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Loss of Western brands is Russia’s gain – Putin

RT | February 9, 2023

Many foreign brands and businesses are leaving Russia not of their own volition but because they are feeling pressured to do so, and suffer financially as a result, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday at a meeting of the supervisory board of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives.

Moscow, however, will not force anyone to stay, according to the president.

“Many of them, as you know, under pressure from their governments, are leaving our market. Well, all the best to them. However, because of the loss of our market they incur huge losses. It’s their choice, it’s their decision,” Putin said, noting that many of those companies “do it without any pleasure.”

“Who wants to lose a well-established business in which they invested effort, money? It’s not even about the money sometimes – many have invested their hearts – but under pressure from their governments are forced to leave.”

According to Putin, Russia will not allow the varied assets and infrastructure these companies leave behind to go to waste, and domestic industries may even benefit from the situation.

“They leave behind a good legacy, so to speak, they leave behind production infrastructure, well-trained personnel. Perhaps someone thinks that all of this will immediately crumble and fall apart – nothing of the sort is happening. Our companies, our entrepreneurs are picking up these enterprises and businesses and continuing this work. And quite successfully,” the Russian president assured.

After Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine began, many major Western brands announced their withdrawal from the Russian market and the suspension of investment. According to economists from Switzerland’s University of St. Gallen, more than 1,400 companies decided to quit Russia over the past year, including electronics manufacturers, automakers, hotels, banks and restaurant chains.

However, Russia managed to secure supplies of goods through alternate routes – via the so-called ‘parallel imports’ – where products continue to be delivered to Russia through third countries without a brand license from the rights holder.

In addition to this, the Russian government has launched a number of programs and initiatives to support domestic manufacturers, which fall within the framework of ‘import substitution’. According to Putin, the country produces a lot of quality products, which until recently had a hard time making their way to the domestic market due to competition from global players.

However, the departure of Western brands means “our domestic manufacturers received unique opportunities for development and we must take advantage of them,” Putin stated.

February 9, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

EU mulls ways to censor Russian views

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | FEBRUARY 2, 2023

The European Union is organizing a conference entitled: “Beyond disinformation – EU responses to the threat of foreign information manipulation.”

Its main thrust is to seek ways of expunging any trace of a Russia-friendly outlook within the Union.

The EU has already censored Russia Today TV channels and the Sputnik agency. It is now extending its reach to EU citizens relaying content from these portals, whether they agree with it or not.

The event will be chaired by Josep Borrell, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, assisted by Stefano Sannino, Secretary General of the European External Action Service,.

MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, Chairman of the European Parliament’s Special Committee on Foreign Interference, will address the meeting along with representatives of the Swedish Psychological Defense Agency, the British Foreign Office and the US State Department, and of course of NATO.

The star of the show will be Nina Jankowicz (pictured), who, after serving as communications adviser to President Volodymr Zelensky, was appointed by President Joe Biden to chair the Disinformation Governance Board, the short-lived US censorship structure.

With the exception of Mr. Glucksman, all the speakers are senior, though unelected, officials.

February 8, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

World Health Organization zero draft pandemic treaty pushes for increased surveillance powers

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | February 6, 2023

The  (WHO) has released the latest zero draft of its international pandemic treaty which will give the unelected global health agency new sweeping surveillance powers if passed.

The treaty requires the WHO’s 194 member states (which represent 98% of all the countries in the world) to strengthen the WHO’s “One Health surveillance systems.”

One Health is a WHO system that aims to “optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems” and “uses the close, interdependent links among these fields to create new surveillance and disease control methods.”

The WHO’s One Health fact sheet points to Covid-19 as one of the main reasons for expanding its One Health approach and states that it “put a spotlight on the need for a global framework for improved surveillance.”

The draft treaty also orders WHO member states to strengthen surveillance functions for “outbreak investigation and control through interoperable early warning and alert systems.”

Additionally, it requires member states to recognize the WHO as the “directing and coordinating authority on international health work, in pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery of health systems, and in convening and generating scientific evidence, and, more generally, fostering multilateral cooperation in global health governance.”

We obtained a copy of the zero draft of the WHO’s pandemic treaty for you here.

Although the draft treaty doesn’t mention surveillance tools that were used during Covid, such as contact tracing, testing, and vaccine passports, the WHO has previously confirmed that it’s a big supporter of vaccine passports. In the early stages of the pandemic, the WHO also lauded China’s Covid response, which utilized intense digital surveillance, before changing its position and criticizing China’s zero-Covid policy.

This draft treaty has been in the works since December 2021. A final report on the treaty is expected to be presented to the WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), in May 2024.

If passed, this treaty will be adopted under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution — an article that allows the WHO to impose legally binding conventions on the WHO’s 194 member states if two-thirds of the member states’ representatives vote in favor of the conventions.

Unlike the lawmaking process in most democratic nations, where elected officials implement national law, this WHO process allows a small number of global representatives, often unelected diplomats, to impose international laws on all of the WHO’s member states.

While some politicians have pushed back against this international pandemic treaty, it has the support of many powerful nations including the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), , , New Zealand, and the European Council (EC) (which represents 27 European Union (EU) member states).

This treaty is just one of the global surveillance proposals with ties to the WHO that is being pushed by influential global figures. At Business (B20) 2022, a summit of business leaders from Group of 20 (G20) countries, numerous countries agreed on a digital health passport that uses WHO standards. This digital health certificate will track whether people have been vaccinated or tested.

February 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ban on Russian media protects ‘freedom of expression’ – Borrell

RT | February 7, 2023

The EU’s crusade against Russian media does not seek to curb free speech but in fact pursues the opposite goal, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said on Tuesday. His remarks triggered criticism from Moscow, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova saying that Russia has viewed the media crackdown as a sign of a dictatorship.

Speaking at a conference dedicated to the EU’s response to foreign disinformation, Borrell said that the sanctions on Russian media “effectively banned them from operating” within the bloc.

“In doing that, we are not attacking the freedom of expression, we are just protecting the freedom of expression,” he argued.

Borrell also noted that the EU is trying to support those media organizations that Russia has classified as ‘foreign agents’, a designation meaning that an entity is either funded from abroad or is under “foreign influence.”

“What I’m saying is not just rhetoric. I cannot go into detail, but believe me, we try to support them in practical terms,” he said, adding that he would not say how in order not to do them “a bad favor.”

In an attempt to defend the EU’s media policies, Borrell claimed that Russia is using “manipulation and interference as a crucial instrument” in the Ukraine conflict. In light of this, the diplomat said that the EU would launch a platform called the Information Sharing and Analysis Center to combat falsehoods.

“We need to understand how these disinformation campaigns are organized … to identify the actors of the manipulation,” he stressed.

Commenting on Borrell’s remarks, Zakharova stated that in the past Moscow regarded the media crackdown as “a manifestation of liberal dictatorship.” But the way the diplomat described these policies in his latest speech made them “sparkle with fresh colors with a shade of delusion,” she added.

In recent years, the EU has unleashed a campaign against Russian media which only intensified when Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. In March, the EU suspended the broadcasting activities of Sputnik and RT, with the number of blacklisted channels only growing in the following months as the bloc introduced new sanctions against Russia.

February 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Returning to COVID19

By Dr. Malcolm Kendrick | January 31, 2023

With the resignation of Jacinda Ardern, my thoughts were dragged back to Covid once more. Jacinda, as Prime Minster of New Zealand was the ultimate lockdown enforcer. She was feted round the world for her iron will, but I was not a fan, to put it mildly. Whenever I heard her speak, it brought to mind one of my most favourite quotes:

‘Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.’  C.S. Lewis

At one point she actually said the following:

“We will continue to be your single source of truth” “Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.’

If I ruled the world, anyone who said, that, or anything remotely like that, would be taken as far as possible from any position of power, never to be allowed anywhere near it again. Ever.

Yet, there are still many who believe her to have been a great and caring leader. She certainly hugged a lot of people with that well rehearsed pained/caring expression on her face.

Enough of that particular woman. But it got me thinking about lockdowns again and the whole worldwide madness of Covid. This was a time of such blundering idiocy that I find increasingly difficult to believe it ever happened. A bad dream.

‘The sky is falling, the sky is falling…’ Cue, everyone running about in panic. People, allegedly, dropping dead on the streets. Mortuaries, allegedly, overflowing. Freezer lorries, allegedly, stacked with dead bodies. Bring out your dead!

I worked with doctors who strode around the wards in positive pressure protective gear. There were GPs who simply refused to visit elderly residents in nursing homes. On my patch this was all GPs and all nursing homes. Meanwhile I happily visited away with a mask stuck to the top of my head.

During the Covid pandemic I travelled far past angry, to reach a point of utter weariness. Instead of becoming outraged by the latest rubbish that was being pronounced, I very nearly washed my hands of it. However, after learning of Jacinda’s resignation I roused myself to have another look at what actually did happen. Or to be more specific, what was the impact of Covid on overall mortality. The only outcome that really matters.

Rid your mind of the numbers claimed to have died of Covid. The, never to be clarified distinction between those who died ‘of’ or ‘with’ Covid. Or those who read an article on Covid and then, overwhelmed with fear, stepped out in front of a bus. Thus, becoming a Covid related… associated, something, anything to do with Covid, death.

Over time the Covid figures became so ridiculous and unreliable as to become meaningless. I should know, I wrote some of the death certificates myself. Let me think… ‘She died of COVID, she died of COVID not. Eeny, meeny, miney mo…’

I am not saying that Covid did not kill a large number of people. But the fact that deaths from influenza disappeared completely for two years tells me all I need to know. ‘Roll up, roll up, Ladies and Gentlemen, to see the amazing lady influenza disappear before your very eyes.’ An astonishing trick, all the way from La La Land. ‘You expect me to believe that?  Ho, ho, ho, very funny…. Oh, sorry, you actually do.’

Anyway, to clear my internal database of horribly unreliable figures, I went back to look at my favourite graphs on EuroMOMO. This website looks at overall mortality, and only overall mortality. Their data comes from countries who do know how to record deaths, honestly. Unlike some others, who shall be nameless … China.

However, the main reason to focus on EuroMOMO is that overall mortality is something you cannot fake. About the only thing you can do to manipulate the figures is hold back data for a month or two – which has been done, but not to any great degree. So, without further ado, let us move onto EuroMOMO. Below is a recent graph. I have deliberately removed most of the information you need to know what it is showing. I wanted people to avoid jumping to conclusions … that they might then find it difficult row back from.

I found myself examining this graph idly and thought. Imagine if you had no idea what you were looking at here. What would you think? It’s a squiggly line, yes. Very good, gold star. What else?

To give you a bit more detail. This is a graph of overall mortality, across a large number of European countries. All of those who provide data to the EuroMOMO database anyway. Norway, the ultimate European lockdown champion, has mysteriously disappeared from the database. Maybe they shall return …. I have begun to see everything as a conspiracy nowadays.

The graph itself begins in January 2017 and finishes in January 2023. As you can see (if not terribly clearly) there are two wavy dotted lines. These lines rise up in the winter, and then fall back down in the summer. Something seen every year. This is because, every year, more people die in the winter than in the summer.

Everyone thinks they know the reason for this winter summer effect, but I am not so sure they do. But that is an enormously complicated topic for another time.

The lower, dotted lines represent the ‘average’ mortality you would expect to see [with upper and lower ‘normal’ limits] year on year. Above those wavy dotted lines sits a solid spikey line. This represents the actual number of deaths that occurred. Not just from Covid, but from everything.

This does raise an immediate question. If we keep seeing more deaths than we would expect in the winter, year on year, then the ‘average’ number of deaths should rise? Thus, the wavy dotted lines ought to be going up and up, in the winter. But they don’t.

I am not entirely sure why this is not the case. But it is a statistical question of such mind-boggling complexity that I am, frankly, unable to answer it. I have looked into it, but I was scared off by the sheer scale and difficulty of the mathematics involved. Too many equations for my poor wee brain.

Anyway, this graph starts in the winter of 2017 and ends about now. The vertical lines are drawn at midnight on Dec 31st each year. Which means that we have almost exactly six years of data. Excellent data, not manipulated in any way. I say this because, whilst the diagnosis of ‘Covid death’ may be disputed, the diagnosis of death cannot.

What stands out? Well, there was a very sharp peak of deaths in early 2020. This, as you have probably worked out, was when Covid first hit. I find it fascinating that it was so transient. It came, it went… gone. For a bit anyway.

Was the precipitous fall due to strict lockdowns? Some will doubtless argue this. However, we all locked down again in autumn 2020 and the death rate went up, and stayed up, for about six months. Until, that is, January came along, and it all settled down again. Which follows pretty much the pattern of 2017, 2108 and 2019. And the pattern of all pandemics. They come, and they go. Some a little earlier, some a little later.

What else do you see – now that we are all pretty much fully vaccinated? I think another thing that stands out is the sudden and sharp rise in mortality in November 2022. Which is virtually identical to the spike in 2020. Strange?

However, to my mind, the thing that shouts most loudly about this graph is that the years of Covid pandemic panic really do not look that much different from the previous three years. Half close your eyes, and there is almost nothing to see. The Covid peaks were a little higher, and a little longer – maybe.

If you knew nothing about the Covid pandemic I don’t think you would exclaim. ‘My God, look at these vast waves of death in 2020, 2021. What amazing, never seen before thing, happened here?’ Yes, first spike of early 2020 was certainly sharp, and unusual, but it was short. And very little different to the spike at the end of 2022. As for the rest?

Now, I would like to turn your attention to Germany. The most populous country in Europe. Here it is even more clear that the years of the Covid pandemic are not remotely unusual. If I had removed the calendar years off this graph, you would be hard pressed to spot the Covid pandemic. In truth, you would be more than hard pressed. You couldn’t.

The 2018 influenza spike was equally dramatic to Covid peak of 2021, if not more so. [You may have noticed that there was no peak in 2020] In addition, at the end of 2022, we have the highest peak of all. Future historians might well look at this graph and ask. ‘Tell me, why did the world go mad in 2020, and remain mad through 2021? Why did everyone lockdown in March 2020, and then do nothing whatsoever in December 2022?’

It almost goes without saying that, had we locked down again in November 2022, it would have been claimed that lockdown saved us all. Look at how quickly it came, then went. Well, they could have claimed it. But we didn’t lock down again, did we? In direct contrast to Germany. What of the people living in Luxembourg?

Luxembourg is surrounded by Belgium France and Germany. People move freely from one to the other, always have done, and still do. The ‘deadly’ Covid pandemic raged all around them. Here, absolutely nothing happened. Mind you, they also seem to have been unaffected by influenza.

Whilst the Germans were dying in large numbers in 2018, the Luxembourgians carried on serenely, not an extra death to be seen. Why? Discuss. [It seems that most/all countries unaffected by Covid, were also unaffected by earlier flu epidemics].

I know some of you may be thinking that Germany is much bigger than Luxembourg so … so what? If you are going to see an effect on mortality, you are more likely to see it happen, more dramatically, and rapidly, in a country with fewer people.

I should explain that the figures on the left axis, on the German and Luxembourg graphs (unlike the first one), do not represent total deaths, they are the ‘Z score’. That is, the deviation from the mean.

The upper dotted line represents a Z score of five. That means, five standard deviations above the mean. It has been decreed that if you hit more than five standard deviations above the mean, for any length of time, this is a signal that ‘something bad’ is happening. The alarm starts goes off, and epidemiologists run around bumping into each other. ‘The sky is falling… etc.’

If you use the Z score it makes no difference how large the population is. It has been specifically designed to make it possible to compare changes in overall mortality, in populations of very different sizes. I feel the need here to make it clear that Luxembourg is not that small. It has more than twice the population of Iceland, for example.

Enough of the maths already.

So, deep breath, and trying to bring all these random thoughts together. What does EuroMOMO tell us? It tells us that Covid was a bit worse than a bad flu season, with 2018 being a good reference point. [There have been far worse flu epidemics than 2018, and I am not talking about 1918/19].

What EuroMOMO makes most clear, at least to me, is that Covid was not, repeat not, a pandemic of unique power, and destructiveness. It could have never remotely justified the drastic actions that were taken to combat it.

Belatedly, this is becoming recognised, as has the damage associated with lockdowns. Here is the abstract of an article from 2022. A bit dry, but worth a read. ‘Are Lockdowns Effective in Managing Pandemics?’

‘The present coronavirus crisis caused a major worldwide disruption which has not been experienced for decades. The lockdown-based crisis management was implemented by nearly all the countries, and studies confirming lockdown effectiveness can be found alongside the studies questioning it.

In this work, we performed a narrative review of the works studying the above effectiveness, as well as the historic experience of previous pandemics and risk-benefit analysis based on the connection of health and wealth. Our aim was to learn lessons and analyze ways to improve the management of similar events in the future.

The comparative analysis of different countries showed that the assumption of lockdowns’ effectiveness cannot be supported by evidence—neither regarding the present COVID-19 pandemic, nor regarding the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu and other less-severe pandemics in the past.

The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save. It is suggested therefore that a thorough cost-benefit analysis should be performed before imposing any lockdown for either COVID-19 or any future pandemic.’ 1

In the face of such evidence, the argument for lockdown seems to be transforming into a somewhat pathetic whinge. ‘We didn’t know. It’s all very well people saying we shouldn’t have locked down now. We didn’t hear you saying it at the time. We were just following The Science, don’t blame us. Better safe than sorry. Don’t blame us … I think you’re being very nasty to us.’

This, of course, is nonsense. There were plenty of scientists arguing against lockdown at the time. However, they were all ruthlessly censored, attacked, and silenced. Experts such as Prof. John Ioannidis, Prof. Karol Sikora, Prof. Sunetra Gupta, Prof. Carl Heneghan. These last two UK professors argued very strenuously against lockdowns. They were ignored, then vilified. Here from an article written in January 2021:

‘… Sunetra Gupta. She’s been getting flak from the mob for months but it reached a crescendo yesterday when she was on the Today programme. Why is the BBC giving space to a nutter, people asked? She isn’t a nutter, of course. She’s an infectious disease epidemiologist at Oxford University. But she bristles against the COVID consensus and that makes her a bad person, virtually a witch, in the eyes of the zealous protectors of COVID orthodoxy. Professor Gupta has written about the barrage of abuse she receives via email. ‘Evil’, they call her.’

‘… her chief crime, judging from the hysterical commentary about her, is that she is critical of harsh lockdowns. She is a founder of the Great Barrington Declaration, which proposes that instead of locking down the whole of society we should shield the elderly and the vulnerable while allowing other people to carry on pretty much as normal. It is this perfectly legitimate discussion of a social and political question — the question of lockdown — that has earned Gupta the most ire.’ 2

I would like to point out that I was arguing against lockdown, right from the very beginning. Yes, I do enjoy saying, ‘I told you so’ from time to time. It is one of the few satisfactions I get in life nowadays. Here is a section from a blog I wrote in March 2020. Once again, right from the start:

‘… However, there is also a health downside associated with our current approach. Many people are also going to suffer and die, because of the actions we are currently taking. On the BBC, a man with cancer was being interviewed. Due to the shutdown, his operation is being put back by several months – at least. Others with cancer will not be getting treatment. The level of worry and anxiety will be massive.

Hip replacements are also being postponed and other, hugely beneficial interventions are not being done. Those with heart disease and diabetes will not be treated. Elderly people, with no support, may simply die of starvation in their own homes. Jobs will be lost, companies are going bust, suicides will go up. Psychosocial stress will be immense.

In my role, working in Out of Hours, we are being asked to watch out for abuse in the home. Because we know that children will now be more at risk, trapped in their houses. Also, partners will suffer greater physical abuse, stuck in the home, unable to get out. Not much fun.

Which means that we are certainly not looking at a zero-sum game here, where every case of COVID prevented, or treated, is one less death. There is a health cost.

There is also the impact of economic damage, which can be immense. I studied what happened in Russia, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the economic and social chaos that ensued. There was a massive spike in premature deaths.

In men, life expectancy fell by almost seven years, over a two to three-year period. A seven-year loss of life expectancy in seventy million men, is forty-nine million QALYs worth. It is certainly a far greater health disaster than COVID can possibly create…’ 3

And lo, the damage is coming to pass. Maybe not so many people dying of starvation as I predicted, at least not in the West. In poorer countries, however …

Another terrible thing that happened during lockdown was the vilification of anyone who dared question the official narrative. Yet almost everything they predicted has come true. Have the likes of Professor Gupta been forgiven and welcomed back into the fold? Have a wild guess on that one.

What of those who deliberately whipped up the panic and led the dreadful behavioural psychology teams. They quite deliberately frothed the population into a state of terror. What of those, whose ridiculous models kicked the whole damned thing off? The Professor Neil Fergusons of this land? Yes, you.

These people are all still comfortably ensconced, advising away. Their positions fully secure. In the UK they were mostly given knighthoods, damehoods, and other shiny gongs to impress their friends with. This, I find hard to swallow.

More worrying is that there will never be an honest review on the pandemic. Why, because so many people in positions of power would be seriously threatened by it. Which means that any such review will end up as a completely bland whitewash.  ‘In general the actions taken were reasonable, and in a situation where so much was unknown, it was better to try and protect the public … blah, blah.’ Case closed.

The reality is that these lockdowns were a complete disaster. A complete disaster. The fact that we will never have a proper debate about them, means that we will learn nothing from what happened. This, in turn, means that another disaster is on the way. Those who should be listened to will be attacked, silenced and censored, again.

Those who got it all horribly wrong last time will be handed even greater powers … next time. The reason why lockdowns did not work, they will argue, is because they were not strict enough, or long enough. We need proper lockdowns next time. You have been warned. Cast your eyes over China.

I will leave you with the conclusion of the paper ‘Are lockdowns effective in managing pandemics?’

  • Neither previous pandemics nor COVID19 provide clear evidence that lockdowns help to prevent death in pandemic
  • Lockdowns are associated with a considerable human cost. Even if somewhat effective in preventing COVID19 death, they probably cause far more extensive (an order of magnitude or more) loss of life
  • A thorough risk-benefit analysis must be performed before imposing any lockdown in future.

Which can probably be summed in in the words: Primum non nocere. First, do no harm.

The central guiding principle of medicine that was hurled out of the window in March 2020 by people who seem not to exhibit a scrap of humility, or humanity. Nor apology.

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9368251/

2: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-censorious-war-on-lockdown-sceptics/

3: https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/03/29/a-health-economic-perspective-on-covid-19/

February 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Will U.S. ‘Interests’ Become Sacrificed on Altar of New Indo-Pacific Strategy?

By Matthew Ehret | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 4, 2023

As the trans-Atlantic world is pulled into the vortex of a McCarthyite nightmare with a renewed wave of anti-Russian and now anti-China hysterics, a wave of new “Asia Pacific” doctrines have emerged across captured states… I mean “member” states throughout NATO.

Starting with the February 2022 American ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’, similar anti-China programs have popped up left and right with one principled target in mind: eliminate the threat of China through every tool available.

By early June 2022, the UK announced its own branding of the Asia Pivot remixed into the oddly named ‘Indo-Pacific Tilt’ which focuses less on the liberal eco-friendly language of the EU and devotes itself entirely to vastly increasing its military presence in China’s backyard.

After NATO’s June 2022 Madrid Summit officially designated China as ‘a systemic rival’, Canada’s foreign ministry announced its own Indo-Pacific Strategy in November 2022 followed by an absurd 26 page program published in January 10, 2023 outlining the details of Canada’s new role in the Pacific (which will be the subject of a subsequent report).

On January 25, 2023 NATO’s ironically named ‘Science for Peace and Security Program’ launched a new ‘cooperative initiative on the Indo-Pacific, followed by a January 30, 2023 Atlantic Council Indo-Pacific Security Initiative focused on dealing with “China’s growing threat to the international order”. The same day the Atlantic Council unveiled this new doctrine, an American intelligence spook named Markus Garlauskas was named the program’s new director.

While efforts have been made to avoid using an explicitly militaristic language within the majority of the seemingly unconnected reports outlined above, the fact is that what is emerging is a mutation of Obama’s toxic ‘Asia Pivot’. Unlike the small kinetic wars against non-nuclear states like Iraq or Libya, this new war plan against China is a diverse hodgepodge of every single tool of asymmetrical war launched all at once and targeting not only China, but more importantly China’s weaker neighbors. Besides the obvious conventional military and color revolutionary techniques which I’ve written about extensively in other locations, this new era of Indo-Pacific Strategies rely upon:

1- Seducing Asian neighbors into trade deals, economic partnerships, and military partnerships with the Trans Atlantic community which pull them out of China’s orbit

2- Coerce China’s neighbors into military agreements with the U.S., Canada, the EU and especially the absurd ‘Global NATO’ advocated by Jens Stoltenberg and his think tank clones in Brussels and Washington.

3- Promote an anti-Chinese human rights consensus to justify endless sanctions on Beijing for imagined abuses of Tibetans, forced labor of Uyghurs and tyrannized Hong Kongers.

4- Induce as many nations in the Anglo-American sphere of influence to cut themselves off of business with China or Chinese state firms in order to defend the rules based order

5- Build an anti-development cage around China and its neighboring regions under the guise of ‘ecosystems management’, ‘green finance’, ‘decarbonization’ and ‘ocean conservation’

6- Construct new trade alliances in the Pacific to counteract both China’s maritime Silk Road and also the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with an ambiguously titled U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF)

Since the architects of this agenda are not known for their commitment to reality, the objectives also include a fair amount of tools that aren’t available but are imagined to be so.

Chief among the list of imaginary tools to subdue China, we find the incredible economic power of the mighty U.S. dollar whose business everyone in the world is believed to desperately desire.

Take the example of some champions of the anti-China program writing at The Hill who criticized IPEF not for being delusional- but rather not for being delusional enough saying: “The IPEF neglects one of the secrets of U.S. success in Asia- access to U.S. markets. It was this lure and a U.S. regional security umbrella that fostered the economic miracles of Japan and South Korea after World War II and later Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and China itself”.

Ignoring the fact that the once viable U.S. economy of the post-WWII decades has become a hollowed out shell of de-industrialized rot replaced with a cancerous speculative bubble economy, the authors of the article cited above exhibit a complete ignorance to the reality that the only insecurity shaking the foundations of the Asia Pacific is caused by the belligerent antagonisms of an insecure dumb giant overcompensating for its own mediocrity and impending collapse.

Despite the fact that China is the undisputed driver of economic growth, national banking and scientific progress in the world, the Anglo-American foreign policy hawks drafting the Indo-Pacific Agenda imagine that the world is somehow yearning to be liberated from Beijing’s nefarious agenda to end poverty, increase food production, build infrastructure and reconstruct war torn sectors of the globe that have been shredded by NATO-led bombing campaigns.

Even if one disregards my remarks about China’s program as “romantic idealism” and instead consider only the basic self-interest of anyone doing business with China, the basic economic facts of China’s trade relationship with its neighbors should cause anyone with half a brain to recognize where Asian-Pacific nations see as the principled force of their present and future prosperity.

Take the case of the U.S. military colony of Japan, which saw China consume over 20% of her trade exports in 2020, surpassing the USA and which increased from $146 billion to $206 billion in 2021. Despite being run by synthetic puppets clamoring for antagonism with China, Japan much more dependent on China economically than any other nation, including the USA.

Or take South Korea – another candidate for the Pacific NATO and second largest military colony of the Pacific behind Japan, whose largest trading partner is China running up to the tune of $240 billion between 2016-2021 (contrasted with a mere $131 billion with the USA over that same period). Without China, South Korea’s economy literally falls to pieces.

Despite the fact that the USA is desperately trying to intimidate nations of Asia to partner up with itself in opposition to China, Beijing’s trade with all 10 ASEAN nations rose by an incredible 71% over last year and grew 41% with India – both of whom share common interests with Russia, Iran, Africa and the broader multipolar alliance.

The European Union has conducted its fair share of blood-letting under Anglo American pressure over the past year.

First by slashing access to cheap and abundant Russian oil and natural gas, but then by freezing a long-awaited EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investments in May 2021 after China counter sanctioned five European parliamentarians for using CIA-propaganda to justify a sanction regime onto China over alleged abuses of Uyghurs. The freezing of this deal was followed Brussel’s decision to begin imposing tariffs onto Chinese aluminum and by Germany’s cancelling of a Chinese purchase of a chip manufacturer and blocking of China’s purchase of an un-named construction firm. As of January 30, Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for International Markets attested to the EU’s devotion “to the goal of choking China’s semiconductor industry” and went on to say “We fully agree with the objective of depriving China of the most advanced chips. We cannot allow China to access the most advanced technologies”.

Despite these ugly facts, the fact remains that the EU is still (and will continue to be) completely reliant upon trade with Beijing which is still by far the EU’s #1 trade partner. Not only is China the biggest source of exports to the EU (making up 22% of exports in 2021 and whose bilateral trade amounted to $711 billion during the first 10 months of 2022), but the EU is also dependent upon rare earth metals controlled by China (which controls nearly 90% of global supplies). It should be noted that before the USA announced its Indo-Pacific Strategy in February 2022, the EU had already made its own intentions clear to launch its ‘EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific’ in September 2021 except with the important difference that China was not targeted as a rival or ‘systemic disrupter’ but rather as a partner in cooperation. This spirit of cooperation was obviously intolerable to an oligarchy seeking to set the stage for a new dark age.

Not that this obvious fact should need to be stated, trade with Russia, the Russian-led EAEU, the African Union, Southwest Asia, Central Asia, Gulf States and CELAC nations has also increased in leaps and bounds this year showing no signs of reversal.

I’ve stated this before, and I’ll say it again: China, Russia and every other nation sitting on the other side of the trans-Atlantic gated community are extremely aware of the precarious time bomb that is the Wall Street-City of London bubble banking system.

While synthetic shells might currently be sitting in positions of management within the capitals of Germany, France, Japan, Taiwan and other abused sacrificial states, the vast majority of the people, business class and intelligentsia knows that the script that celebrated a new world order and ‘end of history’ in 1992 no longer applies to the Eurasian-led world.

Barring a mindlessly desperate unleashing of nuclear warheads in the short term, the very fact of the real centers of gravity caused by the pro-growth, human-centric priorities of Eurasia led by China’s evolving Belt and Road initiative ensure that the storms which WILL befall the western world will not be everlasting nor will the dark abyss caused by the meltdown of the banking system be something which cannot be replaced by a viable economic and security architecture more befitting the human species.

February 5, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Content production company for RT’s sister channel ceases operations, citing crackdown on media freedom

RT | February 3, 2023

RT DE Productions – a German-based company that produces content for the RT DE TV channel and website in Moscow – has announced that it’s halting all its operations in the country. The company cited “the repressive state of media freedoms within the EU.”

The latest round of sanctions adopted by Brussels has made any further activities of the company in Germany impossible, RT DE Productions said in a statement on Friday.

The ninth sanctions package introduced in December 2022 amounted to “effectively cutting off oxygen for staff,” the firm said, adding that the EU had “betrayed the reliance on the fundamental rights and freedoms recognized in the Charter of Fundamental Rights” of the bloc itself.

“The EU, in permitting the imposition of sanctions on media freedoms, has shown that the very values claimed to define the core of its existence are without any substance,” the statement read, adding that the freedom of the press “does not exist in Germany today.”

The production company also said it was “happy and proud” to be able to provide German-speaking audiences in multiple countries with “essential stories and opinions, often side-lined or overlooked by the mainstream media outlets.”

The sanctions package announced in December blacklisted RT’s parent company, TV-Novosti, as well as revoking the EU broadcasting licenses of Russian media outlets including NTV, NTV Mir, Rossiya 1, REN TV and Perviy Channel. Following the introduction of these new restrictions, Paris froze the accounts of RT France, citing the need to comply with the new regulations. The move forced RT’s French subsidiary to cease broadcasting.

Even before the conflict in Ukraine, RT had faced multiple obstacles to launching a live TV channel for a German audience back in 2021. German banks abruptly refused to work with the broadcaster, and Luxembourg shot down its licensing bid.

When the channel was eventually launched in December 2021, its YouTube page was immediately banned and European satellite TV operator Eutelsat took it off air shortly after, giving in to pressure from the German media regulator, MAAB. The regulator then demanded a broadcast ban on the RT DE channel, accusing RT DE Productions of broadcasting without a valid German license.

RT DE Productions is not a broadcaster, but a production company, while the RT DE channel was broadcast from Moscow under a valid EU-wide Serbian license. However, a German court sided with the media regulator in March 2022.

February 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

EU sanctions blocked Nord Stream repairs – company

RT | February 1, 2023

Norway’s Equinor on Wednesday revealed that it was the government in Oslo and EU sanctions that blocked it from responding to a request for assistance in dealing with the damage to Nord Stream pipelines. The Baltic Sea pipelines delivering Russian natural gas to Germany were damaged by sabotage in September, which Moscow blamed on the West.

“The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has stated that work on the pipelines would be in breach of the Norwegian sanction regulations – and by extension the EU sanction regulations,” Equinor said a statement emailed to Reuters.

Equinor is the Norwegian oil company that administers the Pipeline Repair and Subsea Intervention (PRSI) Pool, established by Oslo to deal with leaks and ruptures. The Swiss-based operators for Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 are among the 72 members of PRSI, and sent requests for assistance in October, shortly after both pipelines were damaged by undersea explosions.

Because PRSI “adheres to current legislation related to sanctions,” it “notified NS1 and NS2 (operators) that we were not able to do work as requested,” Equinor said in the statement.

Nord Stream 2 AG told Reuters that it had filed a request for support to inspect the damage, “as a full member of the PRSI Pool,” but was turned down. Its sister company, which operates the original Nord Stream, said in early October that the survey vessel it attempted to charter was waiting for permission from the Norwegian government.

The original Nord Stream was inaugurated in 2011, and supplied Russian natural gas to Germany and the rest of the EU while bypassing Ukraine and Poland. The second pipeline, which would have doubled the volume of gas deliveries, was finished in 2021 but Berlin refused to certify it for operations even before the conflict in Ukraine escalated. The US had sought to block the second pipeline’s construction with sanctions and vowed it would prevent it from becoming operational.

On September 26, 2022 both strings of NS1 and one string of NS2 were damaged in a series of powerful undersea explosions. As NS1 was pressurized at the time, a large quantity of gas was released into the Baltic Sea.

Washington insinuated that Moscow was behind the blasts, while Russia pointed the finger at the West for the “act of terrorism.” Sweden, Denmark and Germany launched an investigation into the explosion, but refused to share the results with Russia. Anonymous EU officials have since leaked to the US media that there was “no evidence” to suggest Moscow was behind the sabotage. Russia’s energy company Gazprom was allowed access to the site only once, in late October.

While the German gas company Uniper has estimated it would take 6-12 months to repair the pipelines, it is unclear whether Berlin even wants to do so.

February 1, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Irish MEP: US yielding to Israeli pressures over 2015 Iran nuclear deal

Press TV – February 1, 2023

A member of the European Parliament says the United States has bowed to Israeli pressures over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal as negotiations for reviving the agreement have been stalled due to Washington’s excessive demands.

In a post on his Twitter account on Wednesday, MEP Mick Wallace criticized the US and some “hawks” in the European Parliament over the stalled talks on reviving the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“Biden promised to get #JCPOA with #Iran back on track but negotiations have stalled,” he wrote, adding, “[it] seems #US have caved to pressure from #Israel.”

The “hawks in EU Parliament want to abandon” the JCPOA, however, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell “is right to keep dialogue open with Iran,” Wallace added.

The remarks come as negotiations, which started in April last year in Vienna, remain stalled since August as Washington refuses to remove the sanctions that were slapped on the Islamic Republic by the previous US administration of Donald Trump.

This is while after taking office, the Biden administration had criticized his predecessor’s decision to scrap the deal and vowed to reverse the measure.

On the contrary, the Biden administration officials have upped the so-called maximum pressure campaign against Iran and on several occasions announced that the talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal are no longer their main focus.

The White House, meanwhile, is leveling accusations against Iran over human rights issues during recent foreign-backed riots and drone delivery to Russia to be used in the Ukraine war. Tehran has strongly rejected the allegations in both cases.

Observers believe Washington is trying to use these baseless accusations against Iran to gain leverage in talks and negotiate from a position of strength.

Meanwhile, the Israeli regime has openly expressed opposition to the deal since it was signed back in 2015. The regime, which is the only possessor of nuclear warheads in the region without being a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, has made various efforts in the past years to hamper Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, from assassinating Iranian scientists to carrying out acts of sabotage in Iranian facilities and trying to push others away from the deal.

February 1, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Amount of frozen Russian investments revealed

RT | January 31, 2023

Nearly $81 billion in funds belonging to Russian investors have been blocked by Western financial institutions, according to estimates by the Bank of Russia revealed on Tuesday.

As of November 30, the volume of frozen assets held at Western financial institutions totaled 5.7 trillion rubles ($80.8 billion). More than 20% of these funds are owned by retail investors, the regulator pointed out.

Last year, in an effort to minimize risks and protect investors, the Russian central bank banned brokers from executing trades for unqualified investors to purchase securities from so-called ‘unfriendly’ countries. The regulator has also imposed retaliatory restrictions on assets under Russia’s jurisdiction owned by nonresidents.

Speaking at a conference on the global challenges facing Russian financial markets, the head of the central bank’s investment department, Olga Shishlyannikova, stated her view that the frozen asset “story” is “very complicated” and that it will continue to have a negative impact on investors.

However, some solutions have been implemented, she noted. For example, direct payments of income from Russian securities trading in foreign markets to Russian investors were allowed.

Also, under a scheme introduced last year, Russian companies are able to issue local ‘replacement’ bonds with settlement in rubles to replace outstanding Eurobonds, a type of bond denominated in foreign currency. Russian issuers have experienced major difficulties servicing these bonds in light of Western sanctions.

“If all Russian Eurobonds are replaced, then retail investors will be able to withdraw more than 50% of their assets and start making use of those funds,” Shishlyannikova explained.

The rest of the assets are foreign securities from foreign issuers that have no direct connection with the Russian economy, she added.

Last September, Russia’s National Settlement Depository applied to the finance ministries of Belgium and Luxembourg for general licenses in order to unlock the frozen assets. In December, a general license was issued to release certain frozen funds and economic resources belonging to non-sanctioned Russian investors. However, the Bank of Russia assessed the chances of Western countries returning Russian assets as “extremely low” despite the fact that they haven’t been legally confiscated.

January 31, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Expert: Seizure of Russian Funds Could Make EU No-Go Investment Area for Rest of World

Sputnik – 27.01.2023

The European Commission’s plans to seize frozen Russian assets and use them to pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine will make the European Union a “no-go investment area” for other non-Western countries that will be scared away by these measures, geopolitical expert Charles Gave told Sputnik.

“I believe that Europe would become a no-go investment area for the non-Western world the day Europe seizes the assets of the Russian sovereign state… there is no legal base for seizing the assets of a foreign state,” the expert said.

In November, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed the creation of a special structure to manage the frozen assets of the Russian Central Bank and private assets to support Ukraine. On Thursday, a senior EU official said that the possible use of Russia’s frozen assets in the EU was accompanied by complex legal issues, with various EU institutions continuing discussions on the matter.

Gave, who is also a fund manager and investor, criticized another idea of the commission — to use Russia’s frozen funds to generate interests that could be confiscated and then allocated to provide infrastructure help to Ukraine — as he called this step “ridiculous” and “illegal.”

The expert gave the example of a situation where EU or G7 states could seize the interest generated by German bonds that belong to the Russian Central Bank and are deposited at the Bundesbank, the central bank of Germany. In this case, out of 3.4 billion euros ($3.7 billion) invested, the bloc would get only 340 million euros in interest over a year at a rate of 1%, Gave estimated, adding that this would not be enough for Ukraine’s reconstruction.

“It would take years to generate a substantial revenue from European investments of confiscated Russian assets. The G7 has no authority to decide anything. It would be a colossal abuse of power,” the expert added.

Gave also stated that the revenue from the interest of Russia’s assets would be low and it would divert the focus of the EU from the real issues, including the current excessive debt of member states, which could be difficult to repay once inflation falls.

The geopolitical expert said that the issue of Ukraine’s reconstruction should be discussed once the conflict was over. There has to be a negotiated settlement between the two sides, and only then the EU and other Western nations could start rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, Gave concluded.

The European Commission estimates the damage caused by the military operation that Russia launched in Ukraine a year ago at 600 billion euros. The West has blocked 300 billion euros worth of Russian Central Bank reserves and 19 billion euros in Russian businessmen’ assets, according to von der Leyen. Once sanctions are lifted, these funds “should be used so that Russia pays full compensation for the damages caused to Ukraine,” she said last year.

For its part, Moscow has warned that any attempts to confiscate frozen Russian assets fall under the definition of expropriation of property in violation of the European Constitution and international law, pledging to take measures in response if the West goes through with the move.

January 27, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Crushed Bug ‘Additive’ is Now Included in Pizza, Pasta & Cereals Across the EU

Most people won’t even know they’re eating it

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | January 25, 2023

As of yesterday, a food additive made out of powdered crickets began appearing in foods from pizza, to pasta to cereals across the European Union.

Yes, really.

Defatted house crickets are on the menu for Europeans across the continent, without the vast majority of them knowing it is now in their food.

“This comes thanks to a European Commission ruling passed earlier this month,” reports RT.

“As per the decision, which cited the scientific opinion of the European Food Safety Authority, the additive is safe to use in a whole range of products, including but not limited to cereal bars, biscuits, pizza, pasta-based products, and whey powder.”

But don’t worry, because the crickets first have to be checked to make sure they “discard their bowel content” before being frozen.

Lovely stuff.

Critics suggested that once bugs become widely accepted as a food additive, their consumption will become normalized across the board.

“The Liberal World Order has decided that the little people must eat bugs to prevent the climate from fluctuating, in accordance with ruling class ideology,” writes Dave Blount.

“Yet rather than mindlessly obey The Experts as most did with Covid policy, people have resisted. So our moonbat overlords are furtively sneaking insects into food.”

“This will allow them to reveal in the near future that we have already been eating bugs, so there is no reason to object to them shutting down farms and imposing a new diet.”

The European Union also recently approved the use of Alphitobius diaperinus, otherwise known as the lesser mealworm, for human consumption.

As we have exhaustively documented, globalist technocrats and climate change activists have consistently lobbied for people to start eating bugs to fight global warming, despite the practice being linked to parasitic infections.

I somewhat doubt that elitist technocrats who recently visited Davos will be switching to the bug diet, no matter how much they browbeat us about man-made climate change.

Back in November, the Washington Post advised Americans that instead of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, which now is unaffordable for a quarter of families, they should instead look to eating bugs.

While livestock farmers in the Netherlands are being climate change regulated out of existence, school children are being indoctrinated to eat bugs, while another German school has banned meat entirely.

January 26, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

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