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North Dakota House Votes To Make Mask Mandates Illegal

By Steve Watson | Summit News | February 23, 2021

The House of Representatives in North Dakota has voted to make mandates on wearing face masks illegal.

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Jeff Hoverson who labelled the mask mandate instituted by the State governor last year as “diabolical silliness,” adding that “Our state is not a prison camp.”

The legislation outlines that “A state or local elected official, the state, or a political subdivision of the state may not mandate an individual in this state use a face mask, face shield, or other face covering.”

It also “prohibits making use of a face mask, shield, or covering a condition for entry, education, employment, or services.”

The bill also notes that “If a state or local elected official, the state, or a political subdivision of the state recommends an individual in this state use a face mask, shield, or covering, the official or entity shall provide notice the recommendation is not mandatory.”

Hoverson said that the mask mandates are being enforced by “unelected, wealthy bureaucrats who are robbing our freedoms and perpetuating lies.”

The bill was approved 50-44 and will now advance to the state Senate.

Several states, including Iowa, Montana, and Mississippi have begun lifting mask mandates, despite Joe Biden’s attempts to instigate a nation-wide mask mandate, which he recently said could extend ‘through the next year’.

Dr Anthony Fauci also said Sunday he sees it as entirely possible that everyone will have to keep wearing face coverings throughout the entirety of 2021 and into 2022, prompting backlash.

February 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | 1 Comment

Summary of findings on covid, February 2021

Mathematical Modelling Company of France

Bernard Beauzamy PDG chez Société de Calcul Mathématique SA (CEO at Société de Calcul Mathatique SA, Mathematical Modelling Corporation of France. )

The overall mortality data (all causes combined) for the year 2020 show that the covid epidemic did not have any particular severity.

As of 02/20/2021, there are approximately 3,300 intensive care beds occupied (all causes), for approximately 13,000 existing ones: we are very far from saturation.

There is no indication (let’s not speak of proof!) Allowing to conclude to any effectiveness of any of the decisions taken by the government since the beginning: confinement, social distancing, masks, curfew, etc. All this is entirely devoid of a rational basis and health efficiency. Already in 1910 the astronomer Camille Flammarion had advocated confinement during the arrival of Halley’s Comet.

This is the first time that we have tried to follow an epidemic in its details: how many people affected at any given moment, how many positives, how many tests, etc. If we had done this for previous epidemics, we would have references, which is not the case. The figures published every day by a press hungry for sensations serve to frighten the public.

The government, from the start, wanted to give this epidemic the most anxiety-inducing character possible, by publishing figures taken out of context and by banning existing treatments. This is not an initial error as one might have thought, but a deliberate will whose effects can still be seen today: grotesque, incoherent decisions intended to establish the authority of the government and to harm economic activity.

The various institutions responsible for limiting the powers of government (Parliament, Council of State, etc.) accepted the decisions taken, even though they were scientifically unfounded. This attitude still persists today and, except for popular revolt, we do not see how, in the near future, we could get out of the absurd “state of health emergency” in which we are today legally locked up.

The full list of our publications on these issues is available here:

http://www.scmsa.eu/archives/SCM_Coronavirus.pdf

Above is translated from the original French language by Google Translate.

Les données de mortalité globale (toutes causes confondues) pour l’année 2020 montrent que l’épidémie de covid n’a eu aucune sévérité particulière.

Il y a, au 20/02/2021, environ 3 300 lits de réanimation occupés (toutes causes confondues), pour environ 13 000 existants : on est très loin de la saturation.

Il n’existe aucune indication (ne parlons pas de preuve !) permettant de conclure à une quelconque efficacité de l’une quelconque des décisions prises par le gouvernement depuis le début : confinement, distanciation sociale, masques, couvre-feu, etc. Tout ceci est entièrement dépourvu de base rationnelle et d’efficacité sanitaire. Déjà en 1910 l’astronome Camille Flammarion avait prôné le confinement lors de la venue de la Comète de Halley.

C’est la première fois que l’on s’efforce de suivre une épidémie dans ses détails : combien de personnes atteintes à chaque instant, combien de positifs, combien de tests, etc. Si on l’avait fait pour les épidémies précédentes, on disposerait de références, ce qui n’est pas le cas. Les chiffres publiés chaque jour par une presse avide de sensations servent à effrayer le public.

Le gouvernement, depuis le début, a voulu donner à cette épidémie le caractère le plus anxiogène possible, en publiant des chiffres sortis de leur contexte et en interdisant les traitements existants. Il s’agit là, non pas d’une erreur initiale comme on a pu le croire, mais d’une volonté délibérée dont on constate les effets aujourd’hui encore : décisions grotesques, incohérentes, destinées à asseoir l’autorité du gouvernement et à nuire à l’activité économique.

Les différentes institutions qui sont chargées de limiter les pouvoirs du gouvernement (Parlement, Conseil d’Etat, etc.) ont accepté les décisions prises, quand bien même elles étaient scientifiquement dépourvues de fondement. Cette attitude persiste encore aujourd’hui et, sauf révolte populaire, on ne voit pas comment, dans un futur proche, nous pourrions sortir de l’absurde “état d’urgence sanitaire” où nous sommes aujourd’hui légalement enfermés.

La liste complète de nos publications sur ces questions est disponible ici :

http://www.scmsa.eu/archives/SCM_Coronavirus.pdf

February 23, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Signs of life: Are the masses awakening from COVID psychosis?

By Jordan Schachtel | February 23, 2021

Over the course of the past year, a coalition including the corporate media, international “health” institutions, a maniacal mega billionaire, Big Pharma oligarchs, and power drunk governments consumed massive amounts of power left and right, with little to no observed resistance in sight.

With COVID mania in full swing, they moved the goalposts as they pleased. Free of any science, data, or logical reasoning, the ruling class had the terrified masses completely under their thumb. Under the spell of a mass social psychosis, we willingly surrendered our liberties and even happily enforced draconian edicts on our own peers, despite the global trampling of our basic rights.

The ruling class moved seamlessly from “15 days to stop the spread” to “30 days to stop the spread” to “Zero COVID.”

From “everyone needs to wear a mask” to “everyone needs to wear two masks” to “maybe we should wear three masks.”

From “lockdown to preserve healthcare capacity” to “lockdown to slow/stop the spread” to “lockdown until we have a vaccine.”

All of these aforementioned restrictions and guidelines were abided by without resistance. Across the globe, citizens remained firmly trapped in perhaps the most self-destructive mass social psychosis in human history, convinced that a respiratory virus (that causes a disease with a 99.8% recovery rate) was responsible for their economic and societal devastation. The authoritarians did as they wished, without a hint of pushback.

However, it seems we have finally reached one particular narrative that has been met with firm resistance.

People are rightfully outraged by another ongoing narrative shift attempt led by the likes of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, countless government health bureaucracies, and other leaders of the corona hysteria movement. We’re now being told that the vaccine is not in fact a ticket to normalcy. Instead, we’ve been told that even with the vaccine, people still need to wear a mask, social distance, and act as if fellow human beings are nothing more than mere vectors of disease.

They initially told us lockdowns would solve our COVID problem. They then told us masks would end the pandemic. Soon after, the “experts” went all in on the vaccine narrative. It seems that the new narrative is one of “forever COVID,” or a permanent safety regime that stresses prioritizing avoidance of a virus over anything else in life. Fauci and the gang is now demoting the vaccine’s status as no longer a way out, but just another tool to help you mitigate the threat posed by the “deadly virus.”

And many finally seem to be pushing back against the ruling class plan for a permanent COVID state.

Will the vaccine rug pull attempt awaken the masses to the reality that they’ve been conned for an entire year? That is too soon to tell, but we are finally seeing signs of widespread pushback against the latest demands from the ruling class. Many of us wished this hopeful revival of rational thought had occurred a full year ago, but it’s more important right now to build a coalition around restoring our rights and quashing the power grab, even if that coalition includes the same individuals and groups that were once on the side of the totalitarians.

February 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 1 Comment

The Vaccine (Dis)Information War

By CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory Inc. | February 23, 2021

So, good news, folks! It appears that GloboCap’s Genetic Modification Division has come up with a miracle vaccine for Covid! It’s an absolutely safe, non-experimental, messenger-RNA vaccine that teaches your cells to produce a protein that triggers an immune response, just like your body’s immune-system response, only better, because it’s made by corporations!

OK, technically, it hasn’t been approved for use — that process normally takes several years — so I guess it’s slightly “experimental,” but the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency have issued “Emergency Use Authorizations,” and it has been “tested extensively for safety and effectiveness,” according to Facebook’s anonymous “fact checkers,” so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.

This non-experimental experimental vaccine is truly a historic development, because apart from saving the world from a virus that causes mild to moderate flu-like symptoms (or, more commonly, no symptoms whatsoever) in roughly 95% of those infected, and that over 99% of those infected survive, the possibilities for future applications of messenger-RNA technology, and the genetic modification of humans, generally, is virtually unlimited at this point.

Imagine all the diseases we can cure, and all the genetic “mistakes” we can fix, now that we can reprogram people’s genes to do whatever we want … cancer, heart disease, dementia, blindness, not to mention the common cold! We could even cure psychiatric disorders, like “antisocial personality disorder,” “oppositional defiant disorder,” and other “conduct disorders” and “personality disorders.” Who knows? In another hundred years, we will probably be able to genetically cleanse the human species of age-old scourges, like racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, etcetera, by reprogramming everyone’s defective alleles, or implanting some kind of nanotechnological neurosynaptic chips into our brains. The only thing standing in our way is people’s totally irrational resistance to letting corporations redesign the human organism, which, clearly, was rather poorly designed, and thus is vulnerable to all these horrible diseases, and emotional and behavioral disorders.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The important thing at the moment is to defeat this common-flu-like pestilence that has no significant effect on age-adjusted death rates, and the mortality profile of which is more or less identical to the normal mortality profile, but which has nonetheless left the global corporatocracy no choice but to “lock down” the entire planet, plunge millions into desperate poverty, order everyone to wear medical-looking masks, unleash armed goon squads to raid people’s homes, and otherwise transform society into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare. And, of course, the only way to do that (i.e., save humanity from a flu-like bug) is to coercively vaccinate every single human being on the planet Earth!

OK, you’re probably thinking that doesn’t make much sense, this crusade to vaccinate the entire species against a relatively standard respiratory virus, but that’s just because you are still thinking critically. You really need to stop thinking like that. As The New York Times just pointed out, “critical thinking isn’t helping.” In fact, it might be symptomatic of one of those “disorders” I just mentioned above. Critical thinking leads to “vaccine hesitancy,” which is why corporations are working with governments to immediately censor any and all content that deviates from the official Covid-19 narrative and deplatform the authors of such content, or discredit them as “anti-vax disinformationists.”

For example, Children’s Health Defense, which has been reporting on so-called “adverse events” and deaths in connection with the Covid vaccines, despite the fact that, according to the authorities, “there are no safety problems with the vaccines” and “there is no link between Covid-19 vaccines and those who die after receiving them.” In fact, according to the “fact-checkers” at Reuters, these purported “reports of adverse events” “may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable!”

Yes, you’re reading between the lines right. The corporate media can’t come right out and say it, but it appears the “anti-vax disinformationists” are fabricating “adverse events” out of whole cloth and hacking them into the VAERS database and other such systems around the world. Worse, they are somehow infiltrating these made-up stories into the mainstream media in order to lure people into “vaccine hesitancy” and stop us from vaccinating every man, woman, and child in the physical universe, repeatedly, on an ongoing basis, for as long as the “medical experts” deem necessary.

Here are just a few examples of their handiwork …

  • In California, a 60-year-old X-ray technologist received a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. A few hours later he had trouble breathing. He was hospitalized and died four days later. His widow says she’s not ready at this point to link her husband’s death to the vaccine. “I’m not putting any blame on Pfizer,” she said, “or on any other pharmaceutical company.” So, probably just another coincidence.
  • A 78-year-old woman in California died immediately after being vaccinated, but her death was not related to the vaccine, health officials assured the public. “(She) received an injection of the Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by Pfizer around noon. While seated in the observation area after the injection, [she] complained of feeling discomfort and while being evaluated by medical personnel she lost consciousness.” Despite the sudden death of his wife, her husband intends to receive a second dose.
  • Also in Michigan, a 90-year-old man died the day after receiving the vaccine, but, again, this was just a tragic coincidence. As Dr. David Gorski explained, “the baseline death rate of 90-year-olds is high because they’re 90 years old,” which makes perfect sense … unless, of course, they died of Covid, in which case their age and underlying conditions make absolutely no difference whatsoever.

And then there are all the people on Facebook sharing their stories of loved ones who have died shortly after receiving the Covid vaccine, who the Facebook “fact checkers” are doing their utmost to discredit with their official-looking “fact-check notices.” For example …

OK, I realize it’s uncomfortable to have to face things like that (i.e., global corporations like Facebook implying that these people are lying or are using the sudden deaths of their loved ones to discourage others from getting vaccinated), especially if you’re just trying to follow orders and parrot official propaganda … even the most fanatical Covidian Cultists probably still have a shred of human empathy buried deep in their cold little hearts. But there’s an information war on, folks! You’re either with the Corporatocracy or against it! This is no time to get squeamish, or, you know, publicly exhibit an ounce of compassion. What would your friends and colleagues think of you?!

No, report these anti-vaxxers to the authorities, shout them down on social media, switch off your critical-thinking faculties, and get in line to get your vaccination! The fate of the human species depends on it! And, if you’re lucky, maybe GloboCap will even give you one of these nifty numerical Covid-vaccine tattoos for free!

#

February 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

House Democrats, Targeting Right-Wing Cable Outlets, Are Assaulting Core Press Freedoms

By Glenn Greenwald | February 23, 2021

Not even two months into their reign as the majority party that controls the White House and both houses of Congress, key Democrats have made clear that one of their top priorities is censorship of divergent voices. On Saturday, I detailed how their escalating official campaign to coerce and threaten social media companies into more aggressively censoring views that they dislike — including by summoning social media CEOs to appear before them for the third time in less than five months — is implicating, if not already violating, core First Amendment rights of free speech.

Now they are going further — much further. The same Democratic House Committee that is demanding greater online censorship from social media companies now has its sights set on the removal of conservative cable outlets, including Fox News, from the airwaves.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Monday announced a February 24 hearing, convened by one of its sub-committees, entitled “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media.” Claiming that “the spread of disinformation and extremism by traditional news media presents a tangible and destabilizing threat,” the Committee argues: “Some broadcasters’ and cable networks’ increasing reliance on conspiracy theories and misleading or patently false information raises questions about their devotion to journalistic integrity.”

Since when is it the role of the U.S. Government to arbitrate and enforce precepts of “journalistic integrity”? Unless you believe in the right of the government to regulate and control what the press says — a power which the First Amendment explicitly prohibits — how can anyone be comfortable with members of Congress arrogating unto themselves the power to dictate what media outlets are permitted to report and control how they discuss and analyze the news of the day?

But what House Democrats are doing here is far more insidious than what is revealed by that creepy official announcement. Two senior members of that Committee, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Silicon-Valley) and Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) also sent their own letters to seven of the nation’s largest cable providers — Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox and Altice — as well as to digital distributors of cable news (Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google and Hulu) demanding to know, among other things, what those cable distributors did to prevent conservative “disinformation” prior to the election and after — disinformation, they said, that just so happened to be spread by the only conservative cable outlets: Fox, Newsmax and OANN.

In case there was any doubt about their true goal — coercing these cable providers to remove all cable networks that feature conservative voices, including Fox (just as their counterparts on that Committee want to ban right-wing voices from social media) — the House Democrats in their letter said explicitly what they are after: namely, removal of those conservative outlets by these cable providers:

Congresswoman Eshoo boasted on her official site about these efforts, lauding herself and McNerney for “urging 12 cable, satellite, and streaming TV companies to combat the spread of misinformation and requesting more information about their actions to address misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies spread through channels they host.”

For the last four years, we were inundated with media messaging that Trump posed an unprecedented threat to press freedoms. The Washington Post even flamboyantly adopted a new motto to implicitly ratify that accusation (while claiming it was not Trump-specific). Other than the indictment of Julian Assange — which most Washington Democrats cheered — what did the Trump administration do in the way of attacking press freedoms that remotely compares to Democrats abusing their majoritarian power to force the removal of conservative cable outlets from the airwaves, just days after doing the same with dissident voices online?

There is not a peep of protest from any liberal journalists. Do any of the people who spent four years pretending to care so deeply about the vital role of press freedom have anything to say about this full frontal attack by the majority party in Washington on news outlets opposed to their political agenda and ideology?

Evidently not. While many conservative outlets are covering this story, it is difficult to find any liberal outlets writing about it at all. An article from The New York Times was one exception, though it largely attempted to justify these censorship efforts, with paragraph after paragraph purporting to demonstrate the dangerous misinformation spread by these channels. The only nods to the dangers for press freedoms in the article came from statements by Fox News and a GOP member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Revealingly, these same two members of Congress who sent this threatening letter to cable providers said during the Trump years that freedom of the press must be safeguarded at all costs. “The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws that abridge the freedom of the press, and we cherish our country’s culture of free expression,” they intoned when writing to the FCC in 2019 to complain that Russian news outlets were concealing their affiliation with the Kremlin. “We’re not requesting any press censorship,” they assured the FCC under Trump. Yet they are clearly doing exactly that now.

In a statement he emailed to me and publicly posted, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr denounced the Democrats’ actions as a “marked departure from First Amendment norms.” He said “it is a chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys.” In response to my inquiries, Commissioner Carr added in a separate statement to me:

The greatest threat to free speech in America today is not any law passed by the government—the First Amendment stands as a strong bulwark against that form of censorship by state action.  The threat comes in the form of legislating by letterhead. Politicians have realized that they can silence the speech of those with different political viewpoints by public bullying.  The letter sent by two senior Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to cable companies and other regulated entities, and the Committee’s own hearing this week on “disinformation in the media,” are the latest examples. They are singling out selected newsrooms for their coverage of political events and sending a clear message that these media outlets will pay a price if they do not align their viewpoints with Democrat orthodoxy. That is a chilling transgression of free speech and journalistic freedom. No government official has any business inquiring about the ‘moral principles’ that guide a private entity’s decision about what news to carry.

Carr’s GOP colleague on the FCC, Commissioner Nathan Simington, similarly accused House Democrats of seeking to “intimidate into silence those who would distribute on their platforms disfavored points of view.”


The way Democrats justify this to themselves is important to consider. They do not, of course, explicitly acknowledge that they are engaged in authoritarian assaults on free speech and a free press. Not even the most despotic tyrants like to think of themselves in that way. All tyrants concoct theories and excuses to justify their censorship as noble and necessary.

Indeed, the justifying script Democrats are using here is the one most commonly employed by autocrats around the world to silence their critics. Those they seek to silence are not merely expressing a different view, but are dangerous. They are not merely advocating alternative ideologies but are destabilizing society with lies, fake news, and speech that deliberately incites violence, subversion and domestic terrorism.

In her boastful posting, Rep. Eshoo says her efforts targeting these cable outlets are necessary because “misinformation on TV has led to our current polluted information environment that radicalizes individuals to commit seditious acts and rejects public health best practices, among other issues in our public discourse.” This is the rationale invoked by virtually every repressive state to imprison journalists and ban media outlets.

The Democrats sound a great deal like the Egyptian regime of Gen. Abdel el-Sisi. Just two weeks ago, Sisi’s regime finally released an Al Jazeera journalist who had been imprisoned for four years based on accusations that he had “spread false news” and was guilty of “incitement against state institutions and broadcasting false news with the aim of spreading chaos.” Sound familiar? It should, since that is precisely what House Democrats are saying to ennoble their multi-pronged assault on free expression.

International Federation of Journalists, Feb. 5, 2021

Accusing one’s domestic opponents of being subversives and domestic terrorists is by far the most common way that despots on every continent justify their censorship and silencing campaigns of oppositional media outlets. In 2014, the French journalist Valeria Costa-Kostritsky warned in the Index on Censorship that anti-terrorism laws and accusations of promoting subversion were becoming the primary means which authoritarian states from Turkey and Jordan to Russia and the UAE use to justify the silencing of journalists:

Anti-terror legislation seems to be the perfect tool for a state seeking to crack down on opposition. “It’s so elusive. You can [see] anything as terrorist propaganda. There needn’t be any evidence of violence, any praise of violence. Plus, if you blame someone for having a connection with the [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] the public buys that argument easily, especially in a country that is suffering from terrorism, as Turkey is,” said Sevgi Akarçeşme, former editor-in-chief of Turkey’s Today’s Zaman (the English-language edition of daily Zaman), who had her newspaper taken over by the government in March 2016.

A similar means used by repressive governments to silence disfavored media outlets is to claim they are promoting “extremism.” As Costa-Kostritsky detailed:

There’s another word one can use to browse through reports published on the [Mapping Media Freedom] map: “extremism”. Anti-extremism legislation is used to intimidate journalists in post-Soviet countries, particularly in Russia. On the map, of the 35 incidents flagged with “extremism”, 11 took place in Russia, and seven in Crimea, others include Belgium, Italy, Hungary, France and Spain. Five reports connecting the media to “extremism” took place during the first half of 2016. They include website closures and journalists being put on a list of extremists. In Russia, most cases using anti-extremism legislations against journalists happen via Roskomnadzor, the national media regulator.

When China arrests journalists it typically justifies its actions by accusing them of fomenting extremism that jeopardizes national security.

And accusing journalists of spreading “fake news” — always a dangerously vague term from its inception — is equally commonplace when government authorities want to silence media outlets. The Washington Post reported that “as 2019 draws to a close, there are 30 journalists in jail worldwide on charges of ‘false news’ — or, as it’s also called these days, ‘fake news.’” In sum:

It has now become commonplace to throw around fake-news accusations in the United States. But in other countries around the world — like Egypt, Turkey, Somalia and Cameroon — such charges can have very chilling and stifling impacts on the press, according to an annual report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

In Egypt — where General-turned-President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi has been overseeing a crackdown that human rights groups say is harsher than any before — there are 21 journalists in jail for allegedly publishing “false news,” according to the CPJ’s data. In practice, press freedom advocates say, these charges stem from a simple fact: The journalists published news that Sisi didn’t like.

In a passage that the Post would only publish about foreign countries but never about House Democrats, even though it now applies equally, they observed: “There is a serious global problem of disinformation spreading online and sowing distrust and sectarianism. The problem, say press advocates, is that the laws regulating fake news all too often are a means of stifling the media rather than fostering a more transparent environment online.”

This framework is hardly rare in the west either. When the Obama administration collaborated with the UK Government in 2013 to detain my husband David Miranda at Heathrow Airport in connection with the work he was doing in the Snowden reporting, they cited an anti-terrorism law to justify his detention, and repeatedly threatened to prosecute him for terrorism if he did not cooperate by providing all of his passwords to them. He ultimately prevailed in his lawsuit against the U.K. Government on the ground that it constitutes an illegal assault on press freedoms and human rights to abuse anti-terrorism frameworks to intimidate or silence journalists.

Justifying the silencing of journalists by accusing them of inciting domestic terrorism and extremism is now the most common means used globally for censorsing the press. The Committee to Protect Journalists in 2013 said they had “tracked a significant rise in journalist imprisonments.” The culprit, said the group, was “the expansion of anti-terrorism and national security laws worldwide” after the 9/11 attack, which had been repeatedly abused to criminalize media outlets. “The number of journalists jailed worldwide hit 232 in 2012, 132 of whom were held on anti-terror or other national security charges.” In sum: “CPJ’s analysis has found that governments have exploited these laws to silence critical journalists.”

Are there conspiracy theories and disinformation sometimes found on the conservative cable outlets which House Democrats want taken off the air? Of course there are: all media outlets disseminate conspiracy theories and fake news at times. MSNBC and CNN spent four years endorsing the most deranged conspiracy theory imaginable, one with very toxic roots in the Cold War: namely, the McCarthyite script that the Kremlin had taken over control of key U.S. institutions through sexual blackmail over the President, invasions into the nation’s heating system and electric grid, and criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the Trump campaign to hack into Democrats’ emails.

All of that was false, just as the one-month tale told over and over by the media about a pro-Trump mob murdering Brian Sicknick by bludgeoning him to death with a fire extinguisher was false — a story which remains unretracted or corrected by most who spread it.

Just imagine if, during the Trump years, the GOP Senate had abused its power to bully cable outlets into removing MSNBC from their platforms, or banning liberal journalists and activists from using social media platforms, on the grounds that they were spreading conspiracy theories and fake news. It is hard to overstate how extreme the rhetoric would have been that Trump and the Republicans were engaged in authoritarian measures to destroy free speech and a free press.

And I would have joined in those denunciations (as I did with the Assange prosecution): as much as I loathe so much of what those outlets do, it is not the role of the government to regulate let alone silence them. The corrective is for journalists to rebuild trust and faith with the public by exposing their misinformation and proving to the public that they will do accurate and reliable reporting regardless of which faction is aggrandized or angered.

But corporate media outlets and Democrats (excuse the redundancy) who spent the last four years posturing as virulent defenders of press freedoms never meant it. Like so much of what they claimed to believe, it was fraudulent. The proof is that they are now mute, if not supportive, as Democrats use their status as majority party to launch an assault against press freedoms far more egregious than anything Trump got close to doing.

February 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

What to Do About Israel?

Here are some suggestions

By Philip Giraldi | Unz Review | February 23, 2021

Critics of U.S. policy with and about Israel like myself have been relatively successful in describing the considerable downside in the bilateral status quo. We have demonstrated that the lopsided relationship supports absolutely no U.S. interest and that, on the contrary, considerable damage is done to the American people, to include involvement in armed conflict in the Middle East which serves no purpose beyond “protecting Israel.”

Israel benefits from billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars annually in a $3.8 billion lump sum for “military aid” plus hundreds of millions more in special procurements and projects that are together considered untouchable in Washington. Add to that the quasi legal “charitable” tax exempt contributions from wealthy American Jews and groups that fuel apartheid policies in Palestine and pay for the illegal settlements. Many of those same groups are themselves tax exempt and they exploit that status to actively lobby on behalf of the Jewish state, successfully shielding it from any consequences for its war crimes and human rights violations. They also avoid registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, even though many of them collude directly with the Israeli government through its embassy in Washington and are directed by the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu government. In fact, no Israel Lobby component among the six hundred or so Jewish groups that have been protecting Israel as part of their agenda has ever been required to register as a foreign agent.

Under President Donald Trump, one Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson contributed as much as $300 million to GOP coffers, money which had with it a quid pro quo, that Trump should do a series of favors for Israel, which he did. The Democrats have their own counterpart in Israeli film producer Haim Saban, who has said that he is a “one issue guy and his issue is Israel.” Neither major party can be counted upon to resist Israeli pressure on foreign policy or even on domestic issues that might limit the “aid” that the Jewish state receives.

The money coming from the Israel Lobby has corrupted American government all the way down to the local level and special preferences for Israeli businesses in states like Florida and Virginia have added even more to the cash flow that goes in only one direction. Ironically, Israel does not really need the money. It is a socialist state that has a European level standard of living, to include free health care and university education, benefits that Americans do not possess.

Add to that Israel’s deplorable human rights record, which Washington is required to defend in international fora, as well as Israel’s record of persistent and highly damaging spying against the United States. It all means that little more need to be said, apart from restating the fact that it is a very bad deal for the American people. And it has also brought with it collateral damage to include attacks on fundamental rights like Freedom of Speech and Assembly. As the politicians in both major parties are bribed or otherwise coerced into continuing to behave the way that they do, count on things getting even worse, with criminalizing of any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism currently making the rounds of pending legislation.

All of that said, when I and others lay out the laundry list of Israel’s crimes against America, some sympathizers inevitably respond: “Okay, so what are you going to do about it?” So now I am going to address some of the things that can be done by ordinary Americans and by groups that are correctly appalled by Washington’s wag the dog relationship with the Jewish state.

First of all, demand from our elected officials that American law be enforced on Israel. There are several areas where that is relevant. First, as mentioned above, is the failure of the Justice and Treasury Departments to enforce registration of pro-Israel lobbying groups. Registration would force groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) to open their books regarding the money they receive and spend and could also require them to reveal details of their lobbying activity.

Another area where the law is not being enforced is regarding Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which was created by stealing both technology and enriched uranium from the U.S. The Symington Amendment on foreign relations forbids giving aid to any country that is either a nuclear proliferator or is in possession of undeclared nuclear weapons. Demand that it be enforced fully now and end all aid to Israel.

U.S. Israel-centric charities or foundations should also have their tax exemptions strictly enforced. Humanitarian aid is fine, but if they are funding the illegal West Bank settlements, which many of them are, they should have their exemptions revoked. And finally, Israelis caught spying or Americans who are assisting in the theft of U.S. classified or sensitive information should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to include use of the Espionage Act. Currently, such individuals are almost always given a pass. If [proclaimed] President Joe Biden can continue the persecution of legitimate journalist Julian Assange under the Espionage Act, he can certainly do the same vis-à-vis Israel’s spies.

Second, call for the end of Citizens United, which enables the Zionist oligarchs to dictate U.S. policy in the Middle East through their PACs and direct political donations. Beyond that, make your voice heard more generally. Sure, calling or writing to a congressional office is most often a waste of time but Capitol Hill staffers have told me many times that if a congressman gets multiple complaints about a certain policy or issue, he or she will begin to pay attention. That is not to say that they will give a damn about their actual constituents versus the powerful Israel Lobby but the background noise might make them just a bit more sensitive on the issue.

Likewise, with the mainstream media and the entertainment industry, which are Jewish/Israel dominated. When one reads an article or watches a documentary that is heavily slanted towards the Jewish state, make an online comment or write a letter to the editor or producer saying that the bias is evident. As in the case with congress, if newspaper or television editors begin to see a lot of commentary hostile to their spin they just might begin to be more cautious for fear of losing readers, viewers or advertising dollars. And just a little bit of loosening of the Israeli grip in the media will mean that the public will begin to appreciate that the “news stories” that have been promoted for so many years are nothing but a tissue of lies.

Third, support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement as well as organizations that are actively critical of Israel. BDS is non-violent and increasingly effective, particularly on college campuses. Always remember that Israel and its friends do not have a grip on Congress, the White House and the media because they are wonderful warm people that others find to be sympathetic. It is difficult even to imagine a scintillating conversation with a malignant toad like former casino magnate Sheldon Adelson or with congressional slime balls like Senators Chuck Schumer and Ben Cardin.

Israel’s ability to corrupt and misdirect is all based on Jewish money, a well-established process whereby Zionist oligarchs buy their way to power and access. So to restore the relationship to something more like the normal interaction between countries the solution is to hit back where it really hurts – boycott Israel and Israeli products or services and do the same for the companies that are the sources of income for those American Jews who are the principal supporters of the Zionist project. If you want to visit Las Vegas, by all means go, but don’t patronize the casinos and hotels now owned by Sheldon Adelson’s Israeli wife Miriam, which include The Venetian and Sands Resort.

Democratic party major donor Haim Saban, meanwhile, is a producer of Hollywood children’s entertainment, including the lucrative Power Rangers. You can stop your children from watching his violent programming and tell the network’s advertisers why you are doing so. And then there are businessmen including Bernard Marcus, who is a co-founder of Home Depot and a major supporter of Israel, and Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots. No one really has to spend $1000 to go to a football game, particularly if the owner is a good friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, and if you need something for your home or are seeking entertainment, choose to spend your dollars somewhere else. Readers can do the homework for the businesses and services that they normally patronize. If outspoken advocates for Israel own the company, take your dollars elsewhere.

Also put direct pressure on the mostly high-tech U.S. companies that invest in Israel, which are particularly vulnerable because they are thereby sending American jobs overseas, particularly as they country they are sending them to will steal the technology as likely as not. Make Israel’s cash-rich supporters pay a price for promotion of an apartheid/racist regime that is contemptuous of Americans even as it robs us blind, in the process doing terrible damage to the United States.

I am confident that readers will come up with other ideas regarding what might be done to counter Israel and all its works right here in the United States. If we lapse into apathy and think that nothing can be done to oppose the Israeli juggernaut, we will all lose. And, to be sure, the Israelis and their friends in America and Europe have one huge weakness. It is their hubris. They think that they are invulnerable because of their money and political power, but they fail to understand that in history the rich and powerful have inevitably gone too far and have finally received their comeuppance. Perhaps the “gone too far” moment has finally arrived.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

February 23, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | 2 Comments

Iran blocks IAEA nuclear inspections under Additional Protocol following sanctions deadline

Press TV – February 23, 2021

Iran has stopped the voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Safeguards Agreement that allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to carry out short-notice inspections of the country’s nuclear facilities, following a deadline set by Tehran for the removal of US sanctions.

Talking to reporters, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif confirmed that the implementation of the Additional Protocol had been stopped as of Tuesday morning.

Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s permanent representative to Vienna-based international organizations, also announced late on Monday that all the IAEA’s additional access to the nuclear sites would be halted by midnight.

“As of 12:00 p.m. local time (2030 GMT), we have nothing called obligations beyond the Safeguards Agreement,” he said. “Necessary orders have been issued to nuclear facilities.”

Zarif pointed out that Iran will continue to implement its commitments under the NPT Safeguards Agreements and cooperate with the IAEA.

He explained that footage recorded by cameras at Iran’s nuclear sites will now be withheld and no longer shared with the IAEA on a daily and weekly basis as was done in the past.

The foreign minister also noted that Iran will have no official meeting with the US, since Washington is no longer a party to the nuclear deal.

Later on Tuesday, Zarif posted a tweet about the technical understanding reached with IAEA chief Rafael Grossi.

The halt came under the Strategic Action Plan to Counter Sanctions, a law passed last December by the Iranian Parliament.

The legislation set February 23 as a deadline for the Iranian government to further scale back compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), if the US does not lift its sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The withdrawal from the Protocol adds to Iran’s previous steps away from the JCPOA in response to the US’s unilateral withdrawal in 2018 and the other parties’ failure to fulfill their commitments.

Admin. welcomes Leader’s call for unity with Parliament

Additionally, the administration of President Hassan Rouhani on Monday welcomed a call by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei for it and the Parliament to resolve their rifts and act in unison regarding the anti-sanctions law.

“Negotiations and agreements between the Islamic Republic and the IAEA have been in full compliance with the Constitution and the laws of the country, in particular the resolution of the 759th session of the Supreme National Security Council. All experts and security officials have acknowledged that they (the negotiations and agreements with the IAEA) were the most efficient and the least costly way to fully implement the Parliament’s resolution,” it said in a statement.

“The goal of the Islamic Republic and the definite plan of the government are to realize the rights of the Iranian people, intelligently and decisively confront the illegal actions and policies of the United States, and lift the cruel and inhumane sanctions against the Iranian nation as soon as possible,” it added.

During a visit by IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to Tehran on Sunday, the UN nuclear watchdog struck a three-month deal with Iran.

Under the agreement, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) would continue to use cameras to record information at its nuclear sites for three months, but it would retain the information exclusively. If the US sanctions are lifted completely within that period, Iran will provide the footage information to the IAEA, otherwise it will be deleted forever.

“The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on its national and legal duties, is now confident that the law passed by the Parliament has been fully enacted so far while taking into account technical considerations and national interests,” the government statement added.

Jahangiri defends Iran-IAEA deal

In a post on his twitter account, Iranian First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri said the Iran-IAEA deal is “within the framework of the law and the principles of wisdom, dignity and expediency.”

“Inspections beyond the Safeguards Agreement ended. At the same time, Iran once again showed its goodwill to the world and the IAEA,” he said.

“The art of authoritative diplomacy is to break deadlocks,” he added.

The administration of US President Joe Biden has indicated willingness to rejoin the JCPOA, but it has been dragging its feet on taking any meaningful measure to undo the former US government’s wrongs.

It has conditioned the US’s return to the nuclear accord on Tehran’s resumption of the commitments it has suspended under the JCPOA.

However, Tehran says it will retrace its nuclear countermeasures only after the US lifts its sanctions in a verifiable manner.

US keeps up anti-Iran rhetoric

Addressing the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington is working with allies and partners seeking to “lengthen and strengthen the JCPOA” and address Iran’s regional role and missiles program.

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Jen Psaki claimed that Iran is “a long way from compliance, and that hasn’t changed. I said that last week, and many — and I believe my colleague, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, conveyed that just yesterday. That has not changed. “

The Iranians, she added, “have clearly not taken the steps needed to comply, and we have not taken any steps or — and made any indication that we are going to meet the demands that they are putting forward either.”

Separately, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the US is “concerned to hear that Iran intends to cease implementation of the Additional Protocol and other measures this week. We note the announcement that Iran will continue to implement its obligations under its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements with the IAEA fully and without limitation, and that the IAEA and Iran have reached a temporary bilateral technical understanding regarding verification and monitoring activities.

“If Iran returns to full compliance with the Iran deal, the United States would be prepared to do the same. We would then use the JCPOA as a basis for a longer and stronger agreement and negotiate follow-on agreements to cover other areas of concern,” he said.

February 23, 2021 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , | 1 Comment

Florida Wins the Lockdown Science War – Hands Down

Ivor Cummins | February 18, 2021

Self explanatory: Florida is an exemplar of applied scientific thinking.

Please share widely to help the people understand the basics. Also please download the vid right here: https://we.tl/t-8A21PY5MM6 – and upload everywhere.

NOTE: My extensive research and interviewing / video/sound editing and much more does require support – please consider helping if you can with monthly donation to support me directly, or one-off payment: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_…

Alternatively join up with my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IvorCummins

February 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Democrats ask cable operators why they don’t CENSOR Fox News, OAN & Newsmax

RT | February 22, 2021

In a move condemned by Republicans as a “troubling” attack on free press, Democrats have asked cable and digital operators to justify carrying Fox News, OAN and Newsmax ahead of a hearing on media “disinformation and extremism.”

“Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, OANN, and Newsmax on your platform both now and beyond the renewal date?” a letter sent Monday by California Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney asked major cable and digital TV providers in the US.

“If so, why?”

The letter was addressed to cable and satellite providers Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox and Altice, as well as digital carriers Amazon, Apple, Google, Hulu and Roku.

Eshoo and McNerney also asked what steps the providers took prior to and after the November 3, 2020 election and the January 6 Capitol riot “to monitor, respond to, and reduce the spread of disinformation, including encouragement or incitement of violence by channels your company disseminates to millions of Americans?”

This was a reference to the three networks giving space to President Donald Trump and his supporters to make accusations of irregularities in the 2020 election, which the Democrats have blamed for what they claim was an “insurrection” at the Capitol.

McNerney and Eshoo sit on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, whose subcommittee on Communications and Technology is scheduled to hold a hearing on “traditional media’s role in promoting disinformation and extremism” on Wednesday. While the subcommittee did not name any names, they said the “increasing reliance on conspiracy theories and misleading or patently false information” at some networks “raises questions about their devotion to journalistic integrity.”

The letter attracted the attention of Brendan Carr, the lone Republican on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), who condemned it as “a chilling transgression” of free speech rights in the US.

Democrats are “sending a message that is as clear as it is troubling—these regulated entities will pay a price if the targeted newsrooms do not conform to Democrats’ preferred political narratives,” Carr added.

A newsroom’s decision about which stories to cover and how “should be beyond the reach of any government official, not targeted by them,” Carr argued, asking his FCC colleagues to “join me in publicly denouncing this attempt to stifle political speech and independent news judgment.” As of Monday afternoon, they have not done so.

Democrats are “saying it explicitly” that they want to “police and censor both social media and cable news,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted on Monday, as the issue came up during the Senate confirmation hearings of Merrick Garland, nominated to serve as attorney general in the Biden administration.

While the menacing letter to cable operators may not have said so explicitly, the lawmakers appeared to be contrasting their supposed inaction with the sweeping restrictions social media companies such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube imposed on their users prior and following the election, including the ban on President Trump and pre-labeling any claims about election results or integrity as false.

Reporting on the Eshoo-McNerney letter, the New York Times approvingly noted that while “defamation lawsuits filed by private companies have taken the lead in the fight against disinformation promoted on some cable channels,” pointing to Dominion Voting Systems suing Trump lawyers who appeared on the three networks, as well as pillow manufacturer Mike Lindell.

The First Amendment of the US Constitution explicitly prohibits Congress from restricting freedom of religion, speech, and press. Though this is presumably a fundamental American value, of the kind President Joe Biden said would guide his policies, the US embassy in Ukraine cheered earlier this month when the government in Kiev banned several local TV networks, saying it was a proper move to “counter Russia’s malign influence.”

February 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 2 Comments

Court invalidates Balfour Declaration, holds UK responsible for Palestinian plight

Press TV – February 22, 2021

A Palestinian court has declared as invalid the Balfour Declaration, a document issued by the British government in 1917 that paved the way for the creation of Israel, as it violates the rules of international law.

The Court of First Instance in the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank on Sunday also held Britain legally responsible for the consequences of the Balfour Declaration, demanding an apology to the Palestinians.

The Balfour Declaration came in the form of a letter from Britain’s then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community. It was published on November 2, 1917.

The declaration was made during World War I (1914-1918), and included in the terms of the British Mandate for Palestine after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

It is widely seen as the precursor to the 1948 Palestinian Nakba, when Zionist armed paramilitary groups, who were trained and created to fight side by side with the British in World War II, forcibly expelled more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland, captured huge swathes of the Arab land, and proclaimed existence of Israel.

The lawsuit was filed by Palestinian lawyers in October last year on behalf of the National Assembly of Independents, the International Foundation for the Follow-up of the Rights of the Palestinian People, and the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, against the British government.

“Britain and its foreign minister at the time, Arthur James Balfour, from whom the ‘Balfour Declaration’ was issued at the time, neither owned Palestine nor did they have the right to determine the fate of its people,” the court ruled Sunday.

Britain’s acts violate “the rules of international law, local laws, international norms and the decisions of the United Nations League and the United Nations during the period of its occupation of the Palestinian territories throughout the period of the British Mandate, including its implementation of the Balfour Declaration,” it said.

The ruling said the declaration deprived “the Palestinian people of their legal, human and political rights, and prevented them from their right to self-determination on their Palestinian lands”.

The court’s decision was welcomed by the Palestinians, with the head of the Supreme Islamic Authority, the preacher of the al-Aqsa Mosque, Ikrimah Sabri, saying it “came to expose the crimes of the occupation”.

The head of the National Assembly of Independents, Munib al-Masri, also described the ruling as “historic”, saying it was a fair trial.

He noted that the next step would be bringing the case to the British courts.

Deputy governor of Nablus Anan al-Atire said, “What we are witnessing in terms of legal battle confirms that our people will not forget the historical injustice, and we will not forgive those who put us under this colonial occupation.”

Palestinians, she said, “will only accept independence, an independent state with Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital, the return of refugees, and the expulsion of these colonists from our land.”

“We will continue the battle of struggle and resistance in all its forms.”

February 22, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 7 Comments

Revelations show FBI, New York police behind killing of US Muslim leader Malcolm X

Press TV – February 22, 2021

New evidence about the assassination of prominent US civil rights leader Malcolm X has shown that the New York Police Department participated in a conspiracy with the FBI that led to the 1965 killing of the Muslim leader.

Members of Malcolm X’s family made public a letter written by a deceased New York police officer stating that the New York Police Department and FBI were behind the killing of the famed Black activist.

The cousin of former undercover NYPD officer Raymond Wood said his late cousin had confessed to him that he had been pressured by his NYPD supervisors to lure members of Malcolm X’s security detail into committing crimes that resulted in their arrest just days before the assassination of Malcolm X in New York Harlem.

“Under the direction of my handlers, I was told to encourage leaders and members of the civil rights groups to commit felonious acts,” read the letter composed by Wood in 2011.

“It was my assignment to draw the two men into a felonious federal crime so that they could be arrested by the FBI and kept away from managing Malcolm X’s Audubon Ballroom door security on February 21st, 1965,” the letter stated.

On February 21, 1965, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Malcolm X’s Muslim name, without the two bodyguards, was gunned down as he prepared to give a speech at a theater in Harlem, in the north of Manhattan.

An estimated 30,000 mourners attended Malcolm X’s funeral in Harlem.

Wood did not want his testimony to become public until after his death and maintained that the New York police department and the FBI kept certain aspects of the case secret.

The FBI has not made any comment yet about the new revelations.

Malcolm X’s daughters have called to reopen an investigation into the murder of prominent Black activist following the new testimony that implicates the FBI and the New York police.

“Any evidence that provides greatest insight into the truth behind that terrible tragedy should be thoroughly investigated,” said Ilyasah Shabazz, one of Malcolm X’s six daughters.

She said she had always lived with uncertainty around the circumstances of her father’s death.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s office told in a statement its “review of this matter is active and ongoing.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office announced last February that it would review the convictions of two of members of Malcolm X’s group who were held responsible for the 1965 killing.

Considered alongside Martin Luther King Jr as one the most influential African Americans in history, Malcolm X was an outspoken Muslim advocate of Black rights.

Malcolm X helped define the struggle for racial equality in the 1960s, and was a powerful orator who rose to prominence as the spokesman of the Nation of Islam, an African-American Muslim group.

February 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

Texas Power Freeze-Down Demonstrates Political Climate Craziness

By Larry Bell | PA Pundits – International | February 22, 2021

Texas just sent a very chilling message to the rest of the nation about what to expect your life to be like with President Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan AKA, “Green New Deal,” in order to save the planet from overheating.

It seems he’s already overachieving that goal.

An unusual Arctic blast that spread across the state from the tip of the Panhandle all the way to the Rio Grande Valley has left millions of homes and businesses here without electricity.

A series of forced rolling blackouts were required to prevent power grid collapse as single-digit temperatures froze wind turbines and hobbled dozens of power plant operations.

How could this possibly happen here in Texas?

This isn’t supposed to be California, after all, where over-dependence on wind and solar power destabilized the grid during a record 2020 heat wave.

California already leads the nation with the least reliable power system and greatest number of annual outages … 4,297 were recorded between 2008 and 2017. And conditions will only become far worse as the state now requires that all new homes be nearly entirely electric.

More than 30 cities, including San Francisco, have already enacted bans on new gas appliance hookups. California plans to eventually outlaw gasoline and diesel cars.

Hey y’all… this is Texas, a land of far more savvy dudes in a state rightly famous for being awash in huge petroleum and natural gas resources.

Texas isn’t a place where we who live here ordinarily worry about freezing to death due to a lack of reliable fossil and nuclear power to heat our homes… unlike northern latitudes that routinely get really cold with iced-up failing power lines.

So, in addition to record low temperatures, what happened to change that?

I guess we got a little bit too woke.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) which oversees the state’s wholesale power market has shifted grid reliance away from reliable coal, nuclear, and natural gas toward heavily taxpayer-subsidized (no free lunch here) wind energy.

That wind generation now constitutes the second-largest electricity power source in Texas. According to ERCOT, it accounted for 23% of the state supply last year, behind natural gas which represented 45%.

Over the past decade, strict CO2 emission regulations have caused coal’s share of Texas’s electricity to plunge by more than half, to supply 18%.

A power crunch ensued, as bitter cold damp conditions caused wind turbines in West Texas to freeze at the same time it was causing residents to crank up their thermostats. Regulators did what they could to protect public safety by rationing gas for commercial and industrial uses to ensure fuel for power plants and household heating.

Some natural gas wellheads also froze, along with refining facilities in some locations, in turn bleeding natural gas needed for turbines that provide essential back-up “spinning reserve” power for – at best intermittent – wind and solar outputs.

And who could have possibly imagined what happened next?

The spot price of wholesale electricity on the Texas power grid spiked more than 10,000%, surging past $9,000 per MegaWatt-hour. Even during high demand summer months, $100 per MW-hr would be considered high.

On second thought, maybe Texas and every other state might have anticipated much of this occurring based upon Germany’s “Energiewende” (energy transition) experience, a policy established in 2000 to decarbonize its primary energy supply.

When the program was first launched, 6.6% of Germany’s electricity came from renewable sources, primarily solar and wind. By 2019, nearly two decades later, that share had reached 41%.

By 2019, average German household electricity costs during that same period have doubled to 34 U.S. cents per Kilowatt-hour. (Compare this with 22 cents per kWh in France, and 13 cents in the United States.)

Meager renewable energy supply conditions worsened dramatically this winter as the coldest western Europe weather in a decade have blanked millions of Germany’s solar panels with snow and ice and rendered 30,000 of its wind turbines idle. This left the greatest share of vital power coming from coal.

In January, the German RBB (Berlin-Brandenburg) public broadcasting network aired a report that sums up the consequences of continually shutting the country’s coal and nuclear energy capacities in favor of adding those “green renewable alternatives.”

Harald Schwarz, a professor of power distribution at the University of Cottbus, went straight to the point, saying: “die gesicherte leistung von wind + sonne = 0,” which means:

“The guaranteed output of wind + sun = 0.”

To be more charitable to those renewables, the actual benefit reportedly ranges between zero and two or three percent.

The RBB broadcast went on to warn that Germany’s futile attempt to replace reliable nuclear and coal-fired energy with wind and solar will extend the supply and demand gap dangerously wide.

The current trend leaves Germany with no real future alternative but to rely more on natural gas from Russia, coal power from Poland, and nuclear power from France.

And what about America, where wind and solar combined provide, at most, about four percent of our grid electricity (not total energy), versus about 80% from hydrocarbons?

The $2 trillion Biden “Equitable Clean Energy Future” agenda pledges to eliminate those hydrocarbon emissions from electricity by 2035, and then achieve “net-zero carbon” by 2050.

To prove he’s serious, on his very first day in the Oval Office, President Biden capped off the Keystone XL pipeline at the Canadian border along with about 11,000 jobs and 830,000 barrels of oil per day it would have delivered, which must now be transported by CO2-emitting rail and trucks.

On top of decimating our current energy supply infrastructure, the plan is for taxpayers to finance a half-million electric car chargers across the nation and add a humongous number of electricity-thirsty electric vehicles to further stress already precarious capacities.

Before buying into this political man-made climate crisis of lunacy, demand to know where sufficient energy will come from, and at what economic and social cost, to air condition fully-electrified Texas summer and New England winter homes – plus recharge millions of plug-in vehicles – on windless cloudy days and nights – especially during inevitable extreme weather demand periods.

Larry Bell contributes posts at the CFACT site. He heads the graduate program in space architecture at the University of Houston. He founded and directs the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture. He is also the author of “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax.”

February 22, 2021 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment