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‘Smile-kill-enjoy’: Motto of candidate to lead Israel’s National Guard

The former Unit 101 paratrooper commander, told his soldiers to enjoy killing Palestinians

The Cradle – April 10 2023

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, one of the leading candidates to head Israel’s new National Guard is Avinoam Emunah, a retired colonel known for advocating violence against Palestinians.

Middle East Eye (MEE) noted that Emunah is the former commander of the infamous elite paratroopers Unit 101. Established in 1953, the unit was first led by former general and prime minister Ariel Sharon and was known for carrying out operations terrorizing Palestinian, Jordanian, and Egyptian civilians.

While a member of Unit 101, Emunah fought in campaigns during the Second Intifada, the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, and the war on Gaza in 2014.

Sources in the Israeli military report that Emunah punished his soldiers who did not use enough violence during fighting in the Gaza Strip in 2014.

In addition, a Video emerged of Emunah telling his soldiers, “Much of the time, you’ll be seeing them fleeing … Kill them as they flee” and “Smile, guys. You should enjoy it. Try to enjoy it.”

In a 2015 article published in an army magazine, he dubbed the “smile-kill-enjoy” motto as “words to spur on” the troops.

On 2 April, Israel’s government announced the establishment of the National Guard under the supervision of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who is also known for his extreme anti-Palestinian views.

Haaretz reported as well that when asked who he would like to see enlist in the national guard, Ben-Gvir specifically mentioned La Familia, the racist hooligan fan club of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team, and said that there are “officers and ethical people” among them.

The Israeli government approved a budget of around $278 million for the establishment of the armed branch while also increasing the salaries of over 3,000 police officers.

Ben Gvir said the establishment of the National Guard is “important news for Israeli residents and will improve personal security.”

However, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel called the proposed national guard “a private, armed militia that … will first and foremost act in mixed cities, first and foremost against the Arab population.”

Ben Gvir had previously called for establishing an Israeli National Guard to prepare the country for a new “imminent” war with Hamas.

The deal to establish the National Guard was reached with Gvir’s party, Otzma Yehudit, in exchange for not leaving the government over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intention to postpone the legislation of the controversial judicial reform bill.

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

‘Pentagon Leak’ Indicates US Allies Not Falling in Line With Washington’s All-In Ukraine Policy

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 11.04.2023

The apparent Pentagon leak has shown that Washington’s attempts to force its allies into following its military agenda is not working well anymore, as the Kiev regime is losing grip and ground, Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, told Sputnik.

Alleged Pentagon documents, with some of them marked “top secret,” have found their way to the web over the past few weeks. The trove contains information ranging from American military plans in Ukraine, to sensitive data linked to China and the Middle East, and also shed new light on Washington’s spying on its allies. This is not the first time that Pentagon documents have been leaked: in 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies, turned over a batch of Pentagon files pertaining to the US’ involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967 to The New York Times, which prompted a heated public debate. Meanwhile, the veracity of the latest trove is in question, as South Korea, the UK, Israel, and Bulgaria have dismissed the apparent leak as “false.”

“There’s so much speculation,” said Daniel McAdams. “Could it be someone from the Pentagon who understands that the White House has absolutely no idea what it’s doing and is dragging us into World War III? Could it be someone like that, a whistleblower? Possibly. Could it be someone in the White House understanding that this is a lost war? They’ve lost the war and they’re looking for an off-ramp. And if they could point out the fact that Ukraine’s resources are severely depleted when the so-called spring offensive comes and it fails like most people expect it to fail, they could say, ‘Well, the information was out there. You all knew that they didn’t have a chance anyway, so it’s not our fault. See you later.’ You know, that could be another thing.”

Judging from the documents in question, the US has recently been busy with persuading its allies to kick off deliveries of military equipment and lethal weapons to the Kiev regime. The alleged Pentagon files shed light on Seoul’s concerns that artillery shells provided to the US by South Korea could then be transferred to Ukraine. The batch also showed that the US has not given up hope on forcing Tel Aviv into sending missiles to the Kiev regime and even alleged that the Bulgarian government is considering sending Kiev its MiG fighter jets. However, the US allies have resolutely denied planning any of the aforementioned weaponrs deliveries to Kiev.

“I don’t think it’s anything unusual to see the US pressuring its so-called allies into doing what Washington wants done on foreign policy,” McAdams noted. “I mean, the leaks are very strange, because it’s not obvious what the purpose of leaking them was right now. The idea that the US is pressuring countries like South Korea and Israel is not a surprise, but it does show at least that the US is all-in on its Ukraine policy and it’s demanding that the rest of the world fall in line (…) There are two reasons [for the US pressuring its allies to give weapons to Ukraine]. First of all, the neocons (…) who run our foreign policy, they never back off. They never back away. That’s number one. And number two, this whole thing is a money-laundering scheme. The Central Europeans give up Soviet-era weapons, and then they use money given to them by Washington to purchase brand new weapons from the US military-industrial complex. This is a massive scam on a multi-tens of billions of dollars scale.”

The US sent Ukraine nearly $47 billion worth of military aid last year and still Washington is pressuring smaller allied nations to join its effort and fork out. However, the problem is that it isn’t working and those countries are pushing back and saying “no,” McAdams continued. He cited French President Emmanuel Macron as saying recently: “We can’t just follow the Americans on their foreign policy anymore.” According to the US scholar, this is a clear indication that “there is a shift coming.” In addition, it has also become clear that the Kiev regime is incapable of winning on the battlefield and negotiations are long overdue. The apparent Pentagon leak describes a gloomy picture of Ukraine’s depleted stockpiles and manpower.

“I think what it says is that it’s hopeless. But again, the strange thing about these leaks is that this is hardly a revelation. Anyone who follows the Ukraine-Russia conflict beyond just watching CNN understands that Ukraine is in a terrible situation. It’s already lost a thousand tanks. Another 100 tanks is not going to make a big difference. You can’t train a military on all of these different weapons systems and military systems and none of them are interconnected, none of them match. You’ve got a German tank over here, an English tank over here, and an American tank over here. You can’t win a war that way against any opponent, but certainly not against the Russian military. It can’t be won that way. So it’s not a revelation, it confirms what many people who are following this thing already know,” McAdams concluded.

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Peace is Breaking Out in the Middle East… and Washington is Not Happy!

By Ron Paul | April 10, 2023

While we were being distracted by the ongoing Russia/Ukraine war – and Washington’s increasing involvement in the war – tremendous developments in the Middle East have all but ended decades of US meddling in the region. Peace is breaking out in the Middle East and Washington is not at all happy about it!

Take, for example, the recent mending of relations between Saudi Arabia and formerly bitter adversaries Iran and Syria. A China-brokered deal between the Saudis and Iran has them re-establishing full diplomatic relations, with the foreign ministers of both countries meeting in Beijing last week. It is the highest level meeting between the two countries in seven years.

Additionally, Riyadh is expected to invite Syria back into the Arab League and Syrian president Assad may attend the next Arab League summit. Syria was suspended from the Arab League 12 years ago when then-US allies in the Middle East signed on to Washington’s “Assad must go” policy that wreaked havoc across the region.

And the nearly decade-long war in Yemen, which has devastated that population, appears to finally be ending, as Saudi Arabia is expected to announce an end to its US-backed war on that country. Troops from the United Arab Emirates are leaving Yemen and a Saudi delegation is arriving to negotiate a peace deal.

To normal people the idea of peace breaking out in the Middle East is a wonderful thing. But Washington is anything but normal. President Biden dispatched his CIA Director, William Burns, to Saudi Arabia in a surprise visit last week. According to press reports, Burns was sent to express Washington’s surprise and frustration over the peace deals going through. Biden’s foreign policy team “has felt blindsided” by Saudi Arabia’s sudden move to get along with its neighbors.

Washington is angry that Saudi Arabia will start trading with Syria and Iran because those two countries are still under “crippling” US sanctions. One by one, as these countries begin ignoring US-demanded sanctions, the entirety of US foreign policy is being exposed as a paper tiger – just bluster and threats.

Middle East developments have revealed a dirty secret about US foreign policy. Washington has for a long time used a “divide and conquer” strategy to keep countries in the Middle East – and elsewhere – at each other’s throats. Sanctions, covert operations, and color revolutions have all been used to make sure that these countries do not get along with each other and that DC controls who runs the show.

As unlikely as it may seem to some, China has moved into the region with a different policy. China seeks business partners, not to manipulate the internal politics of the Middle East. They may be ruthless in their own way, but it is suddenly clear that the countries of this region are tired of US meddling and are looking for new partners.

We non-interventionists are often attacked as “isolationists,” but as I have always said, it is the neocons and interventionists in Washington who are really isolating us from the rest of the world. Nowhere is that more evident these days in the Middle East. It didn’t have to be this way, but if this is the end of US meddling in Middle East affairs then ultimately it is a good thing for the American people… and for peace.

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Kremlin responds to claim of secret rocket purchases

RT | April 11, 2023

The Kremlin has rejected a claim that it was planning to secretly acquire rockets from Egypt. The allegations were said to have come from leaked US intelligence files.

“This looks like yet another false story, as there are many of them today [in the media]. That is how one should treat such reports,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a phone call with journalists on Tuesday.

The Washington Post cited a US intelligence document on Monday that claimed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had ordered the production of up to 40,000 rockets so they could be discreetly shipped to Russia.

El-Sisi was quoted as telling officials that the operation should be secret “to avoid problems with the West.” He also reportedly mentioned plans to supply Moscow with artillery rounds and gunpowder.

According to the Post, the document was among alleged classified Pentagon files that were dumped online earlier this year and unearthed by news organizations last week.

Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid told the Post that Cairo remains committed to non-involvement in the Ukraine conflict and to “maintain equal distance with both sides.”

“We continue to urge both parties to cease hostilities and reach a political solution through negotiations,” Zeid said.

Al Qahera News, meanwhile, cited an Egyptian official who claimed that the Post’s story is “nonsense that is not based on truth.”

Egypt has maintained close ties with Moscow since Soviet times and is one of the top buyers of Russian weapons. At the same time, the country has good relations with the US, as the two states share a history of security cooperation. The US has also provided military assistance to Egypt.

The US and its allies have imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, aiming to cut its export revenues.

Sergey Chemezov – the head of state-run Russian company Rostec, which oversees the work of several defense manufacturers – said in January that the production of munitions has been substantially increased. He stated that “the talk… about Russia running out of rockets and rounds is complete nonsense.”

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception | | Leave a comment

‘Pentagon Leak’ Shows US Dragging Allies Into War With Russia

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 11.04.2023

South Korea, the UK, Israel, and Bulgaria have all rushed to deny the veracity of the alleged Pentagon leak. The dump not only exposed Washington’s possible plans and routine spying, but also cast a shadow on its allies, with Seoul, London, Tel Aviv, and Sofia branding the batch as “false.”

The US Justice Department on April 10 opened an investigation into the purported leak of US Department of Defense intelligence documents. The trove of apparently classified files contains the Pentagon’s assessments of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and Washington’s efforts to persuade its allies to jump on its proxy war bandwagon.

“I think [the documents are] extraordinary, for a number of reasons,” Professor Joe Siracusa, US political expert and dean of Global Futures, Curtin University, told Sputnik. “Number one, most leaks in the past we’ve learned about in retrospect. These documents are fresh. Some of them are barely 40 days old and tell us exactly the debates that are going on in South Korea. South Korea doesn’t like to pass on ammunition to third parties, for example. And there’s a debate within South Korea about the pressure from the Americans. And there it is. It’s all in the documents. It’s not even in the South Korean media. What’s extraordinary about this is how recent these documents are. And it’s not like Snowden, or Chelsea Manning, or Julian Assange, [where] sometimes the documents are two or three years afterwards, or even in my day, the Pentagon Papers were many years afterwards. These are very fresh and, I think, very embarrassing.”

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

The much-discussed Pentagon docs showed that South Korea found itself between a rock and a hard place after agreeing to sell artillery shells to help the United States replenish its stockpiles. The problem was that Seoul was worried that Washington would divert munitions to the Kiev regime. The Asian nation’s official policy prohibits it from providing lethal weapons to countries at war. In addition, the report concerning South Korea’s back-and-forths was based on signals intelligence, meaning the US has been spying on its ally, as per The New York Times.

While the leak risks triggering tensions between Washington and Seoul, it may simultaneously backfire on longstanding relations between South Korea and Russia. Addressing the plenary session of the Valdai International Discussion Club in October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Seoul against arming the Kiev regime. The Russian president suggested that Seoul would be similarly disappointed if Moscow had resumed nuclear cooperation with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Likewise, Israel appears to be displeased after the disclosure of potential scenarios in which the US believes Tel Aviv would supply Ukraine with lethal weapons. One of the scenarios, eloquently titled the “Turkish Model,” envisages that Israel could supply defense systems to Kiev through a third party while still calling for dialogue between Ukraine and Russia. The Pentagon’s list of Israeli weapons supposedly includes Barak 8 missiles, the Spyder air defense system, and Spike anti-tank missiles.

The apparently leaked report hypothesized that Tel Aviv would provide lethal weapons to Ukraine in the event of a diplomatic crisis with Moscow stemming from Russia’s growing ties with Iran. Moscow’s reinforcement of Syria’s air defenses resulting in the downing of Israeli aircraft could also drive a wedge between Israel and Russia, as per the document.

Yet another scenario raised by the report envisions US cooperation with Israel to prepare action against Tehran in order to persuade the Israelis to arm the Kiev regime.

While Israeli administrations have avoided sending lethal weapons to Kiev, the Israeli media alleged in November 2022 that Tel Aviv had agreed to fund several million dollars’ worth of supplies of “strategic materials” to Ukraine. The Israeli authorities allegedly asked participants of the deal to keep it on the hush so as not to anger Moscow. Media also suggested that Israel is covertly aiding Ukraine with intelligence and that Tel Aviv had agreed that NATO members could supply the Kiev regime with weapons systems containing Israeli components like electro-optical and fire-control systems.

To frustrate Israeli officials even further, the alleged Pentagon documents suggested that the leadership of the Israeli secret service Mossad had encouraged the agency’s staff and Israeli citizens to participate in protests against the nation’s judicial reform, advocated by the Netanyahu government.

The much-discussed docs further alleged that a Russian fighter jet “nearly shot down” a British spy plane off the coast of Crimea on September 29, 2022. At the time, UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace did not describe the incident as “a near-shootdown,” but called it a “malfunction,” adding that he had spoken with senior Russian defense officials about it.

As per the US press, the apparent episode shows that despite their bellicose rhetoric, Western military officials are trying hard to avoid being drawn directly into conflict with Moscow.

When it comes to Bulgaria, the country allegedly offered to donate its MiG-29s to Kiev, as per “the Pentagon leak.” On April 10, the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense asserted to the public that it had not held any talks on the provision of MiG-29 jets to Ukraine. “Such a decision would lead to a deficit of capabilities which is contrary to the country’s Constitution,” the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense stated.

Who’s Behind the ‘Leak’?

As per the American press, US officials have confirmed that the Pentagon docs “appear to be legitimate intelligence and operational briefs” compiled by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, adding that at least one had been modified from the original at some point. Nonetheless, the media highlighted, citing US officials, that the apparent authenticity of the documents “is not an indication of their accuracy.”

“When they first came out, the Pentagon denied they were real,” Siracusa said. “There was a little fairy tale about these may be fake documents. Well, they are not fake documents. Someone might have fooled around with a sentence or two. They’re real documents and they come from the top Joint Chiefs, from various PowerPoint displays or whatever it is. Somebody stole these and passed them out. And so you ask yourself, were these passed on to show that the Ukrainians are probably now losing the war or were they passed on as a signal to other people? I mean, is this somebody who’s trying to bring peace to the region? I’m very interested in why people take this information. Because taking this information and publishing it is treason.”

The US political expert wonders as to who leaked the documents and what goals they are pursuing. According to Siracusa, they could be motivated by a higher humanitarian purpose or “might have just simply been released as a childhood or as a pubescent conflict between two kids who can get into the system who were playing games.” At the same time, someone in the Pentagon may have released these to show the American people that the US proxy war in Ukraine is doomed and they are trying to sweeten the pill, showing in advance that there were preconditions for a defeat, the professor presumed.

“I’m very curious about who released them and why,” he said. “Right now, people say there’s not much importance in them. That’s not true at all, because the very fact that they were released suggests to me that there are leaks at the highest levels of the Pentagon. And when things escape the Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings, I have to ask myself, ‘Well, why did that happen?’ Or maybe it actually happened with somebody on the Joint Chiefs who’s very unhappy about this situation. All kinds of things are whirling on beneath the actual story itself. We don’t know the real story yet. But I think, once we find out, if we find out who leaked this and why, I think we’ll even have a bigger story than we have today.”

Remarkably, the apparent leak followed Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s Nord Stream bombshell, which detailed how US and Norwegian operatives axed the underwater pipelines at the request of the Biden administration. In his follow-up articles on Substack, Hersh hinted that disgruntled CIA officials could be behind the leak of the Nord Stream plot. However, the US mainstream press almost completely ignored the veteran journalist’s story, in contrast to the latest Pentagon dump, which has been widely disseminated by the Western press over the past week.

US Proxy War in Ukraine is De Facto Direct Involvement

The NYT called the Pentagon leaks a “nightmare for the Five Eyes” intelligence alliance. However, Siracusa does not believe that the apparent leak will pose a challenge to the Anglophone bloc. As per him, it won’t impact the bloc’s intelligence sharing. However, when it comes to other allies of Washington, the unfolding scandal has definitely hit a raw nerve.

“I think The New York Times saying that this is going to have an enormous impact on the Five Eyes is an exaggeration,” Siracusa said. “I mean, the Five Eyes are on board anyway, and they’ll put up with it. But I think it would be a little disturbing to me if I were a leader of a government to find out that my deepest conversations with my military chiefs was being reported in The New York Times. I would just wonder ‘How reliable is an ally that allows top secret information, these conversations, my words, your words, to be published in print for the world to see and for my enemies to use against me.’ I think if you were a friend of the United States, tonight you’d be a little more nervous than you were yesterday.”

To complicate matters further, the leak pertains to the US and NATO’s ongoing proxy war in Ukraine and their attempts to involve more nations in their fold, thus putting the latter in dire straits. According to Siracusa, “these leaked documents (…) show that America is guiding the war, it’s providing targeting information, satellite information” to hit Russian troops and positions. The professor highlighted that he regards “a proxy war as a real war.” “This is direct involvement,” he stressed.

“I do not approve of American proxy involvement in this war. And when I find out that America is playing a leading role, continuing the war, because the longer this war goes on, the more people who are going to die, and it’s going to have no purpose at the end, because Russia will get the Donbass and Crimea, all the rest of it. I mean, there is nothing that Zelensky or the Americans can do to change the outcome, that they could have had one year ago. Now I’m looking at direct American involvement in a war that the United States says it’s not directly involved in. Well, look, that’s a lie,” Siracusa concluded.

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Kiev to run out of its anti-air missiles

By Lucas Leiroz | April 11, 2023

Apparently, it is increasingly difficult to hide the catastrophic situation of Kiev’s war arsenal. According to a major Western media outlet, the neo-Nazi regime will run out of most of its anti-air missiles by next month. The source of the newspaper would be an alleged leaked Pentagon’s document. The case shows once again how unfavorable the military scenario of the conflict is for the Ukrainian forces.

The subject was discussed in a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal. According to the outlet, documents leaked on the Pentagon’s official social networks would have exposed an extremely pessimistic forecast about the future of the Ukrainian armed forces, pointing to the nearly total exhaustion of Kiev’s anti-aircraft defense capacity. Anti-air missiles are expected to run out in May, which will further complicate the Ukrainian situation and boost demand for new NATO weapons packages in order to prolong the alliance’s proxy war.

The forecast is based on a calculation taking into account the recent numbers of the Ukrainian army. Currently, Kiev is expending about 69 Buk missiles and 200 S-300 missiles a month to maintain its defense positions against the Russian air attacks. With these numbers, it is most likely that the Buk missiles will run out in early April and that the stock of S-300s will expire by May 3rd, according to Pentagon’s officials in the leaked document.

Indeed, some measures to mitigate the effects of Ukrainian anti-aircraft weakness have already been taken by Western forces. Kiev received three Iris-T anti-aircraft systems from Germany, in addition to eight American NASAMS systems. However, these devices allow a limited number of launches, which do not cover as much territory as the S-300 missiles. This limited aid has made it difficult to efficiently supply new Western missiles to Ukraine, making Kiev still heavily dependent on Soviet-era launch systems.

In this sense, a new wave of broad military support would be needed to overcome the Ukrainian deficit. The US military, according to what is exposed in the revealed paper, estimate that the necessary number will reach 16 Irist-T or NASAMS batteries and up to 12 Patriot or SAMP-T batteries. It is necessary to remember that recently the American president Joe Biden had already authorized the sending of a Patriot battery, at the same time that Germany, France and Italy promised to supply a SAMP-T system to the neo-Nazi regime. However, this equipment has not yet reached Ukraine, which is why the situation of Kiev’s defense has not yet improved.

Since late 2022, requests for military aid focused on anti-aircraft defense have been constant in Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s speeches. He considers this type of equipment a “number one priority”, and his advisors have also requested, in addition to anti-missile systems, the well-known US F-16 fighter jets, which have been repeatedly banned by the US government. Some pro-Ukrainian analysts believe that these aid packages would be a kind of “game changer”, but renowned experts rule out any possibility of reversing the military scenario of the conflict, regardless of whether NATO weapons reach the battlefield.

It is important to note that the US government has not yet commented on the case, with the Pentagon being silent on the authenticity of the supposed leak. The matter comes amid a recent wave of releases of classified Pentagon’s documents. Other reports from the department were exposed on social networks, including information on sensitive topics such as China, the Middle East and terrorism. There has been strong distrust on the part of analysts about the veracity of these alleged leaks. Some commentators argue that if the releases were true there would be no room for the Western media to report their existence, with a strong censorship initiative trying to hide the incident.

Although there is not enough information to point out the veracity of these leakages, it is possible to say that at least with regard to the Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles, there is a great possibility that the numbers are real, considering the evident defeat of Kiev’s forces in the battlefield. In a more realistic perspective, it is possible to suspect that in fact there are no “leaks”, but that the Pentagon would be deliberately publishing the numbers to increase the fear of a Ukrainian defeat in public opinion, boosting support for the shipment of new weapons.

What we have seen recently is the absolute failure of the “Ukrainian victory” narrative, as Russian advances have made it clear which side militarily controls the combats. Due to this, there seems to be currently an attempt at “damage control”, with officials and mainstream media partially admitting Ukraine’s defeat. If before the justification for sending weapons was that Kiev would be winning, now it is said that Kiev is losing, but “must win”. The aim is to spread anti-Russian fear in public opinion and to convince ordinary citizens that the shipment of weapons is an urgent measure in order to save the West.

In a rational and strategic analysis, it is possible to see that at no time did Moscow show interest in expanding the limits of its military operation, therefore there is no reason for any kind of fear on the part of Western citizens. On the other hand, the exhaustion of Ukrainian forces seems to be good news, since, faced with the inability to continue fighting, the Kiev regime would be forced to surrender, which would end hostilities. This would be the best-case scenario for all sides except for NATO’s pro-war elites.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist and researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Invading Mexico in the Name of the Drug War Is a Really Bad Idea

By Weimin Chen – Mises Wire – 04/10/2023

Following the violent attack on Americans in the Mexican border city of Matamoros in early March, South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham stated that he was prepared to get tough and introduce legislation to set the stage for US military intervention in Mexico. The move would be a significant escalation in the long-running war on drugs that has been raging under the auspices of the United States for many decades to the dismay of many Latin American countries.

Graham continues to ignore the disastrous results of the use of force in US foreign policy as he eyes adding Mexico to his growing bucket list of interventionist missions. If previous interventions serve as examples, a US military intervention in Mexico would be just another excuse to expand national security interests and mire the country in another costly conflict.

Matamoros Attack

Graham’s comments on using military force in Mexico were sparked when four Americans were kidnapped in Matamoros on the Mexican side of the border with Texas. The area is known for having a heavy drug cartel presence due to its proximity to the US-Mexico border. The four Americans have been identified as Latavia “Tay” McGee, Shaeed Woodard, Zindell Brown, and Eric James Williams.

McGee’s mother told reporters that her daughter was traveling to undergo a cosmetic surgical procedure with the other three. They were fired on in downtown Matamoros and loaded into a pickup truck. A local woman, Areli Pablo Servando, was also killed by a stray bullet in the attack. Brown and Woodard were eventually found dead, while Williams and McGee survived.

Later, a letter of apology along with five men found with their hands tied were turned over to authorities of the Tamaulipas state law enforcement purportedly by the Scorpion faction of the Gulf Cartel. The organization extended its apology to the families of the victims and to the people of Matamoros in general for the poor decision-making and discipline of its affiliated associates.

This public relations move indicated that the cartel was alarmed by the outcry following the attack and wanted to frame it as an unusual incident outside of the ordinary rules under which it operates. Chances are that the cartel wanted to do anything they could to avoid direct US military confrontation.

Policymakers against the Cartels

Graham told Fox News that he would introduce legislation “to make certain Mexican drug cartels foreign terrorist organizations under US law and set the stage to use military force if necessary to protect America from being poisoned by things coming out of Mexico.” This highlights the concern surrounding the trafficking of fentanyl into the US from Mexico and the deadly toll it has been having on the population, and there is a growing sentiment, especially among Republican leaders, for more to be done about it.

Former attorney general Bill Barr concurred with the notion of US military action against cartels and recommended declaring the groups as “foreign terrorist organizations.” Texas representative Dan Crenshaw and Florida representative Michael Waltz have expressed their desires to authorize the president to use military force against “those responsible for trafficking fentanyl or a fentanyl-related substance into the United States or carrying out other related activities that cause regional destabilization in the Western Hemisphere.” Seventeen Republicans have cosponsored that resolution.

Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on Twitter that the US “should strategically strike and take out the Mexican Cartels, not the Mexican government or their people, but the Mexican Cartels which control them all.” This common assurance that America’s execution of military plans will simply target the right people and nobody else has been used in virtually every instance of the US using force in foreign conflicts. It shows either the hubris of US foreign policy or its indifference to the lives of its innocent victims abroad.

Roots of Violence

These calls for military intervention would serve as another layer of policies and actions already implemented by the US that have had disastrous consequences. After all, the violence in Mexico is an extension of the war on drugs started by American policy. In just the last decade, the US Drug Enforcement Administration has been found laundering millions of dollars in cash and delivering drugs for Mexican traffickers, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives was found to have illegally proliferated nearly two thousand firearms with the intention of tracking criminal elements. These firearms were subsequently lost and used in cartel violence on both sides of the border.

Meanwhile, US-trained Mexican troops and federal police officers have committed widespread human rights violations. If these are the policies that have already been implemented, sending the military would be adding fuel to the fire.

Graham followed up with his statements on military force and clarified that he did not mean sending the US Army to invade Mexico but to destroy drug labs. This is reminiscent of the beginning of the US missions in the war on terror in Afghanistan, when special forces under the Joint Special Operations Command were implemented in secret raids that were highly controversial in their lack of accountability in causing collateral damage and civilian casualties. Without any clear definition of success and with the dubious effectiveness of using military force, this kind of endeavor would be susceptible to mission creep and expansions of the scope and spending, just as it did in the many interventions of the war on terror.

Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has already responded to the remarks by Republican lawmakers, saying that any US military intervention in his country would represent an unacceptable infringement of Mexican sovereignty. If the US military’s track record provides any indication, the direct use of force in Mexico would likely cause more pain and suffering in a country with a population already plagued by violence.

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Taliban did in one year what Washington couldn’t in 20, sparking new panic

The ban on Afghan poppy cultivation is set to hit Europe’s heroin supplies

By Rachel Marsden | RT | April 11, 2023

It’s been nearly a year since the Taliban banned Afghan poppy farming used for the production of opioids. The impact of the move is set to hit global markets sometime soon, given the delay from farm to customer.

You’d think that would bring a welcome sigh of relief. Apparently not. Reports are now suggesting that a lack of Afghan heroin on the global market and a reduction of available natural opioids like heroin could lead to increased use of synthetic opioids like fentanyl. If that’s the case, then it’s only because Washington and the West are about as competent at curtailing skyrocketing drug overdose deaths as they were at tackling the cultivation of Afghan opioids back when they had control of the country. Synthetic opioids from China and Mexico are increasingly being used, as are those procured through prescriptions within America’s own healthcare system.

Over the course of the US-led Global War on Terror that kicked off in Afghanistan in 2001, heroin overdoses in the US and elsewhere spiked. Despite having control over the country and its government for two decades, Washington not only failed to curtail farming and exports of Afghan opium, but oversaw an increase.

In February 2004, then US Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Robert Charles, outlined a new policy for countering “narcoterrorism” in Afghanistan before Congress. He cited a desire to assist the US-backed Afghan government with its objective “to eliminate opium poppy cultivation and trade in 10 years.” The project would involve deploying CIA-linked USAID to poppy-growing areas to help find alternative farming solutions. But there have always been strong doubts over the sincerity of such efforts. A US Department of Justice policy paper from 1991 accused the CIA of “complicity in the narcotics trade” in Afghanistan, underscoring that “covert CIA operations in Afghanistan, for example, have transformed South Asia from a self-contained opium zone into a major supplier of heroin for the world market.”

The CIA would certainly be in a position to know, having backed Mujahideen jihadist fighters against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the Cold War while the trafficking occurred right under its nose. Apparently old habits die hard.

In 2010, Former Director of the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia, Viktor Ivanov, met with NATO officials to request a mandate for destroying the poppy fields, citing 30,000 opium-related deaths in Russia. “We cannot be in a situation where we remove the only source of income of people who live in the second poorest country in the world without being able to provide them with an alternative,” NATO spokesman James Appathurai replied, according to Reuters.

Clearly, they just weren’t that interested. It now seems that the US and NATO counter insurgency mission served in part as cover for safeguarding and protecting the opium fields from destruction – which the Taliban had already gone about doing before the 2001 US invasion. Propping up Western proxies doesn’t come cheap, and some things simply aren’t fit for the accounting books back home. It’s no secret that the CIA has a history of using narcotic trafficking to support US interests abroad while simultaneously accusing the local opposition of doing just that – from Nicaragua and Haiti to Southeast Asia, Indochina, and even France.

According to a State Department fact sheet from the pre-2001 archives, Taliban poppy cultivation bans “lacked credibility.” Yet it was Washington’s public proclamations of eradication that never came to fruition. Similarly, Washington laughably charged Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with “narco-terrorism partnership with the FARC for the past 20 years,” in March 2020. This was despite Washington’s unconditional backing of South American ally, Colombia – an actual narco-state whose cocaine production exploded under the leadership of former President Ivan Duque even as President Joe Biden introduced him at the White House in 2022 as “my friend.” Biden added: “We’ve known each other for a long while, and we were reminiscing about how far back we go… I’ve been deeply engaged with the relationship with Colombia for a long time, going back more than 20 years to that old Plan Colombia.”

Funny that Biden should mention Plan Colombia – a US-backed multi-billion dollar program to fight drugs and insurgency in the country, which is largely considered to be a counter narcotics failure. It didn’t even really provide lasting counterinsurgency results, according to members of former President Barack Obama’s own administration, concluding that “our collective failure to control either drug abuse or drug trafficking has exacted an enormous human toll.”

Washington has historically been both disingenuous and incompetent when it comes to fighting illicit drug use. The fact that the Taliban finally has an opportunity to do what Washington was never able or willing to do – despite claims to the contrary – closes one spigot. However, it won’t save Washington from its own failures on the drug front.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US once again turning sword to Latin America as its global power wanes

By Drago Bosnic | April 11, 2023

The political West is always “shocked” by how deeply unpopular it is in the Global South and cannot comprehend why it “dares” to refuse to side with them against Russia and/or China. This lesson is something the political elites of the United States and its numerous satellite states need to be reminded of from time to time. On the other hand, the political West never stopped treating the Global South as a fief that just so happens to be populated by several billion people, all of whom are seen as “fair game”. Needless to say, this has left disastrous consequences for the vast majority of those living in the targeted countries.

While some were attacked directly, such as Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, former Yugoslavia/Serbia, etc. others were being exploited “peacefully”. Luckily for the world, the power of the globe’s most imperialist bloc is gradually fading away. This is certainly not to say that it has already collapsed, but the process is well underway. The political West is also perfectly aware of this, so it now needs to prioritize which areas of the Global South it can target. Its days of waging war on the millions of unfortunate people of the Middle East will soon be over, very likely forever.

However, as the US power projection capabilities dwindle, it’s once again turning its sword toward the immediate neighborhood. And it’s not even trying to be at least somewhat subtle about it, as the people of Mexico are being threatened to find out because many in Washington DC believe it is the Mexicans’ “fault” that America is getting flooded with drugs smuggled in by the cartels. Ironically (or should we say hypocritically) enough, it was precisely the US intelligence services that essentially created these hideously violent organizations and also made sure the connection is kept under the rug.

Last month, after two US citizens were killed, presumably by members of the CDC (otherwise known as the Golf Cartel), Washington DC warhawks threatened to bomb Mexico, a country whose law enforcement works closely with the US to fight the cartels. Earlier, in January, Republicans Mike Waltz and Dan Crenshaw called for an Authorization for Use of Military Force against Mexican cartels for drug trafficking “that has caused destabilization in the Western Hemisphere.” Infamous Lindsey Graham, along with 16 Republican cosponsors, supported the bill and criticized the Biden administration for the deteriorating situation at the southern border, claiming that “up to 100,000 people have died from fentanyl poisoning coming from Mexico and China, and this administration has done nothing about it.”

While it could be argued that fighting cartels is certainly not a bad cause, we should not forget that somewhat similar “altruistic” motives were cited as the reason for virtually any war the US started. Blaming Mexico and China for the drug abuse “pandemic” in America will certainly not resolve this issue or any of the resulting violence across the country. If the establishment in Washington DC had the interests of regular Americans in mind, they would introduce bills allocating at least 10% of their massive $858 billion military budget to the improvement of healthcare, for instance.

Unfortunately, as Abraham Maslow famously wrote in 1966, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.” The case of Mexico is quite telling that no country (unless heavily armed) can hope to feel safe, no matter how closely it worked with the US authorities. For decades, Mexico has been ravaged by drug cartels deeply connected to the infamous CIA and other US intelligence agencies. And despite even allowing American law enforcement to operate in the country, thus undermining its own sovereignty, it’s still faced with the prospect of being attacked.

And Mexico is far from being the only target, as Washington DC is increasingly turning to Nicaragua, a small country in Central America that has already been virtually destroyed by Washington DC during the (First) Cold War when it funded the infamous Contras. Just like then, this time the US is once again “worried about human rights” in Nicaragua. As if that wasn’t laughable enough, Washington DC also officially designated the small country “a strategic threat”. Apparently, the “sole superpower” is endangered by a country roughly the size of New York State, but with the population of Maryland. And the US is also using so-called “international institutions” to target Nicaragua.

The Organization of American States (OAS) and the UN, both largely financed by Washington DC, are being used for this purpose, according to former UN rapporteur for human rights Richard Falk. If one is to believe the “human rights reports” about Nicaragua are true, President Daniel Ortega supposedly ordered 40 people to be “executed”, while conveniently leaving out the part about violent opposition attacks using firearms. The reports also claimed that Ortega ordered hospitals not to treat wounded demonstrators, although the then-health minister had made clear that anyone injured would receive treatment. US-backed “experts” also compared Nicaragua to Nazi Germany.

The glaring hypocrisy in this regard indicates that there is no “international law” for Washington DC. If a country is part of the “rules-based world order“, it can openly embrace Nazism, and it will still be considered “a beacon of freedom and democracy”, while the “Nazi analogies” are reserved for everyone else. Nicaragua should certainly be worried, as should the rest of Latin America. With the US’ ability to project power globally going down faster than most people could’ve imagined just ten years ago, the belligerent thalassocracy might try to revive the infamous Monroe Doctrine, leaving well over 600 million people in Latin America exposed to “freedom and democracy”.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.jj

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Hatched Plan to Threaten Russia With Nord Stream Sabotage in Late 2021, Sy Hersh Says

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 10.04.2023

President Biden publicly warned Moscow in early February of 2022 that the US would bring “an end” to the Nord Stream network if Russia began a military operation in Ukraine. Washington made good on that promise last September, with veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh providing the details in a bombshell Substack piece this past February.

The Biden administration hatched plans to threaten Moscow with the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines about two months before the escalation of the Donbass crisis into a full-blown conflagration between Russia and Ukraine, Seymour Hersh has said.

“The demand was issued just before New Year’s Eve 2021, probably around Christmas,” Hersh said in an interview with independent German media published Monday. “The idea was to find something out of the ordinary that the president could use, a lure or a threat to convince Putin not to attack.”

“Above all, it was a threat. I don’t think this administration is very good at persuasion. They operate more along the lines of ‘you are either with us or against us.’ The idea was to tell Putin: if you cross the border into Ukraine, we will blow up the pipelines,” Hersh added.

The veteran investigative journalist also pointed to another interesting detail about the weeks leading up to the conflict in Ukraine, saying he found it interesting that “hardly anyone pays attention” to the fact that the forces Russia had at its disposal in February 2022 numbered about 120,000 men, far fewer than required to defeat a country the size of Ukraine.

“So if people are still saying that Putin wanted to ‘take’ Kiev, you have to tell them: that’s just not the case. That would not have been possible at all. There were at least 60,000 troops in Kiev [in the spring of 2022, ed.]. And because Putin didn’t take the city, people like to say he failed. But I just can’t imagine how he could have done it with so few troops. It’s also worth remembering that the US and NATO greatly increased the numbers and upgraded the capabilities of the Ukrainian army in recent years, making this army at least formidable,” Hersh said.

The journalist suggested that whatever motivated Russia’s actions in the early days of the conflict, “one thing is clear: [Putin] did not use extreme force.” Hersh believes that what Moscow wants in Ukraine isn’t “physical control” or annexation, but its demilitarization and a measure of “political control over an area, particularly as far as foreign policy is concerned.” The “problem” driving the crisis, in Hersh’s estimation, is that Kiev has rejected demilitarization.

Furthermore, he said, even if Moscow and Kiev were willing to negotiate a compromise, “in the end it won’t matter because we [the US, ed.] don’t want it that way. The US has promised new money, including for fighter jets. We could train Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16 – which, by the way, is an old plane that the Russians could shoot down relatively easily. But don’t tell that to the newspaper people. What the US and NATO are doing right now lies somewhere between ‘stupid’ and ‘crazy.’”

Whatever comes next with the Nord Stream investigations, Hersh is confident that the Biden administration will “never admit” its responsibility, and that the legacy media in the US would be “perfectly happy” with such a state of affairs. The journalist fears the conflict in Ukraine could drag on for years, although “if Putin deploys his troops more decisively, things might go faster.” The US, he said, has already spent nearly $120 billion on the conflict to date, and will need to spend a lot more – something that might prove difficult as public opinion gradually turns against US policy.

Hersh also reiterated that the Nord Stream attack was just as much an attack on Europe as it was on Russia, pointing out that when the attack took place in September, “winter was just around the corner,” and Germany had proven only “partially successful” in filling up its underground reserves. Unusually mild weather and deliveries of explosively-priced liquefied natural gas helped, but led to a state of permanently high energy prices.

“What happens next? If it gets colder again in the fall and gas prices don’t come down, there will be more resentment against the man who started this crisis, Joe Biden. I don’t know what your chancellor is doing or what he’s done. I don’t know if he knew in advance or not. But by blowing up the pipelines, Biden was telling the Europeans: I don’t have your support, I’m afraid you might falter if it comes to a stalemate with Russia. It was his way of saying: I need more money from the NATO partners, maybe even troops, especially from Germany,” Hersh said. This could prove important for Biden in the long term, the journalist believes, given the threat of a US economic downturn, inflation, high interest rates and bank failures.

Hersh compared the decision to strike Nord Stream to the Bush administration’s decision to respond to 9/11 by invading Iraq, saying there’s a “word for” such policy: stupidity.

“Biden certainly has a chance of being included in the list of dumbest post-war US presidents – blowing up an ally’s gas supply, leaving the German chancellor with problems keeping his citizens warm and Germany prosperous is unwise. I don’t know what will happen to Scholz. I really don’t know. I’m speaking to people from the Bundestag, but nothing seems to be happening there. Where is the German report [on Nord Stream, ed.]? When will it be published? In 3,000 years?”

The journalist pointed out that during the German chancellor’s famous visit to Washington in February 2022, about two weeks before Russia kicked off its special operation, where Biden warned openly that if Russian troops crossed into Ukraine, “there will be no longer a Nord Stream – we will bring an end to it,” the German chancellor remained silent instead of challenging the US president.

“It would have been nice if Scholz had said: I support the president in everything he said, but blowing up the pipelines would be unacceptable. But he didn’t say anything. His biggest problem is that he has become a collaborator since my first Nord Stream story. He denied nothing, protested nothing, investigated nothing,” Hersh said.

Hersh’s bombshell reporting on the Nord Stream attack now serves as the basis of Russia’s calls for an independent, international investigation into the act of terror. After ignoring his reporting and then trying to smear the Pulitzer Prize winner as a “discredited journalist,” legacy media have come up with alternative explanations about who was responsible, citing a mysterious “pro-Ukrainian group” with no links to any government and a rented yacht purportedly used to carry out the attack. Media tweaked the “yacht” story last week to say that it may have been “only a decoy” in a much larger operation after a backlash about the original story’s unbelievable claims.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Republican Congress Members and Presidential Candidates Pushing for War in Mexico

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | April 10, 2023

Back in September of 2018, I criticized Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s suggestion that the United States military invade Mexico if Mexico legalizes heroin. Now, several Republican Congress members are using fentanyl fears as a new drug war basis for urging US military action south of the border.

Politico writer Alexander Ward provided details in a Monday article. The article begins with the following:

A growing number of prominent Republicans are rallying around the idea that to solve the fentanyl crisis, America must bomb it away.

In recent weeks, Donald Trump has discussed sending “special forces” and using “cyber warfare” to target cartel leaders if he’s reelected president and, per Rolling Stone, asked for “battle plans” to strike Mexico. Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) introduced a bill seeking authorization for the use of military force to “put us at war with the cartels.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said he is open to sending U.S. troops into Mexico to target drug lords even without that nation’s permission. And lawmakers in both chambers have filed legislation to label some cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, a move supported by GOP presidential aspirants.

While much focus has been on Mexico, fighting drug cartels can mean globe-spanning US military action.

Read Ward’s article here.

Trump’s comments about US military actions to advance the drug war is at odds with his presidential campaign effort to run as the peace candidate. The comments, though, do follow directly from his declaration in his November 17 candidacy announcement speech that “We will wage war upon the cartels and stop the fentanyl and deadly drugs from killing 200,000 Americans per year.” Trump’s comments also fit in with those of other Republican presidential candidates mentioned in the Politico article — Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy — indicating they are open to labeling drug cartels as terrorist organizations and taking military action against them.

Potential presidential candidate John Bolton almost appears the moderate when quoted in the article stating that unilateral military operations “are not going to solve the problem.” That, though, leaves open the potential of US dominated coalition action à la the Bolton fave Iraq War or pressuring Mexico to consent to the intervention. Obtaining permission from Mexico for the US military to fight drug cartels in Mexico was an option Trump floated during his presidential term.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

Tornadoes, Climate Change, and the Media

By Anthony Watts | American Thinker | April 7, 2023 

After the recent devasting tornadoes in the Midwest and South, some media outlets scrambled to try to link the weather events to climate change, when in fact there is no hard data to support this. In fact, tornado data refute claims that tornadoes are increasing in number, range, or severity. However, Salon, Axios, and the Washington Post among others ran articles suggesting climate change is expanding the length of tornado season and area over which tornadoes commonly form, as well as adding ingredients to the atmosphere to make more and bigger tornadoes.

The Salon article, “How climate change made the Mississippi tornadoes more likely,” (actually a reprint from Grist) claimed, “That added ingredient of more heat and moisture is going to be the big thing that will influence what happens and we can expect potentially worse tornado outbreaks,” said William Gallus, a professor of meteorology at Iowa State University.

Axios piled on with “What we know about how climate change affects tornado outbreaks,” which claims, “We also have expectations that the number of severe thunderstorms (hail, wind, tornado) will probably increase in the U.S.”

The Washington Post article, “Here’s what we know about how climate change is influencing tornadoes,” asserts, “Average global temperatures have risen more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s, and the impact is clear: Warmer air provides more energy for storms to develop and intensify, and holds more moisture, which can also fuel storms. Warm, moist air is a key ingredient for developing severe tornadic storms.”

These claims of increased storms due to more heat and moisture are misleading at best and demonstrate a clear lack of understanding of how weather fronts collide to form tornadoes. As Climate at a Glance: Tornadoes points out: “Tornadoes typically form when very cold, dry air clashes with warm, humid air. Climate change warms the Arctic more than the tropics and subtropics, resulting in less of a clash between cold Arctic air masses and warm Gulf of Mexico air masses. As a result, fewer and less violent tornadoes are occurring today than in previous periods, despite media claims that tornadoes are getting more frequent, stronger, or both.”

Plus, all of these articles miss one very important and immutable fact: decades of hard data on tornado activity don’t support these claims.

Despite modest warming of the climate over the past 50 years, data show no trend in increasing tornadoes linked to climate change. Indeed, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its most recent report, “There is low confidence in observed trends in small spatial-scale phenomena such as tornadoes.”

These articles all focused on the recent severe storms that caused many deaths and widespread destruction. Yet, looking at the actual data for the trend in strong to violent tornadoes suggest no cause for alarm. Violent tornadoes, those rated EF3 to EF5 on the enhanced Fujita tornado scale, have declined in recent decades, based on actual data supplied by the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center.

The hard data on tornado numbers and intensity refute any assertions that tornadoes are worsening due to climate change. The number of strong to violent tornadoes, F3 or higher, has dramatically declined for nearly half a century. Additional evidence shows attempts to tie tornadoes to climate change falls flat. For instance, 2018 was a record-low year for tornadoes in the United States. Even the Washington Post wrote that 2018 was the first year with no violent tornadoes in the United States.

Also flying in the face of climate change attribution during the so-called “hottest decade in recorded history” from 2010 to 2019, two record-low years for tornado strikes in the United States occurred, in 2014 and 2018.

Finally, it is important to note that severe tornado outbreaks are not a global (as in global warming) phenomenon, but mostly limited to the United States with its unique topography and weather patterns.

All of these omissions lead one to ask if the media are aware of hard data and previous articles on the topics of tornados and climate change, or did these outlets simply not wish to consider what those articles and data implied, because they presented inconvenient truths that are counter to their attempts to link climate change and tornado behavior?

Even the scientist quoted in the Post article would not commit to the narrative that climate change was changing tornado behavior.

Per the Post, “That suggests more tornadoes may be likely, too. But scientists aren’t ready to declare that yet.”

Also, according to the Post, “There is nothing concrete to say, ‘Yes, we’re going to see more tornadoes,’ Allen said,” as Dance reported.

The willful choice to ignore these facts is indicative of the shoddy state of what passes for journalism today. The Washington Post’s banner reads, “democracy dies in darkness.” Evidently, science dies in darkness, too.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

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