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‘Heating halls’ planned in several German cities

Free West Media | July 12, 2022

The energy emergency brought about by the traffic-light coalition in Germany’s suicidal sanctions policy for autumn and winter is beginning to take shape. Since politicians under the spell of “green” energy have not succeeded in providing sufficient alternatives to Russian natural gas, the population is preparing for the worst. The first emergency scenarios have been outlined.

In Ludwigshafen, for example, plans are now being made to open up halls in which citizens who can no longer afford to heat their apartments, can gather for a bit of heat. “We are currently preparing for all emergency scenarios with a view to autumn and winter,” said Mayor Jutta Steinruck (SPD). The Friedrich-Ebert-Halle will serve as the “central warm-up station”. There are also reports from Tuttlingen in Swabia and from Heidelberg about planned “heating halls”.

In order to deal with the dire gas shortage, Düsseldorf wants to cut heating in autumn and winter. In the case of hot water, the “availability in kitchens and sanitary facilities” should be reduced, a spokesman for the Bild newspaper said.

But there are also significant restrictions planned for summer. Three of the four indoor swimming pools in Nuremberg will be closed as this should save a total of 1,3 gigawatt hours of energy. “We have to prepare in good time for possible restrictions in the gas supply,” said CSU Mayor König.

Foreign Minister Baerbock (Greens) has been one of the most prominent agitators against Russia in the Ukraine conflict which has resulted in the current energy disaster facing Germany. At the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, for example, she announced that the aim of German government policy was to “ruin” Russia.

Her insistence has instead ruined many German households. The Federal Association of German Housing and Real Estate Companies (GdW) has already extrapolated the financial consequences of the exploding energy prices and warned: Single-person households must expect additional costs of almost 1000 euros to around 2700 euros. For four-person households, the association expects additional costs of 1800 euros to around 5000 euros. The above scenario is “rather realistic,” said GdW President Axel Gedaschko.

“We see massive social explosives here,” warned the GdW President. Averaged over all types of energy, a price increase of 37 percent was already achieved by May 2022. For a one-person household, that alone results in an additional burden of 508 euros per year compared to last year.

Information from various energy providers showed the price increases for all energy sources were likely to range between 71 and almost 200 percent, according to the GdW. If the third stage of the gas emergency plan is implemented, there is a risk of gas price increases of up to 400 percent. Because in this case contractual agreements, which have so far protected individual companies from passing on the entire cost increase, could be annulled. “Neither the tenants nor the socially oriented housing companies can afford that,” warned Gedaschko.

July 12, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Critical Norwegian gas platform and transportation hub forced to shut down

Samizdat | July 12, 2022

A Norwegian gas platform and the transportation hub Sleipner Riser at the same field were shut down on Tuesday after separate gas leaks occurred, operator Equinor said, according to Reuters. The company indicated it was unclear when operations would resume.

“A gas leak at the Sleipner A {platform} occurred yesterday morning,” an Equinor spokesperson stated, adding “No person was injured and production was shut. When we tried to restart, a new gas leak occurred, late Monday night … this time at Sleipner Riser.”

Sleipner Riser is a key hub for the transport of North Sea gas to Britain and Belgium.

“We don’t know when we will back in normal production. The facility is shut,” the spokesperson added.

The incident comes at a time when Europe is facing constrained gas supply as scheduled maintenance halted flows from Russia via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Monday. The repairs are expected to take 10 days.

Norway is Europe’s second largest gas supplier and currently meets around 25% of gas demand on the continent, according to S&P global. Its role has come into sharper focus since Russia moved to reduce gas deliveries to Europe.

This month, the Norwegian government ended a strike by the country’s offshore oil and gas workers, who had been demanding wage increases to compensate for rising inflation. The strike, which resulted in the closure of three fields, threatened to exacerbate Europe’s energy crisis.

July 12, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine – global hotbed for mercenaries and terrorists

By Drago Bosnic | July 12, 2022

Western mercenaries are often considered the mainstay of all foreign personnel fighting for the Kiev regime. However, although they’re the ones with the most media exposure, the truth is, there are mercenaries from all around the world fighting for the regime. And although international law outlaws mercenaries, the ones fighting in Ukraine aren’t just “regular soldiers of fortune”, but also international terrorists previously operating in the Middle East and Africa. Even before Russia intervened, information on Islamic terrorists fighting for the Kiev regime was already common knowledge.

Already in late February, Syrian intelligence services intercepted information that the Turks were recruiting troops among the terrorist formations under their control to go fight in Ukraine. According to the information made public at the time, Turks formed and armed at least seven groups of about 100 terrorists in each, which included members of terrorist groups such as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya and the Islamic Party of Turkestan.

A few weeks later, Iraqi Shia group “Ashab al-Kahf” reported that “military advisors” from the countries of the “anti-ISIS” coalition, namely Lithuania, Italy, Germany and the UK, arrived in Iraq to recruit mercenaries for the Kiev regime forces. Two US bases, Ain el-Assad (Iraq) and Al-Tanf (Syria), were used as headquarters for this operation. Residents from Syria, Iraq, Libya, Turkey, Tunisia, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, etc. were given a chance to fight “for democracy”, with priority given to specialists in large-scale urban combat.

