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NYT, after deciding lockdowns are authoritarian and bad when China does them, now mildly terrified as Xi Jinping reopens & infections rise

You can take the New York Times out of lockdown, but you can’t take the lockdowns out of the New York Times.

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | December 19, 2022

“From Zero Covid to No Plan: Behind China’s Pandemic U-Turn” is the headline of the latest highly revealing Times reporting on the end of Zero Covid in China. “After micromanaging the coronavirus strategy for nearly three years,” we read, “… Xi Jinping has suddenly left the populace to improvise.”

The essence of the piece is that the Chinese have rightly regained their freedoms, but they’re now left to face a terrifying virus alone and undefended by their government, which is also very bad, and possibly worse than the lockdowns, as bad as they were.

China’s party-run media has cast the shift [from Zero Covid] as a stressful but well-considered exit, opening the way back to good economic times. Warnings about the dangers of the coronavirus have swiftly disappeared, replaced by official claims that the Omicron variant is generally mild. By holding off from easing until now, the government has saved many lives, the People’s Daily said on Thursday in a long article defending Mr. Xi’s pandemic strategy as “totally correct.”

In reality, an examination of how the shift unfolded in Chongqing and elsewhere reveals a government overtaken by a cascade of Covid outbreaks, confusion over directives, economic woes and then rare political protests. …

It’s almost like mass containment doesn’t do anything aside from wrecking the economy and ruining everyone’s lives. I’m glad the Times can finally come close to admitting this now, in the last weeks of 2022.

By changing only a handful of words, you could make key sections of the article apply to Germany, or any western nation aside from Sweden or Belarus:

Even the Chinese Communist Party, a virtuoso at controlling the narrative, is finding it difficult to sell the policy lurch to anxious residents.

[Xi] turned China’s intense top-to-bottom mobilization against the pandemic into a showcase of the party’s organizational strength. For two years, his Covid war enjoyed widespread public acceptance, but eventually the effort exhausted staff, strained local finances, and appeared to drown out attempts to discuss, let alone devise, a measured transition.

Whereas in the West, we had totally open and honest discussions about the insane, enduring closures, that weren’t marked by massive censorship and government intimidation at all. Otherwise, Western nations were themselves locked in exactly this same international competition, eager to display the fruits of their superior pandemic planning to the world, and terrified that failure would cost them legitimacy. One of the reasons Germany locked down so hard during Fall 2020, was that the Merkel government had collected many international plaudits for their handling of the first wave — effectively taking credit for the seasonality of infections. They were unwilling to surrender the regard they had earned so easily.

Mr. Xi has no likely successor and could stay in power for at least another decade. But the scars from the abrupt change may feed distrust in his domineering style.

It’s not subjecting his whole country to absurd containment theatre over what is no more than an influenza-level risk that poses a political problem for Xi, but rather “the scars from the abrupt change” in policy.

Finally the reporters get around to discussing the protests.

In Zhengzhou in central China, thousands of workers clashed with police at an iPhone plant, angry about a delay in bonuses and the handling of an outbreak.

In Haizhu, a textile manufacturing district in southern China, laborers poured onto the streets over food shortages and hardships under lockdown. Migrant workers, who depend on daily work for their livelihoods, went weeks without jobs.

“I couldn’t make a living this year,” said Zhou Kaice, a street porter in Chongqing. “Some bosses I worked for started up for a few days but were then shut by lockdowns.”

Despite the strains, officials still insisted China must win its pandemic war. Provincial leaders throughout November declared their commitment to “zero Covid,” often citing Mr. Xi as their lodestone.

“If pandemic controls were loosened, that would inevitably create mass infections,” said a Xinhua editorial on Nov. 19. “Economic and social development and the public’s physical health and safety would be seriously hurt.”

How many times did we have to read that lockdowns were the ultimate way to grow the economy, because without them, the virus would somehow destroy all business activity?

It’s also interesting how anti-lockdown protestors in the West are thugs and stupid conspiracy-crazed Nazis, while in China they are “students, workers and homeowners.”

By [November], China’s most widespread protests since 1989 had begun. Students, workers and homeowners in Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere vented against Covid controls, angered by a fire in western China that many believed, despite official denials, had killed residents trapped in their apartments by lockdowns.

“I tell you that in this world there’s only one sickness, and that’s poverty and having no freedom, and we’ve got plenty of that,” said a Chongqing man whose tirade went viral in China.

“Give me liberty or give me death,” he shouted, using the Chinese version of the American revolutionary battle cry.

Sounds like the Canadian trucker protests — you know, those guys who posed such a threat to freedom and democracy that it proved necessary to freeze their bank accounts.

At the end, the Times assures its heavily masked and vaccinated readership that “most people are staying home,” but that “if deaths rise sharply, public anger could revive” because “infections could hinder a quick economic rebound.”

Until we Decovidify the newsrooms, there will never be sane reporting on SARS-2 in any major press outlet, ever.

December 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Qatar warns EU of consequences amid graft probe

RT | December 19, 2022

The European Parliament’s decision to suspend Qatar-linked legislation and deny the country’s officials access to the legislature could negatively affect gas supplies to EU member states, Doha has announced. The bloc’s move comes amid a Belgian probe into alleged graft by MEPs that may have involved Qatar.

The parliament’s decision is “discriminatory,” according to a statement by a diplomat with the Qatari mission to the EU on Sunday, as quoted by news agencies. It will “negatively affect regional and global security cooperation, as well as ongoing discussions around global energy poverty and security,” the diplomat added.

He stressed Qatar’s cooperation with the EU, particularly Belgium, on issues related to Covid-19 and its role as a key supplier of liquified natural gas to the country, expressing disappointment that Brussels is making “no effort to engage with our government to establish the facts once they became aware of the allegations.”

Qatari liquified natural gas plays a key role in the EU’s strategy to compensate for the loss of Russian fossils fuels, which it decided to stop purchasing over the conflict in Ukraine.

In November, Germany secured a 15-year deal for around 2 million tons annually. Berlin is leading a pan-EU effort to secure better terms from Doha, which is pressuring the bloc into signing long-term contracts that prohibit resale to other parts of the world, which would undermine the EU’s goal of phasing out fossil fuels, according to Bloomberg.

Last week, MEPs voted to suspend all work linked to Qatar and cut off “representatives of Qatari interests” from access to the legislature. The decision affects an EU-Qatar aviation agreement and an EU visa waiver for Qatari and Kuwaiti nationals. MEPs denounced “Qatar’s alleged attempts” to buy influence in the EU.

Belgian law enforcement announced earlier this month that it had charged four individuals linked to the European Parliament in an alleged corruption case. They are suspected of being influenced by lavish presents and cash originating from a foreign government.

The local press identified the unnamed Gulf nation as Qatar, which denied any involvement. The European Parliament’s now-former vice president, Eva Kaili, who was among those charged, was stripped of her senior EU office over the probe last week.

December 19, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Stephen Fry and the climate of hypocrisy

By Philip Patrick | TCW Defending Freedom | December 14, 2022

Stephen Fry has announced that he doesn’t understand ‘climate deniers’, implying that such people are selfish and uncaring. He delivered himself of this opinion in a puff piece for his new travel series, A Year on Planet Earth, due to drop on ITVX on December 22.

The series takes Fry to some of the most exotic and beautiful places in the world where he will emote about the flora and fauna. He hopes we will be sufficiently awestruck to help save the world from the ‘climate crisis’ but won’t be lecturing us, he says. This is a relief. But what exactly does he not understand about ‘climate deniers’?

Let’s take a quick look at the views of those crazy denialists. According to William Happer, one of the world’s most distinguished scientists and former adviser to two US presidents, anthropogenic climate change is real – we do have an impact on the climate, but it is small (nothing like a ‘crisis’) and in many ways beneficial (‘global greening’).

Happer and others argue that CO2 (the stuff of life, let us not forget) is a very minor greenhouse gas, and, due to the saturation effect, there is a limit to how much it can affect climate. He uses the analogy of painting a barn door: there are only so many coats you can apply before there is no further impact. In other words, China can build as many coal-fired power stations as it wants, and that may not be good at a surface level, but beyond a certain, not very scary, level, it won’t make any difference to global temperatures.

Added to this, there is the awkward fact that the world isn’t co-operating in the climate crisis narrative. The Arctic and Antarctic have failed to melt away; the Great Barrier Reef, for which an obituary was written in the Guardian, is flourishing, and those pesky polar bears, penguins and whales, just refuse to do the decent thing and disappear. So, to paraphrase Jim Callaghan, ‘Crisis? What crisis?’

Happer’s arguments, shared by many of the world’s most distinguished scientists, should, along with other sceptical viewpoints, certainly be subject to scrutiny. But they certainly shouldn’t be airily dismissed, particularly by someone who by his own admission knows nothing about science: ‘ . . . anything too scientific leaves me having to clutch at a table, feeling a bit weak and hopeless’.

Fry says he can’t understand the people who hold sceptical views on climate views. Can’t, or won’t? The first step to understanding something is wanting to understand it, and if you don’t want to, you never will. This seems to be Fry’s problem, as with many a climate zealot. It is a dangerous mindset, leading you to close your mind to uncomfortable information and denounce unbelievers as heretics.

Fry says in his article that climate deniers ‘now seem to be diminishing in numbers, thankfully’ suggesting these dreadful people are one species he would be glad to see become extinct. And yet this is manifestly untrue. The WCD (World Climate Declaration) is a campaign group of some 1,400 scientists, engineers and experts led by Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever. Hundreds are signing their declaration every day. These, their key points, even a science ‘illiterate’ should be able to understand:

·       Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming

·       Warming is far slower than predicted

·       Climate policy relies on inadequate models

·       CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth

·       Global warming has not increased natural disasters

·       Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities

As for other evidence of scepticism the Swedish government has just scrapped its environment ministry. Huge protests against compulsory farm closures have been happening in Holland. The Sri Lankan government fell after a popular uprising provoked by its climate policies. In the UK, the third highest polling party Reform UK promises a referendum on NetZero (‘Net Stupid’) suggesting considerable scepticism here.

Fry’s most recent project was a three-part spoken word show based on Greek myths: ‘Gods’, ‘Heroes’ and ‘Men’. I suspect he most closely identifies with the first of these. That would explain his Olympian disdain, his effortless superiority, and his seeming imperviousness to accusations of hypocrisy. Like his friend Emma Thompson, Fry apparently sees no contradiction in flying around the world and then claiming to care deeply about climate change. There are, reputedly, 60 locations featured in his new series. Even the title A Year on Planet Earth is revealing, suggesting he has descended from a superterrestrial realm to lead us back on to the path of righteousness.

I’m just about old enough to remember when Fry not only made me laugh but made me think too. Fry was, once, an equal opportunities humorist. If there was a common denominator to his targets it was people who lacked self-awareness, were narrow minded, self-important, and intolerant – like Lord Melchett of Blackadder. If there was a message, it was to engage your intellect and to resist the lure of received ideas.

But that was before this avowed atheist found his religion. Sadly, Fry has gone awry. He is suffering the worst fate that can possibly befall a satirist. He has become an example of the very thing he used to make fun of.

December 14, 2022 Posted by | Film Review, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

What a Bunch of Hooey about Viktor Bout

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | December 9, 2022

It would be difficult to find a bigger pile of hooey in the mainstream press than what they are saying about Viktor Bout. It’s almost as bad as their monumental hooey about Russian citizen Maria Butina. The hooey surrounding Bout and Butina only goes to show what happens to people’s minds when the government inculcates them with an extreme, obsessive anti-Russia hostility. 

I’ve written repeatedly about the federal government’s ludicrous prosecution of Butina, and so I won’t repeat my analysis of her case. Let’s instead focus on Bout. 

Bout is the Russia arms dealer who was just traded for Brittney Griner, the American basketball star who pled guilty to violating Russia’s drug laws and got sentenced to serve nine years in jail. Bout is the international arms dealer who got convicted of conspiring to sell arms to FARC, the rebel group in Columbia that U.S. officials labeled a terrorist group. He was also convicted of conspiring to kill DEA officials operating in Columbia. He was given a 25-year jail sentence and had served 10 years of it when he was traded for Griner.

The mainstream press is decrying the trade. They’re saying it’s just not fair. An arms dealer for a drug-war violator? Oh my gosh, how could President Biden permit himself to be taken in by the evil Russkies?

Unsaid in all this is that the U.S. government, like the Russian government, makes it a criminal offense to possess and distribute marijuana. Defenders of the U.S. drug war can say that the federal penalty for marijuana possession is lower in the U.S. than in Russia, but isn’t that a distinction without a difference? Moreover, let’s not forget that in the long, sordid history of America’s drug war, countless Americans have been forced to serve much longer jail sentences for marijuana possession than Griner.

The important question — one that the mainstream press dares not ask — is why the U.S. government (and the state governments) have drug laws at all. Given that Russia has drug laws, isn’t that a fairly good sign that drug laws are not consistent with he principles of a genuinely free society? Perhaps it’s also worth mentioning that former President Trump is promising to execute drug-war violators if he is put back into the White House. Don’t they do that in China and North Korea too?

The mainstream press continues to emphasize that Bout is an “international arms dealer,” which apparently makes him an extremely evil person. Well, if that’s true, then how about we focus on the world’s biggest international arms dealer. That would be the U.S. government! Yes, the pious, innocent U.S. government, the same government that prosecuted Bout and sentenced him to 25 years in jail.

Take a look at this web page entitled “U.S. Arms Exports in 2021, by Country.” It lists 65 countries to whom the U.S. government sells arms. 

Is it possible — just possible — that U.S. officials went after Bout because he was in competition against them in the sale of arms? What better way to get rid of a competitor than by locking him up in jail for 25 years?

The mainstream press says that Bout was selling arms to terrorist groups. Well, notice on that list that the U.S. government knowingly sells arms to Saudi Arabia, a regime that most everyone in the world, including the family and former fiancé of Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi and even the CIA, knows is one of the most murderous regimes in the world. Is there really any difference in principle between selling arms to a terrorist group and selling arms to a murderous regime?

Let’s now go to to the offenses for which Bout was convicted — conspiring to sell arms to FARC in Colombia and conspiring to kill American drug-war officials operating in Colombia. 

There is one big problem with those offenses, however. That problem is that FARC had nothing to do with any of this. Instead, what happened was that DEA agents who were playing like they were FARC representatives approached Bout and said that they wanted to buy arms from him. Bout agreed to sell arms to those DEA agents who he thought were FARC agents. That’s what they busted him for — for conspiring to sell arms to DEA agents who he thought were FARC agents. 

In other words, if the DEA had not created the crime, it would not have been committed. 

What about the conspiracy to kill American officials who were operating in Colombia. During the fake negotiations for the sale of arms to FARC, one of the DEA agents said that the weapons would be used to kill U.S. officials who were enforcing the drug war in Colombia. Bout allegedly responded indifferently, supposedly saying that they were his enemy too. That’s what got him convicted of conspiring to kill U.S. officials as part of fake negotiations for the sale of arms to DEA agents who were falsely posing as representatives of FARC.

The mainstream press continually claims that Bout was accused of selling arms to al Qaeda. But U.S. officials never charged him with that. Lacking the evidence to convict him of that offense, U.S. officials simply decided to make up a crime and convict him of the made-up crime instead. That’s what goes for “justice” in the federal criminal-justice system. 

I’ve had personal experience with this type of federal drug-war “justice.” After I got my law license in Texas back in 1975, I returned to my hometown of Laredo, Texas, to practice law. Almost immediately, our local federal judge appointed me to represent an indigent defendant charged with a cocaine conspiracy. 

My client told me that he was innocent. Hoping that I would encourage my client to plead guilty, the assistant U.S. attorney in the case turned over all of the very detailed investigative reports that the DEA had turned over to him. Every day I would pore over those reports and carefully chart them out. I finally realized that my client was, in fact, innocent. The DEA had put together a very sophisticated sting operation to get him convicted, just as they did with Bout.

Why would the DEA do that? Simple. They were convinced he was involved in the drug trade but they couldn’t catch him. So, they did the next-best thing. They made up a crime so that they could get him convicted and punished for the made-up crime.

Fortunately, I was able to make the jury see what the DEA had done and to recognize the manifest injustice of convicting a person of a made-up crime. The jury returned with a not-guilty verdict, which meant, after having been jailed for several months since his arrest, my client walked out of that federal courtroom a free man. 

Unfortunately for Bout, the jury in his case was not so inclined. They obviously felt that a made-up crime was just as good as a real crime. However, the federal judge who sentenced Bout apparently didn’t feel totally comfortable with what the DEA had done. The judge sentenced Bout to the minimum amount of time possible, which was nonetheless 25 years. 

There is something else worth noting about the Bout conviction. Bout never committed any offense within the United States. The fake negotiations took place entirely outside the United States. In fact, Bout was arrested while engaging in the fake negotiations in Thailand and then was extradited to the United States to stand trial on a fake made-up crime that never took place anywhere in the United States.

It is also worth asking: What business does the DEA have in setting up an international arms dealer on a fake weapons charge? I thought DEA stood for Drug Enforcement Administration, not Weapons Enforcement Administration. 

Of course, don’t look to the mainstream press to address any of these discomforting matters. That would entail challenging the U.S. government on such things as its evil drug war, its arms sales to evil regimes, and its evil made-up crimes. As far as the U.S. mainstream press is concerned, it’s only permissible to criticize and condemn those evil Russkies, such as Maria Butina and Viktor Bout. 

December 9, 2022 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

Beijing Rips ‘US’s Old Trick of Hyping China Threat’ as DoD Projects Four-Fold Jump in Chinese Nukes

By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat – 06.12.2022

China’s Defense Ministry has ripped Washington over a Pentagon report claiming the People’s Republic plans to ramp up its nuclear weapons stockpile to 1,500 warheads by 2035 and to make modifications to its nuclear doctrine.

“It should be emphasized that China firmly pursues a nuclear strategy of self-defense, adheres to the nuclear policy of no first use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances, and keeps nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security,” Defense Ministry spokesman Tan Kefei said in a written press statement Tuesday.

Accusing Washington of engaging in baseless “speculation” about Beijing’s nuclear deterrent, Tan urged the US to “deeply review and reflect on its own nuclear policy” before “pointing fingers” at China.

“With the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, the US continues to upgrade its nuclear triad, vigorously seeks to develop or forward-deploy non-strategic nuclear weapons, lowers the threshold for using nuclear weapons, and conducts nuclear proliferation through the AUKUS trilateral security partnership, increasingly becoming the source of nuclear conflicts,” the spokesman said.

Tan added that as far as the Pentagon’s 2022 China report as a whole is concerned, it constitutes an example of “the US’s old trick to hype up the so-called ‘Chinese military threat’.” China is “strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposed to the US’s move, and has lodged solemn representations with the US,” the spokesman said.

The US Department of Defense’s new report on China, released on November 29, characterizes the People’s Republic as “the only competitor with the intent and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape” the US-dominated world order. The report cites Chinese efforts to “modernize, diversify, and expand its nuclear forces,” and expects Beijing to increase the size of its nuclear arsenal from about 400 nukes now to “about 1,500 warheads by its 2035 timeline.”

The document further accuses China of planning to make modifications to its nuclear posture to account for more and better weapons systems, and suggests that the PRC “probably seeks lower yield nuclear warhead capabilities to provide proportional response options that its high-yield warheads cannot deliver.” Finally, the Pentagon paper expresses concerns about China’s “launch on warning posture,” which allows for nuclear missiles to be launched before an enemy first strike detonates.

How Much of a Threat Do China’s Nukes Pose to the US?

Estimates on the size of China’s nuclear stockpile range from 350-400 total warheads. Even if the PRC went ahead and more than quadrupled its total nuclear stockpile, as the Pentagon report claims, Beijing’s 1,500 nukes would still be just a fraction of the 5,550 warhead stockpile held by the United States. Amid recent US efforts to peg China into strategic arms limitation talks with Russia, Beijing has indicated that it would be “happy” to join such discussions if the nuclear superpowers first reduced their stockpiles to China’s level.

Notwithstanding China’s economic and technological might and growing geopolitical and strategic weight in the world, its nuclear deterrent remains extremely modest compared to the US. For example, while the US Navy operates a fleet of 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, each carrying up to 336 nuclear bombs – enough to obliterate the whole of China, the People’s Liberation Army Navy has six Type 094 missile subs, each carrying between one and seven warheads (for a total capacity of 12-84 warheads per sub).

China and India remain the only two nuclear weapons states with a no first use policy. The US’s nuclear doctrine, on the other hand, allows the president not only use nukes preemptively, but even against “non-nuclear weapons states.” At the same time that it has accused China of “probably” seeking low-yield nukes, the Pentagon has developed the W76-2 – a nuclear warhead with an explosive yield of about five kilotons (i.e. about a third of the power of the US nuclear bomb which leveled the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945). Nuclear arms experts have expressed concerns that such low-yield nuclear weapons pose a threat to global strategic stability by lowering the threshold for nuclear war.

December 6, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Multinational Agrichemical Corporations and the Great Food Transformation

By Birsen Filip | Mises Wire | November 5, 2022

In July 2022, the Canadian government announced its intention to reduce “emissions from the application of fertilizers by 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030.” In the previous month, the government of the Netherlands publicly stated that it would implement measures designed to lower “nitrogen pollution some areas by up to 70 percent by 2030,” in order to meet the stipulations of the European “Green Deal,” which aims to “make the EU’s climate, energy, transport and taxation policies fit for reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.”

In response, Dutch “farm and agriculture organizations said the targets were not realistic and called for a protest,” which led farmers and their supporters to rise up across the country. The artificially designed Green Deal is one of the goals of Agenda 2030, which was adopted by 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) in 2015.

In addition to the UN, Agenda 2030 is also supported by a number of other international organizations and institutions, including the European Union, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the Bretton Woods Institutions, which consist of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is also endorsed by some of the most powerful agrichemical multinational corporations in the world, such as BASF, Bayer, Dow Chemical, DuPont, and Syngenta, which, together, control more than 75 percent of the global market for farm inputs. In recent years, “the acquisition of Syngenta by ChemChina, and the merger of Bayer and Monsanto” have “reshaped the global seed industry.” Additionally, “DuPont de Nemours was formed by the merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont in 2017.” However, “within 18 months of the merger the company was split into three publicly traded companies with focuses on the following: agriculture with Corteva, materials science with Dow and specialty products with DuPont.”

In recent years, all of these corporations have issued statements suggesting that the agriculture sector will undergo major changes over the upcoming three decades, and that they are committed to doing their parts to accelerate the transition to so called green policies. Accordingly, they advocate for governments to redirect public finance away from conventional farming and toward regenerative agriculture and alternative protein sources, including insect farming and lab-grown meats.

Moreover, BASF, Syngenta and Bayer are members of “the European Carbon+ Farming Coalition,” which includes a number of “organizations and stakeholders along the food value chain,” such as “COPA-COGECA, Crop In, European Conservation Agriculture Federation (ECAF), European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) Food, HERO, Planet Labs,” “Swiss Re, University of Glasgow, Yara, Zurich and the World Economic Forum.” Originally, this “coalition emerged as a partnership between the World Economic Forum’s 100 Million Farmers platform and its CEO Action Group for the European Green Deal.”

Its objective is to “decarbonise the European food system” by accelerating the transformation of farming and agricultural practices. More specifically, the European Carbon+ Farming Coalition seeks to attain “zero gross expansion in the area of land under cultivation for food production by 2025, reduction in total territories used for livestock of about one-third by 2030, and a consequent freeing up of nearly 500 million hectares of land for natural ecosystem restoration by the same date.” According to the WEF, in addition to benefitting the environment, such changes will also be economically advantageous, as “changing the way we produce and consume food could create USD 4.5 trillion a year in new business opportunities.”

In order to accelerate the transformation of farming over the coming decades, BASF calls for requiring “farmers to decrease their environmental impact” by reducing “CO2 emissions per ton of crop by 30 percent,” and applying “digital technologies to more than 400 million hectares of farmland.” BASF also supports the wide use of a number of new products, including “nitrogen management products,” herbicides, “new crop varieties,” “biological inoculants and innovative digital solutions,” so as to make farmers “more carbon efficient and resilient to volatile weather conditions.” It is estimated that such changes would “contribute significantly to the BASF Group target of €22 billion in sales by 2025.”

Meanwhile, Syngenta, the world’s second-largest agrochemical enterprise (after Bayer), which is owned by a Chinese state-owned company called ChemChina, focuses on “carbon neutral agriculture” under the pretense of “combatting climate change.” More precisely, it supports “providing technologies, services, and training to farmers,” as well as the further development of new gene-edited seeds that would lower the emission of CO2. According to Syngenta, “gene-edited crops” will be widely used and cultivated across the globe “by 2050.”

This company also promotes “a transformation toward regenerative agriculture,” which is claimed to “lead to more food grown on less land; reduced agricultural greenhouse gas emissions; increased biodiversity; and enhanced soil health,” though there is scant scientific evidence or long-term data to back up these assertions. Nonetheless, Syngenta argues that the world needs “governments and media … to encourage widespread adoption” of regenerative practices by as many farmers as possible.

Bayer also advocates for regenerative agriculture to help “farmers significantly reduce the amount of greenhouse gas their operations emit, while also removing carbon from the atmosphere.” It further claims that it is necessary “to shift to a regenerative approach and make crops more resilient to climate impacts.” Additionally, much like Syngenta, Bayer supports the development of “new gene editing technologies” in order to reduce “the environmental footprint of global agriculture.” Looking ahead, Bayer foresees that, “in agriculture, biotechnology will be a critical enabler” that will be used to “feed the 10 billion people that will be on the planet by 2050 while at the same time fighting the impact of climate change.”

Similar to Bayer, BASF, and Syngenta, DuPont also seeks to contribute to decreasing “dependence on fossil fuels, and protecting life and the environment.” Its response primarily focuses on facilitating the production and consumption of alternative protein sources that can reproduce “the texture and appearance of meat fibers, and can be used to extend or replace meat or fish.” DuPont pointed out that “in 2016, Americans consumed about 26 kg of beef per capita, at least half of which was eaten in the form of a hamburger. Replacing just half of America’s burger meat with SUPRO® MAX protein,” which has a carbon footprint that is up to eighty times lower than dairy and meat proteins, is equivalent to removing “more than 15 million mid-sized cars from the road.”

Some of the world’s most powerful multinational agrichemical corporations have benefitted immensely from international trade agreements that put their interests ahead of those of small – and medium – size farms, as well as the masses, when it comes to transforming the food and agriculture sectors. In particular, the World Trade Organization’s agreement on trade – related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), which was adopted in 1994, played a major role in destroying the livelihoods of many farmers, while proving lucrative to agrichemical giants like BASF, Bayer, Dow Chemical, DuPont, and Syngenta. This is mainly because TRIPS has allowed for the patenting of seeds and plants.

As a result, native herbs and plants in a number of different countries, many of which had previously been farmed for generations, became the sole properties of powerful agrichemical multinational corporations. After plants and herbs have been patented, local farmers are forbidden from engaging in the traditional and longstanding practices of saving and replanting their own seeds. Instead, they are required to pay the patent holding corporations for the same seeds that they had previously produced, saved, replanted, and exchanged at no cost.

Powerful agrichemical multinational corporations have also furthered their own interests and agendas by exerting unprecedented influence over research and development in the food industry, while ignoring any findings demonstrating that their business practices were harmful to the natural environment. In particular, some of these major agrichemical corporations have focused their efforts and resources on studying “genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the creation of stronger pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, and defending the performance of these products.”

They have also supported the expansion of GMO crops with the knowledge that their cultivation involves “the application of larger quantities” of “synthetic fertilizers and pesticides,” which has led to large amounts of toxic chemicals contaminating soil and water sources. Basically, these agrichemical corporations have been largely responsible for creating many of same environmental problems that they now claim need to be urgently solved through Agenda 2030.

There is a real possibility that the radical and large-scale transformations of the entire food industry and human eating habits being pushed by the social engineers of Agenda 2030 are leading the masses toward a dramatic decrease in living standards. Lessons from the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century revealed that it is very difficult to fix big mistakes attributed to the large-scale central planning of social engineers, because doing so often requires “major social transformation” or “remodelling the whole of society,” which can result in widespread unforeseen consequences or events, major destructive outcomes, and “inconvenience to many people,” in the words of Karl R. Popper.

The intense and coordinated international effort to facilitate an artificially designed transformation of the global food industry, based on Agenda 2030, is a testimony to the fact that we are witnessing the pendulum of civilization swinging back in many advanced societies, where striving to achieve a comfortable life could rapidly be replaced by a struggle for bare necessities in a lower level of existence, which is not supposed to occur in advanced societies.

The masses need to be made to realize that the social engineers of Agenda 2030 are “false prophets,” who are misguiding them to the point where they will be “haunted by the specter of death from starvation.” This may well lead to the emergence of “irreconcilable dissensions within society,” whereby food riots, conflicts, and violence could inevitably “result in a complete disintegration of all societal bonds,” as Ludwig von Mises put it.

Birsen Filip holds a PhD in philosophy and master’s degrees in economics and philosophy. She has published numerous articles and chapters on a range of topics, including political philosophy, geo-politics, and the history of economic thought, with a focus on the Austrian School of Economics and the German Historical School of Economics. She is the author of the upcoming book The Early History of Economics in the United States: The Influence of the German Historical School of Economics on Teaching and Theory (Routledge, 2022). She is also the author of The Rise of Neo-liberalism and the Decline of Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

December 4, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Macron wants more Twitter censorship to stop people saying “crazy things” about vaccines, pandemics, and war

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 2, 2022

French President Emmanuel Macron criticized ’s owner  for relaxing content censorship policies on the platform, arguing that content on Twitter needs more regulation. Macron made the comments in an appearance on ABC News ahead of his visit to The White House.

Macron said that democracies are under “very strong pressure” from forces like social media where users can say “crazy things about a vaccine, a pandemic, the war.”

This week, Musk said he would relax content moderation policies surrounding topics like the coronavirus.

Good Morning America and ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos said, “He’s making it worse, isn’t he?”

“I think this is a big issue,” Macron responded. “I think it deserves to be largely engaged. What I push very much for, want, is exactly the opposite – more regulation.”

Macron further argued that speech in a democracy has to be “based on respect and political order.”

The French President added: “You can demonstrate, you can have free speech, you can write what you want – but there is responsibilities and limits. The limits is you cannot go in the streets and have racist speech, or antisemitic speech, you cannot put at risk the life of someone else. Violence is never legitimate in democracy.”

Macron also criticized former US President , whose Twitter account was recently restored after an almost two-year ban after the January 6, 2021, riot at the US capitol.

“When in one of the biggest democracies and oldest democracies in the world, you can have a leader and supporters deciding on purpose to refuse the results because this is the one they didn’t want to see, this is just the beginning of the end of the democracy,” Macron said.

Earlier this week, regulators in the European Union warned Musk that Twitter could be banned in the region or face fines if it does not enforce content censorship policies. Musk was also warned about the arbitrary reinstatement of previously banned accounts. The new owner said he would grant “general amnesty” to banned accounts that had not broken the law or spammed.

December 3, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli officials slam director over ‘propaganda’ claim

RT | November 29, 2022

Israeli officials tore into their countryman, filmmaker Nadav Lapid, after he condemned popular Indian film The Kashmir Files as “propaganda” and “vulgar” before an audience at the International Film Festival of India in Goa. Lapid had been invited to lead the jury of the festival, which is funded by the government and counts many politicians and other VIPs among its attendees.

“We were all disturbed and shocked by the 15th film, The Kashmir Files, that felt to us like a propaganda, vulgar movie inappropriate for an artistic competitive section of such a prestigious film festival,” Lapid said during the closing ceremony. The film dramatizes the flight of Hindus from Kashmir in the 1990s amid an armed Muslim uprising, and has galvanized Islamophobic sentiment in the country.

“You should be ashamed,” Ambassador Naor Gilon chided Lapid via tweet on Tuesday, accusing the filmmaker of abusing “the trust, respect, and warm hospitality [the International Film Festival of India] have bestowed upon” him.

“It’s insensitive and presumptuous to speak about historic events before deeply studying them and which are an open wound in India because many of those involved are still around and still paying a price,” Gilon continued, suggesting that by publicly casting aspersions on The Kashmir Files’ version of history, Lapid was encouraging Indians to question the Holocaust.

Former ambassador to India Danny Carmon agreed, calling for Lapid to “apologize for the personal comments on historical facts without sensitivity and without knowing what he is talking about.” Consul General of Israel to Midwest India Kobbi Shoshani was quick to reassure local media that Lapid’s words were “not the opinion or the attitude of the government of Israel,” declaring “we completely don’t accept such speeches.”

While Lapid clarified he meant his comment as an artistic rather than personal criticism – “I feel totally comfortable to share openly these feelings here with you on stage since the spirit of the festival can truly accept also a critical discussion, which is essential for art and for life,” he said – that did little to blunt the attacks that came his way, from Indians as well as Israelis.

Lapid was denounced as “a Hindu-hating bigot who whitewashes ethnic cleansing” and as “not less than a Nazi enabler” by Abhinav Prakash, head of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha youth movement, while Aditya Raj Kaul, executive editor of the TV9 network, questioned whether the filmmaker would “call Holocaust a propaganda [sic]” or say the same about Holocaust films Schindler’s List and The Pianist.

November 30, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Film Review, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

British Media Minister Shows Double Standards on Free Speech in China and UK

Samizdat – 29.11.2022

The British government’s draft Online Safety Bill has previously come under fire from free speech campaigners and MPs — including current culture and media minister Michelle Donelan — for demanding social media sites censor posts which do not break any law.

The UK’s media minister has demanded Beijing grant British journalists freedom of speech — while suppressing it at home.

But her department is also spearheading new legislation to censor social media posts even if they do not break any laws against threats or incitement.

Speaking on a radio programme on Tuesday morning, Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Michelle Donelan said it was “absolutely shocking” that a reporter for British state media was arrested while covering protests against COVID-related restrictions in Shanghai.

“We believe in press freedom and the media to be able to report all over the globe,” Donelan said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian accused the British media of “playing the victim” after it claimed cameraman Edward Lawrence was “beaten and kicked” by police.

Zhao urged foreign journalists not to engage in activities “unrelated to their role” — implying they were taking part in the protests rather than reporting them impartially.

The new draft of the Online Safety Bill, which Donelan’s department is pushing through Parliament, would force social media moderators to delete users’ posts if they have “reasonable grounds to infer” their content could cause “serious distress” to some individuals.

The previous version drafted under Donelan’s predecessor Nadine Dorries was criticised by MPs and free speech advocates for attempting to ban comments it dubbed “legal but harmful”.

Donelan herself said at the time that wording would create “a quasi-legal category between illegal and legal.”

A government factsheet published in May said the bill would only mandate censoring social media posts if some harm was “intended”, without a reasonable excuse or the defence of public interest — theoretically protecting satirical cartoons and statements of political opinion.

Ironically, Dorries was herself reportedly banned from a private WhatsApp group for Conservative Party MPs in December 2021 for defending then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson from her colleagues’ criticism.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

New York Times Decides Lockdowns are Actually Draconian and Economically Destructive when China Does Them

“Right-wing conspiracy theorists with ties to anti-Xi opposition elements spread baseless rumours, deny science, and endanger lives” – strangely not how the NYT chose to caption this image.
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | November 28, 2022

Three years ago, Zero Covid was the aspiration of public health bureaucrats and politicians across the West. Charlatan techbros like Tomas Pueyo appeared on national television to demand nationwide house arrest; leaders like Angela Merkel surrounded themselves with virus-eradicationist modellers and imposed unprecedented months-long closures upon their countries. When protests inevitably broke out, they were violently suppressed; the protesters were slandered as conspiracy theorists and fascists.

The New York Times played a leading role in this long and excruciating charade. In April 2020, they reported that “an informal coalition of influential conservative leaders and groups, some with close connections to the [Trump] White House” was responsible for “quietly working to nurture protests and apply … pressure to overturn state and local orders intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.” In March 2021, they ran an obnoxious opinion piece about What Happened When Germany’s Far-Riught Party Railed Against Lockdowns, which called the German protesters “an amorphous mix of conspiracy theorists, shady organizations and outraged citizens” and appeared to accuse the right-populist party Alternativ für Deutschland of opportunism for joining their ranks.

What a difference a few years have made.

China Protests Break Out as Covid Cases Surge and Lockdowns Persist is a lead headline in today’s New York Times : “Strict Covid restrictions are hurting the country’s economy and angering members of the public, who are taking to the streets,” we read in the article that follows. Western anti-lockdown protesters are fascists and conspiracy theorists; Chinese anti-lockdown protesters, on the other hand, are ordinary people protesting their oppression:

“Lift the lockdown,” the protesters screamed in a city in China’s far west. On the other side of the country, in Shanghai, demonstrators held up sheets of blank white paper, turning them into an implicit but powerful sign of defiance. One protester, who was later detained by the police, was carrying only flowers.

Over the weekend, protests against China’s strict Covid restrictions ricocheted across the country in a rare case of nationwide civil unrest. There had been signs of dissent, but the new wave of anger may pose a bigger challenge for the government.

Some demonstrators went so far as to call for the Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, to step down. Many were fed up with Mr. Xi, who in October secured a precedent-defying third term as the party’s general secretary, and his “zero-Covid” policy, which continues to disrupt everyday life, hurt livelihoods and isolate the country.

Western lockdowns were necessary to save lives. Chinese lockdowns are the repressive tactic of an undemocratic regime.

The Chinese government on Monday blamed “forces with ulterior motives” for linking a deadly fire in the western Xinjiang region to strict Covid measures, a key driver as the protests spread across the country.

In much the same way, the New York Times blamed shadowy political actors with ties to Trump for anti-lockdown protests in 2020.

Outside China, the rest of the world has adapted to the virus and is near normalcy. Take soccer’s premier event, the World Cup. Thousands of people from across the globe have assembled in Qatar and are cheering on their teams, shoulder-to-shoulder, without masks, in packed stadiums.

China’s approach won praise during the beginning of the pandemic, and there is no doubt it has saved lives. But now that approach looks increasingly outdated. Almost three years after the coronavirus emerged, the contrast between China and the rest of the world couldn’t be starker.

Emphasis mine, because it’s probably the most amazing line in the whole piece. Here we have America’s foremost propaganda outlet, trying desperately to accuse China of unjust dictatorial repression, for the crime of implementing in a more organised and coherent way the very same Zero Covid policies that Times journalists spent nearly two years supporting. What’s actually wrong with the harsh Chinese lockdowns? Well, say the Times, because they can’t say anything else, they’ve become unfashionable.

The Times have also suddenly discovered that lockdowns are bad for the economy. “China’s economy has been hurt by the restrictions,” which have “hammered business both large and small,” they report. Major companies are seeking to escape the effects of closures by “expand[ing] production outside China”, all while “reduced foot traffic” hurts businesses in “the main streets of towns and cities.” That’s bad when it happens in China, but Germany or Canada it’s totally worth it.

On the one hand, we should be probably be happy about the implicit repudiation of lockdowns that articles like this represent, and the strong signal they send that none of our opinion makers wants to return to them. Some of you will have your own more detailed theories about why this is, but my broad view, is that mass containment adheres to the same trajectory everywhere: 1) There is the initial lockdown followed by a seasonally-induced collapse in cases, which encourages among policymakers to an illusion of control. 2) When infections inevitably surge the second time, they try to play the lockdown card again and again, always with less success. 3) Finally, in the face of growing protests and destruction, the policies are abandoned and everything reopens. The only difference between China and the West, is that a few years intervened before the first and the second of these steps.

On the other hand, the increasingly open hypocrisy and manipulation of the press are reaching terrifying levels I’d never imagined before, and I think this is very bad.

November 28, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Lancet reports on Human Rights failures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Is the tide turning? Think again.

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | November 24, 2022

When I first read the title of an article in The Lancet last week, I thought, this might be interesting, some acknowledgement about how bad lockdowns and mandates were. The title ‘Human rights and the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective and prospective analysis’ made me read on.

Maybe, I shouldn’t have been so naïve and maybe I should have looked at who the authors were first but I read on anyway.

I was still hopeful during the summary.

When the history of the COVID-19 pandemic is written, the failure of many states to live up to their human rights obligations should be a central narrative.

Which states will they talk about? The UK? America? I’d put money on Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Since then, COVID-19’s effects have been profoundly unequal, both nationally and globally. These inequalities have emphatically highlighted how far countries are from meeting the supreme human rights command of non-discrimination, from achieving the highest attainable standard of health that is equally the right of all people everywhere, and from taking the human rights obligation of international assistance and cooperation seriously.

Rubbing my hands together, I scrolled on, expecting to see scathing criticism of citizens being locked at home and how Covid mandates were completely unjust.

We propose embedding human rights and equity within a transformed global health architecture as the necessary response to COVID-19’s rights violations. This means vastly more funding from high-income countries to support low-income and middle-income countries in rights-based recoveries, plus implementing measures to ensure equitable distribution of COVID-19 medical technologies.

We also emphasise structured approaches to funding and equitable distribution going forward, which includes embedding human rights into a new pandemic treaty. Above all, new legal instruments and mechanisms, from a right to health treaty to a fund for civil society right to health advocacy, are required so that the narratives of future health emergencies—and people’s daily lives—are ones of equality and human rights.

Oh, here we go – high-income countries imposing their views on low-income countries. Distribution of mRNA vaccines and a new pandemic treaty.

Deflated, I finally checked the authors. The lead author works for the WHO and many of the other authors championed vaccine passports.

Realising this isn’t going to be the article I thought it was going to be, I skipped to the conclusion.

Equity demands treating health as a global public good and creating new legal instruments grounded in rights and equity. A reimagined, strengthened global health architecture, with human rights as its foundation, would be a fitting monument to the tens of millions who have died and suffered grievously—and would better prepare the world to address climate change, antimicrobial resistance, and other global threats. Furthermore, it would enable a swift, effective response the next time a novel or emerging infection threatens the globe—honouring the dignity of each of us.

I’ve seen that language before. “Equity demands”, “global public good”, “grounded in rights and equity”, “human rights as its foundation”. And whilst it all sounds lovely, it never ends well and the only human rights that are respected are those belonging to the humans that agree with what is being proposed.

You don’t want a pandemic treaty, forced vaccinations and mandates? Think of the tens of millions who have died and suffered grievously, you monster. Think of climate change, you devil in disguise. This is being done to honour the dignity of each of us. Well, not your dignity, you don’t agree with us, you stay locked in the quarantine camp thinking about the lovely dignity you could have if you did agree with us.

It was a struggle but I forced myself to read the rest of the article.

A failure to safeguard the public’s health

Many authoritarian regimes and populist leaders, however, have disregarded science, and have imposed harsh restrictions on human freedoms

One again, my hopes were raised. Maybe there is a small section on lockdowns etc. I saw the letters U.S.A. Maybe it will discuss how it is ridiculous that unvaccinated people still can’t travel there. Nope, it criticised the USA for opposing risk-mitigation measures such as business closures and mask or vaccine mandates.

It continued to get worse.

Public health officials have not always followed the science. The Public Health Agency of Sweden chose to allow a large portion of the country’s population to become infected, aiming to achieve herd immunity through eschewing basic scientific guidance of physical distancing and mask-wearing. This course was so fundamentally unsuccessful in protecting people’s health that it was beyond the discretion permissible under the right to health. By the end of 2020, Sweden’s mortality rate was ten times that of its neighbours, four-times higher than Denmark’s, and higher than in most European countries.

A pandemic of inequality

I agree with much of this section to a large extent, impacts of COVID-19 does disproportionately affect people with little money due to a plethora of risk factors. But so does any disease. And by locking people up, making them unhealthier and poorer, you only exacerbate this inequality.

But carry on with the virtual signalling and keep blaming it on systemic racism. Or Covid racism, I’m not quite sure. Either way, by not investigating why certain races disproportionately filled critical care units meant that more ethnic minorities carried on dying. Congratulations, by trying not to be racist, you actually ended up being racist.

Inequities harm rights to health, education, food, and an adequate standard of living

Service disruptions were responsible for an estimated 47,000 additional malaria deaths in 2020 compared with 2019, and 100,000 additional tuberculosis deaths. 121 (93%) of 130 countries reported mental health service disruptions, as depression and anxiety levels greatly increased. By 2022, more than 200 million additional people faced acute hunger compared with in 2019, while COVID-19 forced nearly 80 million people into extreme poverty.

One word – Lockdowns.

The COVID-19 excuse: abrogating freedoms

Governments exercised vast emergency health powers, including business closures, cordon sanitaire, and full lockdowns, which are warranted only if supported by science, and are necessary, proportionate, and non-discriminatory.

So lockdowns are warranted if supported by science. Still no acknowledgement of the terrible harms they have caused.

authoritarian leaders have used the pandemic as an excuse to violate human rights, including suppressing information, punishing whistleblowers, arresting and detaining opponents and citizen journalists, and undermining democratic rights

I recognise all of those things having happened in many Western countries but are they mentioned? Of course not. China, Tanzania, Egypt, Russia, Pakistan, Madagascar, Bangladesh, Venezuela, Cayman Islands, Burundi, India, Hungary, Malaysia, Zambia, El Salvador, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Ethiopia and Uganda all get a mention but nothing about the US, UK, Australia, Canada or New Zealand.

France and Greece get a brief mention. Maybe they haven’t been sending enough funding to the WHO recently.

Building back better with justice: a human rights response to COVID-19

And there we have it. Now we know exactly where this article has come from!

Global health with justice embedded into legislation and institution

A new rights-based national and global governance for the right to health would respond to the daily health emergency of health inequities that COVID-19 revealed and reinforced. Future governance, and the mechanisms that underpin it, must ensure equitable and effective responses to health emergencies by embedding the right to health, accountability, participation, and equity in global and national policies and international responses.

A new right-based global governance. Where have we heard that before? Nothing to see here. It all sounds completely reasonable and not sinister or dystopian at all.

These people don’t have a clue. That don’t recognise the harms they have caused and they wouldn’t recognise a human right if it jabbed them in the arm.

But they are calling the shots and they want global governance based around the greater good. Not enough countries did as they were told during this pandemic, so next time they want a structure in place that means your democratically elected leaders can’t decide if lockdowns are appropriate or not, the whole world will be locking down together.

Don’t get in the way of the greater good because if you do, you aren’t good and that means we can lock you up. Nobody likes not-good people and everyone will cheer your incarceration because it will keep them safe.

If these recommendations are allowed to go ahead, not only is it dangerous but also stupid. Never again will we know if a certain measure was the correct one to take or if a vaccine or treatment has a particular side effect because everybody in every country will have to do the same thing.

November 24, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

South Korea asks for Russia and China’s help

South Korea’s nuclear envoy Kim Gunn
RT | November 21, 2022

South Korea has turned to Russia and China for help in shutting down rival North Korea’s missile testing program, arguing that Pyongyang is threatening peace and stability across Northeast Asia and beyond.

Nuclear envoy Kim Gunn held a telephone call on Monday morning with the Russian and Chinese ambassadors to Seoul, Andrey Kulik and Xing Haiming, asking for “active cooperation” in persuading Pyongyang to refrain from “further provocations” and return to dialogue, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Kim argued that North Korea’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Friday violated UN Security Council resolutions and marked yet another dangerous saber-rattling incident from President Kim Jong-un’s regime.

Seoul made its appeal for help as its envoys prepared to lobby the UN Security Council for action at an emergency meeting on Monday in response to North Korea’s latest ICBM test. The South Korean diplomat “emphasized the need for the international community, including the United States, to unite and promptly take decisive countermeasures,” the ministry said.

As permanent members of the Security Council, Russia and China have the power to veto any resolutions that would punish North Korea for its strategic weapons tests. Russia has called in the past for de-escalation on the Korean Peninsula by both sides, meaning Pyongyang would halt nuclear-related tests and the US and South Korea would suspend their joint military exercises in the region. US officials have called that idea “insulting.”

Kulik warned last year that only diplomacy would bring peace to the peninsula. “We are convinced that step-by-step activities based on the principles of equality and a gradual and synchronized approach will make it possible to ensure the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and lay the foundation for a solid system of peace and security here,” the ambassador told TASS in an interview last December.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres issued a statement on Friday condemning North Korea for its latest ICBM launch. North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui responded on Monday by calling Guterres a “puppet of the US.” She defended North Korea’s weapons tests as a “legitimate and just exercise of the right to self-defense,” saying they came in response to “provocative nuclear war rehearsals” by the US and its allies.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

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