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NATO jets routinely imitate MISSILE STRIKES against Russia – defense minister

RT | September 7, 2020

The US and NATO air forces have not only increased their surveillance activities along Russia’s borders, but now also routinely train for potential strikes on the country’s soil, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said.

Speaking to Russian TV on Sunday, Shoigu noted a sharp increase in foreign surveillance and training flights testing the country’s borders and air defenses. Last month such activities increased by some 30 percent compared to last August. Moreover, the bloc’s aircraft have been actively training in conducting air strikes, routinely performing mock missile launches on targets within the country, Shoigu revealed.

“The most alarming is that if earlier – even though not that frequently – there were mainly reconnaissance aircraft, they’ve now begun regular training flights with large numbers of planes, during which the mock missile strikes are conducted.”

Over the past few weeks, several incidents between Russian and NATO planes occurred in close proximity to the country’s borders. The latest took place Friday, when three nuclear-capable US Air Force B-52H strategic bombers approached Russia’s border through Ukrainian airspace. The bombers were intercepted by eight fighter jets and warned away from the border.

Another incident involving US strategic bombers occurred late in August, when a B-52H was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 fighter jet over the Baltic Sea. The altercation prompted a wider international scandal, as another NATO country – Denmark – claimed the Russian plane violated the country’s borders while chasing the US plane. Moscow, however, has firmly denied the accusations, insisting that the interception was made in accordance with all international rules.

September 6, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , | 1 Comment

Sceptical covid-19 research and sceptical polar bear science: is there a difference?

By Susan Crockford | Polar Bear Science | September 6, 2020

This essay about medical researchers having trouble getting their papers published because the results don’t support the official pandemic narrative has disturbing parallels with my experience trying to inject some balance into the official polar bear conservation narrative.1 Especially poignant is the mention of models built on assumptions sold as ‘facts’ that fail once data (i.e. evidence) become available – which of course is the entire point of my latest book, The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened.

Read the commentary below, copied from Lockdownsceptics.org (6 September 2020). Bold in original, link added to the story to which this is a response, and brief notes and links added as footnotes for parallels with polar bear conservation science.

Thanks for the ongoing sanity that is Lockdown Sceptics. I read the piece yesterday about how the scientific community is slowly starting to wake up to the fact that we have been significantly underestimating the level of immunity in the population (something that LS has been saying for months).2  I was really struck by these lines:

“Unfortunately, not all scientists are so timid with their views. Could it be the silence of too many sceptical scientists that has allowed more confident scientists like Neil Ferguson to become so influential?”

As sceptical scientist myself, this point hit home, but the reasons for the silence of the sceptical scientific voice are not just to do with lack of confidence.

Firstly, it is important for a scientific argument to have data. Without data you’re just expressing an opinion which, of course, can still carry weight depending on who is expressing it.3 However, there are real issues both with the data we have around COVID-19 and its reporting.

It is a well-known problem in science that the “negative results” are rarely published and so the literature is heavily weighted towards positive findings.4 This can lead to a false perception of what is happening. So for sceptical scientists wanting to make arguments, the data may simply not be there as it was a “negative result”.

Scientists also tend to want to publish interesting findings. As a result, the COVID-19 literature tends to be biased towards the serious or rare cases as these are by definition “interesting”. 5

Here’s an example of the title and the first few lines of a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine from April, which illustrates this point:

Coagulopathy and Antiphospholipid Antibodies in Patients with COVID-19

“We describe a patient with Covid-19 and clinically significant coagulopathy, antiphospholipid antibodies, and multiple infarcts. He was one of three patients with these findings in an intensive care unit designated for patients with COVID-19….”

There is nothing wrong with this paper, it is a typical case report. However notice that the title gives no qualification of the fact that the patients are in the intensive care unit and as such are not representative of the vast number of patients with COVID-19. If you just read the title you could erroneously infer that ALL patients with COVID-19 have issues with their blood coagulating and their immune system going haywire. That’s the problem, a report of a rare finding, designed to alert clinicians in the ICU of potential complications, can feed confirmation bias in a lot of the media (and the public) that COVID-19 is the new plague that will kill you as soon as look at you.

Unfortunately you cannot publish the balancing paper:

Mild cough in Patients with COVID-19

“We describe a patient with Covid-19 and a mild dry cough that resolved itself in a few weeks…”

It is uninteresting. Although ironically it would be interesting (and probably publishable) if COVID-19 was actually causing all patients to have major complications!

Finally as you reported today in your article about Prof. Gupta, there is also further worrying bias in the COVID-19 literature with editors scared to publish “dangerous” ideas that could “impact our response to COVID-19”. Limiting publication of such finding in “lesser journals” (essential ones that aren’t so widely read), is an effective way of burying the findings as they may appear less “valuable” than a publication in Nature.6

This literature bias makes addressing the major issue facing the sceptical scientist even more daunting. This issue is that they need to overturn established orthodoxy around COVID-19 and our responses to it.

The advantage that modellers had at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic is that they did not much [rely on] real world data because they could run their models built on assumptions.7 So it’s not surprising that the modellers got in first. It is only now that we have the actual data can we look at the modelling predictions and point out how inaccurate these were and start to see where the assumptions were wrong.

The problem is that the models and modellers created and established “facts” and you require a lot more data to overcome an established “fact” than was needed to create that “fact” in the first place.8

This was compounded by the fact that we then implemented solutions with assumed efficacy (e.g. wearing face coverings, lockdowns) and the use of these solutions have now become more articles of faith rather than scientific hypotheses.9 So to overcome such solutions will require large amounts of evidence to achieve a shift amongst the scientific community, many of whom have been active advocates of these very solutions. Imagine what data you would actually need to persuade Nicola Sturgeon that mask wearing has no benefit or Matt Hancock that lockdown is not the answer? I’d wager it would be almost impossible and will be all the more impossible if [they] don’t allow the publication of “dangerous data” in the first place.10

Finally I think it import to also understand that science is a professional industry and that most scientists work for businesses and institutions. Most of these businesses and institutions will have implemented COVID-19 based policies, supported by senior leadership who, even if they don’t believe in the policies, will need to be seen to be “doing the right thing”.11 Scientists working in these organisations will also have contractual obligations that will limit their ability to publish without permission or produce communication that could be deemed to be detrimental to their place of work.12

Imagine if you worked for one of the companies working on developing a vaccine and wanted to publish something saying that “vaccines are a waste of time and money because everyone will be basically immune through infection before they get to the clinic”? This effectively means that the vast majority of scientists are in environments that require a level of collective “self-censorship” and so, with a few exceptions, most of us have to bite our tongues or run the genuine risk of “blow back” on careers.13 We are not in the position of having a comfortable academic chair from which to cast our pearls of wisdom.14

Despite this, science is built on data and so ultimately I have to believe that we can get to a point where we stop treating COVID-19 as a special case and recognize it as just another disease to go alongside all the other risks we face in being alive. I am greatly encouraged by the fact that we’re seeing journals like the BMJ publish “sceptical” opinion pieces as it shows that this shift may be starting to occur although today’s article about Prof. Gupta shows that we may have a lot further to go.15

Footnotes

  1. Of course, this analogy applies also to the experiences of many scientists sceptical of climate science narratives: I am not alone in this regard, nor am I alone in my experience of challenging the dominant narrative of polar bear conservation science. Mitch Taylor, Peter Ridd, Tim Ball, Judith Curry, Roger Pielke Jr. and a host of other scientists could write a similar list of parallels.
  2. cf. polar bears are thriving
  3. cf. Ian Stirling’s opinion carried significant weight early on
  4. cf. ‘negative results’ for polar bears is evidence of bears not starving due to reduced sea ice (or population increases), such as in the Beaufort Sea and Barents Sea
  5. cf. cannibalism blamed on climate change
  6. cf. or refuse to publish at all
  7. cf. the 2007 polar bear extinction model
  8. cf. the importance of summer sea ice to polar bears
  9. cf. Ian Stirling interview 2016
  10. cf. Six good years in a row for Western Hudson Bay polar bears
  11. cf. IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group expelled Mitch Taylor
  12. cf. my expulsion from the University of Victoria
  13. cf. BioScience attack on my scientific credentials and integrity
  14. cf. Mitch Taylor on accountability in polar bear science
  15. cf. 2016 paper on status of Canadian polar bears

September 6, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

The Oklahoma City Bombing Story You Were Never Told About

By S.M. Gibson – ANTIMEDIA – April 19, 2018

Sgt. Terrance Yeakey was an Oklahoma City Police Officer, a first responder to the OKC bombing, and an American hero. Officer Yeakey, known to friends as Terry, saved the lives of eight people from the Alfred P. Murrah building on the morning of April 19, 1995.

Terry was a few blocks away from Timothy McVeigh and the now infamous Ryder truck-which was brimming with explosives-when it detonated and erased the lives of 168 people, including 19 children. Yeakey rushed to the blast site, and without regard for his own life, began pulling people from the rubble one by one.

Instead of being showered with accolades by his government for his heroic efforts, Terrance was silenced for what he witnessed in the direct aftermath of one of largest mass murders that the United States has ever seen.

No one is quite sure what Terry actually observed at the Murrah building that April morning, but according to all indications, whatever it was he witnessed did not sync up with the official narrative released by the United States government.

Officer Yeakey began compiling evidence against the tale put out by federal officials and stored his findings in a storage facility outside of El Reno, Oklahoma. The data he was accumulating was also in direct contradiction to “the facts” being reported by media outlets worldwide. According to friends and family, Terry began being intimidated by federal authorities because of his personal pursuit for truth and the information which he possessed. He was being pressured to put an end to his independent investigation.

Terry’s last known words were, “As soon as I shake these Feds that are following me, I’ll be back and we’ll go to dinner.”

He never came back.

The officer’s body was found the next day in a field one mile from his abandoned vehicle. He had been bound, repeatedly cut, strangulated, brutally tortured and killed execution style with a single bullet that entered his right temple at a 45 degree angle. No gun was found at the scene.

His official cause of death was suicide.

I’m not going to suggest that you believe in an elaborate government conspiracy surrounding the Murrah Building bombing based on this one incident, but with that said, Officer Yeakey’s story deserves to be told. What did he know? What really happened that morning in Oklahoma City? Why was he silenced? If we truly respected the lives of police officers, maybe it’s time we find out the answers to these questions.

If not for Terry and his family, then do it for the future of everything you hold dear.

Please watch the extremely informative and startling video below about Officer Yeakey and learn in more detail about the events that surrounded Terry’s death.

September 6, 2020 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | | 7 Comments

Press in His Pocket: Bill Gates Buys Media to Control the Messaging

Editorial by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Board Chair, Children’s Health Defense | September 3, 2020

A Columbia Journalism Review expose reveals that, to control global journalism, Bill Gates has steered over $250 million to the BBC, NPR, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, the New York Times, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, Center for Investigative Reporting, Pulitzer Center, National Press Foundation, International Center for Journalists, and a host of other groups. To conceal his influence, Gates also funneled unknown sums via subgrants for contracts to other press outlets.

His press bribes have paid off. During the pandemic, bought and brain-dead news outlets have treated Bill Gates as a public health expert—despite his lack of medical training or regulatory experience.

Gates also funds an army of independent fact checkers including the Poynter Institute and Gannett —which use their fact-checking platforms to “silence detractors” and to “debunk” as “false conspiracy theories” and “misinformation,” charges that Gates has championed and invested in biometric chips, vaccine identification systems, satellite surveillance, and COVID vaccines.

Gates’s media gifts, says CJR author Tim Schwab, mean that “critical reporting about the Gates Foundation is rare.” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation declined multiple interview requests from CJR and refused to disclose how much money it has funneled to journalists.