On March 8, the Syrian Ambassador to Russia Riyad Haddad announced the threat of “flooding Ukraine with mercenaries and turning it into a big European Idlib.” In early July, he announced the transfer of ISIS terrorists from Idlib to Ukraine, an operation carried out jointly by Turkey, the US and its client states. Earlier, in May, Sergey Ivanov, head of the Press Bureau of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, spoke about the transfer of ISIS soldiers to Ukraine by the Americans. In mid-April, Spokesman of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Igor Konashenkov, stated that at that time and since the beginning of Russia’s intervention, at least 200 Turkish-backed terrorists had arrived in Ukraine. This issue further ruined the already murky reputation of the Kiev regime, as its units were now composed of both Neo-Nazi and Islamic terrorist troops.

It’s pretty clear why the Kiev regime is trying to recruit anyone at this point. Simply put, the motivation of regular Ukrainians to fight for the regime is dwindling, as their forces are suffering heavy casualties, reaching the scale of 10:1, and not in their favor. This is almost perfectly consistent with the scale of artillery supremacy of the Russian forces, which is also 10:1. Just how desperate the Kiev regime is to recruit troops for the “Donbass meat grinder” can be seen in the fact that Ukrainian men are now openly being abducted and pushed to the frontlines. Recently, in Transcarpathia, Ukraine’s westernmost region, police were seen going to recreation centers, including public pools, trying to drag men out of the water and send them to military units.

And this doesn’t only apply to Ukrainian citizens, but also to foreigners residing in Ukraine, including college students. At the start of Russia’s special military operation, when foreigners were being evacuated, including African ex-pat students, some were denied access to trains and buses, while others were told they would be conscripted to the Kiev regime forces. An ABC News journalist interviewed a Congolese national who managed to escape this fate and who said: “We were told: ‘We will give you weapons, and you will fight for Ukraine!’ I say: ‘Eh? Will we fight for Ukraine? We are not Ukrainians. We are black. How can we fight for Ukraine?!'”

On the other hand, there were also mercenaries from some African countries, such as Nigeria, who stated they wanted to fight for the Kiev regime. The regime promised to pay for “their services” and additional funds were sent to the Ukrainian embassy in Nigeria. However, in addition to evidence of military experience, Ukrainian diplomats demanded mercenaries pay $1000 for a visa and a flight ticket, promising a monthly salary of $3,300 dollars, although they previously promised twice as much. At the same time, this is also considered a way for many to use the conflict as an excuse to reach Europe.

What is certainly clear from all this chaos is that the political West seeks to dispose of terrorists and also use them against Russian forces in this war to the last Ukrainian. In addition, Washington DC and London are profiting from all this in the long-term, as mainland Europe is bearing the brunt of the costs and consequences of their proxy war against Russia. Many of the mercenaries and terrorists fighting for the Kiev regime will certainly end up being Europe’s problem, provided they survive the conflict. As already noted, the Kiev regime, for its part, will accept anyone willing to fight in its suicidal confrontation with Russia.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

July 12, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

How Jewish Is the War Against Russia? Let’s be honest about who is promoting it

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW  • JULY 12, 2022

Five years ago, I wrote an article entitled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s wars.” It turned out to be the most popular piece that I have ever written and I was rewarded for it by immediately being fired by the so-called American Conservative magazine, where I had been a regular and highly popular contributor for fourteen years. I opened the article with a brief description of an encounter with a supporter whom I had met shortly before at an antiwar conference. The elderly gentleman asked “Why doesn’t anyone ever speak honestly about the six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room? Nobody has mentioned Israel in this conference and we all know it’s American Jews with all their money and power who are supporting every war in the Middle East for Netanyahu? Shouldn’t we start calling them out and not letting them get away with it?”

In my article I named many of the individual Jews and Jewish groups that had been leading the charge to invade Iraq and also deal with Iran along the way. They used fake intelligence and out-and-out lies to make their case and never addressed the central issue of how those two countries actually threatened the United States or its vital interests. And when they succeeded in committing the US to the fiasco in Iraq, as far as I can determine only one honest Jew who had participated in the process, Philip Zelikow, in a moment of candor, admitted that the Iraq War, in his opinion, was fought for Israel.

There was considerable collusion between the Israeli government and the Jews in the Pentagon, White House, National Security Council and State Department in the wake of 9/11. Under President George W. Bush, Israeli Embassy staff uniquely had free access to the Pentagon office of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, not being required to sign in or submit any security measures. It was a powerful indication of the special status that Israel enjoyed with top Jews in the Bush Administration. It should also be recalled that Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans was the source of the false WMD information used by the Administration to justify invading Iraq, while that information was also funneled directly to Vice President Dick Cheney without any submission to possibly critical analysts by his chief of Staff “Scooter” Libby. Wolfowitz, Feith and Libby were of course Jewish as were many on their staffs and Feith’s relationship with Israel was so close that he actually partnered in a law firm that had a branch in Jerusalem. Feith also served on the board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), which is dedicated to nurturing the relationship between the US and Israel.

Currently, the top three State Department officials (Tony Blinken, Wendy Sherman and Victoria Nuland) are all Zionist Jews. The head of the Department of Homeland Security, which is hot on the trail of domestic “terrorist” dissidents, is also Jewish as is the Attorney General and the president’s chief of staff. They and their boss Joe Biden do not seem concerned that their client Ukraine is no democracy. The nation’s current government came into power after the 2014 coup engineered by President Barack Obama’s State Department at an estimated cost of $5 billion. The regime change carried out under Barack Obama was driven by State Department Russophobe Victoria Nuland with a little help from international globalist George Soros. It removed the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych who was, unfortunately for him, a friend of Russia.

