Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Suppress alternative views, say the climate mafia

By Paul Homewood | TCW Defending Freedom | October 14, 2022

Earlier this year four leading Italian scientists published a major review of  historical climate trends titled A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming, and concluded that declaring a ‘climate emergency’ is not supported by the data. 

The authors do not deny that the world is a little bit warmer than a century ago, nor that the climate has been changing. But after analysing the official data they found no evidence of a climate crisis.

The study looked at various indicators of extreme weather such as temperature extremes, heavy rainfall, hurricanes, floods and droughts. It also reviewed trends in food production and yields. It concluded: ‘None of these response indicators show a clear positive trend of extreme events. In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that according to many sources we are experiencing today is not evident yet.’

The scientists suggested that rather than burdening our children with anxiety about climate change, we should encourage them to think about issues like energy, food and health with a more ‘objective and constructive spirit’ and not waste limited resources on ‘costly and ineffective solutions’.

There really was little that was controversial in the study. A succession of reports from the IPCC, the UN climate panel, essentially have all come to similar conclusions once the political spin was taken away.

Any changes that have affected the climate have been slight and often undetectable. Moreover many of the changes have undoubtedly been beneficial; for instance drought is now much less common and severe in many parts of the world, such as India, Sahel and the US than it used to be in the past. It always was absurd to maintain that global warming makes everything worse.

No matter that the study was well written by highly respected scientists, factually based and peer-reviewed, its message did not fit the narrative. It therefore did not take long for the climate mafia to demand that the paper should be withdrawn by the European Physical Journal Plus which published it in January this year.

According to Phys.Org:  A fundamentally flawed study claiming that scientific evidence of a climate crisis is lacking should be withdrawn from the peer-reviewed journal in which it was published, top climate scientists have told AFP [the Paris-based news agency Agence France-Presse].

‘Appearing earlier this year in the European Physical Journal Plus, published by Springer Nature, the study purports to review data on possible changes in the frequency or intensity of rainfall, cyclones, tornadoes, droughts and other extreme weather events.

‘Four prominent climate scientists contacted by AFP all said the study – of which they had been unaware – grossly manipulates data, cherry-picking some facts and ignoring others that would contradict their discredited assertions.’

We are of course used to the climate establishment trying to censor heretical views. The Climategate emails a few years ago uncovered many such attempts, some even threatening journal editors. And it is worth noting the use of phrases such as ‘fundamentally flawed’, ‘manipulating data’ and ‘cherry–picking’ in an attempt to destroy the study’s credibility. Yet none of these critics are able to back up any of these claims with actual facts.

Doing science is all about facts. If you disagree with a particular scientific study, you challenge it on a factual basis and point out exactly where it is flawed. There is a well-established method of doing this, which is to ask the journal involved to print a response to the original article. Normally the paper’s authors would of course have a right of reply. That is the way facts are established. Simply to demand that the journal withdraws the paper is the worst sort of censorship.

Perhaps worst of all is the fact that the attack on this study was led by Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts Research at the UK Met Office. As an employee of a taxpayer–funded agency, Betts has more obligation than most to be unbiased and open-minded.

He and his supporters may disagree with the European Physical Journal Plus paper: that is their prerogative. But they need to present facts  instead of trying to force the journal into withdrawing the paper.

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

The Alex Jones verdict is a declaration of war on independent media

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | October 14, 2022

A Connecticut court has handed down a 1 billion dollar fine on radio host and independent journalist Alex Jones, for “spreading misinformation” about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.

This is a travesty, and that any could call such an absurd penalty “justice” is sickening. Especially when it is so obviously designed as warning to everyone in the independent media.

Indeed, outside of the specifics of this case, the potential fallout for everyone in the alt-media sphere is terrifying, because already the Jones precedent is being used as an argument for “regulation” of the internet.

Forget about Sandy Hook. Maybe it happened or maybe it didn’t, experience teaches us that virtually nothing happens exactly as the media reports, but even if it did – even if every single word Alex Jones ever said about Sandy Hook was a deliberate lie – you cannot “regulate” that, you cannot make it a crime, and you cannot silence people’s future for words they have said in the past.

That is censorship.

People have the right to free speech. And that includes – MUST include – the right to lie and the right to simply be wrong.

If you take away those rights, you put the power to regulate speech in the hands of those with enough influence to create official “truth” or hold the “right” opinions. And that has nothing to do with objective truth, or real facts.

The media, and the establishment it serves, do not care about truth or facts.

To take a recent example, a Pfizer executive recently reported the pharmaceutical giant never did any research to ascertain if their Covid “vaccine” halted transmission of the “disease” commonly called Covid.

There was never any trial data showing the “vaccines” prevented transmission of “covid”, and that means every outlet, channel or pundit who claimed the vaccine “stopped the spread” was actively “spreading misinformation”.

What’s more this misinformation has likely led to literally thousands of deaths. That is far more harmful than anything anyone could say about a ten-year-old school shooting, real or not.

Will CNN or The Guardian or the NYT face a billion-dollar fine?

Of course they won’t. Because this is not about “misinformation”, this is about uncontrolled information. It is about regulating – even criminalising – the free flow of ideas and opinions.

Even if this kind of rule were equally applied to all media on every topic, it would be still awful… and we all know it won’t be.

Instead, it will be applied to the independent media, to alternative and anti-establishment voices, and to the internet.

If you doubt that, check the media reaction.

One argument against the need for any new regulation of free speech is that we already have legal systems in place to protect people from “harmful speech” – threats, libel and defamation.

Indeed, Jones’ fate here could be held up as a prime example of “the system working”.

But that is not enough, according to this article on NPR which bemoans the “limits” of de-platforming and defamation suits.

That opinion is shared by this article on NBC, which headlines “Alex Jones’ lawsuit losses are not enough”, and concludes:

Defamation lawsuits are an important tool in the quest to reduce harm from harassment and abuse. But they are not a solution to the lie machines built by incredibly savvy, incredibly cynical pundits like Alex Jones. This week’s verdict, coupled with whatever else happens next, will certainly make conspiracy theorists think twice before they inflict pain on private individuals in the future. But it will not solve the bigger problem, which is our world’s dangerous, pervasive flood of misinformation.

That line about “making conspiracy theorists think twice” is the most honest sentence in the article, and confirms one of the major aims of the Jones trial narrative is to set an example.

But while the point of the article could not be clearer, the author never actually uses the words “regulation”, “legislation” or “censorship”. He chooses to play a more subtle game than that.

The same cannot be said for Simon Jenkins in yesterday’s Guardian, who eschews subtlety completely:

Only proper online regulation can stop poisonous conspiracists like Alex Jones

“Proper online regulation”. We all know what that means, it means censorship. He’s not even hiding it in coy language, but openly arguing for a global censorship programme.

He begins by pining for the days when nobody could get a scrap of the public’s attention without going through approved channels:

There have always been Alex Joneses spreading poison from the world’s soap boxes and pavements. As a boy I used to listen to them at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park […] Their lies never made it into newspapers or on to the airwaves. Free speech went only as far as the human voice could carry. Beyond that, “news” was mediated behind a wall of editors, censors and regulators, to keep it from gullible and dangerous ears.

Imagine the kind of mind that is nostalgic for an age when “News” – he is right to use quotes – had to pass through a “wall of editors, censors and regulators”. Imagine being able to simply dismiss the multitude of the public as “gullible and dangerous”.

From there he moves on to praise the verdict against Jones, and the state-backed censorship exhibited by the major social media platforms, but laments it does not go far enough, even hinting that people should have their own private websites confiscated:

The main social media outlets have accepted a modicum of responsibility to monitor content […] attempts are made to keep up with a deluge of often biased and mendacious material, but […] by the time it is taken down it re-emerges elsewhere. Jones has been banned by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but he can still reach audiences on his own website […] Justice is meaningless without enforcement or prevention.

Next, he tells us who exactly will be in the crosshairs of this suggested global censor. It’s a predictable list:

victims may have the rule of law on their side, but that does not curb the climate deniers, anti-vaxxers, trolls and QAnon followers or the appalling and anonymous abuse that now greets the expression online of any liberal – I might say reasonable – point of view.

Alongside a “no true Scotsman” fallacy altering the definition of free speech:

No one seriously believes free speech is an absolute right.

Like all censors before them, modern censors such as Jenkins seek to codify their desire for control in the language of concern. Proselytizing about the need to “protect people” and “the greater good”. They would, they claim, only censor harmful lies.

Such is the call of the censor through the ages. We’re only censoring heresy, we’re only censoring blasphemy, we’re only censoring treason.

Jenkins is aware of this, even as he uses special pleading to argue his version of censorship would be different:

Historians of the news media can chart a progress from early censorship by the church and crown to state licensing and legal regulation. This control was initially employed to enforce conformity, but over the past century it has also sought to sustain diversity and suppress blatant falsity.

The hypocrisy is rank. “Maybe they used to enforce conformity, but of course we would never do that…we just want to silence people who disagree, for society’s sake.”

Of course, none of those who seek to control the speech of their fellow humans ever claim to want to censor the truth. They call it “sedition” or “propaganda”, and claim to be safeguarding “the truth” even as they pull out tongues or break their victims on the rack.

Now they call it “Misinformation”. It’s all the same in the end.

One more time, for the people at the back.

  • Free speech is NOT reserved for people who are “right”.
  • Free speech is NOT only for people who tell “the truth”.
  • Free speech is NOT to be moderated by “a wall of editors and regulators”.

Free speech is not a privilege in the gift of the state, a commodity to be regulated by the government or a child’s toy to be punitively confiscated by grown-ups who know better.

It is a right. For everyone. Everywhere. Always.

And if it is removed from one of us, it is removed from all of us.

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 6 Comments

Sweden explains rejection of joint Nord Stream probe

Samizdat | October 14, 2022

Stockholm has rejected a plan to set up an official joint investigation team together with Germany and Denmark to look into the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in late September, Reuters reported, citing a Swedish investigator. Sweden reportedly argued that its own findings are too sensitive to share even with other EU nations.

