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5 Warning Signs You May Be a Party to the Ukrainian Conflict

Samizdat – 09.11.2022

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated last month that the alliance “is not [a] party to the conflict” in Ukraine, echoing similar claims made by US and European leaders in recent months. But can one ever be sure about their involvement in a security crisis threatening to escalate into a global inferno? Here are a few warning signs.

The “NATO is not a party” in Ukraine talking point has been repeated ad nauseam over the past eight months, with Moscow catching the military bloc tripping up in its own lies last month after Mr. Stoltenberg warned that a Russian victory in Ukraine would constitute a “defeat” for NATO that would “make the world more dangerous.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the NATO chief’s comments were direct confirmation of the Western military bloc’s involvement in the crisis.

$100 Billion Worth of ‘Non-Involvement’

According to this handy Ukraine aid funding tracker, Washington and its allies have already poured more than $100 billion worth of military and economic support to Kiev since February, with the Kiel Institute of World Economy’s “Ukraine Support Tracker” estimating that some $27.5 billion of that constitutes US military aid alone. The UK, Poland, Germany, Canada, and other NATO allies have contributed more than $9 billion in additional weapons assistance.

What’s Ukraine getting for this? The list is quite comprehensive, and includes stuff you’d expect in a Cold War-style proxy conflict, from Stinger and Javelin missiles and precision rocket artillery to troop transporters, drones, radars, night vision, helmets, and body armor. There’s also some unusual “assistance,” like a CIA slush fund (size unknown), $900 million for non-profits, and even $54 million in COVID aid (after all, gotta keep troops safe from the virus as bombs and bullets literally rain down all around them).

Intelligence, Fire Support, and Planning Assistance

NATO’s “non-involvement” isn’t limited to weapons and cash. According to the US Congressional Research Service, Washington has gifted Kiev a broad range of “security assistance” going back to the 2014 Euromaidan coup, including intelligence support, “electronic warfare detection and secure communications,” and “satellite imagery and analysis capability.” This includes a continuous stream of access to images obtained by commercial satellites for use by Ukrainian military planners.

What does the latter mean in practice? Put simply, it gives the Ukrainian Armed Forces access to the Western bloc’s spy satellites – which are the most advanced in the world thanks to bottomless funding and three decades of US and NATO wars of aggression across the Middle East, Yugoslavia, Asia, and North Africa.

In September, French media reported that the Pentagon has even been directly involved in planning Ukrainian military operations, complementing Sputnik’s reporting from the summer revealing that Ukraine’s HIMARS were being manned by outstaffed NATO military personnel. How’s that for “non-involvement”?

Boots on the Ground, Boots in the Ground?

Late last month, the Pentagon confirmed that “small teams” of US military personnel have been dispatched to Ukraine, ostensibly to inspect weapons deliveries to ensure that Western military aid is going where it needs to after a series of reports that much of the military aid was being smuggled out of the warzone by arms dealers.

The story has gone heavily underreported, drowned out by the US midterms and celebrity gossip. However, a few outlets have sounded the alarm about this development, pointing out that the repercussions of US troops potentially getting injured or killed in a Russian military strike on a Ukrainian arms cache have not been sufficiently mapped out.

Diplomatic Doldrums

NATO’s fingerprints are all over Ukraine even on the diplomatic front. This week, Volodymyr Zelensky expressed openness to “genuine peace talks” with Russia, walking back a decree signed just last month ruling out any negotiations with President Vladimir Putin altogether.

US security officials were quick to take credit for the Ukrainian president’s apparent change of heart, telling media that it was made possible “due to soft nudging by the Biden administration.” One security official explained that Zelensky’s new stance came following a visit to Kiev by Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who reportedly “relayed” to Kiev that Washington considers it essential for Ukraine to show willingness to put an end to the crisis in a “reasonable” and “peaceful” manner.

Washington’s direct influence on Kiev has not escaped the eyes of Russian officials, who have spent the past eight-and-a-half years blasting the US, the EU, and NATO for starting the Ukrainian crisis in the first place. On Wednesday, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov reiterated in an interview with Sputnik that “the decision-making center” determining Ukraine’s fate is not even located in Kiev.

“Everyone could see this in March, when one cry from Washington was enough for the Zelensky regime to nullify the agreements reached during intensive contacts” between Kiev and Moscow, Antonov said, recalling the reports that now-former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was speedily dispatched to Kiev at Washington’s behest to sabotage Russian-Ukrainian peace talks.

‘iStand With Ukraine’

All this costly and exhausting non-involvement by NATO in the Ukraine crisis has been accompanied by wartime footing against Russia not just by Western governments and militaries, but by corporations as well. Since February, over 1,000 companies have cut, partially curtailed, or dramatically downsized operations in Russia in a bid to “punish” Moscow and demonstrate that they “Stand With Ukraine.” The campaign has been accompanied by a massive ad campaign targeting Russian IPs informing the hip urban youth and yuppie masses that Putin had robbed them of their beloved symbols of Western consumerism, from Coca-Cola and McDonald’s to iPhones and Mercedes. So far, though, the Russian people seem to have been able to cope with these terrible losses somehow, replacing Coke with Chernogolovka and CoolCola, swapping Mickey D’s for Vkusno I tochka, and ramping up the production of domestic brand vehicles while negotiating the import of more cars from countries like Iran, China, and Turkey.

Exercise in Political Sophistry

NATO’s “non-involvement” rhetoric is little more than an act of political “sophistry,” according to Global Policy Institute senior research fellow George Szamuely.

“According to Stoltenberg, unless you have troops of your own on the ground you are not a combatant. This is the very acme of sophistry. There is nothing in international law to support his contention,” Szamuely said in a recent op-ed.

The observer pointed out that under the Hague Convention Respecting the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers in Cases of War on Land, “a neutral power is not permitted to use its territory for purposes of moving troops or munitions to a combatant.” The analogous convention concerning naval warfare is even more explicit, stating that “the supply in any manner, directly or indirectly, by a neutral power to a belligerent power of ammunition or war material of any kind is forbidden.”

“There’s nothing here to suggest that it’s okay to do so as long as you don’t have forces of your own taking part in armed combat. The NATO powers in fact are doing much more than providing Ukraine with weaponry. They are also providing training on their own and on Ukrainian territory. NATO powers are also involved in targeting decisions,” Szamuely said. “Multiple sources have revealed that the US is directly involved in Ukrainian tactical and operational decisions… NATO’s assertion that it’s not a combatant is as plausible as its claim that it’s a defensive alliance,” the observer emphasized.

November 9, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

England’s Booming Wine Industry has Nothing to Do With Climate Change

The Daily Sceptic | November 7, 2022

In the U.K. one of the ways in which the message of global warming has been subliminally insinuated into the minds of the general public is in the reporting of the huge growth in the number of English vineyards in the last 20 years. Seldom a week goes by without this message appearing in the mainstream media. Worldwide, the meme ranks alongside swimming polar bears, dying barrier reefs and islands sinking beneath the rise in sea levels.

Yet does this have any basis in fact? The answer is no. To see this we need to look at the history of the renaissance in wine growing in England. From the 1960s onwards, vineyards were seemingly owned by an army of amiable retired Colonel Bufton Tuftons who made a range of very pleasant, drinkable wines using German grape varieties. These wines benefited from the cooler English climate to resemble German wines but were more flowery and fresh.

It took the somewhat more hard-headed and business savvy Americans to transform the English wine scene to the booming industry it is now. In 1986, a wealthy U.S. couple, Stuart and Sandy Moss, bought the Nyetimber wine estate in West Sussex, and established a vineyard there two years later. They realised that the Champagne varieties of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier would be ideally suited to the production of sparkling wines in England and so they planted these varieties. This is for two reasons, one being that Champagne is the most northerly region for wine production in France. Secondly, grapes for sparkling wines are picked at a lower level of ripeness than those for still wines, and so require less sunshine and are picked earlier.

It is bizarre that global warming would be proved by a style of wine that can only be grown in a cool climate at the margins of what is warm enough for successful grape growing.

The Mosses were straight away successful in their experiment and won awards for their first harvests in 1992 and 1993.

This led to a huge expansion in the production of wines made from the same grape varieties and with the same methods of production as Champagne. English sparkling wines have subsequently proven in competitions and blind tastings to be at the same level of quality as those of Champagne, if not higher.

Although the total acreage of vines in the U.K. has quadrupled since the 1990s, 75% of the acreage of English vineyards is now Champagne varieties and the acreage of grape varieties for still wine has increased very little. As control of wine production has moved into the hands of more trendy Islington types, the old fresh and flowery still wines have been replaced by still wines which are “fruit driven” with notes of lychees, leather and oak.

It may surprise mainstream media consumers to know that England has always been very well suited to the production of Champagne style wines. In the 1750s they were being produced most successfully. Charles Hamilton planted a vineyard at his landscape garden at Painshill in Surrey and was succesfully producing and selling a sparkling wine from Champagne grapes during the 1750s. The wine was considered by himself and the French ambassador to be superior to any from Champagne. From the records kept, it appears that climate conditions were very similar to today and they faced similar problems, such as occasional cold wet years and too vigorous plant growth.

The vineyard continued for at least 40 years. It has recently been replanted and produces the same sparkling wines of very good quality, and is only 10 miles from Denbies, the largest vineyard in the U.K.

In short, the booming English wine industry has nothing to do with rising temperatures – if, indeed, temperatures are rising. Nearly all the grape varieties being cultivated in England are only suitable for growing in colder, Northern European climates and in some cases have been successfully cultivated in England since the 1750s.

The author of this piece wants to remain anonymous to protect his career as a budding vinter.

November 9, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Belief Of Steady 5300 Year Climate Unravels: Ötzi Got Exposed “Again and Again”

Changing Holocene climate… was never steady

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | November 8, 2022

Researchers say the 5300 year old Ötzi corpse didn’t remain covered by ice 5300 years long, but in fact was exposed again and again!

Lots of experts believe that Ötzi, the corpse found at the Tisenjoch in the Alps in 1991, got uncovered for the first time in 5300 years due to the ice melting – from 20th century manmade global warming.

However, glacial archaeologists from Norway, Austria and Switzerland now believe Ötzi had been exposed “several times in the past 5300 years” and have published their findings in the journal The Holocene. This is reported in an article appearing here in the Swiss online NZZ.