Ukraine is reputedly both the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe, witness the Hunter Biden saga. The current President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish and claims to have holocaust victims in his family tree, is a former comedian who won election in 2019. He replaced another Jewish president Petro Poroshenko, after being heavily funded and promoted by yet another fellow Jew and Ukraine’s richest oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who is also an Israeli citizen and now lives in Israel.

It all sounds like deja vu all over again, particularly as many of the perpetrators are still around, like Nuland, priming the pump to go to war yet again for no reason. And they are joined by journalists like Bret Stephens at the New York Times, Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper at CNN, and also Max Boot at the Washington Post, all of whom are Jewish and can be counted on to write regular pieces both damning and demonizing Russia and its head of state Vladimir Putin, which means it is not only about the Middle East anymore. It is also about weakening and even bringing about regime change in nuclear armed Russia while also drawing some lines in the sand for likewise nuclear armed China. And I might add that playing power games with Russia is a hell of a lot more dangerous that kicking Iraq around.

To put it bluntly, many US government and media Jews hate Russia and even though they benefited substantially as a group by virtue of their preeminent role in the looting of the former Soviet Union under Boris Yeltsin and continue to be among the most prominent Russian oligarchs. Many of the oligarch billionaires, like Boris Berezovsky, self-exiled when Vladimir Putin obtained power and began to crack down on their tax avoidance and other illegal activity. Many moved to Western Europe where some bought up football teams while others went south and obtained Israeli citizenship. Their current grievances somewhat reflect their tribe’s demand for perpetual victimhood and the deference plus forgiveness of all sins that it conveys, with the self-promoted tales of persecution going back to the days of the Tsars, full of allegations about pogroms and Cossacks arriving in the night, stories that rival many of the holocaust fabrications in terms of their lack of credibility.

Many Jews, particularly younger Jews, are finding it difficult to support apartheid Israel and the constant wars being initiated and fought for no particularly credible reason by both Democratic and Republican parties when in power, which is a good thing. But Jewish power in Washington and across the US is difficult to ignore and it is precisely those Jewish groups and individuals who have been empowered through their wealth and connections who have been the most vocal leading warmongers when it has come to the Middle East and to Russia.

Interestingly, however, some pushback is developing. The Jewish peace group Tikkun has recently published a devastating article by Jeffrey Sachs on the Jews who have been agitating for war. It is entitled “Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster” and describes how “The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement. The Biden Administration is packed with the same neocons who championed the US wars of choice in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and who did so much to provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The neocon track record is one of unmitigated disaster, yet Biden has staffed his team with neocons. As a result, Biden is steering Ukraine, the US, and the European Union towards yet another geopolitical debacle…”

Tikkun explains how “The neocon movement emerged in the 1970s around a group of public intellectuals, several of whom were influenced by University of Chicago political scientist Leo Strauss and Yale University classicist Donald Kagan. Neocon leaders included Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan (son of Donald), Frederick Kagan (son of Donald), Victoria Nuland (wife of Robert), Elliott Abrams, and Kimberley Allen Kagan (wife of Frederick).” It might be added that Kimberley Kagan heads the Institute for the Study of War, which is often cited in media coverage and even in Congress to explain why we must fight Russia.

It has long been recognized by many that a particular antipathy directed against Russia permeates the so-called neoconservative world view. The neocons are hugely overrepresented at the top levels of government and, as noted above, a number of them are running the State Department while also holding high level positions elsewhere in the Biden Administration as well as in the foreign policy think tanks, including Richard Haass at the influential Council on Foreign Relations. Likewise, the intensely Russophobic US and Western media, foundations and social networking sites are disproportionately Jewish in their ownership and staffing.

And beyond that, Ukraine is to a certain extent a very Jewish-identified place. The Jewish media in the US and elsewhere has been showering Zelensky with praise, referring to him as a genuine “Jewish hero,” a modern Maccabee resisting oppression, a David versus Goliath. T-shirts bearing his image are being sold that read “Resisting tyrants since Pharaoh” while the largely Orthodox Jewish community in New York City has already been raising millions of dollars for Ukrainian aid.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that a “2020 demographic survey estimated that besides a ‘core’ population of 43,000 Jews, around 200,000 Ukrainians are technically eligible for Israeli citizenship, meaning that they have identifiable Jewish ancestry. The European Jewish Congress says that number could be as high as 400,000.” If that is true, it is one of the largest Jewish communities in the world and it includes at least 8,000 Israelis, many of whom have returned to Israel.

As US-Russian negotiations leading up the current fighting were clearly designed to fail by the Biden Administration, one therefore has to wonder if this war against Russia is largely a product of a long enduring ethno-religious hatred coupled with a belief in the necessity for a strong American military applied as needed to dominate the world and thereby protect Israel. The neocons are most visible, but equally toxic are the Jews who would prefer to describe themselves as neoliberals or liberal interventionists, that is liberals who promote a strong, assertive American leadership role to support the basically phony catchwords “democracy” and “freedom.” Both neocons and neoliberals inevitably support the same policies so they have both ends of the political spectrum covered, particularly concerning the Middle East and against Russia. They currently dominate the foreign policy thinking of both major political parties as well as exercising control over media and entertainment industry coverage of the issues that concern them, largely leaving the American public with only their viewpoint to consider.

