Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Woolsey’s Silly Conspiracy Theory

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | February 25, 2021

 R. James Woolsey, who served as CIA director from 1993 to 1995 under President Clinton, has just come out with a new book about the Kennedy assassination that is straight out of a 1964 time warp. Co-authored by the late Ion Mihai Pacepa, a two-star general of the secret police in communist Romani who later defected to the United States, the book, entitled Operation Dragon, posits an old 1964 conspiracy theory that some people in the U.S. national-security establishment were peddling back in 1964 — that the communists conspired with Lee Harvey Oswald to kill JFK.

In the process, Woolsey does what the mainstream press has done for 60 years — he simply ignores the mountain of circumstantial evidence that assassination researchers have uncovered since the 1960s that inexorably points the finger of guilt at the U.S. national-security establishment, which was conducting all sorts of Cold War national-security regime-change operations in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and beyond.

That was perhaps the biggest benefit of the shroud of national-security state secrecy that was imposed on the Kennedy assassination. The malefactors knew that if they could just keep a secrecy cap on the assassination and its aftermath, there was a good chance that their assassination and cover-up could succeed.

There is no better evidence of this phenomenon than the autopsy that the U.S. national-security establishment performed on the body of President Kennedy just a few hours after his death.

What does Woolsey say about the autopsy? He says nothing. He doesn’t mention it at all, just as the mainstream press never mentions it. Total, absolute silence. Instead, Woolsey keeps his mind firmly embedded in an old 1964 assassination conspiracy theory — that those evil communists conspired to kill President Kennedy because they hated him so much.

Why is the JFK autopsy so important? Because it provides a key to understanding the who of the assassination. The U.S. national-security establishment knew that. That’s why military officials encased the autopsy in strict national-security state secrecy from the very beginning.

As Woolsey knows, there is one irrefutable fact in the Kennedy assassination: the autopsy on Kennedy’s body was carried out by the U.S. national-security establishment. That is, not by the Soviets. Not by Nikita Khrushchev. Not by the communists. Not by Fidel Castro. Not by the Mafia. Not by the Mossad. It was conducted solely by the U.S. national-security establishment.

A shroud of national-security state secrecy was immediately over the autopsy, which was conducted just a few hours after the assassination. Participants were told never to reveal what they had seen. They were forced to sign secret written secrecy oaths. They were threatened with severe action if they ever talked.

The secrecy worked for years and even decades. But assassination researchers, seeing mysteries and anomalies arise in the circumstances surrounding the autopsy, kept pressing, Finally, in the 1990s — thirty years after the assassination — the Assassination Records Review Board partially broken through the dam of autopsy secrecy.

The result? As I detail in my two books The Kennedy Autopsy and The Kennedy Autopsy 2 and as Douglas Horne, who served on the ARRB, details in his five-volume work Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, the circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly establishes a fraudulent autopsy conducted by the U.S. national-security establishment.

Why would the national-security establishment conduct a fraudulent autopsy? There can be only one reason — cover-up. What other purpose would a fraudulent autopsy serve?

‘The natural question arises: Who would the Pentagon and the CIA be covering up for? Certainly not for the communists or the Soviets. As Woolsey documents so well, the Pentagon and the CIA hated the communists and the Soviets. As Woolsey himself would readily acknowledge, there is no reasonable possibility at all that the Pentagon and the CIA would have wanted to cover up an assassination of a U.S. president by the Reds, who, the Pentagon and the CIA steadfastly maintained throughout the Cold War, were coming to get us as part of a supposed international communist conspiracy that was supposedly based in Moscow.

Keep in mind, after all, that the plan to conduct a fraudulent autopsy would have had to originate prior to the assassination itself, especially since it was launched immediately on the death of President Kennedy. That was when a team of Secret Service agents, brandishing guns and implicitly threatening the use of deadly force on Parkland Hospital medical personnel, forced their way out of Parkland with Kennedy’s body. Saying that they were operating on orders, they refused to permit the Dallas County Medical Examiner, Dr. Earl Rose, to conduct the autopsy, as Texas law required. They took the body to Dallas Love Field, where new President Lyndon Johnson was waiting for it. Johnson then took the body and placed it in the hands of the military in Maryland.

How could they have launched their autopsy scheme without knowing who had conducted the assassination? That’s how we know they did it. The fraudulent autopsy had to have been built into the assassination plan itself.

Of course the national-security establishment’s fraudulent autopsy on President Kennedy’s body is the last thing that James Woolsey is  going to discuss in his new book on the Kennedy assassination. He’s still stuck back in 1964, when some in the U.S. national-security establishment were peddling the false conspiracy theory blaming the Kennedy assassination on the Reds.

February 25, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Joe Biden Says the Experimental Coronavirus Vaccines are Safe. The Vaccines’ Fact Sheets Say Something Very Different.

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | February 23, 2021

Via a Monday Twitter post, [proclaimed] President Joe Biden made an unqualified assertion that the experimental coronavirus vaccines, which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of vaccines, the United States government is encouraging Americans to take are “safe” for everyone. However, taking a look through the fact sheets for recipients and caregivers regarding the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna experimental coronavirus vaccines, available at the website of the US government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you find a very different representation.

These fact sheets warn that there are many known health risks of taking either vaccine and that there are also other potential health risks that remain unknown because the experimental vaccines went through rushed and incomplete testing.

Biden stated the following in his tweet:

If there’s one message I want to cut through to everyone in this country, it’s this: The vaccines are safe.

For yourself, your family, your community, our country — take the vaccine when it’s your turn and available. That’s how we’ll beat this pandemic.

Wow. It would be absurd to make such a claim even about the many vaccines that have gone through complete regular testing. There is a basis for arguing taking such injections for many people can be expected to provide greater benefit than detriment. But, to say outright that those vaccines are safe for any particular person is to give false assurance. And to say outright that they are safe for everyone is preposterous.

People are hurt by vaccines that have gone through the full, regular testing process. Further, recognition of the predictable heightened danger for some people taking such vaccines leads doctors to recommend that those individuals not take them at all.

Looking at the fact sheets for recipients and caregivers for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna experimental coronavirus vaccines makes clear how far off Biden’s blanket assurance of safety is. The US government is admitting there are potential negative health consequences of taking the experimental vaccines.

The first warning sign in the fact sheets for the two experimental vaccines is in the fact sheets’ titles. Both titles refer to the “emergency use authorization” of the vaccines. At the end of the fact sheets it is explained that emergency use authorization means the experimental coronavirus vaccines have “not undergone the same type of review as an FDA approved or cleared product.” Further, it is made clear that the emergency use authorization does not mean the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has determined the vaccines are safe. Instead, “the FDA decision is based on the totality of scientific evidence available showing that the product may be effective to prevent COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic and that the known and potential benefits of the product outweigh the known and potential risks of the product.”

Unlike Biden who seems to say everyone should rush out and take the vaccines, the fact sheets explicitly say that some people should not receive the injections: people under a certain age (16 for Pfizer-BioNTech and 18 for Moderna), as well as people who have “had a severe allergic reaction after a previous dose of this vaccine” (both vaccines have a two shot regimen) or “had a severe allergic reaction to any ingredient” of the respective vaccines.

The fact sheets for both the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna experimental coronavirus vaccines also include this section that suggests that, for particular individuals, taking one of the vaccines will carry greater risk of harm and may be better avoided:

WHAT SHOULD YOU MENTION TO YOUR VACCINATION PROVIDER BEFORE YOU GET THE [PFIZER-BIONTECH or MODERNA] COVID-19 VACCINE?

Tell your vaccination provider about all of your medical conditions, including if you:

• have any allergies

• have a fever

• have a bleeding disorder or are on a blood thinner

• are immunocompromised or are on a medicine that affects your immune system

• are pregnant or plan to become pregnant

• are breastfeeding

• have received another COVID-19 vaccine

For each of the experiment vaccines, the respective fact sheets also provide a list of some of potential health harms from receiving the vaccinations — potential health harms Biden seems to claim do not exist.

The Pfizer-BioNTech experimental coronavirus vaccine fact sheet provides these details about risks from having the shots:

WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF THE PFIZER-BIONTECH COVID-19 VACCINE?

Side effects that have been reported with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine include:

• injection site pain

• tiredness

• headache

• muscle pain

• chills

• joint pain

• fever

• injection site swelling

• injection site redness

• nausea

• feeling unwell

• swollen lymph nodes (lymphadenopathy)

Similarly, the Moderna experimental coronavirus vaccine fact sheet provides these details about risks from having the shots:

WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF THE MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINE?

Side effects that have been reported with the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine include:

• Injection site reactions: pain, tenderness and swelling of the lymph nodes in the same arm of the injection, swelling (hardness), and redness

• General side effects: fatigue, headache, muscle pain, joint pain, chills, nausea and vomiting, and fever

Both experimental coronavirus vaccines’ fact sheets also provide this warning:

There is a remote chance that the [Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna] COVID-19 Vaccine could cause a severe allergic reaction. A severe allergic reaction would usually occur within a few minutes to one hour after getting a dose of the [Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna] COVID-19 Vaccine. For this reason, your vaccination provider may ask you to stay at the place where you received your vaccine for monitoring after vaccination. Signs of a severe allergic reaction can include:

• Difficulty breathing

• Swelling of your face and throat

• A fast heartbeat

• A bad rash all over your body

• Dizziness and weakness

These may not be all the possible side effects of the [Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna] COVID-19 Vaccine. Serious and unexpected side effects may occur. The [Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna] COVID-19 Vaccine is still being studied in clinical trials.

So, are the experimental coronavirus vaccines safe? The answer is “no” according to the fact sheets provided at the FDA website. There are significant known dangers from taking the vaccines. Also, especially given the rushed and abbreviated testing of the experimental vaccines, there may be numerous unlisted health problems that arise in people who receive the shots.

Biden says to everyone in his tweet “take the vaccine when it’s your turn and available.” A wiser course is for people to consider the potential risks carefully and make their own informed decisions regarding taking the experimental coronavirus vaccines.

The experimental coronavirus vaccines’ fact sheets are a good starting point for that risk investigation. It may also be worthwhile to take a look at a few of my earlier articles — “Everyone Should Take the Experimental Coronavirus Vaccines? Dr. Joseph Mercola Says No.” from February 3, “Worries of Coronavirus Vaccine Deaths and Injuries in America and Abroad” from January 19, “Coronavirus Vaccinations Seem to be Causing 50 Times the Adverse Events of Flu Vaccinations after Just the First of Two Shots” from January 6, and “Doctors, Normal and Abnormal” from December 19.

Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute.

February 25, 2021 Posted by | Deception | , | 3 Comments

Biden Bombs Syria: A New World Record?

By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | February 25, 2021

According to breaking news reports, including by Reuters, [proclaimed] President Biden has ordered and the Pentagon has carried out military airstrikes on Syria, attacking a structure inside the country that the US government claims houses “Iranian-backed” militia.

US missiles struck tonight near the Syrian town of Al-Bukamal, on the Iraqi border. The strike is said to be in retaliation for recent rocket attacks against US facilities in Iraq. After another rocket attack earlier this month, the US State Department pointed the finger at Iran and threatened a US military response.

The Iraqi parliament voted in January, 2020, to expel US troops from the country after then-President Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. The US government ignored the vote of the democratically-elected Iraqi parliament, however Trump later announced his decision to pull US troops out of Iraq.

President Biden wasted no time in reversing Trump’s disengagement strategy for the Middle East. After just over a month in office, President Biden is re-igniting the failed US intervention launched in 2014 against Syria under the Obama Administration.

Within 24 hours of Biden being inaugurated commander-in-chief, US military convoys began pouring into northern Syria. His Administration, from Secretary of State Tony Blinken on down, enthusiastically supported the US “regime change” policy for Syria under President Obama – a policy that only benefitted al-Qaeda and its affiliates in the region.

Earlier this month it was reported that the US was building a new military base in Syria, near the Iraq and Turkey borders. New military bases carry with them new missions, so there is plenty of reason to believe that Biden plans to return the US to the “Assad must go” policy of his former boss.

Biden coming out of the gate with bombs blazing should be of little surprise to those who have watched his early foreign policy appointments. For example, he tapped noted neocon and aggressive interventionist Dana Stroul to head his Middle East Desk at the Pentagon and no doubt this airstrike at least indirectly reflects her influence and that of many others like her who have taken up positions in the Biden Administration.

Stroul hails from the AIPAC-founded “think tank,” the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), where, as former CIA official Phil Giradi writes, “she has been the Shelly and Michael Kassen Fellow in the Institute’s Beth and David Geduld Program on Arab Politics.” She is an extreme Iran hawk and has advocated and worked for regime change in Syria and US retention of large areas of Syrian territory.

So within a month of assuming office, President Biden looks to be on the cusp of launching a new Middle East war.

February 25, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , | 3 Comments

Russia must ditch ‘poisonous’ US dollar says Foreign Ministry as Moscow moves toward Chinese currency

RT | February 25, 2021

Moscow must act urgently to cut its reliance on American financial systems, including the use of the dollar, one of the country’s top diplomats has said, pointing to a wave of sanctions from Washington against the Russian economy.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told the Bloomberg business news network that it was essential to preempt hostile confrontation with new President Joe Biden.

“We need to barricade ourselves against the US financial and economic system to eliminate dependence on this toxic source of permanent hostile actions,” he said. “We need to cut back the role of the dollar in any operations.”

Earlier this week, American media reported that the White House was preparing to unveil a package of punitive measures against Moscow in the wake of a worsening diplomatic row over the jailing of opposition figure Alexey Navalny. One senior administration official told POLITICO that, “suffice it to say, we won’t stand by idly in the face of these human rights abuses.”

At the same time, in a speech delivered to the Munich Security Conference last week, Biden announced that he was intent on challenging “Russian recklessness and hacking into computer networks in the United States and across Europe and the world has become critical to protecting our collective security.”

On Wednesday, the Ministry of Finance in Moscow reduced the share of US dollars and euros in the currency structure of its National Wealth Fund from 45 percent to 35 percent. Instead, it has taken on more Japanese yen and increased the proportion of assets held in the Chinese yuan by 15 percent. State investors retained a 10 percent stake in the British pound.

According to officials, the changes are aimed at “increasing profitability and diversifying the investment risks of placing funds of the NWF.”

February 25, 2021 Posted by | Economics | , | 2 Comments

‘Undermining faith in NATO’ is now grounds for Twitter ban, because certain kinds of politics have become a religion

By Nebojsa Malic | RT | February 25, 2021

Heresy against NATO has apparently joined the ever-expanding list of sins that will get one erased from Twitter, as Big Tech mounts a crusade against infidels at home and abroad on behalf of values of Our Democracy.

Twitter announced bans on 373 accounts it connected to “state-linked information operations” on Tuesday. Some of them, the company said, “amplified narratives that were aligned with the Russian government” or “focused on undermining faith in the NATO alliance and its stability.”

Twitter is a US-based company, and the First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech as well as religion. Under that set of rules, anyone’s faith in NATO – or lack thereof – would be none of Twitter’s business.

Then again, that set of rules isn’t exactly in effect anymore. Twitter has long abandoned its “free speech wing of the free speech party” shtick to become a cudgel for Our Democracy to beat its critics with. Or did you miss the part where they censored a sitting president of the United States over how he “might be perceived and interpreted” and meddled in the election by blocking a newspaper over a true story they falsely claimed was based on hacked materials?

Assuming for the sake of argument that these things were all part of “fortifying” the election – as TIME magazine put it – and defending Our Democracy from the evils of the constitutional republic, that might explain the repudiation of free speech and free press.

Which leaves religion, and still doesn’t answer why Twitter is now embarking on a jihad to protect NATO from heretics.

Last I checked, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was not a god, but a military alliance. It hardly needs anyone’s “faith” – or Big Tech protection thereof. Not only is it armed to the teeth but commands its own legions of “disinformation” hunters and propaganda shops. Why, one of Twitter’s executives is literally an officer in a psychological warfare outfit of the UK military – a member of NATO, if anyone hasn’t been paying attention.

Big Tech is also working hand in glove with an entire cottage industry of “disinformation researchers” such as Ben Nimmo – an alum of the Atlantic Council, a think-tank serving as a NATO cut-out – and Renee DiResta of the Stanford Internet Observatory.

DiResta ought to be notorious because her old firm, New Knowledge, was exposed for literally running a bunch of fake accounts posing as ‘Russian bots’ during a 2017 special US Senate election in Alabama. Because that helped a Democrat, NK was allowed to quietly rebrand and DiResta failed upward to land at Stanford. These are not the “Russians” you are looking for, move along, that sort of thing.

So it’s ironic that DiResta’s new outfit has provided more information about Twitter’s newest crusade, as well as where it might be headed. Based on information they were provided by Twitter, some of the accounts in one of the “Russian networks,” the SIO says, “appear to have been linked to the operations primarily via technical indicators rather than amplification or conversation between them.”

Notice the weasel phrasing such as “appear to be linked,” or “show signs of being affiliated” in Twitter’s original blog. It’s simply amazing how the same people who demand irrefutable evidence of, say, US election irregularities suddenly need no evidence whatsoever for their own assertions.

SIO also offers a glimpse into the future of this crusade, noting that while Twitter, Facebook and Medium “chip away” at accounts “pushing Russia-aligned narratives about Syria and NATO,” such activity persists on LiveJournal and Telegram.

No doubt these two platforms – one bought by a Russian company back in 2007, the other founded by a Russian national but currently operating out of Dubai – will find themselves in the crosshairs soon enough.

“Censorship is an intoxicating power that endlessly expands until it’s smashed,” as independent journalist Glenn Greenwald pointed out.

Especially since enforcing “faith” means this isn’t about differences of opinion anymore. Forget about things such as free speech, or due process, or debate that’s the cornerstone of an actual democracy. Politics of a certain kind is now religion.

In a move that should surprise no one, this religious war against heretics who dare doubt NATO and other “Russian” wrongthink was hailed by such luminaries of the US establishment as former ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul.

Lest you think he’s an outlier, the US embassy in Kiev applauded the Ukrainian government’s order to close down three opposition TV stations earlier this month. Democrat lawmakers are currently pushing for similar censorship at home.

Just last week, the newly installed US President Joe Biden told European allies that “the transatlantic alliance is back,” pledging his renewed support for NATO. Biden has also said he would govern based on “values.” The thing to understand is that those values aren’t necessarily what the Constitution of the American Republic, now effectively replaced by what has been dubbed Our Democracy, says they are.

Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Telegram @TheNebulator

February 25, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Amid ‘political repression,’ Ukraine becoming American ‘colony’ in Europe: sanctioned opposition leader Medvedchuk

By Gabriel Gavin | RT | February 25, 2021

Moscow – A few weeks ago, Viktor Medvedchuk was celebrating as his party, Ukraine’s largest opposition bloc, topped a nationwide opinion poll. Now, he’s facing charges of funding terrorism that could land him behind bars for over a decade.

In an exclusive interview with RT, the MP and chairman of Opposition Platform — For Life, which advocates better ties with Moscow, insisted that the allegations were a tool of political persecution.

According to him, they are part of a wider pattern of repression linked to Kiev’s recent moves to shut down Russian-language media that has been critical of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. The embattled administration has seen its approval ratings nosedive amid worsening economic woes and a chaotic response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Very serious accusations

Last week, the country’s National Security and Defense Council announced it would seize properties belonging to seven people, including multimillionaire Medvedchuk and his wife, TV presenter Oksana Marchenko, for allegedly financially supporting terrorist organizations. Details of the charges have not yet been made public, but they could carry a 10-12 year prison sentence if he is found guilty.

“These are very serious accusations,” the politician said. “Especially given they are without any foundation at present.” The sanctions, he argued, “are expressly prohibited” by Ukrainian law and in contravention of the Constitution.

“Unfortunately, [prosecution for] crimes like treason and espionage is commonplace. Just as at one time there was a charge of hooliganism, now we can be charged with treachery or spying,” he said. However, despite believing his political opponents are abusing the justice system, any suggestion that the man once described as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ‘favorite Ukrainian’ might flee abroad gets short shrift. “In spite of all of this, I feel like I’m ready to fight – to fight against arbitrariness, against repression, against falsification… I am prepared to stand up to these threats,” he said.

Just a few hours before Medvedchuk spoke to RT, the Kiev-based research group Rating published a poll which they claim shows more than half of all respondents across the country supported the action against the politician and his family. “They say 58 percent agree with the sanctions, but they have not seen any evidence or arguments,” he said incredulously. “So, what can you really say about this figure?”

Again though, he refuses to write off the prospects of healing political divisions in a country where more than half of the population would seemingly relish the prospect of putting him behind bars. “The split can be overcome,” Medvedchuk insisted, “because the East-West divide has existed for a long time. Since independence, even. Yes there are regions… that differ in mentality and attitudes, but that’s not such a terrible thing if there is a wise state policy with solid structures and good governance.”

“We can find shared ground when it comes to the development of the country’s economy, its social sphere, income growth and prosperity.”

External influence

As one of the flag bearers for a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 foreign policy, which pursued closer relations with Moscow until the bloody events of the Maidan uprisings, Medvedchuk is often characterized as being ready to give away the country’s independence to the Kremlin. However, he insists that it is Zelensky’s government, and its Western allies, that presents the real threat to Ukrainian nationhood.

“We live in an independent sovereign state,” he said. “Or, at least, we used to live in one. Now, both independence and sovereignty are being undermined by external influence and most importantly by external political systems imposed by Washington.”

The American embassy in Kiev raised eyebrows internationally earlier this month when it backed an order signed by Zelensky’s government to shut down a group of television channels and news sites owned by one of the country’s elected MPs, Taras Kozak, a member of Medvedchuk’s party. In a media landscape dominated by wealthy oligarchs, Kozak’s ‘Novosti’ media empire carved out a niche with Russian-language programming made and broadcast in Ukraine. Around one in three people in the country speak the language natively at home, and the vast majority of Ukrainians could be considered fluent. Despite this, under laws put in place in 2014, swathes of programming in Russian from Ukraine’s vast eastern neighbor are already banned.

“When you see that the US Embassy supported both the closure of the channels and the sanctions against me,” Medvedchuk said, “it causes real outrage.” He explained that Washington is “used to creating the image that they are the paragon of democracy, but it is their authorities who have imposed external governance and who are now running Ukraine as their colony,” adding, “They will of course target those who push back against external influence.”

The opposition leader reiterated that 2014 was the turning point, explaining that, since then, “the US has imposed its political power, and it has not benefitted my country or the Ukrainian people… nor will it ever be able to.”

Only a court of law can judge us

The shuttering of the Novosti Group’s media channels, Medvedchuk claims, was an extrajudicial act of repression. Having the backing of the country’s National Security and Defense Council, the same body that ordered the most recent sanctions against him, is not sufficient under Ukrainian law, he maintains.

“Did the Security Council have the right to sign a decree after applying restrictions and blocking channels? No!”

Three broadcasters were taken off air almost immediately and several news sites were banned, which Medvedchuk, who holds a doctorate in legal practice, says was unlawful. “There is nothing in the sanctions that enables them to stop broadcasting, or stop internet resources,” he said. “The law knows no such sanctions.”

At the time, Mikhail Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, explained the move, saying, “it’s clear that sanctions on Mr. Medvedchuk’s TV channels are not about the media and not about freedom of speech… it’s just about effectively countering fakes and foreign propaganda.” Without action, he argued, the opposition media would “kill our values.”

Medvedchuk, however, rejects this as arbitrary and political, when only a judicial decision should apply. “They should go legal,” he insisted. “If you think someone is wrong, go to court. The channels can be defended in court – those who think there are arguments can present them. It is the court that decides who is right and who is wrong, not you, not me, or a government representative who thinks it is bad for the interests of the country when I say it is good for the interests of the people.”

“Only a court of law can judge us,” he concluded. “This is the procedure in all legal systems, and this is real, effective democracy. Everything else is evil!”

The American Embassy in Kiev, however, insisted that the move was “in line with Ukrainian law,” and that it supported Zelensky’s efforts “to counter Russia’s malign influence.”

“We must all work together to prevent disinformation from being deployed as a weapon in an info war against sovereign states,” a tweet from the diplomats argued.

Violating the principles of democracy

When the sanctions against him were first announced, Medvedchuk issued a fiery statement in which he accused the president of taking the country “down the path of establishing a “dictatorship and usurping power.” The government was, he insisted, “seeking to crack down on the parliamentary opposition legally elected by the Ukrainian people.”

No matter how evocative that rhetoric might be, however, the reality is that few in the West can imagine Zelensky as a budding despot, at least at the moment. When elected with more than 73 percent of the vote in 2019 after an unlikely rise from television celebrity to politics, he declared that he would only ever serve one term in the top job.

When pushed on whether his political opponent would really go back on that pledge, Medvedchuk insisted that “it all still looks cloudy and foggy.” However, Zelensky’s plans would become clearer, he said, at the next elections. But, in either case, whether the incumbent would succeed in a re-election bid, he said, “I have my doubts.”

The president’s falling popularity, which has seen support for his party drop in a recent poll to around half the level of Medvedchuk’s, “is the result of unprofessional management of the economic and social spheres, as well as the fight against coronavirus,” he said. “It is because of the lack of peace that he promised in the elections, the lack of return of Donbass to Ukraine.”

“And I think that political repression, the establishment of a dictatorship, the closure of channels, the policy of discrimination against the Russian language, the policy of Russophobia and the policy of usurping power are the result of him struggling to maintain and increase his authority and his ratings,” the opposition leader continued. “This is exactly the kind of illegal and unconstitutional way that violates the current legislation of our country, going out of the legal framework and really violating all the principles of democracy.”

European values

For all Medvedchuk’s talk about Zelensky’s undermining of Ukrainian democracy, the country’s president would likely throw those accusations straight back at him. Advocates of a tough line against both Russia and those Kiev politicians who seek better ties with the country argue that the Kremlin will always pose an existential threat to Ukraine’s nationhood.

Unless it finds its own distinct identity, they argue, through elevating the Ukrainian language and advocating an interpretation of the country’s history as separate to Moscow’s, it will forever be sucked into the orbit of its far larger neighbor. The Russian-language broadcasters that Medvedchuk points to as an example of Kiev’s growing autocracy are, to Zelensky’s supporters, a leash that would lead the country back to control from the East. For them, Ukraine’s future lies only in turning to the West.

The opposition leader, however, shrugged off the suggestion that the country could strengthen the president’s ambitions to join Western institutions like the EU and NATO by simply blocking opposing voices. “When he says he is leading the way to European democracy and is trying to break down the barriers to that, it is just seen as utter absurdity,” the MP argued. “If this democracy is about closing down channels alone, then I don’t know what his idea of European democracy is. European democracy has a mechanism for stopping broadcasting – and we’ve already talked about it – through the courts.”

“But what Zelensky is doing – imposing sanctions on his citizens, restricting constitutional rights extrajudicially, shutting down broadcasters illegally – is not democracy, European or otherwise,” he added. “This is the establishment of dictatorship and a way to seize power.”

“Note that the resolution adopted by the European Parliament in matters related to the association agreement between Ukraine and the EU, in several paragraphs it explicitly states that there can be no extrajudicial closure of television broadcasters. There can be no politically motivated action against the opposition – this is also explicitly stated.”

The Ukrainian Ministry of Justice was approached for comment on whether the sanctions against politicians and broadcasters were within the law. No response has been received.

Though Medvedchuk and Zelensky might lead warring factions, they share the same country, divided as it is. The great irony would be if, by trying to break the deadlock between them with promises of a bright, liberal and democratic future, the president and his supporters delivered the kind of autocracy that they have always accused the other side of wanting to install.

February 25, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Poisonous Journey Backward

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 25, 2021

The new White House Team has been in place for more than a month and it is perhaps time to consider where it is going with America’s fractured foreign policy. To be sure, when a new administration brings in a bunch of “old hands” who made their bones by attacking Syria and Libya while also assassinating American citizens by drone one might hope that those mistakes might have served as valuable “lessons learned.” Or maybe not, since no one in the Democratic Party ever mentions the Libya fiasco and President Joe Biden has already made it clear that Syria will continue to be targeted with sanctions as well as with American soldiers based on its soil. And no one will be leaving Afghanistan any time soon. The Biden team will only let up when Afghanistan is “secure” and there is regime change in Damascus.

A big part of the problem is that the personnel moves mean that the poison from the Barack Obama years has now been reintroduced into the tottering edifice that Donald Trump left behind. Obama’s United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice once made the case for attacking the Libyans by explaining how Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi provided his soldiers with Viagra so they could more readily engage in mass rapes of presumably innocent civilians. Unfortunately, Sue is back with the new administration as the Director of the Domestic Policy Council where she will no doubt again wreak havoc in her own inimitable fashion. She is joined at the top level of the administration by Tony Blinken as Secretary of State, Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence, Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor, Samantha Power as head of USAID and retired General Lloyd J. Austin as Secretary of Defense. All of the appointees are regarded as “hawks” and have personal history working with Biden when he was in Congress and as Vice President, while most of them also served in the Obama administration.

Be that as it may, Joe Biden and whoever is pulling his strings have assembled a group of establishment warmongers and aspirant social justice engineers that is second to none. Those who expected something different than the usual Democratic Party template have definitely been disappointed. Hostility towards China continues with warships being sent to the South China Sea and the president is seeking to create a new Trans-Atlantic alliance directed against both Beijing and Moscow. The Europeans are reportedly not enthusiastic about remaining under Washington’s thumb and would like some breathing room.

In a phone conversation where it would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall, Biden warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that the United States would no longer ignore his bad behavior. The official White House account of the call included the following pithy summary: “President Biden reaffirmed the United States’ firm support for Ukraine’s sovereignty. He also raised other matters of concern, including the SolarWinds hack, reports of Russia placing bounties on United States soldiers in Afghanistan, interference in the 2020 United States election, and the poisoning of Aleksey Navalny.”

And to be sure, there have already been a number of issues that Biden might have dealt with by executive order, like lifting the illegal and unjustified blockade of Cuba, that could have inspired some hope that the new administration would not be just another bit of old wine in new bottles. Alas, that has not taken place but for a series of moves to unleash another wave of illegal immigration and to “protect LGBTQ rights globally.” Biden has also retained a heavy military presence in Washington itself, possibly as part of a Constitution-wrecking plan to tackle what he is referring to as “domestic terrorism.” The domestic terrorists being targeted appear to largely consist of people who are white working and middle class and voted for Trump.

In some ways, foreign policy might have been the easiest fix if the new administration were really seeking to correct the misadventures of the past twenty years. Quite the contrary, Biden and his associates have actually reversed the sensible and long overdue policies initiated by Donald Trump to reduce troop strength in Germany and bring the soldiers home from Syria and Afghanistan. Biden has already committed to an indefinite stay in Afghanistan, America’s longest “lost” war, and has covertly sent more soldiers into Syria as well as Iraq.

As regards Latin America, the U.S. clearly is prepared to double down on regime change in Venezuela, continuing its Quixotic support of Juan Guaido as president. Meanwhile, the new Secretary of State Tony Blinken has clearly indicated that there will be no end to deference to Israeli interests in the Middle East. Under questioning by Congress, he has insisted that Israel will be “consulted” on U.S. policy to include arms sales in the region, which has been interpreted to mean that Jerusalem will have a veto, and has confirmed that his view on Iran is identical to that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both are apparently promoting the view that Iran will have enough enriched uranium to construct a weapon within a few weeks, though they have not addressed other technical aspects of what would actually be required to build one. Netanyahu has been making the claim about the Iranian threat since the 1980s and now it is also an element of U.S. policy.

Biden and Blinken have also moved forward slowly on a campaign commitment to attempt renegotiation of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran that President Trump withdrew from in 2017. As a condition to re-start discussions, the Iranian leadership has demanded a return to the status quo ante, meaning that the punitive sanctions initiated by Trump would have to be canceled and Iran would in return cease all enrichment activities. Biden and Blinken, which admittedly sounds a bit like a vaudeville comedy duo, have reportedly agreed to withdraw the Trump sanctions but have also suggested that Iran will have to make other concessions, to include ending its ballistic missile development program and ceasing its “meddling” in the Middle East. Iran will refuse to agree to that, which means that the bid to renegotiate could turn out to be nothing more than a bit of theater involving multilateral “discussions” hosted by the European Union and the pointless hostility between Washington and Tehran will continue.

And speaking again of Israel, there have been concerns expressed by the usual suspects because Biden had not telephoned Netanyahu immediately after the inauguration. It may be true that the president was sending a somewhat less than subtle message signaling that he was in charge, but the call has now taken place and everything is hunky-dory. As a separate issue, the Jewish state has, of course, the world’s only secret nuclear arsenal, estimated to consist of at least 200 bombs, and it also has several systems available to deliver them on target. For no reasons that make any sense, the United States since the time of President Richard Nixon has never publicly confirmed the existence of the weapons, preferring to maintain “nuclear ambiguity” that allows Israel to have the weapons without any demands for inspections or constraints on their use. The most recent four presidents have, in fact, signed secret agreements with Israel not to expose the nuclear arsenal. Biden has apparently not done so yet, but appeals by international figures, including most recently South African Desmond Tutu, had produced some expectations that the new administration might break with precedent.

Giving aid to Israel is, in fact, illegal due to the Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, which bans U.S. economic and military assistance to nuclear proliferators and countries that seek to acquire nuclear weapons. But Biden has already indicated that he would not under any circumstances cut aid to Israel, so the matter would appear to be closed. In any event the Symington Amendment includes an exemption clause that would allow the funding to continue as long as the president certifies to Congress that continued aid to the proliferator would be a vital U.S. interest. Given Israel’s power in both Congress and the White House it is not imaginable that its aid would be affected no matter what Netanyahu and his band of criminals choose to do.

So, it would seem that Biden is unprepared to either pressure or pursue any distancing from Israel and its policies, not a good sign for those of us who have encouraged some disengagement from the Middle East quagmire. And one final issue where some of us have hoped to see some movement from Biden has also been a disappointment. That is Julian Assange, who is fighting against efforts to have him extradited from England to face trial and imprisonment in the U.S. under the Espionage Act. Many observers believe that Assange is a legitimate journalist who is being set up for a show trial with only one possible outcome. The entire process is to a large extent being driven by a desire for revenge coming largely from the Democratic Party since Assange was responsible for publishing the Hillary Clinton emails as well as other party documents. Biden has already indicated that the process of extraditing Assange will continue.

So, Biden has been a major disappointment for those who expected that he might change course regarding America’s pathological involvement in overseas conflicts while also having the good sense and courage to make relations with countries like Iran and Israel responsive to actual U.S. interests. Finally, it would be a good sign if Assange were to be released from the threat of trial and prison, if only to recognize that free speech and a free press benefit everyone, but that is perhaps a bridge too far as the United States moves inexorably towards a totalitarian state intolerant of dissent.

February 25, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

Corporate America is fueling race war to deflect attention from massive wealth inequality

By Robert Bridge | RT | February 25, 2021

Racial strife in the US today is not a ‘grassroots phenomenon’ born out of exasperated relations between blacks and whites. It is a manufactured crisis being foisted upon the public at a time when populist ideas are in the air.

Ask the average person on Main Street to describe the biggest news story of 2020 and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests will probably take a close second place just behind the Covid-19 pandemic. That answer, however, is more of a reflection of the US media’s unmatched power for shaping the public narrative than an honest assessment of the real problems confronting Americans. Indeed, far more worrisome than racial tensions, and a virus with a 99.75 percent survival rate, is the colossal transfer of wealth to the golden 0.01 percent.

Ever since Covid-19 made landfall in January of 2020, America’s 664 billionaires saw their collective worth explode to $4.2 trillion, a staggering 44 percent increase from just one year earlier. If ever there was a media story worth pursuing this was it. After all, that historic money grab was fueled by millions of hardworking Americans suddenly being ordered to shelter in place as their small businesses went up in proverbial flames. At the same time, monster companies like Amazon, WalMart and Louis Vuitton, ranked “essential” and apparently impervious to pandemic, happily filled the void.

Instead of providing a critical assessment of that corporate takeover, the media ran defense for the robber barons, indulging the CEOs as though they were Roman emperors returning home in triumph from military plunder abroad. US News & World Report, for example, apparently confusing the outbreak of a deadly disease with a sporting event, called guys like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates “the biggest winners of the coronavirus pandemic.” So much for critical journalism.

Incidentally, the reason it was deemed necessary for small business owners to lay down and play dead, the ‘experts’ crowed, was to“save grandma” from the ravages of Covid-19 (in the most consequential presidential election cycle in many decades, no less). Yet, strangely, nobody bothered to ask grandma her opinion on the matter, nor did such concerns prevent infected senior citizens from being dispatched to nursing homes, which quickly became the main incubator for coronavirus deaths in the nation. But I digress.

As cruel fate would have it, at the same time that the already insanely rich were counting their newfound bullion, George Floyd had the life crushed out of him under the knee of a white police officer. At this point, the media industrial complex could have navigated that tragedy into safe harbor, away from a proverbial shit storm, or straight into the rocks. Predictably, it chose the latter course, blaming Floyd’s death on ‘systemic racism,’ as opposed to other more probable explanations, like poorly trained and overworked police officers who are simply unprepared for the myriad challenges they face every day on the job. What followed was a prime example of the elite, with the complicity of the media, actively promoting civil strife to conceal the rapidly growing wealth divide.

US corporations – the very same entities that were doing gangbuster business amid the pandemic – began stuffing the war chests of various social justice groups, notably Black Lives Matter. The financier George Soros, who never met a social uprising he didn’t like, also opened his wallet to the tune of $220 million. The question must be asked: why would corporations sponsor BLM at the very same time the latter was destroying and looting Main Street, USA as part of their “mostly peaceful” protests? Wouldn’t those donations have been better spent rebuilding the urban centers and SMALL BUSINESSES across the nation that BLM ransacked? Perhaps, but that would have clashed with the media-forged narrative, predicated on the myth of ‘systemic racism,’ that is working to deflect attention away from an anti-establishment mood that has settled on the nation.

Another method being employed to foment racial tensions is known as ‘critical race theory’ (CRT), by far one of the most sinister ideas to emerge from the liberal asylum of academia in a long time. In a nutshell, CRT postulates the notion that all white people, even if they don’t know it, have an inborn sense of racial superiority, which manifests itself in racism, the oppression of minority groups and card-carrying membership in some white supremacist group (at this point, take a moment and ask yourself how many ‘white supremacists’ you know). Banned by Donald Trump last year after it was discovered that CRT was being taught to government employees, President Joe Biden made it one of his first acts as president to reinstate the radical progressive legislation.

Now CRT is back in the spotlight with a vengeance. Just this month it was discovered that Coca-Cola is instructing its employees to “be less white,” while a Buffalo, New York school district announced it will teach its pupils that “all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism.” In short, here we have another one of those radical progressive ideas, much like the transgender movement, which is based more on raw emotions and feelings than any sound science. After all, are black people free of the purported chromosome that has motivated the loathsome white man to oppress minority groups over the centuries? Well, when it is considered that America’s first black president, Barack Obama, dropped over 26,000 bombs on seven foreign countries in his last year in office, while a number of other African Americans, including, but not limited to, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Susan Rice have also been very casual about oppressing and killing foreigners, then the so-called ‘science’ behind CRT looks more like sheer quackery.

So, what is really going on with regards to race relations in the United States? It is the opinion here, as stated earlier, that the elite, in an effort to deflect attention away from the greatest wealth heist in US history, are hyping ‘systemic racism’ lest the people start asking pesky questions about economic justice, which is certainly in shorter supply now than ever before. Thus, there is a concerted effort by corporations, media, academia and even Hollywood to arouse tensions between blacks and whites when in reality there is very little. That’s certainly not to suggest that racism does not exist in the United States. Of course it does. But to believe that it has reached epidemic levels is simply outlandish and unsupported by the realities on the ground.

A rising tide of populism is swelling in the United States and the elite will do absolutely everything in its power, up to and including aggravating racial tensions, to keep the torches and pitchforks at bay.

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream. @Robert_Bridge

February 25, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Science Theory Unbound by Test — The Story of the Man-Made Global Warming Hypothesis

By Charles R Anderson – Australian Climate Sceptics – February 12, 2021

In 1988, James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, announced that NASA climate models indicated a tendency for heatwave drought situations in the Southeast and the Midwest USA in the late 1980s and the 1990s. This prediction proved wrong.

Also in 1988, James Hansen, testified to our Congress that the Washington, D.C. area would go from 35 days a year warmer the 90F to 85 days a year in the next 50 to 60 years. He also said the ocean will rise between one and six feet. We are 32 years into that 50 to 60 years and so far the average number of days warmer than 90F has decreased. According to NOAA, the rise in sea level from 1988 to 2020 was 9.81 cm or 3.86 inches. Once again, 32 years into that 50 to 60 year prediction, the rise of sea level is running way behind the low end of the prediction.

About the same time, James Hansen, told a reporter the West Side Highway running along the Hudson River on Manhattan Island would be underwater in 20 years. The windows of Manhattan Buildings would all have tape across them due to the high winds. I have been in Manhattan a number of times since the start of 2020. Neither of these predictions have come to fruition.

In June 2008, Hansen claimed there would be no Arctic sea ice in the summer in 5 to 10 years. Al Gore, not to be outdone, predicted that the entire North polar ice cap would be gone in 5 years. U.S. Navy scientists predicted the Arctic could lose its summer sea ice in 2016. In 2020 there was still considerable summer sea ice at the seasonal minimum, as there has been every year since 2008.

In 2009, Prince Charles said we had 8 years to save the world. Damn, we lost the world in 2017.

In 2014, the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, said we had 500 days to avoid climate chaos.

Joe “The Great Idiot” Biden, Hanoi John Kerry, the stark raving mad 8 years to doomsday AOC, and the entire Elite of the Democratic Socialist Party claim that man-made global warming is an “existential” threat to planet Earth. Where Trump may have exaggerated his Inauguration crowd, Biden told us the massive lie that there is an existential threat to the Earth due to our use of carbon fuels. This existential threat requires him to drag us back into the Paris Climate Accord, though it is an unratified treaty. Of course, these politicians are just shills and mooks who have zero understanding of the science of radiative heat transfer.

Supposedly, the principal claim that the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis is true is the claim that its effects have been modelled correctly in their many global climate computer models. They recently claimed these models are good at predicting the surface temperature, but the science the models are supposed to represent makes predictions of the atmospheric temperature throughout the atmosphere, not just at the surface. What is more, the surface temperature record has been strongly biased upward in recent times and downward in the past, making it a very unreliable temperature record. The atmospheric temperature record is much more a global record and has not been manipulated and affected by urban heat island effects in the way the surface temperature record has been. So once again, let us present this comparison of the model temperature predictions for the atmosphere and actual temperature measurements of the atmospheric temperature:

The supposedly science-based global computer models predict much greater temperature increases than have been found in the measurements. The scientific method demands that we declare the hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming a failed hypothesis due to its long history of failed predictions. In other words, the continued belief in catastrophic man-made global warming is anti-science because it has ignored a basic requirement of the scientific method.

Why are its advocates claiming this anti-science belief is justification for putting more than 10,000 Keystone XL Pipeline workers into the already massive pool of the unemployed? Why are they denying the livelihoods of some already who earn a living extracting oil and gas from federal lands and offshore fields and many in the future whose oil and gas jobs will not be created as a result? Why are they damaging the earnings of the many people who provide goods and services to these carbon fuel industries and their employees? Why are they forcing transportation costs for all Americans to rise greatly? Why are they causing the energy costs to run our businesses and to operate our homes to increase drastically? Why are they pushing a future of electricity brown-outs and black-outs upon us? Why are they advocating spreading solar panels and wind generators over huge acreages of the nation? Why do they now no longer care how many birds and bats are killed by wind generators? Why do they want to saddle us with electric vehicles with their massive purchase cost, limited range, and massive repair costs? Why do they not care about the massive damage to our future economy and the many jobs which will be lost, the many jobs that will not be created, and the many advances in other areas of human endeavour that will never come about because of a very harmful energy policy?

The answer is the desire for the Great Reset. These advocates want what the World Economic Forum is advocating, which is an end to capitalism and end to personal property, an end to individual rights, and a complete dependence upon government controlled by a socialist Elite. Biden plagiarized his Build Back Better campaign slogan from the World Economic Forum for a reason. Biden is not a creative man. He has never created or built anything. His speciality is the destruction of things built and created by others. Even in his speeches and writings, he has a long history as a plagiarist. So, it is entirely to be expected that the kind of people who are behind the World Economic Forum has made him their point man, albeit with many socialist managers, for exercising the program of the World Economic Forum upon the USA. This program is absolutely evil and absolutely un-American. Carrying it through is massively unconstitutional. It will be extremely deleterious to the Welfare of the People of the USA. It is moving forward rapidly under the Biden Regime.

February 25, 2021 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | 9 Comments

Fortunate Global Greening

By Zoe Phin | February 16, 2021

NASA offers a data product called a Vegetation Index. This can be used to track how green the Earth is.

February 2000, [Source]

Although many are familiar with recent global greening, I prefer to always check the source data. And so I downloaded all of their available 16-day-increment data from 2000 to 2021. Here’s my result:

0.0936 –> 0.1029 is +9.94%

10% global greening in 20 years! We are incredibly fortunate!

I just wish everyone felt that way. But you know not everyone does. To the extent that humans enhance global greening is precisely what social parasites want to tax and regulate. No good deed goes unpunished.

Anyway, Enjoy 🙂 -Zoe

P. S. The Earth is ~29% land. A Veg Index of ~0.29 would mean all covered land is heavy vegetation.

February 25, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | 2 Comments

The risks of communicating extreme climate forecasts

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY | RESEARCH NEWS | FEBRUARY 24, 2021

For decades, climate change researchers and activists have used dramatic forecasts to attempt to influence public perception of the problem and as a call to action on climate change. These forecasts have frequently been for events that might be called “apocalyptic,” because they predict cataclysmic events resulting from climate change.

In a new paper published in the International Journal of Global Warming, Carnegie Mellon University’s David Rode and Paul Fischbeck argue that making such forecasts can be counterproductive. “Truly apocalyptic forecasts can only ever be observed in their failure–that is the world did not end as predicted,” says Rode, adjunct research faculty with the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center, “and observing a string of repeated apocalyptic forecast failures can undermine the public’s trust in the underlying science.”

Rode and Fischbeck, professor of Social & Decision Sciences and Engineering & Public Policy, collected 79 predictions of climate-caused apocalypse going back to the first Earth Day in 1970. With the passage of time, many of these forecasts have since expired; the dates have come and gone uneventfully. In fact, 48 (61%) of the predictions have already expired as of the end of 2020.

Fischbeck noted, “from a forecasting perspective, the ‘problem’ is not only that all of the expired forecasts were wrong, but also that so many of them never admitted to any uncertainty about the date. About 43% of the forecasts in our dataset made no mention of uncertainty.”

In some cases, the forecasters were both explicit and certain. For example, Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich and British environmental activist Prince Charles are serial failed forecasters, repeatedly expressing high degrees of certainty about apocalyptic climate events.

Rode commented “Ehrlich has made predictions of environmental collapse going back to 1970 that he has described as having ‘near certainty’. Prince Charles has similarly warned repeatedly of ‘irretrievable ecosystem collapse’ if actions were not taken, and when expired, repeated the prediction with a new definitive end date. Their predictions have repeatedly been apocalyptic and highly certain…and so far, they’ve also been wrong.”

The researchers noted that the average time horizon before a climate apocalypse for the 11 predictions made prior to 2000 was 22 years, while for the 68 predictions made after 2000, the average time horizon was 21 years. Despite the passage of time, little has changed–across a half a century of forecasts; the apocalypse is always about 20 years out.

Fischbeck continued, “It’s like the boy who repeatedly cried wolf. If I observe many successive forecast failures, I may be unwilling to take future forecasts seriously.

That’s a problem for climate science, say Rode and Fischbeck.

“The underlying science of climate change has many solid results,” says Fischbeck, “the problem is often the leap in connecting the prediction of climate events to the prediction of the consequences of those events.” Human efforts at adaptation and mitigation, together with the complexity of socio-physical systems, means that the prediction of sea level rise, for example, may not necessarily lead to apocalyptic flooding.

“By linking the climate event and the potential consequence for dramatic effect,” noted Rode, “a failure to observe the consequence may unfairly call into question the legitimacy of the science behind the climate event.”

With the new Biden administration making climate change policy a top priority, trust in scientific predictions about climate change is more crucial than ever, however scientists will have to be wary in qualifying their predictions. In measuring the proliferation the forecasts through search results, the authors found that forecasts that did not mention uncertainty in their apocalyptic date tended to be more visible (i.e., have more search results available). Making sensational predictions of the doom of humanity, while scientifically dubious, has still proven tempting for those wishing to grab headlines.

The trouble with this is that scientists, due to their training, tend to make more cautious statements and more often include references to uncertainty. Rode and Fischbeck found that while 81% of the forecasts made by scientists referenced uncertainty, less than half of the forecasts made by non-scientists did.

“This is not surprising,” said Rode, “but it is troubling when you consider that forecasts that reference uncertainty are less visible on the web. This results in the most visible voices often being the least qualified.”

Rode and Fischbeck argue that scientists must take extraordinary caution in communicating events of great consequence. When it comes to climate change, the authors advise “thinking small.” That is, focusing on making predictions that are less grandiose and shorter in term. “If you want people to believe big predictions, you first need to convince them that you can make little predictions,” says Rode.

Fischbeck added, “We need forecasts of a greater variety of climate variables, we need them made on a regular basis, and we need expert assessments of their uncertainties so people can better calibrate themselves to the accuracy of the forecaster.”

February 25, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries