Papi The Fixer

31/05/2022

The second interesting finding is that the quantity of the power cuts is small relative to the total delivered energy. Over the week 12-19 May 2022, Eskom delivered 4,271 MWh of electricity and cut 70 MWh, which is only about 1.6% of the energy generated, as shown in the image below.

I’m making this point to show that power cuts could get much worse, unless the rebuild programme begins soon. One reason that the power cuts attract high media attention is that consumers bear a disproportionate share of the energy cuts relative to Eskom’s anchor customers.

For instance, under level 4 where power cuts can last for over five hours in a day, lower end users have power for only 67% of the day – meaning 33% of their power supply is cut. But the total energy saving across the whole system is 10%. This suggests that Eskom deliberately preserves supply for its anchor customers – large industrial users and essential services – even during the power cuts.

The final issue is that Eskom could get more capacity from its pumped hydro schemes. These schemes use excess power at night to pump water to high storage dams, from which the water is released during the day to meet the higher demand during daylight hours. During the week 12-19 May, capacity utilisation of pumped hydro was only about 38%.

The chief operating officer of South Africa’s electricity utility, Eskom, warned in May that the government should urgently start building new generating capacity. He was referring to a n…

23/05/2022

Africa’s forests, landscapes, and ecosystems have many contributions to development. They contribute directly to the well-being and food security of poor people. According to the World Bank Forest Action Plan, the impact of forests on poverty is greatest in Africa, with forest-related income lifting 11% of rural households out of extreme poverty. Forests also supply critical raw materials needed to grow the economy, provide habitat to rich flora and fauna, regulate hydrology, and sequester carbon.

However, this rich natural resource, is under extreme pressure and threat due to demand for land for crops, timber, fuel wood, and charcoal. These demands, coupled with weak governance and tenure insecurity, poor management practices and incentives, and forest crime and corruption are depleting Africa’s natural forest assets. Climate change is another key challenge for forests and the people who depend on them. It is a vicious cycle; forest degradation generates greenhouse gases that drive climate change, which exacerbates both droughts and flooding and further stresses fragile ecosystems and poor communities.

REDD+ Ghana: Engaging People in Sustainable Forest Management and Bringing Community Benefits Africa’s forests, landscapes, and ecosystems have many contributions to development. They contribute di…

21/05/2022

What’s really strange is that despite its near-constant incipience, the food shortage never seems to actually arrive and is always blamed on something new.

As long ago as 2012, “scientists” were predicting that climate change and a lack of clean water would create “food shortages” that would “turn the world vegetarian by 2050”.

In 2019, UN “experts” warned that “climate change was threatening the world’s food supply”.

Later the same year, the UK was warned that they could expect a food shortage as a result of “post-Brexit chaos”.

By early March 2020 supermarkets were already “warning” that the government had been too slow to act on the coronavirus outbreak, and they might run out of food. (They never actually did).

A month later, in April 2020 when the “pandemic” was less than three months old, “officials” warned Covid was going to create a global food crisis. Three months later it had ballooned into “the worst food crisis for 50 years”.

In the Summer of 2021 the British press was predicting the “worst food shortages since world war 2” and “rolling power cuts”, allegedly due to a lack of truck drivers blamed equally on Covid and Brexit (neither the shortages nor power cuts ever really materialised).

By September 2021, the UK was told the gas price spike would create a shortage of frozen food, and just a month later, that we may have to ration meat ahead of Christmas, due to the gas crisis. (There never was any rationing)

In January 2022, Australia saw “empty supermarket shelves” blamed on the Omicron variant crippling the supply chain, while the US had the same empty shelves blamed on bad winter weather.

Moving into the spring of 2022, the food crisis is still on its way…only now it’s because of the war in Ukraine, or China’s “Zero Covid” policies, or the bird flu outbreak.

It’s no secret that, according to politicians and the corporate press, “food shortages” and a “food supply crises” have been on the way for a while now. They have been regularly predicted for sever…

21/05/2022

In ancient Mesopotamia, it was called a Jubilee. When debts at interest grew too high to be repaid, the slate was wiped clean. Debts were forgiven, the debtors’ prisons were opened, and the serfs returned to work their plots of land. This could be done because the king was the representative of the gods who were said to own the land, and thus was the creditor to whom the debts were owed. The same policy was advocated in the Book of Leviticus, though it is unclear to what extent this biblical Jubilee was implemented.

That sort of across-the-board debt forgiveness can’t be done today because most of the creditors are private lenders. Banks, landlords and pension fund investors would go bankrupt if their contractual rights to repayment were simply wiped out. But we do have a serious debt problem, and it is largely structural. Governments have delegated the power to create money to private banks, which create most of the circulating money supply as debt at interest. They create the principal but not the interest, so more money must be repaid than was created in the original loan. Debt thus grows faster than the money supply, as seen in the chart from WorkableEconomics.com below. Debt grows until it cannot be repaid, when the board is cleared by some form of market crash such as the 2008 financial crisis, typically widening the wealth gap on the way down.

In ancient Mesopotamia, it was called a Jubilee. When debts at interest grew too high to be repaid, the slate was wiped clean. Debts were forgiven, the debtors’ prisons were opened, and the serfs r…

19/05/2022

With this consultation, the EU Commission is yet again widely following the wish list of some agribusiness lobby groups as nearly all the questions are framed in a way to support the Commission’s deregulation plans. Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides is tragically giving credit to agribusiness’ false promise that new GMOs – currently in the research pipeline stage – would be a useful tool for the transformation of food systems towards sustainability.

EU GMO safety and labelling laws currently also apply to these new genomic or breeding techniques. Exempting them would keep farmers and consumers in the dark as to whether their crops and food are GMOs or not, and would lead to the release of untested and fossil fuel dependent GMOs into the environment.

The EU Commission’s health division has launched a new public consultation on the new wave of genetically modified plants (new GMOs), moving ahead with far reaching deregulation plans. With this&nb…

19/05/2022

The Queen’s Speech was interesting this year.

For all the people outside the UK who don’t understand what the “Queens Speech” actually is, it’s a farcical state occasion in which the Queen (or, in this case, Prince Charles since her majesty is ill/secretly dead/having “mobility issues”) makes a speech about what “her government” intends to do for the next 12 months.

Of course, the Queen doesn’t actually write the speech, or have any input on its content, or have any control at all over what “her” government intends to do. She’s just a mouthpiece in a big gold hat.

It’s the UK equivalent of the State of the Union, only done in Halloween costumes made out of shiny stolen rocks.

The Queen’s Speech was interesting this year. For all the people outside the UK who don’t understand what the “Queens Speech” actually is, it’s a farcical state occasion in which the Queen (or, in …

18/05/2022

In November 2021, Brook Jackson, a whistleblower who worked on Pfizer’s Phase 3 COVID jab trial in the fall of 2020, warned she’d seen evidence of fraud in the trial.

With the release of Pfizer trial data — which they tried to withhold for 75 years — additional problems suggestive of fraud and data manipulation are coming to light.

Trial site 1231, located in Argentina, somehow managed to recruit 10% of the total trial participants, 4,501 in all, and they did so in just three weeks, and without a contract research organization — a feat that has many questioning whether fraud was committed.

The lead investigator for trial site 1231 is Dr. Fernando Po**ck, who also happens to be a consultant for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (RBPAC), a current adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, an investigator for Fundación Infant, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, and the first author of Pfizer’s paper, “Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine,” published at the end of December 2021.

Site 1231 held a second enrollment session, given the designation of “site 4444.” The 4444 trial site data raise another red flag. It supposedly enrolled 1,275 patients in a single week, from September 22 through 27, 2020 — the last week that recruitment could take place to meet the data cutoff for the FDA meeting in December 2020. Was “site 4444” fabricating data to create the appearance that the jab was having an effect?

In November 2021, Brook Jackson, a whistleblower who worked on Pfizer’s Phase 3 COVID jab trial in the fall of 2020, warned she’d seen evidence of fraud in the trial. With the release of Pfizer tri…

18/05/2022

Our world today is facing many serious challenges. Apart from the current global pandemic, there are two issues that are most urgent to address: the environmental destruction of Planet Earth and the serious impoverishment and unbearable living conditions of many of its inhabitants, particularly in rural areas. To create a better and sustainable future for all, we need joint efforts and local solutions for these global threats.

Tree planting is one strategy that offers many benefits in this regard. Planting fruit and cash crop trees with rural communities can create income and employment opportunities while at the same time improving environmental conditions and contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The ecological benefits of trees have been well known for many years. Interest and research on their social impacts has also gradually increased in recent decades, as has attention to multidimensional poverty — the assumption that poverty cannot be measured in monetary terms alone. Yet, comprehensive studies specifically on the relationship of trees and multidimensional poverty are still lacking.

Nevertheless, it is clear that fruit tree-planting projects and the income they generate not only help alleviate monetary poverty, but directly impact many different areas of life. However, not all people benefit equally from such projects, and issues of land ownership as well as traditional gender roles largely determine the benefits that can be derived from them.

Our world today is facing many serious challenges. Apart from the current global pandemic, there are two issues that are most urgent to address: the environmental destruction of Planet Earth and th…

17/05/2022

Worried that his eyes and urine were turning a deep yellow, Gednezar Dladla made his way to a local clinic and was referred to a district hospital, where he was x-rayed, diagnosed with gallstones, and admitted for the night. Both institutions receive funding from the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

A day later, Dladla set off through the hills and valleys of rural Zululand to a village near his childhood home, where a group of men played cards in the shade of a tree. The environmental activist listened to their grievances about dust pollution, water shortages and lack of assistance from a local mine owned by Rio Tinto – whose investors include the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Worried that his eyes and urine were turning a deep yellow, Gednezar Dladla made his way to a local clinic and was referred to a district hospital, where he was x-rayed, diagnosed with gallstones, …

17/05/2022

When people talk about climate change and environmental justice they often talk about things like environmental degradation, air pollution, droughts, floods and water scarcity as separate issues. In reality, all these problems are connected and part of complex global systems, which affect the health, livelihoods and futures of the most vulnerable members of society.

Here three environmental activists share their first-hand experience of how these issues intersect in their own lives and communities.

Curated and edited by Motlalepule Papi Mofokeng This past Human Rights Day we spoke to three activists about how environmental rights are connected to every aspect of our day to day lives. When pe…

16/05/2022

Fears about the impact of climate change is a reality for billions of people around the globe. In Southern Africa, a series of cyclones and tropical storms have done enormous damage in Mozambique, …

14/05/2022

“Climate change is likely to make the spread of many vector-borne diseases more commonplace,” he said, including anything from malaria, to increased Lyme disease in North America, and encephalitis in Europe.

Chapter seven of the report, which looks at the effects of climate change on physical and mental health, migration, conflict, and displacement, found that extreme heat will create “an increased pressure on health care systems,” life-threatening conditions for those who McLeman noted have pre-existing conditions like cardiovascular disease and respiratory illnesses.

“Climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our well-being and a healthy planet. Our actions today will shape how people adapt and nature responds to increasing climate risks.” Global climate…

12/05/2022

This is a 400-MW gas to power plant which received an environmental authorisation in 2016 for a closed cycle gas turbine with a condition that the activity commence within five years of authorisation. Dormant for years, the project resurfaced in December 2020 with an application to amend the timeline, the technology, and the fuel use of the plant – through an environmental authorisation amendment process.

This new court challenge comes in the wake of last month’s announcement that gW and SDCEA, supported by activist organisation Natural Justice and represented by attorneys Cullinan and Associates, have received a court date for the landmark litigation launched in 2021 against the environmental approval of the proposed 3000-MW Eskom gas-to-power station, the first challenge of its kind in South Africa.

In light of the serious climate change impacts that the project will have and the absence of any assessment of these impacts, environmental justice groups groundWork (gW) and the South Durban Commu…

11/05/2022

Geoffrey Thorne has a long list of writing credits in comics (Green Lantern, Mosaic) and television (Power Book II: Ghost, Leverage). His new project, which is out this week, is writing the relaunch of Blood Syndicate for Milestone. The original series, co-created by Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, and Ivan Velez, Jr., has long been a favorite of many – including Thorne. He’s joined on the relaunched series by penciler ChrisCross, who drew much of the original run of the series and returns with a different style and look for the story and the characters.

Geoffrey Thorne has a long list of writing credits in comics (Green Lantern, Mosaic) and television (Power Book II: Ghost, Leverage). His new project, which is out this week, is writ…

11/05/2022

And although so-called anti-vaxxers are belittled for their ignorance, there is no indication those rejecting enforced protocols are doing anything but defending their inalienable rights — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The extreme aggressive tactics of the government and media to promote vaccines — including a campaign to humiliate those who refuse to comply — have the earmarks of psychological warfare, with manipulation of citizens on a grander scale than any effort in recent history...

Curatedfor papithefixer.wordpress.com by Motlalepule Papi Mofokeng The possibility that U.S. government psychological operations, or PSYOP, have been engaged to sway the public to accept COVID vacc…

10/05/2022

Now tracking has shifted to what is known as “first-party” tracking. With this method, people are not being trailed from app to app or site to site. But companies are still gathering information on what people are doing on their specific site or app, with users’ consent. This kind of tracking, which companies have practiced for years, is growing.

In other words, Google is accumulating data on its own users’ search queries, location data and contact information. Pinterest is doing the same with its users on its site and app, while TikTok is gathering information on the people who are on its app. The New York Times also does first-party tracking.

The internet industry shuddered last year when Apple introduced privacy measures for the iPhone that threatened to upend online tracking and cripple digital advertising. Google pledged similar priv…

10/05/2022

Philanthropy – and particularly philanthropy on this scale – isn’t a black-and-white issue though, and important questions have been raised about the way the Foundation operates, and the impact of its work.

The first question concerns accountability. While only around five per cent of the Foundation’s annual global health funding goes directly to lobbying and advocacy, this money (over $100 million) talks loudly. Gates funds institutions ranging from US university departments to major international development NGOs. The Foundation is the main player in several global health partnerships and one of the single largest donors to the WHO. This gives it considerable leverage in shaping health policy priorities and intellectual norms.

Gregg Gonsalves, an experienced AIDS activist and co-founder of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, welcomes the Foundation’s funding, but is concerned about its power. ‘Depending on what side of bed Gates gets out of in the morning,’ he remarks, ‘it can shift the terrain of global health.’

In 2010, the Gates Foundation gave in grants $2.5 billion The World Health Organization, meanwhile, operates on less than a year $2 billion.

Curatedfor papithefixer.wordpress.com by Motlalepule Papi Mofokeng Microsoft’s former CEO has made record-breaking donations to global health programmes – but an investigation by Andrew …

10/05/2022

Luckily, this scary ‘new’ variant of HIV has been identified just in time to make Moderna’s HIV vaccine trials seem more relevant. This particular vaccine candidate, known as IAVI G002, was developed in conjunction with Scripps Research and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), and the trial is being partially funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

On social media and in certain populist corners, the frequency of AIDS mentions has also increased. Part of this increase has been fueled by evidence (both anecdotal and scientific) that COVID vaccinations are harming recipients’ immune systems. The term “VAIDS” (Vaccine-Induced Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is being used to refer to an ostensible AIDS-like deterioration of the immune system that is caused not by HIV but by vaccination for COVID.

Curated for papithefixer.wordpress.com by Motlalepule Papi Mofokeng In the past few days the topic of HIV/AIDS has been thrust back into the spotlight. On 27 January, it was announced tha…

10/05/2022

“There is no doubt that Ofcom’s decision to revoke RT’s broadcasting license is political. For many years the UK was looking for a formal reason to close RT, but they tried to maintain the appearance of maintaining freedom of speech,” added RT spokesperson.

“Now all masks are off. We were banned from working for one reason: any point of view in the west that is different from the official one now has simply no right to exist.”

Curated for papithefixer.wordpress.com by Motlalepule Papi Mofokeng Belfast solicitors Brentnall Legal are acting on behalf of a client, and are seeking a possible judicial review of the decision b…

09/05/2022

The number of wealthy Americans applying for citizenship or residency in foreign countries has skyrocketed over the past three years as US billionaires, tech entrepreneurs, and celebrities look to create a “plan B” for their families, multiple investment migration firms told Insider.

More than a dozen countries offer so-called “golden passports” and visas that allow affluent foreigners to receive citizenship or residency in exchange for investing in the country. The most expensive programs range from $1.1 million in Malta to $9.5 million in Austria, according to Forbes.

The number of wealthy Americans buying “golden passports” has skyrocketed over the past three years.The top programs grant citizenship to foreigners who invest millions of dol…

09/05/2022

This article will not only examine the corporate takeover of whole governmental departments, but it will also look at the risk-benefit analysis of government in its liberal use of consultancy services, and outline the danger that lies with such Public Private Partnerships. It will also provide concrete evidence of consultancy firms’ deep and problematic business ties with the Executive Branch of the French Government.

It is important to examine how these powerful consultancy firms underpin a much larger transnational network. This raises a number of important questions: what is the likelihood of conflict of interest taking place, and do they represent a danger to countries’ national security? Are elected officials and civil servants taking a back seat to non-elected private individuals and their companies who are being allowed to steer public policy in favor of a much broader transnational corporate agenda?

Curated for papithefixer.wordpress.com by Motlalepule Papi Mofokeng In France, consultancy firms have been paid billions of euros to advise governments on policies from the coronavirus vaccine, to …

08/05/2022

The foundation of former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, the “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” (BMGF), is controlled by its three trustees: Bill and Melinda Gates and hedge fund manager Warren Buffett. The foundation holds assets worth about $50 billion – about half of which originates from Buffett – and finances a large number of charitable projects.

Second only to the USA, the BMGF is one of the largest donors to the World Health Organization (WHO) and paid it more than $200 million in 2018 – more than Germany, France and Sweden combined in the same period. But this is not the only way in which the WHO is financed by Gates. GAVI, formerly known as the “Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation”, provided the WHO with an additional $150 million in 2018. One of GAVI’s main donors is again the BMGF, with $1.5 billion in 2016, for example.

Curated and posted on papithefixer.wordpress.com by Motlalepule Papi Mofokeng In the corona crisis, billionaire Bill Gates makes a high-profile appearance as a vaccination activist. The essence: a …

08/05/2022

These findings illustrate the influence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) on global food and agricultural policy. AGRA Watch has continually documented the role of the BMGF in influencing agricultural development, which has grown immensely in recent years,” AGRA Watch writes.

“The Gates Foundation seeks to exercise influence not only through its funding of projects and shaping of expertise, but also in funding the governance platforms that determine food and agricultural policy. This role of the BMGF in driving policy decisions based on its proprietary and technological model of agricultural development is often overlooked….

In this report, we have demonstrated just some of the connections between the Gates Foundation and those who have supported Kalibata’s appointment as head of the UN Food Systems Summit.

While hundreds of civil society organizations called for her removal, only twelve signatories were willing to support her appointment, almost all of whom were direct beneficiaries of the Gates Foundation. This raises critical questions about the role of Bill Gates in shaping the agenda of the UN Food Systems Summit as well as its outcomes.”

Curated for papithefixer.wordpress.com by Motlalepule Papi Mofokeng. Bill Gates wields powerful influence over global food and agriculture policy through his funding of a large number of organizati…

07/05/2022

Imagine yourself sidled up to a bar. A talkative guy sits down on the stool next to you. He has decided that there is one thing wrong with the world. It can be literally anything. Regardless, he has the solution.

It’s interesting and weird for a few minutes. But you gradually come to realize that he is actually crazy. His main point is wrong and so his solutions are wrong too. But the drinks are good, and he is buying. So you put up with it. In any case, you will forget the whole thing in the morning.

In the morning, however, you realize that he is one of the world’s richest men and he is pulling the strings of many of the world’s most powerful people.

Now you are alarmed.

In a nutshell, that’s what it’s like to read Bill Gates’s new book How to Prevent the Next Pandemic. The main theme is implied in the title. With enough money, intelligence, and power, along with technological know-how at the helm, the next pathogen to come along can be stopped in its tracks. Where the bug goes after that he never explains. Presumably it just disappears. Like a computer virus, it exists but doesn’t ruin your hard drive.

Imagine yourself sidled up to a bar. A talkative guy sits down on the stool next to you. He has decided that there is one thing wrong with the world. It can be literally anything. Regardless, he ha…

07/05/2022

The diagnostic criteria for polio were very loose prior to trials for the vaccine in 1954.Only after the vaccine was introduced was there any effort to distinguish polio from other types of paralytic disease.

The first polio vaccine, created by Jonas Salk in 1955, caused a great deal of controversy. The ‘Cutter Incident’ happened when 120,000 children were injected with a live virus instead of a weakened one: 40,000 developed polio, 200 were paralysed, and ten died. When the immunisation program was eventually rolled out to the public, a different, untested, rapidly approved formula was used.

Current NHS information describes it as a ‘serious viral infection’ but adds that most people won’t even know they are infected. While some will experience ‘flu-like’ symptoms, others may…

07/05/2022

Millions of people in Africa die every year from these diseases. But these deaths are entirely preventable. Diarrheal diseases, for example, are caused by parasites that are found in unclean food or water. Malaria can be prevented with targeted insecticide spraying to kill mosquito larvae and with mosquito nets. Access to medicine to treat malaria symptoms can also save millions of lives. But access to life-saving medicine is blocked by profit-driven pharmaceuticals which simply do not see these poor people as a viable market. Additionally, the conditions that large parts of Africa are being kept under by imperialism mean that, for many people, simple things such as clean drinking water, food and proper sanitation are inaccessible. Consequently, diseases which have been eliminated in the West still kill millions of people each year in Africa.

The coronavirus pandemic is a turning point in history. The world economy is receiving one savage blow after another. Healthcare systems are totally overwhelmed in the advanced capitalist countries…

06/05/2022

Bacterial infections are common everyday medical problems that include urinary tract infections such as cystitis, lung infections such as pneumonia, and brain infections such as meningitis, to name a few. Since the discovery of penicillin and its first use in 1942, these miraculous antibiotics have become less and less effective as the bacteria that they are used to treat become resistant.

This is a major problem! Not only do we need antibiotics to treat infections, we need them to prevent infections in the first place in vulnerable people such as those undergoing cancer treatment, transplants, or with HIV. Moreover, almost every time you undergo an operation, an antibiotic is given before the cut is made to prevent an infection developing in the wound. So, losing these antibiotics is a big deal.

Millions of people are now dying every year because of bad practices and South Africa is one of the worst culprits| By Marc Mendelson Last week saw the publication of two important scientific paper…