In 2007, the LA Times published one of the only critical investigations on the Gates Foundation, exposing Gates’s holdings in companies that hurt people his foundation claims to help, like industries linked to child labor. Lead reporter Charles Piller, says, “They were unwilling to answer questions and pretty much refused to respond in any sort of way…”

The investigation showed how Gates’s global health funding has steered the world’s aid agenda toward Gates’ personal goals (vaccines and GMO crops) and away from issues such as emergency preparedness to respond to disease outbreaks, like the Ebola crisis.

“They’ve dodged our questions and sought to undermine our coverage,” says freelance journalist Alex Park after investigating the Gates Foundation’s polio vaccine efforts.

© September 3, 2020, Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

September 6, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Venezuela: Operation Gedeon Organizers Arrested in Colombia

By Ricardo Vaz | Venezuelanalysis | September 5, 2020

Mérida – Colombian security forces announced the arrest of four Venezuelan citizens on Thursday.

Rayder Alexander Russo Marquez, Juvenal Sequea Torres and Juven Jose Sequea Torres were captured in Bogota, while Yacsy Alexandra Alvarez Mirabal was detained in Barranquilla. The operation was jointly carried out by the Colombian attorney general’s office, police, army and migration services, with assistance from the FBI.

Colombian President Ivan Duque held a press conference after the arrests, claiming that the four were “criminals” paid by the Venezuelan government to “destabilize” the country.

The comments drew a sharp rebuke from Caracas, with Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza condemning the “nerve” of the Colombian president.

“What nerve from Ivan Duque. Now it turns out that Venezuelan deserting mercenaries were going to destabilize Colombia,” he wrote ironically on Twitter. “We gave the Colombian government information about these terrorists and it chose to do nothing.”

According to Venezuelan authorities, Russo, the Sequea brothers and Alvarez participated in the “Operation Gedeon” failed paramilitary incursion. On May 3 and 4, two speed boats carrying armed men were intercepted by security forces. Search operations in the following days led to over 40 arrests.

The 60-man Operation Gedeon was orchestrated by former US Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, who was hired by the Juan Guaido-led Venezuelan opposition, and intended to take over strategic locations in the capital and capture several high-ranking figures, including President Nicolas Maduro.

Two other US citizens, fellow former Green Berets Airan Berry and Luke Denman, were arrested in the operation, as was a third Sequea brother, Antonio.

The Venezuelan government sustains that Russo, Juvenal and Juven Sequea took part in the Northern Colombia-based training camps where the coup attempt was prepared. The Sequea brothers took part in the April 30, 2019 failed coup attempt before deserting from the Bolivarian National Guard. Russo, aka “Teniente Pico” is accused of involvement in the August 2018 assassination attempt against Maduro.

For her part, Alvarez is said to have been behind the logistics of the operation as well as functioning as liaison between the Americans and retired Major General Cliver Alcala, another organizer behind Operation Gedeon. Alcala, who had been responsible for previous armed incursion attempts featuring Venezuelan deserters, surrendered to US authorities after being indicted on drug charges.

September 6, 2020 Posted by | Deception | , , , | 1 Comment

The US and its “Humanitarian” War for Central Asia

By Vladimir Odintsov – New Eastern Outlook – 06.09.2020

Despite the failure of the color revolution campaign organized by Washington, the United States and its allies show no signs of moving their attention away from Central Asia. The countries in the region continue to receive so-called “assistance” that permeates all spheres of life of the republics, implanting foreign values, undermining the authorities and interfering in internal affairs, actively trying to tear these states away from Russia and China.

Since the countries of Central Asia’s (CA) proclamation of independence, various international donors have expanded their participation in the region by providing official state and international assistance for development, which has reached more than 25 billion US dollars since 1991. The largest recipient of such aid in the region is Kyrgyzstan, which has received about $ 8.1 billion, followed by Tajikistan ($ 5.9 billion), then Uzbekistan ($ 5.8 billion), and Kazakhstan ($ 4.2 billion). The country that has received the least amount of aid since 1991 was Turkmenistan (803.45 million US dollars). But this is only direct state and international assistance.

In addition, the so-called “assistance” is afforded through various foundations, NGOs, including USAID, NDI, Soros Foundation, Freedom House, Foundation to Promote Open Society, Civil Society Development Association and others, as well as embassies of Western countries. Recently, the well-known abbreviation NED (National Endowment for Democracy), has been mentioned more and more often in the media.

Fearing the restoration of the “Soviet regime” in the states of Central Asia and the strengthening of Russia and China’s influence, the United States in its activities in the region increasingly began to focus on the “humanitarian” areas, including, first of all, the “educational presence”, strengthening of influence on society through various controlled NGOs, establishing control over the press and, through Washington-funded information platforms, influencing the creation of an ideological and propaganda background beneficial to the United States.

The “educational presence” is viewed in Washington as the most important stage in the preparation of the future political and business elite in the states of interest to the United States, and is mainly carried out through “flagship” universities, the activities of cultural sections of American embassies, exchange programs and educational grants.

In recent years, the United States has especially actively used the following as “flagship” universities: American University of Central Asia (AUCA, Bishkek). Kazakh American University (KAU, Alma-Ata) and the Kazakhstan Institute of World Economy and Entrepreneurship (KIMEP, Alma-Ata).

The focus of such “flagship” universities in educating future leaders of the region’s countries close to the United States is not even hidden in the official announcement of the American University of Central Asia, which states that it was founded in 1993 to “educate future leaders for democratic transformations in Central Asia.” It became the first university in Central Asia to issue US accredited liberal arts degrees through a partnership with Bard College in the United States of America. It is worth noting that AUCA is not accountable to the Ministry of Education and Science of Kyrgyzstan, it has an American Board of Trustees, and since May 2019 it has been headed by American political scientist, an expert on Russian politics, Andrew Kuchins.

Other flagship US universities are predominantly located in Kazakhstan. One of them is the private Kazakh-American University, which is a multi-level educational complex with a kindergarten, school, bachelor’s and master’s degrees. KAU was established in 1997 to “train professionals focused on leadership and aimed at the industrial and innovative development of the Republic of Kazakhstan,” as follows from the official presentation of this university. Another pivotal US university in Central Asia is KIMEP, the oldest and largest private university operating according to the North American model of education in Central Asia for the same purpose of educating the future leaders of the region by their own model. Another important institution of higher education providing the “educational presence” of the United States is Narxoz University (formerly the Alma-Ata Institute of National Economy) in Kazakhstan, which is headed by American Andrew Wachtel, current member of the US National Academy of Sciences, former president of AUCA.

In addition, the United States has a network of partner universities in the region. At the same time, in a number of higher educational institutions of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, there are so-called “American sections”, which are essentially US Embassy’s external units, where appropriate work is carried out with the youth of Central Asia, aimed at achieving American foreign policy and foreign economic goals. The American Council for Cooperation in Education and Language Learning (ACCELS) operating in the region is subordinated to the same goals, which, by this Council’s own definition, is called upon to “educate specialists who are able to spread American ideas in the field of business, public administration, to plant the American educational system, to promote positive image of the USA.”

For a more productive outreach to student youth, American diplomats actively communicate with various higher educational institutions of the region, often speak there, participate in institute conferences, invite individual students to some protocol events at the US Embassy, thereby demonstrating an interest in the fate of the future leaders of the CA countries. In carrying out such activities, representatives of American embassies have the opportunity to spot the brightest students, mark them with individual grants and invite them to participate in exchange programs funded by the State Department, and with the support of American corporations or other “interested” US institutions, including US intelligence agencies.

Thus, the “educational presence” is effectively used in the “humanitarian struggle” of the United States for Central Asia, to increase the loyalty of Central Asian citizens to America, especially the most ambitious and brilliant representatives of regional youth. Thus, actively interfering in the domestic affairs of the Central Asian countries and influencing them.

September 6, 2020 Posted by | Corruption | , , , | Leave a comment