The Great Reset is Getting Closer
By Vernon Coleman | March 9, 2022
Sir Klaus Schwab (knighted by the queen for services to conspiracy) is eager to move on with the Great Reset. And so are his co-conspirators. They know that they’re now very close to victory.
The covid fraud terrified, demoralised and trained the naïve and the ignorant and initiated a mass of jab induced illnesses and deaths. The climate change fraud has created a population filled with false anxiety. And now the deliberately manufactured hysteria over the Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered massive shortages of fuel and food that will result in hundreds of millions of deaths. The hysteria was composed, orchestrated and conducted by the usual media suspects, with the BBC and The Guardian in the vanguard. The BBC long ago stopped being a provider of news and became a propaganda unit – denying, suppressing or twisting the truth with pride rather than regret or embarrassment. (When the BBC proudly announced that it didn’t interview doctors questioning vaccination it abandoned all claims to be a news organisation.)
The story told by the media is that Putin is a threat to democracy. If someone can find evidence of any democracy in the West I’d be delighted if they pointed it out. Where is the democracy in Canada? In Australia? In New Zealand? In the UK? In the USA? Anywhere?
Free speech died in February 2020 and hasn’t been seen since.
You’d have to be as naïve as a five-year-old not to realise that the West engineered this war; manipulating Putin into position like a chess piece.
There have been dozens of wars and invasions and massacres in recent years but never before has there been such mass hysteria. Never before have politicians sported coloured favours in support of their favourite side in the conflict. I don’t remember much establishment concern when the Americans and the British were killing a million babies in Iraq. I don’t remember the media complaining about our attacking Libya.
Sainsbury’s, a British grocer, says that it stands united with the people of Ukraine. I don’t remember them standing united with the people dying in scores of other conflicts.
Sanctions won’t do the Russians much damage but the sanctions aren’t aimed at Russia – they’re aimed at us. They’re part of the route to the New World Order.
You’d have to be blind, stupid or bought not to see the plot unfolding and the endgame approaching rapidly.
And yet blindness, stupidity and corruption are commonplace.
For example, the authorities now claim that covid can shrink the brain. The paid for media commentators ignore the fact that it has been known for months that it is the covid-19 jabs which cause brain damage.
The official line is that the only real sign of Long Covid is a loss of smell. And that’s almost certainly a result of olfactory nerve damage resulting from the worthless PCR tests.
The official view is that cricketer Shane Warne died of a congenital heart problem. No officially acceptable commentator has even suggested that there might be a link to his covid-19 jab. And no-one in the mainstream media has questioned the conclusion that yet another super-fit professional sportsman has suddenly developed a deadly, previously unsuspected congenital heart problem. Not even Shane Warne ever managed that much spin.
Any rabid pro-vaxxer who does not, for at least a moment, ask herself or himself whether Mr Warne might have been killed by the covid jab is an idiot. Any doctor who doesn’t ask himself how many the jabs are killing should be struck off the medical register for rank stupidity.
The Canadian province of Quebec will charge its most intelligent residents a special covid health tax. The 13% of Quebec who have been wise enough not to be jabbed with a toxic drug will have to pay extra taxes – presumably to help pay for the additional health care required by those less intelligent and less well informed residents who succumbed to pressure and allowed themselves to be poisoned.
The Premier, Francois Legault, admitted that the bullied and simple minded souls who had been jabbed ‘had made some sacrifices’ and were ‘owed this kind of measure’.
At least he recognises that having the poisonous, experimental jab was a sacrifice.
Everywhere you look there are signs that the conspirators are tightening the net.
Share prices around the world are crashing as the price of oil and gas continue to soar. Everyone hoping to have a pension is affected by this. Council employees who think their pensions are safe will lose out since many local authorities have made reckless investments which are collapsing in value.
Local councils everywhere are doubling the price of car park tickets – all part of the synchronised plan to bankrupt local businesses and all part of the Agenda 21 process of economic destruction.
Uninformed citizens everywhere are responding to the media onslaught and demanding that Russian oil and gas be banned. I wonder how many of the people who complained that Shell bought some Russian oil will complain when there is no fuel for their cars or for their heating.
The media proudly announce that motorists will take fewer and shorter journeys. That’s great if you don’t mind a 10 miles each way walk or bicycle ride to the shops. Rural communities will die a thousand carefully planned deaths. And the elderly and infirm will be marooned in their homes. It’s all part of the plan, of course.
In Scotland it will soon be legal for school-children to change sex as and when they feel like it – without a medical diagnosis. Boys will doubtless change into girls on Thursdays so that they can use the girls’ changing rooms for PT classes. And then they’ll change back again on Fridays so that they can play football and avoid the 21st century equivalent of domestic science.
They’re already talking about stricter controls of the internet. (As far as I am concerned the controls couldn’t be much stricter. I am banned from every social media site I’ve ever heard of.) How much longer before websites disappear for good? I’ll be surprised if we’re still here in six months’ time.
Most big investment companies (particularly in the UK) are keen to ban Russian oil and gas in order to please the global warming cultists who have acquired power and influence far greater than their numbers justify. The shortage of oil will, among other things, mean that farmers won’t be able to afford fertilisers. Food supplies will plummet.
Recent research shows that the educational system in the UK has been carefully and systematically and deliberately destroyed during the last few years. Around half of all British adults have the numeracy of a primary school child. Only one in five UK adults is functionally numerate. This ignorance means that people are easily tricked by misinformation spread by the BBC, other media groups and Government advisors.
Governments and the media are stirring up the people ready for a long war. We’ve been told that the war could last a decade or more. How did Orwell know?
The conspirators are inspiring hatred and they are demonising peace-loving citizens everywhere. It all rather reminds me of that once popular TV show called ‘The Price is Right’. Before the show started a warm-up man would build the audience up into a frenzy. It’s what is happening now. ‘Boo and hiss if you see a Russian!’
Fuel and food prices are going to soar. Fuel and food will be scarce. Inflation is going to go up to a new height. The result will be impoverishment and death. Rising inflation will destroy those with savings. Rising interest rates will destroy those with variable rate mortgages.
Hundreds of millions will starve to death in Africa but Black Lives Matter demonstrators will be too busy whingeing about statues to notice.
The conspirators know that China has been stockpiling food and metals for months. The Chinese aren’t interested in the global warming nonsense. They’re building coal fired power stations and they’ve given families permission to have three children.
China and Russia are in partnership and the conspirators know that if the Chinese and the Russians don’t take part in the Great Reset then the West will shrink alone – and be weak and vulnerable.
And so the hatred and the fear and the anger against Russia (and China) will be stirred up ever more.
The war is real enough, of course, but it is being used (and was probably triggered) by the conspiracy practitioners; the evil billionaires whose plan to take over the world may sound like something out of an old James Bond movie but which is very real.
We’re in the final stages of the move towards the Great Reset.
We win now or we lose forever.
And to win we need to explain to everyone we know or meet what is happening and why.
We’ve got until the end of 2022 – if we’re lucky.
Vernon Coleman’s book Endgame, available as a paperback and an eBook, explains the background to the great reset, explains what is happening and what they have planned for us.
The climate scaremongers: BBC’s campaign against fossil fuels
By Paul Homewood | TCW Defending Freedom | March 4, 2022
As political pressure mounts for the UK fully to exploit North Sea oil reserves and begin fracking, the BBC is doubling down in its campaign to fight fossil fuels.
There is nothing new in this, of course: we have become used it down the years. But now they don’t even attempt to disguise it, so convinced are they of their moral superiority in the matter.
Last week they published two articles attacking critics of Net Zero. The reports were full of the opinions of the BBC’s chums in the Green Blob, such as Greenpeace, Carbon Brief and the Committee on Climate Change, but gave scant mention of opposing views.
The first report, ‘Climate change: Can the UK afford its net zero policies?’ was an attempt to take down the arguments of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG), made up of about 20 Conservative MPs, who have perfectly legitimately drawn the public’s attention to the very real costs of Net Zero.
The article begins by portraying the NZSG as a tiny bunch of ultra Right-wing Brexiteers – you know, the ones who should be ignored!
The rest of the article carries on in the same one-sided vein, with grossly misleading and inaccurate comments and a failure to present the other side of the argument.
It starts by claiming that our energy bills are only £159 a year higher on average because of climate policies. But this does not reflect the full cost of those policies, which in total are estimated to cost £17.6billion this year. That is not £159, but £650 per household.
Much of this cost is paid by the public sector and industry/commerce, meaning higher taxes and prices. Either way, the public end up paying.
The BBC then go on to claim that we should be building wind farms, because they are cheaper than gas power stations.
They imply that you can simply swap wind for gas, ignoring the fact the former is highly intermittent. Currently we need reliable, dispatchable generation, such as gas, to turn on when wind power fails to meet demand. When this is factored in, wind power is nearly double the cost of gas power.
Next the BBC turns its attention to claims that fracking will reduce energy prices in the UK. They argue that we cannot affect global prices of gas, which totally misses the point. Even if UK gas is sold at world prices, the country will still benefit hugely, and in particular government revenues will be boosted. Moreover it will greatly enhance our energy security.
The NZSG have rightly raised the question of how much we will all have to pay for Net Zero, something which the public has been kept in the dark about. The BBC’s response quotes the ultra optimistic calculations of the Committee on Climate Change, which have already been proved to be false and give a cost of ‘only’ £344billion by 2050.
Anybody who claims what the economy will look like three decades hence is a charlatan. But what we do know about is the crippling cost being imposed on the public in the short term. Things like heat pumps, insulation and electric cars will cost us tens of thousands of pounds. The new hydrogen networks being proposed will drive our energy bills up yet further.
For some reason, the BBC makes no mention of any of this.
But won’t the costs of climate change far outweigh all of this? The BBC think so:
‘The UK government’s latest report into the risks of climate change warns that based on a conservative estimate of a 2C temperature rise by 2100, flooding for non-residential properties across the UK is expected to increase by 27 per cent by 2050 and 40 per cent by 2080. At 4C this increases to 44 per cent and 75 per cent respectively.’
Leaving aside the fact that these claims are pure make-believe, does the BBC really think that eliminating the UK’s 1 per cent of world emissions will have the slightest effect on the climate?
The second BBC article, ‘Government climate advisers say cut fossil fuels to lower energy bills’ is by our old friend Roger Harrabin, ‘BBC environment analyst’. Again it does little but report the views of the Committee on Climate Change and others in the Green Blob, who are campaigning for more renewable energy.
As in the first article, it repeats the claim that energy prices won’t drop if we develop shale and North Sea gas reserves as the amounts are so insignificant. However, a recent study by the Warwick Business School estimated that our shale reserves could easily supply a quarter of the UK’s gas consumption over the next twenty years – a hardly insignificant amount at a time when North Sea gas output is expected to halve.
But for ideological reasons, the Committee on Climate Change would like to throw this all away!
John Kerry worries about Ukraine war’s effect on emissions
Joe Biden’s Climate Tsar, the gaffe-prone John Kerry, put his foot in it again last week. In an interview with a Middle East TV station he said he was worried that the Ukraine war would have ‘massive emissions consequences’, and that it could divert the world’s attention away from climate change.
This is the same John Kerry who flew in a private jet to Iceland last year to collect an Environmental Award. When asked why he chose private jet, he responded it was ‘the only choice for someone like me’.
It was only the other day that Kerry was full of praise for India’s climate efforts, despite the fact they continue to burn more and more coal. He was impressed by Prime Minister Modi’s promise to build lots of solar farms, which Kerry claimed would make India compliant with the 1.5C goal set at Glasgow, a goal which requires global emissions to be cut in half in this decade.
Evidently arithmetic is not John Kerry’s strong suit!
While Modi’s plans would increase wind and solar output tenfold by 2040, this will not be enough to even meet the rising demand for energy in India, which is projected to increase by 69 per cent by then. This means that fossil fuel consumption will continue to grow as well.
Even with all of this investment in renewables, wind and solar together will still only be supplying 20 per cent of India’s energy in 2040.
BP Energy Review & International Energy Agency Outlook
While John Kerry strolls around with his head in the clouds, the Indian Government have long realised that you cannot run a modern economy just on the wind and the sun.
Selling the UK steel industry down the river
As I explained a few weeks ago, the UK operates an Emissions Trading Scheme, a cap and trade system, applying to electricity generators, energy intensive industry and domestic aviation.
The scheme is designed to cut the use of fossil fuels by forcing companies to purchase carbon allowances if they dare to use them.
As a direct consequence of government policy, the price of these allowances has in effect quadrupled in the last couple of years. (Although the UK system was only introduced last May, it directly replaced a similar EU scheme, which it now tracks.)
Higher carbon prices have not only pushed electricity prices through the roof, but they are also hitting industry hard as well, not least the steel industry.
According to the Telegraph, steelmakers are now facing the prospect of cutting production thanks to a doubling of the carbon price in the last nine months.
Steel companies receive a set number of free allowances each year, but this quota is reduced each year. Once they have used these up, they must buy them on the market, which adds £175/ton to the cost of the steel produced. This amounts to a third of the price they sell the steel for, which is quite clearly unsustainable.
Indeed, so high are the carbon prices that firms can often be better off selling their allowances and producing nothing!
Cutting production however has its own problems for the steel industry, because its fixed costs are so high. In the real world, steel plants need to run at near to full capacity to be profitable. It makes no financial sense shutting down furnaces and rolling mills for days at a time.
In other words, they are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Furthermore there is little that steel firms can do to cut fossil fuel use. By definition, making steel is a highly energy intensive process. From personal experience I know that steel works have forever been looking at ways to reduce energy use on a daily basis.
It is true that electric arc furnaces, which melt scrap steel, don’t need the colossal amounts of coke required in blast furnaces, but higher electricity prices have already crippled their viability.
The inevitable result of government policy is that we will end up importing more steel instead of making it ourselves. It will be made in countries like China and India, where carbon emissions will be much higher than here. And more emissions will arise from shipping it halfway around the world.
The whole thing makes no sense whatsoever.
It is just another senseless sacrifice to the Great Green God.
They lied about everything else, but believe them about this war
By Frederick Edward | TCW Defending Freedom | March 5, 2022
HOW long until we get reports of people pelting Siberian huskies on the street?
Probably not too long. Already there are videos of Russian food shops being vandalised such as this one in Germany.
A friend who runs a Russian language school in Britain has received threats, including that all Russians should leave the UK. That the school employs mostly Ukrainians and the owner’s wife is from Kiev is neither here nor there when you’re caught up in the latest tide of moral righteousness.
Having forgotten utterly about the preoccupations of yesterday – Covid, Partygate (whatever happened to Sue Gray’s report?) – we are now fully at work with our latest, all-consuming passion. War. Lots of it. Each detonation of a mortar round more titillating than the last. I haven’t seen this much unanimity since the first days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Do you believe what you read in the media? Plucky Ukrainians, incompetent Russians. After a few days, claims that ‘Russia has lost the war’ abound. Stuck in the mud and stranded without fuel. That wars are rarely decided on the opening day seems lost to a world obsessed with only the present moment. There is plenty more time for Ukraine to fall.
But not without additional, unnecessary bloodshed, all encouraged by our politicians and media. Those wishing to volunteer for Kiev are sent away on a bandwagon of positive vibes and profile pictures with superimposed Ukrainian flags. That they are being sent to a probable death is neither here nor there.
The Russians are evil. The West never puts a foot wrong. Ignore the wars of the past – Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya – we are geopolitically chaste and without sin. That Ukraine is of approximately zero geostrategic interest to us does not matter. The forward march of Western hubris in its institutional form cannot be impeded.
Why would Nato not just say Ukraine will remain a buffer state? That nation’s entry into the alliance was so clearly a red line for the strategists of Moscow, nevertheless we courted its favour, assuming that being on the ‘right side of history’ would be enough. When Russia finally did invade, our ignorance leads us to throw our hands up and scream ‘bully!’ at Putin. I do not care much for Putin, but it is for the birds to assume that the West is entirely without blame.
Having been systematically lied to about every imaginable topic, I cannot simply buy our government’s line. Warrior Truss, whose unfamiliarity with the geography of the area should set alarm bells ringing, solemnly plays her role as a second-rate Thatcher-at-war. Johnson, who until yesterday was on the ropes of various scandals, is recast as a latter-day Churchill.
We’re fighting for democracy and freedom. Fighting for it in a corrupt eastern European state, cleft in two by a linguistic and ethnic fault line, and whose elites have bought the ear of the American President and his family.
We’re fighting it from the high horses of the West, which has just spent two years imprisoning its own citizens and demanding they undergo forced medical procedures. From the same West which would not dare comment on Trudeau’s totalitarian seizure of the bank accounts of those who dared disagree with him, nor on the dictatorial powers used daily in the Antipodes.
Forget all of that. We are the good guys. They are the bad guys. The world is black and white. We are not to blame, not one iota. Cheerlead for war and let the stakes get higher. Assume that Russia’s interests are invalid and to be ignored. We’re back to the gilded age of liberal democracies beating the drum of war.
Whatever you do, don’t look back or think about the recent past. Let your minds be firmly occupied by the indulgent orgy of violence, peddled by the same people who conned you so many times before, and who seek to keep us in a perpetual state of crisis. And certainly, never think about the law of unintended consequences.
Public Health Erred on the Side of Catastrophe
In a coercive mass experiment, governments opened a Pandora’s box of harms
By Brian McGlinchey | February 21, 2022
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, proponents of lockdowns, shelter-in-place orders, mask mandates and other coercive government interventions have characterized these measures as benevolently “erring on the side of caution.”
Now, as the grim toll of those public health measures comes into ever-sharper focus, it’s increasingly clear those characterizations were terribly wrong.
What’s less readily apparent, however, is how the very use of the “erring on the side of caution” framing was injurious in itself—by thwarting reasoned debate of public health policies, diverting attention from unintended consequences, and buffering the Covid regime’s architects from accountability.
To understand how the misuse of “erring on the side of caution” performed a sort of mass hypnosis that coaxed populations into two years of submission to disastrous, overreaching policies, consider how the expression is typically used.
In everyday life, one might err on the side of caution by:
- Leaving for the airport an extra 30 minutes early
- Carrying an umbrella when there’s a 25% chance of rain
- Opting for a less-challenging ski slope
- Going back into the house to make sure the iron is unplugged
- Getting a second medical opinion
Generally speaking, “erring on the side of caution” in everyday life means lowering risk with a precaution that has a negligible cost.
When mandate proponents portrayed their edicts as “erring on the side of caution,” it had the effect of tacitly assuring the public—and themselves—that there’d be little or no harm associated with extreme measures like:
- Shutting down businesses for months at a time
- Knowingly forcing millions of people into unemployment
- Halting in-person attendance at schools and colleges
- Ordering people of all ages and risk profiles to wear masks
- Denying people opportunities to socialize, recreate and enjoy living
That implicit low-downside assurance not only fostered unthinking support for draconian measures among citizens and experts alike, it also cultivated an atmosphere of intolerance toward those who questioned the wisdom of these interventions and predicted the great many harms that have resulted.
“Overconfident, unnuanced messaging conditioned us to assume that all dissenting opinions are misinformation rather than reflections of good faith disagreement or differing priorities,” write Rutgers professors Jacob Hale Russell and Dennis Patterson in their essay, The Mask Debacle. “In doing so, elites drove out scientific research that might have separated valuable interventions from the less valuable.”
Of course, in addition to its implicit assurance that a risk-reduction measure comes at little cost, “erring on the side of caution” conveys an assumption that the precaution will actually be effective.
That hasn’t been the case with Covid mandates. Though many continue embracing the illusion of government control over Covid, the contrary studies and real-world observations are stacking far too high to be denied any longer by the intellectually honest among us.
Charts via Ian Miller at Unmasked
Public Health Threw Out the Playbook and Threw Pandora’s Box Wide Open
The masses who’ve chanted “I trust science,” as they praise each government intervention and idolize those who impose them, are likely unaware that, before Covid-19, the well-considered scientific consensus was against lockdowns, broad quarantines and masking outside of hospital settings—particularly for a virus like Covid-19 that has a 99% survival rate for most age groups.
For example, a 2006 paper published by the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center—focusing on mitigation measures against another contagious respiratory illness, pandemic influenza—reads like a warning label against many of the policies inflicted on humanity in the face of Covid-19:
- “There is no basis for recommending quarantine either of groups or individuals. The problems in implementing such measures are formidable, and secondary effects of absenteeism and community disruption as well as possible adverse consequences… are likely to be considerable.”
- “Widespread closures [of schools, restaurants, churches, recreations centers, etc] would almost certainly have serious adverse social and economic effects.”
- “The ordinary surgical mask does little to prevent inhalation of small droplets bearing influenza virus… There are few data available to support the efficacy of N95 or surgical masks outside a healthcare setting. N95 masks need to be fit-tested to be efficacious.”
The point of that and other pre-2020 research into pandemic mitigation was to be prepared, in times of crisis, with policies that reflected a well-reasoned and dispassionate weighing of costs and benefits.
However, when the pandemic arrived, panicking public health officials and academics threw out the playbook and took their policy inspiration from the government that was first to confront the virus. Sadly for the world, that was communist China.
The breadth of the resulting harms from the ensuing plunge into public health authoritarianism is staggering. Far from erring on the side of caution…
Public health erred on the side of a mental health crisis. Anxiety and depression have surged, particularly among adolescents and young adults, where symptoms have doubled during the pandemic.
“I have never been as busy in my life and I’ve never seen my colleagues as busy,” New York psychiatrist Valentine Raiteri told CNBC. “I can’t refer people to other people because everybody is full.”
Public health erred on the side of juvenile suicide attempts. In the summer of 2020, emergency room visits for potential suicides by children leapt over 22% compared to the summer of 2019.
Public health erred on the side of drug overdoses. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, overdose deaths surged 30% in 2020 to a record-high of more than 93,000. Among the factors cited: social isolation, people using drugs alone, and decreased access to treatment.
Public health erred on the side of auto fatalities. Traffic deaths had been on a general downtrend since the 60s, reaching a near-record low in 2019. However, even with shutdown-lightened traffic, deaths jumped 17.5% in the summer of 2020 compared to 2019, and kept rising into 2021.
Blame increased drug and alcohol use, along with psychological fallout from people being denied life’s fundamental pleasures. University of Texas cognitive scientist Art Markman told The New York Times that anger and aggression behind the wheel in part reflects “two years of having to stop ourselves from doing things that we’d like to do.”
Public health erred on the side of domestic violence. A review of 32 studies found an increase in domestic violence around the world, with the increases most intense during the first week of lockdowns. “The home confinement led to constant contact between perpetrators and victims, resulting in increased violence and decreased reports,” the researchers found.
Public health erred on the side of riots, arson and looting. It’s my own conviction that 2020’s eruption of summer violence following a Minneapolis police officer’s callous homicide of George Floyd was greatly magnified by the period of forced mass confinement that preceded it.
Floyd’s death was a match dropped into a tinderbox of humanity confined to veritable house arrest. People blocked from restaurants and bars were suddenly granted a societal waiver to venture out into enormous crowds, where they found excitement, socialization and, far too often, a senselessly destructive means of venting months of pent-up energy, anxiety and frustration. It stands as the costliest civil unrest episode in American history.
Public health erred on the side of confining people where the virus is transmitted most. Lockdowns ordered people away from workplaces, schools, restaurants and bars and into their homes, where New York contract tracers found 74% of Covid spread was happening, compared to just 1.4% in bars and restaurants and even less in schools and workplaces.
Public health erred on the side of obesity. According to the CDC, “the risk of severe COVID-19 illness increases sharply with higher BMI [Body Mass Index].” So what happens when public health “experts” shut down schools, workplaces and recreation options and told people to stay home to stay “safe”?
The CDC found that, in 2020, the rate by which BMI increased among 2- to 19-year olds doubled. Another study found that 48% of adults gained weight during the pandemic, with those who were already overweight most likely to add even more. Among other factors, the study pointed to psychological distress and having schoolchildren at home.
Public health erred against fresh air, exercise and Vitamin D. Governments raced to shut down playgrounds, basketball courts and other outdoor recreation facilities. In a move that’s profoundly emblematic of heavy-handed, counterproductive authoritarianism in the age of Covid, the city of San Clemente, California filled a skate park with 37 tons of sand.
Public health erred on the side of impaired child development. “We find that children born during the pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic,” say the authors of a study from Paediatric Emergency Research in the UK and Ireland (PERUKI).
“Results highlight that even in the absence of direct SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 illness, the environmental changes associated [with the] COVID-19 pandemic [are] significantly and negatively affecting infant and child development.”
Public health erred on the side of learning loss. Children are less vulnerable to Covid-19 than they are to the flu, and rarely transmit it to teachers. Unfortunately, American public health officials and teacher unions prevailed in halting in-person instruction (and socialization) in favor of “remote learning.”
It was a poor substitute that fell hardest on the youngest learners. For example, according to curriculum and assessment provider Amplify, the percentage of first-graders scoring at or above the goals for their grade in mid-school-year dropped from 58% before the pandemic to just 44% this year.
Public health erred on the side of pointlessly masking schoolchildren. When schools did open, mask mandates abounded—despite children’s relative invulnerability to the virus and the documented rarity of in-school transmission. A Spanish study showed no discernible difference in transmission among 5-year-olds—who aren’t required to mask—and 6 year olds, who are.
“Masking is a psychological stressor for children and disrupts learning. Covering the lower half of the face of both teacher and pupil reduces the ability to communicate,” wrote Neeraj Sood, director of the Covid Initiative at USC, and Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford. “Positive emotions such as laughing and smiling become less recognizable, and negative emotions get amplified. Bonding between teachers and students takes a hit.”
“Most of the masks worn by most kids for most of the pandemic have likely done nothing to change the velocity or trajectory of the virus,” writes University of California associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics Vinay Prasad. “The loss to children remains difficult to capture in hard data, but will likely become clear in the years to come.”
Public health erred on the side of giving masked people a false sense of security. As I wrote in August, “Covid-19 particles are astoundingly small. Hard as it is to imagine, the imperceptible gaps in surgical masks can be 1,000 times the size of a viral particle. Gaps in cloth masks are well larger.” That’s to say nothing of the respirated air that simply goes around the mask’s edges.
Earlier in the pandemic, questioning cloth masks triggered outrage and swift social media censorship. Now, even mandate-happy CNN medical analyst Leanna Wen has declared they’re “little more than facial decorations.” Mask skepticism is sprouting elsewhere in mainstream media; the Washington Post and Bloomberg even published an essay titled “Mask Mandates Didn’t Make Much of a Difference Anyway.”
Chart via Ian Miller at Unmasked
When public health officials exaggerated the power of masks, they did more than promote pointless discomfort and a dystopian way of life. “Naively fooled to think that masks would protect them, some older high-risk people did not socially distance properly, and some died from Covid-19 because of it,” said epidemiologist, biostatistician and former Harvard Medical School professor Martin Kulldorff.
Public health erred on the side of killing small businesses. Thanks in large part to government’s targeting of so-called “non-essential businesses,” the first year of the pandemic brought an additional 200,000 business closures over prior levels.
Public health erred on the side of harming women’s careers. Women comprise a greater proportion of the sectors hid hardest by lockdowns, and the closing of schools and child care centers prompted many more women than men to put their careers on hold.
Public health erred on the side of inflation. To offset the massive economic destruction inflicted by public health shutdowns, the federal government plunged into an astounding spending spree, handing out cash to individuals, businesses and city and state governments.
It was money the government didn’t have, so the Federal Reserve essentially created it out of thin air. Pushing all that new fiat money into circulation debases the currency, fueling today’s surging price inflation—which is a stealth tax with no maximum rate, which hits poor people hardest.
Note: Lockdowns and other mandates weren’t the exclusive driver of many of the various harms I’ve described; general fear of the virus also contributed to some of them. However, it should also be noted that public health officials—and media that overwhelmingly emphasized negative stories—whipped up a level of fear that led people to overstate the level of danger actually posed by the virus.
There’s one more way in which characterizing lockdowns and other mandates as “erring on the side of caution” plays a psychological trick: Since the phrase is embedded with the notion of good intentions, it conditions citizens to be forgiving of the bureaucrats and politicians who imposed them.
Note, however, that in most everyday usage of “erring on the side of caution,” the choice to “err” is made voluntarily by individuals who bear the consequences of their own decisions—or by others, like an airplane pilot or a surgeon, to whom we’ve voluntarily and unmistakably granted control of our well-being.
The grim impacts of lockdowns and other mandates, however, were coercively imposed on society, to say nothing of the fact that so many of the edicts represented gross usurpations of power and violations of human rights.
On top of all that, the edicts were reinforced by Orwellian censorship and ostracism leveled at those who dared raise questions that have now proven valid.
So make no mistake: Overreaching public health officials and politicians—and the journalists-in-name-only who served as their mindless, unquestioning megaphones—have fully earned our withering condemnation. Indeed, holding them accountable is essential to sparing ourselves and future generations from repeating this dystopian chapter of human history.
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov Exposes CNN Hypocrisy during Press Conference
Orinoco Tribune – February 26, 2022
Russian authorities have to constantly counter media manipulation when it comes to the current crisis in Ukraine and the Donbas. On Friday, February 25, Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov exposed the hypocrisy of Western media in response to a CNN journalist during a video press conference.
During the conference, Minister Lavrov responded to a question by a CNN journalist and demonstrated the hypocrisy with which Western journalists have handled the Ukraine crisis and their supposed concern for the people of Ukraine and the Donbas. In the last eight years, as over 14,000 people in the Donbas died from attacks by Ukrainian military and neo-Nazis, CNN has not covered these news on the ground in the region.
“Have you seen schools destroyed?” Lavrov asked. “Have you seen women carrying babies killed? Have you seen a children’s beach bombed? Has anyone ever visited that place?”
Minister Lavrov assured that Russia will not attack the civilian population of Ukraine. He urged the CNN journalist to read President Vladimir Putin’s statements that explained that the objectives of the Russian operation are merely military, and that Russia has no plans to occupy Ukraine.
“No one is going to occupy Ukraine, the objectives of the operation are demilitarization and denazification,” Lavrov reiterated. He blamed the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, for wasting all possibility of negotiation and forcing President Putin to make the decision of a military intervention in the Donbas.
Lavrov’s exact response to the CNN correspondent in Kiev was a series of counter-questions. “Why hasn’t any Western journalist covered what is happening on the frontlines controlled by the Ukrainian government in Donbas during these eight years? If they are now horrified by what is happening in Kiev, has anyone from CNN been to Donbas itself?”
Moscow and Kiev issue updates on Ukrainian border guards reported killed
RT | February 26, 2022
The Russian military has claimed that Ukrainian border guards, whom Ukraine initially declared entirely slain, survived, while Kiev’s military concurred that it might indeed be the case.
Both countries’ armed forces on Saturday said that a group of Ukrainian border guards stationed on Zmeinyy (Snake) Island, located some 48km off Ukraine’s southern coast in the Black Sea, were captured by Russian forces. Russia says they were taken alive and unharmed to Sevastopol in Crimea.
However, the initial story allegedly went as follows: a group of 13 border guards on the island were confronted by a Russian warship on Thursday. The Russian ship ordered the group by radio to surrender, the Ukrainians replied “go f**k yourself,” and the Russian ship opened fire. After several hours of fighting, all the guards were killed.
The story spread like wildfire on social media and was held up by the Ukrainian government, Western media outlets and journalists as an example of Ukrainian “heroism.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky honored the troops he declared slain, saying: “On our [Snake] Island, defending it to the last, all the border guards died heroically,” and promising to award them the posthumous title of “Hero of Ukraine.”
The first signs that something else may have happened came early on Saturday, as Russia’s Black Sea Fleet announced that dozens of Ukrainian border troops were delivered to Sevastopol, Crimea, with videos online purportedly showing their arrival.
Ukraine’s Border Guard Service stated shortly afterwards that the troops on Snake Island “bravely defended themselves,” but were taken prisoner when the island was captured. According to the military branch, reports that all had perished were “preliminary,” and came after the Ukrainian military lost contact with the island. The ministry did not say how many guards were stationed on the island, and did not claim to know whether any died or were injured.
The Russian Ministry of Defense likewise confirmed the capture of the island. Spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said that 82 Ukrainian servicemen had been stationed on the island, that all surrendered, and that none were injured. Konashenkov said that as prisoners were being transported off the island, 16 Ukrainian Navy boats disguised as civilian vessels launched an attack on Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
Konashenkov said that Russians destroyed six of the Ukrainian vessels, and claimed that US drones were seen operating in the area, suggesting that the US “directed” the Ukrainian boats. These reports have not yet been corroborated.
A recording of the Snake Island garrison supposedly telling the Russian ship to “go f**k yourself” is still circulating on social media. There is currently no evidence that the recording is genuine, and Ukraine’s Border Guard Service only said that the troops gave a message indicating “no one will surrender.”
Pfizer Steps Up Advertising for Its ‘Blockbuster’ Drug to Treat Heart Conditions…
… Including Those Caused by COVID Vaccines
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 24, 2022
Two major pharmaceutical companies chose February, the month of love — or hearts — to launch an advertising campaign urging people experiencing heart issues for the first time to visit their doctors.
Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) this month revived the “No Time to Wait” ad campaign, spending $1.28 million on TV ads alone.
The campaign warns anyone experiencing palpitations and shortness of breath that they may be at increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation (AF), deep vein thrombosis (DVT), other types of blood clots and strokes — the same types of cardiovascular ailments found among people who have received COVID-19 vaccines.
The campaign urges viewers to seek early medical attention in order to reduce the risk of these serious complications.
“Early medical attention” could include prescription drugs — including Eliquis, developed and marketed by none other than Pfizer and BMS.
According to industry publication Fierce Pharma :
“The aim is to get patients back into their doctors’ offices — and of course, if needed, be diagnosed with any relevant condition that may require them to take a blood thinner, such as Eliquis.”
Eliquis, described as a “blockbuster blood thinner and atrial fibrillation (AF) drug,” is a major revenue generator for the Pfizer-BMS alliance, delivering more than $9 billion in annual revenue — far more than competing drugs such as Xarelto (produced by Bayer in conjunction with Johnson & Johnson), and Pradaxa, produced by Boehringer Ingelheim.
Pfizer and BMS relaunched the “No Time to Wait” campaign in conjunction with several advocacy organizations and medical societies, including World Thrombosis Day, which expressed support for the Pfizer-BMS initiative as a means of “educating” the public.
Characterized as a “surround-sound campaign,” Pfizer-BMS use television, radio and social media to deliver the “No Time to Wait” message to the public.
As part of the campaign, a DVT and pulmonary embolism (PE) television advertisement debuted on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14. The ad showed two patients describing how they “didn’t wait” to speak to their doctors about the AF, DVT and PE symptoms they had begun to experience while performing everyday activities.
Speaking to the camera, the two actors describe symptoms, such as shortness of breath and a racing heart, which are potential indicators of AF, DVT and PE.
Official campaign literature urges the public to take action:
“Right now, people may be weighing a decision to visit a healthcare provider. However, symptoms like swelling, pain, tenderness or redness in the leg, thigh or pelvis can possibly be related to a potentially serious condition such as deep vein thrombosis (DVT). It’s critical to not brush off these symptoms.”
BMS, via its spokesperson, described the reasons for relaunching the campaign:
“We received so much positive feedback from patients and advocates on the impact this campaign had on patients, we knew it was our responsibility to continue to evolve the program and further get the message out.
“In the middle of 2021, we decided to evolve the campaign, with new insight that symptomatic people at risk for AFib or DVT/PE can often dismiss their symptoms or misattribute [emphasis added] them to other health and lifestyle factors.”
Could “misattribute,” in this instance, actually refer to cases where those who had recently received a COVID vaccine experienced the onset of heart-related conditions, in some cases leading to their deaths?
Is Pfizer benefitting from vaccine-induced ailments?
Could the relaunching of the “No Time to Wait” campaign represent an effort by Pfizer to engage in damage control from the increase in vaccine-induced heart conditions — while benefiting from the sale of a drug used to address those same ailments?
There are several objectives Pfizer and BMS could accomplish with the campaign.
First, by launching an advertising campaign warning people they may be at risk of certain heart conditions, Pfizer and BMS are in a sense “naturalizing” heart ailments in young and/or healthy individuals.
Second, by “naturalizing” the prevalence and likelihood of such heart conditions, these companies may deflect blame for these conditions from COVID vaccines, including the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Third, by referring patients to their doctors, the Pfizer-BMS alliance may directly benefit financially from the increased prevalence of heart ailments and conditions in the vaccinated public — as doctors prescribe more Eliquis, the top-selling blood thinner and AF drug, to treat their symptoms.
‘Normalizing’ heart conditions in young and healthy
According to Pfizer and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), even “the healthiest athletes” are now at risk for blood clots, as stated in an urgent warning issued this month.
The media and health authorities in recent months have proffered multiple explanations for why healthy people are developing blood clotting and heart conditions, blaming everything from weather and energy bills to cannabis use — but not COVID vaccines.
Here are some examples:
- September 2021: The Times of India ran a story on a “doctors’ reminder” that “nobody is too young for a heart attack.”
- September 2021: A study indicated that cannabis use doubled the risk of heart attacks in young adults.
- October 2021: The New York Post reported on “[t]he little-known heart attack that’s striking ‘fit and healthy’ women as young as 22.”
- November 2021: British tabloid The Sun reported on “[t]he ways cold weather can affect your body — from winter vagina to blood clots.”
- November 2021: A Times of India report asked why heart attacks are “becoming common in ‘seemingly’ fit people.”
- November 2021: Healthline reported e-cigarettes can raise the risk of heart disease and stroke.
- December 2021: Another British tabloid, Express, warned about the “healthy” diet that “may ‘increase’ your risk of having a heart attack.”
- January 2022: Norton Health informed us that “[p]reventing heart disease in children is becoming more urgent as more kids develop heart disease.”
- January 2022: A report is published warning that “sports can break your heart in more ways than one.”
- January 2022: A report by CT (Connecticut) Insider indicated more people were suffering from heart disease and strokes “after COVID.”
- January 2022: The Daily Mail warned the “[r]isk of heart problems could be increased even if you drink less than NHS weekly units,” referring to recommendations made by the UK’s National Health Service.
- January 2022: The Sun ran a report claiming weather can “harm” one’s health, leading to heart attacks, stroke or gout.
- January 2022: Another report by The Sun warned 300,000 Brits were “living with [a] stealth disease that could kill within 5 years.” The “stealth disease” in question is aortic valve stenosis, a condition where the heart’s aortic valve narrows.
- February 2022: Nature magazine reported the risk of heart disease “soars after COVID — even with a mild case.”
- February 2022: A doctor interviewed on the UK’s ITV warned an increase in energy bill amounts may cause heart attacks and strokes.
Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University and founder of News from Underground compiled a list of reports like those listed above.
In looking at incidents and reports during the week of Feb. 8-14 alone, Crispin told readers:
“Before we note all those whose ‘sudden deaths’ made news just this past week — ‘unexpected deaths’ with no reported cause, or due to heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, cardiac arrest or swift, aggressive cancers (all known to be ‘adverse events’ post-‘vaccination’) — let’s review how this unprecedented global spike in sudden death has been deliberately obscured by ‘our free press.’”
Miller highlighted an ABC News report, “‘Broken heart’ cases surge during COVID, especially among women.”
In another example, Science magazine reported geneticists found the answer to “sudden unexplained child deaths.”
Downplaying of the connection between the COVID vaccines and serious heart conditions often has involved high-profile athletes.
For instance, 33-year-old soccer star Sergio Aguero of FC Barcelona was forced to announce his retirement in December 2021, after suffering chest pains and dizziness during a match in October 2021. He never played again.
According to Aguero’s cardiologist, the vaccine was not the reason for his ailment and retirement.
However, Aguero himself, in a Twitter question-and-answer session earlier this month, did not reject this possibility, stating: “I don’t know if Covid or [the] vaccine caused my retirement.”
Media, however, continue to promote the narrative that vaccines have nothing to do with the surge in sudden illnesses or deaths among athletes.
For example, Miller cited a Feb. 1 Washington Post article describing stories of athletes dying due to COVID vaccination as a “falsehood.”
Miller then compared what he described as the “disgraceful” Washington Post report with a documented timeline of athletes who suffered from heart failure between March 2021 and January 2022.
This string of incidents is further illustrated and detailed by the Real Science blog, which found 707 such incidents as of this writing and demonstrated in graphical form the sharp increase in heart failure incidents involving athletes over the course of 2021 and into 2022, as COVID vaccination uptake increased.
Nevertheless, Politifact, in December 2021, assured the public “[t]here’s no proof athletes collapsed with heart issues because of COVID-19 vaccination,” while in November 2021, U.S. News & World Report warned “COVID may trigger [a] heart condition in young athletes.”
As reports of vaccine-induced heart ailments rise, studies confirm link
Multiple studies and reports have confirmed a link between COVID vaccines and heart ailments.
These reports include:
- September 2021: A report found adolescent boys are at higher risk of hospitalization from the Pfizer vaccine than from COVID.
- November 2021: Renowned cardiologist Dr. Steven Gundry warned the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines “dramatically increase” the risk of heart attacks.
- January 2022: Data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) indicates myocarditis tops the list of COVID vaccine injuries for 12- to 17-year olds.
Meanwhile, reports continue to grow of previously healthy people who develop heart conditions following COVID vaccines.
Here are just a few examples:
- June 2021: A 13-year-old Michigan boy died three days after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.
- June 2021: An athlete who received the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine developed myocarditis, triggered by the vaccine.
- August 2021: A 14-year-old boy developed myocarditis after receiving the Pfizer vaccine.
- October 2021: A 17-year-old developed multisystem inflammatory syndrome and myocarditis after receiving the Pfizer vaccine.
- December 2021: A 26-year-old’s death from heart inflammation was found to have “probably” been caused by the Pfizer vaccine.
- January 2022: An autopsy found the death of another 26-year-old from myocarditis was the direct result of receiving the Pfizer vaccine.
- February 2022: A six-year-old developed vaccine-induced myocarditis, leaving him unable to walk.
- February 2022: Autopsies showed that the deaths of two teenage boys who died soon after receiving the Pfizer vaccine were directly caused by the vaccine.
Reports and studies like those listed above have led to increasing calls for the vaccination of minors to be reassessed or outright halted, including:
- January 2022: More than 30 experts called on UK regulators to reassess COVID vaccination for 12- to 15-year olds.
- January 2022: Data revealed reports of heart disease following COVID vaccines had increased 15,600% in young people under the age of 30, compared to the previous 31 years of heart injuries reported following receipt of FDA-approved vaccines.
They’ve also triggered calls for further scrutiny on the part of health authorities, which appear to have had some effect, at least in certain instances.
For example:
- October 2021: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration delayed a decision on green-lighting the administration of the Moderna vaccine to adolescents, citing heart problems (however, the Pfizer vaccine was nevertheless approved for the same age group).
- October 2021: Health authorities in Denmark and Sweden paused administration of the COVID vaccine to younger age groups, citing reports of myocarditis.
- December 2021: The CDC was monitoring eight cases of heart inflammation reported in 5- to 11-year-olds who received the Pfizer vaccine.
Nevertheless, in January 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) refused to investigate the case of a 13-year-old who died of myocarditis days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine, while in August 2021, doctors “downplayed” the connection between the onset of myocarditis in a 25-year-old, and receipt of the Moderna vaccine.
‘No Time to Wait’ campaign spending indicative of broader Big Pharma marketing expenditures
Big-dollar ad spending is par for the course for Big Pharma companies such as Pfizer, as previously reported by The Defender.
For instance, a 2019 Forbes article reported Pfizer spent twice as much on marketing/selling as it spent on research.
Pfizer’s heavy advertising is also evident in its most recent quarterly report, for the fourth quarter of 2021. The report indicates a 10% increase — a total of $12.7 billion — in 2021 “SI&A expenses,” which include marketing and advertising, as compared to 2020, when there was no COVID vaccine available.
The report also projects Pfizer’s SI&A expenses will range between $12.5 and $13.5 billion in 2022.
BMS, in turn, spent $990 million in advertising and marketing in both 2020 and 2021 — after spending $633 million in 2019.
In sum, pharmaceutical ad spending totaled $6.58 billion in 2020, and was expected to surpass $11 billion by the end of 2021 — including $3.9 billion in spending on television advertisements alone.
In addition to “traditional” advertising and marketing campaigns, pharmaceutical companies adopted some more creative ways to promote their products — and perhaps purchase further goodwill on the part of media outlets.
In an October 2021 article, The Defender highlighted several examples of Pfizer sponsoring television news programs and segments, ranging from “Good Morning America” to “Anderson Cooper 360°” to “CBS HealthWatch.”
For example, an Oct. 4, 2021 tweet posted on CNBC’s official Twitter account portrayed Pfizer in glowing terms, accompanied by the text: “paid post for Pfizer.”
And a March 15, 2021 tweet by Pfizer expressed pride in the release of a National Geographic documentary, “Mission Possible: The Race for a Vaccine.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
Following the Money on Climate Change Media Coverage
By Chris Morrison | The Daily Sceptic | February 20, 2022
The Associated Press (AP) is assigning another two dozen journalists across the world to cover ‘climate issues’. AP Senior Vice President Julie Pace described the move as a “far reaching initiative that will transform the way we cover the climate story”. Over 20 of the journalists will be new hires and they will be funded by an $8m gift from five billionaire philanthropic organisations, including the Left-wing Rockefeller Foundation. The money is just the latest in a series of such gifts and AP reports that 50 writing jobs are funded from these sources.
AP is not the only large media company to collect such hand-outs. The BBC and the Guardian regularly receive multi-million dollar contributions from the trusts of wealthy philanthropists. It is estimated that Bill Gates has given over $300 million over the last decade to a wide variety of media outlets. Faced with plummeting paid readers and advertisers, mainstream legacy media seems eager to tap a new revenue stream.
The money is spread wide across such media. This month, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting received $1.5 million from Rockefeller to “expand coverage of under-reported and/or inaccurately reported critical public health information”. The Quadrivium Foundation, run by Democrat power couple James and Kathryn Murdoch, is also paying climate wages at AP. On its website, the Foundation notes that it also invests in Climate Central, using meteorologists as “trusted messengers” of the links between extreme weather and climate change. Since it is not possible to link individual weather events to long term climate change with any scientific certainty, this aim looks to be a waste of money, or perhaps not.
‘Trusted messengers’ seems to be a phrase much in vogue around philanthropic operations. Last October, Rockefeller gave $4.5 million to Purpose Global, a non-profit company that aims to help corporate clients with their “cultural intelligence”. The money was given in support of facilitating a “communication network of trusted messengers”. This would “amplify accurate information and combat mis- and dis- information on COVID-19 vaccines”. In September 2020, the Gates Foundation gave the Guardian $3.5 million to “support” its regular reporting on global health. Likewise, the Global Health Security Team at the Telegraph is Gates-funded.
Old school journalists might be a little happier to see less of the ‘trusted messenger’ stuff and more of the requirement to investigate. But critical inquiry of climate change science has been more or less banned from many mainstream outlets. This is despite the fact that the hypothesis that humans cause all or most global warming is unproven, and many scientists look more to natural causes for long term change. Predictions – often termed evidence – of future warming, are based on climate models that have never provided an accurate forecast in the last 40 years. Global warming started to run out of steam two decades ago, and it has been at a standstill for the last seven. When Google Adsense banned the main climate web page tracking accurate satellite data showing the standstill, the interest was confined to just a few outlets, including the Daily Sceptic.
One of the largest suppliers of cash for climate change is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the BBC and the Guardian are two of its favourite giftees. The Guardian has received upwards of $20 million over recent years starting with £6m in 2011 to establish a “millennium Development Goals” feed that provides “compelling evidence-based content”. During the last decade, Gates has given at least $20 million to help fund the BBC World Service and $5.5 million for the Corporation’s Media Action charity.
In that time, the software tycoon, once treated with great suspicion for early monopolistic tendencies, has become a prized ‘talking head’ across the BBC for epidemics, vaccines and anti-meat diets. His recent scary tales of climate change, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”, was recently given five airings on prime time Radio 4.
Elsewhere, there are prizes for the best behaved – sorry – most distinguished climate journalist. Every year, the foundation of BBVA, a Spanish bank heavily involved in financing Net Zero projects, hands out €100,000 to the lucky recipient. Last year it went to Marlow Hood of Agence France-Presse, who describes himself as the “Herald of the Anthropocene”, the latter being a political renaming of the current Holocene era. In 2019, Matt McGrath of the BBC pocketed the cash, while in 2020 the award went to – no great surprise – the Guardian.
Much of the BBC money appears to support advocacy in the developing world, although the terms of specific grants are sometimes hard to understand. A letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in August 2019 describing the purpose of a $2.03 million grant to the BBC reads as follows: “To help us learn deepen our underpinning of processes and user journeys for different sets of women’s empowerment collectives, develop use cases for where digital can help amplify effects bring efficiencies, and close gender gaps for women”.
No doubt when this non-sensical gibberish was translated into understandable English, the money was spent wisely.
The War Party Wants a New Cold War, and the Money That Comes with It
By Ryan McMaken | Mises Wire | February 12, 2022
In perhaps the most predictable column of the year, the Wall Street Journal this week featured a column by Walter Russell Mead declaring it’s “Time to Increase Defense Spending.”
Using the Beijing Olympics and the potential Ukraine war to push for funneling ever more taxpayer dollars into military spending, Mead outlines how military spending ought to be raised to match the sort of spending not seen since the hot days of the Cold War.
Mead claims that “[t]he world has changed, and American policy must change with it.” The presumption here is that the status quo is one of declining military spending, in which Americans have embraced some sort of isolationist foreign policy. But the reality doesn’t reflect that claim at all. The status quo is really one of very high levels of military spending, and even outright growth in most years. This sort of gaslighting by military hawks is right up there with left-wing attempts to portray the modern economy as one of unregulated laissez-faire.
Rather, according to estimates from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, military spending is set to reach a post–World War II high in 2022, rising to more than $1.1 trillion. That includes $770 billion spent on the Pentagon plus nuclear arms and related spending. Also included is current spending on veterans. Keeping veteran spending apart from defense spending is a convenient and sneaky political fiction, but veteran spending is just deferred spending for past active-duty members—necessary to attract and retain personnel. And finally, we have the “defense” portion of the interest of the debt, estimated to be about 20 percent of total interest spending. Taking all this together, we find military spending has increased thirteen years out of the last twenty and is now at or near the highest levels of spending seen since the Second World War.
This, not surprisingly, is not enough for Mead, who would like to see military spending much closer to the Cold War average of 7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), up from today’s spending of a little less than 4 percent. To get this average back up would require at least an extra $300 billion in spending, and possibly even spending levels not seen since the bad old days of the Vietnam War. In those days, of course, the US was busy spending enormous amounts of taxpayer wealth on a losing war that cost tens of thousands of American lives. The spending was so enormous that the US regime was driven to breaking the dollar’s last link to gold and subjecting ordinary Americans to years of price controls, inflation, and other forms of economic crisis.
But none of that will dissuade hawks like Mead, who pound the drum incessantly for more military spending. Note also that Mead uses the “spending as a percentage of GDP” metric, which is a favorite metric of military hawks. They use this metric because as the US economy has become more productive, wealthy, and generally larger, the US has been able to maintain sky-high military spending levels without growing the amount of spending in relation to GDP. The use of this metric allows hawks to create the false impression that military spending is somehow going down and that the US is being taken over by peaceniks. In reality, spending levels remain very high—it’s just that the larger economy has been robust.
Yet even if we use this metric—and then compare it to those of other states with large militaries—we find that Mead’s narrative doesn’t quite add up. These numbers in no way suggest that the US regime is being eclipsed by rivals in terms of military spending.
For example, according to the World Bank, China—with a GDP comparable to that of the US—has military spending amounting to about 1.7 percent of GDP (as of 2020). Meanwhile, the total was at 3.7 percent of GDP in the United States. Russian military spending rose to 4.2 percent of GDP in 2020, but that’s based on a GDP total that’s a small fraction of the US’s GDP. Specifically, the Russian economy is less than one-tenth the size of the US economy.
Thus, when we look at actual military spending, we find the disconnect to be quite clear.
According to the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, in 2020 total Chinese military spending totaled approximately $245 billion in 2019 dollars. In Russia, the total was $66 billion. In the US, the total—which in the SIPRI database excludes veteran spending and interest—amounted to $766 billion in 2020.
In other words, total military spending by these presumed rivals amounts to mere fractions of total spending in the US. Moreover, as China scholar Michael Beckley has noted, the US benefits from preexisting military capital—think military know-how and productive capability—built up over decades. Even if the US and China (or Russia) were spending comparable amounts on military capability right now, this would not demonstrate any sort of actual military superiority in real terms.
But, as usual, Mead’s strategy is to claim that financial prudence is in fact imprudence with the usual refrain of “you can’t afford to not spend boatloads of extra money!” This claim is premised on the new domino theory being offered by anti-Russia hawks today. This theory posits that if the US does not start wars with every country that has pushed back against US hegemony—i.e., Iran or Russia—then China will see this “weakness” and start conquering countless nations within its own periphery.
The old cold warriors were telling us this back in 1965 also, insisting that a loss in Vietnam would place all the world under the Communist boot. Needless to say, that didn’t happen, and it turned out Vietnam had nothing to do with American national security.
But none of this will convince the usual hawks—for example, the Heritage Foundation—that there’s never enough military spending.
Prudence, however, suggests the US should be going in the opposite direction. At its most belligerent, the US regime should be adopting a doctrine of restraint—focusing on naval defense and cutting back troop deployments—while changing its nuclear posture to one that is less costly and more defensive.
The ideal solution is far more radically anti-interventionist than that, but a good start would be eliminating hundreds of nuclear warheads and freezing military spending indefinitely. After all, the US’s deterrent second-strike capability does not at all depend on keeping an arsenal of thousands of warheads, as many hawks insist. And geography today continues to favor US conventional defense, just as it always has.
Unfortunately, we’re a long way from a change toward much more sane policy, but at the very least we must reject the latest opportunistic calls for a new cold war and trillions more taxpayer dollars burned in the name of “defense.”
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The Maidan Killings and the False-Flag Case
By Freddie Ponton | 21st Century Wire | September 5, 2026
Before the killings that helped bring down Ukraine’s president in February 2014, American diplomats were discussing who should enter its government. In a leaked telephone call, senior State Department official Victoria Nuland told US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, “I think Yats is the guy,” referring to opposition leader Arseniy Yatseniuk. Washington had clear preferences and was working to advance them. Later that month, Yatseniuk became prime minister.
Ivan Katchanovski’s The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine examines the violence that preceded that transfer of power. Drawing on television footage, witness testimony, forensic examinations and Ukrainian court proceedings, he argues that elements of the opposition shot protesters and police in a false-flag operation. His case centres on evidence of protesters being shot from opposition-controlled locations, including Hotel Ukraina, overlooking the killing ground. … continue
Blog Roll
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- Britain leads Western media’s demise through ‘fear porn’ narrative
- The Maidan Killings and the False-Flag Case
- Georgia’s Largest Healthcare System Will Fire Employees Who Refuse Flu Vaccine
- The Five-Year Fuel Crisis: Why the World Economy Is Paying for a War It Thinks Is Ending
- Trump’s Big Bluff on Iran
- Swiss scammed out of millions by Ukraine-linked call centers – media
- Germany facing potential ‘violent conflict’ with Russia – spy chief
- Ukraine’s EU neighbors reject new plea from Kiev – Politico
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
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- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
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- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
