Yazmin, a quick question for I am sorry that I don’t have time now to find this out myself, and you are the original poster.
From whom are they buying the land? That’s a lot of prime farmland, if I understand it correctly. Are they actually buying the acreage from the owners?
Thanks.
Jeanne,
Does the original post on this thread not arouse your skepticism? 17million hectares? No verification of the land purchase undertaken, but a reference to Cargill’s becoming a majority owner of a sea port in the Odessa region.
You should perhaps look at this:
Not 17million hectares at all, it appears.
But google “Monsanto buying Ukraine land” and you will see who is fanning this faux panic.
Quote:
The post cites a report published on a website called the Australian National Review which claimed that “Three Large American Multinationals Bought 17 Million Hectares of Ukrainian Agricultural Land.”
The article in question features a corrections note at the bottom which states “The 17 million hectares quoted was an error and its 1.7 million."
I’m not questioning the accuracy of that fact-check (I don’t know one way or the other who is right), but Full Fact are also not a reliable source in many instances Here is another “fact-check” which is linked to from the one you link to:
Quote:
Despite the similarity between their names, Blackstone and BlackRock are two separate asset management companies.
Separate except for the fact that Vanguard and BlackRock are the biggest institutional investors in Blackstone Inc. according to Yahoo Finance, something that “Full Fact” omit to mention (although the exact claim they are “fact-checking” is indeed False it appears):
Thank you, Jillian.
Always a good idea to fact-check the fact-checkers.
But what rests on the fact that Vanguard and BlackRock are the biggest “institutional investors” i.e. stockholders in Blackstone? All three are publicly traded companies. Major shareholders (5% and above) have some say over the companies they invest in - can have a director on the board, say - but are not managing the company, which remains a separate entity, separately controlled. As public companies, they are all required to list their major stockholders.
There is no “omission” on the part of Full Check for failing to state that BlackRock and Vanguard own shares in a company. BlackRock and Vanguard hold shares in each other. Who is (nefariously) influencing whom? They hold shares - directly or indirectly in thousands of publicly traded companies.
If anybody wants to make a case that Larry Fink does indeed have an ambition to control the world through BlackRock’s multinational corporate investments, he would have to go beyond merely listing its stockholdings. It is one thing to point out Larry Fink’s preaching of the corrupt WEF gospel, it is quite another to prove that he is using his institutional investments to achieve it. How do you prove that a decision to invest in a Ukrainian agriculture/ land-holding business for profit, is in fact a decision to control Ukrainian politics - i.e. to thwart Ukrainians’ destiny to belong to Russia and Russia’s destiny to own the land and reap the profits thereof.
Did you intend by your fact-checker check to restore BlackRock to the top of the list of WEF conspirators determined to destroy America and Ukraine and so rehabilitate the “spirit” of Yazmin’s original link? So that bare reference to “BlackRock” can have us all reflexively swallowing the poisonous anti-American and anti-Ukraine pill that it coats?
Your scrupulosity on behalf of BlackRock’s notoriety is also susceptible to skeptical checking !!!
Again you jump to all sorts of conclusions, adding offence in your comment.
I didn’t suggest any of that, I was merely pointing out that Full Fact were themselves a dubious source (we can find many examples), and yes it was an omission because their statement claimed that BlackRock and BlackStone were simply “separate” implying no connection at all. As you admit that size of shareholder stake is significant, I didn’t suggest that they were in complete control of the company though either.
I agree that the original article posted was probably not reliable, and I should not have liked the original topic (I mistakenly thought this Free West Media was a reliable source). I think there may be truth in the fact-check, as I stated at the beginning of the comment. We’re into an era of uncertainty where it is really hard to know what to believe, and there is a great explosion of alternative news websites many of which have dubious editorial policies. However, we also know that most of the MSM are engaging in deliberate deception on a whole range of issues, which is much worse than merely making mistakes (which everybody does at some point, we can find many of those in the MSM as well).
There was no offense intended. I am really interested to know why you looked for an inaccuracy (found, in a hair-splitting exercise on “connections”) in the fact-checking site on Blackstone/ BlackRock? What had that to do with the purported land sales in Ukraine to multinational investment companies, including Black Rock (which, if you notice, does not feature prominently as promised by its headline in the body of the article Yazmin linked to), which was the subject of the fact-check I linked to?
I wasn’t presenting the fact-check on the land in Ukraine sold to multinational institutional investors to offer the fact-checker as a “reliable source” of information. I presented the fact-check because it actually checked the facts from the original source, which had corrected itself. Not 17 million hectares, I.7 million. I am satisfied that the particular facts pertaining to the sale of interests in land as presented by Free West Media are wrong. The site has not corrected that error. The conclusion I draw is that this Free West Media article is the equivalent of hearsay: it should not be offered for the truth of what it says as its prejudicial value outweighs its probative value. You agree with this. So why did you bother to draw our attention to the Full Facts site setting forth the legal fact that Black Stone and Black Rock are separate entities omits the disclosure of legal stock-holding positions?
My objection is simply that most of these so-called “fact-checking” websites were set up mainly to protect the big corporations and individuals who fund them from scrutiny. Every time we link to them in an uncritical way we lend them legitimacy. As I pointed out in the other topic on the Poynter article, you have linked to that describing it as a “fair fact-check” and yet it contains a hugely problematic claim that is right at the heart of all the fear-mongering on “COVID” that has done massive and lethal damage worldwide while enriching the very corporations who fund such websites.
I used the point about BlackRock because it occurred to me that possibly the same corporate interests that produce such a “fact-check” might be trying also here to deflect scrutiny from what they may (perhaps) be up to in the Ukraine (just as they are trying to claim that Blackstone and BlackRock are “separate”). I stress that it occurred to me only as a possibility, to delve into this whole thing in the Ukraine properly might take a long time, time which I don’t have.
The bigger general issue here is that these increasingly inter-connected corporations and individuals at the WEF (BlackRock is involved in the WEF) are definitely engaged in massive international fraud which is going to impoverish all the rest of the world’s population including ourselves, possibly even driving us to starvation if they keep on like this, look at what is going on in Holland right now. Evidence of the fraud is found in the Event 201 footage, where they conspired to suppress negative news about the “vaccines”, “vaccines” that they had already decided would be the cure for the coronavirus pandemic that miraculously began just 6 weeks later.
Just a suggestion but we could extract a useful point from such an article and just use it directly without linking to the “fact-check” website at all. For example here you could have made that point about the hectares correction direct from the Australian article.
In your opinion, Chauncey, was Event 201 staged because the WHO already knew that the Covid 19 virus had been released from the Wuhan lab?
Your conclusions, please, not your lucubrations. A brief indication of why you believe what you do is essential, but please spare us a long read if you can.
I don’t know, I don’t even know whether it was released from the lab, that’s a question for experts, but that question doesn’t seem important to me in proving fraud anyway as I’ve stated here before.
What is important is that they were planning for a coronavirus pandemic just before a coronavirus pandemic was declared, and that coronavirus “pandemic” was certainly at least deliberately wildly exaggerated in its seriousness. It’s the combination of those two things together that indicates fraud as far as I’m concerned, and those two things are all we need to indicate fraud with the objective of selling these unnecessary “vaccines”. All the other questions such as the possibility that it was engineered and deliberately released possibly etc. just add more layers to the fraud.
Thank you for your succinct reply.
And what was their latest plan, the up next pandemic scenario they worked on? Monkeypox.
Yes, it’s the combination of so many things together that indicate that deliberate fraud was perpetrated, and collaborated on between government agencies, pharma companies, and media.
Fauci funding the labs (and denying it), then fear mongering about the virus, pushing the vaccine as the only solution, (which he profited from), and suppressing alternatives.
Biden declaring a state of emergency in order to bypass normal protocals.
The pharma companies, CDC and FDA hiding the data and lying about it.
The media, sponsored by Pfizer, fear mongering and pushing the vaccine, lying about it’s harms, and trashing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine…
The list of evidence is very long.
I did not get the correction from the Australian Review article, I got it from Full Fact, who had gone to the Australian Review article as part of the fact-check. My pretending to have got it direct from the Australian Review in order avoid giving credit to a site that does not confirm to or feed a given political bias would be absurd - unnecessary and dishonest. Why should I anticipate and avoid or pander to unthinking reflexive responses in readers on this Forum? I assume that they are better than that. I assume that the Forum is not an echo-chamber.
Your efforts to moderate my attributions and sourcing are absurd. Even more absurd is citing and analyzing chunks from the site that you regard as politically biased merely to make a tendentious case that the site is politically biased and should be avoided as a “source of information”. All of which takes time, which you claim you don’t have. You have time for bias checking, not for fact-checking. And when offered uncontroversial fact-checks you adopt a faux agnosticism about the “truth” of the facts. Okay, which source would you look to for exact numbers of hectares of Ukrainian land sold to foreign interests?
And, no, the “bigger issue” here is NOT the “massive international fraud perpetrated by inter-connected corporations and individuals”. That is what the original article linked to at the top of this thread purported to establish. I took issue with the posting of such an illogical, un-factual, fallacious, tendentious article without any point being made about it, or extracted from it for discussion, as if it were information, just the facts, ma-am.
It appears my suspicions were right: you did want to rehabilitate the original prime facie rubbish.
Nothing you have written so far remotely provides “evidence” for a massive international “fraud” . You offer nothing but innuendo, guilt-by-association, and ad hominem fallacies. As I say in the “poison thread”, Event 201 has mystical significance for you. I will not endow it with supernatural power. The actual power Eventers wield is bad enough, but it can and should be articulated in actual detail. For instance: “Larry Fink ordered this board of directors BlackRock has a stock position in to do that”. “So-and-so Big Tech c.e.o. is lobbying congress to enact carbon offset laws”. The Financial Times - a leftist paper - follows BlackRock almost daily. Policies to counter the actions where it over-reaches can be based on those facts. Certain states are passing anti ESG laws. But BlackRock’s Larry Fink’s WEF “leadership” words are bigger than his corporate powers. BlackRock is no longer pressuring boards of directors to follow ESG standards, much to the chagrin of activist shareholders and advocates of “stakeholder” capitalism.
C.Gee, you wrong when you say that Blackrock isn’t still following ESG standards.
https://summit.news/2022/09/07/video-tucker-carlson-warns-elites-are-making-things-worse-on-purpose/
Yazmin,
I said “BlackRock is no longer pressuring boards of directors to follow ESG standards, much to the chagrin of activist shareholders”. I should have stuck more closely to the language of my source: “pulling back on its support for US shareholder proposals on environmental and social issues”. Here is the entire article:
An article by Brooke Masters in the Financial Times, September 9, 2022:
"BlackRock has hit back at Republican politicians for what it calls their ‘misconceptions’ about its approach to climate change, arguing that its efforts are ‘entirely consistent’ with a duty to maximise investor returns.
"The world’s largest money manager has been under concerted attack for its use of environmental, social and governance factors in investing. It as become a target because chief executive Larry Fink has been outspoken about the need to address global warming.
"Nineteen state attorneys-general, all of them Republicans, sent a letter to BlackRock last month accusing it of prioritising “activism” over fiduciary duty to their state pensions funds.
“Our states will not idly stand for our pensioners’ retirements to be sacrificed for BlackRock’s climate agenda,” they wrote in the letter, which was led by Arizona attorney-general Mark Brnovich.
"New York-based BlackRock responded this week, writing to the attorneys-general: ‘Climate change is testing the resilience of many industries and businesses. As prudent risk managers and steward of our client’s assets, it is imperative that we seek to understand and assess how these risks and opportunities will impact the companies in which we invest.’
"BlackRock, with $8.5tn in assets under management was also the lone US company on a list of money managers singled out last month for potential divestment by the Texas comptroller because they allegedly ‘boycott’ the fossil fuel industry. Several other states are considering similar moves.
"The money manager denied boycotting fossil fuel, arguing that its $170bn of investments in US energy companies were ‘completely at odds with any notion of a boycott.’
"It said its main goal when it came to climate change was ‘transparency…We ask companies to provide disclosures on material issues that impact their business so that investors can make informed decisions.’
"When voting against management in shareholder resolutions, BlackRock wrote: ‘Our votes are not cast to ‘penalise’ companies. quite the opposite: our votes are cast with a view to achieving the best long-term value for those companies and their shareholders.’
"The asset manager has also been criticised by environmental activists this year for pulling back on its support for US shareholder proposals on environmental and social issues.
"Saying the [US shareholder] proposals [on environmental and social issues] had become too prescriptive, BlackRock voted in favour of them just 24 per cent of the time down from 43 per cent last year.
"BlackRock also rolled out a “voting choice” programme that allows institutional money managers, including state pension funds, to choose how to vote their own shares at annual general meetings. ‘We do not …dictate to companies what specific emission targets they should meet or what type of political lobbying they should pursue,’ BlackRock wrote [to the attorneys-general].
“Brnovich’s office did not respond to a request for comment.”
I referred to this article because it reports on real-world BlackRock corporate actions within the real-world political/ideological context of the debate between Woke and Unwoke. I am not taking BlackRock’s side against Republicans. I am not trying to diminish the evil of ESG by referring to BlackRock’s current “pull back” in support of activist shareholders promotion of it. I am not endorsing BlackRock’s denial of its “boycott of fossil fuels”, or its claim that ESG is in line with maximising shareholder value.
That FT article was the source for BlackRock’s real-world actions that I referred to in my comment. The point I was making is that real-world corporate actions of BlackRock (writing a letter to attorneys-general is a real-world action) are constrained as Larry Fink’s speechifying is not. That point is relevant to my argument that the article “Buying Up Ukraine” was not about Monsanto’s or BlackRock’s real-world actions, but about using them to trigger the (leftist, green) antipathy to America and capitalism to implicate Ukraine in a menacing “military-industrial complex”. There is nothing invidious in foreign investment in Ukraine, but when wicked frankenseed producer Monsanto, or greedy capitalist BlackRock buy land in war-mongering, nazi Ukraine - it’s time to - what? - protest, sit-in, march, call our Congressfolk, to “Stop the War Profiteers”. Suddenly, we are soixante-huitards again.
Your links to Breitbart are not relevant to my argument against anti-Ukraine conspiracy propaganda. They do not show I was “wrong”. They set out the consumerist objection to corporate power to manipulated prices. They might help the Republican attorneys-general legal case against BlackRock’s woke agenda to move away from fossil fuels. But the consumerist argument against raising prices is fundamentally anti-market and anti-profit. Think Elizabeth Warren.The energy industry is already unfree, constrained by cartel and government price-fixing. The legal argument that a corporation’s prime duty is to maximise shareholder value is pro-free market: dividends paid to stockholders demonstrate that the corporation is satisfying all needs: suppliers, work-force, buyers, consumers, tax authorities, investors…
I will not read these links. I watch Tucker Carlson and I know that the Biden admin is sending $$$$ to Ukraine from multiple sources. Why have you brought them here?