There is plenty of other evidence that prominent Jews both inside and outside the Administration have been stirring things up against Russia with considerable success as President Biden has now declared insanely that his Administration is engaged in “a great battle for freedom. A battle between democracy and autocracy. Between liberty and repression.” He has confirmed that the US is in Ukraine’s war against Russia until we “win.” How else does one explain the ridiculous trip by Attorney General Merrick Garland to Kiev in late June to help set up a war crimes investigation directed against Russia?

As Garland is supposed to be the US Attorney General, it might first be useful to investigate crimes relating to the United States. He might start with American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan or Israeli war crimes using Washington provided weapons in Lebanon and Syria, not to mention the human rights violations using those same weapons that occur on a daily basis directed against the Palestinians. Some conservatives are also wondering why the Attorney General spends his time pursuing “white supremacists” and has failed to investigate the rioting, looting and killing that rocked the nation in the BLM Summer of 2020.

Nevertheless, an undeterred and fearless Garland announced while in Kiev that Eli Rosenbaum, Jewish of course, and a 36-year veteran of the Justice Department who previously served as the director of the Office of Special Investigations, which was primarily responsible for identifying, denaturalizing and deporting Nazi war criminals, will lead a War Crimes Accountability team made up of DOJ experts in investigating Russian human-rights abuses. After the obligatory photo op sucking up to Zelensky, the diminutive but steely eyed Attorney General declared that “There is no hiding place for war criminals. The US Justice Department will pursue every avenue of accountability for those who commit war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine. Working alongside our domestic and international partners, the Justice Department will be relentless in our efforts to hold accountable every person complicit in the commission of war crimes, torture and other grave violations during the unprovoked conflict in Ukraine.” And if any further evidence is required to demonstrate the Jewishness of that week in Kiev, actor Ben Stiller, also a Jew, visited Zelensky and gave him a big hug.

If Eli Rosenbaum is still seriously interested in finding Nazis he will find many more of them in Ukraine than within the Russian Army. So, one has to ask “Whose war is it and who is making it happen?” Can you please explain Joe Biden? Or, given your perpetual blank look, should I ask Merrick Garland or Tony Blinken or maybe even Victoria Nuland?

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 councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

July 12, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia claims it destroyed US-made Harpoon launchers in Ukraine

Samizdat | July 12, 2022

The Russian military says it has destroyed more US-made weapons in Ukraine. Several Harpoon anti-ship missile units were targeted by a ground-launched Iskander missile strike in Odessa Region, the defense ministry claimed on Tuesday during a daily briefing.

The report identified the location as being near the village of Berezan, some 20km northwest of the port city of Odessa. It offered no further details about the strike.

Last week, Russia claimed it destroyed two Harpoon missile systems near the village of Liman in the same region with a sea-launched missile strike.

The Harpoon is an anti-ship missile system made by Boeing. Several Western nations have supplied them to Ukraine. Officials in Kiev claimed that the weapon was a game-changer for the balance of military power in the Black Sea.

Some credited the threat posed by Western weapons, including the Harpoon, for Russia’s decision to withdraw from Snake Island two weeks ago. Moscow said it was a goodwill gesture meant to counter Ukrainian allegations that Russia was blocking grain exports from the country.

July 12, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

Ukraine frees warlord sentenced for torture

Samizdat | July 12, 2022

Ruslan Onishchenko, former commander of the notorious Ukrainian Tornado battalion, whose fighters were convicted of torturing people in Donbass, has reportedly been released from jail and may join the fight against Russia.

Ukraine began selectively releasing inmates who want to serve on the frontline shortly after Moscow attacked the neighboring state in late February.

The now-disbanded Tornado unit was formed in 2014 to fight for Kiev during the conflict in Donbass. Despite the unit’s designation as a volunteer police battalion, former felons were allowed to become members. Onishchenko had three prior convictions before joining the unit.

In 2017, a Kiev court sentenced Onishchenko to 11 years in prison for kidnapping and torture. Several of his fellow fighters also received jail sentences for kidnapping, torture, rape, and looting.

On Monday, Roksolana Khmara, the wife of former MP Stepan Khmara, wrote on Facebook that Onishchenko was released under the guarantees of her and her husband.

Khmara posted a photo of Onishchenko in a Kiev courtroom, while claiming his sentence had been politically motivated.

Newspaper ‘KP v Ukraine’ said that Onishchenko had asked to be allowed to join the fight against Russia.

According to the paper, Onishchenko’s original sentence had been commuted in accordance with a 2015 law that says one day spent in pre-trial detention counts as two days in jail. However, the former commander remained behind bars while awaiting trial for a 2018 prison riot.

“Nearly all of the battalion’s members are now back on the frontline, fighting in various units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Viktor Pandzhakidze, the ex-spokesman for Tornado, told the paper.

July 12, 2022 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

US plans to build diplomatic compound on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem: Rights group

MEMO | July 12, 2022

The US is planning to build a diplomatic complex on private property confiscated from Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, a rights organisation said Sunday, Anadolu News Agency reports.

In a statement, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah) said they have found new evidence that the land on which the diplomatic compound is to be built under a joint US-Israeli plan is located on private property taken from Palestinians.

“The land on which the US Diplomatic Compound is to be built is registered in the name of the State of Israel, but it was confiscated illegally from Palestinian refugees and internally displaced Palestinians using the 1950 Israeli Absentees’ Property Law,” it noted.

Recalling an upcoming visit by US President Joe Biden to Israel, Adalah said the descendants of the original owners of the property, including US citizens and Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, demand the “immediate cancellation of the plan”.

“If built, the US embassy compound will be located on land that was seized from Palestinians in violation of international law,” the statement added.

Biden is scheduled to arrive in Israel on 13 July, as part of a tour that will also include the West Bank city of Ramallah and Saudi Arabia.

July 12, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Are angry Dutch farmers spearheading an uprising against the elites?

By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | July 12, 2022

Ignored in the media feeding frenzy over Johnson’s resignation were no less than 30,000 Dutch farmers who last week rose up in protest against new nitrogen emission limits set by their government and who are fast bringing their country to a halt. You would think it would be a lead new story, but no.

Only yesterday did any British mainstream newspaper pay attention to this huge story. The Independent took time out to tell its readers that ‘Anger simmers for Dutch farmers who oppose pollution cuts’.

That is not however how social and alternative news media outlets have been reporting this drama. The Dutch government’s new edict will require farmers to so radically to curb their nitrogen emissions, by up to 70 per cent in the next eight years, that it will mean a massive reduction in the number of livestock they can maintain resulting in the loss of their livelihoods and, some say, a State take-over of their farms. It’s for this reason they have been blocking supermarkets, distribution centres and roads, a protest to which, shamefully, the police have responded with brutality, opening fire on tractor-riding farmers and arresting others.

Maybe large farming companies could, at least hypothetically, meet these (climate) goals but for smaller farms, often family-owned over several generations, these new environmental regulations are so extreme they’ll be forced out of business.

That’s why farmers are blockading roads and refusing to deliver their products to supermarket chains, and why the Netherlands is starting to suffer serious shortages of eggs and milk. The global impact is not without significance either. Just as so many people remained unaware until recently how dependent the world is on Ukraine for wheat and fertiliser, enlightenment is yet to dawn about global food dependency on the Netherlands.

In a rare (mainstream) article on the subject last week in Newsweek, Ralph Schoellhammer, an Austrian assistant professor of economics, explains that the Netherlands is the world’s second largest agricultural exporter after the United States, a country of barely 17million inhabitants, a food superpower. Given global food shortages and rising prices, the role of Dutch farmers in the global food chain, he writes, has never been more important: ‘But if you thought the Dutch government was going to take that into account and ensure that people can put food on the table, you would be wrong; when offered the choice between food security and acting against “climate change,” the Dutch government decided to pursue the latter.’

It appears to be an extraordinary own goal, given post Lockdown supply chain problems and the impact of the Ukraine war, but such is the zealotry of these political climate ideologues that they are prepared to attack their own people, just as Pierre Trudeau did with the Truckers. Like Mao, they seem to have little regard for the cost in human lives and suffering in order to achieve their revolutionary goals. And a revolution it is, driven by global elites who can afford high food and energy prices.

Schoellhammer believes that ‘there is a growing resistance by the middle and lower classes against . . . the “luxury beliefs” of the elites, as everyday folks realise the harm it causes them and their communities’. Let’s hope there is.

Rebel News reporter Lincoln Jay, embedded with the farmers since last week, reporting back to Laura Ingraham of Fox News last Friday said ‘the farmers genuinely believe that this is going to destroy their livelihoods’. He believes ‘these new environmental policies are going to make it practically impossible for the younger generation here in the Netherlands to get into farming’.

You can watch the interview here.

In a more recent Rebel News report with Lewis Brackpool he says that the Dutch farmers are not backing down against ‘the authoritarian climate agenda of Prime Minister Mark Rutte’ who they describe as a World Economic Forum insider; and that the farmers’ rebellion is now countrywide, and has brought parts of it to a halt. In the northern town of Drachten, not far from the German border, they watched waves of farm tractors form a convoy along the A7 highway. In Leeuwarden, tractors blockaded government buildings, and farmers tried to confront provincial government officials.

Elsewhere it’s been alleged that that the Dutch minister who pushed the nitrogen law that grants the government the power to expropriate the farmers’ land has a brother whose online supermarket is one in which Bill Gates invested $600million. The Epoch Times reported yesterday that the Dutch Government’s strategy is even more invidious; that the plan is to take the farmers’ land and convert it into housing.

Rutte of course is not the only example of a government’ leveraging ‘climate change concern’ against specific segments of the economy and working people at a time when it will inflict maximum damage. The Western Canadian Wheat Growers have warned that Trudeau’s proposed fertiliser emissions reduction will devastate Canadian prairie farmers, with serious implications for the country’s food security. These also are the heartlands of conservatism in Canada that are targeted.

Whether the Dutch farmers will be the spearhead of what Schoellhammer predicts will be a ‘popular uprising of working-class people against the elites and their values that started with the Canadian Truckers and is crossing the globe’, only time will tell. He says the sympathies of the Dutch are not with their government; they are solidly with their farmers that polls indicate that the Farmers Political Party, formed just three years ago in response to the new regulations, would gain 11 seats in Parliament if elections were held today (it currently holds just one seat out of 150).

