system. Moreover, an oxidative stress imbalance has been demonstrated to occur in COVID-19 patients.

N-Acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) is a precursor of reduced glutathione (GSH). Due to its tolerability, this pleiotropic drug has been proposed not only as a mucolytic agent, but also as a preventive/therapeutic agent in a variety of disorders involving GSH depletion and oxidative stress …

Thiols block the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 thereby hampering penetration of SARS-CoV-2 into cells. Based on a broad range of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory mechanisms … the oral administration of NAC is likely to attenuate the risk of developing COVID-19, as it was previously demonstrated for influenza and influenza-like illnesses.

Moreover, high-dose intravenous NAC may be expected to play an adjuvant role in the treatment of severe COVID-19 cases and in the control of its lethal complications … including pulmonary and cardiovascular adverse events.”

Another study published in 2021 compared consecutive patients hospitalized with moderate or severe COVID-19 pneumonia.21 One group received only standard care and the other group received 600 milligrams of NAC twice daily for 14 days. There were 42 in the NAC group and 40 in the control group. Treatment with NAC led to lower rates of severe respiratory failure and significantly lower mortality rates.

NAC Offers a Multitude of Benefits

NAC has been described as an “old drug with new tricks” because scientists are continually uncovering new ways to use it.22 Along with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and mucolytic properties, NAC may be a useful adjuvant for a variety of chronic diseases and other medical conditions, including:23

  • Polycystic ovary disease
  • Male infertility
  • Sleep apnea
  • Acquired immune deficiency syndrome
  • Influenza
  • Parkinsonism
  • Multiple sclerosis
  • Peripheral neuropathy
  • Stroke outcomes
  • Diabetic neuropathy
  • Crohn’s disease
  • Ulcerative colitis
  • Schizophrenia
  • Bipolar illness
  • Obsessive compulsive disorder
  • As a chelator for heavy metals and nanoparticles

Recently, it was found that NAC may also prevent strokes in people with hereditary cystatin C amyloid angiopathy (HCCAA), a rare genetic disorder.24 People with HCCAA have an average life expectancy of just 30 years, and most die within five years of their first stroke,25 so reducing their incidence could prove to be essential to increasing survival.

The finding is even more significant because it was conducted by researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), which is notoriously against supplements. NAC appears to work by preventing the formation of amyloid-producing proteins, which promote amyloid deposits linked to strokes.26

It could also have potential for Alzheimer’s as, according to the CHOP researchers, the process of protein deposition that occurs in HCCAA is similar to what occurs in Alzheimer’s, although at an accelerated pace, which is why dementia occurs later in life than Alzheimer’s.

With so many potential health benefits, the root of the motivation to ban NAC as a supplement likely lies in protecting the finances of pharmaceutical companies. Hopefully in this case, however, the FDA will determine that NAC should be allowed to exist under the dietary supplement definition, ensuring widespread access to this important compound will continue the way it did for decades.

Sources and References

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

What it means that Hillary Clinton did it

By David Zukerman | American Thinker | May 22, 2022

The Wall Street Journal ran a scathing editorial on May 20, called “Hillary Clinton Did It“.

This editorial began: “The Russia-Trump collusion narrative of 2016 was a dirty trick for the ages — and now we know it came from the top — candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.” The editorial quickly explained: “That was the testimony Friday by 2016 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook in federal court [in Washington, D.C.], and while this news is hardly a surprise, it’s still bracing to find her fingertips on the political weapon.” (Also not surprisingly, The May 20 print edition of The New York Times did not include a story on Mook’s testimony.)

Mook’s testimony was heard at the trial of attorney Michael Sussman, charged with lying to the FBI in calling to their attention a story that Donald J. Trump, by means of connections with Russia’s Alfa Bank, was colluding with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The lie at issue was not the false claim about a Trump-Alfa connection, but the charge that Sussman brought this matter to the FBI as a good citizen, and not as a representative of the Clinton campaign.

As the Journal editorial noted: “Prosecutors say [Sussman] was working for the Clinton campaign.” The editorial pointed out, “Mr. Mook said Mrs. Clinton was asked about the plan [to call attention to the Trump-Alfa ties] and approved it. A story on the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations thus appeared in Slate, a left-leaning online publication.”

After that, the Journal explained how the Clinton campaign used the self-generated news of the investigation and the initial Slate article that came of it, both of which they had planted, as the basis for making tweet after tweet to the press about the Slate report to churn up mass coverage about it in the press and convince the public that the investigation was about something serious.

The concluding paragraphs of the editorial are worth quoting in full:

In short, the Clinton campaign created the Trump-Alfa allegation, fed it to a credulous press that failed to confirm the allegations but ran with them anyway, then promoted the story as if it was legitimate news. The campaign also delivered the claims to the FBI, giving journalists another excuse to portray the accusations as serious and perhaps true.

Most of the press will ignore this news, but the Russia-Trump narrative that Mrs. Clinton sanctioned did enormous harm to the country. It disgraced the FBI, humiliated the press, and sent the country on a three-year investigation to nowhere. Vladimir Putin never came close to doing as much disinformation damage.

The harm done to the United States by the perfidy of the Clintonistas cannot be overemphasized. That “three-year investigation to nowhere” represented the Clinton-Obama attempted takeover of the government. (Call it the COAT campaign.) With congressional Republicans unwilling to prevent the COAT campaign, the Trump administration was blocked from putting U.S.-Russia relations on a rational, mutually beneficial footing, to the point that, under the present Senate leadership, the specter of war with Russia is no longer an unthinkable thought. The COAT campaign succeeded in keeping the Ukraine pot boiling, with the water first heated by Obama’s stirring up of anti-Russian feelings in Ukraine, leading to the Maidan revolution that ousted the legitimately elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden Regime’s Ministry of Truth Stumbles

But it is only on “pause” and we will be seeing it again

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 24, 2022

Finally some good news – maybe! The Department of Homeland Security’s recently launched Disinformation Governance Board has gone into what has been described as the “pause” mode and its controversial Director Nina Jankowicz has resigned, citing “vile personal attacks and physical threats.” Its status will reportedly be reviewed over the next 75 days and it will likely be rolled out more quietly next time around and under a different name.

The Board was developed to counter what was held to be unfair criticism of policies being promoted by the government. Ironically, however, it has recently become clear that the White House itself has been doing much of the lying. It uses the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other government agencies to spread false information, referred to as disinformation, to dupe the public into believing that there is something good and noble about America becoming heavily involved in the war in Ukraine, with all that entails. And, of course, since the evildoers must be excoriated as that drama is playing out, good old Russia fits in admirably, particularly as the Democrats still like to pretend that it was Moscow’s interference that defeated Hillary in 2016.

A lie is a lie, but it is the ultimate irony when a government that is caught lying on a regular basis sets up an inquisition that seeks to identify and take action against ordinary citizens who are accused of spreading “disinformation.” Of course, critics on the right immediately discerned that the disinformation will consist of anything that challenges the official government line on various issues, up to including pandemics, white supremacist domestic terrorism, aborting unwanted babies, and even the march to war. Although the inept President Joe Biden Administration can rightly be accused of elevating deceit to a steady diet of malapropisms, one can trace the rise of egregious lying by heads of state to the Gulf of Tonkin incident and, more recently, to the criminal deceptions carried out by the George W. Bush Administration. Those lies led to the invasion of Iraq, which cost trillions of dollars, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans, and which is still producing unrest in the region.

So now we were to be confronted by the Disinformation Governance Board, so designated under the august authority of the Department of Homeland Security to root out disinformation and those who are seeking to disseminate falsehoods about what our noble elected officials are doing to us in Washington. Followers of George Orwell inevitably, and almost immediately, dubbed the new creation the Ministry of Truth.

The official launch documents in late April claimed that the DGB would be “protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, & civil liberties” against the “threat of disinformation.” Its focus would be on “homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia,” meaning that it would be discrediting any source that complains about the flood of aliens crossing the US southern border or casting doubts on the necessity of supporting America’s Ukraine “allies.” In a follow-up briefing DHS elaborated that it would monitor threat “disinformation spread by foreign states such as Russia, China and Iran, or other adversaries such as transnational criminal organizations and human smuggling organizations.”

And the board was to be headed by one Nina Jankowicz, a weird, highly politicized concoction who sang about her mission in a tweet entitled “You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation” while confirming that she would be the first executive director of the DGB. She has also written a book entitled “How To Be A Woman Online.” She has worked for the National Democratic Institute, the Democratic Party affiliate of the National Endowment for Democracy that promotes democracy worldwide. She has also been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

In an NPR interview responding to a question concerning Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, Jankowicz ridiculously opined that “I shudder to think about, if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would be like for the marginalized communities around the world…” Glenn Greenwald further described the new Disinformation Czar as having “herself ratified and helped spread virtually every disinformation campaign concocted by the union of the Democratic Party and corporate media over the last five years. Indeed, the only valid basis for calling her a ‘disinformation expert’ is that she has spread disinformation with such gusto. The most notorious of those was the pre-election lie that the authentic Hunter Biden laptop was ‘disinformation.’ She also decreed falsely that the origins of COVID were definitively proven to be zoonotic and could not have come from a lab leak, was a frequent and vocal advocate of the fraudulent Steele Dossier, and repeatedly pronounced as true all sorts of Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy theories which Robert Mueller, after conducting an intense 18-month investigation, rejected as lacking evidence to establish their truth.”

Jankowicz’s boss Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas nevertheless claimed that she was “eminently qualified,” a “renowned expert,” and politically “neutral.” But to put that in context, her rather thin actual work history, heavy on being a Democratic Party apparatchik tied to the Clintons, oddly includes a stint as a Fulbright-Clinton fellow in 2017 serving as an adviser on disinformation to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. She sports the US and Ukrainian flags next to her picture on her twitter page.

Attempts by governments to shape their message by discrediting alternative viewpoints are not exactly new. Here in the US, suppressing contrary views is nearly as old as the republic. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 gave the president power to deport potentially “dangerous” foreigners and made it a crime to print “any false, scandalous, and malicious writing” about the government. President John Adams supported these laws because he wanted to prevent a war with France, quite the reverse of what the Biden regime is seeking to do as it mobilizes against Russia. Vice President Thomas Jefferson was openly disgusted by the unconstitutional acts, which probably contributed to his election as president in 1800.

The Acts were subsequently allowed to expire and were never reviewed by the Supreme Court, but there is also the later example of the Committee for Public Information which was used by the government to support the war party line in World War One. There followed the Espionage Act of 1918, which is still in effect, that was used liberally by President Woodrow Wilson to silence critics of American entry into the war. The definition of what constitutes “espionage” was deliberately made infinitely elastic and the Act is still in use against whistleblowers and presumably also Julian Assange.

Given the language connected with the launch of the Disinformation Government Board, it might reasonably be assumed that it would have surely sought to suppress “malicious writing” and speech relating to the Biden sponsored wave of illegal immigration along the country’s southern border that has driven America’s foreign-born population to a record 46.6 million people. And, in addition to an increase in arriving Afghans, which was actually written into the bill proposing $33 billion more for Ukraine, there will surely be more Ukrainian migrants. Jewish organizations in the US, Europe and Israel are already actively bringing in co-religionists. Given political realities, displaced Ukrainian Jews will likely be quietly given refugee status granting them full benefits to include housing and welfare payments.

Not surprisingly, the surging wave of immigration is highly unpopular among working people who are already established, even among many Democrats, and the Biden response will be to compel the bad vibes go away, literally, by openly labeling critics as liars peddling disinformation. Whether there will be actual criminal or civil penalties attached to the process remains to be seen when the board is most likely resurrected under another name.

And, of course, the likes of Senator Rand Paul, Congressman Tom Massie, journalist Tucker Carlson and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard would have their views on the developing catastrophe in Ukraine challenged and denigrated, to include possibly arranging for their banning from social media sites, which is already being done to some critics. The fact is that we do not know at this point exactly what the new Board will eventually be empowered to do, but one can count on the results being bad, destructive both of the First Amendment and of honest journalism in the United States.

The ability of the government to collude with corporate America to diminish personal liberty of the citizenry cannot be understated. We have already seen corporations that operate on the internet proactively terminating accounts that it considers politically unacceptable. Consortium News, a perfect respectable site of long standing that has a splendid record of investigative journalism, was recently delisted by PayPal, which took the further step of confiscating its nearly $10,000 of funds with the threat that the money might be retained by PayPal as an additional punishment.

The reality is that the government can unleash its thousands of lawyers to make a case against nearly every citizen who is politically active. Which is why the Biden Administration has already been criminalizing and/or sanctioning any foreign organization that has “interfered in or undermined public confidence in United States elections,” as if the two major parties are not already doing that quite effectively all by themselves. If that is truly a crime why aren’t Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell being sanctioned?

In my own experience, I have dealt with threatened punishment regarding my contributing to and participating in the activities of an Iranian NGO and a Russian information site. Neither organization can plausibly be regarded as a threat to the United States, though they both were highly critical of US government policies, as am I. In one case, American participants in a conference overseas organized by the Iranians were warned that they would be arrested upon return, which currently appears to be “due process” in the US. In the case of the Russian site, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) advised that any American writing for the site could be fined as much as $311,562!

The unfortunate reality is that the real damage is being done through the employment of government driven restrictions punishing ordinary citizens who are exercising their right of free speech and free association. It is easy to claim that a foreign news service or NGO is “undermining confidence in US elections” as it is a charge that one need not have to prove. Indeed, it is unprovable and it is a weapon that can be used to manage dissent and to narrow the bounds of acceptable discourse. The question becomes whether and to what extent the successor to the now paused Disinformation Governance Board will attempt to apply similar standards to Americans. One might suggest that the barring of dissident US journalists and political figures from social media sites and from funding mechanisms like PayPal is the first shot to be fired in a long struggle over what is “truth” that will play out over the next two years.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

The green agenda’s role in global inflation

By Ben Pile | TCW Defending Freedom | May 24, 2022

AS inflation rises and the prospects for our return to normality following the pandemic fade ever more into the distant future, criticism is rightly focusing on financial institutions and regulators. They claim that printing money, which has inevitably caused prices to rise, was necessary to mitigate the economic chaos of lockdowns. But now they appear to be behind a third act of immense self-harm to help to steer the world to inflation and deliberately prevent economic recovery. The rise in energy prices the world has seen were not the result of an unforeseeable supply crisis, but engineered by those charged with managing the economy.

In a recent interview, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey admitted to Sky News his discomfort at the UK rate of inflation heading towards 10 per cent. ‘We are being struck by historically large shocks,’ explained Bailey, removing himself and his organisation from the spotlight. ‘Who of us thought there would be a war in Europe of the sort that we’re seeing?’ he asked rhetorically.

As it happens, many people have been predicting such a conflict. Analysts, be they critics of Nato or Moscow, have long and for different reasons warned that Ukraine risks becoming the point of renewed east-west tension, and many Ukrainians themselves have spoken about the grim inevitability of war, at least since 2014. But this article is about energy and climate policy, not war. I raise the issue here because, like me, you might have expected the Governor of the Bank of England to have kept a watching brief on geopolitics.

We would be wrong, then. It turns out that the chief regulator of the UK economy (the sixth largest in the world) and his predecessor were far more concerned with the putative risks from climate change than with developments in geopolitics. The Bank of England’s webpages could have been written by an XR activist. ‘Climate change creates financial risks and economic consequences,’ it claims. ‘These risks and consequences matter for our mission to maintain monetary and financial stability.’ Endless volumes of reports and links to pages after pages make the case, citing equally endless scientific reports that I have always considered to be suspect.

Put simply, I do not believe that society’s sensitivity to climate is in any way equivalent to climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide. The planet may well be slightly warmer, but there exists very little evidence that this is creating economic risks. On the contrary, people everywhere are becoming much wealthier. (Or were, before the pandemic.) I shall spare the word count here, but I have written about it at length in many other places if you remain unconvinced. Suffice it to say that it is logically impossible for ‘risks’ to be growing as the BoE claim while an economy is growing, which it was, even in the world’s most seemingly climate-ravaged places.

But green ideology is a fetter on public institutions’ grasp of reality. And so we should look to the origins of green ideology to try to understand what is behind the BoE’s climate activism.

It is a common misconception that the climate agenda is driven by science. But it is a matter of historical fact that green ideology sprang from the very top of global society. In the 1960s, it was the Club of Rome, a think tank formed by wealthy industrialists and their pet academics that turned their fears about overpopulation and resource-depletion into a computer simulation that forecast civilisation’s imminent collapse. And so it is today with climate change, every earlier environmental scare story issued by that simulation now having been debunked by reality.

The heart of the contemporary green ‘movement’ is known by its ugly moniker, the ‘green blob’. The entirety of it, including those parts of it that dwell on streets, owes its existence completely to the grants given by about a dozen or so billionaires’ philanthropic foundations to organisations of various kinds. From Extinction Rebellion to academic research departments, none of it would exist but for the vast torrents of cash from the likes of Jeremy Grantham, Sir Christopher Hohn and Michael Bloomberg. And it is from here that the notion that ‘climate change creates financial risks and economic consequences’ springs from, and the belief that ‘financial stability’ is functionally dependent on ‘stable weather’ is forced into the machinery of the state.

Bailey’s predecessor at the Bank of England (2013-2020), Mark Carney, previously Governor of the Bank of Canada (2008-2013), had been so impressed by multibillionaire Michael Bloomberg’s selfless philanthropy (giving away a total of $11 billion of his $82 billion fortune, significantly to green causes), he fashioned a role for the tycoon in policymaking. As Governor of both BoE and BoC, Carney was also chair of the little-known intergovernmental agency, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), where he oversaw its greening, bringing the notion of financial stability being predicated on ‘stable weather’ to financial institutions the world over. Green ideology is an infectious rot. Under the FSB, a Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) was established, and an array of corporate and financial bigwigs appointed to steer it, including Bloomberg as its chair.

Put simply, TCFD aimed to support the ‘E’ in ‘ESG’ with a system of
‘recommendations’ for voluntary disclosures that companies should make to investors, much as companies are required to make statutory disclosures about the state of their operations. ESG, short for Environmental, Social, and corporate Governance, is the fashionable green-woke successor to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), driving shareholders to change boardroom and culture using metrics that score companies’ commitments progressive values. TCFD’s recommendations build on the notion that, since financial stability is predicated on climatic stability, companies risk profiles are also dependent on weather. The logic here being that if a company does not have a business plan that is compatible with a changing climate, and moreover, compatible with a changing regulatory environment, investors deserve to be made aware of these risks.

This was good business. Ethical business, even. And other green billionaire philanthropists were eager to give their money away to this good cause, too. British hedge fund manager, Sir Christopher Hohn, used much of the $800 million pushed through his philanthropic outfit, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), to support organisations that campaign and lobby for these voluntary disclosures. CIFF founded the ‘Say on Climate’ campaign, which aimed to mobilise investors to press the companies in which they had an interest to adopt ‘climate transition action plans’, building on Hohn’s trademark shareholder activism. Between 2014 and 2020, CIFF made grants of over $23million to the Carbon Disclosure Project, and backed other shareholder and financial sector campaigning organisations partnered with the ‘We Mean Business Coalition’.

But as sure as push comes to shove, voluntary becomes compulsory. At the COP26 meeting in Glasgow last year, Mark Carney stood in front of a screen that declared the intention to make TCFD disclosures mandatory, and for policy frameworks to ‘wind down stranded assets’ – the green movement’s term for fossil fuel investments that will become obsolete when climate policy prohibits them. He was followed by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who declared that investment funds with assets under management worth $130 trillion were aligned to the UK’s new policies.

Sunak was an employee of Hohn’s investment fund, TCI, between 2006 and 2009. And as an alumnus of such a notable activist outfit as TCI, and as Chancellor, it is inconceivable that he was unaware of the effects on the economy that ESG was already having by last autumn. ESG had driven investors away from stock in companies that make useful stuff, such as coal, oil and gas, towards high-tech, social media and companies that produce mere vapour, such as Netflix. As Bloomberg reported at the time, in the era of ESG investing, capital investment in fossil fuels had halved since the Paris Agreement, and the cost of capital to fossil fuel companies had doubled.

Amid other factors, this capital strangulation of the energy sector was the direct effect of ESG investing, green campaigning organisations, and governments and central banks actively working together to destroy the fossil fuel sector without making the policy explicit. This is indubitably the main factor behind the energy supply crisis that seemed to come out of nowhere last year to add to inflation woes by pushing energy prices up.

A few days ago, Bailey told MPs that ‘there isn’t a lot we can do’ to stop inflation rising. But there was a lot that the BoE could have done to stop it happening, but failed to do, and instead helped in no small way to engineer this global crisis. In late 2020, the BoE published an Interim Report and Roadmap for implementing the recommendations of the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, which boasted of the BoE’s and UK government’s leading roles in creating ESG policy, and which ‘advocates a move towards mandatory TCFD-aligned disclosures across non-financial and financial sectors of the UK economy’.

Here’s a clue, Andrew, if you’re reading, about how you might start to address the problem of rising prices. Remove from the Bank of England all traces of environmental ideology and sever all links with the green billionaires who have pushed the notion that climate change is a ‘risk’ to the economy. It isn’t. The much greater risk than weather to the economic wellbeing of millions of British people – and billions of people throughout the world in poorer economies – is green ideology. While the likes of Hohn and Bloomberg have made billions of dollars through creating an ESG bubble via their undemocratic and undue influence in public institutions, billions of people are suffering from the effects of starving the energy sector of investment, pushing up the price of energy, transport, and food.

Here is a short film I have made about the problem.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Can nuclear power achieve net-zero carbon?

By Donn Dears | Power For USA | May 20, 2022

Three steps are required to determine the number of new nuclear power plants needed to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050.

Step 1

Step one determines the number of new nuclear power plants needed to replace all the electricity generated by fossil fuels in 2021.

Today, there are 94 nuclear power plants in operation which generate 18.9% of the 4,116 billion kWh consumed in the United States. 

The amount of electricity generated by fossil fuels in 2021 is 2,512 billion kWh, which is arrived at by subtracting renewables and nuclear from the total.

Step one, therefore, is to establish the number of new nuclear plants needed to replace the 2,512 billion kWh generated by fossil fuels. On average, each existing nuclear plant generates 8.3 billion kWh in 2021.

  • Number of new nuclear power plants to replace fossil fuels = 304

Step 2

Step two is to determine how many new nuclear power plants are needed to supply the electricity needed when all light vehicles are battery-powered, and homes use electricity for heating rather than natural gas. The national renewable energy lab (NREL) has determined that total electricity consumption will double when all light vehicles are BEVs and homes rely on electricity for heating. Hydro can’t be doubled, and without increasing other renewables the additional electricity needed to be generated by nuclear will equal the amount generated by all methods in 2021, i.e., 4,116 billion kWh.

  • Number of new nuclear power plants  to double electricity consumption by 2050 = 497

Step 3

Step three is to determine the number of new nuclear power plants that will be needed to generate the electricity required to produce enough hydrogen to make steel and cement that meet net-zero carbon requirements. ( Cement will also require carbon capture and sequestration to be fully net-zero carbon.) There’s little reliable data on using hydrogen in the making of cement, while there is considerable data for using hydrogen in the making of steel. The estimate shown here for the number of additional nuclear plants is based on the amount of hydrogen required to make 62 million tons of steel, which excludes the amount of steel made using scrap in electric arc furnaces, and then doubling the number of nuclear plants to compensate for the production of cement. (The United States produced 87.9 million tons of steel in 2021.)

  • Number of new nuclear power plants required to generate the electricity used by electrolyzers to produce the hydrogen to make steel and cement = 80

The total number of new nuclear power plants to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050 is:

  • 304 + 497 + 80 = 881

Or, 31 new nuclear power plants every year between now and 2050.

This, in the face of the fact that the US hasn’t been able to build one new nuclear plant over the past ten years.

Additional considerations

Nuclear power plants are scheduled to be shut down beginning in 2032 unless their operating licenses are renewed, with all existing nuclear power plants shut down by 2064. While two units in Georgia are likely to be completed in the next year or two, both Diablo Units in California are scheduled for closure in 2025. There is no provision in the above calculations for additional nuclear power plants to replace any shut down before 2050.

Wind and PV solar have expected lives of 20 years. This means that:

  • All 54,244 wind turbines and all PV solar panels installed before 2022 will also have to be replaced with additional nuclear power plants before 2050.
  • All wind turbines and all PV solar panels installed between now and 2030 will also have to be replaced with additional nuclear power plants before 2050.

These additional nuclear power plants have not been included in the above calculations.

Conclusion

If nuclear power is used in an attempt to eliminate fossil fuels, it will require building at least 31 new nuclear power plants every year between now and 2050. 

  • However, not one new unit has been built during the past ten years, during which time there has been an ongoing effort to build 2 units in Georgia.

This reality check should give everyone pause, as it demonstrates that it’s not possible to eliminate fossil fuels using nuclear power.

Net-zero carbon cannot be achieved using nuclear power.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Economics | | Leave a comment

Biden Says Record-High Gas Prices Part of ‘Incredible Transition’ US Going Through

Samizdat | May 24, 2022

Following the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine on 24 February, the US and several of its allies cut off all imports of Russian oil and gas, which added greatly to soaring gas prices for Americans.

President Joe Biden has argued that the current record-high gas prices in his country are part of America’s major transition from fossil fuels.

“Here’s the situation. And when it comes to gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over,” he said during a joint press conference with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday.

POTUS then insisted that his administration’s actions helped “keep it [the gas prices] from getting worse — and it’s bad”.

“The price of gas at the pump is something that I told you — you heard me say before — it would be a matter of great discussion at my kitchen table when I was a kid growing up,” Biden said before admitting, “It’s affecting a lot of families.”

House Republican Steve Scalise was quick to respond by telling reporters that Biden is “saying the quiet part out loud now.” In an apparent nod to the Biden administration, Scalise added that “they’re causing you pain at the pump because it’s all part of their radical agenda.”

He spoke as the national average for a gallon of regular gas in the US stood at $4.56 as of Monday, which is more than $0.40 higher than it was just a month ago.

In some US states such as California, the average price for a gallon of regular gas has meanwhile already reached $6.06.

While Biden previously tried to cast the price increases as the fault of Russian President Vladimir Putin, labelling high gas prices “Putin’s price hike”, the recent polls show that Americans aren’t buying it.

A survey conducted by conservative pollster Rasmussen found that beliefs about the importance of rising gas prices were essentially unchanged since November 2021, but that a majority (51%) of American voters surveyed held POTUS responsible for higher fuel prices. Another 26% blamed oil companies for the price hike, while just 15% blamed Putin.

May 24, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

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