Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Media Blackout: Moderna’s FDA Report Lists 13 Total Deaths, 6 In The Vaccine Group 7 In The Placebo

Spiro Skouras | December 18, 2020

The Pfizer Covid vaccine is already being administered to the public in the UK and the first doses have been given in the US ahead of a mass vaccination campaign on a global scale.

It is important to recognize that the Pfizer Covid vaccine has not been approved by the FDA. It has only received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) meaning the vaccine has not gone through the standard process to get official approval from the regulatory agency.

Now Moderna’s experimental Covid vaccine is set to get the same Emergency Use Authorization allowing the shot to be distributed to millions of people.

We have already witnessed short term adverse events (side effects) from the Pfizer vaccine. Truth is, nobody knows what the long term effects could be and it appears the public is being subjected to an experiment on a global scale.

In this report, we examine discrepancies in the FDA Moderna report that was voted on by an advisory panel. The panel voted 20-0 recommending EUA.

Some of the discrepancies include cherry picked trial participants to achieve the desired results to gain EUA. As well as 13 total deaths in the trials, 6 in the vaccinated group and 7 in the placebo. Something the media refuses to address.

December 21, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

There are thousands of Covid strains, so this new scare is NO big deal, but politicians just love the new authoritarianism

How the Grinch stole Christmas..starring Boris Johnson (Twitter)

By Peter Andrews | RT | December 21, 2020

The UK’s virus mutation is nothing but recycled alarmism, with no substance to justify the cancellation of Christmas and plunging us all into yet more misery. It’s unscientific, unjustifiable and unforgivable.

Let me set the scene. The world (we are told) is in the grip of a deadly plague. Health services (we are told) are on the brink of collapse. And just when you think things cannot get any worse, the horrific news comes down from on high that our invisible enemy has mutated into an even scarier form. Although it is too early to know anything of substance about it, it is entirely possible that it is more contagious, or more dangerous, or – who knows – maybe both.

Was that the situation at the weekend as the UK was plunged into what’s rapidly become its worst crisis since World War II (and certainly the worst self-induced one), just ahead of Christmas?

No, this was the precise situation FIVE MONTHS AGO, when I wrote about Spike D614G, a mutant variant of coronavirus that we were told could be up to NINE TIMES more contagious. You may not remember because that mutant strain turned out to be a total nothing burger. So why would this one be any different?

The name game

This time around, our Covid commissars haven’t even bothered to give the new strain a flashy name – it is called ‘VUI2020/12/01’. For those interested in what evidence ‘the experts’ have to excuse the panic they are sowing, here is their own one-page justification. Unsurprisingly it is a scant, wishy-washy patchwork of hasty findings, centring on already debunked PCR tests and the mystical ‘R number’. There is absolutely no suggestion it poses any additional threat.

These experts, styling themselves as NERVTAG (why do they love to come up with acronyms that sound as they came from a James Bond movie?), say they have “moderate confidence” that VUI2020/12/01 is more contagious than the supermarket-brand coronavirus. (Would it also be fair to say, then, that they have “moderate confidence” that it is not more contagious?)

In any case, I am tickled to see the name of our old pal Neil Ferguson pop up in NERVTAG, the man who screwed his mistress, screwed us all, and – we thought – screwed his career in the process. I think I am actually starting to like this nutty professor, who must have a neck of the purest, untarnished brass. Maybe it’s something you pick up on the London swinging circuit. As the old saying goes, you just can’t keep a good man down!

Meanwhile, a top Scottish doctor has remarked that there isn’t a shred of evidence that this strain is any more contagious (let alone deadly). Professor Hugh Pennington even notes that the timing of the announcement is ‘’very handy to cancel Christmas.” An entire group of anti-lockdown scientists have issued a challenge to Health Secretary Matt Hancock to back up his claims about the new variant. Professor Carl Heneghan is still waiting for evidence for the claim that the new strain is, precisely, 70 percent more contagious. And I hardly need to tell you by now that the fantastic Dr Mike Yeadon is having none of it.

