Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has charged that a “matrix of lies” was used by a “weaponised” FBI in an attempt “to destroy a sitting president.”
RFK Jr. was responding to journalist Matt Taibbi’s reporting on the Durham report, which effectively exonerated President Trump once and for all from bogus charges of Russian collusion, concluding that the FBI had no grounds at all to open an investigation.
“This is no partisan skirmish,” Kennedy tweeted, adding “It is about the political weaponization of the FBI to destroy a candidate and then a sitting President. It’s about a matrix of lies so elaborate as to make a mockery of the democratic ideal of an informed citizenry.”
Kennedy also got the knives out for the media for being complicit in perpetuating the Russian collusion nonsense for years.
“Maybe most alarming of all, the Durham investigation reveals the abject complicity of the mainstream press, which has yet to admit they were taken in by the big lie, propagated it, and now continues to permit those lies to stand as truth,” Kennedy stated.
May 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Russophobia | FBI, United States |
1 Comment
As we enjoy our lives within the neocon utopia that’s been carefully crafted for us, let us set aside, for a moment, all basic morality and the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. Surely, if we put on the same hegemonic blinders worn by the likes of John Kirby, Victoria Nuland, Lindsey Graham and the rest, their plans in Ukraine will make perfect sense.
In his February 2022 speech concerning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Biden said, “Today, I’m authorizing additional strong sanctions and new limitations on what can be exported to Russia. This is going to impose severe costs on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time.” In an April 2022 speech to reporters in Kiev, Defense Secretary Austin expanded on this sentiment, explaining, “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine. So it has already lost a lot of military capability. And a lot of its troops, quite frankly. And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”
Essentially, the U.S. government’s goal has been to drain Russia of personnel, financial and military resources, the end result being preservation of the unipolar world. Doesn’t seem like a bad plan—as long as you ignore the human toll. However, there are multiple historical precedents that provide insight into whether or not this plan can work.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Non Aggression Pact was hashed out in summer 1939 between the USSR and Nazi Germany, wherein secret protocols allowed both sides to dominate eastern Europe without fear of reprisal from each other. Not long after, of course, Germany invaded Poland from the west, followed by the Soviet invasion from the east.
Stalin knew he couldn’t trust Hitler, and became increasingly concerned that Finland may be used as a base to launch an attack. But the Soviets were unprepared for such an assault. Due mostly to the Bolshevik collectivization of agriculture, an extensive famine began in 1930, which included the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. The result would be upwards of 5 million deaths in Ukraine and 8 million overall. Just a few years later, Stalin would begin the Great Purge, killing somewhere in the range of one million of his own people. This didn’t just include religious leaders, Trotsky supporters, and Kulaks (landowning farmers), but the majority of marshals, commanders, and admirals in the Red Army.
After failed negotiations with Finland—due to unreasonable requests which would have undermined their sovereignty—Stalin invaded, kicking off the Winter War in November 1939. Although a spring offensive may have fared better, Stalin was worried about possible threats to his defense industry, of which 30-35 percent was housed in Leningrad, the second Soviet capital near the Finnish border. He felt they couldn’t wait, stating in an April 1940 debriefing, “It would be great stupidity, political short-sightedness to miss the moment and not try as soon as possible, while there is a war going on in the West, to raise and resolve the issue of Leningrad’s security.”
The end result of Stalin’s missteps were three months of humiliation and more than 320,000 casualties compared to Finland’s 70,000. Although they gained more concessions than originally requested, the damage to the Soviet reputation was immense. This demonstrated weakness contributed to Adolf Hitler’s decision to execute Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 and invade the Russian motherland.
Following a famine most of us could never comprehend, a purge of political opponents that makes Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre look like a seasonal layoff, and a three month skirmish that took more young lives than U.S. troops lost in every conflict since Korea combined, the USSR was still able to become “the main engine of Nazism’s destruction,” according to historian Max Hastings. Three quarters of German losses were at the hands of the Red Army.
The USSR spent nearly 27 million lives to retain their place in the pecking order and expel the Wehrmacht from their borders. What better time for the United States to put them out of business for good? It would, however, take 46 more years of technological one-upsmanship, nuclear brinksmanship, and back and forth proxy wars of attrition between the U.S. and USSR before an open dialogue between leaders would finally break up the Communist Bloc.
Contrarians and critics may point out that today’s Russian Federation is no Soviet Union. By population alone there is a significant difference. The 1939 Soviet population was near 170 million while current Russian estimates hover around 143 million and dropping, due in part to negative birth rates (which is the case for most of the developed world). The loss of tens of millions of Russian lives, or even a humiliating defeat to a smaller nation, would certainly pose an “existential threat.” But “existential threats” aren’t what they used to be. The key difference being that Stalin didn’t possess nuclear weapons until 1949, while Putin has nearly 6,000 at his disposal and a reluctant willingness to use them.
The economic security of Russia also comes into question, with an overreliance on natural resources where oil, natural gas, and coal account for more than 50% of their exports. However, this would only be a valid concern if we ignore the importance of these fuel supplies to the economies of the importing nations. Not only is affordable fuel a key factor for developing countries as they lift their people out of poverty, but it remains essential to emerging superpowers like China and India. Russia’s exports of crude oil to these countries have only increased since their invasion of Ukraine, becoming the leader in both markets.
Since their switch to an oligarchical, mixed-market economy, a mirror of the United States, Russia has maintained their place of geopolitical importance with an increase in the standard of living for Russian citizens. These are a resilient people. I know my fellow Americans, and I’m not convinced most of us could handle anything like what the Russians have seen in the last century. And I don’t believe our benevolent leaders, pushing and extending this provoked war, know so little about history that they actually envision a permanently weakened Russia by way of Ukrainian lives. This has always been about regime change, because a nationalist like Vladimir Putin will never kowtow to Washington’s demands, and for them, this is unacceptable.
I understand why neocons on both sides of the aisle are foaming at the mouth. Smedley Butler said it best:
“WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
What’s troubling is all the sycophantic drones, all too eager to trust the same people who lie with every exhale; those who picture a day when a nation with the largest nuclear arsenal will submit; those who actually think it’s in their best interest to consolidate and centralize power. The same people who will speak out against monopolies in business but clamor for monopoly in governance.
With the coming collapse of the U.S. dollar, an absurd debt-to-GDP ratio, unbridled intelligence agencies, politically motivated investigations into opposition parties, social discord and division, depleted military stockpiles, and entangling alliances across the globe, it is the United States, not Russia, with the earmarks of an imperial collapse. When it all comes down, Joe Biden or Mitch McConnell or whichever other mediocre “elites” take their place will be standing on the rubble with a solution, in front of a welcoming crowd of uninformed and disjointed citizens. Let’s just hope there’s an “encouraged and braced up” remnant ready to pick up the torch of liberty and rebuild.
May 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Russia, United States |
3 Comments
Ukraine has suffered a massive loss of 10,000 drones per month in its war against Russia, which has effectively utilized electronic warfare to down the UAVs provided by the Western countries, a British think tank reports.
Russia’s use of technology-based defense systems has contributed to the staggering loss of Ukrainian drones amid the persisting use of navigational interference by the Russian military in the battle area as a form of electronic protection, the UK-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) unveiled in a new report.
The report appears to entirely dismiss earlier media campaigns by Western news outlets, blaming Russian use of a large number of “Iranian drones” for major losses inflicted on Ukrainian side. Both Tehran and Moscow had totally rejected such reports.
RUSI further insisted, Russia has demonstrated that it is “highly capable” of intercepting and decrypting Ukrainian military communications.
“Russian EW is also apparently achieving real-time interception and decryption of Ukrainian [US-made] Motorola 256-bit encrypted tactical communications systems, which are widely employed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” the report added.
It also pointed out that Russian troops have adjusted their sending of electronic warfare systems, setting one around each 10 kilometer along the front lines, which run through Ukraine’s eastern and southern districts.
According to the report, Ukraine’s monumental losses of drones include both military and commercial UAVs that have been heavily utilized for its war with Russia.
It then noted that Gyrocopter, a commercial drone, has been used for “reconnaissance” while other types have been used in direct assaults as well as targeting tools to coordinate artillery barrages.
Despite its incredibly high losses of UAVs, the report further underlines that Kiev is capable of making, purchasing and acquiring the required number of drones, without elaborating on the funding amid the country’s broken economy and the widely reported fact that it obtains nearly all of its weaponry through military grants from the US and the European Union.
Other changes have been identified in Russian military operations during the second year of the war, the RUSI report adds. It found that Russian forces are flexible and make changes to redress their deficiencies.
Although the Ukraine conflict has witnessed “high-tech tactics stalled or countered by rough terrain, electronic jammers and older tactics such as trench warfare, the use of drones has been a major part of both side’s doctrine,” the report emphasizes.
“In addition to reconnaissance purposes, they’ve been used in direct assaults as well as targeting tools to coordinate artillery barrages, the latter of which has been a dominant element in the conflict.”
The West has supplied Kiev with tens of billions of dollars worth of various weaponry since the onset of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine last year.
Moscow insists it launched the operation as a security measure against persisting eastern advance of the US-led NATO military alliance and the protection of the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine from abusive treatment by Kiev forces.
Western countries, led by the US, have been providing massive amounts of arms and munitions to Ukraine with a declared objective of prolonging the war against Russia and keeping Moscow engaged in a protracted conflict with neighboring Ukraine.
May 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | NATO, Russia, Ukraine |
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An agreement between the US and Russia is the only thing that can end the conflict in Ukraine, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban stated on Monday. Orban has repeatedly accused EU leaders of serving American, rather than European, interests by continuing to bankroll Kiev.
Speaking at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha on Tuesday, Orban reiterated his position that Ukraine cannot win on the battlefield, and that Kiev and its Western backers must pursue peace talks with Russia.
“First we should have a ceasefire,” he said. “Then let’s talk about the new security architecture of the European continent.”
“The only peace agreement that could close this whole conflict is if it is between Russia and the United States,” he elaborated. “What is at stake is the future security of Europe. It’s obvious that without the US there is no security architecture for Europe, and now the war can only be stopped if the Russians can make an agreement with the United States.”
“As a European I am not happy with that,” he added. “But this is the only way out.”
Throughout the conflict, Orban has repeatedly spoken out against the West’s twin policies of military aid to Kiev and sanctions on Moscow, arguing that the former risks escalating the conflict to a global war and the latter harms Europe’s economy more than Russia’s.
The Hungarian prime minister has also argued that only Washington has the power to pressure Kiev into peace talks, and that decisions made in Brussels “reflect American interests more often than European ones.”
With the US dragging Europe into a conflict it cannot win, Orban has suggested that “the solution would be a European NATO” without the US as a member.
Hungary is currently blocking a €500 million ($540 million) EU military aid package for Ukraine. Apart from his long-standing opposition to escalating the conflict, Orban cited Ukraine’s sanctioning of a Hungarian bank as a reason for the hold up.
“If a country like Ukraine would like to get our financial support, they can’t put our companies on a blacklist,” he said on Tuesday. “If you need our money, please respect us.”
May 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Hungary, NATO, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
1 Comment
American statists cannot understand why the Russian people continue to support their president Vladimir Putin and their government’s invasion of Ukraine. For American statists, the issue is very simple: Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia bad. Russians should oppose Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime. End of story.
Fair enough. But let’s engage in a hypothetical.
Let’s assume that Russia establishes military bases and installs nuclear weapons in Cuba. The U.S. government declares, “No way, bud! We are just not going to permit you to do that. Remove them or experience the wrath of our all-powerful military machine.”
Suppose Russia takes the same position as Ukraine and says, “We are not budging. We have the right to enter into an alliance with Cuba, just as Ukraine has the right to join NATO. Moreover, Russia has the same right to establish military bases and install nuclear missiles in Cuba that NATO has to establish military bases and install nuclear missiles in Ukraine.”
A far-fetched hypothetical?
Well, not exactly.
In January 2022, Putin stated that he was thinking of sending Russian troops to Cuba. The U.S. reaction was immediate. U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan exclaimed, “If Russia were to move in that direction, we would deal with it decisively.”
What Sullivan meant by that statement was that the U.S. would issue an immediate demand that Russia cease and desist. If it refused to do so, a U.S. invasion of Cuba would follow.
In other words, the U.S. government was threatening to do to Cuba what Russia has done to Ukraine.
In fact, if we go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, that is what happened then. The Soviets had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba. The U.S. government demanded that they be removed. If they refused to remove them, the U.S. government declared that it would do exactly what the Russian government has done to Ukraine. It would bomb and invade Cuba.
So, my hypothetical clearly falls within the realm of reasonable possibility.
Given such, the question naturally arises: What would American statists who are exclaiming against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine do if that were to happen? Would they oppose the U.S. invasion of Cuba and come to the support of Cuba and Russia?
I think not. I think they would immediately come to the support of the U.S. government and its invasion of Cuba, just as most Russians have come to the support of their government and its invasion of Ukraine.
May 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite | Cuba, NATO, Ukraine, United States |
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A foreign diplomatic source says there has been no progress in the normalization of diplomatic ties between the Tel Aviv regime and Saudi Arabia, as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has rejected a request from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet.
Netanyahu and bin Salman spoke on the phone twice in recent weeks. Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani facilitated the calls.
The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, the 73-year-old Israeli leader and Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler held talks before and after last week’s Arab League meeting in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah to discuss the possibility of rapprochement.
The leaders also did not discuss the possibility of direct flights from the Israeli-occupied territories to Saudi Arabia for the annual pilgrimage Hajj to the holy city of Mecca this year.
According to the N12 news site, Saudi authorities presented a list of demands for Israeli concessions vis-à-vis the Palestinians.
Those demands include allowing the Palestinian security apparatus to be strengthened at the expense of Israeli military forces in the occupied West Bank, the report said.
MBS also requested Palestinian security control over al-Aqsa Mosque compound and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the occupied Old City of al-Quds.
Last week, Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen told The Jerusalem Post newspaper normalization with Saudi Arabia was “not a matter of if, but of when. We and Saudi Arabia have the same interests.”
He said White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk and Special Presidential Coordinator for Global Infrastructure and Energy Security Amos Hochstein had spoken to the Saudi crown prince about détente with Israel during their visit to Jeddah earlier this month.
Normalization with Saudi Arabia could come within the next six months to a year, though senior Saudi officials have always said publicly that headway must be made between Israel and the Palestinians for Riyadh to take that step, Cohen told N12 Saturday night.
“The Palestinian issue was and remains the central issue for Arab countries, and it is at the top of the kingdom’s priorities,” MBS said at the Arab League summit in Jeddah.
“We will not delay in providing assistance to the Palestinian people in recovering their lands, restoring their legitimate rights and establishing an independent state on the 1967 borders with East al-Quds as its capital,” he noted.
Saudi Arabia did not show any opposition when the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in 2020 became the first Arab countries in decades to normalize relations with Israel in a deal brokered by former US President Donald Trump.
The oil-rich kingdom is yet to jump on the bandwagon, but the two sides have seen growing contacts and de-facto rapprochement in recent years, despite claims that it is committed to the 2002 so-called Arab Peace Initiative, which conditions normalizing ties with Israel on the establishment of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
The Riyadh regime in November 2020 granted permission for Israeli airlines to use its airspace, hours before the first Israeli flight to the UAE was set to take off.
Palestinian leaders, activists and ordinary people have repeatedly rejected Arab-Israeli normalization deals as “a stab in the back of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people.”
May 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Israel, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Zionism |
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New US guidelines propose all women should start screening for breast cancer at age 40 instead of 50, but what does the evidence show?
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently changed its recommendations for all women to get screened for breast cancer every other year starting at age 40 instead of 50.
Wanda Nicholson, USPSTF Vice Chair and professor at George Washington University said the updated recommendations “will save more lives among all women.”
Sadly, it’s not that simple.
Time and time again, the evidence shows that screening healthy women using mammograms in fact, does not save lives.
In 2014, in a large study published in The BMJ, half of women underwent annual mammogram screening, and the other half did not.
At the end of the 5-year trial period, and after 25 years of follow-up (see graph), the probability of survival was similar in the two groups.
A Cochrane review in 2013 (and an unpublished update in Jan 2023) also found mammography screening had no impact on the most important outcome, i.e. overall (all-cause) mortality.
The imaging technology is so sensitive that it detects lumps, masses and cysts that are not cancerous, resulting in biopsies and follow-up procedures that can cause patients immense stress.
Also, it’s detecting abnormalities that would never lead to harm because they grow so slowly, or they don’t grow at all.
And because we’re not very good at distinguishing the difference between slow and fast-growing cancers, the standard is to treat them all – sometimes, unnecessarily.
Danish physician Peter Gøtzsche and lead author of the Cochrane review on mammography screening wrote a review in 2015 called “Mammography screening is harmful and should be abandoned.”
Gøtzsche explains why screening healthy women actually harms more than it helps. It’s a well-intentioned program that has unintended harmful consequences.
For example, while trying to reduce death from breast cancer, the treatments (e.g. radiotherapy) may cause death from other diseases like heart disease or lung cancer – so in the end – there is no improvement in lifespan.
Much of the difficulty lies with ~20% of breast abnormalities called “Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS) – otherwise known as stage 0 cancer. Their detection is a direct consequence of the mammography screening, as they would not be detected otherwise.
Importantly, these are not cancers, but have the potential to progress.
The problem is, few clinicians are comfortable with the wait-and-see approach, and often encourage women to undergo invasive surgeries, radiation, or chemotherapy that they didn’t ultimately need.
For this reason, some oncologists have suggested changing the name of DCIS to avoid using words such as “stage 0 cancer” or “carcinoma” which cause fear and unnecessary psychological stress.
The question of whether patients benefit from immediate treatment of DCIS or from ‘active surveillance’, may be answered over the next few years by three ongoing trials – two in Europe and one in the US.
Lowering the screening threshold from age 50 to 40, means millions more people become eligible for treatments that they might not need, under the guise of “prevention is better than cure.”
Consequently, a huge number of scarce resources is diverted from the sick to the ‘worried well.’
Dr Iona Heath, past president of the UK Royal College of General Practitioners, once said to me, “Medicine should probably be leaving the well to be well, instead of constantly trying to find something wrong with them.”
Dr Heath was among several experts who featured in my documentary called “Too Much Medicine” which aired on ABC TV in 2015 (see it here). The program explored the issue of over-diagnosis and over-treatment in various areas of healthcare.
There are women at high risk of breast cancer – e.g. those with a genetic/family history – who might benefit from targeted detection tools, but screening women in the general population appears to cause more harm than good.
*15 of the 16 members of the US Task Force declared no conflicts of interest related to this recommendation. There was only one Task Force member who had a relevant conflict of interest, and he was recused from all activities related to this recommendation.
*Peter Gøtzsche, former head of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, published a book titled “Mammography Screening: Truth, Lies and Controversy” available here.
*Vinay Prasad, a practicing haematologist-oncologist and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco, has recently produced a video explaining the data.
May 22, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science |
1 Comment
Buttar died in mysterious circumstances just days after claiming he’d been poisoned following a controversial interview with CNN
Covid pandemic disinformation; Covid conspiracy doctor claimed he was ‘poisoned after interview’ just days before death; IMO, I don’t put anything past the ‘dark unseen hand’, those behind COVID fraud.
‘A notorious conspiracy theorist doctor, known for his wild takes on the Coronavirus pandemic, claimed he had been poisoned just a few days before he died.
Dr Rashid Buttar, who was part of the group nicknamed the “Disinformation dozen”, died suddenly yesterday (Saturday, May 20) at the age of 57.
He was known for being a huge anti-vaxxer and became a cult figure during the pandemic.’
‘The medical community is mourning the loss of Dr. Rashid Buttar, a respected doctor known for his views on COVID-19 and vaccines.
He was named as one of the “Disinformation Dozen” by the far-left media along with Democrat presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Dr. Buttar, 57, a licensed physician and a retired Major in the US Army who served in special forces, died on Thursday at his home, while spending time with his family, according to an email sent by his family.’
“Every single one of you, independently, is a beacon of light for those around you. So set the example, stand up, continue to fight … let your children see what it means to be free.” — Dr. Rashid Buttar
The entire Children’s Health Defense (CHD) team is saddened to learn of the May 18 passing of renowned physician, humanitarian and children’s health advocate Dr. Rashid Buttar.
Dr. Buttar was born in England in 1966. He moved to the U.S. with his family when he was 10 years old. He graduated from Washington University with a double major in biology and theology, later obtaining a doctor of osteopathic medicine degree from the University of Osteopathic Medicine and Health Sciences, College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery in Des Moines, Iowa.
Dr. Buttar trained in general surgery and emergency medicine and served as brigade surgeon and chief of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Moncrief Army Community Hospital at Ft. Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina, during his time with the U.S. Army.
He was board certified in clinical metal toxicology and was the medical director for Advanced Concepts in Medicine in North Carolina and California clinics specializing in alternative treatments for patients with cancer, heart disease and autism.
Dr. Buttar distinguished himself among the families of children diagnosed with autism for his compassion and willingness to think outside the box in terms of treatment — even when his methodologies went against the grain of mainstream medicine.
He became an advocate for children who were injured by vaccines, testifying in 2004 before the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform on the topic of “Revolutionary New Treatment of Neurodevelopmental Diseases.”
Commenting on Dr. Buttar’s death, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD founder and chairman on leave, said:
“Rashid was an irreplaceable leader in the medical freedom movement. He was also my friend and physician. His early and courageous stand for his patients, for medical integrity and for evidence-based medicine cost him his career, relationships, income and his standing in his community and made him a pariah among his physician colleagues for decades.
“Rashid rarely spoke of his own sacrifices. His consuming focus was on healing the sick, comforting the afflicted and consoling the grief-stricken. I’ll always be grateful to him for the miraculous relief he provided me from mercury toxicity. He gave similar gifts to thousands. I’m grateful to God for giving me such a friend.”
A stalwart pioneer in innovative treatments for autism and other conditions, Dr. Buttar was considered a medical maverick by both his peers and his patients.
In 2010, he wrote the popular book, “The 9 Steps to Keep the Doctor Away: Simple Actions to Shift Your Body and Mind to Optimum Health for Greater Longevity.”
“Our community has lost a dear colleague, a caring physician and a steadfast friend,” said Laura Bono, acting president of CHD.
Bono added:
“Dr. Buttar treated my son’s environmental toxicity and heavy metal poisoning for many years. We drove four hours, round-trip, to his office three days a week. He listened to our views regarding our son’s needs and altered treatments as needed based on our input, a real rarity in medicine today.
“Dr. Buttar never doubted my son’s history of regression into autism after vaccines. After all, it was a story he had heard many times before. The key to his success in treating patients was that he listened to and trusted the parents.
“We can only hope that Dr. Buttar’s example of treating patients’ illnesses with individualized, effective protocols will become the standard for all physicians.”
Dr. Buttar applied the spirit of his experiences on the battlefield to his tireless work for truth and freedom on behalf of neurodevelopmentally injured children despite well-financed censorship of his efforts.
“The many people impacted by Dr. Buttar’s courage and determination will carry on his legacy by continuing to speak truth to power, even when the deck is so heavily stacked against them,” said Bono. “Our collective voices will ensure that truth triumphs in the end.”
May 22, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular |
4 Comments
From his first days in office, President Biden has promised — threatened — to activate the administrative state at every level to address and solve the “climate crisis.” In the orthodoxy of the Biden/Democrat climate cult, this is to be accomplished by reducing U.S. carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
Now, even if you believe that a little more CO2 in the atmosphere is some kind of a problem (it isn’t), there is nothing that the United States can do to have any meaningful impact on that situation, given that countries with populations a large multiple of ours (China, India, Africa) are building coal-fired power plants as fast as they can. Even if we closed our economy entirely and reduced ourselves to eating grass and bugs, the effect on the climate would be zilch.
Meanwhile we have waited through the first two plus years of Bidenism to find out exactly what punishments the administrative state has in mind for us for our sins of prosperity and enjoyment of life. In the last few weeks, we have learned at least part of the answer, in the form of a series of gigantic new regulatory proposals emanating from EPA and other agencies. The answer is, the federal government will become a suicide bomber seeking to blow up and destroy the American economy and the well-being of the American people.
Here are three major regulatory initiatives from the past few weeks, each one supposedly somehow addressing this “climate crisis” thing:
I previously covered the new vehicle rule, really an EV mandate, in this post on May 5. True to form of regulators who treat their subjects with contempt, the rule never explicitly states that the cars we now use are henceforth to be banned. Rather, it is some 262 pages of impenetrable text, which has buried somewhere deep inside a formula (82 g/mile CO2 emissions) that only an industry professional would know effectively bans internal combustion vehicles. All manufacturers are to be forced to comply, irrespective of whether they can do so profitably.
What is the probability that the new EV mandate will put all large U.S. and European automakers out of business in favor of Chinese competitors who have an advantage in the EV segment? The regulators neither know nor care. From Engineering & Technology, May 9:
According to insurers Allianz Trade, China’s decision to invest heavily in EV production over the last 15 years has made it the global leader in this sector. . . . Chinese brands have seen their global market shares climb from less than 40 per cent in 2020 to close to 50 per cent in 2022. This is heavily bolstered by an 80 per cent market share in their densely-populated home country.
In the world of dishwashers, we already have dishwashers that don’t work very well. The reason is regulator-imposed restrictions on use of energy and water. Today, due to these restriction, dishwashers run for more than two hours, and still don’t get the dishes very clean unless you pre-wash them by hand. Well, with the new Energy Department rule, it’s about to get a lot worse. From the WSJ, May 12:
The proposal requires manufacturers to slash water use by a third, limiting machines to 3.2 gallons per cycle, down from the current federal limit of five gallons. New appliances must simultaneously cut estimated annual energy usage by nearly 30%.
And then there is the new power plant rule. This one is 682 pages. Again, it never explicitly says that fossil fuel power plants are banned; it’s just that the emissions standards that they set cannot be met by any fossil fuel plant. The WSJ on May 11 calls the rule a “death sentence” for fossil fuel power plants.
Supposedly the fossil fuel plants can continue to operate if they adopt some means to capture the carbon emissions from their exhaust. I have previously described this idea of carbon capture as a “war against the second law of thermodynamics.” Trying to capture CO2 from power plant emissions requires energy, and the higher the percentage of the emissions you want to capture, the more energy it takes. If you insist on capturing all of the emissions and somehow storing them permanently, it’s going to take more energy than the power plant produces. There has been endless talk about carbon capture for more than a decade, and there is almost nothing in the way of functional carbon capture systems, because as they capture enough carbon to be meaningful, their cost soars out of control.
Will there be any functional replacement for the fossil fuel plants by the time they are forced out of business? This rule doesn’t trouble itself with such matters. That’s for the low status people to figure out. Over here at EPA, we are much too important for that. Our job is to save the planet.
So the regulatory onslaught continues. We are told to expect yet more such regulations, notably in the area of home appliances, in the near future.
Put it all together, and the term “war against the economy” no longer does justice to what is going on. This is a full-blown attack by suicide bombers. They are so crazed with the righteousness of their cause that they couldn’t care less about the destruction and devastation they might cause to the innocent people around them, let alone even about their own death. Who ever thought our federal government would get into such a role?
May 22, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | Joe Biden, United States |
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American military-industrial complex firms are guilty of “price gouging,” amidst the exponentially rising demand for weapons systems to both bolster Taiwan as a counter to Beijing and support NATO’s proxy Kiev during its war with Russia, former Pentagon insiders told Newsweek.
The Ukraine policy of providing massive quantities of arms “no matter the expense,” in particular, is weakening America’s national security and combat readiness by depleting stocks which cannot be easily replenished due to the weapons firms’ skyrocketing prices, according to the former officials.
For four decades, Shay Assad worked as a contract negotiator at the Defense Department. He recently sounded off about these “astronomical price increases” and the resultant detrimental effect on the military, during a recent report on 60 Minutes, the CBS news program.
“The gouging that takes place is unconscionable,” Assad said. “There’s no doubt about it,” he continued, “You just can only buy so much, because you only have so much money. And that’s why I say, is it really any different than not giving a Marine enough bullets to put in his clip? It’s the same thing.” Assad previously worked for Raytheon as well, the arms industry giant on whose board Lloyd Austin sat before becoming the Pentagon chief.
According to Assad, the DOD overpays for “for radar and missiles … helicopters … planes … submarines… down to the nuts and bolts.” The report highlighted the fact that a shoulder-fired Stinger missile, produced by Raytheon, which cost $25,000 in 1991 is now priced at more than $400,000. Newsweek described the price rise as an “eye-watering increase,” even when taking inflation into account as well as interim technological advancements.
He went on to explain the Pentagon’s accountability system, such as it is, is completely “broken.” Assad said, “No matter who they are, no matter what company it is, they need to be held accountable. And right now that accountability system is broken in the Department of Defense.” Moreover, Assad cited two more instances of gouging on the part of arms industry behemoths Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon.
Lockheed and Boeing were found to have yielded an over 40 percent profit on sales of PAC-3 surface to air missiles to Washington and its allies. Assad explained the companies saw a windfall of hundreds of millions on the deals over seven years, and “based on what they actually made, we would’ve received an entire year’s worth of missiles for free.” Lockheed protested to 60 Minutes that the deals had been negotiated “in good faith.”
