Russia’s economy recovers while dozens of US banks face collapse
By Ahmed Adel | March 23, 2023
Although Western media were boasting about Sberbank’s 78% plunge in profit in 2022 due to US-led sanctions, with CEO German Gref acknowledging a “most difficult year”, it appears that the US economic system is the one actually on the brink as four banks have already collapsed, with dozens more expected to follow.
CNN described the Russian bank’s drop in profit as a “collapse” in its headline, but then had to admit in the article that “Sberbank’s resilience in the face of sanctions helped Russia’s banking sector recover from a loss-making first half in 2022.”
This is in line with Gref’s belief that this year’s profits should be close to the record 1.25 trillion rubles ($16.5 billion) earned in the “pre-crisis year.” “Our business model passed another strength test,” he added.
It is recalled that Russian Presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on March 14 that there is “practically” no risk of Russia facing a fallout from the SVB collapse, adding that: “Our banking system has certain connections with some segments of the international financial system, but it is mostly under illegal restrictions.”
Despite alarmist headlines from US media and experts, Peskov was proven correct as no Russian bank has collapsed despite Western sanctions. Meanwhile, the full repercussions of SVB’s downfall are yet to be felt, with former Lehman Brothers executive Lawrence McDonald believing that up to another 50 American banks could collapse if structural problems are not fixed.
“So Lehman failed and then it forced this too-big-to-fail system, and then, now this interest rate shock to the regional banks is moving hundreds of billions of dollars out of regional banks into the big banks… So you could have another 50 bank failures… unless they fix the structural problem,” said McDonald on March 22.
“There’s going to be further damage. They have to cut rates and then they have to have a deposit guarantee, a larger one, that’s what they’re going to come up with… That’s a bailout. That’s basically the federal government taking on bank deposit risk,” he added.
By being cut-off from the Western banking system, Russia is effectively protected from the series of bank collapses that are expected to follow. Russia faced a credit crunch due to the fallout from the US subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, which ultimately led to the Global Financial Crisis, a demonstration of how it too was exposed to weaknesses in the US economy.
Although Russia was cut-off from SWIFT only two-days after the special military operation began, in addition to many other Western restrictions, including a $60 per barrel oil price cap, President Vladimir Putin boasted about the resilience of the Russian economy.
The IMF reported that Russia’s economy contracted by 2.2% in 2022 and will start growing again in 2023, expanding by 0.3%, and then 2.1% in 2024. This is impressive when considering that fellow European countries, which are not sanctioned, will be struggling immensely. The UK is expected to contract by 0.6% and Germany will have a growth of only 0.1%.
At the same time, the OECD forecasts that US economic growth would slow from 1.5% this year to 0.9% next year. This is due to higher interest rates slowing down demand. Bloomberg on March 21, citing sources, reported that the US Treasury Department is studying the possibility of guaranteeing all bank deposits in the event of a recession in the banking sector.
The current banking crisis has forced economists, including from the esteemed JPMorgan Chase, to make new recession forecasts after any hopes of recovery were snuffed away.
“The Fed is facing a difficult task on Wednesday, but it is likely already past the point of no return,” JPMorgan strategists wrote in a note to clients on March 22. “A soft landing now looks unlikely, with the airplane in a tailspin (lack of market confidence) and engines about to turn off (bank lending).”
Goldman Sachs also echoed JPMorgan and said in mid-March that the banking crisis could deliver a severe blow to economic growth.
For his part, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has warned multiple times, including as recently as March 9 but even from before the banking crisis, that the economy could be heading for a “Wile E. Coyote moment,” referencing a Looney Tunes character who was always blissfully unaware that he was about to hit the ground after running off the edge of a cliff.
However, the expected collapse of many banks in the US and the impending economic crisis has not deterred the determination of the Biden administration to fanatically arm, fund and train the Ukrainian military and regime. With millions of Americans on the verge of dropping out of the Middle Class, Washington continues to send tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine, and all the while Western sanctions are now beginning to have a minimum effect on the Russian economy, thus effectively rendering them nearly useless.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Crimean naval base attacked by drones – governor
RT | March 22, 2023
At least three naval drones were involved in an early morning attack on Russian warships stationed at the port of Sevastopol, local Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev has reported. The city hosts Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and is occasionally targeted by Ukrainian forces.
The Russian Navy’s assets were not damaged in Wednesday’s raid, but the windows of several buildings near the coast were shattered by blast waves from the destroyed drones, the senior official wrote on social media. Russian air defenses were used to engage an aerial target during the incident, he added.
Despite sporadic attacks by Ukraine on the city of Sevastopol, located on the Crimean Peninsula, the use of naval drones, which can carry more explosives than their airborne equivalents, is a rare event.
The last major incident involving such weapons was reported by the Russian military in late October last year, when Kiev deployed seven unmanned watercraft and nine unmanned aircraft against ships in Sevastopol harbor. Ukrainian forces managed to damage a Natya-class minesweeper, the Defense Ministry said at the time.
The Russian military claimed the Ukrainian operation was conducted with the help of British advisers and targeted vessels that were providing safe passage for ships under a UN-mediated Black Sea grain deal. The Defense Ministry briefly suspended participation in the scheme as a result.
The grain deal, which allows Ukraine to export agricultural produce by sea, was extended for a second time last week. Moscow warned that the UN had 60 more days to deliver on the promise to have Western nations lift the restrictions hampering Russian grain and fertilizer trade, which it gave when the original agreement was signed.
Putin: Russia Will be Forced to React if West Starts Using Weapons With Nuclear Components
By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 21.03.2023
UK Minister of State for Defense Annabel Goldie said on Tuesday that London would provide Ukraine with armor piercing shells for the Challenger 2 main battle tanks it has decided to send to Kiev, including depleted uranium ammunition.
“Today it became known that the United Kingdom, through its deputy head of the ministry of defense, announced not only the supply of tanks to Ukraine, but also shells with depleted uranium,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said, adding that “it seems that the West really decided to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, not in words, but in deed.”
“I would like to note in this regard that if all this happens, then Russia will be forced to react accordingly – I mean that the Collective West is already starting to use weapons with a nuclear component,” Putin added.
His comments came after meetings with a delegation of high-level Chinese officials, including Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the uranium refining process composed of uranium-238, which is not useful for generating nuclear chain reactions but which is extremely dense and used to make armor-piercing ammunition. However, it still possesses radioactive properties that can be very harmful to humans and is highly toxic, making it a dangerous weapon long after the engagement in which it was fired.
Sites in Iraq and Yugoslavia which US forces used depleted uranium to attack have been associated with increases in birth defects and rare forms of cancer associated with exposure to radioactive materials, including depleted uranium and related radioactive isotopes.
While Moscow has repeatedly warned about the creeping danger of some kind of nuclear exchange as a result of NATO’s support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, Western governments and media have tried to spin such warnings as being threats about the use of nuclear weapons. Putin has since made it explicitly clear that Moscow intends to maintain its no-first-use policy regarding nuclear weapons.
Russia launched its special operation in Ukraine in February 2022 after months of negotiations with Kiev and NATO failed to yield a situation that respected Moscow’s security red lines, most especially regarding Ukraine’s prospective membership in the alliance and the possibility of NATO weapons being stationed on Russia’s borders. The operation aims to neutralize that possibility.
Lavrov: Such Actions Undermine Stability
The decision of the United Kingdom to provide Kiev with depleted uranium tank ammunition undermines stability in the world, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.
“I will not be surprised by this, because they have already lost perspective in terms of how these actions undermine strategic stability around the world,” Lavrov told a Russian broadcaster.
The minister added that this decision shows that the UK is ready to not only just take risks, but also commit war crimes.
“If this is true, then they [UK authorities] are ready to not only just take risks, but violate the international humanitarian law, as it was in 1999 in Yugoslavia, and many other things, including war crimes, crimes against humanity,” Lavrov said.
The AUKUS nuclear submarine deal is part of an imperialist crusade against China
By Timur Fomenko | RT | March 17, 2023
Earlier this week, a trilateral summit was held with the leaders of Australia, the United Kingdom and the US in San Diego to flesh out the details of an AUKUS deal providing Canberra with nuclear-powered submarines, with the intention of containing China in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
The pact will also create a rotational presence of UK and US nuclear submarines near Perth, Western Australia, starting from 2027. The goal is to integrate the US and UK’s nuclear sub fleet while Australia “builds the necessary operational capabilities” of its own.
It is no coincidence that the deal was announced on Commonwealth Day, an annual celebration of the former dominions of the British Empire. On the same day, the UK government released its “integrated review,” whereby it vowed to increase defense spending. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak then proceeded to describe China as an “epoch-defining challenge,” framing the UK, and the AUKUS alliance at large, as a benevolent force dedicated to keeping the Indo-Pacific open and free. China reacted by harshly condemning the meeting, decrying it for a “typical Cold War mentality” that “will only exacerbate [an] arms race, undermine the international nuclear non-proliferation regime and hurt regional peace and stability.”
China’s interpretation of the AUKUS submarine deal is correct. The Biden administration is aggressively expanding its alliance system in a bid to militarily contain Beijing. Along with the AUKUS pact, it is also pushing for trilateral cooperation with South Korea and Japan, something South Korean President Yoon Seok Yeol is open to, expanding its military presence in the Philippines, and taking part in other regional groups such as the Quad. However, AUKUS is unique because it consists solely of Anglosphere nations, and as such, embodies the neo-imperialist sentiment of Anglophone exceptionalism.
The UK’s decision to pursue an increasingly anti-China foreign policy is, of course, influenced by the US and against Britain’s best interests. However, its foreign policy narrative, especially in light of Brexit, is clothed in imperial nostalgia, which reflects back on the British Empire as a “force for good.” It drums up not memories of enslavement, exploitation, or aggression against other countries, but the idea of Britain as a “benevolent” empire which enforced the “rules of the world” acting as a “global policeman,” using its unmatched naval power to beat back aggressors and enforce its will.
Anyone who knows a thing or two about history will be aware that this is an idealistic and revisionist view, and that China was subjected to extreme aggression as Britain sought to forcibly open the country, seize ports and annex territory in the name of Hong Kong, giving way to what Beijing describes as “the century of humiliation.” Although the British Empire no longer exists, the country’s leaders continue to live in the past and the legacy of British Imperialism lives on through the hegemony of the United States and the countries the Empire gave birth to, such as Australia. These offspring continue to “carry the baton” through what they now proclaim to be the “rules-based order.” As a result, they frame continued military expansionism against Beijing as a morally, ideologically, and justified cause.
In reality, AUKUS is a destabilizing force in the Asia-Pacific region, inducing arms races and raising tensions. Neutral countries, who the West would normally hope to align with, such as Indonesia, are wary about AUKUS. This is because it threatens the strategic balance of the region. Moreover, while AUKUS claims to prevent war, it in fact encourages it. As scholar Adam Ni aptly described “it’s like paying insurance premium to increase the likelihood of a car crash.” China is now forced to respond to AUKUS by increasing its own defense spending and military presence and more deeply aligning with countries such as Russia. This plays into US hands by creating a vicious circle, further increasing the likelihood of war.
AUKUS is a post-Imperialist crusade, part of the Biden administration’s multi-faceted campaign to upend peace in Asia and transform the region into a military arena. It is a bid to create a NATO-like system in the Pacific which may be expanded in the future. It is not a commitment to peace, but a commitment to war and destabilization, with an explicit intention to target China. The alliance is laden with the identity, ideology and nostalgia of British imperialism, which shows no respect for the region, its history or its people, and as such peace-loving nations should reject it. Although it is likely to be years before any practical results are seen from this alliance, the projected tensions and political sentiment are going to be felt immediately and abruptly.
It Was A ‘Vaccine Strategy’ From The Start
Ideological zealots wanted jabs in arms
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | March 11, 2023
Our recent “Null Hypothesis” article postulates and evidences a succinct summary of the happenings of the last three years: “The hypothesis that will likely stand the test of time goes like this: a nasty — if not particularly unusual — respiratory disease season was turned into a catastrophe by human misadventure, and this catastrophe was compounded by efforts to save face and justify the unjustifiable”.
In answering the question ‘what happened’, we did not attempt to tackle the obvious follow-up question (apart from a brief discussion about social contagion): ‘why did it happen’?
The sceptical community – living up to its decentralised worldview – is not short of opinions and theories, robustly debated. These are too numerous to cover in detail in this short piece: it suffices to say that they cover a wide spectrum ranging from calamitous ineptitude (and innumeracy) of politicians and civil servants, deceitful and underhand sales & marketing by nefarious global corporations, efforts by the elite to enrich themselves by impoverishing the middle classes and the digital enslavement of the masses, through to some more esoteric beliefs covering depopulation agendas, eugenics and long-in-the-planning Satanic plots… the list just goes on and on.
As many of the most ardent supporters of both pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions (PIs and NPIs) begin to wake up to the collateral damage they helped bring about, it is instructive to stand back and observe tried-and-tested Biblical precedent being re-enacted. Few are not enjoying seeing the pantomime villain Matt Hancock being hoist by his own self-promoting petard via the Oakeshott WhatsApp trove. After all, who does not take some satisfaction from the fall of a petty tyrant? But much like the goat that gets bestowed with the sins of the community in Leviticus (“the goat will carry on itself all their iniquities” ) before being cast out into the wilderness (thus avoiding a full and frank ‘lessons learned’ exercise), the demonisation of this preening ’cock (or monkey) does not necessarily get us much further in terms of identifying whodunnit — who was the organ grinder? After all, a self-promoting chancer whose self-confessed epidemiological education is based on a studious viewing of the film ‘Contagion’ is demonstrably not an evil Blofeld mastermind. Indeed, some sceptics have attempted to use the Telegraph’s Lockdown Files to scotch any discussion of conspiracy and underscore their belief that the disastrous events of 2020-2022 were ‘merely’ a cock-up.
But that simplistic take assumes that the former Secretary of State for Health was more than just a bumbling low-grade chaos agent intent on filling his boots via fast-track procurement channels. Loathsome though he might be, Hancock and his cronies are a symptom – not a cause – of the pit we find ourselves in. Why did he – and the Prime Minister at the time, Boris Johnson – get themselves into such a pickle such that they were not able to navigate a more rational – and less damaging – course through the crisis?
The answer is probably to be found somewhere within what one might term the ‘pandemic preparedness industry’ as outlined a few months ago in the Daily Sceptic :
“The response to the COVID-19 pandemic represented the triumph of a pseudo-scientific biosecurity agenda that emerged in 2005 and has been pushed ever since by a well-organised, well-funded and well-embedded network of ideologues. These fanatics promote and perpetuate the ideas underpinning the draconian new approach by publishing them in leading journals, planting them in public policy and law, pushing them in the media and smearing those who dissent, however eminent or well-qualified.
This avenue of investigation is, we believe, more likely to lead to the source of our misadventure than attempting to rationalise ‘scorched earth’ attempts at containment, suppression and eradication of a killer virus. There was only ever a warped logic to these actions, unless – one way or the other (perhaps for the ‘greater good’ or simply for old-fashioned crony capitalist ends) – you wanted to create a favourable backdrop for a new set of medical interventions that might otherwise have met with limited take-up or even downright opposition. CMO Chris Whitty advised government ministers in February 2020 (!) that covid was not deadly enough to justify fast-tracking vaccines. Put another way, earth could not have been scorched in this way if seasonal respiratory disease had not been given a name such that scariants could be ‘deployed’ to ‘frighten the pants off’ the general populace.
Whether the driving force behind these fanatics is saintly goodwill, pure greed, corruption – or even a Luciferian conspiracy for that matter – is beside the point: what is essential to understand is how a nasty seasonal respiratory disease season was weaponised to drive one of the greatest policy failures of all time. There does not necessarily need to be a single cartoon villain masterminding events to avoid multiple parties conspiring (“breathing together”) to create a great evil.
With this backdrop one does not even need to ferret around in the weeds to find out more. Last summer’s detailed POLITICO/WELT Special Report sheds plentiful quanta of light on the matter:
Four [supra-national] health organizations, working closely together, spent almost $10 billion on responding to Covid across the world. But they lacked the scrutiny of governments… While nations were still debating the seriousness of the pandemic, the groups identified potential vaccine makers and targeted investments in the development of tests, treatments and shots.
The four organizations had worked together in the past, and three of them shared a common history. The largest and most powerful was the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest philanthropies in the world. Then there was Gavi, the global vaccine organization that Gates helped to found to inoculate people in low-income nations, and the Wellcome Trust, a British research foundation with a multibillion dollar endowment that had worked with the Gates Foundation in previous years. Finally, there was the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, the international vaccine research and development group that Gates and Wellcome both helped to create in 2017.
… The World Health Organisation (WHO) was crucial to the groups’ rise to power. All had longstanding ties to the global health body. The boards of both CEPI and Gavi have a specially designated WHO representative. There is also a revolving door between employment in the groups and work for the WHO: Former WHO employees now work at the Gates Foundation and CEPI; some, such as Chris Wolff, the deputy director of country partnerships at the Gates Foundation, occupy important positions. Much of the groups’ clout with the WHO stems simply from money.
… “They’re funded by their own capabilities and or endowments and trusts. But when they step into multilateral affairs, then who keeps watch over them?” a former senior U.S. official said. “I don’t know the answer to that. That’s quite provocative”.
Consider this small early 2020 cameo featuring senior executives from one of these four organisations:
“When it first became clear that this disease was appearing, Richard [Hatchett] and I sat down and said, we know what happened with the last swine flu pandemic, where wealthy countries bought up all the doses [of Pandemrix] that were … available for the developing world, we have to try to do something different about that…”.
Most normal people draw entirely different conclusions from the swine flu saga, not least the absolutely devastating tale of Pandemrix, a giant swindle involving misuse of taxpayer funds to purchase these doses in the first place, the substantial human damage that they then caused, a subsequent cover-up and then further cost to the taxpayer compensating those affected.
Contrast this with CEPI’s ‘mission’: “Vaccines are one of our most powerful tools in the fight to outsmart epidemics. The development of vaccines can help save lives, protect societies and restabilise economies”.
There you have it: the ‘saviour vaccine’, a sacred cow extolled with messianic zeal. It seems that one of the world’s greatest policy failures happens to neatly coincide with the stated aims of the Fantabulous Four. Food for thought given that there is no example of a vaccine ever defeating a sudden onset viral epidemic, let alone a ‘pandemic’ (there is also the question of whether viral pandemics are in any way even a hypothetical threat to modern societies — unless, of course, one incorrectly pins the blame for iatrogenic collateral damage on said virus).
Following the money, therefore, it is not that much of a surprise what came next: while — as pointed out above — “nations were still debating the seriousness of the pandemic” (i.e. correctly monitoring the possibility of a slightly-more-serious-than-usual respiratory disease season), the Fantabulous Four were busy setting the scene with targeted investments to create fertile ground to fulfil their aims. Consider then:
- Who might have benefitted from a social media campaign showing those faked ‘deaths in the street’ in China?
- Who might have considered funding a social media ‘bot army’ to promote lockdowns, interventions that as per Neil Ferguson’s ‘seminal’ fear-mongering 16 March 2020 paper could only conceivably make any sort of logical sense if they were followed in short order by a ‘saviour vaccine’, as explicitly stated by Ferguson and co-authors in that paper (“these policies will need to be maintained until large stocks of vaccine are available” )?
- Who might have benefitted from squashing an early ‘lab leak’ theory that might have implicated some of the Fantabulous Four and the justification for a fast-track vaccine roll-out?
- Conversely, once said roll-out had been successfully funded and procured at eye-watering expense, who might have benefitted from re-floating the ‘lab leak’ theory to help justify future ‘pandemic preparedness’?
- Who might benefit from tightly controlling media output and censorship (after all, “true content … might promote vaccine hesitancy”)? Who was writing this script?
- WHO might wish to publish — in 2022 — detailed recommendations about how those in authority should respond to a ‘vaccine crisis’ (defined as any occurrence that ‘will most likely or has already eroded public trust in vaccines … and may create uncertainty’)?
- Why only the vaccine ‘pillar’ of the WHO’s wish list, the ACT-A (Access to Covid Tools Accelerator), received the funding that was sought? And why did all others on that ACT-A list — most notably cheap therapeutics that might have saved many lives (while of course competing with lucrative vaccines) — remain well short of their funding targets?
This congruency of the categorical trinity — means, motive and opportunity — is difficult to explain away. It is true that much that happened from March 2020 was anarchic, uncontrolled, panicked and unscripted. But there was method to the madness, an ultimate aim to the chaos, namely to make way for a ‘saviour vaccine’ that would only be accepted if the intended recipients had had ‘the pants frightened off them’, i.e. were sufficiently afraid of the alternatives to risk such an unproven medical intervention.
It may conceivably be that many people involved in the Fantabulous Four believe that this collective action was necessary. But collective action – however well meaning – that is dictated by a group and imposed on everyone else is tyranny, pure and simple. It gets worse if authorities are sufficiently captured by this tyranny such that they deploy subversive psychological weaponry on their citizens and suppress any dissent.
These are grave misdeeds that led to great harm, both in terms of bad outcomes and collateral damage from unnecessary non-pharmaceutical interventions, but also from the utterly unnecessary coercion used to foist pharmaceutical interventions on those that did not need them.
Even if we presuppose that there are no evil Blofeld-types standing behind all of this, it is beyond doubt that a fanatical ideology has inspired an evil tyranny. As per the Daily Sceptic :
“This ideology is the enemy, and seeing it for what it is is the first step to defeating it”.
This process has begun.
MHRA stops publishing regular Covid vaccines Yellow Card reports (how very convenient)
By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | March 14, 2023
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), on whom we have to rely for Covid-19 vaccines damage data, are masters of both doublespeak and normalisation, two key means of the global transformation imposed on us over the last three years.
They don’t disappoint with their latest and last of their regular Yellow Card updates published last week. If you have sharp eyes, you will spot in it a neutral-sounding subheading, ‘Update on publication status’. What it tells us is that since the Commission on Human Medicine (yet another quango who, would you believe, advise ‘ministers on the safety, efficacy and quality of medicinal products’ and whose many members you can find here) has advised that ‘given the end of the autumn 2022 booster campaign and the stable safety profile of the Covid-19 vaccines, the MHRA should transition to routine data publication and communication of safety concerns for Covid-19 vaccines. This report is therefore the last regular publication of the Summary of Yellow Card reporting for Covid-19 vaccines‘ (my emphasis). The ‘new interactive‘ will continue with monthly updates, but this is now in line with regular monitoring (whatever that entails) and many other drugs viewed as having an acceptable safety profile. In view of the new spring booster just launched for vulnerable people, who are receiving perhaps their 6th dose of a novel mRNA injection, and the seemingly tolerated (by the the MHRA) level of associated adverse events and deaths for the CVax then this still and wrongly gives the impression that there is ‘no cause for concern’.
How very convenient for all involved, since these embarrassing and counter-narrative Yellow Card reports of adverse events continue to mount. In the last four weeks reported there were another 776 reports, of which 75 per cent are deemed serious by the MHRA itself, and 23 more reports with ‘fatal outcomes’. That means death in plain English.
Exactly how is the phrase ‘given the stable safety profile of the Covid-19 vaccines’ to be interpreted other than doublespeak or a plain lie? How can it be seen except as a slap in the face for the nearly half-million vaccine-injured (75 per cent of whom are seriously injured and who may be only 10 per cent of the total) and a perverse denial of the published data? What a callous way of normalising death and injury.
For what we know is that despite the many, many more adverse events and deaths associated with the Covid vaccines than with the previously rushed-out swine flu vaccines, none of the Covid-19 vaccines has been similarly formally withdrawn. Nothing, but nothing, has been learnt from President Ford’s warp-speed attempt to vaccinate the entire US population in 1976. The Ford administration agreed to indemnify Big Pharma and, like Boris Johnson, Ford politicised the vaccine and was photographed being vaccinated. Although the predicted ‘pandemic’ never materialised, the vaccine side effects did – dozens of cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare problem where the body’s immune system attacks the nerves, potentially leading to paralysis and death. Hundreds of compensation claims followed for years after.
The story was repeated in the UK in 2009 when Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London hyped a swine flu outbreak here. Based on Ferguson’s advice, the government said a ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ was 65,000 deaths in the UK and ordered 90million doses of the swine flu vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline – more than enough to vaccinate the entire population, and more per head than any other country in Europe. The order was part-cancelled it when it was recognised that it was not a pandemic after all. (The Guardian reported: ‘GSK will not suffer from the cancellation – the deal involves a commitment by the Department of Health to buy some of its other products instead.’) Furthermore it was later acknowledged that one in every 55,000 unnecessary jabs had caused narcolepsy, many of the sufferers being children. Years later vaccine injury claims against the DoH are still being fought, with no compensation paid out.
But no lessons were learnt, and today the Big Pharma lobby is hugely more powerful with its tentacles reaching into academe, public health and government quangos and agencies, most often under the guise of philanthropy and independent scientific research.
So let’s see what this ‘last regular publication’ reports.
The notable points for me are:
· an inexorable rise of injuries and deaths now standing at 478,329 people impacted and 2,459 deaths.
· 6,697 children of whom 71 per cent are seriously impacted and more than ten dead
· 39,801 20 – 29yr olds, 73 per cent of whom are seriously impacted
Why aren’t people more angry about this? What are we doing sacrificing children on the altar of an experimental vaccine for which they had no need?
In the next week we will be publishing our own report on the devastating consequences of the vaccine for reproductive health.
MHRA Yellow Card reporting summary up to February 22, 2023
(Data published March 8, 2023) New interactive format
Adult & Child – Primary, Third Dose & Boosters (mono/bivalent)
Government data up to September 11, 2022 – UK-wide (latest)
· 1st doses received – 53.8 million people
· 2nd doses – 50.7m people
· 3rd doses – people having one or more booster – 40,622,659 (up to February 20)
All boosters = 67.26million doses
· Pfizer – 33.1m (monovalent) & 11.5m (bivalent)
· AstraZeneca – 60,900
· Moderna – 13.3m (monovalent) & 9.3m (bivalent)
· Novavax – 1,200
Additional all-brand doses given in last 4 weeks – 3,230 (Pfizer-mono) + 127,312 (Pfizer-bivalent) + zero (AZ) + 176 (Moderna-mono) + 4,335 (Moderna-bivalent) + 200 (Novavax) = 135,253
TOTAL DOSES administered (approx.) = 171.8million doses including all booster programmes
Overall 1 in 112 people injected experience a Yellow Card Adverse Event, 1 in 151 reports are classified as SERIOUS*, 1 in 195 reports are fatal, which may be less than 10 per cent of actual figures according to MHRA.
Yellow Card Adverse Event Reports – 176,316 (Pfizer-mono) + 4,096 (Pfizer-bivalent) + 247,600 (AZ) + 42,833 (Moderna-mono) + 5,108 (Moderna-bivalent) + 57 (Novavax) + 2,319 (Unknown brand) = 478,329 people impacted (increase of 776 in 4 weeks)
Reports classified as SERIOUS* by MHRA = 74.4 per cent
124,617 (Pfizer-mono) + 3,126 (Pfizer-bivalent) + 191,644 (AZ) + 30,929 (Moderna-mono) + 3,685 (Moderna-bivalent) + 40 (Novavax) + 1670 (Unknown) = 355,711
Over 45,857 of the above serious reports are of ‘Unknown Age’ = 9.6 per cent of all reports
Reports classified as Non-SERIOUS by MHRA = 25.1 per cent
50,832 (Pfizer-mono) + 940 (Pfizer-bivalent) + 54,592 (AZ) + 11,816 (Moderna-mono) + 1,381 (Moderna-bivalent) + 17 (Novavax) + 581 (Unknown) = 120,159
Reactions – 508,104 (Pfizer-mono) + 10,867 (Pfizer-bivalent) + 877,221 (AZ) + 140,373 (Moderna-mono) + 13,896 (Moderna-bivalent) + 178 (Novavax) + 7,217 (Unknown) = 1,557,856
Fatal – 867 (Pfizer-mono) + 30 (Pfizer-bivalent) + 1,364 (AZ) + 88 (Moderna-mono) + 42 (Moderna-bivalent) + 68 (Unknown) = 2,459 (0.5 per cent of reports) (increase of 23 reports with fatal outcome in 4 weeks)
Over 386 of the above fatalities are of ‘Unknown Age’ = 16 per cent of all fatalities
CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE SPECIAL REPORT
Last available data set for Under 18s in Nov 2022
· 4,213,500 children (1st doses) – majority Pfizer
· 2,910,500 (2nd doses) – majority Pfizer
· 485,900 boosters
Yellow Card Adverse Events Reported – Below combined 0-19yrs – many categories retracted (^) ‘due to less than 5 reports in line with MHRA duty of confidentiality to patients and reporters’
0-19yr old reports classified as SERIOUS* by MHRA = 71.3 per cent
4,650 (Pfizer-mono) + 34 (Pfizer-bivalent) + 1,457 (AZ) + 517 (Moderna-mono) + >7 (Moderna-bivalent) + >32 (Unknown) = 6,697
0-19yr old reports classified as FATAL by MHRA
>10 (Pfizer-mono) + zero (Pfizer-bivalent) + <5 (AZ) + <5 (Moderna-mono) + <5 (Moderna-bivalent) + <5 (Unknown brand) = greater than 10
20-29yr old reports classified as SERIOUS* by MHRA = 73.2 per cent
19,965 (Pfizer-mono) + 103 (Pfizer-bivalent) + 14,542 (AZ) + 4,973 (Moderna-mono) + 127 (Moderna-bivalent) + < 5 (Novavax) + 91 (Unknown) = 39,801
20-29yr old reports classified as FATAL by MHRA
15 (Pfizer-mono) + <5 (Pfizer-bivalent) + 28 (AZ) + zero (Moderna-mono) + zero (Moderna-bivalent) + zero (Novavax) + zero (Unknown brand) = greater than 43
* MHRA definition of ‘serious’ – patient died, life threatening, hospitalisation, congenital abnormality, persistent or significant disability or capacity, deemed medically significant by MHRA medical dictionary or reporter
For full reports, see here.
Updated 10am, 14.3.23
Sunak grants £5 billion boost to the military despite growing issues of poverty and inflation
By Ahmed Adel | March 16, 2023
Britain’s updated defence and foreign policy strategy envisages an additional £5 billion for armaments and is a demonstration that London’s priority is confrontation with Russia and China. Although UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised this considerable appropriation for the military over two years, it is unlikely to appease British conservatives as the figure did not meet the demands of spending 3% GDP on defence.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace wanted a larger military budget but officials are reportedly “delighted” with the settlement. This is unlikely the case behind closed doors.
Most of the £5 billion will be used to replenish ammunition stockpiles given to Ukraine and work on the AUKUS project to develop nuclear-powered submarines for Australia. Effectively, the main priority of London’s updated defence and foreign policy strategy is to oppose the main geopolitical threats to Anglo hegemony – Russia and China.
Speaking from San Diego on March 13, Sunak said: “It’s clear that the world has become more volatile, the threats to our security have increased. And that’s why we’re investing £5 billion more in our world-beating armed forces over the next two years and increasing our defence spending to 2.5% of GDP so we can continue to be a world leader when it comes to defence and keeping our country safe.”
Of course, this omits the obvious failures in Afghanistan and Ukraine, and the fact that neither Russia or China pose a threat to Britain. In fact, it is evident from the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan that the threat is the UK.
Russophobia guides the British political and media establishment, and has thus shaped British public opinion for more than 200 years. Therefore, in the context of Russia’s special military operation, the updated strategy does not represent anything new in terms of escalation. Rather, it just merely shows the British establishment’s continuous Russophobia.
The procurement of ammunition and atomic armament demonstrates that the Sunak government is continuing what Boris Johnson, and those before him, started. What is telling though is that a £5 billion boost is being allocated to the military, partially to replenish stocks given to Ukraine, just as the UK is experiencing the worst economic catastrophe of the 21st century, thus far.
According to the latest figures (2020/21), around one in five people in the UK (20%) were in poverty, or 13.4 million people. Of these, 7.9 million were working-age adults, 3.9 million were children and 1.7 million were pensioners. Therefore, one in four children in the UK are living in poverty (27%).
However, a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, an independent social change organization working to solve poverty in the UK, said in January 2023 that “living standards are likely to have fallen since the latest official data covering 2020/21.”
“Since the last official poverty data, the direct impact of the pandemic on society has lessened, but some of the changes it has brought about will be long lasting,” the report said, citing the war in Ukraine and the continuing effects of Brexit as examples of difficulties.
The report published that across the poorest fifth of British families, the JRF’s cost of living tracker in October 2022 found that around six in ten low-income households are not able to afford an unexpected expense, over half are in arrears, around a quarter use credit to pay essential bills, and over seven in ten families are going without essentials.
However, due to centuries of indoctrination, there is little condemnation from the British public that £5 billion is being used to replenish military stocks sent to Ukraine instead of dealing with an inflation that is currently forecast to peak at around 11%, which will be the highest rate in forty years, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Although Russia is the main adversary for London, China is rapidly becoming its second. This is becoming increasingly apparent considering that the UK and US are not only each other’s main political and military ally, but are also in anti-China formations together, such as AUKUS.
Therefore, it should not be surprising either that the second part of the renewed strategy is arming Australia so that it becomes an Anglo stronghold in the South Pacific. This is all part of preparations to set the stage for a new big showdown with China, especially given that the situation related to Taiwan confirms that the current trajectory is towards military confrontation.
Either way, although the £5 billion is not as much as the British hawks wanted due to budgetary constraints, it still symbolises that the UK is committed to opposing Russia and advancing future hostilities with China.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
MP and American cardiologist call on the UK Parliament to hold the US government accountable for violation of the Biological Weapons Treaty
By Rhoda Wilson • The Exposé • March 14, 2023
UK Member of Parliament Andrew Bridgen and Dr. Richard Fleming have jointly called on the UK Houses of Parliament to hold the USA government accountable for their violation of the Biological Conventions Weapons Treaty resulting in the covid pandemic and unprecedented use of experimental genetic vaccines.
In a press release dated 13 March 2023, Mr. Bridgen and Dr. Fleming – a Physicist, Internist, Cardiologist and Nuclear Cardiologist – encouraged the US Congress to investigate the US funding of covid and highlighted that British citizens were paying the price for the US biological viral weapon and genetic vaccine programme funded by the US NIAID and Department of Defence. “Either the US will hold its criminals accountable or we should.”
“The world death count from the viral bioweapon is over 6.7 million, including more than 203,000 deaths in the UK. Based upon information as of 3 months ago (October 2022) there have been more than 2,400 deaths in the UK following the use of the genetic vaccine products, which are copies of the US biological viral bioweapon,” the statement said.
The statement also noted that there have been 1.6 million adverse effects reported to the Yellow Card system after being injected with the “genetic vaccines.” It continued:
“We call upon the Houses of Parliament to demand accountability on the part of the US Government for their violation of the Biological Weapons Convention Treaty resulting in the Covid pandemic and unprecedented use of experimental genetic vaccines that turn red blood cells grey and cause blood to clot upon contact, thus causing heart damage including prion disease (amyloidosis) and myocarditis, strokes, cancer, miscarriages and death.”
We have included an image of the full press release below.
The press release follows a tweet from Mr. Bridgen on Sunday where he confirmed that during his visit to Washington DC at the end of last year he was “informed that the US DoD were responsible for both the virus and the vaccines. Fort Detrick was named. Also, a facility in Canada. By the end of the month, I expect to see the start of criminal proceedings against the many politicians and officials who are responsible around the world.”
Source: Andrew Bridgen MP on Twitter
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Book Review
Zika: The Pandemic That Never Was
BY DR ROGER WATSON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 14, 2023
Roger Daltry of mod rock band The Who screamed “We won’t get fooled again” in its lengthy and punchy signature song. But it appears we have. Almost everything that those on the sceptical side of the Covid narrative recognise about the hyped-up nature of the recent pandemic will see parallels in Overturning Zika: the pandemic that never was by Randall S. Bock.
Bock is a U.S. physician who has long harboured scepticism about something that most of us had completely forgotten: the Zika ‘pandemic’ of 2015 in Brazil. Like COVID-19, this was accompanied by dire predictions of deaths in the millions and, parallel to the ridiculous and extraordinary locking down and social distancing mandates of 2020-2021, Zika was accompanied by ludicrous suggestions that women should not have babies and even abort the ones they were carrying. Some did. … continue
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