The real worry he notes is that the ‘elites are behaving much as they did in Canada and the US, and not just those in government. He points to mainstream media outlets refusing to even report the protests, or when they do, ‘casting the farmers as extremists’; acting as in effect as government mouthpiece.

That, so far, is the problem here too. At the time of writing the main print and broadcast media outlets are still ignoring the Dutch farmers protest – with the honourable exception of guess who but Mark Steyn on GB News.

You can read the full Newsweek article here. 

July 12, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Solidarity and Activism | , | Leave a comment

The (almost) unbelievable story of an Israeli killer – and the lies that are protecting him

By Kathryn Shihadah | Israel-Palestine News | July 10, 2022

After Ali Harb’s gruesome death last month, the chronicle of events that followed was unsurprising to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, but mind-boggling to most of the rest of the world.

Eyewitnesses to the incident on June 21 describe what began as a fairly routine episode: Israeli settlers (illegal under international law), spurred on by radical ideology, often show up on Palestinian private property to harass or provoke the indigenous Palestinians. Sometimes the settlers come with the intention to pitch a tent – creating an illegal “outpost” which can be the first step in annexing a piece of property.

These incidents sometimes play out with the Palestinians hiding in their homes for safety; at other times, they confront the settlers and tell them to go away. Often, Israeli soldiers accompany the settlers, protect them, and arrest (or shoot at) the Palestinians who refuse to give in.

In this case, a crowd of about 15 settlers – with Israeli soldiers watching – began constructing an outpost on the Harb family land. “When we tried to prevent them,” explained Harb’s cousin Naim, “one of the settlers took a knife and stabbed Ali in the chest.”

Another relative, Zaid, added, “The police and army were just a few meters away from us, but they did not do a thing to the stabber.”

Eyewitnesses maintain that the Palestinians’ actions before the stabbing had been nonviolent.

As Ali Harb lay bleeding on the ground, “the military pointed their weapons at us and fired in the air,” according to another relative, Firas.

Eventually, bystanders were permitted to move Ali. Firas explained, “We carried him for a distance of approximately two kilometers [about 1 ¼ miles)…while he bled, until we got to the ambulance.” Ali was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Family of Ali Harb mourn his death after a settler stabbed him in the heart. (ajplus/Twitter)

Official Israeli version

The official Israeli version of the incident differs, as is often the case.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military claims that a “violent confrontation” between settlers and Palestinians had already taken place when the soldiers arrived – the account emphasized that the confrontation had taken place before they arrived.

Soldiers allegedly noted a wounded Palestinian, and offered to put him in a military ambulance and take him to a hospital so he could get “the necessary medical treatment.” The official narrative asserts that the Palestinians refused.

Aftermath

A few days later, Israeli soldiers arrested members of the Harb family in a 2 am raid that included stun grenades.

One of those arrested described the interrogation: “They concentrated on the fact that we had said the army and police were present when the incident occurred – they tried to tell us they weren’t there when it happened…That was all they asked about.”

He added, “I maintained my testimony that the settler stabbed Ali in front of the soldiers, just as I had said in my declaration to the Israeli police just after the killing happened.”

Israeli intelligence arrested a 44-year-old Israeli settler; hundreds of Israelis, among them far-right members of the parliament, protested the arrest, demanding the killer be set free.

“Self-defense”

In fact, on Tuesday, July 5th, the settler who killed Ali Harb was released to house arrest.

The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports: “Police are now regarding the case as one of reckless homicide… rather than a more serious charge of murder.” If convicted, the maximum sentence would be 12 years. (Reckless homicide is a form of involuntary manslaughter.)

The settler, who was trespassing on private Palestinian property and being asked to leave, has claimed that the stabbing was in “self-defense,”

Shin Bet investigators do not regard the incident as “deliberate” or “terrorism.”

Outpost violence

While all of Israel’s settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal under international law, outposts are not even officially recognized by Israel; nevertheless outposts receive funding and military support from the state.

The violence used to intimidate and ultimately ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the land has been practiced since the founding of Israel, and even before – and generally goes unacknowledged and unpunished by the state.

Palestinian activist Ghassan Daghlas explains,

The Israeli government has given the settlers a green light to take over any land they can take by force.

In the Salfit region alone [where Ali Harb was killed], there are 24 settlements and settler outposts, and they are among the most violent settlers in the West Bank.

Palestinians in the region have no protection, and they have to come out to protect their lands, risking their safety and lives.

Settlers come out to establish new outposts on Palestinian land because they know that they have the army and the government’s protection, and that’s why they attack Palestinian farmers and villagers as well.

Palestinian leaders stress that killing of Ali Harb is yet another outcome of Israeli impunity – including Israeli settlers – in the international community.

Of the 650,000 Israeli settlers living on Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, not all seek to expand further, as did those who were involved in the killing of Ali Harb. The Israeli government encourages Israelis to settle, and offers incentives to get them to move to the occupied territories. Their presence impacts Palestinian lives in the form of the government appropriating land for the settlements, Jewish-only roads to the settlements, and space for expansion – all carved out of Palestinian property without Palestinian consent.

The ideological settlers go beyond this disruption and squat on additional Palestinian property besides what they already have. Both types of settlers are in breach of international law.

