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UK Assumes Full Control of Libya’s Oil

An oil and gas platform off the coast of Libya. (Photo: Antonio Sempere via Getty)

Mark Curtis

Internationalist 360º

British oil giants BP and Shell are returning to the oil-rich north African country just over a decade after the UK plunged it into chaos in its 2011 military intervention, which the British government never admitted was a war for oil.

BP controls exploration areas in Libya covering nearly three times the size of Wales UK company Petrofac, convicted of bribery last year, has secured new oil contract in Libya and sponsored British embassy thereUK is combining its interest in accessing Libya’s oil with increasing military involvement

Last month Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) agreed for BP to start drilling for and producing natural gas in a major project off the coast of the north African country.

The UK corporation, on whose board sits former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers, controls exploration areas in Libya equivalent to nearly three times the size of Wales.

British officials have long sought to profit from oil in Libya, which contains 48 billion barrels of reserves – the largest oil resources in Africa, accounting for 3% of the world total.

BP is one of the few foreign oil and gas companies with exploration and production licences in Libya. Its assets there were nationalised by Muammar Gaddafi soon after he seized power in a 1969 coup that challenged the entire British position in the country and region.

After years of tensions between the two countries, prime minister Tony Blair met Gaddafi in 2004 and agreed the so-called ‘Deal in the Desert’ which included a $900m exploration and production agreement between BP and Libya’s NOC.

BP re-entered the country in 2007 but its operations were scuppered by the war of 2011 when British, French and US forces with the support of Qatar and Islamic militants overthrew Gaddafi.

Terrorism and civil war subsequently engulfed the country and oil company operations were put on hold.

The restart of BP’s operations follows the signing in 2018 of a memorandum of understanding with the NOC and Eni, the Italian oil major, to resume exploration, with Eni acting as the operator of the oil fields. BP chief executive Bob Dudley hailed the deal as an important step “towards returning to our work in Libya”.

The BP-ENI project, an $8bn investment, involves two exploration areas in the onshore Ghadames basin and one in the offshore Sirte basin, covering a total area of around 54,000 km2. The Sirte basin concession alone covers an area larger than the size of Belgium.

The UK’s other oil major, Shell, is also “preparing to return as a major player” in Libya, the company has stated in a confidential document. After putting its Libyan operations on hold in 2012, the corporation is now planning to explore for new oil and gas fields in several blocks.Oil briberyA third British company, Petrofac – which provides engineering services to oil operations – secured a $100m contract in September last year to help develop an oil field known as Erawin in Libya’s deep southwest.Petrofac was at the time under investigation for bribery by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO).One of its executives, global head of sales David Lufkin, had already pleaded guilty in 2019 to 11 counts of bribery.

The month following the award of the Libya contract, the SFO convicted and fined Petrofac on seven counts of bribery between 2011 and 2017. Petrofac pleaded guilty to its senior executives using agents to bribe officials to the tune of £32m to win oil contracts in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“A key feature of the case”, the SFO noted, “was the complex and deliberately opaque methods used by these senior executives to pay agents across borders, disguising payments through sub-contractors, creating fake contracts for fictitious services and, in some cases, passing bribes through more than one agent and one country, to disguise their actions”.

Petrofac works with BP in several countries around the world, including Iraq, Azerbaijan and Oman and in the North Sea.

Government backingAll three British companies re-entering Libya have strong links to the UK government. In some of the years during which Petrofac was paying bribes, the company was led by Ayman Asfari, who with his wife donated almost £800,000 to the Conservative Party between 2009 and 2017.In 2014, Asfari, who is now a non-executive director of Petrofac, had been appointed by David Cameron to be one of his business ambassadors.Petrofac, which is incorporated in the tax haven of Jersey, has also benefited from insurance provided by the UK taxpayer via UK Export Finance (UKEF).In May 2019, when Petrofac was under investigation by the SFO, UKEF provided £700m in project insurance for the design and operation of an oil refinery at Duqm in the dictatorship of Oman, a project in which Petrofac was named as the sole UK exporter.In June this year Petrofac was one of five companies sponsoring the official reopening of the British embassy in Tripoli. Ambassador Caroline Hurndall told the audience: “I am especially proud that British businesses are collaborating with Libyan companies and having a meaningful impact upon Libya’s economic development. Many of those businesses are represented here tonight”.BP and Shell are especially close to Whitehall, with a long standing revolving door of personnel between the corporation and former senior civil servants.LobbyingFrank Baker, then the ambassador to Libya, wrote in 2018 that the UK was “helping to create a more permissible environment for trade and investment, and to uncover opportunities for British expertise to help Libya’s reconstruction”.Since then, new ambassador Hurndall has held meetings with Libya’s oil minister, Mohammed Aoun, to discuss the return of UK oil companies to Libya, and the NOC has set up a hub in London, its only one outside Libya and the US.The NOC’s London unit, launched in early 2021, is poised to “award consultancy and asset management contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds over the next several years to British companies”, the Times reported.Also heavily promoting British oil interests is the Libyan British Business Council (LBBC), whose president is Lord Trefgarne, a former minister under Margaret Thatcher, and which is chaired by former British ambassador to Libya, Peter Millett.

The LBBC, which sent a delegation to Libya earlier this month, says it acts “as an influential and informed advocacy group on behalf of UK business in Libya – in dialogue with the British government” and others.

In October 2018, the LBBC and the NOC signed a ‘statement of intent’ on the subject of “enhanced cooperation in the development of Libya’s oil and gas industry”. It also called for “mutually satisfactory contracts”.

The chair of the NOC, Mustafa Sanalla, said at the time that “the UK is a key partner for Libya in boosting oil production” and welcomed “strengthening this partnership”. The LBBC pledged to “facilitate Chairman Mustafa Sanalla’s access to British government ministers”.

Control of oil

Last year, Libya was the UK’s third largest source of oil, after Norway and the US, supplying 7.8% of all British oil imports. Oil is Libya’s lifeline, providing over 90% of the country’s revenues.

But the country’s civil war has provoked a battle for control over the oil industry which has been described as being in “disarray”, with “little clarity on who really is in control of the nation’s most valuable resource”. The UN-backed Government of National Unity, which is supported by the UK, sits in the capital, Tripoli, while in the east of the country sits a rival government.

[…]

Via https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/29/the-uk-assumes-full-control-of-libyas-oil/

 

 

 

Fake Tweet Tanks Eli Lilly’s Stock Price and Exposes Drugmaker’s Price Gouging

By  Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

After drugmaker Eli Lilly apologized for a “misleading” fake Twitter post announcing insulin would now be free, comedian Russell Brand mocked the company for making billions of dollars in profit from life-saving insulin by charging 4,000 times what it costs to produce.

On Nov.10, a Twitter account masquerading as drugmaker Eli Lilly’s corporate account tweeted: “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.”

Within hours, the fake tweet got around 10,000 likes and thousands of retweets before Twitter suspended the impersonator. It also caused Eli Lilly’s stock price to drop 4.37% — and drew fresh attention to the sky-high price of insulin in the U.S.

The creators of the fake Twitter account used Elon Musk’s new paid verification feature to get a “blue tick” that signaled account verification.

“You could say that Musk ‘blue’ it by putting Twitter’s blue verification check mark up for sale,” Forbes reported Nov. 12.

Eli Lilly issued an official public apology — also posted on Twitter — which read:

We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account. Our official Twitter account is @LillyPad.

— Eli Lilly and Company (@LillyPad) November 10, 2022

Comedian and political commentator Russell Brand wasted no time in mocking the drugmaker’s apology:

“Yeah sorry about that. There’s a real problem here. You’ve been served a fake message … sorry you were misled for a moment [to think] the world was a fair and decent place. Let’s get you back on track: The world is an unfair, profiteering, ugly place based on greed.”

Brand pointed out the company didn’t apologize for “charging you too much money for insulin.” He cited a Nov. 12 Common Dreams report that said:

“Diabetes — a disease that can wreak havoc on organs, eyesight, and limbs if left unmanaged — affects more than 37 million U.S. adults and is the country’s seventh leading cause of death.

“Meanwhile, the price of insulin, which is needed to treat diabetes, is so astronomical in the U.S. that experts have accused the federal government and pharmaceutical industry of violating human rights.

“Although it costs a mere $10 to produce a vial of insulin, uninsured patients in the U.S. pay $300 to $400 per vial of the century-old drug because the three pharmaceutical corporations [including Eli Lilly] that control the nation’s lucrative insulin market charge excessive prices with very little pushback from congressional lawmakers.”

Brand also drew attention to a letter from Public Citizen, T1International and more than 50 other organizations telling congressional leaders that the Inflation Reduction Act “barely scratches the surface” of what is needed to expand insulin access and “likely does nothing” to lower the excessive prices charged by insulin manufacturers.

When the discoverer of insulin — Sir Frederick Banting — sold the patent in 1923 for $1, he famously said, “Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world.”

That’s clearly not true in today’s world, Brand said.

“There is a kind of ugly materialistic and rational nihilism that pervades our entire culture that thankfully can be punctured by a single Blue Tick trick,” he said, referring to the fake Twitter post.

“It shows you if we were to — in the spirit of unity and mirth — join together in opposition of these negative principles, that the world would change.”

Watch the Brand segment here:

 […]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/insulin-fake-tweet-eli-lilly-price-gouging/

Twitter Stops Enforcing Covid Misinformation Policy

Getty Images

Carlie Porterfield

Forbes

Topline

Twitter quietly stopped enforcing its Covid misinformation policy last week, the embattled social media company said, as new owner Elon Musk continues to transition the platform to fit his vision of freedom of speech.

Key Facts

Twitter users on Monday night spotted a line added to a report dedicated to Twitter’s Covid misinformation moderation that said the platform’s policy would no longer be enforced effective Nov. 23.

The company did not make a formal announcement that it was ending enforcement of the policy, but it lines up with many of Musk’s recent moves, like last week reinstating the personal account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who was banned in January over spreading Covid misinformation.

In 2020, Twitter began flagging posts, removing content and suspending accounts that were found to contain misinformation about Covid or any message that “could place people at a higher risk of transmitting COVID-19,” the company said.

Twitter removed 97,674 pieces of content and suspended 11,230 accounts since January 2020 under the guidelines, according to the platform.

Twitter’s previous policy of removing Covid misinformation had been lauded by health professionals like U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who last year advised other social media platforms to take similar measures.

Key Background

Musk outlined Twitter’s new policy as “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” saying the platform would not promote and demonetize negative content and hate speech, and that users would only be able to find the offending tweets if they “specifically seek it out,” which is no different from the rest of the internet, Musk tweeted earlier this month.

Musk himself has repeatedly used Twitter to share questionable comments about Covid and criticize the handling of the pandemic, even before he bought the platform for $44 billion in October. Musk’s recent moves include reinstating accounts that had previously been banned, including Greene and other controversial users like former President Donald Trump.

Musk’s tenure at the tech company has been tumultuous, with Twitter losing advertising revenue as brands suspend spending over concerns of the direction Musk will lead the company.

On Monday, Musk said Apple had threatened to remove Twitter from its App Store without providing a reason. Twitter let go about half of the company’s workforce in a round of layoffs earlier this month.

What To Watch For

On Monday, Musk tweeted that he would be releasing what he described as “the Twitter Files” on the platform’s free speech suppression.

[…]

Via https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/11/29/twitter-stops-enforcing-covid-19-misinformation-policy/?sh=32653c352200

Four Arizona Counties Delay Election Certification

Kari Donovan

The Republic Brief

Historic denial of election data is happening in the state of Arizona because the midterm elections earlier in November were completely suspicious and election officials really had no choice other than to say ‘NO’ to lousy election results.

[…]

Here is what Independent media is reporting:

Four out of Arizona counties say that they will hold off on certifying the 2022 midterm elections. Gila, Cochise, Mohave, and Yavapai have refused to approve the suspect election. Arizona only has 15 counties in the state.

Seth Kessel, a leading high-profile election integrity activist, posted some information on his Truth Social account about the 2022 AZ results:

Dr. Kelli Ward is a long-time Conservative activist and leader in Arizona and head of the state Republican party as the AZGOP chairwoman.

Ward oversaw the corrupt AZ election in 2020 and communicated daily to the public for

On Monday, she tweeted:

Voters in all rural counties in Arizona are being disenfranchised by Maricopa County’s incompetence/malfeasance. I’m happy to see that my county (Mohave) voted to delay certification. #ElectionIntegrity

— Dr. Kelli Ward (@kelliwardaz) November 21, 2022

“The Cochise County Board in southeast Arizona delayed the certification of the suspect midterm elections on Friday,” Jim Hoft reported for The Gateway Pundit, adding:

“Republicans in the state had 72% of the turnout on election day. Democrats had only a 17% turnout. But for some reason, the remaining ballots after election day broke even between the two parties – despite Republicans holding strong leads in the polls.”

Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem said this action sets precedent for other Arizona counties to do the same.

BREAKING: Cochise County BOS just motioned to table the certification of the election until November 28th, when they expect to review all evidence of the proof of legal certification by the accredited Election Assistance Commission labs to use the tabulation machines. This /1

— Mark Finchem #JustFollowTheLaw VoteFinchem.com (@RealMarkFinchem) November 19, 2022

“This now establishes precedent to do the same in other counties now that Cochise County is validating their results. Arizona cannot certify any election results until all counties have rendered certified results,” Mark Finchem #JustFollowTheLaw VoteFinchem.com (@RealMarkFinchem) posted on Twitter on November 19, 2022.

The Arizona Attorney General’s office on Saturday sent a letter to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office demanding explanations for the election issues before the results can be certified.

“The Elections Integrity Unit of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office has received hundreds of complaints since Election Day pertaining to issues related to the administration of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County,” Wright wrote.

“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law.”

In Fox News bitter and pouty coverage of the historic story, watch as they discredit everyone who raised a concern about the election:

“The three claimed the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission allowed certifications for testing companies to lapse, and that voided the certifications of vote tabulation equipment used across the state.

That came despite testimony from the state’s elections director that the machines and the testing company were indeed certified.

“The equipment used in Cochise County is properly certified under both federal and state laws and requirements,” state Elections Director Kori Lorick told the board. “The claims that the SLI testing labs were not properly accredited are false.”

The move is the latest drama in the Republican-heavy county in recent weeks, which started when GOP board members Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd voted to have all the ballots in last week’s election counted by hand to determine if the machine counts were accurate.

Crosby also defended a lawsuit he and Judd filed against the county elections director earlier this week seeking to force the hand-count. They dropped the case against Lisa Marra on Wednesday.

“If our presenters’ request is met by the proof that our machines are indeed legally and lawfully accredited, then indeed we should accept the results,” Crosby said. “However, if the machines have not been lawfully certificated, then the converse is also true. We cannot verify this election now.”

[…]

Via https://republicbrief.com/breaking-four-arizona-counties-delay-election-certification/

19th Century Korea: Resisting European Colonization to Fall Victim to Japan

Kim Il-Sung, leader of Korean resistance against Japanese Occupation

Episode 41: Korean Choson – The Last Dynasty

Foundations of Eastern Civilization

Dr Craig Benjamin (2013)

Film Review

In response to the opium wars Britain launched on China, Korea’s Choson Dynasty essentially closed their country to foreigners.

After the Choson rejected British India Company trade overtures in 1832, the European response was aggressive:

In 1846, three French warships delivered a letter protesting the persecution of French missionaries.In 1854, two Russian warships “interfered” with Korean commercial shipping, resulting in several injuries and deaths.In 1866, after a local Pyongyang official declined their request to trade, a US trading ship took him hostage, fired their guns into a crowd of civilians and sent a crew ashore to plunder Pyongyang and murdered seven Koreans. In response, the Korean military set fire to the ship and killed the entire crew.In 1866 a full scale campaign against Catholicism turned into a blood bath – with nine French missionaries and 8,000 Korean Catholics killed. One of the missionaries escaped to China, where he persuaded the French overseas fleet pursue punitive action.  After a French squadron pillaged the administrative center on Gangwha Island, they made an unsuccessful attempt to invade the mainland. \In 1871, the US US Asiatic Squadron sent warships against Korea in 1871. Opening fire on them, batteries on shore forced them to return to China.

Japan proved more successful in colonizing Korea:

In 1875, a Japanese invasion of Korea forced them to sign the 1876 Treaty of Kanghwa opening trade relations between the two countries.Between 1882-89 (fearful of further Japanese aggressive), Korea signed military and trade agreements with the US, Britain, Germany,  them with Italy, Russia, France, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.In 1885, Japan withdrew the troops they had stationed in Korea.In 1895, the Japanese ambassador assassinated the Choson queen. In response the king fled to the Russian legation to conduct his official business.In 1894, the Choson requested China’s help in suppressing a civil rebellion. To counteract Chinese military influence over Korean, Japan also dispatched troops to Korea (in violation of the Treaty of Kangwha). This led first Sino-Japanese War (1894-95).In 1895, the Shimonoseki Treaty granted the Japanese total control over Korea.In 1905 (following Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War), US President Teddy Roosevelt encouraged Japan to increase its dominance in Korea when Japan agreed to US occupation of the Philippines.In 1907, Japan dissolved the Korean Army and stationed 2,000 police in Korea to pacify the population. They also suspended all newspapers.In 1910, the Japanese forced the Choson emperor to abdicate.

The period 1910-1945 was associated with extremely harsh colonial rule intent on eradicating Korean culture. Forbidden to use the their own language, Koreans were forced to adopt Japanese names and convert to Shintoism.

In 1919, a populist independence movement was brutally crushed with 7,000 members killed. Tens of thousands were either jailed or permanently injured.

In 1937, Japan invaded China, launching the second Sino-Japanese War. Korean men were conscripted into the Japanese army, with another 16% of the Korean population deported to Japan either as as slave labor or as “comfort women” (sex slaves). Seventy thousand Korean cultural artifacts were either destroyed or taken to Japan.

A Korean resistance movement, led by Kim Il-Sung,* was formed with the support of the Communist Party of China. Thousands joined People’s Liberation Army and fought the Japanese in China.

*Kim Il-Sung (grandfather of Kim Jong-un) ultimately became the first premier of North Korea.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5808608/5808693

MIT Professor: Halt Vaccination of Young People Until Vaccine-Linked Myocarditis Is Studied

Retsef Levi: Dissenting views about the COVID-19 narrative have

Jan Jekielek and Masooma Haq

Epoch Times

Retsef Levi, a former Israeli military intelligence officer, an expert in risk management and health systems, and a professor at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, coauthored a paper that found a 25 percent rise in heart attack emergency calls among young Israelis after the country’s rollout of the COVID genetic vaccine.

Levi argues that there is enough data from this and various other studies on the vaccine’s adverse heart effects, to stop its use and run a thorough investigation into why many once-healthy young people suffer or die from heart inflammation after being vaccinated.

“The main question that we need to ask ourselves is, do we have enough evidence from this study and many other studies, to say halt!” Levi said during a recent interview with Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. “We’re going to stop these vaccines, for young individuals, but maybe overall, and we’re going to take the time to really look very, very carefully and scrutinize every piece of data and bring together every possible piece of data to understand what is the answer.”

Levi has worked extensively in the areas of analytics and modeling, looking at issues of risk management in the field of healthcare and other related systems. Mainly, analyzing data sets to see what they reveal about quality, safety, risks, etc.

His coauthored paper in Nature Scientific Reports looked at Israel’s national emergency calls in the first five months of 2021 and found a 25 percent increase in cardiac arrest and heart attacks in men aged 16-39 as compared to the year before the national vaccine rollout.

The study found, “a temporal correlation between this increase starting in early 2021, and the launch of the vaccination campaign in Israel,” said Levi.

The paper does not conclude a causal relationship between the vaccine and the observed increase in heart problems, but it definitely gives enough evidence to warrant an in-depth investigation said, Levi.

Further, Israel’s health ministry should want to know why there was an increase in heart problems; but instead, they “launched an attack on us, both in the public domain, as well as even actively trying to approach the journal and asked the journal to retract the paper,” said Levi.

Sound Scientific Process Abandoned

There is a lot of data that strongly suggests an increase in myocarditis or death in young people who have been vaccinated. Levi believes that the haste with which the vaccines were produced, approved, and deployed, neglected safety and best practices for rolling out vaccines.

This deviation from basic sound scientific principles has put health officials in Israel and the United States, “in a situation where you essentially cannot admit any wrong anymore because that will imply that you did something very, very disastrous,” said Levi. “We approve it in a very expedited way, and we approve it to everybody regardless of the risk, and that was basically the fundamental mistake that we’ve done. And I think everything else can be explained by that.”

There was strong early evidence, including a 2020 study done by Stanford University researchers John Ioannidis and colleagues concluding that people under 65, with no comorbidities, had very little risk of death from COVID-19 and should have helped target vaccines to the high-risk populations.

Levi believes health agency officials and governments should not have required vaccinations for healthy young people, and by doing so, “put them in a situation when they take an unknown risk that now we know is actually, in some cases pretty substantial, and could really compromise the future of young people and including causing their death.”

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo. (York Du/The Epoch Times)Mounting Evidence Against Vaccinating Youth

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, recently advised Floridians not to vaccinate healthy young people, because he found an 84 percent increase in heart problems among young men. While his study also does not prove a causal relationship, “at the very least, this should just raise your concerns that something really, really disturbing is happening here,” said Levi.

Levi thinks the public should look at a variety of studies when determining the safety of any vaccine or health guidance, and that Ladapo’s findings are in keeping with a large body of evidence that supports his guidance, even though the mainstream is dismissing this evidence.

Levi believes Ladopo was correctly following the mounting evidence of vaccine-related heart problems and deaths, and the principle of “do no harm.” “Ladopo was saying, I don’t feel comfortable to continue to give these vaccines to young individuals, given the evidence that I have,” said Levi.

[…]

Via https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/halt-vaccination-of-young-people-until-vaccine-linked-myocarditis-is-studied-mit-professor_4882005.html

3 Federal Agencies Hit With Lawsuits in Ongoing Quest to Uncover COVID Origins

By The Defender Staff

U.S. Right to Know last week filed three new Freedom of Information Act lawsuits against federal agencies as part of an ongoing effort to uncover what is known about the origins of COVID-19, leaks or mishaps at biosafety labs and the risks of gain-of-function research.

 U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) last week filed three new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against federal agencies as part of an ongoing effort to uncover what is known about the origins of COVID-19, leaks or mishaps at biosafety labs and the risks of gain-of-function research.

The nonprofit investigative public health group has filed more than 90 state, federal and international public records requests since July 2020, seeking information related to the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

The group filed the three new lawsuits after federal agencies failed to respond to several FOIA requests, instead withholding documents and information that potentially shed light on the origins of COVID-19 and related issues.

“The public and global scientific community have a right to know what data exists about these matters,” USRTK said.

HHS, DARPA, National Library of Medicine targets of latest lawsuits

USRTK filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) after they ignored USRTK’s request, submitted in June, for information about Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) inquiries made before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Researchers commonly use BLAST to compare potentially new genetic sequences to a database of known sequences. The lawsuit seeks to uncover whether anyone was using BLAST to align a nucleic acid or amino acid sequence identical to parts of the SARS-CoV-2 genome before the pandemic.

USRTK Executive Director Gary Ruskin explained the significance of this investigation in a tweet:

If such a sequence is found, and if the search occurred before the pandemic started, it would suggest the searcher may have had a virus similar to SARS-CoV-2. https://t.co/zHsIoX3r7G pic.twitter.com/PF3MFBiLGA

— Gary Ruskin (@garyruskin) November 22, 2022

In response to the original FOIA request, the NLM told USRTK it had “no responsive records,” but didn’t provide details about how it looked into the issue. NLM ignored USRTK’s appeal with follow-up questions, which led to the lawsuit.

USRTK filed another lawsuit against the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) when it didn’t respond to two FOIA requests from October 2020 and March 2021.

The first request sought records about funding contracts, grant agreements and communications about funding DARPA provided to Duke University in 2017, as part of DARPA’s Pandemic Prevention Platform program.

The funding granted to the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, housed in the Duke Regional Biocontainment Laboratory, provided $12.8 million over 30 months to develop a system capable of halting viral pandemics within 60 days.

The second FOIA request sought contracts, grants and communication pertaining to eight contracts funded by DARPA’s PREventing EMerging Pathogenic Threats program to develop technology to surveil and model viral pathogens in animals and insects with the potential for human spillover.

USRTK filed a third lawsuit against HHS and the NLM for ignoring an August 2022 FOIA asking the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to release all early SARS-CoV-2 sequences or SARS-like sequences that might be suppressed or withheld from public view.

The investigative nonprofit filed the FOIA request after researchers found NIH had deleted SARS-CoV-2 sequences from its databases.

In 2021, Jesse Bloom, Ph.D., an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, uncovered 13 sequences from early in the Wuhan outbreak that were deleted from the NIH Sequence Read Archive at the submitter’s request.

USRTK also reported that in July 2022, the NIH released 163 spike protein sequences from SARS-like coronaviruses originally submitted in 2018. Ten days later those sequences were removed from public view.

Karolina Corin, Ph.D., staff scientist at USRTK, underscored the importance of this FOIA request in August, tweeting:

We just submitted a #FOIA request to @NIH asking for any SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-related sequences that are not publicly accessible. https://t.co/EdbEff01S1

— Karolina Corin (@kccorin) August 23, 2022

Bloom and other scientists concurred, writing in Science:

“Whether the origins are from a lab leak or from zoonotic spillover, knowing how COVID-19 emerged is critical for informing strategies to mitigate risk of future outbreaks.”

‘Full and honest picture’ of COVID origins and gain-of-function research dangers suppressed

Two hypotheses exist regarding the COVID-19 virus origins — one that it resulted from a natural “zoonotic” spillover and the other that it resulted from a “lab leak” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory partially funded by the U.S. government.

A group of researchers associated with the WIV and EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nonprofit that collaborated with WIV on coronavirus research, heavily promoted the zoonotic spillover hypothesis.

In March 2020, the researchers published a letter in Nature Medicine asserting that the lab theory was not “plausible.”

The letter was influential in discrediting those who questioned the zoonotic origin hypothesis as “conspiracy theorists,” despite the fact that other scientists continued to call for research into the origins of COVID-19.

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s email correspondence from January to June 2020, obtained by the Washington Post, Buzzfeed News and CNN through FOIA requests, showed researchers had alerted Fauci and his colleagues early on to the possibility that COVID-19 may have leaked from the Wuhan lab.

The emails also show that Fauci and then director of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins, participated in a teleconference where they advised the researchers who drafted the letter not to mention the possibility of a lab leak.

In a White House press conference, Fauci later pointed to that letter as evidence the virus had a zoonotic origin.

In August, House Republicans said they would open an inquiry into the potential lab origins of COVID-19 if they won a majority in the House in the midterm elections. They won that majority this November.

On Tuesday, Fauci told reporters in a White House briefing that he will fully cooperate with House Republicans if they launch an investigation into the origins of COVID-19. “I have no trouble testifying — we can defend and explain everything that we’ve said.”

Appearing on Sunday’s Meet the Press, Fauci added that he had a “completely open mind” regarding the origins of the virus, and conceded that the zoonotic origin hypothesis “hasn’t been definitively proven.”

The “lab leak” hypothesis is supported by a history of safety concerns with high-level biosafety labs in general and the BSL-4 lab in Wuhan in particular.

Published research and U.S. federal grants to EcoHealth Alliance to fund WIV’s coronavirus research demonstrate that WIV stored potentially dangerous SARS-like coronaviruses, and carried out gain-of-function research in collaboration with U.S. universities.

In June, The Defender reported that the World Health Organization acknowledged there are crucial information gaps hindering its investigation into COVID-19 origins, leaving open the possibility the virus could have escaped from a lab.

This statement contradicted WHO’s earlier claim that it was “extremely unlikely” COVID-19 leaked from the WIV.

ProPublica and Vanity Fair investigated WIV this fall, reporting “a complex and grave situation” inside of “a biocomplex in crisis.” In late October, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) also released an interim report into the origins of the COVID-19 virus that strongly supported the lab-leak theory.

Given the limited investigation and the lack of transparency regarding the research into the origins of COVID-19, gain-of-function research and biolabs, USRTK in July 2020 began submitting public records requests because the group was “concerned that the national security apparatuses of the United States, China and elsewhere, and the university, industry and governmental entities with which they collaborate, may not provide a full and honest picture of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and the dangers of gain-of-function research.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/federal-agencies-lawsuits-covid-origins/

60% of Great Britain’s manufacturing sector risks closure due to soaring energy prices

Dr Eddy Betterman

The results of a new survey on the current state of the British economy are dire, suggesting that as many as six in 10 manufacturing businesses throughout the country are at risk of closing due to skyrocketing energy bills.

MakeUK, a manufacturing lobby organization in the United Kingdom, announced over the weekend that 42 percent of British manufacturing businesses have already seen their electricity bills double over the past year. About 32 percent have also seen their gas bills double.

Already, some 13 percent of British manufacturers have had to pare down their hours of operation to compensate for energy inflation. Twelve percent, we are told, have had to lay off workers as a result of ever-increasing energy costs.

If things continue on the current hyperinflationary trajectory – and there is no reason to believe otherwise – then at least 50 percent of British manufacturing businesses will have to close up shop entirely in the coming months.

“Out of control energy bills are now business threatening for 60% of manufacturers,” tweeted Make UK Campaigns about how the figure is likely even higher. “We’re calling on Government to look at introducing an Industry Price Cap to freeze energy bills at an agreed rate.”

Goldman Sachs says UK inflation to reach 22 percent next year

MakeUK has proposed a 100-day plan for the new incoming prime minister, Liz Truss, that lays out a roadmap for navigating the crisis. It includes:

A call for an emergency budgetA demand to commission the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to review the Shortage Occupation List (SOL), which outlines key job roles in high demand throughout the UK that could be recruited from overseas more easilyAn overhaul of the Apprenticeship Levy “to ensure British people are among the most productive and highly skilled workers in the world”

As wholesale energy prices continue to soar, banking giant Goldman Sachs has issued a prediction that inflation in the UK could reach 22 percent next year. This is what MakeUK is trying to plan ahead for by pushing energy price caps.

Keep in mind that a major driving factor in the energy crisis is the UK and Europe’s aggressive push for “green” energy. Going green, it turns out, means going lean on everything, including the national economy.

An energy bill protest is also on the way come October when tens of thousands of Brits are expected to just stop paying.

Goldman Sachs says that the energy sector could see another m

ore than 80 percent price increase before the next review in January, which, combined with other sectors of the economy, “impl[ies] headline inflation peaking at 22.4 percent.”

“Inflation in Britain reached double digits for the first time since the 1980s in July, and if Goldman Sachs estimates were to be realized, the cost of living in the UK would come close to hitting the country’s post-war record of 24.5 percent inflation set in August 1975,” reported Remix about the situation.

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2022/11/28/great-britains-manufacturing-sector-risks-closure-energy-prices/

Iran: From Social Mobilization to the Direct Armed Phase

Mission Veridad

Internatonalist 360°

Since mid-September, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been subjected to a new cycle of destabilization. The death of a young Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini (22), on September 16 was the starting point. Amini, who had been briefly detained by the morality police on September 13 for not wearing her hijab correctly, collapsed in a police station, dying three days later.

CCTV footage captured the moment when the young woman suddenly fell to the ground with no visible police coercion, on her way to an ordinary Islamic dress code class. But before the police made these images public (and the government ordered an investigation), word had already begun to spread that the young woman had died of a stroke as a result of the beatings she received at the police station.

It mattered little the health problems she had (she had brain surgery in 2006), that the audiovisual file shows that nothing extraordinary happened before the collapse, that there was no physical contact between officers and the young woman, who died of cerebral hypoxia and a heart attack, after spending almost three days in a coma.

The news,  initially reported by  Shargh, was quickly picked up by “human rights” groups and Kurdish news agencies that began a follow-up that was gradually replicated by the international media, while the initial follow-up was adulterating the nature of the news, to then consolidate the matrix that Amini died as a result of physical aggressions perpetrated by “henchmen of the Islamic regime”.

Two news sources conspicuously led to the leap from the domestic to the global embedded in the preset communicational system: first, the “monitoring” of the events by the State Department “activist” Masih Alinejad (more on her later) of the already adulterated version of the event, and the entry into the Twittersphere of the former soccer player based in the Emirates, Ali Karimi, from where numerous newly created accounts began to replicate the “news” and tags such as #OpIran, among others, since the hijacked and modified version of the events was circulating throughout the anti-Islamic Republic media system.

On the basis of an event recognized as tragic by all sides without distinction, a large number of organized and sophisticated media devices, with foreign affiliations and links, were set in motion. Before long, the representation of the conflict shifted from the denunciation of the death of the young Amini to the liberal anti-Hijab protests, for “democracy”, against the Islamic system and socio-economic hardships.

And while outwardly the “freedom” and anti-oppression version was presented, portraying the demonstrations as “peaceful”, numerous cities in the country witnessed riots, armed violence, aggressions against people and public property (in the first week alone the “demonstrators” destroyed 61 ambulances), attacks against religious and government institutions, assassinations and lynchings against security forces, as well as terrorist attacks.

So far, two waves can be accurately distinguished from this cycle. The first, in direct reaction to the Amini case, where visibly (and above all other actions) the format of “peaceful demonstrations” predominated, obfuscating the rest of the ultra-violent events, from September 16 to mid-October.

A second wave, of a more explicitly terrorist, armed, and indiscriminate violence, was established from October 26, when a gunman opened fire on pilgrims and worshippers, killing 15 and wounding more than 40, in the temple of Shah Cheragh, in the city of Shiraz, in the province of Fars. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State. The security forces also thwarted  a bomb attack that should have occurred at the same time in the city.

Thus was established the classic sequence of a destabilization process under the codification of color revolution, a format repeated to the point of exhaustion and overwhelm, which, from the “mobilizations” of the “civil society” that gives it cover and context that do not achieve the objectives politically (regime change), passes to the direct armed phase. This, beyond damage, has not achieved the objectives of placing the Iranian government and society in check.

As is also often the case, the same Western media apparatus and networks that breathe life into the narrative tailored to liberal precepts are obliged to hide and/or deny the existence of the large demonstrations, counter-marches and mass attendance at funerals in honor of martyrs, in defense of the country and the government, which have also occurred alongside the various operational phases of regime change.

[…]

The Mammoth Architecture of the Information Landscape

Although it is and has always been an essential component, the dimension, magnitude and scope that has been deployed in the Iranian case to establish the narrative apparatus, surpassing the usual parameters, is still surprising. The most important components will be highlighted here, which are undoubtedly shaped and sustained logistically, financially and operationally by the usual actors: the United States, the United Kingdom, the Persian Gulf monarchies, Saudi Arabia and prominent figures in the European Union.

Masih Alinejad*. The Iranian exile “activist,” known for her flamboyant appearance and her long-standing constant promotion of hijab-burning and State Department protégé (despite criticism for her proximity to the Trump administration), was above all a leading figure of the first hour in shaping and making consumable the regime change narrative. Her “follow-up,” based on the available sourcing apparatus, expedited and planted 1) the version of Amini’s death as a state crime, and 2) the framing of it within the Western, “feminist” catechism for moral consumption.A U.S. resident, domiciled in an FBI safe house, Alinejad, a “correspondent” for Voice of America Persia, has been a recipient of United States Global Media Agency funding in excess of half a million dollars for over a decade. Over time, Alinejad has been a leading figure in legitimizing any action against the Islamic Republic, being a conspicuous promoter of economic sanctions, the main source of hardship in daily life in the Persian nation. Portrayed with figures of the moral stature of Mike Pompeo, Alinejad also publishes “articles” promoted, among others, by the NED* itself. Alinejad is one of the usual stepping stones leading from the diffuse universe of non-state actors to the officialization of the narrative by Western governments, particularly the US. The White House established an official “position”, condemning the Iranian government and supporting the demonstrations, on October 3.The five main media and their ecosystem. At the center, molding, matrix replication and narrative projection  are the BBC’s Persian service, Voice of America, Manoto TV (based in London), Iran International (also based in the UK and funded by Saudi Arabia) and Radio Farda (the arm of Radio Free Asia, operating out of Prague). This second tier is responsible for collecting and installing the matrix that the global mainstream then replicates, since it also collects the “information” of lesser “alternative” media and reports from NGOs (mainly Kurdish), such as  as Dariche News and Fahim News on the “journalistic” level, or “human rights” organizations such as HANAand the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center recipients, among others, of the 631,500 dollars that  the NED provided to these organizations in 2021. According to Fars News, the five media above have been responsible for the dissemination of at least 38 thousand false reports between September 14 and October 16 (the context of the first wave).

[…]

Via https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/27/iran-from-social-mobilizations-to-the-direct-armed-phase/

Iran: From Social Mobilizations to the Direct Armed Phase

Mission VerdadInternatonalist 360°

Since mid-September, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been subjected to a new cycle of destabilization. The death of a young Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini (22), on September 16 was the starting point. Amini, who had been briefly detained by the morality police on September 13 for not wearing her hijab correctly, collapsed in a police station, dying three days later.

CCTV footage captured the moment when the young woman suddenly fell to the ground with no visible police coercion, on her way to an ordinary Islamic dress code class. But before the police made these images public (and the government ordered an investigation), word had already begun to spread that the young woman had died of a stroke as a result of the beatings she received at the police station.

It mattered little the health problems she had (she had brain surgery in 2006), that the audiovisual file shows that nothing extraordinary happened before the collapse, that there was no physical contact between officers and the young woman, who died of cerebral hypoxia and a heart attack, after spending almost three days in a coma.

The news,  initially reported by  Shargh, was quickly picked up by “human rights” groups and Kurdish news agencies that began a follow-up that was gradually replicated by the international media, while the initial follow-up was adulterating the nature of the news, to then consolidate the matrix that Amini died as a result of physical aggressions perpetrated by “henchmen of the Islamic regime”.

Two news sources conspicuously led to the leap from the domestic to the global embedded in the preset communicational system: first, the “monitoring” of the events by the State Department “activist” Masih Alinejad (more on her later) of the already adulterated version of the event, and the entry into the Twittersphere of the former soccer player based in the Emirates, Ali Karimi, from where numerous newly created accounts began to replicate the “news” and tags such as #OpIran, among others, since the hijacked and modified version of the events was circulating throughout the anti-Islamic Republic media system.

On the basis of an event recognized as tragic by all sides without distinction, a large number of organized and sophisticated media devices, with foreign affiliations and links, were set in motion. Before long, the representation of the conflict shifted from the denunciation of the death of the young Amini to the liberal anti-Hijab protests, for “democracy”, against the Islamic system and socio-economic hardships.

And while outwardly the “freedom” and anti-oppression version was presented, portraying the demonstrations as “peaceful”, numerous cities in the country witnessed riots, armed violence, aggressions against people and public property (in the first week alone the “demonstrators” destroyed 61 ambulances), attacks against religious and government institutions, assassinations and lynchings against security forces, as well as terrorist attacks.

So far, two waves can be accurately distinguished from this cycle. The first, in direct reaction to the Amini case, where visibly (and above all other actions) the format of “peaceful demonstrations” predominated, obfuscating the rest of the ultra-violent events, from September 16 to mid-October.

A second wave, of a more explicitly terrorist, armed, and indiscriminate violence, was established from October 26, when a gunman opened fire on pilgrims and worshippers, killing 15 and wounding more than 40, in the temple of Shah Cheragh, in the city of Shiraz, in the province of Fars. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State. The security forces also thwarted  a bomb attack that should have occurred at the same time in the city.

Thus was established the classic sequence of a destabilization process under the codification of color revolution, a format repeated to the point of exhaustion and overwhelm, which, from the “mobilizations” of the “civil society” that gives it cover and context that do not achieve the objectives politically (regime change), passes to the direct armed phase. This, beyond damage, has not achieved the objectives of placing the Iranian government and society in check.

As is also often the case, the same Western media apparatus and networks that breathe life into the narrative tailored to liberal precepts are obliged to hide and/or deny the existence of the large demonstrations, counter-marches and mass attendance at funerals in honor of martyrs, in defense of the country and the government, which have also occurred alongside the various operational phases of regime change.

[…]

The Mammoth Architecture of the Information Landscape

Although it is and has always been an essential component, the dimension, magnitude and scope that has been deployed in the Iranian case to establish the narrative apparatus, surpassing the usual parameters, is still surprising. The most important components will be highlighted here, which are undoubtedly shaped and sustained logistically, financially and operationally by the usual actors: the United States, the United Kingdom, the Persian Gulf monarchies, Saudi Arabia and prominent figures in the European Union.

Masih Alinejad*. The Iranian exile “activist,” known for her flamboyant appearance and her long-standing constant promotion of hijab-burning and State Department protégé (despite criticism for her proximity to the Trump administration), was above all a leading figure of the first hour in shaping and making consumable the regime change narrative. Her “follow-up,” based on the available sourcing apparatus, expedited and planted 1) the version of Amini’s death as a state crime, and 2) the framing of it within the Western, “feminist” catechism for moral consumption.A U.S. resident, domiciled in an FBI safe house, Alinejad, a “correspondent” for Voice of America Persia, has been a recipient of United States Global Media Agency funding in excess of half a million dollars for over a decade. Over time, Alinejad has been a leading figure in legitimizing any action against the Islamic Republic, being a conspicuous promoter of economic sanctions, the main source of hardship in daily life in the Persian nation. Portrayed with figures of the moral stature of Mike Pompeo, Alinejad also publishes “articles” promoted, among others, by the NED* itself. Alinejad is one of the usual stepping stones leading from the diffuse universe of non-state actors to the officialization of the narrative by Western governments, particularly the US. The White House established an official “position”, condemning the Iranian government and supporting the demonstrations, on October 3.The five main media and their ecosystem. At the center, molding, matrix replication and narrative projection  are the BBC’s Persian service, Voice of America, Manoto TV (based in London), Iran International (also based in the UK and funded by Saudi Arabia) and Radio Farda (the arm of Radio Free Asia, operating out of Prague). This second tier is responsible for collecting and installing the matrix that the global mainstream then replicates, since it also collects the “information” of lesser “alternative” media and reports from NGOs (mainly Kurdish), such as  as Dariche News and Fahim News on the “journalistic” level, or “human rights” organizations such as HANAand the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center recipients, among others, of the 631,500 dollars that  the NED provided to these organizations in 2021. According to Fars News, the five media above have been responsible for the dissemination of at least 38 thousand false reports between September 14 and October 16 (the context of the first wave).

[…]

Via https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/27/iran-from-social-mobilizations-to-the-direct-armed-phase/