The EU’s agency for criminal justice cooperation, Eurojust, recently came up with a proposal to establish a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to launch a probe into the Nord Stream explosions, Reuters said, adding that Sweden blocked the initiative. On Friday, Mats Ljungqvist, a Swedish prosecutor involved in the nation’s probe into the incident, told the news agency that this development would impose unwanted obligations on his nation.

“This is because there is information in our investigation that is subject to confidentiality directly linked to national security,” Ljungqvist said, adding that his nation is already cooperating with Germany and Denmark on the matter anyway.

According to the prosecutor, establishing a JIT would involve signing a legally binding information-sharing agreement. Eurojust says on its website that a JIT mechanism indeed includes a legal agreement between the involved parties for the purposes of conducting criminal investigations.

Earlier, citing “security circles,” Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine said that Sweden considered the sensitivity level of its own probe’s findings to be “too high to share them with other countries.” News portal Tagesschau, owned by the German ARD broadcaster, also reported on Friday that Germany, Sweden, and Denmark initially wanted to investigate the incident together but “that’s not the case now.”

According to Tagesschau, Denmark also eventually opposed the idea of a joint probe. Now, all three nations will conduct their own separate investigations, it added. Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson denied the reports, however, adding that “we are working together with Germany and Denmark on this issue.”

Earlier, all three nations refused to grant Russia access to the probe, prompting Moscow to summon their ambassadors. Russia also said it would not recognize the results of any probe unless its specialists were allowed to participate. Andersson said on Monday that Stockholm would not share its investigation results with Moscow.

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were damaged and rendered inoperable following a series of powerful underwater explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm. No nation conducting a probe into the incident has officially named any suspects that could have been involved in the alleged attacks on the pipelines.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously hinted at a potential “beneficiary.”

“One can now force the liquefied natural gas from the US on to European countries on a much larger scale,” he said earlier this week. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the incidents a “tremendous opportunity” for Europe “to once and for all remove dependence on Russian energy.”

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , , | 4 Comments

A Look Back at the Demonization of the Unvaccinated

By Michael P Senger  | The New Normal | October 13, 2022

Social media has been in an uproar since a member of European Parliament posted a video of a hearing in which a Pfizer director admitted the company never tested whether its Covid mRNA vaccine prevents transmission prior to its approval for emergency use.

Though the fact that Covid mRNA vaccines do not prevent transmission was, of course, abundantly clear from the data soon after their implementation, this myth was a primary justification for vaccine passes and a primary cause of the unprecedented venom launched at those who refused Covid vaccines throughout 2021 and continuing through today.

Not only did governments exert this pressure through policy, but in many cases politicians and officials used their office to deliberately stoke the social stigmatization of the unvaccinated. Here’s a look back at some of the unprecedented vitriol that was launched at those who refused Covid vaccines from 2021 and beyond.

Officials in many jurisdictions proposed making the unvaccinated pay more for healthcare.

 

In Victoria, Australia — where lockdowns were longer than in perhaps any other city in the world—one politician proposed cutting the unvaccinated out of the national health system entirely.

 

A particularly disturbing idea that began to gain serious traction among the elite commentariat was to have hospitals triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last, or even deny healthcare to the unvaccinated entirely—a fairly clear-cut crime against humanity.

 

One vocal proponent of the idea of triaging emergency care to disfavor the unvaccinated was David Frum, Senior Editor of the Atlantic, most famous for his outspoken support for the invasion of Iraq. When his infamous tweet on the subject sparked an uproar, Frum doubled down.

Piers Morgan agreed that the unvaccinated should be denied emergency care.

 

Shockingly, this appalling idea of triaging emergency care based on vaccination status is still being proposed to this day.

 

The demonization of the unvaccinated was, of course, far from limited to healthcare. Vilifying the unvaccinated became a kind of illiberal fad among the elite commentariat. The US CDC even paid screen writers and comedians to promote Covid vaccines, which in some cases involved paying them to mock the unvaccinated.

In a bout of recidivism to the early 20th century, Austria and Germany introduced the chilling concept of “lockdown for the unvaccinated.”

“Lockdown for the unvaccinated” gained traction in the English-speaking world as well.

Most countries, cities, and states across the western world introduced vaccine passes that their own citizens had to show in order to partake in daily life. The World Health Organization published an extensive document on implementing a digital vaccine-pass system, including an international vaccine status registry and instructions on how to later revoke someone’s vaccine pass.

 

The most dystopian of these vaccine pass systems was in Lithuania, where the unvaccinated were banned from nearly all public spaces and employment outside their homes; the few shops where they could purchase essentials had to post large red signs on their doors indicating that unvaccinated persons could be present.

And of course, who could forget Justin Trudeau’s classic fuhrer-style rant about having to share public transportation with the unvaccinated, despite government documents later revealing that he had no science to back any of these claims.

Like so much of the response to Covid, these vaccine passes and the illiberal fad of stigmatizing the unvaccinated were unscientific, unprecedented, ineffective, totalitarian, brutal, and dumb.

It was never remotely realistic for any government to expect every single person to get vaccinated, especially when the vaccine in question involved a novel genetic-based therapy. Thus, these proposals to impose draconian hardships on those who refused Covid vaccines would inevitably involve the state imposing draconian hardships on a sizable portion of the population.

According to Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, one of the most credible voices on the subject, Covid vaccines likely yielded benefits for the elderly and vulnerable, but it remains entirely unclear whether Covid vaccines have yielded any benefit at all for healthy adults and especially for children. Coupled with the still-unknown risks associated with mRNA technology and the now well-documented cases of death and serious injury from these vaccines, for governments across the world to have exerted extreme pressure on children and healthy adults to get these vaccines is absolutely sickening.

That some healthy young people were surely coerced into receiving an injection that led to their death or serious injury, when the data showed that the benefits did not outweigh the risks, is an unconscionable tragedy.

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Pfizer and the FDA NEVER Claimed Their COVID-19 Vaccine Stopped Transmission – This is NOT News Today!

By Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | October 11, 2022

My news feed and my inbox in my email program have been flooded with links to stories reporting what so many in the Alternative Media today are claiming is BREAKING NEWS: Pfizer’s COVID Vaccine was Never Tested on Preventing Transmission!

The source of this “Breaking News” is apparently a Dutch Member of the European Parliament, Rob Roos.

Well I have some news for all of you emailing me this story: This is NOT news!

Pfizer and the FDA have NEVER claimed that their COVID-19 stopped transmission of COVID, and this information has been readily available to the public since the beginning when the shot was first given an EUA.

It has ALWAYS been a lie propagated by the Corporate Media and the criminal CDC, and we have exposed this lie many times in the past.

In January of 2021, just about a month after the shots were given emergency use authorization, I published an article titled:

Why Would Anyone Choose to Receive an Experimental COVID mRNA Injection?

In this article, I quoted exactly what the FDA was publishing in their Fact Sheet for Healthcare Providers Administering Vaccine and the Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers on the FDA website.

Not only did they NOT claim that the shots stopped transmission, they didn’t even claim it would prevent the one receiving the vaccine from getting COVID!

Then in May of 2021, just a few months after the shots were authorized by the FDA, Barbara Loe Fisher, the co-founder of The National Vaccine Information Center, which is the leading vaccine consumer advocacy group in the world and has been in existence for over 30 years, wrote what was by far the most comprehensive review of these new shots where she warned the public, among other things, that these vaccines were never even intended to stop transmission!

Barbara Loe Fisher: Seeing Through the COVID-19 Spin – How Big Pharma and Government are Spending $BILLIONS to Deceive the Public with Misinformation on COVID “Vaccines”

Quote:

Myth: Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Vaccines Have Been Proven to Prevent Infection and Transmission of SARS-CoV-2

What are the two biggest myths that have been generated by the advertising campaign being conducted with Pharma and taxpayer dollars?

The first big myth is that if you get two doses of the mRNA COVID vaccine, you will get artificial immunity and cannot be asymptomatically or symptomatically infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and you will not be able to infect others who come in physical contact with you: you dutifully got vaccinated and now you are immune.

That is a normal assumption because that is what vaccines are supposed to do, but it is a false assumption.

The Emergency Use Authorization the FDA gave to Pfizer and Moderna was not granted based on scientific evidence that the product prevented infection and transmission of SARS-Cov-2.

In fact, the FDA directed manufacturers in the summer of 2020 to make a product that had at least a 50 percent efficacy rate in either preventing or reducing severity of COVID-19 disease.

The companies chose to apply for an EUA based on nine months of clinical trial data that the product prevents people from developing severe symptoms of COVID-19 disease and reduces the likelihood they will have serious complications leading to hospitalization and death – not that it prevents infection and transmission.

There is a difference. (Full article.)

See Also:

Brazilian President tells WHO Director “People are Dying” After COVID Shots – Pleads with WHO to Publicly NOT Recommend it for Children

In November of 2021, we reported that even the director of WHO told the Brazilian President that the COVID shots were not designed to stop transmission.

So with all due respect to Mr. Roos, this is OLD NEWS, and is certainly not a “smoking gun.”

The fact that so many people are getting worked up into a frenzy over this today just proves that people in the beginning did not do their homework and research for themselves the public information that was available about these shots, and sadly, that included MANY in the medical field who were recommending them!!

As I have written many times over the years, people spend more time researching information before purchasing a home or a car, than they do before taking someone’s word about an experimental medical procedure that could kill them, or maim them for life.

And that is exactly what happened in the beginning with these COVID shots, and now that the truth is coming out, everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon regarding the now obvious criminal activities that brought these vaccines to the public.

And yet there are those of us who have been warning the public about the criminal activities of the FDA, CDC, and Big Pharma in the vaccine industry for decades, when almost nobody wanted to listen to us, until they ended up with a vaccine-damaged child, or were themselves injured by the flu shot or some other bogus vaccine that nobody has ever needed, because the science has NEVER proven that any single vaccine has ever been safe, nor effective.