July 11, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

17 killed, injured in Saudi attack on Yemen’s Sa’ada Province

Press TV – July 11, 2022

The Saudi-led coalition has once again broken the terms of a United Nations-mediated truce, killing and injuring as many as 17 people in a cross-border attack on the impoverished country.

The casualties were caused on Sunday after Saudi forces opened fire on a border area in Yemen’s Sa’ada Province, which lies to Yemen’s extreme northwest, a security source told Yemen’s official Saba Net news agency.

Most of the wounded, who have been transferred to a hospital in the city of Razih in the western part of the province, are in a life-threatening condition, the source said.

Elsewhere in the province, the coalition targeted the Shada’a District, killing one person and injuring seven others.

Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistical support from the United States and other Western states.

The objective was to reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and crush Yemen’s Ansarullah popular resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen.

While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to meet any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The UN-brokered truce between the coalition and Ansarullah, which came into effect in April, was extended for another two months on June 2.

As part of the ceasefire, commercial flights have resumed from Sana’a International Airport to Amman and Cairo, while oil tankers have been able to dock at the port city of al-Hudaydah.

The elusive truce has provided a rare let-up in the Saudi-led coalition’s attacks on the Arab country, even though the coalition has been accused of a series of ceasefire violations.

Also on Sunday, the Yemeni National Salvation Government’s health ministry said a total of 31 people had been killed and 356 others injured as a result of the invaders’ violations of the make-or-break ceasefire.

July 11, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

We’re “losing the fight against monkeypox”… apparently

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | July 11, 2022

According to the New York Times the US is currently “losing the fight with Monkeypox”. That’s probably news to you.

After all, given the fact the US has around 700 cases of Monkeypox (around 0.0002% of the population), that the entire world only 8000 “cases” (about 0.0001%), and that there have been just 3 reported deaths… well, you’d be forgiven for not realising there was a fight at all, let alone that we were losing.

It’s really more of a kerfuffle. At worst. Perhaps a fracas.

That is – of course – assuming there is any monkeypox “outbreak” at all, something we should never take on faith, especially in the post-Covid world.

Nevertheless, the NYT is sure…

There probably will be many more infections before the outbreak can be controlled, if at this point it can be controlled at all.

The US isn’t the only place getting a fresh batch of monkeypox fear porn this week.

Five days ago it was reported that Australia had recorded its first “case”, with the under-stated headline…

KILLER VIRUS SUDDENLY SPREADS IN AUSTRALIA

… clearly this went too far, even for the mainstream media, who quietly reworded the title a few hours later.

Not to be outdone, two days later New Zealand announced their first monkeypox case was isolating at home.

And just 15 minutes ago, at the time of writing, The Guardian published a news story headlined:

Efforts to curb UK monkeypox outbreak inadequate, warn experts

So, what is the cause of mankind’s imminent loss to the monkeypox peril? Well they really couldn’t be clearer about that – we’re not testing enough.

The NYT goes on about this at length:

the response in the United States has been sluggish and timid, reminiscent of the early days of the Covid pandemic, experts say, raising troubling questions about the nation’s preparedness for pandemic threats.

[…] The first cases of monkeypox were reported in May, but tests will not be readily available until sometime this month.

[…] The first missteps in the U.S. response to monkeypox were in testing. As in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, samples from monkeypox patients are being funneled to the CDC for final diagnosis, a process that can take days.

Slate agrees, headlining “We Need to Keep Better Track of Monkeypox” and quoting on “expert”:

Testing is the key piece in getting answers to these questions, and currently we simply are not doing enough of it.”

We’ve seen this movie before, we know how it goes from here.

Since, as the NYT points out, Monkeypox tests will be “readily available sometime this month”, we can expect a BIG spike in cases coming up.

Far from being recognised for what it is – a huge number of false positives caused by PCR tests – this increase in cases will be sold as the “true size of the outbreak” after weeks of calling current “case” numbers “likely underestimates”.

The solution, we know, will be “increasing vaccine coverage” or “helping immunize the most vulnerable” or some buzz phrase like that.

But oh no! We don’t have enough vaccines!

At least, according the New York Times, and LA Times, and CBS, and Science and New York Magazine and NPR and NBC and the New York Post and…

… it’s the prevalent message, is what I’m trying to say.

Don’t worry though, a VERY familiar hero is about to ride over the horizon on a white horse:

Moderna is investigating potential monkeypox vaccines at a preclinical level, using its mRNA platform,”

Yes, Moderna started working on a new mRNA monkeypox vaccine back in May… so by Covid rules they’re probably nearly done by now.

Just inject in precisely one person, and if they don’t die instantly on the spot then it’s safe.

… and if they DO then they were already sick and the trial data is compromised and monkeypox is such an emergency we should grant it approval anyway. You can read the trial data in 2097.

We know how this works.

Tests to create the “problem”, vaccines to “solve” the “problem”. Both of them result in vast amounts of public money disappearing into bottomless private pockets.

There’s a lot of fog around monkeypox – we don’t know, in a lot of ways, where it’s going or what it’s even for. The narrative is only half-formed. First growing, then shrinking, then growing again.

It had a name change that never really materialised, and the decision to focus it on sexual transmission – especially among “men who have sex with men” (I don’t know why they ALL use that phrase and not “gay men”) – is one I just can’t puzzle out yet.

But while it’s yet to take definitively pick a size, direction or speed, it’s taking a very familiar shape: Tests and vaccines.

It’s always tests and vaccines.

July 11, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Top climate scientists slam global warming “so-called evidence” as “misrepresentation, exaggeration & outright lying”

By Chris Morrison | The Daily Sceptic | July 11, 2022

Two top-level American atmospheric scientists have dismissed the peer review system of current climate science literature as “a joke”. According to Emeritus Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen, “it is pal review, not peer review”. The two men have had long distinguished careers in physics and atmospheric science. “Climate science is awash with manipulated data, which provides no reliable scientific evidence,” they state.

No reliable scientific evidence can be provided either by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), they say, which is “government-controlled and only issues government dictated findings”. The two academics draw attention to an IPCC rule that states all summaries for policymakers are approved by governments. In their opinion, these summaries are “merely government opinions”. They refer to the recent comments on climate models by the atmospheric science professor John Christy from the University of Alabama, who says that, in his view, recent climate model predictions “fail miserably to predict reality”, making them “inappropriate” to use in predicting future climate changes.

The ’miserable failure’ is graphically displayed below. Since the observations cut-off, global temperatures have again paused.

Particular scorn is poured on global surface temperature datasets. Happer and Lindzen draw attention to a 2017 paper by Dr. James Wallace and others that elaborated on how over the last several decades, “NASA and NOAA have been fabricating temperature data to argue that rising CO2 levels have led to the hottest year on record”. The false and manipulated data are said to be an “egregious violation of scientific method”. The Wallace authors also looked at the Met Office HadCRUT database and found all three surface datasets made large historical adjustments and removed cyclical temperature patterns. This was “totally inconsistent” with other temperature data, including satellites and meteorological balloons, they said. Readers will recall that the Daily Sceptic has reported extensively on these issues of late and has attracted a number of somewhat footling ‘fact checks’.

Happer and Lindzen summarise: “Misrepresentation, exaggeration, cherry picking or outright lying pretty much covers all the so-called evidence marshalled in support of the theory of imminent catastrophic global warming caused by fossil fuels and CO2.”

Professors Happer and Lindzen’s comments are included in a submission to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which is seeking to impose massive and onerous ‘climate change’ reporting requirements on public companies. But they form part of a wider scientific revolt by many scientists alarmed at the corruption of science to promote the command-and-control Net Zero agenda. Needless to say, these debates are largely ignored by mainstream media. Opponents of Net Zero politicised science are denounced as ‘cranks’ and ‘deniers’, labels at odds with their distinguished scientific achievements. Between them, Happer from Princeton and Lindzen from MIT have around 100 years of involvement in atmospheric science. Richard Lindzen was an early lead author for the IPCC, while William Happer was responsible for a groundbreaking invention that corrected the degrading effects of atmospheric turbulence on imaging resolution.

In their submission, Happer and Lindzen supply a basic lesson in science: “Reliable scientific theories come from validating theoretical predictions with observations, not consensus, peer review, government opinions or manipulated data”.

In the U.K., it will be interesting to see if Net Zero will feature as a major issue in the battle to find a new Prime Minister. At the moment, candidates seem to be steering a widish berth – something that can happen with virtuous green policies when actual votes are at stake. Happer and Lindzen state firmly that “science demonstrates there is no climate-related risk caused by fossil fuels and CO2, and therefore no reliable scientific evidence supporting the proposed rule”. The rule in this case refers to the SEC climate requirement, but it could equally apply to Net Zero. Many people now accept that a rigid Net Zero policy will lead to massive falls in living standards that will disproportionately affect the poorer in society, both in the U.K. and particularly in the developing world. Contrary to the incessant attack on fossil fuels, write Happer and Lindzen, “affordable, abundant fossil fuels have given ordinary people the sort of freedom, prosperity and health that were reserved for kings in ages past”.

Such prosperity, of course, has left the building in the case of Sri Lanka, where the prospect of famine and civil breakdown face 22 million people following (among other things) the decision of the Government to ban fertiliser in the interests of climate change and saving the planet. Such a collapse, with the President hastily fleeing the country, is likely to face any modern Net Zero society that seeks to tamper with reliable and affordable energy supply, restrict diet and try to grow enough food using ‘organic’ methods. Happer and Lindzen state that reducing CO2 and the use of fossil fuels would have “disastrous consequences” for the poor, people worldwide and future generations.

Both Happer and Lindzen have long held out against the current demonisation of atmospheric CO2, pointing out that the current 415 parts per million (ppm) is near a record low and not dangerously high. They note that 600 million years of CO2 and temperature data “contradict the theory that high levels of CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming”. Omitting unfavourable data is an egregious violation of scientific method. Facts omitted by those who argue there is a climate emergency include that CO2 levels were over 1,000 ppm for hundreds of millions of years and have been as high as over 7,000 ppm; CO2  has been declining for 180 million years from about 2,800 ppm to today’s low; and today’s low is not far above the minimum level when plants die of CO2 starvation, leading to all other life forms perishing for lack of food.

Finally, the authors note that the logarithmic influence of CO2 means its contribution to global warming is “heavily saturated”. The scientists calculate that a doubling of current CO2 levels would only reduce the heat escaping to space by about 1.1%. This suggests warming of around 1°C or less. The saturation hypothesis explains, they say, the disconnect between CO2  and temperature observed over 600 million years.

July 11, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

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