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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

France increases hostilities against China in the South China Sea

By Paul Antonopoulos | February 25, 2021

The French Navy days ago announced that the Tonnerre amphibious assault ship and the Surcouf frigate departed from the port of Toulon on February 18 and would travel to the Pacific for a three-month mission. According to Naval News, the French warships will pass through the South China Sea twice and in May participate in joint military exercises with the U.S., Australia, India and Japan. China has strongly criticized this French move.

The fact that the French Navy sent the Surcouf and the multi-purpose landing craft Tonnere to patrol the South China Sea, which is over 10,000 kilometers away from France, proves that the disputed sea region is one of the most important geopolitical hotspots in the world. The French claim that attention is focused on ensuring navigational security as the South China Sea is a particularly important bridge between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and has influence on geopolitics and geoeconomics, not only within Asia-Pacific and the Indo-Pacific region, but for the entire world.

By sending modern warships to Asia-Pacific, France proved that they have a new approach to Vietnam, a former French colony. The recent moves by Paris marks the return of the French to Southeast Asia, not as an invader like in the previous century, but as a country willing to challenge and provoke China in its own backyard. This is something that would also appeal to Vietnam as it has centuries long enmity with China that continues to this day and is far deeper compared to the relatively short-lived French colonial era of Indochina. Another point to note is that the French energy company Total is one of the most important partners for Vietnam in the oil and gas sector. The French company is currently cooperating with Vietnam and some other countries in the region to exploit resources.

Since 2018, France has built an Indo-Pacific strategy. France is the first European country to make this move. In addition, in 2015 and 2017, French warships also passed through the South China Sea. It is likely that France will now step up its position against Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea by increasing the frequency of its activities in the region, including military exercises.

Four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council send their fleets on irregular or periodic patrols in the South China Sea, proving how important this region is for the global economy and the world’s superpowers. It should be emphasized that having a major power from outside the region deploy its modern weapons in the South China Sea is a major provocation. France, whose closest territory to the South China Sea is New Caledonia over 6,500 kilometers away, has no business in being involved in the region’s problems. But none-the-less, the French are most likely motivated to be interested in South China Sea affairs to support Total’s business plans in the area.

In the words of French Defense Minister Florence Parly, the patrol of French warships in the South China Sea is “evidence of the French navy’s ability to deploy operations in remote areas in the long run with strategic partners,” making reference to the U.S., Japan and Australia. It can be seen that France is ready to strengthen cooperation with QUAD, a coalition consisting of the U.S., India, Japan and Australia whose aim is to challenge China in the Indo-Pacific region.

France is not a member of QUAD; however, the European country can strengthen its ties with the alliance on the basis of bilateral military agreements signed with the U.S. and the other three countries. On the other hand, France is an ally of the U.S. through NATO, in which Japan and Australia are also considered Major non-NATO allies. The dispatch of two important warships to the South China Sea shows that France is ready to stand alongside the U.S., Japan, India and Australia in Indo-Pacific geostrategic, political and military issues with a focus against China.

For the U.S., the introduction of French warships to the South China Sea is an important step towards establishing an anti-China alliance on a global scale, not just at a regional level. Although China has denounced these recent provocations emanating from non-regional powers, it has not yet revealed how they may respond.

Although the French Colonial Empire is long gone, Paris is still attempting to maintain its global influence through its former colonies, not only in Southeast Asia through countries like Vietnam, but also in Africa, the South Pacific, South America and the Caribbean. However, despite France’s antagonizations, Paris does not have the capabilities to be able to challenge China unilaterally in the South China Sea, hence why it is relying on former colonial possessions like Vietnam and partners like the U.S., Australia and India. For now, there is no indication that France will successfully deter China from pursuing its interests in the South China Sea.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

February 25, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , | 1 Comment

Whitney Webb on the Oxford-AstraZeneca Eugenics Links

Corbett • 02/24/2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Even some in the independent media have bought into the hype surrounding the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine and its “non-profit” nature. But once you peel back the layers of obfuscation you quickly find not only the profit motive hiding underneath, but the dark specter of eugenics. Whitney Webb of Unlimited Hangout joins us to discuss her recent article, “Developers of Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine Tied to UK Eugenics Movement.”

Watch on Archive / BitChute / LBRY / Minds / YouTube or Download the mp4

SHOW NOTES
Unlimited Hangout

Schwab Family Values

Developers of Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine Tied to UK Eugenics Movement

Successful Not-for-Profit Oxford COVID Vaccine Threatens Big Pharma Profit Logic

The Year Ahead – Part 2: Biosecurity

GSK to start production of Ebola vaccine as tests on humans begin (2014)

Episode 208 – The Galton Institute Exposed

Major U.K. genetics lab accused of misusing African DNA

Eugenics: The Future Of Human Life In The 21st Century

Event Review: Selective Reproduction, Bioethics, and the Idea of Eugenics

Who Is Bill Gates?

Palantir’s Tiberius, Race, and the Public Health Panopticon

February 24, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

China announces MASSIVE oil & gas discovery in Bohai Sea

RT | February 24, 2021

China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) revealed this week that its newly discovered oil and gas field in the Bohai Sea contains proven geological reserves of 100 million metric tons of oil and gas equivalent.

That makes Bozhong 13-2 one of the biggest crude oil production bases in the country, according to the company.

The new field is located 140 kilometers off the coast of Tianjin at an average water depth of 23.2 meters, according to Zhou Xinhuai, general manager of the oil exploration department at CNOOC. The Bozhong 13-2-2 well, where the reserve was discovered, was drilled and completed at a depth of 5,223 meters, and encountered oil pay zones with a total thickness of approximately 346 meters.

The well was tested to produce an average of approximately 1,980 barrels of crude oil per day. The company expects daily crude oil and natural gas generation from the well to reach 300 tons and 150,000 cubic meters, Zhou was cited as saying by China Daily.

The Bohai oilfield is likely to start production in 2023 and achieve a peak output of 1.2 million tons of oil equivalent.

According to industry experts, the Bohai Sea natural gas and oil discoveries will boost CNOOC’s annual output to above 80 million tons of oil equivalent by 2025.

The company said in 2019 that its Bohai discoveries contain 100 billion cubic meters of proven geological reserves of natural gas. It expects the increased capacity from the new finds to help meet the surging demand for natural gas in northern and eastern China and reduce the country’s reliance on costly imports.

China’s natural gas production reached 188.8 billion cubic meters in 2020, up 9.8 percent on a yearly basis, according to data by the National Bureau of Statistics. Natural gas imports rose to 102 million cubic meters, up by 5.3 percent on a yearly basis.

February 24, 2021 Posted by | Economics | | 1 Comment

Russia expects to win big from rapidly expanding LNG market

RT | February 24, 2021

Global liquefied natural gas (LNG) is set to grow in the next three decades and will outpace the share of pipeline gas supplies, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak believes.

“What the market and analysts definitely agree on is that the LNG market will at least double by 2050,” Novak, who previously served as Russia’s energy minister, told the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) on Wednesday.

Gas is the most promising and environmentally friendly type of hydrocarbon fuel, according to the deputy PM. Given that Russia boasts one of the largest gas reserves, the growth of the LNG market opens up even more prospects for the country.

Russia is the fourth largest global LNG exporter. Last year, it boosted LNG production by over three percent to 30.5 million tons, while in 2019 its LNG output surged over 47 percent. Novak says that the country aims to increase its annual LNG production to 120-140 million tons by 2035, amounting to around a fifth of the forecasted global LNG production.

Most of Russia’s LNG comes from the Yamal LNG project, majority owned and operated by the country’s biggest privately owned natural gas producer, Novatek. There are several other projects that can help to further boost Russian LNG exports, including the Arctic LNG 2 project, the first line of which is set to be launched in 2023.