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , | 1 Comment

Pfizer Exec Admits COVID-19 Vaccine Never Tested to Prevent Transmission, Media Silent

By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | October 12, 2022

In early 2021, CDC director Rochelle Walensky had no problem going on national television and declaring to the world that if you took the covid-19 vaccine “you will not get or spread covid.” Within weeks, this was found to be entirely untrue.

Dr. Anthony Fauci also spread the exact same misinformation, telling Americans that they had nothing to worry about once they took the shots. Yet hundreds of thousands of people who took the shots, got sick and died.

Joe Biden, Bill Gates, and countless other Pfizer shills in the media waged a massive campaign to convince Americans and the world at large that taking the vaccine meant that you could not get or transmit COVID-19. And they were all dead wrong.

Instead of apologizing and admitting they were wrong, team Pfizer doubled down and claimed that getting “boosted” was the real protection. Again, this was proven wrong.

Now that tens of billions of taxpayer dollars have flowed into their coffers, Pfizer is admitting that they never even tested whether or not the vaccine prevented transmission before they released it. Read that again—Pfizer admitted that they never tested their vaccine’s ability to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 before its release.

During a hearing this week on the European Union’s COVID-19 response, Pfizer’s president of international developed markets, Janine Small, made this bombshell admission.

Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Robert “Rob” Roos asked Small if Pfizer tested whether or not the vaccine prevented transmission. Her answer was a resounding “no.”

“Regarding the question around did we know about stopping immunization before it entered the market…No.,” Small said.

Given this telling admission that the vaccine was never tested in this manner, it raises the question as to where all the blowhards in the video above received this information. Who was telling them that the vaccine prevented transmission if the manufacturer never tested it?

Where did Walensky, Biden, Fauci, Gates, Maddow and others get this information from when they launched their concerted effort to spread this misinformation? This is a question we must all be demanding an answer to immediately.

We should also be asking why not a single mainstream outlet is reporting on this admission. Literally, no one in corporate media has touched this new information despite its bombshell nature. Americans would probably like to know that they were forced to take a vaccine that was never tested for prevention of transmission despite the entirety of the establishment telling them otherwise. Yet corporate media, largely funded by Pfizer, is silent.

We must never forget that politicians—all claiming to “follow the science”—locked us down, destroyed the economy, decimated the middle class through inflation, forcibly medicated us, and muzzled our children over the last 2 years. All the while we were told that our only way out of this was to take the jab.

We have been constantly reminded that if you don’t follow “The Science,” you are a science-denying buffoon who wants grandma to die, doesn’t care about the children, were an alt-right Nazi, a white supremacist, extremist, and most likely a domestic terrorist.

Those who stood against unconstitutional vaccine mandates were scorned by the mainstream, labeled as “anti-vaxxers” and had people wishing for their deaths. Even people who took the jab but stood against mandates were labeled anti-vaxxers as definitions were altered to fit the narrative.

We the people were pitted against each other in one of the most divisive propaganda campaigns in human history. The middle ground was eliminated and logic and reason burned to the ground alongside the economy. And all of it was based on lies.

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

The Biden Regime reveals its new National Security Strategy: climate change, diversity, equity and inclusion

By Jordan Schachtel | The Dossier | October 12, 2022

The Biden Administration released its first National Security Strategy (NSS) document Wednesday, and it is exponentially more unhinged than any of its predecessors. The NSS was once understood as a serious document compiling a list of *actual* threats to the nation. It now resembles a hyper-political Blue Anon fundraising mailer.

Most of the items discussed in the supposed threat assessment have nothing to do with national security at all. And the things that are related to national security matters have major prioritization and politicization issues.

Biden Harris Administrations National Security Strategy 10
562KB ∙ PDF File

Download

Prior to launching The Dossier, your humble correspondent was a somewhat seasoned national security correspondent. As a periodic consumer of these strategy documents, I can assure you that not even the Obama Administration inserted its political agenda as aggressively as the Biden regime is choosing to do this year.

A simple word search gives the reader a sense of the White House’s priorities.

Russia takes top billing. It is referred to 71 times, in the most hysterical way imaginable. According to Team Biden, Putin is a war criminal, whose armies entered Ukraine for no reason whatsoever other than to impose carnage upon Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Speaking of Ukraine, the memo discusses Ukraine 33 times.

China, on the other hand, only gets 14 mentions, and the CCP is likened to a friendly competitor, like a mere player on the other side of a chess game. Here’s a graph from the China section:

“While we have profound differences with the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Government, those differences are between governments and systems – not between our people. Ties of family and friendship continue to connect the American and the Chinese people. We deeply respect their achievements, their history, and their culture. Racism and hate have no place in a nation built by generations of immigrants to fulfill the promise of opportunity for all. And we intend to work together to solve issues that matter most to the people of both countries.”

Other than Putin, the number one “national security” priority of this administration is Climate Change, which is referenced 63 times in the National Security Strategy.Moreover, the importance of the energy “transition” away from reliable energy resources is referred to 11 times in the document.

Now, a progressive neoliberal administration’s threat assessment wouldn’t be complete without discussing “diversity” (16 mentions), “equity” (14 hits), and “inclusion,” (24 times) or what the wokes refer to as DEI.

The document concludes that the United States is “making meaningful progress on issues like climate change, global health, and food security to improve the lives not just of Americans but of people around the world.”

The NSS has been prepared periodically by the executive branch since the Reagan Administration, upon the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols act of 1986. The document is purposed with informing Congress and the public on the administration’s chief national security priorities, and how the White House intends to deal with them.

For this White House, the NSS reveals that its top priorities involve blaming Russia for everything, advancing the climate hoax, and facilitating the woke agenda globally through the U.S. military’s bloated bureaucracy and budget.

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

EU’s LNG storage space runs out as Brussels braces for winter without Russian gas

By Drago Bosnic | October 14, 2022

The European Union’s self-imposed energy crisis is taking a turn for the worse. The political elites in Brussels and their suicidal subservience to Washington DC is breaking records day by day. The latest energy hurdle the bloc is facing is a chronic lack of transport ships carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States to EU countries. According to Bloomberg, as the bloc is trying to prepare for a winter without Russian natural gas and other crucial commodities, LNG shipping rates are surging, but this will not be enough to meet the EU’s energy needs this season. The report states that European countries are now paying to keep the LNG transport ships loaded with natural gas in ports as onshore LNG storage facilities are full.

As companies are racing to charter entire fleets of LNG transport ships, there is a growing fear that there will not be enough vessels capable of transporting natural gas from the US. This problem is further exacerbated by those ready to pay for the already-loaded ships to stay in ports. Gas Market Report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), released on October 3, states that the demand for LNG in EU member states surged by 65% for the first three quarters of 2022 when compared to the same period last year.

In the aftermath of anti-Russian sanctions, the EU was forced to import less from Russia. According to OilPrice.com, in June, the bloc imported more natural gas from the US than from Russia for the first time in its history. A Reuters report claims that up to 70% of US LNG exports were sent to the EU in September, which was a 7% increase in comparison to August. In the meantime, countries in East Asia and South America are also trying to acquire more natural gas in preparation for the winter season, which is adding even more pressure on shipping companies. Worse yet, US states in New England, which are dependent on LNG imports, are now forced to compete with EU buyers, which further drives up prices, according to Seeking Alpha.

The October 11 report published by Bloomberg states that the cost to charter a transport ship loaded with LNG and set to sail across the Atlantic Ocean rose to $397,500 per day. This new record for Atlantic LNG shipping rates represents an increase of over 6% in less than a week, as the previous record of $374,000 per day was set on October 3. However, to better understand just how mind-boggling the shipping prices are now, it’s better to compare on a yearly basis. In 2021, the Atlantic LNG freight rate was $91,000 per day. With the newest record, which has very likely already been topped, this is an increase of over $306,500 per day, or 337%, and an approximately 500% increase since January 2022, according to Spark Commodities.

The LNG shipping price assessor reports that this broke the 2021 all-time record high for the Pacific Ocean freight rates which happened at the height of the supply chain crisis. The price is expected to surge further as traders are hoarding even more natural gas. The scramble to buy more LNG and charter additional transport ships to carry it is very likely to create the next big shortage in the energy market, experts and traders agree.

The shortage has become so severe that LNG exporters in Asia are now selling natural gas directly from their ports instead of offering to ship it to buyers. However, many buyers lack LNG shipping vessels of their own and are forced to pay exorbitant prices to get natural gas to their own ports, while in some cases they can’t even find a way to transport the LNG they already paid for. According to LNG traders, there are very few transport ships left to charter for the rest of 2022 and they are charging astronomical rates.

The shipping issues for LNG are a clear indicator that pipelines have no viable alternatives. However, with NATO countries and satellite states being involved in sabotage operations against Russia-EU pipelines, be it through sanctions or terrorist acts such as the Nord Stream 1 and 2 explosions, Brussels is now forced to contend with both US LNG producers and freight companies and their exorbitant prices.

There’s growing frustration in the EU as it is painfully obvious that the US is making astronomical profits thanks to the escalation of tensions between Brussels and Moscow. Global demand for LNG transport vessels is driving freight rates even higher, which will make pipelines even more important. The EU will have a clear choice – either come to an agreement with Russia and stop acts of sabotage or continue paying several times more for LNG and brace for certain shortages as storage space runs out.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | | 1 Comment

Saudi Arabia calls out US bluster

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | OCTOBER 14, 2022 

Saudi Arabia has politely but firmly rebutted the threats and calumnies levelled by the US political elites in the past week since the OPEC decided to cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day. On Thursday, a Foreign Ministry official in Riyadh forcefully pushed back the allegation that the OPEC decision was at Saudi initiative and was politically motivated against the US, and, worse still, to help Russia. 

The Saudi official rejected the US allegations as baseless, especially the imputation that Saudi Arabia is “aligning” with Russia in the context of the Ukraine situation. The official made three substantive points: 

  • The OPEC+ decision constitutes the unanimous opinion of the member states and it is preposterous to attribute it to Saudi Arabia.
  • Purely economic considerations lie behind the decision, which takes into account the imperatives of maintaining balance of supply and demand in the oil market and limiting the volatility.
  • Saudi Arabia has taken a principled stance on the Ukraine issue, as its votes supporting two UN resolutions testify. 

The Saudi official, inter alia, made a startling disclosure that the Biden Administration had actually tried to get Riyadh to postpone the OPEC+ decision by a month. Presumably, the rage in Washington today is not so much about the oil prices as the panic that the OPEC decision casts on the US diplomacy and foreign policy in general  — and, especially, on President Biden personally — in a poor light as ineffectual and illogical, as the Republicans are highlighting. 

Conceivably, the one-month delay that was sought was intended to overlap the forthcoming midterms in the US on November 8. Unsurprisingly, the Saudis didn’t oblige the White House and it now becomes an unforgivable slight on the US’ sense of entitlement and Biden’s vanity. 

Suffice it to say, the Democrats and the Biden Administration have worked themselves into a frenzy because of their fear that the price of gas can become a combustible issue that may spell doom at the midterms. Some Democrats have gone to the absurd extent of suspecting that the Saudis are deliberately interfering in the US politics to help the Republicans’ electoral prospects. 

The Saudi statement has pointedly rejected “any dictates, actions, or efforts to distort its (Saudi) noble objectives to protect the global economy from oil market volatility.” It is a mild warning that any anti-Saudi moves will meet with resistance and will have repercussions. 

The Saudi statements came within hours of an interview by Biden with the CNN on Thursday, where he warned that “There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve (Saudis) done, with Russia. I’m not going to get into what I’d consider and what I have in mind. But there will be — there will be consequences.”

Later, John Kirby, a White House National Security Council spokesman, said Biden believes “it’s time to take another look at this relationship and make sure that it’s serving our national security interests.”

Biden himself was speaking a day after the influential Democratic senator from New Jersey Bob Menendez threatened to block cooperation with Saudi Arabia. He excoriated Saudi Arabia, accusing it of helping “underwrite Putin’s war through the OPEC+ cartel.” Menendez ripped into the kingdom, and went on to say that the US must “immediately freeze all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including any arms sales and security cooperation beyond what is absolutely necessary to defend US personnel and interests.”

In good measure, Menendez added an ultimatum that he would not “green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the Kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine. Enough is enough.” 

Quite obviously, the White House’s strategy is to obfuscate the matter by making the OPEC+ decision a geopolitical challenge to the US strategies concerning Ukraine and Russia rather than as a historic rebuff to Biden’s clumsy personal diplomacy — which it is — to try to get Saudi Arabia on board his fanciful project to bring down the oil prices so that Russia’s income from oil exports will be severely curtailed. 

The fact of the matter is that the OPEC decision virtually derails the Biden Administration’s pet project to impose a price cap on Russia’s oil exports. Simply put, that hare-brained project, conceived by the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, flounders if oil prices remain high. 

Interestingly, the G7 statement last week on Ukraine and Russia did not make any references to the price cap project. On the other hand, high oil prices will further aggravate the economic crisis in Europe even as the EU is moving towards terminating all oil imports from Russia by December 5. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration is acutely conscious that the Europeans — Germany and France included —are increasingly murmuring their discontent that the Americans played them and are selling gas at vastly higher prices in the European energy market. 

When an influential senator like Menendez throws down the gauntlet to Riyadh, it can be taken as signalling that some retaliatory action against Saudi Arabia is in the cards. Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Rep. Ro Khanna of California have introduced legislation that would immediately pause all US arms sales to Saudi Arabia for one year as well as halt sales of spare and repair parts, support services and logistical support. 

But appearances can be deceptive. The vehemence of the rage and rave have a contrived look, a touch of bluster. Significantly, in his CNN interview, Biden stopped short of endorsing the Democratic lawmakers’ call to halt weapons. Biden merely said he would look to consult with Congress on the way forward. 

Whereas, Menendez has promised to use his position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to block any future arms sales to the Saudis. Quite obviously, the anger with Saudi Arabia has become far more palpable on Capitol Hill, but will it translate into action?  

The big question is how much of this bluster is with an eye on the mid-terms in November. The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters that Biden was also looking at a possible halt in arms sales as part of a broader re-evaluation of the US relationship with Saudi Arabia, but that no move was imminent. 

Indeed, any attempt to rebalance relations with Saudi Arabia will have ripple effects at a time when the contours of an emerging alliance between Saudi Arabia and Russia are becoming apparent, the Iran question remains unresolved and high oil prices upset the US consumer and deepen the crisis in Europe — and, of course, so long as the petrodollar remains a key pillar of the western banking system. Besides, as things stand, US influence in the West Asia is today a pale shadow of what it used to be, and alienating Saudi Arabia to a point of no return will be an exceedingly foolish thing to do. 

Above all, will the military-industrial complex in the US countenance a US-Saudi break-up? Saudi Arabia is the proverbial goose that lays golden eggs. It is a terrific paymaster for the American arms industry. Geopolitical analysts often call it the US’ ATM. Equally, the bottom line is that the Democrats wouldn’t even be able to garner enough Republican support to pass legislation once Congress is back in session next month. 

The Saudi statement concludes with a word of advice for American diplomacy in these extraordinary times of multipolarity: “Resolving economic challenges requires the establishment of a non-politicised constructive dialogue, and to wisely and rationally consider what serves the interests of all countries.” (Emphasis added.) It ended recalling that “the solid pillars upon which the Saudi-US relationship had stood over the past eight decades” include mutual respect and common interests, amongst other things.     

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Russophobia | , , , | 1 Comment

Putin explains why there are no peace talks with Ukraine

Samizdat – October 14, 2022

Ukraine is refusing to engage in peace talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalists on Friday, when asked about possible negotiations to end the conflict between the two countries.

The Kiev government “had been saying that they wanted talks and ostensibly asked for them, but now they issued a formal decision that prohibits them,” he said during a press conference in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Earlier this month, Zelensky signed a decree forbidding any negotiations with Putin, saying Ukraine will only talk to Russia when it has a different president. Speaking to journalists on Friday, Putin remarked that mediation by nations including Türkey between Moscow and Kiev may be required, if Ukraine’s position changes.

Putin recalled that Russia and Ukraine reached a preliminary agreement which could have the halted hostilities, during Turkey-mediated talks in late March.

“Those agreements were almost initialled. But as soon as the troops were pulled back from Kiev, the leadership in Kiev lost all desire to have talks,” he remarked.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced a withdrawal of troops from the Ukrainian capital after news broke that the negotiators in Istanbul had agreed on a draft treaty. Under its terms, Ukraine would have pledged to maintain a neutral status and not allow foreign troops and military installations on its soil, in exchange for security guarantees from foreign nations, including Russia.

Days later, President Vladimir Zelensky accused Russian troops of committing war crimes, claiming that evidence was discovered in Bucha, one of the towns near Kiev that the Russian army had left. He declared that the Ukrainian people would not allow him to negotiate with Russia after the discovery. Moscow claimed that the evidence was fabricated to justify breaking off the talks.

According to Russian diplomats, Moscow wrote up a formal peace agreement based on Ukrainian proposals and sent it to Kiev, but never heard anything back.

According to Ukrainian media reports in May, Zelensky was pressured into breaking off negotiations with Russia by Boris Johnson, then-prime minister of Britain. Johnson arrived in Kiev, “almost without warning” on April 9. He allegedly told the Ukrainian leader that Western nations would refuse to sign up to the security guarantees that Kiev wanted to receive under the proposed peace treaty.

President Zelensky has repeatedly stated that his only goal in the conflict is to defeat Russia on the battlefield and retake control of all territories that Kiev claims to be under its sovereignty.

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | 1 Comment

SpaceX calls on Pentagon to foot Ukraine bill – media

Samizdat | October 14, 2022

Elon Musk’s aerospace firm has asked the US military to pay for its Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine, saying it is no longer able to foot the cost of operations, according to company documents obtained by CNN.

In a letter sent to the Pentagon last month, SpaceX outlined its financial difficulties and asked the government to begin funding Starlink services for Ukraine, claiming it will cost more than $120 million for the rest of 2022, and some $400 million over the next 12 months.

“We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX’s director of government sales said in the letter.

SpaceX has donated around 20,000 Starlink satellite units to Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict in late February, providing internet connection and military coordination in chaotic battlegrounds that would otherwise be cut off from the web. Ukrainian officials have hailed the system as “an essential part of critical infrastructure.”

Kiev has nonetheless urged the company to send thousands of additional Starlink terminals, with another letter obtained by CNN showing that a top Ukrainian general, Valery Zaluzhny, directly asked for 8,000 units back in July. An outside consultant for SpaceX later wrote that the firm “faces terribly difficult decisions here,” adding “I do not think they have the financial ability to provide any additional terminals or service as requested by General Zaluzhny.”

Musk has stated that SpaceX will have spent more than $100 million providing Starlink services to Ukraine by the end of the year. However the company’s letter to the Pentagon indicates that the “vast majority” of the 20,000 units furnished to Kiev have received “full or partial funding” from the American, British and Polish governments.

Other contributions come from NGOs and private fundraisers, though SpaceX has covered most of the service costs of around $4,500 per terminal each month.

More recently, SpaceX has come under fire for alleged Starlink outages across some regions of Ukraine, with the Financial Times relaying reports from Ukrainian soldiers of a “catastrophic” loss of communications last week.

The cause of the outages remains unclear, though Ukrainian officials insist the problems were not the result of a technical glitch or cyberattacks, instead suggesting “SpaceX-imposed geographical restrictions.” Service has since resumed in the affected areas, however.

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | 2 Comments

« Previous Entries