Speaking to journalists in Turkmenistan on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to questions about several recent remarks from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. During the latest G7 summit, the UK leader joked that his allies should take their clothes off for the photoshoot – to show that they are “tougher than Putin.”
“I don’t know how they wanted to undress, waist-high or not, but I think it would be a disgusting sight either way,” the Russian president quipped. “Everything should be harmoniously developed in a person, both the body and the soul. However, in order for everything to be harmonious, one has to abandon excessive drinking and break other bad habits, start exercising, take up a sport.”
Johnson’s another recent remark suggested that what he described as a “macho war of invasion” in Ukraine would not happen “if Putin was a woman, which he obviously isn’t.”
The Russian leader responded: “I just want to remind you about the events of modern history, when Margaret Thatcher made a decision to launch military action against Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Here’s a woman, deciding to launch military action. Where are the Falkland Islands and where is Britain? And this was dictated by nothing but imperial ambitions.”
“So coming from an acting British Prime Minister, this is not exactly a correct remark in regards to what is happening today.”
Here we go again. It’s the middle of summer and the leading opinion piece in the Guardian today calls for the return of restrictions in response to rising infections and hospitalisations. In a piece introduced with, “a few small changes would make a big difference to millions of vulnerable people”, journalist Frances Ryan writes:
If you’re reading this in the U.K., odds are that by now you’ve had coronavirus: seven in 10 of us have watched the dreaded red line appear. You may have been stuck in bed with it twice or even three times by now; by April 2022, England alone had recorded almost 900,000 reinfections. When the public asked to “return to normal”, I’m not sure a regular hacking cough was what they had in mind.
Almost 900,000 reinfections? How will 1.6% of the population have coped with getting another cold?
Ryan continues:
It is an odd situation. Last week, Covid infections were reported to have soared by 43%, while hospitalisation from the virus rose by 23%. An estimated 1.7 million people in the U.K. tested positive over those seven days. Two million of us now have long Covid, with about two in five of those – or 826,000 people – having symptoms for at least a year.
What Ryan fails to mention is that Long Covid studies frequently find small to negligible numbers of additional symptoms compared to a control group, meaning the quoted figure is unlikely to be an accurate picture of the real impact of COVID-19.
Ryan again:
Back in February, Johnson said the Government had created a plan to start “living with Covid”, but what it really did was form a plan to catch and spread Covid. After all coronavirus prevention measures were dropped on April 1st – from the legal obligation to isolate if you had Covid, to the end of most free testing – the public were left wide open to mass infection. Even hospitals were told by ministers to ditch mask mandates, though some worried trusts have defied the rules and kept them. That all precautions were pulled back just when most people’s vaccine immunity was beginning to fade, and the virus was evolving to be more transmissible, gives a hint at how little logic ministers applied.
Since Ryan accepts that vaccine protection wanes, she evidently intends restrictions, sorry, precautions to continue indefinitely. Indeed, the plummeting of the infection fatality rate makes no difference to her argument, as “excessive focus” has been placed on deaths, she says.
One of the biggest problems facing Britain’s attempts to quell the virus is that this Government doesn’t really want to.There is hope – the number of people dying from Covid has reduced since its peak – but excessive focus on this has long hidden the fact that loss of life has never been the only thing that matters: how many people are infected with the virus matters too. A strategy that lets the virus rip through the population increases the risk we all face, be it from surges, new dangerous variants, or in developing long Covid. Fundamentally, it means accepting a reality where it is deemed normal for many of us to be (possibly severely) sick, from a virus whose long-term effects – and the effects of repeated reinfection – we still know little about.
Once again, the plight of the vulnerable is deployed to justify indefinite restrictions on everyone – a logic which would destroy most freedoms given the opportunity, as we have seen in the last two and a half years.
There will be few greater casualties though than the 3.7 million clinically extremely vulnerable people, especially the 500,000 who are immunocompromised and can’t get much or any benefit from a booster jab. Trying to avoid the virus in a country that has forgone all safety measures means risking your life when you pop to the shops. Ministers who are content for repeated coronavirus infection to just become part of British life are content for isolation to be part of clinically vulnerable people’s.
What does Ryan propose? The reinstatement of free lateral flow tests – as though there isn’t an economic crisis on, and we haven’t spent enough over-testing ourselves for colds; the return of the legal requirement to isolate for those with a positive test – a measure extremely disruptive to education, employment, health care and everything else; and financial help such as sick pay for those isolating – more magical money. Plus more of the vaccines she has acknowledged don’t work for long.
And, inevitably, masks: “Wearing masks in busy and enclosed spaces again is the right thing to do; just under half of Britons (48%) reported wearing a face covering when outside their home last month, down from about 95% during the January Omicron wave.”
From a sceptical point of view, it’s depressing that nearly half of people still say they’re wearing a mask – though since far fewer than half the people I see out and about are actually wearing a mask, this poll probably reveals more about the biases of polls (and what people say to them) than the reality on the ground.
Then Ryan lays it on thick:
Unless we wish to sign up to getting repeatedly sick for the foreseeable future, and to the risk of long-term disability from long Covid, we are going to have to bring back low-effort protective measures to curb it. A recent public health campaign in Ireland, which encourages people to think of clinically vulnerable people in their daily interactions, shows how easy it is to do things differently.
Former Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam recently said the rise in infections was nothing to worry about and that even he had stopped wearing his face mask. But will he think again now, if respectable opinion starts to shift in the direction Frances Ryan and others would like?
Let’s hope this is just an anomalous op-ed and not the start of a trend. After all, if this is what they’re saying in June, what will they be saying in December?
The UK government’s official advisers on climate change have warned that much more needs to be done to persuade people to fly less and eat less meat in order to meet climate targets.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) says that unless policies are radically improved, the UK won’t achieve its target to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
According to The BBC:
The committee is an independent body advising on climate policy. This report is an annual review of progress to MPs.
It does praise ministers on two issues: it says the government’s renewable energy programme will save people £125 a year on bills by 2030.
And it congratulates ministers on promoting electric cars – even though it says more charge points and more electric vans are needed…
The committee agrees that carbon-cutting policies are now in place for most sectors of the economy – but it says there’s “scant evidence” that these goals will be delivered.
And it warns that ministers need a back-up plan, including measures they may prefer to avoid such as asking the public to change behaviour by eating less meat and flying less.
The chairman, Lord Deben, told BBC News that recent climate extremes were “very, very worrying”. He continued: “The public should be proud of the UK setting best targets but I’m very worried that there’s no convincing programme for delivering policies.
“I’m seriously worried that we are not moving fast enough to avert real catastrophe.”
Legendary Australian Geologist Ian Plimer has just published a new book entitled “Green Murder.” I’ve just finished reading it. I wish every man, woman and child on Earth had a copy to hand.
In the book, Professor Plimer forensically annihilates the claim that man-made Co2 is responsible for global warming.
He warns us that ludicrous net zero policies will result in ruined economies, the destruction of the global food chain, permanent travel restrictions, the death of civil liberties and worldwide unemployment.
Each and every claim in his book is backed up by peer-reviewed evidence, yet you’ll never hear Ian Plimer on the BBC.
Health officials in the U.K. this month identified the country’s first polio outbreak in 40 years, and believe the outbreak was caused by a strain of polio found in the oral polio vaccine.
Health officials in Britain warned parents on June 22 to ensure their children have been vaccinated against polio after multiple closely related versions of the virus that cause the disease were found in sewage water at the London Beckton Sewage Treatment Works — the largest water treatment plant in the U.K.
“The Global Polio Laboratory Network has confirmed the isolation of type 2 vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV2) from environmental samples in London, United Kingdom, which were detected as part of ongoing disease surveillance,” the World Health Organization (WHO) states on its website.
The U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said it believes the virus was “vaccine-derived,” meaning it came from someone who received the live polio vaccine. That person then passed the virus to individuals in London, who shed the virus into their feces.
The viruses’ genetic sequences suggest “there has been some spread between closely linked individuals in north and east London,” the UKHSA said.
The virus was isolated from environmental samples collected between February and May, and no related cases of paralysis have been detected, the WHO said. “Additional sewage samples collected upstream from the main waste-water treatment plant’s inlet are being analyzed.”
People vaccinated with the live oral polio vaccine (OPV) shed traces of the virus in their stool — which eventually end up in sewage wastewater, NPR reported. Scientists believe a person brought the virus into London and then spread it to others who were unvaccinated.
“We are urgently investigating to better understand the extent of this transmission,” Vanessa Saliba, an epidemiologist who consults for the UKHSA, said in the statement.
The risk to the general public is thought to be “extremely low” but the agency encourages anyone not fully vaccinated to receive a polio vaccine.
WHO approves Gates’ oral polio vaccine for emergency use
The WHO on Nov. 13, 2020, granted Emergency Use Listing (EUL) to a new novel oral polio vaccine called nOPV2, designed to treat the type of polio outbreak occurring in the U.K.
Based on the WHO’s review of data and research available on nOPV2, the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) recommended Gates’ nOPV2 become the “vaccine of choice” for responding to type 2 polio outbreaks caused by OPV.
“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded all development and clinical trials of nOPV2 to date, working closely with GPEI partners throughout the process to ensure resources are going toward a tool that could prove critical to helping end all forms of polio.
“Based on promising data from clinical trials, and the public health emergency that cVDPV2 [vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2] constitutes, the Foundation is funding at-risk production of 160 million doses of nOPV2 to ensure it can be deployed immediately following the issuance of WHO’s interim Emergency Use Listing (EUL) recommendation for use.”
“The emergency use listing, or EUL, is the first of its kind for a vaccine” designed to “pave the way for potential listing of COVID-19 vaccines,” the WHO said on its website.
On December 31, 2020, the WHO issued its first EUL listing for a COVID-19 vaccine. According to the WHO, the agency granted the listing for the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine.
The EUL is a regulatory pathway that allows the WHO — whose second-largest financial donor is the Gates Foundation — to distribute an unlicensed product for a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” which the organization claims polio has been since 2014.
The EUL allows vaccines and medicines to be made available more quickly to address health emergencies, without long-term phase 3 data, and is the same mechanism used for distribution of Zika, Ebola and COVID-19 vaccines.
According to the WHO, in “very rare cases,” the administration of OPV results in vaccine-associated paralytic polio associated with a “reversion of the vaccine strains to the more neurovirulent profile of wild poliovirus.”
In addition to causing vaccine-associated paralytic polio, vaccine strains have the capacity to cause disease of the nervous system and to transmit from person to person resulting in infectious poliomyelitis.
Based on the WHO’s review of data and research available on nOPV2, the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) recommended Gates’ nOPV2 become the “vaccine of choice” for responding to type 2 polio outbreaks caused by OPV.
According to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), the nOPV2 was developed to address vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 outbreaks, which “can emerge when the weakened strain of the vaccine virus circulates in under-immunized populations and, with time, can genetically revert into a form that causes paralysis.”
In other words, “under-immunized” populations — not the OPV — are to blame for the vaccine-related polio strains.
“Once again, Big Pharma, fueled by the Gates Foundation, has created a huge problem that only they can solve. The introduction of the new OPV in the U.K. has predictably led to polio virus in the sewage (i.e., where poliovirus propagates) and now the “only solution” is to inject U.K. citizens with the nPOV2 to prevent the spread of OPV-induced polio. If this isn’t a scam, I don’t know what is!”
The U.K.’s Medicines and Regulatory Health Products Agency (MHRA) on June 17 said in a tweet: “An exciting new global study, co-authored by our lead scientist Javier Martin, shows that new polio vaccine nOPV2 is an effective tool in reducing the risk of Vaccine-Derived Polio Viruses.“
The tweet linked to a study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advocating for the use of Gates’ nOPV2 vaccine.
Between the launch of nOPV2 in March 2021 and late May 2022, more than 350 million doses had been administered across 18 countries.
The GPEI confirmed, as of May 30, 16 other countries are “ready to use nOPV2” and an additional 17 are in the midst of preparations.
WHO, GPEI and other organizations pushing Gates-funded vaccine
According to UNICEF, the GPEI is a public-private partnership led by national governments with six core partners: Rotary International, the WHO, the CDC, UNICEF, the Gates Foundation and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
The entity in charge of monitoring vaccine adverse events following administraton of nPOV2 is the WHO’s own Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS).
“The GACVS Sub-Committee on nOPV2 Safety will advise WHO and its Member States on safety outcomes following the use of initially pre-licensed type 2 novel oral poliovirus vaccine, during the EUL period, prior to the availability of Phase III clinical trial results,” according to GPEI.
In essence, the Gates Foundation funded the creation, development and clinical trials for the new nPOV2 polio vaccine, funds the organizations that administered millions of doses to be given under EUL without any long-term data, funds the organizations implementing its roll-out and surveillance and funds the entity monitoring adverse events associated with nPOV2’s use.
The Gates Foundation is also a funder of NPR and NPR’s blog, which have published numerous articles on VDPV2 and paved the way for Gates’ nPOV2 vaccine as the solution.
Oral polio v. inactivated polio vaccines
According to the WHO, the original OPV uses a mixture of “live attenuated poliovirus strains of each of the three serotypes,” selected for their ability to mimic the immune system’s response following infection with wild polioviruses, but with a reduced chance of spreading to the central nervous system.
To achieve the desired immune response, three or more doses of OPV are required spaced out over a period of time.
The U.S. and some western countries use an inactivated (killed) polio vaccine (IPV) developed by Dr. Jonas Salk and first used in 1955.
Scientists claim the inactivated virus poses no risk of spread, although the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting system shows two reported cases of poliomyelitis reported following vaccination with IPV.
The U.S. stopped using OPV in 2000 because it caused paralytic polio.
According to NPR, countries in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia are experiencing a rise in cases of vaccine-derived polio. These countries mostly use the OPV developed by Albert Sabin and first used in 1961.
Gates’ nOPV2 vaccine is a modified version of Sabin’s existing OPV vaccine.
“The spread of vaccine-derived polio virus from OPV vaccine in multiple countries throughout Africa and Asia resulted in 1,612 cases of paralytic polio from 2017 through 2020,” Dr. Liz Mumper, pediatrician and former medical director of the Autism Research Institute told The Defender.
“Since these polio virus samples are in wastewater in a developed country, those who have access to clean water should not be at risk,” Mumper said. “However, the media is raising alarms. This is a setback for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.”
According to the CDC, three cases of paralytic polio caused by the OPV vaccine have been reported in the U.S. since the vaccine was discontinued in 2000.
The CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, shows 66 reports of polio following administration of the OPV.
WITH all eyes on the dramatic ‘return of polio’ headlines of last Wednesday and Thursday, a far more significant piece of news was slipped out. It was announced that the Government was partnering with Moderna to open a large research and manufacturing centre in Britain which ‘will develop cutting-edge mRNA vaccines for a wide range of respiratory diseases, including Covid-19 vaccines that can protect against multiple variants, helping to future-proof the UK against potential emerging health threats’.
Lucky NHS patients are to have access to the ‘next generation’ of mRNA vaccines and treatments. ‘The centre will be able to scale up production rapidly in the event of a health emergency, significantly boosting the UK’s ability to respond to future pandemics.’
This worrying press release requires careful reading. It reveals an astonishing gung-ho and uncritical approach to mRNA Covid vaccines in view of their now proven limited or even zero efficacy, and the high rate of recorded adverse events, injuries and deaths associated with them and in particular with the Moderna brand.
It does not tell us how much the Government is investing in this planned ‘mRNA Innovation and Technology Centre’ or where all the money is coming from. From the Centre for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation (CEPI), the organisation which put up the money for Moderna’s fast-tracked Covid vaccine, that the UK already pays into? Or will some of the billions Moderna has made on the back of their ‘gene therapy’ covid vaccines be invested?
Something was to be gleaned from an interview with the Health Secretary on Wednesday’s BBC Radio 4 PM programme. Evan Davis asked Sajid Javid what Moderna would get in return for their billion-pound investment. ‘Well,’ said Javid, ‘the government’s agreed to buy Moderna’s vaccines, the mRNA ones, for the next decade’. (My italics)
Why, as already touched on, would the government be making such a huge commitment to the producer of the vaccine that gets by far the highest Yellow Card adverse reaction reporting rate in the UK? (The official figures are: Pfizer – 1 in 157 people impacted, AstraZeneca – 1 in 101 people impacted, Moderna – 1 in 43 people impacted.) These represent the immediate risks recipients are exposed to but the technology is so new that there remains a complete absence of understanding of any long-term risks, and apparently no follow-up mechanism to study them.
In this interview we also learnt that it was, in Javid’s words, ‘a huge deal’, and that yes, what Moderna got out of it was a captive and secure market for pretty much whatever vaccines they choose to produce.
‘We all saw during the pandemic the power of vaccines, the difference that they can make. And in particular, with this new technology called mRNA, this platform, we saw how it has literally saved millions of lives during the pandemic. And this technology is transformational. And under this deal, what will be happening is that Moderna will be opening both a global R&D centre here in the UK, carrying out lots of the clinical trials. But also they’ll be building a manufacturing facility here in the UK for vaccines, that will be their largest outside of the United States. So it’s over a . . . well over a billion pounds of investment. It’s a huge vote of confidence in our life sciences industry. But how it matters most of all to me as the Health Secretary is that it will mean that we in the UK, NHS patients, will have guaranteed access to future vaccines and treatments from this exciting mRNA platform. And what that means, it’s more than just Covid or flu, it means that the future sort of health needs in terms of cancer and dementia, cardiovascular disease, you know, these are all things that hold huge potential from this investment’.
When Davis pressed: ‘I’m interested in what they get out of it, because you say obviously our regulators would have to approve any vaccine that we buy from them . . . but we have guaranteed purchases, haven’t we?’ Javid agreed: ‘Yeah, let me explain that. So what we will do is we’ll sign a contract with them which will say, basically, that if you create drugs that our regulator approves and that we actually want for our health system, then we will buy those drugs. And in return what we get in the UK is, is this huge investment and guaranteed access.’
His economic sense appeared to have gone quite astray at this point. What favour Moderna would be doing us if they are to be provided with a promised captive market? Of course we will have ‘guaranteed access’! And why the UK when Europe represents a much bigger market and we no longer have access to the EU single market?
Unfortunately Davis did not ask to whom the £395 million government investment mentioned in the press release ‘to secure and scale up the UK’s vaccine manufacturing capabilities’ has gone to or goes to. To Moderna?
Looking at the updates to Moderna’s confidentiality agreements released to Axios, they appear to be trying to diversify into the existing market for childhood vaccines and are gearing up to roll out mRNA vaccines for measles and mumps and perhaps now polio and other viruses.
The very real fear is that the MHRA will follow the US Food and Drug Administration’s approach of rapid rubberstamping for new products deemed to be ‘biosimilar’ to existing products authorised on that ‘platform’. Thus minimal testing will be required, the products will get MHRA approval more easily than traditional vaccines, and our children risk being guinea pigs again. The regulatory safeguards for these products that industry sees as ‘red tape’ have been built up over decades to protect users but are now being set aside. Additionally US pharmaceutical companies have absolute protection under US law for liability for defectively designed children’s vaccines. Will the UK now give them the same indemnities?
Mr Johnson’s and Mr Javid’s shared enthusiasm for this novel technology is in direct conflict with the precautionary principle. Either they have not caught up with or are in denial about the extent of the health issues surrounding mRNA vaccination.
If Johnson’s and Javid’s naivete can be excused, Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, must know better. Yet here he is in the press release cheering on the project: ‘The establishment of the Moderna mRNA Innovation and Technology Centre is great news for the UK’s research and development activities and future capabilities. Rapid cutting-edge vaccines were vital in the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Developing the next generation of mRNA vaccines will be crucial in boosting our ability to prevent and respond to a wide range of diseases in the future.’
Not so fast, Sir Patrick and Mr Javid. This is not what the latest mRNA vaccine research evidence suggests at all. A study which summarises the current literature on mRNA and its effects published this month concludes that ‘the many alterations in the vaccine mRNA hide the mRNA from cellular defences and promote a longer biological half-life and high production of spike protein’ causing innate immune suppression. The research paper presents evidence that vaccination induces a profound impairment in type I interferon signalling, which has diverse adverse consequences to human health and says: ‘We believe a comprehensive risk/benefit assessment of the mRNA vaccines questions them as positive contributors to public health.’
The cynic might say that what the next generation of mRNA vaccines will be crucial in is weakening our natural immunity, compromising our ability to combat disease ourselves while subjecting us and the next generation of children with reckless indifference to unknown health risks.
Moscow settled interest payments in rubles, after sanctions blocked it from foreign currency transactions
Samizdat | June 27, 2022
As the grace periods on two Russian eurobond coupons expired on Sunday night, multiple Western media outlets rushed to announce that Moscow was now in a state of default on its foreign currency-denominated debt for the first time in over a century.
Bloomberg called it a “a grim marker in the country’s rapid transformation into an economic, financial and political outcast,” while the BBC called it a “major blow to the nation’s prestige.”
The Wall Street Journal even invoked a spectre of the “Bolshevik Revolution when Vladimir Lenin, the newly installed communist leader, repudiated the debt of the Russian Empire.”
The bond holders themselves have yet to declare a default or start any proceedings, and the publications admitted that the label is “mostly symbolic for now” while the situation is “expected to pose unique legal challenges,” because “Russia has the money and intent to pay.”
Moscow repeatedly accused Washington of trying to engineer an artificial default in recent months, as the country has enough funds and willingness to pay its debts – but was intentionally cut off from foreign currency payment mechanisms. After the Russian central bank’s foreign reserves were frozen, Moscow continued to service its sovereign debt with new cash it receives from energy and other exports, so last month Washington ended a bond payments waiver.
Russia’s Finance Ministry announced on Thursday that it settled two issues of dollar-denominated Eurobonds maturing in 2027 and 2047 “in full” by sending 12.51 billion rubles ($234.5 million) in coupon payments to the National Settlement Depository, under a new mechanism.
Investors will now need to open a ruble account to receive the funds, and deal with any Western sanctions that might prevent them from moving the money out of Russia by themselves, the ministry explained. “Thus, obligations on servicing the state securities of the Russian Federation were fulfilled by the Finance Ministry in full,” the statement said.
President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on this temporary procedure for Eurobond payments on Wednesday. The document states that Moscow will now consider its obligations completed “if they are fulfilled in rubles in an amount equivalent to the value of obligations in foreign currency” at the exchange rate on the day the funds are transferred to the central depository (NSD), through which they will be paid to creditors.
ACCORDING TO the Cambridge Dictionary, a sanction is ‘a strong action taken in order to make people obey a law or rule, or a punishment given when they do not obey’. The purpose is pretty obvious, to try to deter an action that is not deemed by the sanctioner as acceptable.
A child thus may be sanctioned for poor behaviour with no sweets for a week. A country is equally sanctioned in some way deemed to harm the errant country and not those giving the sanction. Russia has been sanctioned by primarily the US, UK and EU in an unprecedented fashion due to the war in Ukraine. But who is it hurting?
This article is not about the morality of the situation in Ukraine. It is simply about whether the sanctions have been effective, or have they actually been counter-productive? At the most basic level, has applying sanctions made it more, or less likely, that UK policy goals will be achieved?
A third of a year into war, the only conclusion one can sanely draw so far is that the West’s sanctions have been an unmitigated disaster in self-harm undermining domestic prosperity while causing serious inflationary and monetary dislocation.
There is very little evidence that Western sanctions have materially harmed Russia’s ability to prosecute war or (as much as we can judge) diminish Russian domestic support for it. Far from Government’s expectations that it would cripple the Russian economy and perhaps lead to regime change, if anything it is Western economies that are in desperate trouble. It seems that US, UK and EU sanctions are proving to be a lose-lose trade.
A simple test – what currency traders would say
We were told sanctions were going to cripple the Russian economy and stop its war machine. For around two weeks, judging by the currency market’s reaction to a then collapsing rouble, that superficially seemed right.
Initially the rouble halved from a pre-war 75 to the USD to a low of 140 as the West confiscated over $300billion of Russia’s sovereign assets held in the West. This, coupled with a wholesale withdrawal of Western companies, from BP to McDonald’s, and a tightening of oil and gas sanctions, resulted in currency collapse.
Such a collapse, if prolonged, would have been very dangerous for Russia’s stability as it simply destroys its terms of trade, potentially resulting in material inflation as the cost of importing goods rises significantly.
But Western policy makers did not think through the second derivative which is coming back to bite. Economically Russia to an extent is the polar opposite of the West.
The West undoubtedly has significant technological and soft power advantage over Russia. However, most Western economies have growing and inefficient public sectors and weak central banking systems impeded by the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and particularly lockdowns, with substantial growing public debt and debased monetary systems through a new-found belief in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) – accompanied by all the associated Quantitative Easing over the last decade. Britain and the US also run substantial trade deficits.
Russia, on the other hand, is a commodity- and primary products-led export economy running a substantial trade surplus, with weak technology and service sector exports and soft power. Its public finances are very strong with low public debt, low taxes (14 per cent flat rate income tax) and substantial cash reserves even after half were sanctioned.
This asymmetry of strategic advantage between Russia and the West has profound implications if sanctions are applied. Thus quite quickly currency traders realised what extraordinarily almost none of our current crop of virtue signalling politicians dare to say – that the sanctions were potentially more of a threat to the West (UK and EU in particular) as the impact of ‘cancelling’ Russian carbon was highly inflationary.
There are no cheap short or medium term substitutes. Much of the West is dependent on Russian primary products, while only some Russians might be upset the Prada store in Moscow had closed (but the back door from China remained wide open). An inconvenience, sure; a game changer, probably not.
Thus the rouble strengthened materially and at the time of writing is 55 to the USD, almost 30 per cent stronger than before the conflict in Ukraine. If one compares the sterling- rouble exchange rate, sterling’s underperformance is even starker.
It is quite simple. Cancel Russian oil (13 per cent global production) and India joyfully buys the discarded stock at a discount while the global price goes up as the West scrambles to find new supply. Worse, cancel Russian gas and the EU has a major crisis, as does the UK given the UK’s foolish decade-plus de-emphasising of carbon, including the closure of strategic gas storage facilities. The list goes on well beyond carbon – from titanium to fertiliser, from wheat to cod.
But it is oil and gas that are so critical as power is essential to the manufacture, to a greater or lesser extent, of most things. The irony is that as well as Saudi, Iran and Venezuela, the greatest beneficiary of soaring hydrocarbon prices is Russia. Putin’s Russia has run consistent trade surpluses but the current surplus is a record, as a direct result of sanctions, taking the spot price of oil from a pre-war $80 a barrel to $120 today.
While the rouble strengthens and the Russian trade surplus expands, the effect on Western economies has been devastating. In fairness the West had been severely undermining its own advantage for many years prior to the invasion of Ukraine, fuelled by Governmental policies based on a double fallacy: that monetary policy could solve all ills, and that centralised decision-making and excessive public spending could solve all ills.
Both fallacies are now coming with a substantial price, but to multiply that with an ill-thought-out sanctions regime that is achieving none of its underlying goals and is harming Western economies is frankly hard to fathom.
The West, particularly the EU and UK, is now in a pickle. This pickle has the potential to be calamitous as Governments remain in denial at the scale of the challenge they are facing.
We are in a situation where the inflationary surge, given supply chains, is in its embryo stage, not close to its conclusion. Sure, the price rise at the pumps is immediate, but domestic energy prices are set to increase by a further 40 per cent in September when the price cap comes off. As a warning, German producer price inflation (see chart below) is over 30 per cent, a rate not seen since post-war ruination in 1946.
I sincerely hope I am wrong but this has the potential to get very nasty. Rishi Sunak said on Wednesday: ‘We are using all the tools at our disposal to bring inflation down and combat rising prices. We can build a stronger economy through independent monetary policy, responsible fiscal policy which doesn’t add to inflationary pressures, and by boosting our long-term productivity and growth.’ That says to me he hasn’t a clue about the scale of the challenge or indeed the underlying causes.
The reality is unfortunately that both the Bank of England and the ECB are so far behind the curve as to make you weep. Interest rates of 1.25 per cent when RPI is 11 per cent are so far off-kilter while the ECB, with arguably an even greater inflation headache given German industrial reliance on Russian gas, is only now coming off negative rates.
Moreover, expanding a wantonly inefficient public sector to around half the entire economy coupled with an unprecedented regulatory stranglehold can only spell a productivity disaster. It is throwing money at the bad, paid for by the good.
Where this will end remains uncertain, so many unknowns are there. What we can predict is that this is the beginning not the end of the maelstrom. Governments do not like short-term pain as elections approach and we risk yet another debt-funded stimulus papering over the ever-wider cracks. How credible would that really be when inflation is 11 per cent? Would they dare print money again in such circumstance? I fear they would.
This country and indeed Europe generally is enduring enormous self-harm. Sanctions have backfired but the cocktail of sanctions, massive public sector expansion, delusional monetary policy and delusional energy policy risk an economic disaster of immense proportion.
There is no easy fix but unless we wish to become a northern version of Argentina, with a debased currency, constant crisis and missed opportunity, we need to understand the scale and multiple layers of our challenge.
It’s too late to avoid prolonged and meaningful inflation, and in time recession, but it’s not too late to start to rectify policy error. I can’t see the current crop of politicians analysing forensically the impact of sanctions but a great start would be to toss away the gateway drug to our delusions, the strange idea that Modern Monetary Theory works and governments can print and spend their way out of a crisis. Frankly they can’t and with that acceptance perhaps we can start the process of an appropriately balanced economy focused on private activity, not state direction. Government got us in this mess, only the people can free us from it.
Why was there no democracy in Hong Kong under British colonial rule? And why democracy can be developed in an orderly manner in Hong Kong only on the premise of firmly implementing the policy of “One Country, Two Systems” and the Basic Law of the HKSAR. Einar Tangen, our current affairs commentator, tells more.
According to a recent study by the World Bank, published in the journal Nature, lockdowns and the response to Covid-19 have pushed an additional 75 million people into extreme poverty, living on less than US $1.90 a day.
In the typical Walter Duranty style that’s become a kind of twisted journalistic norm since March 2020, the World Bank and Nature of course blame this on “the pandemic” rather than lockdowns. I remain baffled as to how seemingly well-meaning people are able to sleep at night repeating such nonsense—are they somehow blind to the role of their own sycophancy in perpetuating these policies?
Nonetheless, there are signs that the political mainstream is starting to realize lockdowns were a disaster. Today, the Wall Street Journal published an excellent piece titled The Revenge of the Locked-Down Voters, noting the growing political backlash against lockdown politicians from voters at the lower end of the income scale.
This comes shortly after the New York Timesquietly acknowledged a study showing that Covid lockdowns and mandates led to over 170,000 excess deaths among young Americans.
And, as in America, this comes shortly after the London Times, the UK’s centre-left newspaper of record, published a cautiously-introspective piece on its support for lockdowns.
These are promising indications that the political mainstream, especially on the right, is coming around to the fact that lockdowns were a policy catastrophe more quickly than some might have worried.
Still, there’s much more to be done. Currently, the mainstream left and right are starting to realize lockdowns were a big mistake, while many career bureaucrats are still stuck pretending lockdowns were the greatest medical breakthrough since penicillin. There really needs to be a bipartisan consensus that lockdowns were an unprecedented policy catastrophe before we can start to see justice and have undue foreign and financial influence taken seriously.
In recent weeks, I have received a number of complimentary emails from readers of my essays who took note of what they consider my even-handed approach to the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian military conflict which is at variance with the fired-up Russophile and Russophobe positions that we find daily in alternative and mainstream media respectively. Some have gone on to say that they have profited from my reporting on the content and changing views aired on Russian political talk shows these past few months, all of which is rarely featured in mainstream Western news and analysis. My intent in such reporting was to ensure that at least some people here understand what Ukraine and its Western backers are up against, so as to better understand the course of the fighting on the ground and who may be winning.
In this context, I announce with sadness that the job of even-handed reporting has just become much more difficult as a result of Eutelsat’s implementation yesterday of a policy decision announced just over a month ago, but which went unnoticed by most everyone, myself included.
I quote from Google Search:
“Eutelsat to remove banned Russian channels. Eutelsat ready to immediately stop the rebroadcasting of the Russian channels RTR Planeta and Rossiya 24 on its satellites on June 25. 13 May 2022”
Indeed, the main state news channels of the Russian Federation can now no longer be received via satellite antennas here in Belgium or elsewhere on the Continent. They are partially and sporadically accessible on the internet via www.smotrim.ru but the level of interference from Western censors makes such viewing a dismal exercise. “Freezing” of frames seems to be most common with respect to the talk shows “Sixty Minutes” and “Evening with Solovyov,” two programs which I had been following and reporting on most regularly. However, it also is applied against Russian shows which might be characterized as being simply entertainment, such as the currently running historical serial about the life and times of the 18th century tsarina Elizabeth. I dare anyone to get more than a minute or two into the broadcast before the curtain comes down, so to speak.
The curtain in question is an updated Iron Curtain, which this time has been dropped on our heads by the powers that be in Washington. After all, it is Washington that pressured the French controlled Eutelsat rebroadcaster of television channels that dominates the European and other global markets to throw out the Russians.
The argument behind that demand was to exclude “Russian propaganda” from the airwaves.
In the spirit of fairmindedness with which I opened this essay, I agree that Russian state television is practicing propagandistic methods insofar as it withholds certain information from viewers while promoting other information favorable to its paymasters. For example, on Russian state television news you will not find a word about the civilian casualties and damage to residential buildings of Russian artillery and rocket attacks on Kharkov. You are shown only the civilian casualties and damage to residential buildings in Donetsk and towns of the Donbas caused by Ukrainian artillery and rocket strikes.
On the other hand, however, European and U.S. newscasts feature the damage caused by Russian strikes on Ukrainian towns while saying not a word about the sufferings of the Donbas population from military assaults by Ukrainian forces. Just as they have been entirely silent about such suffering and death among the Donbas population that Kiev has inflicted on them for the past eight years, since the outbreak of the civil war in 2014.
Each side in the Ukrainian conflict accuses the other side of using cluster bombs and other internationally prohibited weapons against civilian populations. These accusations are put on air by Russian and Western news programs only as they are set out by their favored respective side.
My point is very simple: by silencing the so-called Russian propagandists, Western propagandists have the field to themselves here in Belgium, in the broader European Union and in North America. The possibilities for the public to form an independent view of what is going on are choked off, and with that there is no basis for informed policy discussion in the expert community. As The Washington Post so nicely puts it: democracy dies in darkness.
And what about the Russian side? Are they also cut off and ignorant as my remarks on coverage of casualties above might suggest? I commented on this question in my travel report on my six week stay in Petersburg that began in May: Western news channels have been removed from the cable television distributors in the city. For this I blame not Russian government prohibitions but the commercial decisions of Western content providers who terminated their contracts with Russian distributors just as did the Hollywood studios. Meanwhile, Western stations remain accessible on the internet without interference and they remain accessible on satellite television.
At my dacha, I had no difficulty receiving the BBC and Bloomberg for free courtesy of my parabolic antenna. How long this will be the case given the tit-for-tat nature of the relationship between the West and Russia generally I cannot say. But if someone does pull the plug on Western ‘propaganda’ in Russia, it will be in response to the West’s dropping the Iron Curtain on Russia, not the other way around.
It is sad that Western leaders are destroying with their own hands the underpinnings of democracy at home through this censorship. The only likely result will be total shock and surprise throughout the Western world when the Russians complete their liberation of Donbas, take the Ukrainian Black Sea coast including Odessa and declare victory over what will by then be an utterly destroyed Ukrainian army.
In the meantime, under greatly constrained conditions, I will try my best to follow the Russian side of the story on talk shows, on news reports of Russian war correspondents embedded with their forces on the front lines, and to share with readers what appears to be afoot on the other side of the barricades.
The West needs to keep arming Ukraine instead of seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Kiev and Moscow, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told French President Emmanuel Macron, according to Downing Street. Any attempt to resolve the conflict peacefully will lead to global instability, he said at a meeting on the sidelines of the G7 Summit on Sunday.
The military action in Ukraine is at a “critical moment,” the two leaders agreed, but there is still “an opportunity to turn the tide.” According to the statement, Johnson and Macron have agreed to continue supporting Kiev militarily to “strengthen their hand in both the war and any future negotiations.”
The prime minister also cautioned the French leader against seeking alternatives to resolving the conflict.
The Prime Minister stressed any attempt to settle the conflict now will only cause enduring instability and give Putin licence to manipulate both sovereign countries and international markets in perpetuity.
Johnson took a similar stance at a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday. “Ukraine is on a knife-edge and we need to tip the balance of the war in their favor. That means providing Ukraine with the defensive capabilities, training and intelligence they need to repel the Russian advance,” a statement from Downing Street read.
On Sunday, Johnson tweeted that Ukraine’s “security is our security, and their freedom is our freedom.”
Ahead of the summit, London pledged an additional £429 million ($525 million) in guarantees for World Bank loans in 2022 as a form of financial assistance to Kiev. According to Downing Street, the UK’s total financial support for Ukraine, including loan guarantees, amounted to £1.3 billion ($1.5 billion) and the combined UK economic and humanitarian support for Ukraine amounted to £1.5 billion ($1.8 billion) this year.
Johnson has been one of Kiev’s most ardent supporters after Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began in late February. He has visited Kiev twice since then and repeatedly called on Western nations to provide more weapons. The UK is one of Kiev’s major arms suppliers, including heavy weaponry.
In June, Johnson warned that the West must brace for a long war between Kiev and Moscow. On Saturday, he said he would consider resigning if he has to abandon Ukraine at some point.
The Allies suffered over 100,000 casualties during pointless fighting in Africa when they could have invaded Sicily. Some believe the US Army lacked the experience to fight a major war and fighting confused Frenchmen in Africa provided that. However, most of the American generals, colonels and senior sergeants had fought in World War I. There were no German ground combat troops in Sicily in late 1942 and not many Italian. The best Italian units and equipment were dedicated to fighting the British in Egypt and there were little preparations to defend Sicily, which only had five second-rate infantry divisions with dispersed units providing security at key points. A November 1942 invasion of Sicily would have been bloody, but losses would be far less than the 100,000 casualties suffered fighting in Africa plus the 25,000 lost invading Sicily in July 1943 after it had been fortified.
“Major Convoy Operation to Malta, 10-15 August 1942 (Operation Pedestal)”; Milan Vego; Naval War College Review; 2010; https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi…
By Daniel Ken | TCW Defending Freedom | May 20, 2023
Over more than two decades in the classroom I’ve taught thousands of children and teenagers: some were lovely and lots were hard-working. On the other hand, quite a number were disruptive and argumentative, and a number were violently opposed to learning. But I don’t think I’ve taught more than a handful of kids who could be properly described as having the symptoms of ADHD. And that handful could just as easily have had something else wrong with them. Because here’s the thing: despite the fact that the best part of a million children are medicated for the condition, ADHD doesn’t exist.
There’s no definitive medical test for it, experts can’t agree on what it actually means, and most of the symptoms disappear if the child in question has lots of exercise, good diet and, crucially, a set of clear behavioural boundaries, preferably set early in childhood and, for the boys at least, enforced by a stable adult male living at home. … continue
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Speaking to journalists in Turkmenistan on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to questions about several recent remarks from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. During the latest G7 summit, the UK leader joked that his allies should take their clothes off for the photoshoot – to show that they are “tougher than Putin.”
Aletho News 