February 24, 2021 Posted by | Economics | | 5 Comments

Israel’s killing of Palestinian man at checkpoint was ‘extrajudicial execution’, concludes report

Ahmed Erekat, a 27 year old Palestinian man was killed by Israeli soldiers near a checkpoint in Abu Dis

Ahmed Erekat, a 27 year old Palestinian man was killed by Israeli soldiers near a checkpoint in Abu Dis on 23 June 2020
MEMO | February 24, 2021

Further doubts have been raised over Israel’s killing of Ahmad Erekat. The 27-year-old was shot dead in June at an Israeli military checkpoint near the town of Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem. Israeli police claimed that Erekat was a “terrorist” conducting an attack.

But a new report by Forensic Architecture, a British research body based at Goldsmiths, University of London, has challenged the Israeli narrative following a “frame-by-frame” analysis of the security camera footage which clearly showed Erekat’s movement prior to his killing.

The report found that Erekat posed no “immediate threat” to Israeli soldiers; that he was denied medical treatment after he was fatally shot; his body was treated in a “degrading” manner and that following his death his family was subjected to collective punishment.

Details of the report, which includes the reconstruction of the scene using available film, including security footage published by police, cast “significant doubt” over the Israeli narrative. It cited collision experts who concluded that Erekat’s car was not accelerating significantly. “Our analysis also comes across evidence that raises the possibility that Erekat braked before impact with the checkpoint,” the report said.

Collision expert Dr Jeremy J Bauer concluded that “the driver did not rapidly accelerate into the checkpoint. Had the driver truly wanted to maximize the chance that he would surprise the guards and strike them with his vehicle, he could have accelerated to the maximum capacity of the vehicle.”

After the impact, video footage shows Erekat leaving the vehicle unarmed and moving away from the soldiers, raising his hands in the air. He is first shot when standing around four metres away from the nearest soldier. He then continues to move backwards as he falls to the ground. Israeli soldiers fired six shots in the space of two seconds.

Detailed analysis of the footage contradicts the Israeli army’s claim and confirms that Erekat did not pose any immediate threat. It also found that Israeli forces offered no immediate medical aid, even while Erekat was clearly alive. The killing amounted to an extrajudicial execution, it concluded.

February 24, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | 3 Comments

Israel said to warn Hamas leader not to run in polls

MEMO | February 23, 2021

Hamas leader Nayef al-Rajoub said Tuesday he was warned by Israeli intelligence agents against running in the Palestinian elections later this year, Anadolu Agency reported.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, al-Rajoub, 63, said he was searched during an Israeli raid on his home in the town of Dura, west of Hebron.

“An intelligence officer then threatened me not to run in the upcoming polls,” al-Rajoub said, adding that he was only allowed to cast a ballot in the elections.

Al-Rujoub, a brother of prominent Fatah leader Jibril al-Rujoub, received the most votes during the 2006 parliamentary elections won by Hamas.

In the Hamas-led government that emerged from those elections, Al-Rujoub served as minister of religious endowments. He had previously been detained by Israeli forces and served more than eight years in prison.

Earlier Tuesday, Israeli forces arrested 13 Palestinians, including Hamas leader Faze’ Sawafta, in overnight raids in the occupied West Bank.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, had earlier warned of Israeli plans to stage a mass arrest campaign against the resistance group ahead of Palestinian elections later this year.

Over the past month, several Hamas members were detained in Israeli raids, with the Palestinian group warning that the Israeli arrests aim to disrupt the Palestinian elections and affect its results.

Palestinians are scheduled to vote in legislative elections on May 22, presidential polls on July 31, and National Council polls on Aug. 31.

The last legislative elections, in which Hamas won a majority, were held in 2006.

February 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

African governments are crushing opposition using Israeli spyware

By Suraya Dadoo | MEMO | February 24, 2021

As internet penetration and smartphone usage increases across Africa, digital spaces have become increasingly important for organising political uprisings and opposition movements. In response, several of the continent’s regimes have shut down the internet or blocked social media apps. To sidestep the economic costs and global criticism that these online shutdowns incur, governments have turned to digital surveillance technology as a shrewder way to crush all opposition.

In a recently-released report titled “Running in Circles: Uncovering the Clients of Cyberespionage Firm, Circles”, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab — which investigates digital espionage against civil society — details how government agencies in Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe are using the surveillance technology developed by Israeli telecom company Circles to snoop on the personal communications of opposition politicians, human rights activists and journalists. These seven African countries are among 25 around the world using Circles, which is affiliated with the notorious NSO Group whose invasive Pegasus spyware has been used to target human rights defenders and journalists around the world.

How does it work?

Circles technology is sold to nation states only, and intercepts data from 3G networks, allowing the infiltrator to read messages and emails, and listen to phone calls in real time. Using only the telephone number, a Circles platform can identify the location of a phone anywhere in the world within seconds.

Circles exploits flaws in Signalling System No.7 (SS7), the set of protocols that allows networks to exchange calls and text messages between each other. This allows government agencies to track individuals across borders without a warrant, bypassing international conventions.

In 2019, 3G became the leading mobile technology in Sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for over 45 per cent of all connections. With the faster — and possibly more secure — 4G networks being at least five years away from becoming the standard for mobile connectivity on the continent, Circles’ 3G-manipulating technology is ideal for power-hungry African leaders looking to cling to power by spying on critics.

The spying revelations came as African governments — including some named in the Citizen Lab report — are cracking down brutally on protestors and opposition groups.

Nigeria

Recent #EndSARS protests triggered a deadly response from Nigeria’s state security apparatus, with the government able to infiltrate the movement’s organisational structures successfully.

Citizen Lab identified two Circles systems in Nigeria that both began operating in June 2015. One of them was being used by the Nigerian Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). In 2016, the governors of Delta and Bayelsa states also purchased Circles systems to spy on political opponents and critics. The presence of Circles products in Nigeria goes back more than a decade, when former Rivers state governor, Rotimi Amaechi, became the first Nigerian politician to use the surveillance technology in 2010.

Circles’ government clients in Nigeria have a long history of abusing surveillance technologies to conduct mass surveillance of citizens’ telecommunications. Femi Adeyeye, a Lagos-based political activist who has been detained several times for criticising the Nigerian government, is not surprised that Muhammadu Buhari’s regime is using the invasive spying technology.

Adeyeye cited several cases where Nigerians were swiftly traced, arrested and detained after criticising the government. These include journalists Omoyele Sowore, Abubakar Idris Dadiyata and Stephen Kefas. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has also reported numerous cases of the Nigerian authorities abusing phone surveillance by targeting journalists’ phones to reveal and track sources for stories investigating government corruption.

“We are already in the worst stage of dictatorship,” warns Adeyeye. “Freedom of expression, media, and political association have been further weakened by this spying technology.”

He says that Nigerian political analysts now self-censor when commenting on national political issues, after witnessing the government’s infiltration of #EndSARS. “They have seen how people have been traced, their passports seized and bank accounts frozen, and how they have been forced to go into exile.”

Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe — which has witnessed intense anti-government protests recently — Citizen Lab detected three Circles platforms, with one dating back to 2013. A second platform was activated in March 2018 and is still operating.

As in Nigeria, there has been a government crackdown on anyone exposing corruption. Investigative journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, and Jacob Ngarivhume, the leader of the opposition group Transform Zimbabwe, were detained ahead of anti-government protests last year. Circles technology is facilitating this suppression.

Equatorial Guinea

A Circles surveillance system was also found in Equatorial Guinea, where dictator Tedoro Obiang has ruled for 40 years in a climate of torture, extra-judicial executions, arbitrary arrests and the persecution of political activists and human rights defenders. Obiang has crushed protests violently and ignored demands for electoral reforms and limits on terms of office.

Morocco

Morocco’s Ministry of the Interior has been a Circles client since 2018. Rabat has a history of leveraging digital technology to unlawfully target Moroccan human rights activists.

Eroding democracy in Botswana

It’s not just countries such as these facing protests, or those with a dismal record of human rights abuses, that are spying on their citizens. Even supposed democracies are involved. Botswana is hailed widely as one of Africa’s most stable democracies. Yet, the country’s Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS) was linked to two Circles surveillance systems dating back to 2015. The targets were journalists investigating corruption by politicians.

According to Moeti Mohwasa, spokesperson for the opposition Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), Israeli companies have been selling spyware to the Botswana government for years. Mohwasa says that some of this equipment has been used to eavesdrop on opposition politicians and union leaders in the country.

Enabling authoritarianism in Kenya

Citizen Lab also reported a Circles system in Kenya. While the East African nation is often lauded as a strong democracy, critics accuse the Uhuru Kenyatta administration of being an authoritarian regime.

“In Kenya, freedom of expression and media freedoms are under constant threat,” says Suhayl Omar, a policing, surveillance and militarism researcher from Nairobi. “The Kenyatta regime has waged a war against constitutionalism and any form of opposition in Kenya.”

Omar believes that the Kenyan government relies heavily on surveillance of its citizens to crack down on any form of opposition. “For this, they look to undemocratic and violent states — like Israel — to fund, equip and train their agents and armies for these unconstitutional missions.”

Zambia

Zambia is also a Circles client. In 2019, the Zambian authorities reportedly used a cyber-surveillance unit in the offices of Zambia’s telecommunications regulator to pinpoint the location of a group of bloggers who ran an opposition news site. They were duly arrested, with the authorities in constant contact with the police units on the ground throughout the operation. Given its capabilities, it is likely that a Circles system was used to do this.

Should the Israeli government be held accountable?

African governments will justify spying by claiming that it is a matter of national security. The Israeli government, meanwhile, has distanced itself from these anti-democracy purges. Israeli Minister Zeev Elkin denied any government involvement, telling Israeli radio, “Everyone understands that this is not about the state of Israel.” But it is.

The Israeli government, through its Ministry of Defence, implicitly sanctions such activities by providing tech firms with export licences. In January 2020, Amnesty International filed a lawsuit in Israel calling for the ministry to ban the export of invasive spying software, as it was being used to attack human rights activists by the governments purchasing them. Last July, an Israeli court denied Amnesty’s request.

“The Israeli regime has actively enabled the authoritarianism of Uhuru Kenyatta,” explains Suhayl Omar, commenting on the situation in Kenya. Moeti Mohwasa in Botswana agrees about official Israeli involvement. “In recent years, the Botswana government has increasingly been eroding civil rights, and becoming intolerant of political dissent. Israel is aiding these dangerous trends.”

Friends with benefits

Although developed by private companies, the spying equipment is also a key part of the Israeli government’s diplomatic charm offensive in Africa. By helping African governments cling to power through arming them with the weapons to wage cyber-warfare on their citizens, Tel Aviv is hoping to make more African friends. The aim is to dissolve African solidarity with Palestine, and capture African votes at the UN and so defeat resolutions that are critical of Israel’s brutal military occupation. Israel is also trying to find partners to lobby the African Union to grant the occupation state observer status.

In his book War Against the People, Jeff Halper writes that Israel is exporting its expertise in population control gained through its occupation of Palestine, and leading the “global pacification” industry, assisting state security agencies around the world. The danger, Halper warns, is that gradually we will all become like Palestinians, fearful of being tracked and detained for organising a protest, defending human rights or trying to hold the powerful to account.

As repressive African governments continue looking to Israel to help them shrink the safe space for human rights defenders even further, the danger is that Abuja, Nairobi, Gaborone and other capitals across the continent may end up under digital occupation just like Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Gaza City.

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Israel’s global cybercrime racket

February 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | 1 Comment

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