In general, Ötzi researchers are quite sure about what had led to the ancient traveler’s death, but little was ever asked about what happened after he died. It was simply assumed that he stayed covered by ice 5300 years long – until modern manmade global warming caused the ice to melt and expose the body for the first time, allowing it to be discovered in 1991 in a hollow at an altitude of 3210 meters. Freed for the first time by global warming!

But now a team of glacial archaeologists think the body must have slid into the hollow afterwards and did not spend the millennia constantly covered by the ice, “but lay exposed again and again”.

“Ötzi’s body and its equipment are not the pristine time capsule they are portrayed as,” reports the NZZ.

This means the climate cycled between warm and cold phases during these 5000 years and the melting like that of today happened again and again. The climate had not been “more or less constant” like many researchers like to suggest.

The authors of the new study conclude that Ötzi likely died on the snow at a higher elevation, and then afterwards his corpse and equipment slid into the hollow. The ice field formed was “relatively small and thin and therefore probably melted several times”.

“The state of preservation also speaks against Ötzi being a time capsule from the ice. Twenty years ago, examinations of hairline cracks in the skull already showed that the corpse had repeatedly thawed and refrozen, reports the NZZ.

Also: “The part of the fur coat lying under the body was much better preserved than the rest, and on the back of Ötzi’s head – he was lying face down – the skin had disappeared. This also indicates that the body was exposed several times.”

Moreover, if Ötzi had actually been under the ice for 5300 years, nothing younger than the corpse should have been found on the floor of the hollow. But that is not the case, as a large number of much younger articles like plants, animal droppings, feathers and a piece of wood were found there as well, meaning the ice had to have melted again and again.

“Thus, even thousands of years after Ötzi’s death, material landed in the hollow again and again; consequently, it was not permanently covered by ice.”

November 9, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

CIA Officer Frank Snepp Discusses Planting Stories in Vietnam

Witness to War | September 30, 2017

Frank Snepp arrived in Vietnam in 1969 and stayed on until he was evacuated as Saigon fell in 1975.

He spent a good deal of time working with the press while there and developed the ability to plant stories in major media outlets like the New York Times, the New Yorker, the LA Times, Chicago Daily News and others that supported the Agency’s goals.

The younger reporters like the Associated Press’s Peter Arnett wouldn’t take the bait.

After he left the CIA he wrote a book, Decent Interval, that talked about his time in Vietnam. The CIA made his life hell and took a case all the way to the Supreme Court where they won a verdict that required Snepp to turn over all the money the book had made. That was $300,000.

To Snepp, that decision and the Pentagon Papers case, where the Supreme Court decided in some instances the government could impose prior restraint on the media meant the only victory the US could show for its war in Vietnam was undoing the first amendment.

Witness to War

Clete Roberts, correspondent
Ian Masters, Producer, Director
Michael Rose, Producer
Haskell Wexler, Camera (along with others)
Susan Cope, Sound
Eric Vollmer, Coordinator
Anne Vermillion, Coordinator

Vietnam Reconsidered Conference, USC Conference
USC, 1983

Snepp went on to be a journalist working for some of the same outlets he’d once duped into printing fake news. But as a reformed spy he earned a Peabody award and an Emmy for his investigative reports.

November 9, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | 3 Comments

Israel builds fake cemeteries around Al-Aqsa Mosque, says Palestinian committee

MEMO | November 8, 2022

The Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque Committee of the Palestinian Legislative Council accused the Israeli occupation authorities yesterday of constructing fake cemeteries around Al-Aqsa Mosque, Quds Press has reported.

According to the head of the Committee, Ahmad Abu Halabiyeh MP, this was an attempt to forge “evidence” to “prove” a historic Jewish presence in the Palestinian, Arab and Islamic holy city.

“Recently, the Israeli occupation has built hundreds of tombs to prove that the Jewish existence dates back hundreds of years,” explained Abu Halabiyeh. Around 300 fake tombs have been built in Jabal Al-Zaytoun, east of Al-Aqsa Mosque, he said, and 200 others in Wadi Al Hilwa in Silwan, south of the mosque, in addition to hundreds more in different areas across occupied Jerusalem, mainly in the Old City.

The MP pointed out that these tombs were built over the past two years. One area, he said, has even been called the “Jewish Cemetery”.

“This is a clear distortion of history, as well as proof that the Israelis are intruders,” added Abu Halabiyeh. Building tombs without human remains inside, he stressed, reinforces settlement projects and serves the occupation’s interests.

Israeli aggression against and within Al-Aqsa Mosque occurs on a daily basis, he concluded.

November 8, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | 3 Comments

Effects on mother and child that bear out Mike Yeadon’s warnings

By Neville Hodgkinson | TCW Defending Freedom | November 7, 2022

A British scientist with 32 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry warned right at the start of the Covid vaccine rollout that under no circumstances should the gene-based, mRNA jab be given to women of child-bearing age without studies to confirm it was safe.

Dr Mike Yeadon, former vice president for research at Pfizer, one of the manufacturers of the experimental mRNA products, filed a petition with the European Medicines Agency on December, 1, 2020, urging that even testing the jab on human volunteers was unethical without significant safety concerns being taken into account.

One of these was a similarity between virus proteins targeted by the proposed vaccinations and a protein (syncitin) essential for forming the placenta in pregnancy. If antibodies produced by the jab also acted against those proteins, the petition said, ‘it would result in vaccinated women essentially becoming infertile’.

Co-signed by Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, a leading German physician, the document also warned that the vaccine trials were much too short to flag up late adverse effects. It added that the design was such that the trials could not show whether the product worked either in stopping a person from becoming infected, or from infecting others.

Subsequently, Yeadon became one of the first scientists to highlight evidence from a previously confidential Pfizer study showing that the vaccine products do not stay at the injection site but become widely distributed throughout the body, including the ovaries.

In view of the toxic nature of the ‘spike’ protein that the jab manufactures (summarised here), Yeadon warned in August, 2021: ‘My assumption at the moment is that these vaccines are concentrating in the ovaries of every female who has been given them. We don’t know what that will do, but it cannot be benign and it could be seriously harmful.’

It is now widely acknowledged that the jab neither protects against infection nor transmission, as Yeadon and Wodarg spelled out in their petition. If their knowledge had been sought at the outset of the Covid crisis the UK alone could have been spared the £500billion lockdown bill, with enormous associated social damage.

But what about the fertility warnings? Despite his years of experience at the top of his field, Yeadon has been vilified for speaking out. Is he really no more than ‘a hero of Covid conspiracy theorists’, as the Times described him?

Birth rates have fallen significantly in many countries, including the UK, in the wake of the vaccine rollouts. Various reasons for the fall have been suggested – usually excluding the jab.

Yet Dr James Thorp, a 68-year-old American physician who has practised obstetrics for more than 42 years and sees thousands of high-risk pregnant patients each year, has observed many complications attributable to the jabs, including foetal death and miscarriage. ‘What I’ve seen in the last two years is unprecedented,’ he says.

With help from several colleagues, he compared rates of adverse events following the Covid jabs with those reported post-flu vaccination in women of reproductive age. The focus was on events related to pregnancy and menstruation, using data from the US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

preprint of their findings published on September 28 shows a thousand-fold increase in menstrual abnormalities after the Covid jab, and significant increases in miscarriage, foetal malformation, growth abnormalities, cardiac disorders, foetal death and stillbirth.

Thorp has also highlighted risks to newborn babies taking milk from their vaccinated mothers. One study found mRNA from the jab in five out of 11 lactating women who had received the vaccination within six months of their delivery.

Last month, in a wide-ranging review in the US-based Epoch Times of these and other findings, US microbiologist and biomedical scientist Dr Sean Lin revealed that Thorp ‘has seen at least three newborns, completely healthy at the time of their birth, who passed away after being breastfed by their recently vaccinated mothers’. This suggested the vaccine components can not only accumulate in the ovaries but can also be passed on to infants via breastfeeding, he wrote.

He added that details of animal experiments performed before the jabs were authorised, recently obtained under freedom of information legislation, showed that mRNA and spike protein can travel through all barriers in a mother rat to enter its foetus. The rats themselves experienced toxicity during gestation, with some becoming infertile and losing the use of their hind legs.

Calling for an end to all Covid shots for pregnant women until long-term safety data become available, Lin writes: ‘The medical field and health agencies should still adhere to the fundamental ethical principle of ‘Do No Harms’.’

A hospital memo leaked to the Epoch Times by a nurse in Fresno, California, revealed how the hospital is experiencing a dramatic rise in the number of stillbirth cases, now upwards of 22 a month compared with an average of one to two every three months previously.  This massive increase seems to align with similar evidence from across the country showing a potential rise in problems with fertility, miscarriages and foetal development, the newspaper reported.

Could the vaccine have contributed to a ‘very unusual’ spike in deaths among newborn babies now being investigated in Scotland?

In the UK, one and a half million Yellow Card reports of suspected adverse reactions to the vaccines include 821 miscarriages and 58,171 reproductive/breast disorders.

With tens of millions of doses administered, those numbers have still not persuaded regulators that there is a problem, although real-world adverse effects can be at least ten times higher than those reported. ‘Our advice remains that the Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective during pregnancy and breastfeeding,’ the Medicines and Health products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) reaffirmed in September.

A review last month in the journal Vaccine declared that based on studies published so far ‘there is no scientific proof’ of any association between the jabs and impaired fertility in either men or women.

It depends on what is meant by ‘scientific proof’. If scientists do not ask the right questions, they can avoid receiving unwelcome answers. Those who drove the vaccine rollout are choosing not to see the thousands of reported disorders as related to the jabs, despite the record numbers, and clearly demonstrated mechanisms of harm.

It took a mathematician/businessman, for example, to point out evidence of a dose-response relationship between the jabs and infant deaths, with significantly more deaths reported when the higher-dose Moderna jab is used during pregnancy than with the Pfizer product.

Igor Chudov, who highlighted this phenomenon using US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) figures, says the Moderna product is associated with nearly twice as many neonatal deaths as the Pfizer vaccine, and 42 per cent more miscarriages.

In the light of these data, he asks: ‘How can Covid vaccine given during pregnancy be safe, and NOT affect infant deaths?  How come nobody at the CDC asked this question? How come our media is silent on this?’

It is as though there are parallel universes: one occupied by those who can see no harm, and the other by doctors and scientists who insist a grave situation is staring us in the face.

The latter include three American medical whistle-blowers who found a 2021 rise of nearly 300 per cent in miscarriages among women serving in the US Army compared with the previous five years. There was no increase in 2020, when Covid arrived.

Doctors calling for a halt to Covid vaccination for pregnant women often meet abuse and censorship.

In October 2021, obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Christiane Northrup told the Epoch Times: ‘Women are having bleedings. The doctors in our area are doing hysterectomies in young women, like 30-somethings. They said “Oh, it’s not unusual”. Let me tell you, as a board-certified gynaecologist, that’s very unusual. Women’s periods are messed up all over the place . . . I’ve had a huge Facebook group of thousands of women talking about this situation that was removed.’

What of Yeadon’s worry that an immune reaction to the spike protein might block pregnancy?

A small study from Singapore, in 15 women, reported that none had developed anti-syncitin antibodies after the jab, but Yeadon says the actual data showed a clear increase, arbitrarily ruled as insignificant by the researchers.

‘It looked like someone had tried to dismiss our concerns by testing for evidence of the particular problem we’d warned about. Unfortunately, all they did is to reinforce our concerns.

‘We’d envisioned the risk that, in responding to the synthetic piece of virus spike protein, women’s immune systems would also make an immune response to their own placental protein. That’s exactly what was reported in the pre-print paper.

‘Based on this concern alone, all these experimental products as a class should have been completely contraindicated in women younger than menopause.’

He insists that a series of toxicology issues meant ‘adverse impacts on conception and ability to sustain a pregnancy were foreseeable from the start . . . There was and still is no data package supporting safety in pregnancy, or prior to conception.’

November 8, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

How Nonsense Masquerades As Science: Climate “Code Red” Example

BY WILLIAM M. BRIGGS | OCTOBER 31, 2022

One of the reasons for broken science is nonsense being passed off as science. Today’s example, and a prominent example, too, comes from the peer-reviewed journal BioScience. From the paper “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” by William Ripple and others.

Now the word emergency isn’t undefined or unfamiliar: we know the difference between an emergency and a matter of concern, or even a problem. Further, we know the word so well that we know the weather we experience is not any kind of emergency, even if it might, possibly, someday, perhaps, who knows, maybe be a problem. Which it now is not; a problem, that is, let alone emergency. The weather is not acting in any extraordinary way.

Even though we know the word, it doesn’t have a scientific meaning. Emergency, as a word, has no place in scientific discourse. And neither does code red, a term used in the article’s opening sentences: “We are now at ‘code red’ on planet Earth. Humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency.”

What—what precisely—is a code red? Is it different from a code orange or code puce? What—what precisely—differentiates code red from code indigo? How many codes are there, and how do we measure or categorize without ambiguity their characteristics?

Obviously, we cannot answer any of those questions; they aren’t even meant to be asked. Which means the term is not part of science. It is instead hyperbolic, and editorial. It is scientific nonsense.

The paper, therefore, is off to a bad start. It has already signaled it is a work of politics and not science. Yet even though the work cannot function at all well as science, it might have value politically. Let’s see the very next sentences:

The scale of untold human suffering, already immense, is rapidly growing with the escalating number of climate-related disasters. Therefore, we urge scientists, citizens, and world leaders to read this Special Report and quickly take the necessary actions to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

The scale of human suffering due to poor or inclement weather is not “already immense”. The suffering is not “rapidly growing”, either. This we know from the work of men like Bjorn Lomberg. One citation will do, though there are many:

Lomberg is careful to make that graph scientific (links here), by defining just what he means by “climate deaths”. Naturally, the definition can be disputed, or changed, and the numbers would change, too. It is true, also, that measuring these things is subject to at least substantial uncertainty, so that the blue line should have something like a plus or minus around it.

Those are scientific criticisms because they speak to the measurements and the certainty we have in them. But, given this picture, and the work of others, it is clear that something like that picture is true; I mean the decrease in deaths. And that, therefore, Ripple’s “rapidly growing” is false.

Which doesn’t make his statement valueless. Since we are dealing, as we have learned, with a political paper, and not a scientific one, and in politics anything goes, Ripple will likely get away with his falsehood.

Which is why he goes from the political strength of “rapidly growing” to (in the next paragraph) “The consequences of global heating are becoming increasingly extreme, and outcomes such as global societal collapse are plausible and dangerously underexplored”.

Global societal collapse! I suppose we could criticize that term, too, since it, being undefined, means only what horrors are held in the mind of individual readers, but we see where we are now.

It’s not that this paper doesn’t have aspects that look like science. It does. For instance, there’s a table which claims “April 2022: Climate change likely contributed to extreme rainfall in Eastern South Africa, which triggered flooding and landslides that killed at least 435 people and affected more than 40,000 people.”

What makes this advocacy and not science is that Ripple makes no attempt to give alternate, and even more likely, explanations for the rain. There are also many critiques proving these attributions are, at absolute best, vastly over-certain, and most likely just plain wrong.

To make this paper science, and not advocacy, those legitimate and strong critiques must be at least mentioned, even if they are dismissed. Not just for this instance, but in each claim made about the causes of weather supposedly running amok.

Science is about discovering the causes of observables. If all possible likely causes are not given or investigated, then the work can be no better than bad science. Or no science at all, as we have here.

But this paper will be taken as science, especially by those rulers who have “solutions” to sell. Especially since its original 2020 version attracted “14,700 signatories from 158 countries”. If you are in the majority who take science to be a vote, then this number of signers is irresistible.

November 8, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | 1 Comment

The Anti-Russia Paranoia

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | November 8, 2022

Given the mid-term elections, the anti-Russia paranoia of U.S. officials has been at a peak. The feds have been scouring the Internet to determine whether the Russians are improperly influencing American voters into supporting candidates who refuse to adopt the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s extreme anti-Russia animus. The idea is that American voters, given that they are mostly public-school graduates, have extremely pliant minds that are overly susceptible to being molded into being pro-communist or pro-Russia dupes. 

For example, last July the Justice Department secured an indictment against a Russian citizen named Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov who heads up an organization based in Moscow named Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, which allegedly receives funds from the Russian government. 

The charge? Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen declared, “Ionov allegedly orchestrated a brazen influence campaign, turning U.S. political groups and U.S. citizens into instruments of the Russian government.”

See what I mean? The minds of public-school educated Americans are so pliant and susceptible to propaganda that they have to be protected by their federal daddy from those evil Russkies who are trying to turn them to the dark side. 

Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, reinforced what Olsen stated: “Secret foreign government efforts to influence American elections and political groups threaten our democracy by spreading misinformation and breeding distrust.” U.S. Attorney Roger B. Handberg for the Middle District of Florida weighed in on the matter: “The prosecution of this criminal conduct is essential to protecting the American public when foreign governments seek to inject themselves into the American political process.”

When I read such nonsensical statements from what are supposed to be intelligent people, I can’t help but wonder about two things: 

One, how U.S. officials justify their massive interventions into the political processes of other countries. Hey, just for starters, let’s not forget their knowing, intentional, and deliberate destruction of the democratic systems of Iran, Guatemala, and Chile, not to mention their programs of state-sponsored regime-change assassinations, coups, sanctions, and embargoes.

Two, when we are discussing the extreme anti-Russia animus that has long driven the federal government, I can’t help but think about President Kennedy. He was determined to move America in a direction that was opposite to that of the Pentagon and the CIA. He was determined to bring an end to the extreme anti-Russia animus that the Pentagon and the CIA had inculcated in the American people. 

I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if Kennedy had survived the assassination attempt in Dallas and had run for reelection in 1964. Would the Pentagon and CIA have been targeting Russian citizens who were supporting Kennedy and opposing his GOP opponent, Barry Goldwater, whose mindset mirrored that of the Pentagon and the CIA? 

I don’t think there is any doubt that they would have been doing that. They also would have been accusing Kennedy of having become a Russian dupe who was leading America to disaster. In fact, as I detail in my newest book, An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, that’s precisely what they were saying about him before they assassinated him. Also, see FFF’s book JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne, who served on the Assassination Records Review Board. 

The Pentagon’s and the CIA’s extreme anti-Russia animus that has held America in its grip for decades is a grave threat to the liberty and well-being of the American people, in part because it has, once again, brought us to the edge of life-destroying nuclear war. The sooner this paranoid nonsense is brought to an end, the better off the American people will be. 

November 8, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Russophobia | , | 1 Comment

If You Say Democracy Often Enough the Voters Will Reward You

Just don’t mention Ukraine or the economy

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 8, 2022

To be sure there is an election coming up today in the United States and President Joe Biden has clearly taken the low road in the lead up to it by speaking before friendly audiences and repeating over and over the bromides that cause the brain to go numb. During the past week it was all about saving “American democracy” from the MAGA barbarians. And Democracy is, inevitably, tied to the Democratic Party etymologically, which, in a sense, makes it the presumed sole possessor of the right stuff when it comes to delivering freedom to all, including most recently a truly delusional pledge by Biden to “free Iran.”

The problem for the president is that Bidenspeak is being seen by some as devoid of content, choosing to skip over any discussion of the actual policies that have benefitted or harmed the American people over the past two years. That omission is convenient as many voters look around and see high inflation, a struggling economy, surging crime rates and an open border that may have produced, according to Tucker Carlson, a tidal wave of as many as five million (newly arrived) illegal immigrants in the country. And, of course, there is also the war threatening to go nuclear over the Russian intervention in Ukraine, a conflict that threatens no American interest but which nevertheless has been elevated into a genuine saga of good versus evil through the combined efforts of the US and British governments ably assisted by the western mainstream media.

And it has become a real war, thanks to the joint UK-US bombing of one of the Nord Stream pipelines that connect Russia to northern Europe. Washington has warned repeatedly that it would take steps to shut down the pipeline, which it regards as a security threat in that it makes Europe dependent on Russia for energy, and it appears that the plucky Brits did the dirty work. Britain’s then Foreign Minister Liz Truss reportedly texted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken immediately after the pipeline blew up, telling him “It’s done!” Neither Truss nor Blinken were apparently aware that Russian intelligence had penetrated the security on the connection and recorded the communication.

And, of course, it is all about Ukraine even if the ultimate objective by the US is to weaken Russia militarily while also removing President Vladimir Putin. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has emerged as some kind of puppet master in his control of the White House, the US Congress and the mainstream media, drawing an estimated 60 billion dollars in economic and military aid from the US Treasury and also committing Washington to support his country until it “wins” against Putin. Zelensky, whose middle name must be Svengali, reportedly was involved recently in a phone call with Biden in which the US president expressed frustration over Zelensky’s frequently repeated demands for more money and weapons. Biden vented and even shouted but Zelensky wound up with the cash, some of which will certainly go to support the Ukrainian president’s various real estate holdings in Israel and Florida.

And then there is the “dirty bomb” story making the rounds. It has two components. First is the technology of a dirty bomb itself, which is a high explosive device that is seeded with radioactive waste that is lethal and contaminates a large area when it is detonated. A dirty bomb is considered a weapon of mass destruction and its use is categorized as a war crime, much like using a chemical or biological weapon. Second, there is the false flag aspect to the tale that is circulating. The Russian government, the source of the report, is claiming that Zelensky’s government is preparing to put together and detonate a dirty bomb somewhere inside Ukraine and before blaming the development on Putin and his government. That attribution of an action falsely to a country or government that was not involved is a false flag and the intention is to create a perception that someone is breaking the rules on what is allowed even during wartime.

False flags attacks were used most recently in the western supported insurgency in Syria, most notably at the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in 2013, where a chemical-weapons claimed attack that may have killed as many as 1700 people took place. The attack was inevitably attributed to the Syrian government by the United States but it was in fact, much more plausibly carried out by the rebels who controlled the area at that time.

So why would Zelensky detonate a dirty bomb within the area he controlled? Well, Zelensky has long sought increased and direct US and NATO involvement on his side in the fight against Russia. Being able to point to a major war crime that he would attribute to the Russians through a false flag operation might just be enough to do the trick and bring in larger scale western involvement. It is certainly something that Zelensky and his neocon advisers would consider an acceptable ruse de guerre. Given the effective neocon control over foreign policy and the media outlets in the US it would also in all likelihood involve the United States in a major war that was avoidable with devastating consequences for all parties involved.

So, if Joe Biden wants to talk about his achievements in the run-up to elections, why doesn’t he explain his reasons for enabling and expanding the war with Russia over Ukraine? That war has not only brought about a flow of billions of dollars in aid for the most corrupt country in Europe, it has also resulted in a worldwide energy crisis that has fueled inflation and disrupted trade. More to the point, it has led to a global movement to confront the United States over its presumption that it is the hegemonistic power that sets the rules for everyone else. That is also contributing to increasing rejection of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which will have an incalculable impact on the American economy and the country’s standard of living.

Has it all been worth it, Joe, to craft a narrative that ignores the real issues just so you can stay in power? The America that you and I were brought up in is sliding down into a deep dark hole, and you and your delusional neocon and neoliberal friends have been largely responsible for the descent even as you use your bully pulpit to cry about “democracy” at every opportunity.

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.

November 8, 2022 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

American voters don’t need Russian trolls to tell them how bad things are

By Robert Bridge | RT | November 8, 2022

As US voters head to the polls for the much-anticipated Midterms, talk of Russian trolls monkeying with US democracy is back in the news. But does the country really need Russia’s help in “stoking anger” among the electorate?

If the hyper-liberal New York Times can be taken at face value just two days before an epic election, Russia’s underground army of trolls is, once again, attempting to seed the minds of malleable US voters to the Kremlin’s advantage. If those charges sounded outlandish in 2016, when the Democrats accused Russian ‘influencers’ of denying Hillary Clinton the presidency, they seem doubly so today.

The Times reported that the goal of the reactivated Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg is to “stoke anger among conservative voters and to undermine trust in the American electoral system.” Judging by the looks of things, the Russians are a bit late to the party. It would be hard to name another period in US politics when the level of anger and distrust has been so extreme, and that is something the Russian trolls, despite their supposed superhuman abilities, can’t take credit for.

Take inflation, for example, the single most pressing issue among US voters. It doesn’t require any sort of Russian mind-bending operation to inform Americans that the economic situation is deteriorating before their eyes, and has been ever since Biden entered office. They only need to look at their food and utility bills each month, and the price at the gas pump, to feel fury for what the Biden administration has done to the economy in a shockingly short period of time. Any effort to blame these negative sentiments on “the Russians” is just another way of the Democrats saying that soaring prices is “disinformation” and unworthy of your attention.

The Times mentions another point of contention among US voters, particularly the Republicans, and that is the blank-check powers that have been awarded to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Citing the work of “cybersecurity researchers,” the article alleges that the Russian influence campaign “appears intended to undermine the Biden administration’s extensive military assistance to Ukraine.” Again, here is an issue that has already been undermined by the Republicans ever since the Democrats commenced with their proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, a massively hazardous venture where no expense is considered too great.

On this point, the Democrats are able to claim, much like in 2016, that the Russians and the Republicans are working in collusion, this time against Kiev. The Russians are anxious to see US military spending on Ukraine come to an end as all of those sophisticated weapons are only prolonging the conflict. Meanwhile, some of the Republicans campaigned on promises to terminate funding to the Zelensky regime and divert those billions of dollars to national security projects, like fortifying their own border and fighting crime.

It would be a mistake to think that Americans are not acutely aware of the issues now dividing the country. Every day, social media users can see for themselves everything they need to know about crime, inflation, transgender issues, and the border, to name just a few of the hot-button issues dividing the country. To suggest that Russian trolls are required to “stoke conservative anger” is to grossly underestimate the political intelligence of the average US voter, who appears better informed than ever before. The fact is, the Democrats are afraid of being wiped out in a landslide come Tuesday. Conjuring up the ghost of Russia interference at the 11th hour reveals their insecurity and will provide them some partial excuse in the event of a blowout.

With regards to these latest accusations of election interference, Moscow is understandably losing its patience. It requires either a certain lack of self-awareness, or an astonishing excess of arrogance, for the United States to lecture any country on the question of meddling. After all, in the case of Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, we’re talking about a mere $150,000 spent on several thousand Facebook ads, many of which had no political message whatsoever. When it is considered that US presidential elections have turned into multi-billion-dollar pageants, with no expense spared on campaign attack ads, it is hard to imagine that Russia’s severely limited campaign had any effect whatsoever (it needs emphasis that not even Facebook is entirely sure where the posts originated from. Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, would only say they “likely operated out of Russia”).

Now compare that to the way the United States “meddles” in the affairs of foreign countries, like Ukraine. In November 2013, after the government of President Viktor Yanukovich opted in favor of closer ties with Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union instead of the EU, protests broke out in the country. How did the United States respond? Not with internet trolls, that’s for sure. It dispatched high-ranking US officials to Kiev, like Senator John McCain and Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, where they agitated the masses against the democratically elected government. On the question of who would ultimately govern the splintered country, Nuland was overheard in a phone call with the US ambassador to Ukraine handpicking the eligible candidates.

Once again, the United States proved that there are rules for itself and rules for the rest of the world, and increasingly it is the American people who must pay the price for that supreme arrogance.

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

November 8, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

How sarcastic remarks became basis for resurrecting ‘Russiagate’

By Drago Bosnic | November 8, 2022

The so-called “Russiagate” conspiracy theory has been the main go-to scapegoat for the failures of the DNC, be it the 2016 presidential or 2018 midterm elections. For six years the mainstream propaganda machine has been parroting the supposed “Russian election meddling” narrative.

Despite the official investigation giving no proof to support the claims that Moscow secured the United States presidency for Donald Trump, “Russiagate” persisted even after he left office. Several major events, such as the humiliating US defeat in Afghanistan and the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, pushed the debunked conspiracy theory out of the spotlight for some time. Still, just when the world forgot about “Russiagate”, the propaganda machine decided to resurrect it as a scapegoat once again, this time for the 2022 midterms.

On November 7, The New York Times published a report claiming that the Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, the alleged “true founder and financial backer” of the “Wagner” PMC (private military company), made a “sardonic” statement about the supposed Russian meddling in 2022 US midterms. The Western mainstream media regularly accuse Prigozhin of “having close ties” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and they’ve even given him a rather cliché “supervillain” nickname – “Putin’s Chef”. Despite holding no official position in the Russian government, he is accused of conducting “clandestine operations” for the Kremlin, including alleged election interference.

“Gentlemen, we have interfered, we do interfere and we will [continue to] interfere,” Prigozhin said in a statement in response to a question from a Russian news outlet. “We will do it carefully, precisely, surgically as we are capable of doing it. During our targeted operations, we will remove both kidneys and liver at once,” he concluded in what was quite obviously a sarcastic remark. Russian news agency RIA Novosti described the comments as such as well, but the US mainstream propaganda machine is adamant that the statement is “clear proof” that Russia will supposedly affect the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections.

In 2018, Prigozhin was even indicted by the US that he funded and organized the so-called “troll factory” to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections, which was one of the staples of the “Russiagate” conspiracy theory. Despite no clear evidence that he did any of this, in 2021 the FBI put Prigozhin on its most-wanted list, while the US Treasury imposed sanctions on him for allegedly “organizing disinformation campaigns” in elections in Asia, Europe and Africa. The Biden administration placed additional sanctions on Prigozhin in March, due to his supposed “crucial role” in Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe.

The US State Department also commented on Prigozhin’s statement, with the spokesman Ned Price calling it “a bold confession”. She added that it was “clear that a person of Mr. Prigozhin’s stature would not be in a position to make such claims unless the Kremlin, at some level didn’t approve.”

According to The New York Times, the unnamed “researchers” have supposedly “detected a new, though more concentrated, campaign by Russia to try to influence Tuesday’s midterm elections.” The alleged goal is “to empower angry conservative voters with the aim of undermining faith in American democracy … at a time when soaring energy prices and inflation threaten to dent support for the war, the campaign also appears intent on undermining the Biden administration’s extensive financial and military support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.”

The report further claims that “the campaign — using accounts that pose as enraged Americans — has specifically targeted Democratic candidates in the most heated races, including the Senate seats being contested in Ohio, Arizona and Pennsylvania.” The alleged “calculation appears to be that a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could dent American support for the war in Ukraine.”

The claims are quite clearly yet another attempt to use foreign powers as scapegoats and an excuse between political opponents in the US. The New York Times is infamous for being one of the strongholds of the neoliberal portion of the US establishment. By accusing the “angry conservatives” of working with Russia, the outlet is obviously trying to discredit the GOP to help the Democrats and give them at least somewhat better chances in the midterms.

The Republicans themselves aren’t immune to this, as they also resort to it by accusing the DNC of working with China. However, in this particular case, the Democrats, terrified of the prospect of losing both the House of Representatives and the Senate, are trying everything in their power to sway public opinion toward supporting their policies, both domestic and foreign, the unpopularity of which has reached its peak in recent months.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

November 8, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment