BLM’s lesson in how ‘trained Marxism’ really works, leader rakes in millions while chapters get nothing
Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, DC, December 1, 2020. © REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
By Nebojsa Malic | RT | December 4, 2020
While the Black Lives Matter Global Network, led by ‘trained Marxist’ Patrisse Cullors, embraced the windfall of donations following the George Floyd protests across America, local chapters say they were left holding the bag.
It was through the hard work of “radical black organizers” engaging in a “protracted struggle for our lives against police terrorism” that Black Lives Matter attracted millions of dollars in contributions this year, yet the BLMGN only recently invited selected chapters to apply for a $500,000 grant, ten chapters from across the US said in a statement this week.
“This is not the equity and financial accountability we deserve,” they declared.
The Global Network is “not accountable to local communities” and chapters, and due to its lack of support their work “continues to be erased,” Black Lives Matter DC said in a twitter thread. The newly announced BLM political action committee (PAC) and Grassroots entities were set up without the chapter approval – or even knowledge. “[All] of these events occurred without democracy,” the chapters said.
This state of affairs isn’t exactly new. Between July 2017 and June 2019, the Global Network had spent $4.5 million on consultants, travel and salaries while giving only $328,000 to local chapters, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation. What’s new is that BLM fundraising went stratospheric in May this year, as riots over the death of George Floyd in Minnesota spread across the nation – and even globally.
BLMGN raked in millions using ActBlue, the fundraising platform serving the Democratic party, and while legions of fact-checkers insisted that none of that funding spilled over to the DNC or any campaigns, the Democrats admitted they also had a record fundraising haul paralleling the Floyd riots.
As the African-American activists gave the party a piggyback ride yet again, the very least they could have got out of the deal was some cash for their trouble. Not only did the BLM chapters not get that, they also bore the brunt of the backlash against rioting, arson, and property destruction inflicted by the riots on their own communities. It was a win-win for the self-styled leadership, lose-lose for the actual footsoldiers on the ground.
What Black Lives Matter chapters don’t understand is that the system they’ve embraced is working exactly as intended. They may have forgotten, and the mainstream media certainly hates reminding anyone, that Cullors boasted in a 2015 interview that she and BLMGN co-founder Alicia Garza were “trained Marxists.”
“We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories. And I think that what we really tried to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many black folk,” Cullors told Jared Ball of The Real News Network.
Having been trained in Marxism myself many years ago, in a country that’s no longer around, I recall all too well how in “scientific socialism” everyone is supposed to contribute according to their ability and receive according to their need. What happens in practice, however, is that this incentivizes the needs to grow – and abilities to diminish.
That’s even before the people in charge – who already believe they are “more equal than others” by the virtue of that, as George Orwell put it in ‘Animal Farm’ – decide that their needs are near-infinite. And since there’s a finite amount of wealth to be re-distributed, that means the needs of the many must amount to nearly nil. When the two inevitabilities converge… well, you get the picture.
Therefore, it is only right and proper that the activists on the ground get nothing while the leaders such as Cullors, or the Democrats piggybacking on the movement, get to laugh all the way to the bank. Complain all you want, but this is part and parcel of the ideology you signed up for.
Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic
Canada: Government and Bankers Pay “Antifa” Members to Dox and Attack Right Wingers
By Eric Striker • National Justice • December 3, 2020
Last week, Kurt Phillips of Anti-Racist Canada (ARC) retired his blog after 13 years.
ARC was an early pioneer of the tactic of “doxing,” where leftists post the addresses, photos of homes, and other personal information of political dissidents in order to threaten and intimidate them into silence. Over the years, Phillips has targeted free speech activists, Canadian nationalists, Proud Boys, immigration skeptics and even the Canadian Yellow Vest movement, sometimes paired with thinly veiled calls to violence.
Even his farewell message encourages readers to follow explicitly violent anarchist groups and left-wing “skinheads” like SHARP.
Early this year, Phillips was himself exposed as a gay communist teacher at St. Anthony’s Catholic school in Drumheller, Alberta, where he continues to work despite revelations of his activities and litigation alleging unethical and potentially illegal behavior.
While Phillips is calling it quits at ARC, this is only because of a sinecure he has received at Bernie Farber’s antifa NGO, the “Canadian Anti-Hate Network,” (CAN) where Phillips is now a board member. Farber is a Zionist Jewish activist who was criticized for claiming to be a homosexual in 2009 in order to promote Israel and protest a pro-Palestine group at an gay parade.
CAN engages in similar activities as ARC, specializing in doxing and creating media narratives to demonize right-wingers in Canada. CAN’s position on violence appears to be purely legalistic, with its “About” page stating “We do not, however, engage in any on-the-ground organizing and encourage you to contact your local anti-racist groups if you want to get involved at that level.” The anti-racist groups they are referring to are mostly communist and anarchist “antifa” groups who use force to deny Canadians with different political opinions their civil liberties.
What is most shocking about CAN is who is paying Phillips to harass people: the Canadian government and banking establishment.
In October, the multinational investment bank Bank of Montreal (BMO) provided CAN with a $250,000 donation to expand its “antifa” operations. This was followed up with another big cash injection from the Canadian state itself through its “Anti-Racist Action” program, which allocated $270,000 to CAN’s activities of “monitoring” and “combating” right-wing groups.
The dynamic doesn’t seem to bother self-described anti-capitalists tripping over one another for the money of bankers and Canadian plutocrats.
Non-governmental organizations, often funded by billionaires and business interests, have always been a vital lifeline for the phony left. Now Canada appears to be one of the first nations to use taxpayer dollars to outright fund left-wing paramilitary activity and organized online harassment.
The fact that the “Anti-Racist Action” grant program shares its name with the “antifa” terrorist group is unlikely to be a coincidence. If you were to ask Kurt Phillips, he is likely to proudly agree.
The U.S. Election Is Not Over
By Patrick Armstrong | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 4, 2020
President Putin is correct not to congratulate Joe Biden on being elected. There are two reasons. The first is that the complex U.S. election process has not finished; therefore, as Trump has not conceded, there is no “President-elect”. The second reason is that the results may be overthrown by reason of fraud. In which case, Putin will, at the end of the story, look smarter than those who rushed to congratulate Biden before the process was complete.
The hearing in the Pennsylvania Senate and the lawsuits filed in Georgia and Michigan in the last week of November were the first public appearance of the fraud arguments and their supporting evidence – although the alternate media had been on the case from the beginning. Contrary to the utterances of the news media, it was only then that the case was presented in its fullest – the previous legal actions having been only preliminary manoeuvring. The evidence for fraud falls under four heads: eyewitness accounts, improbabilities, statistical analysis and the matter of voting machines and their software. It’s difficult to make up numbers – there are relationships and patterns the fraudster may not know about: better to just make up a final percentage à la the USSR. This piece gives a summary of some of the difficulties with the published results; this piece describes some of the “statistical aberrations”.
Parenthetically, one might observe that the U.S. government declares foreign elections to be fraudulent on a mere fraction of this evidence. Or even, as in the case of Belarus, with no proffered evidence at all: no exit polls, no blurry films; nothing at all.
There are now hundreds, if not thousands, of eyewitness accounts of strange happenings – sudden arrivals of ballots, observers kept away, counting stopped but apparently continuing in secret, suspiciously pristine postal ballots, stacks of ballots with only Biden’s name filled out, Trump votes destroyed, suspicious ballot “curing”, signature problems, backdating postal ballots, wandering USB drives, dead people voting, computer “glitches” sending Trump votes to Biden. Many of these are incorporated into affidavits in the lawsuits and may be read and judged by the public. Many eyewitness accounts, of course, can be dismissed for one valid reason or another, but there are too many now, with more appearing, for casual dismissal.
There are improbabilities in the result. Biden received fewer votes than Clinton or Obama in most areas but many more in the “battleground states”. There were striking exceptions in “down-ballot” voting: in the key states there were large differences between the votes for Biden and for the Democratic Senate candidate. There are cases of historically high – almost Soviet-level – turnouts in key precincts in the “battleground states”. There were improbably high turnouts in nursing homes and in group homes. There are many cases where more votes were cast than voters registered. It was generally a bad day for Democratic candidates: seats were lost in the House and in state legislatures but we are expected to believe that Biden won a strong victory. Despite the spectacular difference in enthusiastic crowds, we’re told that more people turned out for Biden on the day. Perhaps any one of these can be explained but can all of them?
Statistical analysis comprises the next grouping of evidence. We see that votes for Biden, most of the time, and votes for Trump, all of the time, roughly accord with the curve of Benford’s Law. But in those areas where Biden needed the votes, they do not. Violations of Benford’s Law are commonly used by forensic accountants to indicate fraud. An analysis of moving averages over time shows a settled ratio of votes for Biden with a sudden jump in the hours when counting was “stopped”. In some cases votes seem to have been processed faster than physically possible. Other analyses point to suspicious spikes of votes for Biden. A number of statisticians have been attracted to the question and their analyses suggesting fraud are appearing. Again there are too many of these pointers – all of them in the same direction – to be easily dismissed.
Finally there is the whole collection of problems with some voting machines – especially Dominion – and their associated software. The argument is that the machines and software were specifically designed to produce fraudulent results: totals can be changed, votes switched from one candidate to another, incoming vote weighted in favour of one candidate and so on. There are affidavits to this effect. U.S. Embassy cables and previous investigations had shown problems with Dominion machines but, nonetheless, they and the associated software were widely used in 2020. There is possible foreign involvement in these important machines: many parts are made in China; affidavits claim that voting tallies were sent to other countries on the Internet and were massaged there and that passwords into the system were widely available. A computer security expert attests that “hundreds of thousands of votes” were transferred from Trump to Biden by the machines. These issues are attracting computer programmers and hackers and there are now a number of videos on the Internet showing how easily the machines can be hacked.
In summary, the argument is that the machines were programmed to rig the vote in the key states (and perhaps everywhere) by an amount that was thought to be sufficient. But the Trump vote was so much greater than anticipated that the counting had to be “halted” in the “battleground states”; in the “halted” time, ballots were manufactured to compensate. The image of a smooth red curve being overtaken by a blue stepped curve has become the logo of those who believe there were such injections.
This is now quite a large heap of accusations, witness statements and assertions: can these charges be proved in a court (leaving aside the question of whether U.S. courts can be trusted to rule on such a partisan issue – vide General Flynn’s experience)? Or, given the provisions of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution – “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…” – can sufficient state legislatures be convinced to select Trump-voting Electors? We will find out. But there are certainly too many things to be airily dismissed and there is nothing to suggest that either side will concede until the issue has been fought out to the end.
But, whatever is decided, half the population will be convinced that the election was stolen – indeed a Rasmussen poll in mid-November showed that nearly half the population – including 30% of Democrats! – already believes that “Democrats stole votes or destroyed pro-Trump ballots in several states to ensure that Biden would win”.
2020 has not been a good year for the United States: COVID-19 has wreaked havoc, the economic gains of the past few years have eroded, civil violence and rioting have been common. A disputed election leaving half the population thinking its candidate was cheated out of office will not make things more peaceful. Many are speaking of, if not outright civil war, severe civil strife.
And, in a condition of widespread civil strife and who knows what else, what is the future of the Imperium Americanum? Many pundits will quote Plehve’s alleged remark about the attractiveness of a “little, victorious war” to distract the population. But what little wars are there left? Afghanistan? Iraq? Hardly victorious. It is unlikely that overthrowing Maduro would be very short or, even if it were, that it would distract impassioned American rioters. A war with Iran would be neither little nor victorious. A really severe civil war would divide the U.S. military and bring it home. The consequences of the November 2020 election, whoever winds up in the White House in January, will be long-lasting; the Imperium will have important concerns at home.
What from Moscow’s perspective? The ingathering of American resources to deal with problems in the homeland will be welcomed but the dangers of a nuclear state imploding will not. 2021 may make 2020 look like a blessed haven of stability.
Obama would take the COVID vaccine on live television if Fauci assured him it was safe
By Jon Rappoport | December 4, 2020
SiriusXM, The Joe Madison Show, Obama [1] [2]: “I promise you that when it’s [the vaccine] been made for people who are less at risk, I will be taking it, and I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed just so that people know that I trust this science… People like Anthony Fauci, who I know, and I’ve worked with, I trust completely… So if Anthony Fauci tells me this vaccine is safe, and can vaccinate, you know, immunize you from getting COVID, absolutely, I’m going to take it…I understand, historically, everything dating back all the way to the Tuskegee experiments and so forth, why the African-American community would have some skepticism, but the fact of the matter is, is that vaccines are why we don’t have polio anymore.”
There’s no risk here, because if doctors have any sense, they’ll make sure Obama is jabbed with a shot of saltwater, a placebo, masquerading as the real thing.
The real thing, the RNA COVID vaccine, poses all sorts of dangers. No RNA technology for a drug or vaccine has ever been approved for public use. [3]
Efforts in the past to bring the technology to market have failed, owing to adverse effects. The basic effect has been auto-immune reactions. The body attacks itself. [3]
Further, as I’ve described several times, the major clinical trials of the COVID vaccine are not designed to prevent serious illness, hospitalization, or death. They’re designed to prevent “mild cases”—meaning a cough, or chills and fever. [4]
A mild case cures itself naturally. No need for a vaccine.
Other than danger, and uselessness, the vaccine is perfect.
Obama is grandstanding. He’s looking for publicity any way he can get it, as he re-enters the political scene standing right behind his former assistant, Joe Biden.
Maybe Joe can appoint Obama to the post of press secretary, to stand up on television once a week to deliver messages to the nation. Just like old times.
Unless the building tsunami of vote fraud sweeps Joe away into obscurity.
Now that he’s back on the scene, Obama might feel a need to re-enforce his image as the “great peacemaker.” You know, “bridging the divide in a nation seized by a frenzy of hatreds.”
Just in case, I offer this look back at his actual record. The Guardian, “America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama’s reign,” by Medea Benjamin. [5]
Sub-headline: “According to new figures, the US dropped nearly three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.”
“… in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.”
“While most of these air attacks were in Syria and Iraq, US bombs also rained down on people in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. That’s seven majority-Muslim countries.”
“One bombing technique that President Obama championed is drone strikes. As drone-warrior-in-chief, he spread the use of drones outside the declared battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, mainly to Pakistan and Yemen. Obama authorized over 10 times more drone strikes than George W Bush, and automatically painted all males of military age in these regions as combatants, making them fair game for remote controlled killing.”
“President Obama has claimed that his overseas military adventures are legal under the 2001 and 2003 authorizations for the use of military force passed by Congress to go after al-Qaida. But today’s wars have little or nothing to do with those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.”
Getting the picture?
Then there was Obama’s military adventure, in partnership with Hillary Clinton: the bombing of Libya, which turned that place into a non-nation terrorist nightmare.
So, would you buy a used car from that man, or trust his assurances about a COVID vaccine?
Update: Now we have rogue’s gallery of ex-presidents who say they’ll take the COVID shot publicly, to assure everyone it’s safe: Obama, Bush, and Bill Clinton. [6]
Hell of a trio. Will Trump and Biden join the team? [7]
Bush is the perfect dupe. You see, he’s done this before. Years ago, when it was falsely announced that the country was under threat from a bio-attack of smallpox, Bush rolled up his sleeve on live television and took the vaccine.
Tommy Thompson, then the head of Health and Human Services, announced there was a vial of smallpox vaccine ready for every American, and special centers would be set up across the nation to deliver it.
Only a few centers were established. Months passed. Then, all sorts of doctors objected, saying the live vaccine was too dangerous for mass public consumption.
Tommy Thompson blithely made a new announcement. He was NOT recommending that any of Bush’s cabinet members take the shot.
The whole program collapsed.
Of course, the vaccine, which was too dangerous, was the same brew that had been given to millions upon millions of people in Africa, decades earlier.
Upon completion of the program, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued heraldic proclamations of success. Smallpox had been conquered.
A very trustworthy source told me the following: After the smallpox vaccine campaign in Africa was over, a secret WHO meeting was held in Geneva.
A decision was made never to deploy that vaccine again.
Why? Because it caused smallpox.
But don’t worry. All is well. Take the COVID vaccine. Carry the immunity certificate with you wherever you go. Flash it, smile, be happy.
Obama likes the vaccine. Bush does. Clinton does. Trump and Biden, too.
What else do you need to know?
SOURCES:
[3] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/05/22/moderna-and-the-covid-vaccine-what-kind-of-lunacy/
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy
[6] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/02/politics/obama-vaccine/index.html
Canadian Intel Report Alleging COVID-19 Disinformation Campaign is ‘Madness’, Russian Embassy States
Sputnik – 04.12.2020
The Russian Embassy in Ottawa refuted a Canadian intelligence report that claimed Russia, China and Iran actively spread COVID-19 disinformation.
Earlier in the day, snippets of a Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) report obtained by a Canadian media outlet shed light on an alleged disinformation campaign by Russia, China and Iran to discredit western countries’ pandemic response to further their strategic interests.
“False claims in blame Russia-fashion spread by [mainstream media], referring to secret intelligence reports, instead of cooperation against the pandemic. The propaganda war by western spy agencies to denigrate Russian anti-COVID-19 efforts and the successful Sputnik V vaccine while diverting attention from west’s own failures. Madness,” the embassy’s press service tweeted on Thursday.
Canada’s spy agency deduced that Russia spread disinformation to discredit the west, promote national interests abroad and to push for an end to sanctions. China and Iran were accused of spreading disinformation to compensate for their failures in containing the pandemic.
Reciprocally, Russia, China and Iran have vocally asserted that western countries are using COVID-19 disinformation to sow discord in their internal affairs.
Obama Is An Asshole, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
By Caitlin Johnstone | December 2, 2020
US empire: Assassinates scientists, invades countries, topples governments, circles the planet with military bases, deliberately starves civilians to death with sanctions, threatens the world with nuclear weapons.
Also the US empire: “Iran must begin acting like a normal country.”
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Obama’s job is to tell you that the ruling establishment which murders, oppresses and exploits people all day every day is quite progressive actually and the people who oppose it are immature lunatics who should be scoffed at.
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If you killed someone that’s all you’d be known for. When a US president kills thousands upon thousands of people all mainstream discourse is about his sound fiscal policy and ability to sink a three-pointer.
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Nice guy fascism: A murderous and tyrannical political ideology whose iron-fisted agendas of oppression, exploitation and violent domination are hidden behind lip service to progressivism, diverse cabinet picks, and nice tweets.
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The powerful are screwing us and there are more of us than there are of them. An entire culture and information ecosystem has been deliberately constructed around keeping a critical mass of us from awakening to this one basic fact.
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Any issue of international conflict involving the US-centralized empire is going to be awash with western media propaganda marketed to western audiences. No one who ignores this indisputable reality is able to understand any major international news story.
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It’s so weird how rich and powerful people are pouring massive amounts of wealth and manpower into manipulating our minds every single day and it’s not the main thing we talk about all the time.
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Biden is like if everyone suddenly started gushing poetically about how wonderful and refreshing and inclusive the Chevron logo is.
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Being part of the US-led liberal world order means that anyone, regardless of their race, gender or sexual orientation, is free to serve the globe-spanning murder machine in any way they choose.
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Being a part of the US-led liberal world order means you are free to do absolutely anything you want, so long as it doesn’t inconvenience the powerful in any way, shape or form.
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Sometimes I feel sad that Cobain died so young, but I brighten up when I remember it means we didn’t have to watch him turn into a cringey embarrassing shitlib.
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Failing to pardon Snowden and Assange would be an inexcusable evil. Please re-evaluate your opinion of Trump as needed when he pardons neither.
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Western imperialism is worse than every single issue the mass media are screaming in your face about on any given day. Without exaggeration it is worse than 100 percent of those issues. If people could really grasp the horrific nature of imperial warmongering, the wars would be forced to end.
It can be hard to avoid getting swept up in the MSM Issue Of The Day, but it’s important to keep your focus on the actual monster in the room. They’re ripping kids apart with explosives and starving them to death with sanctions, currently, and it is invisible to the news media.
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Charles Manson never murdered anyone, he just convinced people that it would be a good thing to do. The mass media have convinced far more people that it would be a good idea to commit far more murders than the Manson cult ever committed, and should be reviled as such.
The fastest way to get yourself banned from social media is to say something that sounds like you’re inciting violence. But mass media which do that constantly are never banned, because what’s actually forbidden is inciting violence that isn’t authorized by the powerful.
In fact the easiest way to advance your career in media is to incite violence on behalf of the powerful. This is true in news media, and it’s even true in video games and Hollywood; make compelling games and screenplays glorifying military violence and your career will thrive.
We live in a society that is built on violence, sustained by violence, and driven by violence. Those who promote unauthorized violence are vilified while those who promote violence in service of the powerful can ride that wave to fame and fortune. This should disgust us all.
If you remove your propaganda-installed perceptual filters, you see a machine that is fuelled by the blood of the powerless being piloted by serial killer politicians, laughing skullface comedians, and news men with human flesh in their teeth. Once you’ve seen the horror of the empire you can never unsee it.
Betting other people’s money on green
Climate Discussion Nexus | December 2, 2020
With pandemic lockdowns crushing the private sector, it’s obviously time to launch an ambitious redesign of our economy. Or so they tell us. And “they” are not just the architects of the Great Reset whose plans, we noted last week, offer a strange mix of cosmic ambition and predictable futility. But “they” also includes those who keep insisting, against all evidence, that there are vast commercial opportunities in this new economy. If that were true it would mean we don’t need sweeping government intervention, just the same old profit motive and efficient capital markets. Unfortunately neither profits nor efficient capital markets seem to enter the picture. Yahoo! Finance just noted that “The chief executive officers of eight Canadian pension funds, collectively representing about $1.6 trillion in assets under management, are calling for a green recovery from the COVID-19 economic slump.” But every single one of those massive funds is… a government agency gambling with other people’s money. Every one.
We’re talking state capitalism not the private kind because the CEOs who signed the letter in question run “AIMCo, BCI, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, CPP Investments, HOOPP, OMERS, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and PSP Investments.” All stuffed with public-sector money and insulated by government guarantees from the cost of any failed investment in magic beans. Unlike, say, taxpayers.
In case some of those pension funds are not familiar to you, HOOPP is the “Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP)” whose website boasts that “As one of Canada’s largest defined benefit pension plans, we are dedicated to providing retirement security to more than 380,000 healthcare workers in Ontario.” As for AIMCo, aka “Alberta Investment Management Corporation”, its website touts first “New Commitments to Diversity & Inclusion” then “Investors Collaborate on Climate Change Mitigation”. Not return on equity. So you’re not astonished to learn from their 2019 Annual Report that they call themselves “Alberta’s investment manager” and that their shareholder, in the singular, is… “the Government of Alberta”. Or that they are “a non-profit, crown corporation responsible for investing on behalf of most of Alberta’s public sector employees and, through the Heritage Fund, on behalf of all Albertans.”
Shall we continue? Let’s. Sure enough, BCI is the “British Columbia Investment Management Corporation” aka “The Investment Manager of Choice for British Columbia’s Public Sector”. Obviously the Caisse de depot is a branch of the Quebec government. It claims its clients are “41 depositor groups. Most are pension plans and public and parapublic insurance plans which, together, pay out benefits to more than two million Quebecers each year.” But of course its real client is the government of Quebec, which appoints the Board of Directors and mandates the Caisse to generate money for the government’s pension plans “while at the same time contributing to Quebec’s economic development” in, you understand, an independent manner.
Where are we? Ah yes, CPP Investments, whose name speaks for itself, though we might add that it is “one of the world’s largest investors in private equity”. So it is not your grandfather’s capitalism we’re seeing here.
Then there’s OMERS, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, a branch of the Ontario government that, Wikipedia notes, “has become one of the largest institutional investors in Canada”. And as its own website notes, it runs a “defined benefit pension plan” so if the market returns aren’t there, well, the government will come to the rescue with however many billions are needed.
We don’t have to tell you that the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is another of these parastatal behemoths. But we should mention that PSP Investments is… yes… the “Public Sector Pension Investment Board”, a branch of the federal government that is also “one of Canada’s largest pension investment managers” and once again oversees defined-benefit plans.
We dwell on the “defined-benefit” aspect here because it is vital to understand that these outfits are free to gamble with other people’s money for two vital reasons. First, by law their beneficiaries get paid whether the investments work out or not. And second and related, they are free from the sort of scrutiny normal investment firms face from clients concerned about losing their savings if the fund bets heavily on trendy exotic ideas because their clients are not those whose pensions they manage but governments that can just raise taxes, borrow against other people’s assets or, for the federal government, print the stuff to make up for any failure to find a pot of gold at the end of the green rainbow.
This consideration deserves emphasis because when you hear “institutional investors” you might well be inclined to think, well, if sober money managers taking care of Canadians’ hard-won savings are into this stuff it must not be trendy or exotic. Green must be blue chip. But no. It’s just more of the public-sector song and dance you pay for whether you like it or not.
Except for one nasty thing: The bigger they are the harder they fall. Especially now, with public sector balance sheets a soggy red mess, if one or more of these major holders of often badly underfunded public-sector pension assets should bet the wind farm on something that goes thud, as alternative energy generally does, it may not be possible for the government or governments in question to find the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars needed to make up the losses. (The CPP, the Chief Actuary of Canada has said, must earn a real rate of return of 4% for 75 years to cover projected payouts. Good luck with that mate. And as Andrew Coyne has been tireless in exposing, what was once a small outfit pursuing a “Wealthy Barber” plan of passive investment with 164 employees and administrative costs of $118 million has since 2006 become a bloated behemoth whose 1,661-strong host of managers costing $3.3 billion a year pursue risky ventures around the world. So they’re riding the gravy train even if we’re not.)
There is this meme out there that big companies are extra-right-wing entities that send lavish cheques to deniers and oppose regulation. But it’s not true. Like GM, which just switched from Trump’s position on California’s strict new emissions to Biden’s, many are smooth operators convinced they can game the system. They may find, as carmakers in Europe are already finding, that feeding the crocodile in the hope of being eaten last is just exactly as bad an idea as it sounds. But in any case private companies no longer dominate financial markets. Public and parapublic entities do.
As a result, the only meaningful shareholder revolt possible here is that of citizens. And just imagine trying to make OMERS’ investment strategy a key election issue. But it matters, because that CEOs’ letter is full of trendy verbiage like “The pandemic and other tragic events of 2020 have revealed pre-existing business strengths and shortcomings with respect to social inequity, including systemic racism and environmental threats.” And so all your chips, as a taxpayer and as a retired or even current public employee, are on the notion that a Great Reset is a fiscal winner.
French former interior minister accused of concealing evidence in death of 80yo killed by riot police tear gas grenade in her home
RT | December 2, 2020
The daughter of an 80-year-old woman killed when a tear gas grenade was fired into her apartment by French riot police two years ago has filed a legal complaint against former Interior Minister Christophe Castaner over the death.
In 2018, Zineb Redouane was closing the shutters of her flat in Marseille when she was struck by the canister, fired during a Yellow Vest demonstration. Experts estimated it had been travelling at more than 97km/h when it hit her chest and face, and she died in hospital shortly thereafter. A report earlier this year into the incident cleared the police of any wrongdoing.
However, a recent investigation conducted by the French non-governmental organization Disclose, using reconstructions by a research group at the University of London, contradicted that report and alleged that the officer who had fired the canister was targeting residential homes.
As a result of the NGO’s findings, Redouane’s daughter, Milfed, has now lodged a legal complaint against Castaner, who was the interior minister at the time of her mother’s death.
Her daughter’s lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, has repeatedly accused the former minister and others of obstructing justice, and now, in the formal complaint, is accusing him of concealing and interfering with evidence.
Castaner, who currently leads the ruling La République En Marche! party, has repeatedly claimed Redouane’s death was not linked with the tear gas grenade. In 2019, pronouncing claims that police killed her as false, he told France’s Inter radio station, “We must stop this talk of police violence”.
The complaint will now be heard before the Cour de Justice de la République – a special court that was set up to try cases of ministerial misconduct.
A global team of experts has found 10 FATAL FLAWS in the main test for Covid and is demanding it’s urgently axed
By Peter Andrews | RT | December 1, 2020
A peer review of the paper on which most Covid testing is based has comprehensively debunked the science behind it, finding major flaws. They conclude it’s utterly unsuitable as a means for diagnosis – and the fall-out is immense.
Last week, I reported on a landmark ruling from Portugal, where a court had ruled against a governmental health authority that had illegally confined four people to a hotel this summer. They had done so because one of the people had tested positive for Covid in a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test – but the court had found the test fundamentally flawed and basically inadmissible.
Now the PCR testing supremacy under which we all now live has received another crushing blow. A peer review from a group of 22 international experts has found 10 “major flaws” in the main protocol for such tests. The report systematically dismantles the original study, called the Corman-Drosten paper, which described a protocol for applying the PCR technique to detecting Covid.
The Corman-Drosten paper was published on January, 23, 2020, just a day after being submitted, which would make any peer review process that took place possibly the shortest in history. What is important about it is that the protocol it describes is used in around 70 percent of Covid kits worldwide. It’s cheap, fast – and absolutely useless.
The 10 deadly sins
Among the fatal flaws that totally invalidate the PCR testing protocol are that the test:
- is non-specific, due to erroneous primer design
- is enormously variable
- cannot discriminate between the whole virus and viral fragments
- has no positive or negative controls
- has no standard operating procedure
- does not seem to have been properly peer reviewed
Oh dear. One wonders whether anything at all was correct in the paper. But wait – it gets worse. As has been noted previously, no threshold for positivity was ever identified. This is why labs have been running 40 cycles, almost guaranteeing a large number of false positives – up to 97 percent, according to some studies.
The cherry on top, though, is that among the authors of the original paper themselves, at least four have severe conflicts of interest. Two of them are members of the editorial board of Eurosurveillance, the sinisterly named journal that published the paper. And at least three of them are on the payroll of the first companies to perform PCR testing!
Heroes we deserve
The 22 members of the consortium that has challenged this shoddy science deserve huge credit. The scientists, from Europe, the USA, and Japan, comprise senior molecular geneticists, biochemists, immunologists, and microbiologists, with many decades of experience between them.
They have issued a demand to Eurosurveillance to retract the Corman-Drosten paper, writing: “Considering the scientific and methodological blemishes presented here, we are confident that the editorial board of Eurosurveillance has no other choice but to retract the publication.’’ Talk about putting the pressure on.
It is difficult to overstate the implications of this revelation. Every single thing about the Covid orthodoxy relies on ‘case numbers’, which are largely the results of the now widespread PCR tests. If their results are essentially meaningless, then everything we are being told – and ordered to do by increasingly dictatorial governments – is likely to be incorrect. For instance, one of the authors of the review is Dr Mike Yeadon, who asserts that, in the UK, there is no ‘second wave’ and that the pandemic has been over since June. Having seen the PCR tests so unambiguously debunked, it is hard to see any evidence to the contrary.
The house of cards collapses
Why was this paper rushed to publication in January, despite clearly not meeting proper standards? Why did none of the checks and balances that are meant to prevent bad science dictating public policy kick into action? And why did it take so long for anyone in the scientific community to challenge its faulty methodology? These questions lead to dark ruminations, which I will save for another day.
Even more pressing is the question of what is going to be done about this now. The people responsible for writing and publishing the paper have to be held accountable. But also, all PCR testing based on the Corman-Drosten protocol should be stopped with immediate effect. All those who are so-called current ‘Covid cases’, diagnosed based on that protocol, should be told they no longer have to isolate. All present and previous Covid deaths, cases, and ‘infection rates’ should be subject to a massive retroactive inquiry. And lockdowns, shutdowns, and other restrictions should be urgently reviewed and relaxed.
Because this latest blow to PCR testing raises the probability that we are not enduring a killer virus pandemic, but a false positive pseudo-epidemic. And one on which we are destroying our economies, wrecking people’s livelihoods and causing more deaths than Covid-19 will ever claim.
Peter Andrews is an Irish science journalist and writer based in London. He has a background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in genetics.
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The infinite list
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | October 12, 2022
Almost three years ago science entered a new dark age.
Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, seems to agree. He has been compiling a list of the examples of anti-science we have unfortunately become used to.
I have listed his thoughts so far but the list is continually expanding... continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Iran War Confusion & Mixed Messaging /Lt Col Daniel Davis
- Israel threatens Gaza flotilla activists with death after abduction
- Met refuses to probe British nationals accused of war crimes in Gaza
- Hezbollah denies activity in Syria amid persistent and false claims
- Melkite bishops concerned over Israeli demolitions in South Lebanon
- Israel’s Obliteration Ecocide from Gaza to Lebanon and Beyond
- UAE deports tens of thousands of Pakistanis, seizes their savings amid war on Iran: Report
- Wheels Down in Tbilisi: Was a Routine U.S. Military Stopover a Deliberate Signal to Iran?
- Trump’s second strike on Iran would be suicidal. But that’s not the reason why he won’t go ahead with it
- Palantir touts record expansion and ‘battlefield’ AI value
- If Americans Knew
- An All-American Retort to Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon
- How Dr. Adam Hamawy’s experience as a surgeon in Gaza inspired him to run for Congress
- Under Trump, Green Card Seekers Face New Scrutiny for Views on Israel
- With World Distracted by War, Extremist Settlers Intensify Attacks in West Bank
- Israel’s brutality toward Gaza flotilla activists – 3 articles
- “Spitting and humiliation are daily. People are afraid to walk in Jerusalem with Christian symbols.”
- How the US-Israel Relationship Weakens America and Harms the World
- 1 in 5 amputees in Gaza is a child, UN warns amid prosthetic care crisis
- 6,000 Gazans lack prosthetic and/or rehabilitation care – Daily Update
- As in Gaza, Israel is targeting rescue workers in South Lebanon, killing more than 100 since March
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Declining Trends In 1980-2023 Tropical Cyclone Frequency, Accumulated Energy
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
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