In Great Britain, a particularly depressing facet of the crisis is now showing its first contours – and thus anticipating what is likely to happen in other European countries in the near future: because of the exploding energy prices, agriculture is being strangled and fresh produce has to be rationed.
High energy prices in the UK have meant that many farmers have made limited use of greenhouses to plant winter crops. According to a BBC report, this is leading to the first supermarkets to ration various types of vegetables. Field crops such as tomatoes, peppers, lamb’s lettuce, cauliflower or cucumbers are sometimes only sold in limited quantities.
Meanwhile, wholesalers are looking for new suppliers from other countries – but this means that the harvests have to travel much longer distances to Europe, which is not in the interest of the environment.
So far, farmers are not among those who benefit particularly from public support. This is now beginning to have an impact on consumers. Inexpensive food that is available all year round will soon be a thing of the past in Europe.
Rabat markets ‘well supplied with basic products’
British consumers are told that the impact that high electricity prices are having on produce grown in greenhouses in the UK, is due to “climate change”. The UK government has therefore blamed “bad weather” in Morocco.
The situation is quite different however: From the beginning of 2023 to February 22, a total of 64,034 places of production, storage and wholesale and retail sales were inspected, said Moroccan government spokesman, Mustapha Baitas.
During these interventions, 3,325 offences were recorded in terms of pricing and quality, Baitas said in a press briefing after the meeting of the Government Council, in response to a question on the results of control operations and the situation of seized products.
The joint commissions seized and destroyed 400 tons of products “not conforming to the standards in force”, while all usable products were sold at public auction, he added.
The minister had stressed earlier that the markets “are well supplied with basic products”.
UK to introduce GM foods
In the UK, the Lea Valley Growers Association (LVGA) produces around 75 percent of the country’s crops. They now say that half of the greenhouses are empty and production is expected to go down by up to 60 percent.
The Bank of England director, Andrew Bailey, apologized in June last year for sounding “apocalyptic” about rising food prices.
Such dire warnings have led to support for the introduction of a Bill that paves the way for genetically modified (GM) crops, with new food laws expected to pass through the UK’s Parliament.
Not a UK problem only
“Many greenhouse producers are abandoning their businesses due to the inability to cover their current heating and labor costs. So far, the state has taken absolutely no measures to support the greenhouse production sector. As we all know, it is one of the most expensive industries in the agricultural sector and is directly related to gas and electricity prices,” according to the Bulgarian Association of Greenhouse Farmers.
The profitability of Dutch companies have also been impacted, because energy represents 20 to 30 percent of their costs, Reuters reported.
A study conducted by ABN Amro predicted that rising energy prices would cost Dutch companies around 22 billion euros this year as gas and electricity prices jumped almost 5 times their 2019 levels.
Among the most impacted sectors: greenhouse production whose annual turnover reaches around 8 billion euros but where energy represents 20 to 30 percent of the costs. Already 40 percent of the members of the Glastuinbouw Nederland group are operating at a loss, due to excessive energy costs.
February 28, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | UK |
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In an interview with CNBC News in September 2020, Dr. Albert Bourla, the veterinarian Chief Executive Officer of Pfizer — the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world by revenue — said that anyone refusing to take the BioNTech vaccine will become “the weak link that will allow the virus to replicate”, and assured the public that “we will develop our product, develop our vaccine using the highest ethical standards”.
It was a dangerous claim to make, even for a CEO and investor making billions out of the experimental mRNA gene therapy product. Pfizer has a long history of paying out vast sums in out-of-court settlements to avoid not only claims in civil cases but also prosecution on criminal charges resulting from the fraudulent promotion, unapproved prescription and injury, including death, from use of its products. It has also offered millions in payments to doctors and scientists to prescribe, test, approve and recommend them to the public. So let’s have a look at what Dr. Albert Bourla means by Pfizer’s ‘ethical standards’.
- In 1992, Pfizer agreed to pay between $165 million and $215 million to settle lawsuits arising from the fracturing of the Bjork-Shiley Convexo-Concave heart valve, which by 2012 has resulted in 663 deaths.
- In 1996, Pfizer conducted an unapproved clinical trial on 200 Nigerian children with its experimental anti-meningitis drug, Trovafloxacin, without the consent of their parents and which led to the death of 11 children from kidney failure and left dozens more disabled. In 2011, Pfizer paid just $700,000 to four families who had lost a child and set up a $35 million fund for the disabled. This cover-up was the basis of the John Le Carré book and film The Constant Gardener.
- In 2004, Pfizer’s subsidiary Warner-Lambert was fined $430 million to resolve criminal charges and civil liabilities for the fraudulent promotion of its epilepsy drug, Neurontin, paying doctors to prescribe it for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
- In 2009, Pfizer spent $25.8 million lobbying Congressional lawmakers and federal agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services. Its expenditure on federal lobbying between 2006 and 2014 came to $89.89 million. In 2019 it spent $11 million lobbying the federal Government.
- In 2009, Pfizer set a record for the largest health care fraud settlement and the largest criminal fine of any kind, paying $2.3 billion to avoid criminal and civil liability for fraudulently marketing its anti-inflammatory drug, Bextra, which had been refused approval by the FDA due to safety concerns.
- In 2009, Pfizer paid $750 million to settle 35,000 claims that its diabetes drug, Rezulin, was responsible for 63 deaths and dozens of liver failures. In 1999, a senior epidemiologist at the Food and Drug Administration warned that Rezulin was “one of the most dangerous drugs on the market”.
- In 2010, Pfizer was ordered to pay $142.1 million in damages for violating a federal anti-racketeering law by its fraudulent sale and marketing of Neurontin for uses not approved by the FDA, including for migraines and bi-polar disorder.
- In 2010, Pfizer admitted that, in the last six months of 2009 alone, it had paid $20 million to 4,500 doctors in the U.S. for consulting and speaking on its behalf, and $15.3 million to 250 academic medical centres for clinical trials.
- In 2012, Pfizer paid $45 million to settle charges of bribing doctors and other health-care professionals employed by foreign Governments in order to win business. The Chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission Enforcement Division’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Unit said: “Pfizer subsidiaries in several countries had bribery so entwined in their sales culture that they offered points and bonus programs to improperly reward foreign officials who proved to be their best customers.”
- By 2012, Pfizer had paid $1.226 billion to settle claims by nearly 10,000 women that its hormone replacement therapy drug, Prempro, caused breast cancer.
- In 2013, Pfizer agreed to pay $55 million to settle criminal charges of failing to warn patients and doctors about the risks of kidney disease, kidney injury, kidney failure and acute interstitial nephritis caused by its proton pump inhibitor, Protonix.
- In 2013, Pfizer set aside $288 million to settle claims by 2,700 people that its smoking cessation drug, Chantix, caused suicidal thoughts and severe psychological disorders. The Food and Drug Administration subsequently determined that Chantix is probably associated with a higher risk of heart attack.
- In 2013, Pfizer absolved itself of claims that its antidepressant, Effexor, caused congenital heart defects in the children of pregnant woman by arguing that the prescribing obstetrician was responsible for advising the patient about the medication’s use.
- In 2014, Pfizer paid a further $325 million to settle a lawsuit brought by health-care benefit providers who claimed the company marketed its epilepsy drug, Neurontin, for purposes unapproved by the FDA.
- In 2014, Pfizer paid $35 million to settle a law suit accusing its subsidiary of promoting the kidney transplant drug, Rapamune, for unapproved uses, including bribing doctors to prescribe it to patients.
- In 2016, Pfizer was fined a record £84.2 million for overcharging the NHS for its rebranded and deregulated anti-epilepsy drug Phenytoin by 2,600% (from £2.83 to £67.50 a capsule), increasing the cost to U.K. taxpayers from £2 million in 2012 to about £50 million in 2013.
- In May 2018, Pfizer still had 6,000 lawsuits pending against claims that its testosterone replacement therapy products cause strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis, and were fraudulently marketed at healthy men for uses not approved by the FDA.
- In June-August 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice said they were looking at Pfizer’s activities in China and Russia under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which forbids U.S. firms from bribing foreign officials.
- In November 2021, the British Medical Journal revealed that the Ventavia Research Group had falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in the phase 3 trial for Pfizer’s ‘vaccine’.
- Since 2000, Pfizer has incurred $10.268 billion in penalties, including $5.637 billion for safety-related offences; $3.373 billion for unapproved promotion of medical products; $1.148 billion for government contract-related offences; $60 million under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; and $34.7 million for ‘kickbacks and bribery’.
Given this record of ongoing corruption and malpractice from, which only its enormous profits have saved it from criminal prosecution by means of out-of-court settlements, it seems extraordinary that Pfizer Inc. is still permitted to manufacture and sell any health-care products. Yet this is the pharmaceutical company we were asked by the U.K. Government, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, the U.K. Health Security Agency and the National Health Service to trust with the mass vaccination of 68 million people with a product that was rushed through clinical trials in seven months, employing experimental mRNA biotechnology whose clinical trials are not due to be completed until March 2023, for a disease with the infection fatality rate not much above seasonal influenza, which statistically is no threat to those under 50 years old, and for which there is no evidence that it prevents infection by the virus.
That was three years ago, during which the British people have paid with their freedoms, their health and their lives for believing the lies of their Government, their National Health Service and international pharmaceutical companies. Subsequent retractions by Pfizer, however, are an opportunity to revisit its claims in more detail.
On December 10th 2020, the U.S. Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee met to evaluate the trial data on the efficacy and safety of Pfizer/BioNTech’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine contained in the briefing document produced by Pfizer itself titled ‘Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine (BNT162, PF-07302048) Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee Briefing Document‘. It was on the basis of this evaluation that, on December 11th, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Emergency Use Authorisation to its mRNA gene therapy product. And given the subsequent debate about what Pfizer claimed its ‘vaccine’ would do, it might be useful to review the contents of this document.
The FDA’s Emergency Use Authorisation, which requires less data than standard approvals and is based on a lower standard of proof, was issued for a vaccine “intended to prevent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2”. It was issued for prevention, therefore, not for reduction of the severity of symptoms, as was claimed when it became clear the gene therapy product did not prevent infection. Pfizer’s claim was that its product had a ‘vaccine efficacy’ of 95% protection against COVID-19 occurring after second days from injection with the second dose. In its clinical trials, a ‘case’ of COVID-19 was defined as a positive RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 and the presence of at least one of the following symptoms: fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, muscle pain, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, diarrhoea or vomiting. Nothing was said about asymptomatic ‘cases’ of COVID-19, or claimed about the ability of the gene therapy product to stop ‘asymptomatic transmission’ of the virus.
Pfizer’s benefit assessment was that its mRNA vaccine may be able to induce “herd immunity”, induces strong “immune responses”, and “confers strong protection against COVID-19”. This clearly indicates protection against both infection with the virus and the disease. Since transmission of a virus from person to person requires prior infection, Pfizer’s claim that its vaccine protects against infection, and the suggestion that sufficient injections will induce ‘herd immunity’, is also, by extension, a claim that it stops transmission from the injected.
The subsequent claim by Janine Small, Pfizer’s President of International Developed Markets, during her testimony before the European Union Parliament in October 2022, that Pfizer never tested whether its ‘vaccine’ stopped transmission appears, therefore, to rest on the myth of ‘asymptomatic transmission’. The implication of her statement was that Pfizer’s product only stops infection with SARS-CoV-2 and symptoms of COVID-19. However, the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorisation for Pfizer’s vaccine was based on prevention of both infection and disease. Pfizer’s claim is not evidence, as many afterwards claimed, for the lack of justification for making injection a condition of lifting lockdown or imposing vaccine passports, but rather an attempt to deny responsibility for the failure of its product (from which it has made $69 billion) to meet either of its claims.
An indication of just how unscientific was the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorisation of Pfizer’s vaccine is that it was granted on the basis of protection from infection and disease, while conceding there is no evidence that the vaccine “prevents transmission from person to person“. This is the way the ‘Science’ we mustn’t question or deny but blindly follow is conducted in what I call the global biosecurity state. Indeed, three years after it announced the pandemic in March 2020, the World Health Organisation can still only offer the following justifications for the four vaccines authorised for use in the U.K.
- Pfizer/BioNTech: “There is modest vaccine impact on transmission.”
- AstraZeneca/Oxford: “No substantive data are available related to impact of the vaccine on transmission or viral shedding.”
- Moderna: “There is only modest impact on preventing mild infections and transmission.”
- Novavax: “There is not currently sufficient evidence to date to evaluate the impact of the vaccine on transmission.” (See World Health Organisation, ‘COVID-19 advice for the public: Getting vaccinated’.)
Failure to offer protection against infection or transmission, however, are the least of the failings of Pfizer’s ‘vaccine’. As the evidence of the harms and deaths caused by this experimental gene therapy product injected into the U.K. public becomes too overwhelming for all but the Covid-faithful, the British press, the U.K. Parliament and our Government to ignore, there have been no end of doctors, nurses and medical professionals protesting they thought Pfizer’s biotechnology was ‘safe and effective’. But aren’t they trained to spot when something is going medically very wrong?
As of January 25th 2023, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, responsible for authorising the injection of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine into U.K. citizens, has received 180,005 reports of 517,779 adverse reactions to the injections, over 70% of which reports (127,405) have been classified as ‘serious’, including 884 deaths following injection. Including AstraZeneca’s viral-vector gene therapy product and Moderna’s mRNA gene therapy, the MHRA has received a total of 477,553 reports of 1,555,433 adverse reactions to the COVID-19 gene therapies, 74 per cent of which (355,052 reports) are categorised as ‘serious’, including 2,436 deaths following injection.
By the MHRA’s own estimation, only 10% of serious adverse reactions and 2-4% of non-serious reactions are reported, so the actual tally of injuries, autoimmune disease, reproductive and breast disorders, miscarriages and premature births, facial paralysis, blood clotting, amputations, myocarditis, pericarditis, heart attacks and deaths — all of which were recorded in Pfizer’s own analysis of post-authorisation adverse events as early as February 2021 — is far higher, undoubtedly many times higher. Indeed, this — and not the risible excuses with which the U.K. public has been fobbed off by the U.K. media — is likely a major cause of the huge increase in mortality in the U.K. since the ‘vaccine’ programme was implemented, contributing to the more than 60,000 excess deaths in 2022.
Given which, it is my contention that any medical professional that authorised or administered the injection of U.K. citizens with the Pfizer/BioNTech gene therapy product is at risk of being found guilty in a court of law for failure to give sufficient warning of adverse effects and obtain informed consent.
Simon Elmer is the author of two new volumes of articles on the U.K. biosecurity state, Virtue and Terror and The New Normal, which are available in hardback, paperback and as an ebook. This article is an extract from an article in Volume 2, ‘Bowling for Pfizer’. Please click on these links for the contents page and purchase options. On March 11th, to mark the third anniversary since the declaration of the pandemic by the World Health Organisation, he will be holding a book launch at the Star & Garter, 62 Poland Street, W1F 7NX, upstairs in the William Blake room from 6-8pm. Entry is free, with book signings, a reading and open-mic discussion.
February 25, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, FDA, Pfizer, UK |
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Immediately after the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, key players in the coalition supporting Ukraine, as well as transatlantic financial institutions and think tanks, were already discussing the governance and financing of Ukraine’s reconstruction. They invariably framed it as a historic opportunity for the country: like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Ukraine would become a beacon of freedom, democracy and rule-of-law, a testimonial for Build Back Better, a “green and digital economy” success story; the country would leapfrog several stages of economic and governmental development and its economic growth would replicate Germany’s post-war boom. Unsurprisingly, the more recent and far less inspiring examples of Western-led ‘reconstruction’ in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan didn’t earn mention.
The speed with which fantastical narratives of recovery and reconstruction were churned out shouldn’t surprise anyone because they had been concocted years earlier as part of several ‘reform plans’ for Ukraine. One could say they are hardwired into the overall strategy of this proxy war against Russia as they are aimed at securing political, military and financial support for Ukraine to prolong the war rather than an incentive to negotiate peace. All those who produce these narratives are directly or indirectly linked to governments that are involved both in the destruction of Ukraine and the Ukrainization of Europe, a process designed to fully control, militarize and loot the Old World.
Paying lip service to the idea of reconstruction is also the best way to distract attention from one’s investment in the business of war. For example, JPMorgan Investment Management owns more than $2.5 billion worth of Raytheon stocks and more than $1.3 billion worth of Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics securities, as of February 15. As long as Ukraine keeps consuming U.S. military products, the rising profits for arms companies – satisfies investment funds. And rich corruption in the U.S., EU and Ukraine. As long as Ukraine is of any interest in terms of consumption of U.S. military products, there will be no peace on its territory.
There is little doubt that Ukraine will need rebuilding once the war eventually ends, but ‘destruction’ and ‘reconstruction’ mean different things to different people.
For instance, there is strong disagreement as to what constitutes ‘destruction’, when the ‘destruction’ of Ukraine started and who should be blamed for it.
Those who have been following Ukrainian affairs without ideological prejudice, and with a modicum of intellectual honesty, know that at the time of the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine was an economic powerhouse, the third industrial power of the Soviet Union after Russia and Belarus, and its breadbasket. The Soviet republic had aerospace, automobile and machine tool industries, well-developed mining, metallurgical and agricultural sectors, nuclear, oil refining and petrochemical plants, tourism and commercial infrastructures and the largest shipbuilding center in the USSR.
Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine’s GDP has lagged behind the level it reached in Soviet times, industry declined, and the population decreased by about 14.5 million people in 30 years due to emigration and the lowest birth rate in Europe. Ukraine has also become the third largest IMF debtor and Europe’s poorest country. These negative records cannot be blamed solely on Ukraine’s systemic and staggering corruption: the corrupt networks bleeding Ukraine are truly transnational. If the best way to rob a bank is to own one, then the best way to plunder a country is to control its elites. Which is exactly what Western kleptocratic networks have been doing for decades with the help of their local facilitators and enablers.
Ukraine was targeted by two U.S.-funded color revolutions that led to regime change and civil war, was wrestled away from its largest economic partner, Russia; its history was erased and rewritten while an artificial identity was manufactured and imposed on its population; neoliberal prescriptions destroyed its economic and social fabric and led to a neocolonial form of governance.
Though Ukraine joined Europe’s nefarious Eastern Partnership in 2009 and has been teeming with Western NGOs, economic and political advisers since its independence, the country’s indentured servitude and captivity to Western interests was cemented after the last Ukrainian government to object to the IMF’s harsh conditions – including steep budget cuts and a 40-percent increase in natural-gas bills – was overthrown by a U.S.-sponsored coup in 2014.
On 10 December, 2013, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych stated that the conditions set by the IMF for loan approval were unacceptable: “I had a conversation with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who told me that the issue of the IMF loan has almost been solved, but I told him that if the conditions remained we did not need such loans“. He then broke off negotiations with the IMF and turned to Russia for financial assistance. It was the sensible thing to do, but cost him dearly. You can’t break the shackles of IMF debt with impunity, this lender of last resort not only imposes its usual shock therapy of austerity, deregulation, and privatization so that the vultures can swoop in, it also furthers and protects U.S. interests.
If those who destroyed a country are allowed to be involved in its reconstruction, then reconstruction will inevitably be just a point on the continuum of conquest, occupation and looting, but with better optics. Destruction produces that blank slate that has always been colonialism’s seductive promise, on that slate you can write your own rules: “To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desolation and they call it peace”. Tacitus knew both the reality and the spin of Roman imperialism.
One can only wonder if those who talk about ‘reconstruction’, ‘recovery’, ‘reform’, ‘rules-based order’, ‘reset’ or whatever buzzword is fashionable at the moment are aware of the brutal reality or truly believe their own spin. In any case they promise a future utopia worth killing and dying for.
The capitalist, imperialist West has created its own eschatology, embedded in both the environmental and technological discourses. Thirty years ago, Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, had cautioned an audience in Prague, whose newborn democracy was teeming with promise and perils, about the difference between eschatology – understanding and belief in the “end,” i.e., eternal life – and utopia. Belief in the latter, which he defined simply as “the hope of a better world in the future,” had taken the place of eternal life across the West. Man’s hubris replaces eschatology with a self-made utopia which intends to fulfill man’s hopes. Constantly allured by newer technocratic abilities, the utopians end up sharing Tantalus’ fate, and are condemned to live in Hades, tormented with the sight of something desired but out of reach, teased by arousing expectations that are inevitably disappointed.
The more secular-minded may remember what Karl Marx wrote about the destructive (and self-destructive) tendencies inherent to capitalism. It’s by causing large-scale loss that it enables new wealth to be created. Wars and economic crises serve the purpose as they allow capitalism to start a new cycle of wealth creation for an ever-shrinking class of owners.
But the neoliberal capitalist system is fast running out of creative schemes to forestall its collapse and the old ones no longer deliver the desired results because they are predicated on rules and conditions set by the U.S., and the transnational institutions it controls. As U.S. power wanes, the global oligarchy that depends on it is faced with the choice of defending that power at any cost and against all odds, or seeking an arrangement with emerging powers, an option that would not only reduce its sway and outrageous profits, but also accelerate U.S. decline. Since World War II, U.S. influence over the global economy and military power have been intertwined and losing one would precipitate the loss of the other. The engine of world economic growth has moved to Asia, with China in a leading position, and the U.S. has chosen to tighten the grip on its vassals, double down on its hegemonic ambitions and indulge in grandiose, and dangerous, fantasies rather than accept the emergence of a multipolar reality. Since fantasies cannot deliver real growth, let alone prosperity, the Empire invests a considerable part of its resources in colonizing minds and policing narratives. The job of those who are simultaneously planning ‘destruction’ and ‘reconstruction’ is to reduce the cognitive dissonance between the present misery and picture-perfect manifestos of a bright future.
Selling a war requires all hands on deck, and that’s why think tanks and marketing specialists have been involved from the early stages. They churn out narratives that help shape the discursive space, engineer a perception of global support for Ukraine, provide talking points, and versions of the truth, to both politicians and the media. They have to motivate Ukrainians to keep fighting and European vassals to keep funding the war and arming Ukraine, no matter the cost to their economy.
If those who attended recovery conferences never talked about peace is also because the possibility of peace negotiations with Russia has been performatively and normatively excluded from the Western discourse. The last time Western leaders claimed they wanted peace in Ukraine, they were lying. As we now know, the Minsk Agreements were signed by Angela Merkel and François Holland only to win time for Kiev to prepare for war.
The EU was so committed to peace that in a truly Orwellian fashion, in 2021 established the European Peace Facility (EPF) to bankroll military operations, provide military equipment and training to unnamed “EU partners” – Ukraine couldn’t be openly mentioned yet. The fund, worth €5 billion, was financed outside the budget, for a period of seven years.
When in October 2022 Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bizarre decree prohibiting talks with the current Russian leadership he simply formalized something that had already become a dogma among his allies. Six months earlier, in April, Boris Johnson went to Kiev to pressure Zelensky to cut off peace negotiations with Russia, because the two sides appeared to have made some tenuous progress during talks in Istanbul. In March Denis Kireev, a member of the Ukraine delegation who had taken part in the February peace talks in Belarus, was shot dead by his country’s security service. Israeli PM Naftali Bennet, who had also attempted to mediate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, revealed how the Anglo-Americans, with Boris Johnson in the role of chief bully again, blocked his efforts.
Peace advocates, including Roger Waters, Pink Floyd’s former frontman, were added to the infamous Myrotvorets online [assassination] database. Those who profit from war and want to see Russia weakened would stop at nothing to prevent peace talks. While Europeans are grappling with the ever growing cost of an American proxy war in their continent, they need a compensatory fantasy to support the absurd notion that a peace settlement in Ukraine would threaten their security and not be in their best interests. Narratives of reconstruction, seamlessly woven into delusions of Ukraine’s victory from the start, allow the transnational party of war to present itself as a force for good and a driver of future growth.
The reconstruction marketeers have aggressively tried to occupy the moral high ground by evicting the peacemakers and to do so they had to bolster the argument that war couldn’t be prevented nor stopped.
In March 2022, less than a month since Russian troops had crossed the Ukrainian border, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), one of the U.S. military-industrial-intelligence complex’s favorite think tanks, published a bizarre article titled “Rebuilding Ukraine after the War”. Its author compared the destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure to a “natural” disaster such as the hurricane that destroyed Puerto Rico in 2017 and argued that reconstruction would provide an opportunity “to improve on the past”, paving the way for a radiant future, a techno-utopia as orderly, clean and green as an architectural rendition.
Framing war as a “natural disaster”, as opposed to a man-made one, would allow those who militarized Ukraine and sabotaged all peace agreements, to pre-empt any serious discussion about the causes of, and possible solutions to this conflict. If the war in Ukraine was as sudden and inevitable as a hurricane then it would be pointless to seek an explanation for it other than “Putin is mad/bloodthirsty/evil…” or “Russia is an imperialist country”.
The ensuing devastation was also framed as the result of Russian forces’ congenital appetite for wanton destruction – in the West Nazi tropes are back in fashion and Russian soldiers can be described as “barbaric Asiatic hordes” with total impunity. Western media ensured that their public would never hear about the role played in the destruction of residential districts by Ukrainian nationalists who set up firing positions, deploy armored vehicles, conceal artillery pieces and MLRS in densely populated areas and use civilians as human shields. Hardly natural. Even less natural was the outbreak of this war, unless you consider NATO’s expansion and U.S. geopolitical goals as part of a divine plan. Mind you, some do and call it “manifest destiny”.
CSIS put forward arguments and plans that would later be expanded at conferences about Ukraine reconstruction. “Thinking about recovery means envisioning a post-conflict future, and that links to the twin messages of hope and the necessity to keep fighting.” The twin messages, constantly amplified by Western-controlled media, are mainly addressed to those who need to be reassured that they stand to benefit from the escalation of this conflict, regardless of the huge losses they are currently incurring. And that includes a multitude of stakeholders, both in NATO countries and in Ukraine.
There have been several antecedents to recent conferences in which representatives of Western governments, financial institutions and corporations discussed ways to keep Ukraine fighting “to the last man” while baiting it with promises of reforms and reconstruction, but one stands out as a direct progenitor. It had all the hallmarks of a British influence operation.
On July 6, 2017 the UK Foreign Office headed by Boris Johnson organized and hosted the first Ukraine Reform Conference in London. Ukrainians, notorious “friends of UK/raine” such as Christya Freeland and other rabid Anglophile Russophobes, many hailing from the Baltics, would outnumber less invested participants, expose them to their extremist views in order to facilitate their radicalization and recruitment. The power of conformity, suggestibility and normative social influence would ensure that participants who had previously held moderate views would gravitate towards the extremist opinion of the majority.
The alleged purpose of this conference was to seek political and financial support for Ukraine’s 2020 Reform Plan, a neoliberal roadmap designed to create a more profitable and less unpredictable environment for Western corporate interests while priming the Ukrainian population and army for war. This medium-term Reform Plan defined the main objectives and areas of the Ukrainian Government activity for 2017-2020 and formed the basis for the strategic plans of ministries and other executive bodies. It was predicated on privatization of state-owned enterprises, deregulation, judicial reform, amendments to the labor law, land market reforms, decentralization, forced de-Russification, patriotic education, transformation of the armed forces into a “modern and effective army in line with NATO standards” by increasing its military spending to 6% of GDP, integration into the European political, economic and legal space. In short, this was a roadmap for the complete hijacking of Ukraine’s economic, political, and social institutions, the demolition of what stood in its way, and further militarization of the country.
The conference also served other purposes. The main proponents of Anglo-American eastward expansion, who are deeply invested in Ukraine, after the election of Donald Trump couldn’t fully rely on the U.S. government to further their agenda: Trump’s “America First” foreign policy had strained relations with NATO allies and frozen military aid to Ukraine – arms sales were ok, freebies not so much. London was more than eager to pick up the mantle and ensure Ukraine stayed the course and remained on top of the transatlantic agenda. By taking the lead in coordinating and strategizing support for Ukraine, the UK government also saw an opportunity to strengthen British influence especially at a time when Brexit negotiations had just started and London feared losing its leverage in Europe. British elites were determined to put their country “at the beginning of the line” in the looting of Ukraine’s assets while salivating at the prospect of looting Russian assets too.
The gambit seemed to pay off: the following years attendance at the annual conference grew, including a larger number of representatives from the United States, NATO, OECD, G7 and European countries, OSCE, Council of Europe, IMF, European Investment Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the World Bank.
After Russia’s intervention in 2022, the “Ukraine Reform Conference” (URC) was quickly renamed “Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC). The continuity is striking: acronym, logo and corporate image remained exactly the same when in July 2022, the conference was held in Lugano, Switzerland.
Unsurprisingly, the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano turned out to be little more than a PR stunt, featured a few squabbles among participants competing for their share in any future spoils of war, and provided an opportunity for Ukraine’s prime minister Denys Shmygal, supported by Liz Truss, to advocate the seizure of frozen Russian assets to fund his country’s reconstruction project. Shmygal’s call sent shivers down the spine of Swiss authorities, because not only would the confiscation of these assets violate and thus undermine international legal rules, it would also deal a mortal blow to Switzerland’s banking industry.
Brookings, the U.S. think tank that was deeply involved in the design and implementation of the original Marshall Plan for the post-war redevelopment of Western Europe, had to admit that the Lugano conference “was a missed opportunity because the donor countries did not come prepared with any agreement on coordination mechanisms, a division of labor, or necessary funding levels. In addition, the United States was not represented by officials with seniority commensurate to the European representation.”
A similar criticism was expressed by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, another U.S. think tank. GMF asserted that the European Commission has “neither the necessary political nor the financial heft” to lead reconstruction. And it advised against creating a new agency or centralized trust fund. Instead, it suggested that the G7 and Ukraine together appoint “an American of global stature” as recovery coordinator “because only the United States will be able to bring together the needed global coalition and forge consensus among Ukraine’s partners.”
The Anglo-Americans who need the EU to fund the war and masochistically support their geopolitical plans were disappointed that the richest EU countries would not cough up the amount of money they expected because in this scam Germany, France and Italy are the designated suckers. The con artists invest in the fraudulent scheme to give it an appearance of legitimacy and win the suckers’ confidence.
If Ukraine is the bait, Europe is the big fish and this crime syndicate would stop at nothing to achieve its goals: persuasion tactics can be escalated to involve some serious arm-twisting, as the Nord Stream sabotage clearly showed.
For all their pledges to help Ukraine “recover”, those who took part in “Recovery and Reconstruction” conferences seemed bound by an oath to never advocate for peace negotiations with Russia. Wouldn’t peace be a necessary condition for recovery? Well, it depends on what we mean by recovery. The main purpose of these conferences is to raise funds for Ukraine’s war chest, build a larger consensus on the seizure of Russian frozen assets, and instill enough hopes of a better future to convince Ukrainians and their partners that they should keep fighting regardless of the devastating human and economic losses they are incurring.
The London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) clearly spelled out this strategy in its Macroeconomics Policies for Wartime Ukraine, which outlined policies to “put the Ukrainian economy on a sustainable trajectory for the duration of the war”. The same policy became a dogma in Davos, where the WEF evil wizards agreed and emphasized the need to start reconstruction while the destruction is still ongoing, as that would drive Ukrainian refugees back home, that is to a place described as the “hell of war” in the same paragraph. “We have a moral obligation to nurture hope for these people and to help them stay strong as they go through the hell of war. Doing so will also encourage Ukrainian refugees to return to their homeland.” The cherry on the cake is the cynical reference to “inclusivity”, because no disability should exempt Ukrainians from contributing to war efforts, they too are called upon to fill positions vacated by the dead and those at the front. “Inclusivity is particularly important. Thousands of Ukrainians have already received long-lasting injuries (…) many of them will need to continue their life and work with disabilities.”
People, military and financial aid are all needed to ensure Ukraine retains enough strength not to collapse while it performs its designated role of proxy. That said, broadcasting donors’ pledges and the promise of foreign investments also serve a strategic purpose: it sends a message that Western countries form a compact bloc that will stick together no matter the cost, and to other nations that there are benefits to alignment with this bloc. All wishful thinking, of course.
With Ukrainian GDP expected to fall by more than 45%, budget expenditures doubling due to increased military spending as well as business and humanitarian support, budget deficit projected to reach more than USD 45 billion by the end of 2022 why would international investors be interested in what is de facto a failed state that is still at war?
Disaster capitalism feeds on shock, and war is the ultimate shock treatment. The privatization of profit and socialization of losses is its mantra and a heavily indebted country on its knees can’t prevent the outright sale of its assets. Rebuilding is never the primary purpose, it’s about reshaping everything. If anything, the stories of corruption and incompetence serve to mask a deeper scandal: the rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering. After all, war-ravaged countries are in a state of limited sovereignty and any aid money that might pour in is often put in a trust fund, managed by foreign entities. The promise of Ukraine’s reconstruction by a parallel government made up of a familiar cast of for-profit consulting firms, engineering companies, mega-NGOs, foreign governments, international aid agencies and financial institutions would certainly make the prospect of Private-Public Partnership (PPP) attractive. But all this is predicated on Ukraine winning the war and remaining under Western control.
Betting on Ukraine’s victory is a high-odds bet, a very risky bet even for the regular gamblers of the vast casino known as the Western financial system. Yes, debt can be repackaged by lenders into creative securities backed by some pie-in-the sky and sold to global investors, a scam that would make the subprime mortgage crisis pale in comparison. Problem is, there isn’t as much liquidity around in Borrel’s European garden, nor in Biden’s land of the free for that matter. Prices and the cost of money have risen sharply, the market sentiment has slumped, recession is looming in Western countries whose financial system is broken beyond repair, but Western leaders, financiers and business moguls delude themselves they can simply talk up the global economy and resort to their old tricks. Their “everything is fine” message, as witnessed in Davos, is nothing more than one of those “confidence-boosting” exercises their minions practice in front of the mirror.
Attracting foreign investments is far from easy, as the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance has candidly admitted, though he believes that a PPP with BlackRock “can help raise capital even against the background of a bad investment reputation in the past (…) Obviously, private investors in the West will show much more trust in projects or a fund in which a world-renowned company plays some role. Even if it is consulting support. (…) Since investors often have a herd instinct, the option of creating a BlackRock investment fund to accumulate funds from private investors and finance Ukrainian projects is considered optimal”.
Officially, BlackRock’s cooperation with the Ukrainian government was formalized in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which was signed in November 2022. Since then other Wall Street banksters have jumped on the bandwagon. This February, JP Morgan, the U.S.’s largest bank, also signed a MoU with Volodymyr Zelensky with the eye on attracting private capital for a new investment fund seeded with $20 billion to $30 billion in private capital. Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan’s CEO, called the consequences of the conflict in Ukraine “an inflection point for the Western world for a hundred years.”
Well, the decline of U.S. hegemony and the financial, corporate elites that feed on it (the “inflection point”, as Dimon called it) started well before February 2022. The end of U.S.-European domination of world capitalism is upon us as the center of gravity of the global economy shifts to China and the world is moving toward political multipolarity. Western elites are aware that the fraudulent, unequal system they owe their power to is cracking up, and the West’s mother-of-all financial bubbles is about to explode. All their hare-brained schemes are designed to increase debt, and therefore the enslavement of an ever-greater portion of humanity and have increased instability in the system. The COVID-19 pandemic and the Green New Deal were supposed to pave the way for “resetting and reshaping” the world, through the application of new digital technologies for a more regimented, technocratic and authoritarian control over the global population. But it has not gone as anticipated. Instead, the pandemic accelerated all the contradictions and crisis tendencies of financial capitalism. Ukraine, the greatest rock’n’roll swindle of all times might prove to be one hare-brained scheme too far.
For years the Fed, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank have been printing money, but unbacked fiat currency is a Ponzi Scheme built on treachery and lies: its expansion is financed by the transfer of wealth from everyone for the supposed benefit of everyone… till it all ends in tears for most. Those who have made their fortunes by placing bets on the future, buying or selling options and all sorts of other recondite financial inventions might be lured by the promise of high returns, but many investors will join the pyramid scheme simply because their assets are managed by BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs etc. When the scheme finally collapses, they will be ruined, just like Ukraine.
February 24, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | China, European Union, NATO, Russia, UK, Ukraine, United States |
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The EU, and not Russia, has weakened since the start of the special military operation
By Ahmed Adel | February 24, 2023
Although many remember February 24 as the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, Russia’s special military operation is actually the next phase of a wider conflict that began in 2014. This is a key point often overlooked because the narrative built in the West is that Russia’s intervention was an unprovoked invasion with the sole purpose of territorial expansionism. The international community, which the West incorrectly refers to itself as, has rejected this narrative. To the disappointment of Western leaders, most of the world has instead deepened their ties with Russia.
However, the “unprovoked invasion” narrative has been exposed in the West also as a fallacy. It is recalled that former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted in December 2022 that “the 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give time to Ukraine.”
“It also used this time to become stronger as can be seen today. The Ukraine of 2014-2015 is not the modern Ukraine,” she said, adding that “it was clear to everyone” that the conflict had been put on hold, “yet this was what gave Ukraine invaluable time.”
Merkel’s statement confirmed that the Minsk Accords, a series of agreements which sought to end the Donbass war, was only intended to give the Ukrainian state more time to militarily strengthen. It also proves that the Western party of the Minsk Accords never intended to use this mechanism to find peace and address the concerns of local residents.
Therefore, the Russian intervention was not necessarily a surprise, and perhaps the West were even expecting it.
However, what was an absolute surprise for the West was the geopolitical and economic ramifications – all to the detriment of the West and to the advancement of Moscow.
It cannot be denied that sanctions had an impact on the Russian economy, but the European Union has demonstrated that it is nothing more than a political dwarf that has no autonomy from Washington. Sanctions have a limited effect on Russia given that it is a completely self-sustainable country, unlike Syria and Iran (which are also heavily sanctioned but without the capacity for self-sustainability).
Rather, the sanctions have actually accelerated the de-Dollorisation of the global economy and deepened the economic crisis in Europe.
Evidently, there was naivety in the West, as there was a false belief that Russia would capitulate to sanctions pressure. Instead, Europe is experiencing an economic crisis that has crushed the Middle Class through a cost-of-living crisis. Meanwhile, Russia has greater prospects for recovery compared to Germany and the UK.
According to a January forecast by the International Monetary Fund, Russia’s economy will grow faster than Germany’s while Britain’s will contract. This is a far cry from the eminent collapse of the Russian economy that was predicted when hundreds of international companies, such as McDonald’s and Boeing, withdrew from Russia and Russians were blocked from using Western financial institutions.
It is recalled that in March 2022, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen boasted that “the Russian economy will be devastated.” Eleven months after Yellen’s statement, the IMF predicts that the Russian economy will start growing again in 2023, expanding by 0.3% and then 2.1% in 2024. Although 0.3% growth is paltry, it is still surprisingly higher than Germany’s 0.1%, a phenomenal situation considering that it is Berlin imposing the sanctions, not Russia on Germany.
The UK is in an even worse situation. Its economy is expected to contract by 0.6%.
India and China are helping Russia alleviate the stress of decoupling from Western financial institutions and trade exchanges. Many experts believe that the 21st century is the “Asian Century” and expect the world’s major financial centres to shift from the West to the East. In this light, Russia’s exclusion from the West has left it with no choice but to strongly project to the East, something that India, China and other countries have enthusiastically taken advantage of.
The 20th century was dominated by the bipolar system and a short-lived unipolar system. Although the 21st century is multipolar in nature, the overwhelmingly dominant economic and military powers are expected to be the US and China, with a host of other Great Powers, such as Russia and India, fully capable of defending their own interests.
What the West does not realise is that in such a global system, it is Russia that hugely influences whether the US or China will triumph. Russia has effectively been given no choice but to pivot towards China. Future generations in the West will learn that this was a strategic blunder – and all for the illiberal sake of defending a neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.
The war in Ukraine was expected to be another advancement of “liberalism” and Western internationalism. However, what has transpired instead is the weakening of Western hegemony. The US expected most countries to fall in line and impose sanctions against Russia, however, this did not trend in Asia, the Islamic World, Africa, or Latin America.
Although the West is persistently and arrogantly defending the Kiev regime against the reality that Russia will triumph in the war, it continues to ruin its own reputation in the eyes of the actual international community by lambasting countries, such as India, for not following their orders. This will have long-term negative ramifications for the West as its influence is weakening and mistrust is deepening.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
February 24, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics | China, European Union, Germany, India, Russia, UK |
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Former Labour MP Chris Williamson has been hosting Press TV’s weekly show, Palestine Declassified, since March 2022.
A former UK Labour Party MP, Chris Williamson, was on Tuesday stripped of his parliamentary pass until further notice by a committee of lawmakers in what he described as “confected controversy.”
The 66-year-old seasoned British politician and human rights campaigner, who served as the MP for Derby North from 2010 to 2015 and again between 2017 and 2019, had since July 2020 been in possession of one of more than 300 security passes given to former parliamentarians.
The pass was revoked over what the committee termed his “unacceptable” role as a co-host of the weekly show ‘Palestine Declassified’ on Press TV, Iran’s premier international news network.
“The Administration Committee met yesterday and decided to suspend your parliamentary pass until further notice,” the committee chair and conservative MP Charles Walker wrote to Williamson in a comminque.
“The Committee considered that your continued presence on Press TV, a broadcaster that has been banned in the UK and multiple other countries, is unacceptable and risks bringing Parliament into disrepute.”
Speaking to the Press TV Website, Williamson said he “wasn’t surprised” by the arbitrary decision, noting that the political class in the UK has been “gripped by a kind of hypocritical hysteria”.
“The grounds for the arbitrary cancellation of my pass are absurd. They claim that my presence on Press TV ‘risks bringing parliament into disrepute’,” asserted Williamson, one of the closest allies of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and author of ‘Ten Years Hard Labour’.
“But it’s their attack on free speech that is bringing parliament into disrepute, not the fact that I present a weekly programme on Press TV about Palestine’s struggle for freedom.”
The former British shadow minister who has previously been falsely accused of ‘anti-Semitism” said he never used his parliamentary pass since leaving the job in 2019 and was being targeted for championing the Palestinian cause and “exposing the brutal Israeli apartheid regime”.
He hastened to add that he intends to “write back” to Charles Walker and ask the committee to “think again in view of the absurdity and inconsistency of their position”.
A staunch socialist, trade unionist and anti-imperialist, Williamson has been co-hosting the ‘Palestine Declassified’ show on Press TV since March 2022 with David Miller, a former Bristol University professor who was sacked in October 2021 for his views on Israeli apartheid.
The popular show highlights with cutting-edge research and analysis the Israeli regime’s unbridled aggression in the occupied Palestinian territories and seeks to build global solidarity for the Palestinian cause. To a great extent, it has been successful in that goal.
Pertinently, Press TV was taken off air in the UK in January 2012 by media regulator Ofcom, which accused the network of “breaching broadcasting license rules” with its “editorial content”.
The network, in a statement at the time, called the decision “a clear example of censorship”.
“It is precisely because I host a programme about Palestine that’s broadcasted by Press TV, and because I have criticized the (British) government’s support for NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine,” Williamson told the Press TV Website, commenting on his parliamentary pass being stripped.
“MPs have used these two facts as a pretext for spurious complaints, suggesting that I therefore pose some sort of security risk. It is utterly absurd and frankly insulting”.
He decried the smear campaign and attacks against Press TV, saying it was “off the scale”.
“The hypocrisy over the treatment of Press TV is off the scale. But it indicates that the ruling class is insecure in their position, so we should take heart from that and keep going.”
The former MP also called out the “disturbing scale of censorship” in British society, saying the ability to speak out against the prevailing establishment narrative is “strictly restricted”.
“Little to no platform is provided by the corporate media to articulate a contrary viewpoint, and even access to social media is being restricted,” he told the Press TV Website.
“Academics have lost their careers for speaking out against the evils of Zionism for example, and anyone calling for a diplomatic solution is dismissed as a ‘Putin apologist’.”
Williamson further noted that the Zionist lobby and acolytes of the NATO military alliance in the British parliament exert an “entirely disproportionate influence”.
“The British political class only represent the interests of powerful lobbies, rather than the wellbeing of the communities they are elected to serve, and on whose votes they rely for their privileged positions,” he said, pointing to the gap between the rulers and the subjects.
A strong anti-war and anti-racism voice who has resolutely opposed the war in Ukraine – which completes one year this week – Williamson said the Nazi influence in Ukraine is “well-documented” while calling the embattled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “NATO’s useful idiot”.
“The ultimate ambition of the war hawks in the US is to weaken and ultimately balkanize Russia, and then pivot against China,” Williamson asserted, adding that the European governments are “allowing themselves to be used to help the US retain its dominant position in the unipolar world”.
“The US Defense Department openly commissions a report by the Rand Corporation on ways to achieve their goal against Russia. Furthermore, prominent figures in the Atlantic Council, NATO’s de-facto think tank, were setting out the strategic case for risking war with Russia in Ukraine before the present military conflict began,” he said, pinning the blame on the US-led NATO military alliance for the simmering crisis in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the staunch advocate for the Palestinian cause vowed to continue his advocacy work for the weak and vulnerable irrespective of whether he holds the parliamentary pass or not.
“Whatever dirty tricks they deploy against me, these political lackeys of the war machine and parliamentary servants of Israel’s brutal apartheid regime, they will never stop me campaigning for peace and supporting the liberation of Palestine,” Williamson asserted.
He also invoked the 20th-century Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, that these out-of-touch politicians “can cut all the flowers but cannot keep spring from coming”.
“And I believe the day is coming when Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.”
Syed Zafar Mehdi is a Tehran-based journalist, political commentator and author. He has reported for more than 13 years from India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir and West Asia for leading publications worldwide.
February 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance | UK, Zionism |
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Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is again promoting a controversial plan to give every British citizen a digital ID. This would entail the utilization of new biometric technology to store a person’s passport, driving license, tax records, qualifications, and their right to work status.
Sir Tony had previously attempted to introduce ID cards during his time as Prime Minister.
Tony Blair and former Conservative lawmaker William Hague have stated that a major transformation of the government with regards to technology is necessary in order to keep up with the ever-changing world.
However, there was backlash from their demands with Sir Jake Berry calling it a “creepy state plan to track you from the cradle to the grave.”
Blair and Hague revealed their plot in an article for The Times, in which they said “politics must change radically because the world is changing radically.
“We are living through a 21st-century technology revolution as huge in its implications as the 19th-century industrial revolution.”
The duo alleged that current politicians were “in danger of conducting a 20th-century fight at the margins of tax and spending policy when the issue is how we harness this new revolution to reimagine the state and public services.”
The duo demand digital IDs for every citizen – they also called for “a national health infrastructure that uses data to improve care and keep costs down, and sovereign AI systems backed by supercomputing capabilities.”
In an interview with BBC Radio 4 Blair highlighted how countries “as small as Estonia and as large as India’ are moving towards digital IDs.
“If you look at the biometric technology that allows you to do digital ID today, it can overcome many of these problems,’ Blair said.
Big Brother Watch condemned Blair for pushing for a digital identity system.
Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo said: “Sir Tony and Lord Hague are absolutely right about the need for the UK to take leadership in technological innovation, but this means protecting people’s rights and privacy, not reviving failed proposals for an intrusive mass digital identity system and a database state.”
Carlo added: “A sprawling digital identity system of the type described by Sir Tony and Lord Hague is utterly retrograde and would be one of the biggest assaults on privacy ever seen in the UK. The public has consistently opposed mandatory ID systems and there is absolutely nothing to suggest the public would want or support such a digital ID system now.”
Blair recently called for global organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Economic Forum (WEF) to push national governments to introduce “digital infrastructure” that monitors who has been vaccinated and who hasn’t.
February 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Estonia, Human rights, India, UK, WEF |
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Some protests are torrid affairs. Others can prove enlightening. The march last Saturday in the heart of Oxford was the latter.
Attendees rocked up nearly 2 hours before the scheduled meet, poised with their homemade placards, ready to dissent. It was truly an eclectic mix. Tweed jackets juxtaposed grey baggy trackies, edgy high-tops contrasted brown Chelsea boots, dreadlocks neighboured crew cuts, with all unified under one mission – to say no to Oxfordshire County Council’s creeping authoritarianism.
Last year, the Council announced plans to impose Low Traffic Neighbours (LTN) across the city. Councillors justified the £6.5 million schemes by declaring that they will “greatly reduce” motor vehicle traffic in residential streets. They purport to achieve this by two means. First, bollards will be placed to block off certain streets. Second, LTN zones will be designated and monitored by cameras recording license plates, so if residents drive in zones they have not purchased a permit for, they will be fined. Upon that fine being ignored, they would likely be jailed.
Multiple consultations were then held late last year. The response from locals was overwhelming. 65% of them wholly disapproved. Only 7% endorsed the proposals in another consultation. With some notably citing, the schemes would make certain journeys up to 10 times longer. Acclaimed actress Florence Pugh’s father, who owns a shop in a LTN-designated area, revealed the council failed to consult local shop owners like him. He likewise expressed frustration over footfall decreases since lockdowns and how LTN’s were almost guaranteed to worsen the situation.
At 1pm on the dot, the speeches began. Several speakers took the stage but one 12-year-girl stole the show. The anti-Greta, if you will. There she stood, impressively reading out a pre-written speech that progressively exposed the irrationality behind the council’s plans point-by-point. Crowd members clapped intermittently. And then came the punchline, “To Klaus Schwab…”, she paused, “how dare you!”. Everybody loved it. Children in politics should really be a no no. But to witness an anti-woke one actively fighting to preserve her freedom rather than simping for the current political vogue, by God it was refreshing.
Admittedly, we may or may not have popped to the pub to down a quick ale at this point before rejoining. So we missed the start of the march. When we rejoined, we were confused. The crowd had nearly quadrupled in size.
Chants of freedom rang aloud for the better part of the next 2 hours. Plenty of bypassing youths looked perplexed. Some took videos with disapproving smirks. You could almost see them twitching their thumbs in anticipation of posting about the Alex Jones loons they’d just seen. Several cab drivers beeped their horns in support, smiling and waving vigorously as they did. It was an out and out, peaceful success.
Only the next day did we see coverage of Antifa agitators. Apparently a dozen or so turned up but were quickly cordoned off by police and dispersed after a bloke trolled them with a hearty rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life”. Then came the barrage of articles from various local and legacy media journalists.
The Oxford Mail tainted marchers by highlighting that a “Neo-Nazi” was in attendance. LBC’s James O’Brien labelled everyone attending “conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers”. But one journalist, Dave Vetter, went further and purveyed in what can only be called live gaslighting. According to Vetter, live-tweeting his perspective, it was an “intoxicating mix of far-right conspiracy slogans, antisemitism and really terrible hip-hop”. He concluded “the rally is, at heart, a climate denial protest”.
In reality, while there were some radical deductions espoused, these were minute, the vast majority of people were simply expressing their desire not to be restricted by local government. No signs we saw referred to Jewish people. And the hip-hop was a sheer sight better than what Vetter is probably capable of. Tellingly, Vetter only mentioned the word freedom once in his thread, which is slightly strange, provided it was the most common word featured on placards. Instead, the likes of the Oxford Mail, O’Brien, and Vetter focused on sporadic elements, deploying typical guilt-by-association devices designed to reassure readers that all these crackpots aren’t to be taken seriously.
Vetter then linked a “video explainer” at the end of his thread to show how 15-minute-cities are a “win for everyone”. From the get-go, again, the presenter gaslights. Ominously, we are told a strain of opposition (virus-connotations likely intended) is growing that is fatally misunderstanding these schemes for “open air prisons enforced by a police state from their enclosed zone”. So let’s recap. Oxford Council proposes plans to restrict and regulate traffic in the city. They ignore locals’ obvious rejection. Planned rollouts of the scheme continue with the council investing in cameras to monitor and fine those in breach of the scheme – sounds quite authoritarian to me. Again, there was no mention of infringements on freedom. Nor was there any reference to the clear subversion of local democracy, which is more or less a facade nowadays.
Entirely absent from almost all coverage is the money that Oxfordshire County Council stands to make. According to citizen journalist, Dulwich Clean Air, Southwark council issued 37,006 PCN fines to drivers going through 5 ANPR cameras (same as Oxford intends to use) in Dulwich’s LTN zone in only 65 working days in May 2021. That amounted to £4,810,780, which is £74,012 per day. Oxford has an estimated population of about half that of Southwark. That equates to roughly £37,000 in fines per day and £13,505,000 a year.
No wonder Oxfordshire Council want to join the party…
What the protest really showed, however, is as much as national governments are guilty of a mission creep towards a kind of plastic moral governance, so are local councils. Per Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for travel and development strategy, Duncan Enright’s own words, these schemes are “going to happen definitely” (whether the public like it or not).
In short, we know better. So the herd must follow our moral plans even if they disapprove. It is the same existential issue afflicting government at the national level. Turns out, it has captured government at the local level too. The ends justify the means for these legislators. Until that is reversed at both macro and micro-level, these protests will grow in number.
Dozens upon dozens of councils across the UK, meanwhile, announce similar traffic schemes to dissenting choruses.
February 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | Human rights, UK |
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We are in the midst of history’s greatest wealth transfer. Government subsidized wind systems, solar arrays, and electric vehicles overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy members of society and rich nations. The poor and middle class pay for green energy programs with higher taxes and higher electricity and energy costs. Developing nations suffer environmental damage to deliver mined materials needed for renewables in rich nations.
Since 2000, the world has spent more than $5 trillion on green energy. More than 300,000 wind turbines have been erected, millions of solar arrays were installed, more than 25 million electric vehicles (EVs) have been sold, hundreds of thousands of acres of forest were cut down to produce biomass fuel, and about three percent of agricultural land is now used to produce biofuel for vehicles. The world spends about $1 trillion per year on green energy. Government subsidies run about $200 billion annually, with more than $1 trillion in subsidies spent over the last 20 years.
World leaders obsess over the need for a renewable energy transition to save the planet from human-caused global warming. Governments deliver an endless river of cash to promote adoption of green energy. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provided $370 billion in subsidies and loans for renewables and EVs. But renewable subsidies and mandates overwhelmingly favor the rich members of society at the expense of the poor.
Wind systems receive production tax credits, property tax exemptions, and sometimes receive payments even when not generating electricity. Landowners receive as much as $8,000 per turbine each year from leases for wind systems on their land. Lease income can be quite high for a landowner with many turbines. In England, ordinary taxpayers pay hundreds of millions of pounds per year in taxes that are funneled as subsidies to wind companies and wealthy land owners.
In the US, 39 states currently have net metering laws. Net metering provides a credit for electricity generated by rooftop solar systems that is fed back into the grid. Solar generators typically get credits at the retail electricity rate, about 14 cents per kilowatt-hour. This is a subsidized rate, which is more than double the roughly five cents per kilowatt-hour earned by power plants. Apartment residents and homeowners that cannot afford to install rooftop solar pay higher electricity bills to subsidize homes that receive net metering credits. Rooftop solar owners also receive federal and state tax incentives, another wealth transfer from ordinary citizens.
US federal subsidies of up to $7,500 for each electric car purchased, along with additional state subsidies, directly benefit EV buyers. The average price of an EV in the US last year was $66,000, which is out of reach for most drivers. A 2021 University of Chicago study found that California EV owners only drive 5,300 miles per year, less than half the mileage for a typical car. Most electric cars in the US are second cars for the rich.
A mid-size electric car needs a battery that weighs about a 1,000 pounds to provide acceptable driving range. Because of battery weight, EVs tend to be about 50 percent heavier than gasoline cars, which causes increased road damage. But EVs don’t pay the road tax included in the price of every gallon of gasoline. EVs should pay higher road taxes than traditional cars, but today this cost is borne by everyday gasoline car drivers.
Renewable systems require huge amounts of special metals. Electric car batteries need cobalt, nickel, and lithium to achieve high energy density and performance. Magnets in wind turbines require rare earth metals, such as neodymium and dysprosium. Large quantities of copper are essential for EV engines, batteries, wind and solar arrays, and electricity transmission systems to connect to remote wind and solar sites. According to the International Energy Agency, an EV requires about six times the special metals of a gasoline or diesel car. A wind array requires more than ten times the metals of a natural gas power plant on a delivered-electricity basis. The majority of these metals are mined in developing countries.
Almost 70 percent of cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Indonesia produces more than 30 percent of the world’s nickel. Chile produces 28 percent of the copper. China produces 60 percent of the rare earth metals. These nations struggle with serious air and water pollution from mining operations. Workers in mines also suffer from poor working conditions and the use of forced labor and child labor practices. But apparently no cost is too great so that rich people in developed nations can drive a Tesla.
To top it off, the European Union recently approved a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The CBAM will tax goods coming from poor nations which aren’t manufactured using low-carbon processes. CBAM revenues will be a great source of funds for Europe’s green energy programs that benefit the wealthy.
In January, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Washington proposed a wealth tax on billionaires. It’s interesting to note that all seven of these states mandate and heavily subsidize wind and solar arrays and electric vehicles, which transfer wealth from poor and middle-class residents to those same billionaires.
February 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | European Union, UK, United States |
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Skripal Salisbury Chemical Weapons Attack 2018. An Investigation (2019 Update.) This video explores the nonsense that passes as the official narrative of 2018 Salisbury chemical weapons attack. T has been updated to include recent revelations about Colonel Alison McCourt. Using stock news footage of the Skripal poisoning and mainstream media reports about the supposed Salisbury attack, we consider, with tongue firmly in cheek, if what we are told about the UK chemical weapons attack is remotely plausible.
On March 4th 2018 Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal were allegedly poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok by two suggested Russian GRU agents. Both Sergei and Yulia thankfully recovered, as did PC Nick Bailey who was also contaminated. However, the British government maintained that Novichok was the most deadly nerve agent ever created. 5 times more Deadly than VX and 8 times more deadly than Sarin. Scientists at Porton Down stated that there was no known antidote. The Skripal’s recovery is therefore just one of the many aspects of the official government narrative that makes no sense whatsoever.
The lack of evidence about the Skripal’s movements in Salisbury, the bizaar tale of how the two GRU agents discarded the Novichok and its later discovery by Charlie Rowley. The sad demise of Rowley’s partner Dawn Sturgess following first response that did not identify the presence of Novichok. The odd route taken by the alleged assassins and their seeming willingness both to leave evidence at the scene of the crime and remain at the crime scene for unfathomable and totally unnecessary reasons.
Hopefully amusing at times but based upon the available evidence I hope you find Skripal – An Investigation a worthwhile watch.
Take it easy.
February 22, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia | UK |
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The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office is funding London-based think tank the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which creates a blacklist of websites it thinks advertisers should avoid that are mostly right-of-center news websites.
GDI states that its objective is to “disrupt their advertising-funded business models by encouraging brands, suppliers and ad tech vendors to blocklist them.”
The GDI is also funded by the US State Department.
Recently, the think tank published a list of 10 “least risky” and “riskiest” news websites in the US. The New York Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, and AP News were among the list of “least risky.” Among the 10 “riskiest” websites were the New York Post, Newsmax, the American Spectator, and The Federalist.
GDI also wants anything that challenges scientific consensus on vaccines and climate change to be blocked. For instance it is disinformation to describe the COVID-19 vaccines as “experimental.”
The GDI is on a mission to “defund online sources of disinformation.”
February 21, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | UK, United States |
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Ordinary Russians feel no sympathy for their rich compatriots who had their assets frozen by Western countries, President Vladimir Putin stated on Tuesday.
Addressing the Federal Assembly in his key annual program speech he argued that in their kitchen conversations ordinary Russians remembered both the privatization of the 1990s and the conspicuous consumption of the new elites.
“None of the ordinary citizens of Russia felt sorry for those who lost their capital in foreign banks. They didn’t feel sorry for those who lost their yachts and palaces abroad,” Putin stressed.
He recalled “imbalances” faced by the post-Soviet economy when Russia began to build the country again from scratch by aligning with the West.
“We were considered as a source of raw materials,” Putin said, stressing that it took Russia years to break this trend. Meanwhile, instead of expanding production and creating jobs in Russia, the wealthy “elite” spent money on luxury goods like yachts, mansions, and the education of their children abroad, Putin pointed out.
As a result, the image of the West as a safe haven for capital turned out to be “a fake” and everything was taken away from the oligarchs – savings, houses and also their yachts.
“They were simply robbed there and even legally earned money was taken away,” the president said, adding that an attractive Western lifestyle turned out to be an illusion.
February 21, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Supremacism, Social Darwinism | European Union, Russia, UK |
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