Both by overstating the cost and time needed to produce the radar equipment, Raytheon was also alleged to have taken obscene profits from the Patriot air defense system. The reporters were told by a company spokesman that Raytheon was working to “equitably resolve” the dispute. It is also noted that, in 2021, CEO Greg Hayes notified his investors that Raytheon schemed to put aside nearly $300 million for probable liability.
Assad demonstrated to the 60 Minutes host that an oil pressure switch was selling for over $10,000, when he claimed the switch should cost $328. The host asked Assad a question regarding the huge discrepancy, to which the former official responded “Gouging. What else can account for it?”
Assad went on to say that this widespread practice shows arms firms are hoodwinking and taking advantage of the American taxpayer. “We have to have a financially healthy defense industrial base. We all want that. But what we don’t want to do is get taken advantage of and hoodwinked […] We have nowhere else to go. For many of these weapons that are being sent over to Ukraine right now, there’s only one supplier. And the companies know it.”
Retired Air Force Lieutenant Gen. Chris Bogdan, who oversaw weapons purchases during his time in the military, further explained his concerns over the fact that when companies sell their weapons to the DOD, they retain the proprietary information required to fix the systems themselves, precluding the Pentagon, in some cases, from doing its own repairs.
“It’s not really a true capitalistic market because one company is telling you what’s going to happen. [It’s a] monopoly,” retired DOD auditor Mark Owen told CBS.
These reports come as tensions between Washington and Russia as well as China are growing at a rapid clip. The US is planning on fighting a hot war with China. Concurrently, the White House is committing billions of dollars in unprecedented military aid to Taipei, some of which is being drawn from the same dwindling DOD stocks used to prop up Kiev’s war against Moscow via the “Presidential Drawdown Authority.”
Since 2018, the Pentagon has been shifting its focus away from counterterrorism in the Middle East and North Africa, to focus primarily on so-called “great power competition” with China and Russia, pegged respectively as the number one and number two targets.
This has been reaffirmed in subsequent national defense strategies, as the shift in 2018 was codifying renewed Cold Wars against Russia and China launched by the US years and, in the case of Moscow, decades prior to the officially adopted national defense strategy.
It is also critical to note, that as the new Cold Wars get hotter, the nominal Pentagon budget is nearing a whopping $900 billion and will soon surpass the previously unthinkable $1 trillion mark. However, a closer look reveals the real national security state budget is already fast approaching $1.5 trillion.
This larger figure includes not only the mammoth War Department’s budget but – among a plethora of other expenses – the Department of Veterans Affairs, interest on the warfighting share of the national debt, nuclear weapons, and the Department of Homeland Security.
Congress recently simulated a Chinese attack on Taiwan and came to the conclusion that Taipei should thus be armed “to the teeth” by Washington. Center for a New American Security (CNAS), the ultra-hawkish think tank which has members and associates planted throughout the Joe Biden administration, carried out the exercise with the lawmakers on the House Select Committee on China.
CNAS is funded by Taiwan via the island’s de facto embassy in the United States, as well as the Pentagon, the State Department, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. In August 2021, investigative journalist Dan Cohen reported CNAS “has taken more money from weapons companies over the last several years than any other think tank in Washington… At least 16 CNAS alumni are now in key positions in the Biden Pentagon and State Department.”
May 22, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Boeing, CNAS, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Taiwan, United States |
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Former Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland, who served for the first four months of the Trump administration under Michael Flynn, says that the deep state is going to rig the 2024 US election following their success in 2020.
“We now have black-and-white evidence that the FBI interfered in the 2016 election. When they failed to elect Hillary Clinton, they set out to destroy the Trump administration,” she told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo.
“Go back to 2020. This time, the CIA got involved in the election with those 51 former intel agents who said the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. So they’ve gotten away with it for two elections. They will surely try and get away with it in 2024, right?
Because there are no consequences…
“There is now hard evidence that there was election interference by the U.S. intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice. Those individuals must be terrified that a Republican president comes in with a Republican Attorney General, investigates them, and charges them with all of the crimes they have committed over the last eight years. Take it to the bank.
They will absolutely interfere in 2024…
These people are selling us out. Not only to foreign leaders, but they are interfering in our elections.
They are tearing up the Constitution… This is just a gut punch to the American people.”
May 22, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | CIA, FBI, NSA, United States |
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