Nothing new under the sun

Back in July, I made the argument that it would actually be a good thing if the Spike D614G strain was more contagious. I explained the school of thought that says that seasonal respiratory viruses, like the one that causes Covid, evolve to become less dangerous as they spread through a population. This is because respiratory viruses always have thousands of variants, some that increase the deadliness and some that reduce it. The deadliest ones sicken or kill their hosts quickly, before they have a chance to spread it to other people. But the least deadly ones, which cause no or mild symptoms, can hitch a ride in their hosts to many people who they can then infect and multiply. Thus, natural selection favours the mildest, most contagious strains.

I still believe in the logic of that theory, and I think it explains why the coronavirus is now endemic (i.e. everywhere) and by extension why all further restrictions are completely pointless and do only harm. I will not give Hancock and the rest of SAGE’s anti-scientific advisers the satisfaction of directly addressing this so-called new strain: as Prof. Pennington has suggested, it looks like a ploy designed to mislead the public into sacrificing Christmas, the only glimmer of hope that had got them through this harshest of winters.

One should be wary of caricaturing Boris Johnson and the rest of his cronies perpetrating this crime on the people as ‘Grinches’. They are nothing so amusing or cuddly. They are far, far worse than that, and make no mistake about it, they know full well what they are doing. The irrepressible Peter Hitchens has pointed out that Britain now resembles the cursed land from CS Lewis’ Narnia books, where it is “always winter but never Christmas.” I never thought the nightmare worlds of my childhood reading would manifest in reality; but this year, they have.

Peter Andrews is an Irish science journalist and writer based in London. He has a background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in genetics

December 21, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

Massie, Gabbard team up on bill to repeal the Patriot Act

By Justine Coleman – The Hill – 12/16/20

Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) have teamed up to introduce a bill designed to repeal the Patriot Act.

The two House members are proposing bipartisan legislation designed to limit government surveillance of people without warrants and probable cause.

The Protect Our Civil Liberties Act would repeal both the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act that permitted government agencies to collect mass telephone and email data. Gabbard and Massie argue that this surveillance violates Americans’ right to privacy and their civil liberties.

In a video announcement Wednesday, Gabbard said the bill would make sure that Congress “reexamines how best to strike this balance of protecting our national security interests while also ensuring that the constitutional rights of every single American is preserved.”

“Protection of our civil liberties is essential,” she later said. “Join us in making sure that our constitutional rights are upheld.”

The Hawaii Democrat also called out the intelligence community, saying it “has not been transparent or honest with the American people or even Congress about what they’ve been doing.”

The bill would also make retaliation against any federal national security whistleblowers, such as Edward Snowden, illegal and require that the Government Accountability Office “regularly monitor domestic surveillance programs.”

It would also ban “government-mandated back doors” built into electronics and software that allows the government to get past any privacy technology, Gabbard said.

Massie retweeted Gabbard’s video and said he is “honored to cosponsor a bill to repeal the Patriot Act with my friend across the aisle @TulsiGabbard.”

In a statement, Massie said the Patriot Act violates the Fourth Amendment and has expanded domestic surveillance in the country.

“Our Founding Fathers fought and died to stop the kind of warrantless spying and searches that the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act authorize,” he said. “It is long past time to repeal the Patriot Act and reassert the constitutional rights of all Americans.”

H.R.8970, the Protect Our Civil Liberties Act, a bipartisan bill, would repeal the USA PATRIOT Act as well as amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to address dangerous changes made to it in the years following the 9/11 attacks. and which were not addressed by subsequent FISA amendments made by Congress. The USA PATRIOT Act along with changes to FISA have been used to undermine Americans’ civil liberties, particularly Fourth Amendment protections.

The Protect Our Civil Liberties Act would:

  1. Repeal the PATRIOT Act (which contains provisions allowing for mass telephone metadata collection)

 

  1. Repeal the FISA Amendments Act (which contains provisions allowing for mass email collection), except for provisions regarding FISA court reporting and WMD intelligence collection.

 

  1. Makes retaliation against federal national security whistleblowers illegal and provides for the termination of individuals who engage in such retaliation.

 

  1. Ensure that any FISA collection against a U.S. person can only occur with a valid warrant based on probable cause (which was the original FISA standard from 1978 to 2001).

 

  1. Retain the ability for government surveillance capabilities to be targeted against a specific non-U.S. person, regardless of the type of communications method(s) or device(s) being used by the subject of the surveillance.

 

  1. Retain provisions in current law dealing with the acquisition of intelligence information involving weapons of mass destruction from entities not composed primarily of U.S. persons.

