Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

It’s unrealistic to expect the US to maintain 500% tariffs on China and India for their purchase of Russian oil, which would also ruin its trade talks with them and derail the Ukrainian peace process…

Senator Lindsey Graham recently said that his bill to impose 500% tariffs on every country that imports Russian resources is “an economic bunker buster against China, India, and Russia”, yet for all his tough talk, the US is still reluctant to drop it. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump Administration is “quietly pressuring” the Senate to water down the legislation by “turn[ing] the word ‘shall’ into ‘may’ wherever it appears in the bill’s text, removing the mandatory nature of the prescribed reprimands”.

Their report was lent credence by Graham himself proposing an exemption for countries that aid Ukraine, thus averting an unprecedented US-EU trade war in the event that his bill passes into law. Trump’s remark to Politico in mid-June about how “sanctions cost us a lot of money” suggests that he’s not interested in going this route, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio later telling them that sanctions could derail the Ukrainian peace process, though he also didn’t rule them out in the future.

These are sensible explanations for the US’ reluctance to drop its “economic bunker buster” on Russia but they don’t account for its reluctance to drop it on China and India, which have served as invaluable valves for Russia from the West’s sanctions pressure due to their large-scale import of its oil. Graham expects that they’ll cut off their purchases if the US threatens them with 500% tariffs but they’re unlikely to comply since they know that the US would also harm its own economy through these means.

Not only that, but the trade deal that US and China recently agreed to would be jeopardized, as would the ongoing talks with India over a similar such agreement. Trump is pleased with both and doesn’t want to rock the boat right now. While he might revert back to his previous tariff pressure if things don’t go his way, he could just unilaterally impose more tariffs against either in that scenario, and they probably wouldn’t be anywhere near the counterproductive level that Graham’s legislation demands.

Seeing as how “The US Is Once Again Trying To Subordinate India”, which is part of his administration’s efforts to reshape South Asian geopolitics, he’s more prone to imposing higher tariffs against it instead of China but it’s premature to predict that he ultimately will. In any case, the pretext probably wouldn’t be energy-related given that he just surprisingly posted that “China can continue to purchase Oil from Iran” in spite of early February’s Executive Order that explicitly aims to “drive Iran’s export of oil to zero”.

It would therefore be utterly bizarre for Trump to impose tariffs of any level on India or whoever else for purchasing Russian resources when he now no longer cares about the US’ systemic rival China purchasing oil from none other than Iran, which he just bombed, in defiance of his own decree. The aforementioned calculations make it very unlikely that Trump will drop Graham’s “bunker buster” on either of those two. If his bill enters into law, a loophole would likely be found to avoid complying with it.

This prediction brings the analysis back around to the future of Graham’s “economic bunker buster”. Quite clearly, the Trump Administration doesn’t want him to move it through Congress so he might respect their wishes, thus leading to his bill becoming nothing but bluster. This is especially so if his team signals that it’s already found a loophole to get around it unless he changes the language as reportedly requested. China, India, and Russia therefore almost certainly have nothing to worry about.

Authored by Mark Keenan via RealityBooks.com,

Millions of people worldwide are concerned about climate change and believe there is a climate emergency. For decades we have been told by the United Nations that Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activity are causing disastrous climate change. In 2018, a UN IPCC report even warned that ‘we have 12 years to save the Earth’, thus sending millions of people worldwide into a frenzy.

Thirty-five years ago, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the (World Meteorological Organization) WMO established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide scientific advice on the complex topic of climate change. The panel was asked to prepare, based on available scientific information, a report on all aspects relevant to climate change and its impacts and to formulate realistic response strategies. The first assessment report of the IPCC served as the basis for negotiating the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Governments worldwide have signed this convention, thereby, significantly impacting the lives of the people of the world.

However, many scientists dispute with the UN-promoted man-made climate change theory, and many people worldwide are confused by the subject, or are unaware of the full facts. Please allow me to provide some information you may not be aware of.

1. Very few people actually dig into the data, they simply accept the UN IPPC reports. Yet many highly respectable and distinguished scientists have done exactly that and found that the UN-promoted manmade climate change theory is seriously flawed. Are you aware that almost 2,000 of the world’s leading climate scientists and professionals in over 30 countries have signed a declaration that there is no climate emergency and have refuted the United Nations claims in relation to man-made climate change? See https://clintel.org/world-climate-declaration/

2. I have also signed this declaration. How can I make such an assertion? I have experience in the field as a former scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, UK Government; and as former staff member at United Nations Environment, where I was responsible for servicing the Pollution Release and Transfer Register Protocol, a Multinational Environmental Agreement, involving the monitoring of pollutants to land, air, and water worldwide. Real pollution exists, but the problem is not CO2. Industrial globalisation has produced many substances that are registered as pollutants, including thousands of new man-made chemical compounds, toxins, nano-particles and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that are in violation of the scientific pre-cautionary principle.

A book I published also provides ample evidence and testimony from renowned scientists that there is no ‘CO2-induced’ Climate emergency. The book titled ‘Climate CO2 Hoax – How Bankers Hijacked the Environment Movement’ is available on Amazon here

Purchase here

3. Next, I will mention the Irish Climate Science Forum (ICSF) website, a valuable resource founded by Jim O’Brien. I am grateful to the ICSF for their excellent work in highlighting the scientific flaws in the UN climate narrative. The ICSF provides a comprehensive lecture series from renowned international scientists providing much evidence, analysis, and data that contradicts the UN assertions. The lectures are available at: https://www.icsf.ie/lecture-series

The ICSF scientific view coincides with those of the Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) foundation that operates in the fields of climate change and climate policy. CLINTEL was founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok. Based on this common conviction, 20 Irish scientists and several ICSF members have co-signed the CLINTEL World Climate Declaration “There is No Climate Emergency” (see https://clintel.org/ireland/).

4. The reality is that the climate has always been changing, the climate changes naturally and slowly in its own cycle, and CO2 emissions (and methane from livestock, such as cows) are not dominant factors in climate change. In essence, therefore, the incessant UN, government, and corporate-media-produced climate hysteria in relation to CO2 emissions (and also methane from cows) has no scientific basis. It appears to me the UN narrative is yet another example of fake science being used to drive an ulterior agenda, see also the book Godless Fake Science.

In truth I am against ‘real’ pollution, and the reality is that the CO2 component is not a pollutant. Unfortunately, many misinformed environmentalists are driving around in electric cars, the battery production for which has caused vast amounts of ‘real’ pollution via the industrial mining and processing of rare earth metals, and the consequent pollution to land, air and water systems. See also this article. Note that the UN does not focus on the thousands of real pollutants that corporate industrial globalisation creates.

5. The conclusions of the Climate Intelligence foundation include the following

There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm.

Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming: The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.

Warming is far slower than predicted: The world has warmed significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing. The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.

Climate policy relies on inadequate models: Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as global policy tools. They blow up the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2. In addition, they ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.

CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth: CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.

Global warming has not increased natural disasters: There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent.

It also appears to me that various catastrophes attributed to “CO2-induced climate change” are nothing of the sort. I note the following articles:

Carbon Is Not the Enemy. End Chemtrails!

Problem. Reaction. Solution. Wildfires About More than CO2 Induced Climate Change?

They’re burning from the inside out.” Robert Brame on the Unusual Properties of the Pacific Palisades Fires

6. In the above book I reference the relevant work and scientific presentations of some of the world’s leading climate scientists. Let us examine some of the work and testimonies of these scientists:

“deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that Co2 from human industry was a dangerous plant destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that Co2 the life of plants was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.” – Professor Richard Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT.

Dr Nils-Axel Mörner was a former Committee Chairman at the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He was an expert involved in reviewing the first IPPC documents. He says the UN IPPC is misleading humanity about climate change.  He tried to warn that the IPPC were publishing lies and false information that would inevitably be discredited. In an interview, he stated: “This is the most dangerous and frightening part of it. How a lobbyist group, such as the IPPC, has been able to fool the whole world. These organised and deceitful forces are dangerous” and expressed shock “that the UN and governments would parade children around the place at UN Climate summits as propaganda props”. He states:

“solar activity is the dominant factor in climate and not Co2… something is basically sick in the blame Co2 hypothesis…  It was launched more than 100 years ago and almost immediately excellent physicists demonstrated that the hypothesis did not work.

I was the chairman of the only international committee on sea levels changes and as such a person I was elected to be the expert reviewer on the (UN IPPC) sea levels chapter. It was written by 38 persons and not a single one was a sea level specialist… I was shocked by the low quality it was like a student paper… I went through it and showed them that it was wrong and wrong and wrong…The scientific truth is on the side of the sceptics… I have thousands of high ranked scientists all over the world who agree that NO, CO2 is not the driving mechanism and that everything is exaggerated.

In the field of physics 80 to 90% of physicists know that the Co2 hypothesis is wrong… Of course, metrologists they believe in this because that is their own profession – they live on it.… I suspect that behind-the-scenes promoters… have an ulterior motive… It’s a wonderful way of controlling taxation controlling people” – Dr Nils-Axel Mörner, a former Committee Chairman at the UN IPPC, and former head of the Paleo Geo-physics and Geo-dynamics department in Stockholm

Another climate scientist with impeccable credentials that has broken rank is Dr Mototaka Nakamura. He asserts:  “Our models are mickey-mouse mockeries of the real world”. Dr Nakamura received a Doctorate of Science from MIT, and for nearly 25 years specialized in abnormal weather and climate change at prestigious institutions that included MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, JAMSTEC and Duke University. Dr Nakamura explains why the data foundation underpinning global warming science is “untrustworthy” and cannot be relied on and that: “Global mean temperatures before 1980 are based on untrustworthy data”.

Professor John R. Christy, Director of Atmospheric and Earth Sciences, University of Alabama, has provided detailed analysis of climate data. I summarise the main points from his analysis below:

“The established global warming theory significantly misrepresents the impact of extra greenhouse gases; the weather that affects people the most is not becoming more extreme or more dangerous; temperatures were higher in the 1930s than today; between 1895 and 2015, 14 of the top 15 years with the highest heat records occurred before 1960; the temperatures we are experiencing now in 2021 were the same as 120 years ago…

the number of major tornadoes between 1954 and 1986 averaged 56/year, but between 1987 and 2020 the average was only 34/year; between 1895 and 2015 on average there has been no change in the number of very wet days per month, and no change in the number of very dry days per month, and the 20 driest months were before 1988. Between 1950 and 2019 the percentage of land area experiencing droughts has not increased globally – the trend is flat; the incidence of wildfires in North America between 1600 and 2000 has decreased substantially. Sea levels rose 12.5 cm per decade for 8,000 years and then it levelled off, now it rising only 2.5 cm per decade… worrying about 30 cm rise in sea level in a decade is ridiculous, in a hurricane the east coast of the U.S. gets a 20 foot rise in 6 hours, so a 30 cm rise will be easily handled!”

In a lecture titled The imaginary climate crisis – how can we change the message? Available on the Irish Climate Science Forum website, see Endnote [ii]. Richard L Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT summarises the battle against the climate hysteria as follows:

“in the long history of the earth there has been almost no correlation between climate and co2… the paleoclimate record shows unambiguously that Co2 is not a control knob… the narrative is absurd…  it gives governments the power to control the energy sector… for about 33 years, many of us have been battling against the climate hysteria… There were more important leading people who were objecting to it, they were unfortunately older and by now most of them dead…

Elites are always searching for ways to advertise their virtue and assert their authority. They believe they are entitled to view science as a source of authority rather than a process, and they try to appropriate science, suitably and incorrectly simplified, as the basis for their movement.”

“CO2…  it’s not a pollutant… it’s the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis…  if you ever wanted a leverage point to control everything from exhalation to driving, this would be a dream. So it has a kind of fundamental attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality.” – Prof. Richard Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, and President of Greenpeace in Canada for seven years, states:

“the whole climate crisis is not only fake news its fake science… of course climate change is real it’s been happening since the beginning of time, but it’s not dangerous and it’s not caused by people… climate change is a perfectly natural phenomenon and this modern warming period actually began about 300 years ago when the little ice age began to come to an end. There is nothing to be afraid of and all they are doing is instilling fear. Most of the scientists who are saying it’s a crisis are on perpetual government grants.

I was one of the (Greenpeace) founders… by the mid-80s… we were hijacked by the extreme left who basically took Greenpeace from a science-based organisation to an organisation based on sensationalism, misinformation and fear… you don’t have a plan to feed 8 billion people without fossils fuels or get the food into the cities…” – Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace

Professor William Happer, Princeton University, Former Director of Science at the US Department of Energy, is also a strong voice against the myth of man-made global warming. He states: “More CO2 benefits the Earth”.

7. The UN IPCC cherry picks data, uses flawed modelling and scenarios not remotely related to the real world

The UN climate crisis predictions are not based on physical evidence, rather they are based on complex computer modelling. One has to decode and analyse the modelling process to ascertain whether or not the models are valid and accurate or whether they have obvious flaws. The vast majority of scientists, economists, politicians and the general public have simply assumed that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models are accurate. Very few people have the time or skills to analyse these models, not to mention actually dispute them. Nonetheless, there were many senior and highly distinguished scientists that did exactly that – they claimed the UN narrative was incorrect and that there was no climate emergency. Their voices have been drowned out by a vast money-driven political and media establishment of the globalised ‘system’. The vitally important work of some of these renowned scientists is referenced in the above book.

“The computer models are making systematic dramatic errors… they are all parametrised… fudged…  the models really don’t work” – Patrick J. Michaels, Director, Cato Institute Center for the Study of Science

Dr Roger Pielke Jr, University of Colorado, has conducted a detailed scientific review and analysis of the UN IPCC AR6 report, see Endnote [iii].  He describes that in relation to climate modelling, the IPCC detached the models from socio-economic plausibility. In creating the models, instead of first completing integrative assessment models (IAMs), the IPCC skipped this essential step and jumped straight to radiative forcing scenarios and thus these scenarios are not based on competed IAMs. This led much of climate modelling down the wrong track. I quote points from Dr Pielke’s analysis as follows:

“The four IPCC scenarios came from a large family of models so instead of splitting modelling from socio-economic assumptions the models already had the assumptions faked and baked in to them, because they had to have those assumptions to produce the required radiative forcing (to produce a desired climate ‘crisis scenario’ outcome).

In another fateful decision the 4 representative concentration pathways (RCPs) came from 4 different IAMs, which was a huge mistake.  These models are completely unrelated to each other, but the impression has been given that they are of a common set, only differing in their radiative forcing, this was a huge mistake. Furthermore, no-one has responsibility for determining whether these scenarios are plausible. The climate community decided which scenario to prioritise and they chose the two most implausible scenarios! There are thousands of climate assumptions, but only 8 to 12 of them are available currently for climate research. The IPCC report even states that “no likelihood is attached to the scenarios in this report”. The likelihood is considered low they admit – This is an incredible admission by the IPCC.

These extreme unlikely scenarios dominate the literature and the IPCC report; therefore, the IPCC report is biased. Bottom line is that there is massive confusion. The IPCCs’ Richard Moss warned that RCP 8.5 was not to be used as a reference for the other RCPs, but 5,800 scientific papers worldwide misuse it like that… The whole process is seriously flawed… Nothing close to the real world is represented by the IPCC scenarios. Climate science has a huge problem! The IPCC currently uses RCP 8.5 as the ‘business as usual’ scenario, but RCP 8.5 is wild fantasy land and not remotely related to current reality at all… climate science has a scientific integrity crisis.” – Dr Roger Pielke Jr, University of Colorado

8. Financialization of the entire world economy is now based on a life-killing ‘net-zero’ greenhouse gas emissions strategy.

The UN Agenda 2030 plan and the Paris Agreement goal to reduce CO2 emissions by 7% per annum until 2030 is in effect a plan that would seemingly disable the current fossil-fuel-based mechanisms of the industrial economy for the food, energy and goods that enable human life and survival. Yet the narrative is quite hypocritical as the production of green energy infrastructure, and mining of rare earth metals for batteries for electric vehicles, is, and will most likely continue to be, very fossil-fuel intensive. Globalisation resulted in much of humanity becoming largely dependent on the trans-national industrial economy rather than on traditional more self-sufficient local/regional economies. Therefore, one has to ask where is this all going to lead if the plug is truly pulled on fossil fuels? Almost all of us are seemingly locked into, and have become dependent upon, the current economic paradigm of globalisation. A system rigged by debt-money created from nothing; created and controlled by private mega-banks and behind the scenes money-masters; and which can induce boom, bust, bailout scenarios that detrimentally effect the populace.

It should be noted that for decades, these same political, government, and corporate powers have rampantly promoted corporate economic globalization and fossil fuel dependency. Whilst, at the same time actively hindering the funding, creation, or government support of, more self-sufficient local communities/regions, and local co-operatives. Most of the world population thus became reliant on the globalized fossil-fuel driven system. I explore this topic in the books Demonic Economics and the Tricks of the Bankers and Transcending the Climate Change Deception Toward Real Sustainability

Purchase here

Zero carbon emissions, in essence, means pulling the plug on current systems of industrial agriculture, transport, goods production, electricity production, etc. This could have terrible consequences, particularly in locations and countries, that are currently unable to produce much food. In Ireland, the deluded greens in government had planned to close the coal-fired power station Moneypoint, in the name of reducing CO2 emissions. However, as the price of electricity increased and the dawn of so-called ‘green energy’ began to evaporate like the Irish morning mist, the government scrapped this plan in 2022, instead deciding to convert the station to an oil-burning facility. The Irish Times newspaper reported:

“With growing concerns over security of the energy supply in the State, the Government is not in a position to decommission Moneypoint as a fuel-burning station in the near future. It was confirmed by the Irish Government in 2022 that Moneypoint will convert to oil generation from 2023.” 

The so-called ‘green economy’ (for it is not environmentally friendly in reality) and UN Agenda 2030 are resulting in increased energy poverty and decreased energy independence for the masses, while also developing trillions of dollars for the behind-the-scenes mega-banks. “Stop burning coal and wood logs that causes climate change don’t ya know” my deluded neighbour informed me last year, having threw out her wood burning stove and installed solar panels. Then a typical winter storm in Ireland last month left many thousands of people without electricity or heating for almost a week, shivering and wishing for a wood burning stove, while their solar panels produced little electricity in winter.

9. Central bankers are entirely funding / controlling the advancement of the worldwide climate change ‘project’

The decision to drastically reduce CO2, one of the most essential compounds to sustain all life, is no co-incidence. It should be noted that it is the world’s central bankers that are behind this decision and are entirely funding and controlling the advancement of the worldwide project of ‘combatting man-made climate-change’.

This project involves an attempt to de-carbonise the activities of the entire world population. In December 2015, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) created the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), which represents $118 trillion of assets globally. In essence this means that the financialization of the entire world economy is based on meeting nonsensical aims such as “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”. The TCFD includes key people from the world’s mega-banks and asset management companies, including JP Morgan Chase; BlackRock; Barclays Bank; HSBC; China’s ICBC bank; Tata Steel, ENI oil, Dow Chemical, and more.

The fact that the world’s largest banks and asset management corporations, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, the UN, the World Bank, the Bank of England and other central banks of the BIS, have all linked to push a vague, mathematically nonsensical ‘green’ economy, is no coincidence. There is another agenda at play that has nothing to do with environmentalism. When the world largest banks, corporations, and institutions, all align to push a climate change agenda that has zero evidence, one can see there is another major agenda going on behind the scenes. This agenda tries to convince the common people of the world to make huge sacrifices under the emotive guise of “saving our planet.”. While all the time the corporations and banks make vast profits, and political institutions implement worldwide technocratic control systems under the banner of combatting, and adapting to, so-called man-made climate change.

“The links between the world’s largest financial groups, central banks and global corporations to the current push for a radical climate strategy to abandon the fossil fuel economy in favor of a vague, unexplained Green economy, it seems, is less about genuine concern to make our planet a clean and healthy environment to live. Rather it is an agenda, intimately tied to the UN Agenda 2030 for “sustainable” economy, and to developing literally trillions of dollars in new wealth for the global banks and financial giants who constitute the real powers that be… “ – F. William Engdahl, strategic risk consultant and lecturer

Back in 2010, the head of Working Group 3 of the UN IPCC, Dr Otmar Edenhofer, told an interviewer, “…one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”

To better perceive what is ‘behind the curtain’ of the climate hoax and the UN/WEF agenda it also helps to examine what has happened in the decades beforehand. It is important to perceive the implications of the worldwide fractional-reserve debt-money banking scam and the subtle system of debt-slavery that has existed for decades.  If you look at the World Bank website you will see that virtually every nation on Earth is in vast debt. In debt to who you may ask? The answer is to privately owned mega-banks. See also the book Demonic Economics and the Tricks of the Bankers.

Purchase here

For many decades the so-called banking and corporate elites have had full control of the source of money creation and its allocation, via the debt-money system, and have therefore, by default, been able to fund, and increasingly control and manipulate the entire world spectrum of industry, media, government, education, ideological supremacy and war to their own design, agenda and benefit. Mayer Amschel Rothschild (banker) is widely reported to have said:

 “Give me control of a nation’s money supply and I care not who makes its laws.”

10. Central bankers hijacked the real environmental movement in 1992 creating the fake climate change agenda

Psychopaths can utilise any ideology and, change it from within to something that may eventually be entirely different to its original purpose.  Meanwhile, the original followers and advocates continue to pursue what they believe is the original ideology, but gradually become mere pawns in the agenda of a self-serving elite. Unfortunately, over the past decades, this is exactly what has happened in the environmental movement.

Whistleblower George Hunt served as an official host at a key environmental meeting in Denver, Colorado in 1987, and states that David Rockefeller; Baron Edmund De Rothschild; US Secretary of State Baker; Maurice Strong, a UN official and an employee of the Rockefeller and Rothschild trusts; EPA administrator William Ruccleshaus; UN Secretary General in Geneva MacNeill, along with World Bank and IMF officials were at this meeting. Hunt was surprised to see all these rich elite bankers at the meeting and questioned what they were doing there at an environmental congress.

In a video recording available here Hunt later provided important evidence from the documents of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3-14 June 1992. This conference was the well-known UN ’92 Earth Summit and was run by UNCED. According to Hunt, via the Earth summit, the UN was setting a net, an agenda, to place the power over the Earth and its peoples into their own hands. The world private banking cartel are the same ultra-rich banking families that had been instrumental in the setting up of the World Bank, the UN, and other international institutions, after WW2. Their political cohorts included Stalin (the leader of a brutal communist regime in the USSR that committed genocide of millions of people), UK Prime minister Churchill, and US President Roosevelt. Hunt refers to these banking families and their financial and international institutional networks as:

“The same world order that tricked third world countries to borrow funds and rack up enormous debts… and purposely creating war and debt to bring societies into their control. The world order crowd are not a nice group of people…”– George Hunt, Whistleblower speaking about the UN Earth summit of 1992

As a consequence of the UN Earth Summit, it appears the genuine environment movement that actually cared about real pollution to land, air and water, was politically hi-jacked by powerful political and financial interests with a different agenda. Maurice Strong, a UN official and an employee of the Rockefeller and Rothschild trusts, had convened the first UNCED congress in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972. Then, 20 years later he was the convenor and secretary general of UNCED. Hunt also provided video evidence from the Fourth UNCED World Congress meeting in 1987 of an international investment banker, stating that:

“I suggest therefore that this be sold not through a democratic process that would take too long and require far too much funds to educate the cannon-fodder, unfortunately, which populates the Earth. We have to take almost an elitist program…”

Thus, the decrees leading to the 1992 UN Earth summit were dictated without debate or opportunity for dissent and would supersede national laws. According to Hunt, the decrees were dictated into existence by the banker Edmund de Rothschild, who got these major decrees into the ’92 UN resolutions without debate or challenge. Hunt asserts that he was denied the opportunity to openly challenge Rothschild’s remarks by the meeting Chairman; and that the Rothschild bank of Geneva is the nucleus of the World Conservation bank and the wealthy elite are integrated into the bank via the Rothschilds private offering of shares.

11. Despite the deceptive and fake environmental facade, it has adopted, the vast institutional entity of the UN has fully endorsed environmentally destructive industrial globalisation for the past 70 years.

The UN climate change, sustainable development and green economy policies over the past 30 years are little more than worldwide marketing tricks that have tragically brainwashed two generations of young people who do not understand what the UN actually is, and who is it is really designed to serve.

This current globalised system involves the promotion of beliefs and fake science that claim to be unchallengeable truths, but are, in fact, ideologies in which evidence is manipulated, twisted, and distorted to prove the ‘governing idea’, and thus promote its worldwide dissemination. They start with the conclusion they want and then wrench and manipulate what scant evidence they can to fit that conclusion. Man-made climate change due to anthropogenic carbon emission is a major example of this.

Institutions, including the UN, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the World Health Organisation (WHO), are privately-motivated unelected unaccountable organisations controlled by the source of debt-money creation, i.e., the world private-banking cartel; and are just clever marketing tools and political mechanisms for implementing and maintaining a corrupt worldwide system, under the clever guise of ‘fixing the problems of the world’. 

These powerful special interests have been promoting certain ‘ideologies’ for decades to advance their corporate and political aims. The word “sustainable” was hijacked decades ago, and it is now deceptively used to advance the agendas of globalist mega-corporate interests who couldn’t care less about the environment. The aim is to catapult humanity into the arms of UN Agenda 2030 and the WEF ‘reset’ plan, which are clever marketing plans entirely designed by the so-called elite mega-corporate interests of the WEF Davos group.

12. Furthermore, the current green energy/renewable technologies being promoted by the UN and WEF, are not a viable solution for the world’s energy supply. Although these technologies have some limited viability in certain locations and scenarios, the fact remains that the Energy Returned on Energy Invested is much too low – in essence the entire process is mathematically flawed. This is evidenced by the work of scientists, including Professor David MacKay (1967 – 2016), former Regius Professor of Engineering at Cambridge University, and former Chief Scientific Advisor at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Summary

In summary, CO2 reduction is the main focus of the UN-promoted climate-change-hysteria that has been rampant among the world’s population. However, the proclaimed climate crisis exists in computer models only.  The cult of ‘manmade climate change’ is a media and UN politically-promoted ‘ideology’, that is used for a wider political and corporate agenda. Manmade climate change is not based in fact, and has hijacked real environmental concerns.

Due to incessant UN, government, and corporate-promoted climate change propaganda, many people are, thus, in a media-induced state of confusion, and, thus, blindly assume their pre-determined role in society under this ‘dictatorship of words’ without even being aware of it. The unpalatable reality is that people’s access to energy and resources is being intentionally reduced via bogus climate change policies, inflation, ongoing geo-political theatre and intentionally instigated war.

We cannot understand how to create a truly resilient society unless we correctly perceive the current society we live in and how it came to exist. Unless we recognize the untruths of the current paradigm, even if it is not ‘politically correct’ to do so, then we will not be able to make the correct adjustments to our communities and local/regional networks, or create a truly resilient thriving society. In this spirit of truth, new networks are emerging worldwide.      

Each year, our editorial team at Visual Capitalist sifts through hundreds of reports and articles to put together our Prediction Consensus, an aggregation of everything that experts predict for the year ahead.

Almost halfway through 2025 now, it’s time to see how these predictions are holding up. From Trump’s friendships and feuds to geopolitical uncertainty and market volatility, many expert predictions have already come true.

Along with the update of our Prediction Consensus bingo card above, this article dives into the most notable developments with visuals breaking them down.

Presidential Predictions and D.O.G.E. Cuts

While Trump has been fairly unpredictable during the first six months of his presidential term, many experts read him right when it came to his relationship with Elon Musk and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.

Even without any significant economic problems in the U.S., the president has been relentless in his demands for Powell to cut rates, already giving him the nickname of “Too Late” Jerome Powell.

Rather than blaming Powell for an economic downturn which hasn’t manifested yet, the focus has been on the interest payments of U.S. short-term debt, which would indeed fall if rates were cut.

These cuts are even more needed for the budget considering D.O.G.E.’s inability to cut spending, along with the lack of spending restraint in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which is estimated to add $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit between 2025 and 2034.

Looking at Elon Musk’s goals for D.O.G.E.’s spending cuts, we can see just how little the organization managed to cut in comparison to the projected 2025 fiscal year spending of $7 trillion.

D.O.G.E.’s inability to make headway in cutting spending, along with Tesla suffering from Musk’s political involvement, led to Musk departing from the administration on May 30th.

Just a few days later, Musk posted on X his dissatisfaction with Trump’s bill, calling it a “disgusting abomination”, and following up with posts alleging Trump’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. Trump’s retaliation came in the form of threats of revoking federal contracts and calling Musk mentally unstable.

However, by the following week, Musk had apologized and expressed regret for his statements, with Trump ultimately saying he had “no hard feelings” about the matter.

Europe Shines Brighter Than the “Not so Magnificent Seven”

When it comes to the markets, while experts predicted European equities’ returns to improve, they probably didn’t expect to see them outperform quite this much as quickly as they did.

In the first two months of 2025 alone, Germany’s DAX 40 index rose 13.2%, Italy’s Milano Italia Borsa by 12.5%, and the UK’s FTSE 100 by 7.8%.

Europe’s equity indices have been among the best performing of 2025 so far, greatly outpacing both U.S. large cap and small cap indices.

Amidst U.S. equity underperformance has been the mixed returns of the Magnificent Seven stocks, with significant divergences across the seven tech companies.

Apple and Tesla have suffered the most in 2025 so far. Musk’s political involvement has only hurt Tesla’s brand with non-Republicans and those outside of America, meanwhile, tariffs along with a late and poorly executed AI rollout have dragged on Apple’s returns.

For Alphabet, Google’s large capital expenditures on AI infrastructure are being seen as a drag on free cash flow which may not pay off. This hit to margins is coupled with revenue concerns from declining search usage due to ChatGPT’s rising popularity and the lack of a clear monetization plan for Gemini and Google’s other AI features.

If we look at Nvidia’s yearly returns since 2019 in the chart below, we can see that keeping up with the stellar triple-digit returns of 2023 and 2024 was a near impossible task for 2025.

While Nvidia’s growth has normalized from the breakneck pace of prior years, the company retains dominant market share when it comes to chip design. Along with this, the emergence of AI reasoning models and the development of agents have only increased the forecasts of token throughput and compute required.

This article is an excerpt from the latest VC+ Special Dispatch. Join VC+ to access the full version, packed with more expert predictions and exclusive visuals. And for a limited time, get VC+ for life with a one-time payment. Hurry—offer ends in a few days.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

The Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into the University of California (UC) system to determine whether its efforts to boost faculty diversity run afoul of federal anti-discrimination laws.

In a June 26 announcement, the Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that it is probing whether the university’s “UC 2030 Capacity Plan” and related campus-level programs constitute a pattern or practice of unlawful employment discrimination based on race and sex, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“Public employers are bound by federal laws that prohibit racial and other employment discrimination,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who leads the department’s Civil Rights Division. “Institutional directives that use race- and sex-based hiring practices expose employers to legal risk under federal law.”

According to the Justice Department, the UC system’s strategic hiring plan explicitly encourages campuses to measure and increase the number of new hires by race and sex to meet internal diversity targets. Officials described the framework as potentially unlawful, citing provisions in the plan that direct campuses to recruit “diverse” faculty in line with demographic benchmarks.

The UC 2030 Capacity Plan outlines several such goals, including the recruitment of at least 40 percent of its graduate students from its own undergraduate programs and from other minority-serving institutions, including Hispanic-serving institutions, historically black colleges and universities, and tribal colleges and universities. The plan also outlines a goal to hire more than 1,100 new ladder-rank faculty members by 2030—an effort the university says will help diversify its academic workforce, noting that new hires tend to be more diverse than the existing faculty.

“Identity-based hiring is not only wrong—it is illegal,” Dhillon wrote in a post on social media. “Public employers ignore our civil rights laws at their peril.”

A request for comment sent to the University of California by The Epoch Times was not immediately returned.

A university spokesperson told The Hill that the university “is committed to fair and lawful processes in all of our programs and activities, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws.”

“The University also aims to foster a campus environment where everyone is welcomed and supported. We will work in good faith with the Department of Justice as it conducts its investigation,” the spokesperson said.

The probe marks the latest in a series of moves by the federal government targeting higher education policies seen as promoting identity-based ideologies and practices. On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump issued executive orders prohibiting federal funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, saying such programs violate anti-discrimination laws and undermine “national unity” and “traditional American values.”

“These illegal … policies also threaten the safety of American men, women, and children across the Nation by diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination when selecting people for jobs and services in key sectors of American society,” Trump said in a Jan. 21 executive order titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”

In recent years, a number of U.S. colleges have adopted DEI frameworks. A 2023 report by The Heritage Foundation found that 81 percent of surveyed community colleges had some form of DEI infrastructure, such as mission statements, staff, or task forces. At institutions with more than 10,000 students, that figure climbed to 96 percent. The larger the school, the more likely it was to institutionalize DEI.

Since Trump resumed office and began enforcing restrictions on race and identity-based funding, a number of colleges and universities have begun scaling back or dismantling their diversity programs to maintain eligibility for federal support.

Authored by Gary Abernathy via The Empowerment Alliance,

A few short months ago, much of the world seemed doomed to a bleak energy future, with unreliable, taxpayer-subsidized “renewables” being foisted upon homes and businesses by governments kneeling at the altar of the climate cult. The result was nation after nation winning plaudits from the extreme environmental movement, but increasingly incapable of meeting the energy demands of the 21st Century.

Thanks to U.S. voters in the 2024 elections, the world’s leading superpower has reversed course – and where America leads, the world tends to follow. Today, there’s renewed optimism that our energy resources will meet future demands – particularly as it relates to natural gas, the most affordable, reliable and clean choice among traditional energy sources.

In some cases, the turnaround is in the form of projects producing more gas for domestic use. But even when U.S. projects transport gas to other countries, the new infrastructure, additional jobs and an expanded tax base combine to benefit states and local communities.

In addition to the new gas pipelines from Pennsylvania to New York previously highlighted in this space – along with a growing list of other projects – three recently announced developments highlight the resurgence of natural gas.

1. Alaska LNG project. Once considered a lost opportunity, there is renewed interest in a project on Alaska’s North Slope “that would deliver vast amounts of natural gas … in an 800-mile pipeline, super-chill it in Southcentral Alaska, and transport the liquefied natural gas overseas to countries like Japan, Korea and Taiwan,” according to the Anchorage Daily News.

Some reports have suggested that President Trump’s tariff threats played a part in getting Asia’s attention. Whatever the case, delegations from those countries trekked to Alaska in early June “expressing interest in the project and also seeking to learn more about it. A Taiwanese official even said Alaska LNG could one day become that country’s primary source of energy, if the project is built,” the Daily News reported.

While there remain skeptics due to the project’s cost, others are optimistic. State Rep. Chuck Kopp (R) said the interest from Asian representatives and other favorable developments “give him confidence that it will be built starting in the next two or three years.”

In addition to supplying foreign countries, the project would also provide more natural gas within Alaska’s borders, available to Fairbanks by 2028 or 2029, according to the report.

2. Louisiana LNG project. A $28 billion LNG export project recently broke ground in Louisiana, slated to bring jobs and an expanded local tax base.

“Upon completion, Venture Global expects to become the largest LNG exporter in the United States and the second largest in the world,” according to the trade news site Offshore Energy. “Recently, CP2 received final approval and notices to proceed from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).”

In addition to providing U.S. natural gas to customers around the world, the project is expected to mean more than $4 billion in local property taxes during its operation and support 3,000 jobs in the state, including 400 direct, permanent employees.

The project’s impact will reach far beyond Louisiana’s borders, with roughly 7,500 direct construction jobs and “tens of thousands of indirect subcontractor, part-time, and full-time jobs in over 30 states,” according to the report.

3. Texas data center gas power plants. Texas is ground zero for many of the crucial new AI data centers springing up to meet demand. Previously, it was assumed that these server farms would be powered by wind or solar, meaning long wait times before the centers could go online. But thanks to government policies friendlier to proven traditional resources, those plans are changing.

Across Texas “a frantic race to boot up energy-hungry data centers has led many developers to plan their own gas-fired power plants rather than wait for connection to the state’s public grid. Egged on by supportive government policies, this buildout promises to lock in strong gas demand for a generation to come,” according to The Texas Tribune.

“Operating alone, a wind or solar farm can’t run a data center,” the article noted. “Battery technologies still can’t store such large amounts of energy for the length of time required to provide steady, uninterrupted power for 24 hours per day as data centers require.”

Facing a “tidal wave” of new AI projects, companies are increasingly partnering with natural gas companies to “fuel the new era of demand.”

The Tribune story includes standard-issue climate cult handwringing. But it drives home the reality that “the yearslong wait times for turbines has quickly become the (AI) industry’s largest constraint in an otherwise positive outlook,” and quotes one energy economy expert as saying, “If you’re looking at a five-year lead time, that’s not going to help Alexa or Siri today.”

Thanks to radical policies of the recent past, the U.S. and much of the world seemed hell-bent on phasing out natural gas and other reliable energy sources, racing instead toward endless cycles of brownouts, blackouts, and complete grid failures brought on by the inadequacies of “alternatives.”

In the nick of time, thanks to President Trump and other forward-thinking leaders, the turnaround has begun – and natural gas is leading the way.

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Empowerment Alliance.

A local journalist at Fox Baltimore is starting to dive into the same rabbit hole we’ve explored for years—tracing the dark money networks funneling cash into left-wing nonprofits tied to the Democratic Party machine. Whether it’s funding anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles or quietly backing political campaigns, the funding network is vast, coordinated, and often concealed behind leftist law firms that create a web of pop-up nonprofit organizations.

Gary Collins of Fox Baltimore and the Baltimore Sun recently flagged a mysterious multi-week propaganda blitz—radio ads flooding the airwaves across the Baltimore metro area with praise for far-left Gov. Wes Moore’s supposedly ‘stellar’ economy. Collins noted that the campaign is now expanding to television.

The commercial, funded by America Works USA—a dark money-funded nonprofit affiliated with the Democratic Governors Association (DGA)—promotes Moore’s potentially misleading claims of economic growth, job creation, and a budget surplus. 

Even Democrats in the state dispute these claims. Ed Hale, a Democrat and former banker who founded the defunct 1st Mariner Bank, called the entire ad misleading, citing Maryland’s first credit downgrade in half a century and other economic setbacks.

Republican Senate Minority Whip Justin Ready labeled the ad a major economic distortion funded by a DGA-aligned group using dark money. 

“I think it’s fear that they’ve touched the third rail, they passed and signed the largest tax increase in the history of the state of Maryland,” Ready said, adding, “Whether you’re a middle-class family, whether you’re wealthy, or whether you’re poor, you’re paying more under Wes Moore.” 

According to public records, America Works is just one spoke in the Democratic Party’s massive network of affiliated NGOs waging an informational war on the American people. 

The timing of the ad is no coincidence—it comes as the governor faces growing backlash over his mismanagement of the state. From Maryland’s deteriorating credit rating and ballooning budget deficit to sweeping tax hikes, a hiring freeze for state workers, violent crime, and a power bill crisis in the sanctuary state overwhelmed by illegal aliens, the headlines have been anything but flattering.

The ads may be part of the Democratic Party’s effort to counter growing negative sentiment through propaganda warfare—or an information war targeting Marylanders’ minds – think of it as an informational matrix. The goal is simple: flood the airwaves with narrative-shaping content to drown out dissent. That’s how the political game is played.

Here’s Gary Collins’ full report: 

. . . 

Submitted by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner of WirePoints

A review of U.S. Census population data since 2020, including fresh 2024 data released this week, reveals a perfect demographic storm that’s likely to worsen Illinois’ downward spiral. 

Illinois has experienced from 2020 to 2024 the nation’s worst collapse in youth aged 18 and under; the 6th-worst drop in working age residents; and a jump in the elderly’s share of population. All three in combination foreshadow a vicious cycle of higher taxes and taxpayer flight, leading to even higher taxes and more population decline.

The demographic challenges above are piling up on top of a slew of other damaging population data released recently. 

Illinois’ population loss of nearly 110,000 since 2020 is the nation’s 3rd worst. Only a spike in illegal immigration the last two years has been able to temporarily slow the state’s population decline. And the state has been chasing out its wealthy residents in exchange for incomers who make far less.

The overall population results of the last four years show why Illinois needs an absolute flip of its politics and policy. 

Here’s what the latest demographic data shows for Illinois:

Nation’s worst drop in number of residents age 18 and under. Illinois had 184,000 fewer residents aged 18 and under in 2024 vs 2020. That’s a 6% drop, the biggest percentage loss in the country. 

To be sure, much of Illinois’ decline can be attributed to the national trend of declining births. In all, just 11 states increased their youth population over the same period. But having the worst decline shows Illinois is in special trouble. Every one of Illinois’ neighbors had a far smaller decline than we did.

Florida, in contrast, had its age 18 and under population grow by 5.5%, or nearly 250,000, over the same period.

Nation’s 6th-worst drop in working-age residents. Illinois needs a massive growth in its tax base to change its current trajectory from ever-higher taxes to actual tax relief. Not to mention it needs more productive workers to spread out the cost of its nation’s-highest pension debt.

Unfortunately, over the last four years Illinois lost 146,000 18-64 working age residents. That’s a decline of 2%, the 6th-worst change in the country.

Texas and Florida show the power of attracting workers from other states to drive their economies. In just four years Florida added 950,000 working-age residents and Texas, 1.3 million.

Seniors growing as a share of population. Compounding the demographic problems mentioned above is a significant 225,000 increase in Illinois’ number of senior citizens.  With the young and working-age brackets in decline, seniors now make up 18% of the population, up from 16% four years before. As a result, the tax base will be under even bigger pressure.

Count on the bad news to keep coming. There’s zero indication that the state’s current leadership plans to reverse course on the policies that have gotten Illinois into this mess.

Appendix.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on June 26 advised the agency to stop recommending influenza vaccines containing a mercury-based preservative.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in a series of votes reaffirmed the existing recommendation that virtually all individuals aged at least 6 months of age receive an annual influenza shot. The panel further advised, though, that individuals only receive thimerosal-free vaccines.

About 95 percent of influenza vaccines administered in the United States in late 2024 and early 2025 were free of thimerosal, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Tracy Hoeg, an FDA official, told the committee that there appear to be enough influenza vaccine doses without thimerosal for the upcoming virus season, which runs from the fall into the winter.

A spokesperson for Sanofi told The Epoch Times in an email: “We acknowledge the recommendation of the new ACIP. We now await the decision by the CDC on the path forward.

“We will have sufficient supply of Sanofi flu vaccine to support customer preference for this season.”

Seqirus, which also produces influenza vaccines with thimerosal, has not responded to requests for comment.

ACIP provides advice to the CDC’s director, who typically adopts the recommendations.

The CDC has no acting director listed on its website. President Donald Trump’s nominee for the post, Susan Monarez, is being considered by the Senate. The CDC and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, did not respond to requests for comment.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier in the year adopted some recommendations offered by ACIP.

Kennedy has long opposed vaccines with thimerosal, and the panel heard before the vote from Lyn Redwood, a past president of a nonprofit that Kennedy founded who is now listed as an employee of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Redwood said in her presentation that a number of studies have provided evidence against thimerosal, including a 2003 paper that found an association between thimerosal exposure and tics and a 2007 study that found links to several positive and several negative associations, including a lower measure of executive functioning.

“There have been studies that have found evidence of harm,” Redwood said.

Thimerosal is about 50 percent mercury by weight. It was used broadly in vaccines for decades before largely being phased out in the 2000s in what federal officials have described as a precautionary measure.

“We do have a risk of repeated exposure to this. So it’s not just a one administration, but potential chronic exposure on an annual basis,” Dr. Robert Malone, one of the CDC’s advisers, said after listening to Redwood’s presentation.

A number of CDC advisers said they supported lowering exposure to mercury, noting that mercury is a known toxin.

“We need to do whatever we can to control the controllable sources of exposure,” Retsef Levi, another panelist, said.

Dr. Cody Meissner, a pediatrician who was just reappointed to the committee, strongly opposed the move.

“ACIP makes recommendations based on scientific evidence as much as possible,” he said. “And there is no scientific evidence that thimerosal has caused a problem.”

Some representatives of health groups serving as liaisons to the committee, including Dr. Matthew Zahn with the National Association of County and City Health Officials, told the panel before the vote that they think thimerosal-containing vaccines are safe.

The CDC said in an unsigned document posted online on June 24 that “evidence does not support an association between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism spectrum disorder or other neurodevelopmental disorders.” Staffers said that the papers that have found an increased risk of neurodevelopment disorders and autism from thimerosal-containing vaccines ”have significant methodological limitations including unmeasured confounding, inaccurate assessment of exposures, differences in control and case groups, unverified diagnoses, and other potential biases that threaten the validity and reliability of the findings.”

The document was taken offline before the meeting.

“This document by the CDC vaccine safety office did not go through the appropriate process to be posted,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services told The Epoch Times in an email.

The spokesperson said the document was provided to all ACIP members, and members said they had reviewed it.

In the first vote, every adviser except for one voted in favor of keeping the existing recommendation that people aged 6 months and older receive an influenza vaccine on an annual basis unless they have a contraindication. The next three votes focused on whether to recommend thimerosal-free vaccines for various populations.

Vicky Pebsworth, one of the members, abstained from all four votes, saying she did not think there had been enough discussion about the topic. Meissner voted no on the thimerosal-free vaccine votes. All other advisers voted yes.

Members said in a joint statement after the meeting: “We came to this meeting with no predetermined ideas and will make judgments as if we are treating our own families. Unbiased scientific thinking is fundamental to the committee’s charge. Our votes are recommendations, but we know that some may perceive them as mandates, so we take this responsibility very seriously. We pledge to not hold a vote if there is not sufficient information to enable evaluation of the risks and benefits.”

Kennedy recently removed all 17 members of ACIP and replaced them with new members.

Kennedy wrote in a lengthy social media post on June 24 that “there are high bolus doses of mercury in flu shots” and that the cumulative impact of the doses in children who receive a shot every year could result in levels much higher than recommended. He also cited multiple papers, including a study that found higher brain-to-blood mercury concentration ratios in monkeys exposed to thimerosal versus a control group.