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Palestine welcomes UN resolution confirming its sovereignty over its resources

MEMO | December 15, 2022

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) welcomed the adoption of a resolution by the UN General Assembly regarding the rights of Palestinians over their natural resources.

In a statement the Secretary of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Hussein Al-Sheikh, said: “We welcome the UN resolution in the General Assembly on the rights of the Palestinians to the natural resources in their homeland.”

“This UN resolution is an addition to hundreds of resolutions that affirm the Palestinian right and the illegality of the occupation and its aggressive and racist measures and practices.”

The official Palestinian News Agency, Wafa, said that the UN General Assembly “adopted a resolution tonight by an overwhelming majority regarding the permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people over their natural resources.”

The agency noted that “159 countries voted in favour of the resolution, 10 countries abstained from voting, while 8 countries opposed it.”

December 15, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

War on Global Agriculture: The Unsustainable ‘Sustainable’ UN Agenda 2030

By F. William Engdahl | Global Research | December 1, 2022

Over the past weeks a coordinated all-out assault on our agriculture—the ability to produce food for human existence—has begun. The recent G20 governmental meeting in Bali, the UN Agenda 2030 Cop27 meeting in Egypt, the Davos World Economic Forum and Bill Gates are all complicit. Typically, they are using dystopian linguistic framing to give the illusion they are up to good when they are actually advancing an agenda that will lead to famine and death for hundreds of millions if not billions if allowed to proceed. It’s driven by a coalition of money.

From G20 to Cop27 to WEF

On November 13 the G20–representatives of the 20 most influential nations including the USA, the UK, the European Union (though it’s no nation), Germany, Italy, France, Japan, South Korea, and several developing countries including China, India, Indonesia and Brazil,– agreed on a final declaration.

The first major item is a “call for an accelerated transformation towards sustainable and resilient agriculture and food systems and supply chains.”

Further, “working together to sustainably produce and distribute food, ensure that food systems better contribute to adaptation and mitigation to climate change, and halting and reversing biodiversity loss, diversify food sources…”

In addition they called for “inclusive, predictable, and non-discriminatory, rules-based agricultural trade based on WTO rules.”

As well, “We are committed to supporting the adoption of innovative practices and technologies, including digital innovation in agriculture and food systems to enhance productivity and sustainability in harmony with nature…”

Then comes the revealing statement: “We reiterate our commitment to achieve global net zero greenhouse gas emissions/carbon neutrality by or around mid-century.” [i](emphasis mine)

“Sustainable agriculture” with “net zero greenhouse gas emissions” is Orwellian doublespeak. For an outsider to UN linguistics, the words sound too good. What in fact is being promoted is the most radical destruction of farming and agriculture globally under the name “sustainable agriculture.”

Following the Bali G20 confab by only days was the United Nations’ COP27 annual Green Agenda Climate Summit meeting in Egypt. There, the participants from most UN countries along with NGOs such as Greenpeace and hundreds of other green NGOs drafted a second call. COP27 launched something they revealingly call FAST– UN’s new Food and Agriculture for Sustainable Transformation (FAST) initiative. Fast, as in “to abstain from food…”

According to Forbes, FAST will promote a “shift towards sustainable, climate-resilient, healthy diets, would help reduce health and climate change costs by up to US$ 1.3 trillion while supporting food security in the face of climate change.” We are talking big numbers. $1.3 trillion by transition to “sustainable, climate-resilient, healthy diets” that would reduce cost of climate change by $1.3 trillion. [ii]  What’s really going on behind all these words?

Big Money Behind

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization speaking to Reuters during COP27, within a year the FAO will launch a “gold standard” blueprint for reduction of so-called Greenhouse gases from agriculture.

The impulse for this war on agriculture comes not surprisingly from big money, FAIRR Initiative, a UK-based coalition of international investment managers which focuses on “material ESG risks and opportunities caused by intensive livestock production.”

Their members include the most influential players in global finance including  BlackRock, JP Morgan Asset Management, Allianz AG of Germany, Swiss Re, HSBC Bank, Fidelity Investments, Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management, Credit Suisse, Rockefeller Asset Management, UBS Bank and numerous other banks and pension funds with total assets under management of $25 trillion.[iii] They are now opening the war on agriculture much as they have on energy. The UN FAO Deputy Director for Climate Change policies,  Zitouni Ould-Dada said during the COP27 that, “There has never been this much attention to food and agriculture anytime before. This COP is definitely the one.” [iv]

The FAIRR claims, without proof,  that:

“food production accounts for around a third of global greenhouse gas emissions and is the main threat to 86% of the world’s species at risk of extinction, while cattle ranching is responsible for three quarters of Amazon rainforest loss.” [v]

The FAO plans to propose drastic reduction in global livestock production, especially cattle, which FAIRR claims is responsible for:

“nearly a third of the global methane emissions linked to human activity, released in the form of cattle burps, manure and the cultivation of feed crops.”

For them, the best way to stop cow burps and cow manure is to eliminate cattle. [vi]

Unsustainable Sustainable Agriculture

The fact that the UN FAO is about to release a roadmap to drastically reduce so-called greenhouse gases from global agriculture, under the false claim of “sustainable agriculture”  that is being driven by the world’s largest wealth managers including BlackRock, JP Morgan, AXA and such, tells volumes about the true agenda. These are some of the most corrupt financial institutions on the planet. They never put a penny where they are not guaranteed huge profits. The  war on farming is their next target.

The term “sustainable” was created by David Rockefeller’s Malthusian Club of Rome. In their 1974 report, Mankind at the Turning Point, The Club of Rome argued:

“Nations cannot be interdependent without each of them giving up some of, or at least acknowledging limits to, its own independence. Now is the time to draw up a master plan for organic sustainable growth and world development based on global allocation of all finite resources and a new global economic system. [vii](emphasis mine)

That was the early formulation of the UN Agenda 21, Agenda2030 and the 2020 Davos Great Reset. In 2015 UN member nations adopted what is called the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs: 17 Goals to Transform our World​. Goal 2 is “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.”

But if we read in detail into proposals of COP27, G20 and Davos WEF of Klaus Schwab we find what is meant by these nice sounding words.  Now we are being inundated with claims, unverified, by numerous government and privately-funded think tank models that our agriculture systems are a major cause of, yes, global warming. Not only CO2 but methane and nitrogen. Yet the entire global greenhouse gas argument that our planet is on the brink of irreversible disaster if we do not radically change our emissions by 2030 is unverifiable nonsense from opaque computer models. Based on these models the UN IPCC insists that if we do not stop a global temperature rise of 1.5 C above the level of 1850, by 2050 the world will essentially end.

The War Is Just Beginning

The UN and Davos WEF teamed up in 2019 to jointly advance the SDG UN Agenda 2030. On the WEF website this is openly admitted to mean getting rid of meat protein sources, introducing promoting unproven fake meat, advocating alternative protein such as salted ants or ground crickets or worms to replace chicken or beef or lamb. At COP27, discussion was about “diets that can remain within planetary boundaries, including lowering meat consumption, developing alternatives, and spurring the shift towards more native plants, crops and grains (thus reducing the current reliance on wheat, maize, rice, potatoes).” [viii]

The WEF is promoting a shift from meat protein diets to vegan arguing it would be more “sustainable”. [ix] They also promote lab-grown or plant-based lab meat alternatives such as the Bill Gates-funded Impossible Burgers, whose own FDA tests indicate it is a likely carcinogen as it is produced with GMO soy and other products saturated with glyphosate. The CEO of Air Protein, another fake meat company, Lisa Lyons, is a special WEF adviser. WEF also promotes insect protein alternatives to meat. Note also Al Gore is a Trustee of WEF. [x]

The war on animal raising for meat is just getting deadly serious. The government of the Netherlands whose Prime Minister Mark Rutte, formerly of Unilever, is a WEF Agenda Contributor, has created a special Minister for the Environment and Nitrogen, Christianne van der Wal. Using a never-invoked and outdated EU Natura 2000 nature protection guidelines designed allegedly to “protect moss and clover,” and based on fraudulent test data, the Government just announced it will forcibly close 2,500 cattle farms across Holland. Their goal is to force fully 30% of cattle farms to close or face expropriation.

In Germany the German Meat Industry Association (VDF), says that within the next four to six months Germany will face a meat shortage, and prices will skyrocket. Hubert Kelliger, a VDF board member said, “In four, five, six months we will have gaps on the shelves.” Pork is expected to experience the worst shortages. The issues in meat supply are due to Berlin insisting on reducing the numbers of livestock by 50% to reduce global warming emissions. [xi] In Canada, the Trudeau government, another Davos WEF product, according to the Financial Post of July 27, plans to cut emissions from fertilizer 30 per cent by 2030 as part of a plan to get to net zero in the next three decades. But growers are saying that to achieve that, they may have to shrink grain output significantly.

When the autocratic President of Sri Lanka banned all import of nitrogen fertilizers in April 2021 in a brutal effort to return to a past of “sustainable” agriculture, harvests collapsed in seven months and famine and farmer ruin and mass protests forced him to flee the country. He ordered that the entire country would immediately switch to organic farming but provided farmers with no such training.

Combine all this with the catastrophic EU political decision to ban Russian natural gas used to make nitrogen-based fertilizers, forcing shutdowns of fertilizer plants across the EU, that will cause a global reduction in crop yields, and as well the fake Bird Flu wave that is falsely ordering farmers across North America and the EU to kill off tens of millions of chickens and turkeys to cite just a few more cases, and it becomes clear that our world faces a food crisis that is unprecedented. All for climate change?

*

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

[i] G20 Bali Leaders’ Declaration,  Bali, Indonesia, 15-16 November 2022, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/60201/2022-11-16-g20-declaration-data.pdf

[ii] Kit Knightly, COP27 reignites the war on food, https://www.theburningplatform.com/2022/11/13/lab-grown-meat-nuclear-yeast-vats-cop27-reignites-the-war-on-food/

[iii] https://www.fairr.org/about-fairr/network-members/page/14

[iv]  Sarah El Safty, Simon Jessop,  COP27: UN food agency plan on farming emissions to launch by next year after investor push, November 10, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/cop27-un-food-agency-plan-farming-emissions-launch-by-next-year-after-investor-2022-11-10/

[v] FAIRR Initiative, Where’s The Beef, https://www.fairr.org/wheres-the-beef/

[vi] Simon Jessop,  Gloria Dickie,  Global investors write to U N to urge global plan on farming emissions, June 9, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/exclusive-global-investors-write-un-urge-global-plan-farming-emissions-2022-06-08/

[vii] Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point, 1974, https://web.archive.org/web/20080316192242/http:/www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=154

[viii] THE SHARM EL SHEIKH CLIMATE IMPLEMENTATION SUMMIT, cop27.eg 1, Round table on “Food Security” 7th November 2022,  https://cop27.eg/assets/files/days/COP27%20FOOD%20SECURITY-DOC-01-EGY-10-22-EN.pdf

[ix] Vegan, vegetarian or flexitarian? 3 ways to eat more sustainably, October 28, 2022, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/10/vegan-plant-based-diets-sustainable-food/

[x] WEF, Have we reached the end of meat?, https://www.weforum.org/podcasts/house-on-fire/episodes/have-we-reached-the-end-of-meat

[xi] J. Shaw,  Germany cutting back meat production to fight global warming, November 21, 2022, https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2022/11/21/germany-cutting-back-meat-production-to-fight-global-warming-n512518

Copyright © F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 2022

December 4, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Agenda of the COP27 Climate Change Conference in Egypt

By Mateo Requesens | The Postil | December 1, 2022 

The EU is pursuing one of the most radical climate change policies of the major CO2 emitters, having committed itself to reducing its net greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels, and to eliminating such emission by 2050. To achieve this, the EU, unlike China, India or Russia, is willing to sacrifice its economy, its industry and its middle classes to advance climate ideology. Reaching zero emissions by 2050 would require a decrease of 1.4 GtCO2 each year, comparable to the fall observed in 2020 emissions because of COVID-19, to achieve which would imply no more and no less than the paralysis of all Western economies.

At this COP27 climate summit, the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, once again resorted to his usual apocalyptic discourse to say that “we are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” With the gall of the best trickster at the carnival, Guterres said that “to avoid that terrible fate, all G-20 countries must accelerate their transition now, in this decade.” The same time span, a decade, in which the apostles of the climate religion went from talking about a new Ice Age to a dangerous warming of the planet, between the 1970s and 1980s.

Unmoved by the serious energy emergency we are experiencing, those attending COP27 did not spend a minute reflecting on the need for abundant and cheap energy to maintain the welfare states in developed countries and to promote economic progress in developing countries. Renewable energies today are neither the cheapest nor do they produce enough to supply the demand of homes and industry. What is urgent today is not to save the planet from a climate change whose origins and consequences are unknown. What is really urgent is to solve general inflation and, in particular, food and energy price rises to avoid a global recession.

Regardless, COP27 went ahead with what is undoubtedly the biggest scam in the history of mankind, declaring an emergency for something that is hardly changing our way of life, nor does it really affect our immediate future. The farce of the climate conference in Egypt has given birth to a pact to create a “loss and damage” fund, to repair the worst effects of extreme weather on the most vulnerable nations, spreading the deception that hurricanes, floods and other catastrophes that have always been recurrent throughout history are the result of man-made climate change.

To refute this fallacy that they make us swallow like fools, remember that the year 2021 was the year with the lowest number of hurricanes worldwide since 1980. However, the stupidity that these catastrophes are the planet’s response to our aggressions against the environment continues to circulate. It doesn’t matter that the prophecies of the climate religion have been unfulfilled for 30 years.

The needs and well-being of Europeans do not matter; they are not a priority, as announced by the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak: “As there are other priorities, we think that the climate can wait, but it can’t. The climate emergency is already here. The climate urgency is already here. We don’t have to wait for tomorrow.” We Europeans are guilty. That’s why we must pay the poorest countries for the damage caused by weather phenomena that climate change caused that is turned caused by our industries. Macron has already said that “we have to stand up and support the poorest countries with 100 billion dollars to fight against the climate crisis.”

The green policies promoted by the globalist elites through indirect carbon taxes and subsidies to things “eco,” to renewable energies and other ecological prohibitions and obstacles, are becoming another way of plundering the wealth of the Western middle classes. But if the climate change business has reached huge proportions in the developed world at the expense of consumers, in the third world it condemns thousands of people to remain in poverty and live a miserable life. When the IMF refuses to provide funds for coal-fired power plants in Africa or forbids the use of synthetic fertilizers in Sri Lanka, the poorest lose access to cheap energy and affordable food production.

After the pandemic, we have seen how science is easily manipulated and its empirical objectivity is easily corrupted to benefit the political and economic elites. When a hypothesis is elaborated by a group of researchers that can serve the purposes of these elites, the doors are opened to the financing of more studies in that direction, more publications, more papers in congresses, and in the end a semblance of scientific consensus. It is more profitable for any university department to focus its studies on the influence of climate change in a given area, than to explore other alternatives. If there is also the backing of supranational organizations and governments, the pressure becomes irresistible. Naturally, the mass media takes it upon itself to reaffirm the official doctrine and ostracize its detractors, while sowing alarm among the population.

The climate-belief apologists serve a more ambitious social engineering strategy, which aims to destroy the social, economic and political model in which we live, in order to replace it with the objectives that, under the label of Agenda 2030, are pursued by the globalist elites. They have given birth to hysterical teenagers like Greta Thunberg, who are followed as a model by brainless ecological activists, such as those who have dedicated themselves in recent weeks to attacking works of art in museums. But above all, they serve the goal of destroying the West as it had been configured up until the end of the Cold War.

The sovereignty of nations has already been considerably reduced with the prominence of supranational organizations and the phenomenon of globalization, which no longer makes it possible to control national financial and economic flows in an interconnected world market. This allowed P. Bobbitt to speak of what he called the “market-State,” referring to a structure whose purpose consists exclusively in its economic functionality. But it is clear that with Agenda 2030, it is being transformed into something different, into another type of State, in which the protagonism of the national community has been replaced by the protagonism of the state bureaucracy—large corporations and globalist elites grouped around conferences, such as the one held in Egypt: the perfect breeding ground for the formation of the new world order.

Mateo Requesens is a judge in Spain. [This article appears courtesy of Posmodernia].

December 3, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Israel calls on world leaders to oppose ICJ opinion on occupation

The Cradle | November 29, 2022

On 29 November, acting Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid sent a letter to more than 50 world leaders, demanding them to oppose a Palestinian bid at the United Nations regarding an advisory position of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

“This resolution is the result of a concerted effort to single out Israel, discredit our legitimate security concerns, and delegitimize our very existence,” Lapid said in the letter.

Among the recipients were the heads of government of the United Kingdom, France, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Latvia, Georgia, Brazil, Uruguay, Peru, and Vietnam.

With a majority of 98 votes in favor and 17 against, a committee of the UN General Assembly approved a resolution on 11 November requesting the ICJ to “urgently” issue a stance on the effects of Israel’s illegal occupation and colonization of Palestinian territories, The New Arab reported.

In the coming weeks, the resolution has to be voted on for a second time by the plenary of the General Assembly.

The acting Prime Minister stated that this resolution resulted from a “biased campaign” by the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva and its Commission of Inquiry, which have repeatedly denounced human rights abuses against the Palestinians.

According to Lapid, the “status of the disputed territory must be subject to direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.”

However, Israel has illegally expanded its territory since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and built settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem for over 700,000 settlers, clearly violating international law.

On 13 November, Israeli authorities announced their plans to construct 9,000 new illegal settlement units over the ruins of Palestine’s Jerusalem International Airport.

The settlement plan was initially submitted for discussion last year by the Israeli-run Jerusalem Municipality but then halted due to pressure from EU member states and several rights groups; however, the plan has been revived and is under review by the municipality.

On 8 November, the ‘Elad’ settlement association in occupied East Jerusalem received roughly $7.9 million to support illegal settlements in the Palestinian town of Silwan.

November 30, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia concerned about US bio activities – Defense Ministry

RT | November 26, 2022

The US admits the “dual-use nature” of its large-scale biological research programs both at home and abroad but still plans to further expand them, the commander of Russia’s Nuclear Biological and Chemical Defense Troops, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, said during a briefing on Saturday. The general demanded broader international oversight of such programs.

“The military biological activities of the Pentagon in various regions of the world” are among the sources of risk threatening the whole international community, Kirillov warned.

The US seeks to “enhance its military biological potential,” as well as “expand its global control over the biological situation in the world,” he noted, citing the US’ own strategic documents.

The US National Biodefense Strategy, adopted in October 2022, does say that the nation “recognizes the dual-use nature of the life sciences and biotechnology” while also stating that Washington “seeks to prevent the misuse of science and technology.” It adds that biological risk management “requires… taking steps to mitigate those risks, regardless of whether they originate in the United States or abroad,” pointing to the need to “evolve” the country’s “biodefense capabilities.”

The US Defense Threat Reduction Agency – a Pentagon body mostly focused on countering threats posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – goes even further in its strategy for the years 2022-2027. It openly identifies expanding the US’ ability to “identify, characterize and exploit adversary WMD vulnerabilities” as one of its goals. Another of its aims is to recognize “potential WMD warfighting obstacles” and find “solutions” to help the US and its allies “win during the conflict.”

Washington’s stated intention of strengthening the implementation of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) has been met with doubt from Moscow. Russia has “repeatedly raised the issue of the real goal of the Pentagon’s research programs at various international sites,” Kirillov stated on Saturday, adding that these questions “remain unanswered to date.”

In late October, Russia filed an official complaint claiming that US-backed biological activities are taking place in Ukraine and requested a UN probe into the matter. The UN Security Council rejected Moscow’s proposal, with the US, UK, and France voting against it.

Kirillov’s statement was made ahead of the upcoming BWC review conference scheduled to take place in Geneva over late November and early December. Held every five years, the event is aimed at ensuring that the convention remains relevant and up-to-date amid the changes in science and technology, as well as in the global security landscape.

November 26, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Why is the UN Commissioner For Human Rights Trying to Suppress Free Speech on Twitter?

BY DR DAVID MCGROGAN | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | NOVEMBER 22, 2022

While there has been a great deal of hullabaloo concerning Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, one would probably not have expected senior officials at the United Nations to find it necessary to have their say on the matter. Yet on November 5th Volker Türk, the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, did indeed weigh-in, sending an open letter to Mr. Musk to express his “concern and apprehension” about Twitter’s role in the “digital public square”. He urged Musk to make sure human rights would be “central to the management of Twitter”, and to “address harms” associated with the platform, and also took the time for a bit of finger-wagging at Twitter’s new CEO for sacking Twitter’s human rights team (no, I had no idea it had one either).

The letter was almost certainly only sent so that Türk, who assumed office in mid-October and is a comparative unknown (some UN insiders were apparently hoping for Michelle Obama or Angela Merkel), can get a bit of recognition. But it is instructive nonetheless in giving stark expression to the awkward position which human rights advocates have found themselves adopting when it comes to one of the most salient issues of the day – the regulation of speech online and particularly the subjects of disinformation and misinformation.

This happens in the course of two short paragraphs. Starting off, Türk is keen to emphasise the importance of protecting free speech. Twitter, he notes, is being pressed by governments to take down content or use upload filters, and he urges it in clear terms to “stand up for the rights to privacy and free expression to the full [sic] extent possible under relevant laws”. So, on the one hand, he adopts a strong position against censorship, implying that speech should only be restricted online where it would cross the border into illegality.

Yet on the other hand, in the very next breath, he declares that “free speech is not a free pass” and that the “viral spread of harmful disinformation…results in real world harms”. Therefore, in his view, Twitter must take responsibility to “avoid amplifying content” that results in harms to people’s rights – whether or not, by implication, it is technically legal. Hence, for example, scepticism about the efficacy of vaccines, legally expressed, ought nonetheless to be supressed given the impact it might have on the right to health.

This can only be described as cakeism. For Türk, it is apparently desirable both to protect freedom of expression to the fullest extent possible under the law, and yet also to restrict lawful speech where it might result in ‘harms’. It is easy to see the appeal in the abstract of the idea that these positions can be reconciled, and Türk indeed concludes his letter by suggesting that “our shared human rights offer a unifying way forward”. But it is difficult to see from its content how this could be so. Does Türk believe that freedom of speech should be protected insofar as it is possible to do so? Or does he believe lawful speech should be suppressed to prevent harm? He can believe in one, but he surely cannot coherently believe in both.

The wider point is that human rights advocates like Türk have rather lost faith in their own model. For decades, it has been orthodox human rights doctrine that all human rights are, in UN-speak, “indivisible and interdependent”. The rights to freedom of expression, freedom of association, non-discrimination, health, food, housing, education, and so on, all support one another and, indeed, cannot properly be enjoyed without the others. It is therefore not only possible to secure (say) freedom of expression and the right to health – they actually bolster each other.

The rationale for this can be readily understood: if freedom of expression is secure, then people will have access to the full range of information and opinion available on any given topic, and therefore policymakers, healthcare providers, doctors and patients will be able to make better health-related decisions than they would otherwise. There is therefore a direct link between securing freedom of speech and the right to health. (And conversely, of course, securing the right to health means increasing opportunities for people to express themselves freely – one will find it much easier to actively participate in public discourse if one is in good health than not.) What is true in this example is true across the round, and the orthodox position in the UN human rights system has long been that these mutually-supportive linkages can be found throughout the human rights corpus.

This is not, however, the position that Türk adopts in his letter. To reiterate, for the new High Commissioner, freedom of expression and the right to health are not in fact “indivisible and interdependent”, but incommensurate. If people are able to express themselves freely, they will circulate dangerous disinformation about vaccines, and harm will result. Freedom of expression does not reinforce the right to health; it undermines it.

Türk is no loose cannon. As short as his letter to Musk is, it essentially summarises the position adopted in a recent report to the UN General Assembly by the Secretary-General himself. This report manages somehow to express a robust defence of the “right to hold opinions without interference” and an insistence that “free communication of information and ideas about public and political issues… is essential”, while at the same time advocating for state intervention to prevent the spread of inaccurate information concerning “public health, electoral processes or national security” and the demonetisation of legal-but-harmful content. The same schizophrenic attitude is adopted as in Türk’s letter, but the message is clear enough: while it is necessary to pay lip service to the importance of freedom of expression, the system as a whole now disavows the “indivisible and interdependent” doctrine, and instead sees freedom of expression as being potentially antagonistic to other rights.

What are we to make of this? The clue is in the types of harmful inaccurate information that both Türk and the Secretary-General identify as particularly dangerous and hence warranting state suppression – i.e., those implicating public health, electoral processes and national security. It is no accident that these subjects map pretty closely to the issues that are of greatest concern to the global bien pensant class in which these figures are so firmly entrenched – Covid vaccines, ‘election denialism’, and Russian disinformation. And it is not really a great surprise that when the chips are down and the consensus within that class is that oppositional views on those topics represent a genuine threat, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Secretary-General suddenly find that freedom of expression is not so “indivisible and interdependent” with respect to other rights at all. Indeed, it is to be sacrificed where those particular concerns are raised. Human beings, as we know, can be remarkably flexible on points of principle when peer pressure is applied – even, it turns out, senior human rights lawyers and UN Secretary-Generals.

More broadly, if one were being especially cynical, one might say that this is further evidence supporting the long-term criticism of the international human rights system – that it is essentially a forum for pharisaical expressions of right-on opinions which vary in accordance with whatever the ‘current thing’ is. This would not be entirely fair – the UN human rights organs do very important work – but it is sometimes easy to see how this view proliferates. Türk’s letter is suggestive not so much of a commitment to the letter of human rights law, but rather only to the contemporary concerns of a particular elite constituency. This in turn indicates that the UN human rights apparatus as a whole is geared more toward addressing the anxieties of that constituency than it is towards standing up for human rights across the board. Is it any wonder, then, that ordinary people generally take a sceptical view about human rights in the round?

Dr. David McGrogan is Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School.

November 24, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

How Blackrock Investment Fund Triggered the Global Energy Crisis

“Adherence to UN 2030 Sustainability Agenda”. Colossal disinvestment in the trillion-dollar global oil and gas sector.

By F. William Engdahl | Global Research | November 16, 2022

Most people are bewildered by what is a global energy crisis, with prices for oil, gas and coal simultaneously soaring and even forcing closure of major industrial plants such as chemicals or aluminum or steel. The Biden Administration and EU have insisted that all is because of Putin and Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. This is not the case. The energy crisis is a long-planned strategy of western corporate and political circles to dismantle industrial economies in the name of a dystopian Green Agenda that has its roots in the period years well before February 2022, when Russia launched its military action in Ukraine.

Blackrock pushes ESG

In January, 2020  on the eve of the economically and socially devastating covid lockdowns, the CEO of the world’s largest investment fund, Larry Fink of Blackrock, issued a letter to Wall Street colleagues and corporate CEOs on the future of investment flows. In the document, modestly titled “A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance”, Fink, who manages the world’s largest investment fund with some $7 trillion then under management, announced a radical departure for corporate investment. Money would “go green.” In his closely-followed 2020 letter Fink declared,

“In the near future – and sooner than most anticipate – there will be a significant re-allocation of capital…Climate risk is investment risk.” Further he stated, “Every government, company, and shareholder must confront climate change.” [i]

In a separate letter to Blackrock investor clients, Fink delivered the new agenda for capital investing. He declared that Blackrock will exit certain high-carbon investments such as coal, the largest source of electricity for the USA and many other countries. He added that Blackrock would screen new investment in oil, gas and coal to determine their adherence to the UN Agenda 2030 “sustainability.”

Fink made clear the world’s largest fund would begin to disinvest in oil, gas and coal.  “Over time,” Fink wrote, “companies and governments that do not respond to stakeholders and address sustainability risks will encounter growing skepticism from the markets, and in turn, a higher cost of capital.” He added that, “Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects… we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.” [ii]

From that point on the so-called ESG investing, penalizing CO2 emitting companies like ExxonMobil, has become all the fashion among hedge funds and Wall Street banks and investment funds including State Street and Vanguard. Such is the power of Blackrock. Fink was also able to get four new board members in ExxonMobil committed to end the company’s oil and gas business.

The January 2020 Fink letter was a declaration of war by big finance against the conventional energy industry. BlackRock was a founding member of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (the TCFD) and is a signatory of the UN PRI— Principles for Responsible Investing, a UN-supported network of investors pushing zero carbon investing using the highly-corrupt ESG criteria—Environmental, Social and Governance factors into investment decisions. There is no objective control over fake data for a company’s ESG. As well Blackrock signed the Vatican’s 2019 statement advocating carbon pricing regimes. BlackRock in 2020 also joined  Climate Action 100, a coalition of almost 400 investment managers  managing US$40 trillion.

With that fateful January 2020 CEO letter, Larry Fink set in motion a colossal disinvestment in the trillion-dollar global oil and gas sector. Notably, that same year BlackRock’s Fink was named to the Board of Trustees of Klaus Schwab’s dystopian World Economic Forum, the corporate and political nexus of the Zero Carbon UN Agenda 2030. In June 2019, the World Economic Forum and the United Nations signed a strategic partnership framework to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.  WEF has a Strategic Intelligence platform which includes Agenda 2030’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

In his 2021 CEO letter, Fink doubled down on the attack on oil, gas and coal. “Given how central the energy transition will be to every company’s growth prospects, we are asking companies to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net zero economy,” Fink wrote. Another BlackRock officer told a recent energy conference, “where BlackRock goes, others will follow.” [iii]

In just two years, by 2022 an estimated $1 trillion has exited investment in oil and gas exploration and development globally. Oil extraction is an expensive business and cut-off of external investment by BlackRock and other Wall Street investors spells the slow death of the industry.

Biden—A BlackRock President?

Early in his then-lackluster Presidential bid, Biden had a closed door meeting in late 2019 with Fink who reportedly told the candidate that, “I’m here to help.” After his fateful meeting with BlackRock’s Fink, candidate Biden announced, “We are going to get rid of fossil fuels…” In December 2020, even before Biden was inaugurated in January 2021, he named BlackRock Global Head of Sustainable Investing, Brian Deese, to be Assistant to the President and Director of the National Economic Council. Here, Deese, who played a key role for Obama in drafting the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, has quietly shaped the Biden war on energy.

This has been catastrophic for the oil and gas industry. Fink’s man Deese was active in giving the new President Biden a list of anti-oil measures to sign by Executive Order beginning day one in January 2021. That included closing the huge Keystone XL oil pipeline that would bring 830,000 barrels per day from Canada as far as Texas refineries, and halting any new leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Biden also rejoined the Paris Climate Accord that Deese had negotiated for Obama in 2015 and Trump cancelled.

The same day, Biden set in motion a change of the so-called “Social Cost of Carbon” that imposes a punitive $51 a ton of CO2 on the oil and gas industry. That one move, established under purely executive-branch authority without the consent of Congress, is dealing a devastating cost to investment in oil and gas in the US, a country only two years before that was the world’s largest oil producer.[iv]

Killing refinery capacity

Even worse, Biden’s  aggressive environmental rules and BlackRock ESG investing mandates are killing the US refinery capacity. Without refineries it doesn’t matter how many barrels of oil you take from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In the first two years of Biden’s Presidency the US has shut down some 1 million barrels a day of gasoline and diesel refining capacity, some due to covid demand collapse, the fastest decline in US history. The shutdowns are permanent. In 2023 an added 1.7 million bpd of capacity is set to close as a result of BlackRock and Wall Street ESG disinvesting and Biden regulations. [v]

Citing the heavy Wall Street disinvestment in oil and the Biden anti-oil policies, the CEO of Chevron in June 2022 declared that he doesn’t believe the US will ever build another new refinery.[vi]

Larry Fink, Board member of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum, is joined by the EU whose President of the EU Commission, the notoriously corrupt Ursula von der Leyen left the WEF Board in 2019 to become EU Commission head. Her first major act in Brussels was to push through the EU Zero Carbon Fit for 55 agenda. That has imposed major carbon taxes and other constraints on oil, gas and coal in the EU well before the February 2022 Russian actions in Ukraine. The combined impact of the Fink fraudulent ESG agenda in the Biden administration and the EU Zero Carbon madness is creating the worst energy and inflation crisis in history.

*

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Notes

[i] Larry Fink, A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance, Letter to CEOs, January, 2020, https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/2020-blackrock-client-letter

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Tsvetana Paraskova,  Why Are Investors Turning Their Backs On Fossil Fuel Projects?, OilPrice.com,

March 11, 2021, https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Why-Are-Investors-Turning-Their-Backs-On-Fossil-Fuel-Projects.html

[iv] Joseph Toomey, Energy Inflation Was by Design, September, 2022, https://assets.realclear.com/files/2022/10/2058_energyinflationwasbydesign.pdf

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Fox Business, Chevron CEO says there may never be another oil refinery built in the US, June 3. 2022, https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/chevron-ceo-oil-refinery-built-u-s

Copyright © F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 2022

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

South Korea asks for Russia and China’s help

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Western-led ‘international’ organizations have no future

By Drago Bosnic | November 21, 2022

On November 18, the Polish foreign ministry stated that it will not allow a Russian delegation to attend the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) summit next month. OSCE is one of the most prominent regional security organizations in the world and its stated goal is to establish a viable security framework that would prevent conflicts in Europe and beyond. However, the reality is a bit different from the organization’s publicly altruistic intentions. The Associated Press asked the Polish foreign ministry if Russia would be denied entry to the OSCE’s December conference and Spokesman Lukasz Jasina responded that it would.

Russia, one of the most important members of the organization, as well as a key player in European security, is being denied entry due to politics. The very fact that this is even possible calls into question the purpose of OSCE or any similar organization dominated by the political West. This year, Poland is chairing the 57-nation organization, with the annual ministerial conference scheduled to be held in the city of Lodz on December 1-2. When asked if Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would be attending the conference, Jasina responded, “We are not expecting a visit by minister Lavrov to Lodz.”

“Delegations should be adjusted to the current EU regulations and not include persons that are sanctioned by the European Union,” according to an announcement by the Polish OSCE Chairmanship. “…a number of Russian nationals were added to the list of sanctioned individuals, including Minister Lavrov,” it added.

OSCE should be excluded from EU regulations, as the very purpose of the organization is to be a forum for security dialogue between European and other countries and prevent any escalation or spillover of local conflicts. By denying Russia the opportunity to attend the December 1-2 confidence in Lodz, precisely this security dialogue is being prevented, eliminating the need for OSCE altogether. However, in recent months, certain events have led many to believe the organization is hardly a neutral one, as its actions have often been used to aid one side in a particular conflict.

For instance, the war in Donbass, which has been going on for nearly a decade, and which has taken the lives of around 15,000 local men, women and children by early 2022, pushed the role of OSCE into more of a gray area. Its mission in Donbass, which the organization itself claims to be “arms control, promotion of human rights, early warning, conflict prevention, crisis management” failed back in April. In fact, it has continually been failing for over 8 years, as the Kiev regime’s shelling of the people of Donbass never stopped. Worse yet, it turned out that OSCE didn’t just fail to prevent the conflict, but it might have even done certain things to facilitate it.

In a rather disturbing revelation by war correspondent Alexander Sladkov, the organization was using high-resolution cameras, originally placed to conduct ceasefire monitoring, to relay DNR and LNR positions to the Kiev regime forces which then used the provided data to target or correct their artillery fire. The OSCE mission provided their observation data, captured by cameras and other monitoring equipment they installed over the years. In essence, OSCE was spying and effectively waging war on the side of the Neo-Nazi junta. To make matters worse, the provided monitoring data also included the movement of regular Russian military personnel in the early days of the special military operation.

The report was heavily censored by the mainstream propaganda machine, making it virtually impossible for most people in Europe to see how a supposedly impartial international organization effectively became a party to the conflict which could not only undermine security in Europe, but the world as well. To make matters worse, these issues aren’t only limited to the OSCE, but many other apparently “international” organizations, including the United Nations. Back in February, twelve Russian UN diplomats were ordered to leave the US after being accused of being “intelligence operatives engaged in espionage.” The same pretext could be used to expel virtually anyone deemed a “security challenge” by the US, which would affect entire nations or groups of nations the ability to defend their interests at the UN.

The latest G20 summit held in Bali was also a clear indicator that the world is moving away from Western-led “international” organizations. While most members were trying to focus on actual global issues, the G7 members within the G20 were effectively trying to hijack the summit and make it entirely Ukraine-focused, which failed for the most part. All of this is happening at a time when BRICS is expanding across the world, with approximately a dozen major nations showing direct interest in joining the organization. The BRICS+ framework allows countries to maintain their sovereignty while becoming members of the world’s largest truly international organization.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Every Place On Earth Warming Faster Than Every Other Place On Earth

BY WILLIAM M. BRIGGS • NOVEMBER 16, 2022 

The other day we saw a UN report which claimed that “billions live in regions that have already experienced warming greater than the global average.”

They didn’t say where those regions were, a strange lacuna for such a large number of souls. I thought this an interesting question, so I looked it up, searching with terms like “warming faster than rest of the world” and the like. I used the Regime-approved search engine Google.

Here are the regions of the world which Regime-approved government and media sources—I would never quote from conspiracy-believing denier sites!—think are warming faster than the rest of the world. I believe all of these links are from the last year or two. I did not cheat and use anything from the 2000s or earlier.

Have I left anywhere out? I grew bored with the task after thirty minutes, especially when I started to do each individual state. I invite to try your own search and fill in those geographic areas (if any) that I missed.

We all live in Lake Woeonus, where it’s always worse than we thought, there are always five years left to SAVE THE PLANET!, and all the temperatures are rising faster than average.

I’ll save the larger, and more important, conclusion that models, and those that create them, cannot be trusted for another day.

I was scooped on this by at least three years. Here’s a guy who found that same “twice as high” goofiness three years ago.

November 19, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

RT sends request to UN over rape allegations

RT | November 15, 2022

RT has reached out to the UN special representative on sexual violence, Pramila Patten, to request a correction or retraction of a statement in which she accused the Russian Armed Forces of employing a deliberate “rape strategy” as part of its military campaign in Ukraine. Patten made the claim in October in an interview with the AFP only to admit she did not have any solid evidence to substantiate it a month later.

“The allegations Ms. Patten has brought forward are of a very serious nature, which have the power to shape public discourse around the events in Ukraine,” RT said in a statement, adding that her words were then “widely distributed amongst media outlets and social media, to create a misleading, if not entirely false, narrative.”

In October, Patten told the AFP that when “you hear women testify about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it’s clearly a military strategy.” Less than a month later, the UN official admitted that her words were based solely on some unverified reports disclosed to her in the presence of two Ukrainian officials. Speaking to Russian prank artists Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov, also known as Vovan and Lexus, she recently said that it was “not her job” to conduct investigations anyway.

No evidence has since been provided to corroborate these claims. In its statement, RT asked Patten whether she “intends to issue a retraction – or at least a correction – of her original, misleading statement.”

“As a person holding such a public role with enormous responsibility, one would hope that Ms Patten seek to provide a true, verified testimony of her organization’s work,” the statement added.

RT also asked Patten’s office to provide some evidence to support her allegations in case the UN special representative believes a retraction would be “improper.” Neither Patten nor her office has commented on the request so far.

Moscow has previously denied the accusations made by Patten. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blasted the UN official’s claims as going “beyond the reach of reason.”

November 15, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

UN reparations decision is ‘plunder’ – Kremlin

RT | November 15, 2022

A Resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly, which urges Moscow to compensate for losses inflicted on Ukraine, aims to enshrine the theft of Russian funds blocked by the West, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

Peskov said that “organizers of this process are trying to complete the plundering of our gold and foreign currency reserves,” which he said were illegally frozen by Western countries over the Ukraine conflict.

“This is a formalization of this plundering under the guise of the United Nations,” he reiterated, adding that “Russia is categorically opposed to this.”

The official also reminded reporters that the resolution “is not legally binding.” “This is the way we are going to regard it,” he stated.

According to Peskov, Moscow will also “do its best” to thwart the confiscation of the assets that have been frozen by the West.

The comments come after the UN General Assembly on Monday adopted a resolution calling for Russia to pay “war reparations to Ukraine.” The document was supported by 94 countries, with 73 UN members abstaining and another 14 voting against.

Commenting on the resolution, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, claimed that its provisions “cannot stand up to any criticism” from a legal point of view. “They are legally void – nothing more than an attempt to legalize what cannot be legalized in terms of effective international law,” he said, warning the document’s co-sponsors that it could trigger consequences that “may boomerang against themselves.”

After Russia launched its military operation against Ukraine in late February, the West has significantly ratcheted up sanctions against Moscow. Western countries have frozen around half of Russia’s gold and foreign exchange reserves, which amounted to around $640 billion before the large-scale hostilities broke out. Moscow has repeatedly claimed that these funds have been “essentially stolen” from Russia.

In recent months, various Western officials have spoken in favor of outright confiscating these Russian assets and for them to be used for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

November 15, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

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