 

  1. Prohibit government-mandated “back doors” in electric devices or software that allow the government to bypass encryption or other privacy technology built into said hardware and/or software.

 

  1. Increase the terms of judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) from seven to ten years and allow their reappointment.

 

  1. Mandate that the FISC utilize technologically competent technical and legal experts (Special Masters) to help determine the veracity of government claims about privacy, minimization and collection capabilities employed by the U.S. government in FISA applications.

 

  1. Mandate that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) regularly monitor such domestic surveillance programs for compliance with the law, including responding to Member requests for investigations and whistleblower complaints of wrongdoing.

 

  1. Explicitly ban the use of Executive Order 12333 as a way of conducting surveillance on U.S. persons or mass collection of information

December 21, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | 1 Comment

Dream of Greater Europe dies: German efforts to create a Europe without Russia forged a Europe against Russia

By Glenn Diesen | RT | December 21, 2020

German-Russian friendship is over with ‘Ostpolitik’ dead and buried. Future relations will largely be based on confrontation, as Moscow no longer cares what Berlin thinks and Germany has lost its unique leverage with Russia.

Many observers believe the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) needs an overhaul. With countries such as Brazil, Germany, India and even Japan suggested as potential permanent members. Reaction to Berlin’s recent two-year stint on the body suggests the present five (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US) will be keeping the gate locked for a while.

Instead of the customary pleasantries and recognition for Germany’s contributions on its way out, Russia and China scolded the German Permanent Representative to the United Nations Christoph Heusgen. Russian Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitri Polyansky lambasted Germany’s “hypocritical behavior” and in no uncertain terms stated that “we will not miss you.” China also denounced Germany for its behavior and asserted Germany’s path toward a permanent seat at the UNSC “will be difficult.”

Disputes over Syria

The heated rhetoric derived primarily from Germany’s criticism of Russia and China over developments in Syria. For Heusgen, the fault for the crisis in Syria was simple: “Russia has been undermining the OPCW” by questioning its findings and supporting the Syrian government. Complex geopolitical rivalries in a strategic region are clothed in the language of values as liberal democracies versus authoritarians.

Since 2006, it has been widely reported and confirmed that the US has been preparing proxies in Syria for regime change. Since the fighting erupted in 2011, Western states have violated international law by funding and training militant groups and directly attacking Syrian targets.

Leaks from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) indicate that findings were deliberately misrepresented, and the chief of cabinet at the OPCW ordered officials to “remove all traces” of documents that found the gas cylinders in Douma had been planted there. The US, UK and France, blocked the testimony of Jose Bustani, the first director-general of the OPCW, who accused Washington of high-jacking the institution to control the narrative.

Russia’s denunciation of Germany’s role in the UNSC represents a wider rejection of Berlin’s self-professed moral authority. The post-Cold War era of liberal hegemony is increasingly seen by Moscow as an era of political radicalism. The West professed that its global hegemony would advance liberal values, yet Moscow perceives that liberal values have been used to assert global hegemony.

The West is accused of developing security strategies based on dominance rather than multilateralism, while relentlessly expanding a military bloc, invading and destroying other countries with increasing frequency, and pursuing coups – all the while claiming moral authority as defenders of human rights, democracy and peace.

The German-Russian split: Redefining Ostpolitik

The German-Russian relationship has historically swung between partnership and competition. In 1917, James Fairgrieve described Eastern Europe as a “crush zone” due to the power competition between Germany and Russia. Third parties such as the UK and US have historically defined their security interest as maintaining this division in Europe, as a German-Russian partnership would shift the balance of power on the continent and possibly become a threat.

Even today, the likes of ‘Stratfor’ founder George Friedman assert that the primary foreign policy goal of the US is to prevent any sort of alliance between Moscow and Berlin, because of the fear that it would offer a desirable alternative to US hegemony.

Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik during the Cold War sought to normalize relations with the Soviet Union and its East European satellites. Moscow interpreted this as a German effort to resolve the historical zero-sum rivalry in Eastern Europe as opposed to merely regaining a foothold in Soviet satellite states. From Gorbachev’s aspiration of a Common European Home to the post-Cold War aspirations of a Greater Europe, Moscow recognized a partnership with Germany was necessary to unify the continent.

Today, Germany interprets Ostpolitik as leadership in Eastern Europe, which depends on pushing Russia out of Europe. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced this month the legacy of Ostpolitik: “Unlike Brandt, we no longer have to go via Moscow to talk to our eastern neighbours nowadays. Many partners in Eastern and Central Europe now view Russia very critically – and German foreign policy must take our neighbours’ concerns seriously. In addition to offers of dialogue, clear German positions vis-à-vis Moscow are therefore important for maintaining trust in Eastern Europe.”

Fairgrieve’s “crush zone” description of German-Russian relations remains, although expressed in Berlin’s value-based “Euro-speak.”

From Greater Europe to Greater Eurasia

Berlin’s efforts to create a Europe without Russia unavoidably became a Europe against Russia. The German-supported unconstitutional coup against Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014, or “democratic revolution” as Berlin frames it, resulted in the death of Moscow’s Greater Europe initiative.

While the West condemned Russia for how it reacted to the Maidan, less focus was devoted to the sense of betrayal in Moscow. The remaining Russian illusions of gradual integration into a Greater Europe collapsed as the EU compelled Ukraine to choose between East and West. Subsequently, the nature and utility of the special partnership with Germany also ended.

The German-Russian partnership for Greater Europe was replaced with the Chinese-Russian partnership for Greater Eurasia. Russia has been busy the past years diversifying its economy away from Germany and toward China and Asia. The growing success of the Greater Eurasia initiative is largely the result of Russian-Chinese efforts to harmonise interests in their shared regions, which is contrasted with German efforts to “peel away” Russia’s neighbours – or “European integration” as Berlin frames it.

German-Russian relations in the age of Greater Eurasia

Under the Greater Europe initiative, Russia implicitly accepted German interference in its domestic affairs. As the eternal aspirant aiming to be included in Europe based on common values manifested itself in a subject-object or teacher-student organization of relations, Berlin was bestowed with the assumed moral authority to socialize or civilize Moscow in domestic and international affairs.

In the age of Greater Eurasia, relations between Russia and Germany are changing rapidly.

The emergence of a multipolar world implies pluralism of morals and values. Moscow is charting a distinctive conservative path and will no longer accept that liberal democratic universalism legitimizes sovereign inequality. Moscow subsequently rejects that its domestic politics is an issue for international discussion, and likewise dismisses Berlin’s effort to frame competing national interests in a Manichean prism as good versus bad values.

The unfriendly farewell by Moscow and Beijing as Germany exits the Security Council is a manifestation of a recalibrating relationship. Rather than attempting to reset relations, Moscow and Berlin should organize an amicable divorce and establish clear expectations toward each other.

Glenn Diesen is an Associate Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal. Follow him on Twitter @glenndiesen

December 21, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

The Washington Post Can’t Stop Babbling About Russians ‘Hacking Our Minds’

By Caitlin Johnstone | December 19, 2020

The Washington Post has published another article warning its readers that the Russians are “hacking our minds”, this one authored by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

“Russia hasn’t just hacked our computer systems. It’s hacked our minds.” blares the ridiculous, propagandistic headline for an article about “the Russian model” of propaganda which “rests on the principle that people get convinced when they hear the same message many times from a variety of sources, no matter how biased.”

Which is funny, since this is not the first time WaPo itself has repeated this cartoonish narrative about Russian mind-hackers.

Just two months ago the Washington Post editorial board published an article titled “The US may be safe from foreign interference in this election. But what about perception hacking?“, which opens with the line “Russia and other adversaries may not need to hack the election if they can hack something else: our minds.”

The paranoid screed unironically argued that Russia is using its super powerful propaganda engine to make people paranoid and doubtful of US electoral systems, which could actually have an adverse effect on the US election. As though telling people their mental and perceptual faculties are being hacked by a hostile foreign enemy with the goal of influencing the election would not make them paranoid and doubtful of US electoral systems.

Zakaria’s piece builds on this already established theme by parroting the still completely evidence-free claim that Russia was responsible for the far-reaching cyber intrusion into the IT company SolarWinds, whose cybersecurity we recently learned was left so unprotected that its update server’s password was literally “solarwinds123”.

“But what about the perhaps more insidious Russian efforts at disinformation, which have helped to reshape the information environment worldwide?” Zakaria asks. He then does a few mental gymnastics to tie Russia’s propaganda campaign to Donald Trump, because of course he does, and leaves the reader with the closing line, “The problem is not just that Russia has hacked America’s computer systems. It seems to have hacked our minds.”

WaPo keeps hammering this narrative about powerful Russian mind-hackers as though Russia is the only nation with an existing propaganda campaign on the world stage and not one of the weaker ones doing so. The US government itself openly uses propaganda on foreigners with programs like Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, which actually serve the more important function of presenting the illusion that those are the only form of US government propaganda.

In reality the plutocratic class which owns the mass media works closely with the US government and sets up its institutions to only elevate voices which advance narratives that are favorable to the status quo those plutocrats have built their kingdoms upon. WaPo itself is owned by the richest man in the world who is also a CIA contractor and sits on a Pentagon advisory board. The unofficial propaganda operations of the oligarchic empire give it a massive edge in international narrative control that dwarfs both official US propaganda programs and anything the Russian government could ever come up with.

Among some very stiff competition, one of the dumbest recurring themes in western imperialist media is the idea that world affairs, entire electoral and governmental systems, and even our very minds, are being controlled by a nation with the same GDP as South Korea. Russia does not have an especially strong sway over the world stage, it just happens to be one of the few remaining power structures which have resisted absorption into the US-centralized empire and is being targeted with a propaganda campaign aimed at changing that.

Russia is not hacking your mind. If anyone is hacking your mind, it’s the vast globe-spanning power structure loosely centralized around the United States which has been aggressively propagandizing you into supporting the continuation of status quo politics since you were born.

The dawn of political insight comes when you realize that propaganda is not just something that is done by other nations to other people. It is done by your own rulers, in your own nation, and it is being done to you.

Support Caitlin on Patreon.

December 21, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | 2 Comments

Government, Not Coronavirus, Is Killing Small Businesses

By Ron Paul | December 21, 2020

A video of a confrontation between Ventura County, California health officials and restaurant owner Anton Van Happen has gone viral. The health officials were ordering Mr. Van Happen to close his business because he allegedly violated California’s ban on outdoor dining. Mr. Van Happen asked the health officials if the government will pay his employees and his rent while his business is indefinitely closed.

Mr. Van Happen is hardly the only small business owner worried about how to pay bills during the lockdowns. Many small businesses operate on a narrow profit margin, so being forced to “temporarily” shut down or limit the number of customers they can serve is a virtual death sentence.

The lockdowns have already caused as many as 200,000 small businesses to permanently close. Lockdowns, by shrinking the number of employers, lead to long-term unemployment or lower wages for many workers.

While governments have terrorized small businesses, they have typically deemed the big chain stores “essential businesses” so they can remain open. The lockdowns are thus another government policy that gives big businesses a competitive advantage over their smaller competitors.

The benefits big businesses get from the lockdowns — including fewer competitors, more customers, and a job market with more workers competing for fewer jobs — may explain why many big businesses are not fighting the lockdowns. Instead, most big retail chains are requiring their workers and customers to wear masks. Many big businesses may soon deny service to those who refuse to receive a Covid vaccine.

One would think that progressives who claim to oppose policies that benefit big corporations like WalMart, Target, and Amazon would oppose the lockdowns. Sadly, even many progressives are unquestioningly parroting the Covid propaganda and demonizing those who dissent.

By slowing down the development of herd immunity among the population, the lockdowns could put those truly at risk in greater danger. Lockdowns have also had negative effects such as increases in drug and alcohol abuse and increases in domestic violence. Meanwhile, many schoolchildren are deprived of the opportunity to interact with their teachers and their peers. Instead, these children are subjected to the fraud of “virtual learning.”

Resistance to Covid tyranny is growing as more people figure out that lockdowns and mandates are both unnecessary and harmful. This resistance was largely started by small business owners faced with a choice between obeying the government or making sure they, and their employees, can feed their families. Small business owners have been leaders in recent anti-lockdown protests across America.

Eventually the resistance will grow to the point where the politicians will be forced to either double down on authoritarianism or admit the lockdowns were a mistake. Either way, those of us who know the truth must resist the Covid tyranny until government officials no longer terrorize small businesses for the crime of serving willing consumers.

Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute.

December 21, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

U.S. plans to build a nuclear plant on the Moon are a major challenge to other Great Powers

By Paul Antonopoulos | December 21, 2020

The U.S., via its Space Policy Directive-6 (SPD-6), announced plans to set up a nuclear power plant on the Moon by 2027. The SPD-6 states that the Moon will be installed with a fission power system that will have a power range of 40 kilowatt-electric (kWe) and higher so that the celestial body can support a sustained lunar presence and allow Mars to be more easily explored.

China’s Global Times reported that the U.S.’ ambitions will lead to future lunar military projects as it seeks space supremacy. According to Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert, the moon is rich in helium-3, which can be used to produce energy by nuclear fusion. Song warned that by setting up a nuclear power plant, the Americans can theoretically turn the Moon “into a production site of nuclear weapons”.

U.S. President Donald Trump, as Eurasian Times reported, issued the SPD-6, which lays out a national strategy for the responsible and effective use of space nuclear power and propulsion (SNPP) systems.

Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University highlighted that the use of SNPP is in the attempt to establish “American unilateralism” over space. As per the Moon Treaty, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979, celestial bodies and the Moon are “not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means”. Washington has generally adhered to the Moon Treaty, but never formally signed or ratified it.

Earlier this year, Trump attempted to challenge this Treaty by proposing new rules, dubbed the “Artemis Accord”, which would change the status quo. The Artemis Accord would allow for the exploitation of lunar resources for commercial gain and focus on establishing so-called safety zones around landing sites. This could be interpreted as de facto ownership of areas of the moon, forbidden by the Outer Space Treaty that provides a basic framework for international space law.

In addition, on April 6, Trump passed a decree that allows the U.S. to extract mineral resources from outer space. The document, states: “Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons”.

It adds: “the United States does not consider the Moon Agreement to be an effective or necessary instrument to guide nation states regarding the promotion of commercial participation in the long-term exploration, scientific discovery, and use of the Moon, Mars, or other celestial bodies”. Finally, the document emphasizes that the U.S. will challenge any attempt by another state or international organization that wants to treat the Moon Agreement as customary international law.

With the U.S. planning to violate international treaties to unilaterally exploit the resources of space and construct a nuclear plant on the Moon, it is understood why Trump established the United States Space Force (USSF), the space service branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. Russia, India and China all have interests on the Moon too, and the USSF was established to ensure U.S. dominance over space rivals.

India in 2019 launched the Chandrayaan 2 mission with the aim to land on the south pole of the Moon to search for water and minerals. No other landing craft has reached this part of the moon before. Unfortunately for India, the landing failed because of a software glitch. This has not deterred Indian ambitions though and Chandrayaan-3 is scheduled to land on the Moon in the second quarter of 2021.

Meanwhile, China launched the Chang’e 5 robotic Moon mission on November 23 from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site and landed on the Moon on December 1. By December 16 it returned to Earth with lunar soil and rock samples. It was China’s first sample-return mission, making it the third country after the U.S. and the Soviet Union to successfully obtain samples returned from the Moon.

Russia will be returning to the Moon after 45 years of inactivity. Vladimir Kolmykov, head of the Lavochkin Scientific and Production Association at the Russian space agency Roscosmos, told Russian President President Vladimir Putin on April 10 that: “The Luna-25 spacecraft is currently in the assembly and first trial stages. Yes, there are some cooperation problems but we are working on them. I hope that the 2021 goal of launching Luna-25 will be achieved.”

With the world’s Great Powers (the U.S., Russia and China), and emerging Great Power, India, all having vested interests in space and the Moon, the construction of a nuclear plant on the celestial body is a major challenge as it will propel a race for its resources and weaponization. All countries will try and claim parts of the moon for mining, resembling something akin to Western Europe’s Scramble for Africa or the race to claim large swathes of Antarctica. The U.S. is trying to dominate space policies from a very narrow U.S.-centric view when space should be viewed as a Common Heritage to Mankind. Russia, China and India could also claim large swathes of the moon in reaction to U.S. unilateral activities, thus kicking off another, more fundamental “Scramble for the Moon.”

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.  

December 21, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | | 1 Comment

2020: The Year we Sold Our Liberties For a Medical Tyranny

By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | December 19, 2020

This year has seen what looks like the birth of a new religion. Let us call it Covidianity. It has its Prophets (eg. Neil Ferguson); its Priesthood of experts (eg. Whitty and Vallance); its own Soteriology (eg. The Vaccine of Salvation); its evangelists (eg. Piers Morgan); its own eschatology (eg. The New Normal); and of course its heretics (anyone questioning the data or the narrative).

Not everyone who has adopted the bizarre practices of Covidianity is a Covidian. Many have been cowed into it somewhat unwillingly; many have been bamboozled into it somewhat unwittingly; and many others just do not seem to have thought through what is being done to them, much less whether it is right, necessary and proportionate. But there are definitely true Covidians, and you can recognise them by their insistence that all bow down to their cult, and that those who refuse should be shamed.

In one sense, this religion has come upon us at warp speed. There we all were, going about our business at the start of the year, not particularly suspecting that there would be anything particularly out of the ordinary in 2020, and suddenly, wham! Yet in another sense, many of the ingredients were already in place long before this year, and they were simply brought together in one large melting pot to produce a toxic brew of fear, hysteria and irrationality on a truly epic scale.

Those ingredients include: A society that had abandoned belief in the Triune God and hadn’t quite managed to find a replacement to fill the void; a society obsessed with Safetyism, and the general sterilisation of life; a society glued to the Propaganda Box in the corner of the room with millions hanging on the every word that proceeds from it as if it were the very Oracle of God; and a society that had, by and large, utterly forgotten what freedom actually means.

What this has given us is a society seeking an arche (first principle) to hold everything together; one trying to stave off death by eliminating every potential risk; one that looks unquestioningly to the Government, the media and assembled experts to tell them how to do this; and one that has proved itself willing to give up freedoms won through blood, sweat and tears centuries ago to achieve it. In short, we have arrived at the planned, technocratic oligarchy that C S Lewis warned of us of over half a century ago:

“The new oligarchy must more and more base its claim to plan us on its claim to knowledge. If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. This means they must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists’ puppets. Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend.”

And here’s Dwight Eisenhower saying much the same thing in his farewell address in 1961:

“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Sound familiar?

The irony of all that has happened this year is that in our apparent attempt to eliminate risk, we have given up our lives. That is, we have placed apparent safety so high up on the list of priorities that it has become a god, governing how we are to live, breathe and have our being, and it so dominates our everyday lives, that it makes normal life impossible, sucking out joy, meaning, and purpose. It is, as Lewis said, a tragic way to live:

“Now I care far more how humanity lives than how long. Progress, for me, means increasing goodness and happiness of individual lives. For the species, as for each man, mere longevity seems to me a contemptible ideal.”

One can understand how people in a plague situation would accept the suspension of normal life for a time, since you don’t mess about with an illness that wipes out something like 60% of the population. But for a coronavirus with an Infection Fatality Rate of around 0.2% – 0.26%? For a virus which has caused deaths — as a proportion of the population — to return to levels not seen since … ooh … those dark days of 2000:

 

And yes, I know that Covidian Logicians will claim that the deaths are not higher because we did all that weird stuff like shutting down the country and wearing bizarre face gear and making sure we didn’t sing loudly and so on. Then again, Covidian Logic claims lots of things which aren’t true, and the fact is there is no evidence whatsoever to show that these measures had any effect in terms of altering mortality rates.

For the illusion of safety — a mess of pottage — we have sold the heritage, and the liberties that were bequeathed to us by those who have gone before, which it was our duty to preserve for those who are to come. As Edmund Burke taught us:

“Society is indeed a contract … It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

We have betrayed our ancestors and our descendants, and the idea that we will just get these liberties back is a woeful misunderstanding of how the world works. Firstly, human nature being what it is, those in power who have developed a taste for authoritarianism rarely like to give it up. And secondly, liberties take centuries of long hard work to grow up, but can be hacked down in a short time — as has happened to us in 2020. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula for reinstating them speedily.

Having said that, perhaps there is still time. Perhaps there is still a window of opportunity for us to step back from the brink of this absurd Medical Tyranny, with its false promises of safety, and instead embrace life and freedom. But this would mean rejecting this misery of Covidianity without any further delay, and taking a good long draught of whatever it was they used to drink in Rohan:

“Eowyn: I fear neither death nor pain.

Aragorn: What do you fear, my lady?

Eowyn: A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valour has gone beyond recall or desire.”

December 21, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment