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Ukraine’s prized drone fleet almost grounded

RT | May 29, 2023

Turkish Bayraktar UAVs were touted as wonder weapons, with officials in Kiev saying they would give them an advantage against Russia. One year later, however, only a few remaining units are being used far from the battlefield, and for reconnaissance rather than attack missions, a Pentagon-linked analyst has told Business Insider.

Ukraine purchased dozens of Bayraktar TB2 drones and used them to strike Donbass in violation of a ceasefire agreement at least once, even before the conflict with Russia began last February. Kiev also claims to have received an unspecified number of additional drones during the past year, despite Türkiye’s official neutrality.

In the first months of the conflict, Kiev routinely claimed to have conducted successful strikes using TB2s, but by July, the Bayraktars became “almost useless,” and Kiev reserved them for “rare special operations,” Ukrainian pilots told Foreign Policy at the time.

Russian forces destroyed “more than 100 Bayraktar drones” in Ukraine, the deputy commander-in-chief of the Air Force, Lieutenant-General Andrey Demin, claimed in April.

As of now, the Ukrainian fleet of “once-prized drones have almost entirely been shot down,” Business Insider wrote on Sunday, citing an expert in unmanned and robotic military systems at the Center for Naval Analyses, Samuel Bendett.

“As a relatively slow and low-flying UAV, it can become a target for a range of air defense systems that are well organized,” Bendett said, adding that “once the Russian military got its act together, it was able to down many TB2s.”

The Bayraktar TB2 is a design of Turkish company Baykar Makina, which costs around $2 million per unit. Ankara has touted the drones since 2020, when they were said to have helped Azerbaijan prevail in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Turkish troops have also deployed them in Syria and Libya.

Responding to a prank caller last year, the head of the Association of Defense Enterprises of Ukraine admitted there was “more PR and corruption in Bayraktar than combat use,” and claimed “they were all shot down within a week.”

Earlier this month, a Bayraktar TB2 was destroyed after it reportedly went rogue over the Ukrainian capital, with a video showing the drone being taken down by a shoulder-fired rocket.

While pro-Ukrainian ‘open source intel’ accounts initially claimed it was a Russian Corsair, the Ukrainian military later admitted that they had to destroy their own drone after the operators failed to regain control.

May 29, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Cataloging a tsunami of Covid scandals

By my count, they’re at least 10 … and they are all massive

BY BILL RICE, JR. | MAY 26, 2023

If you have an hour to spare, I highly recommend reading this document, which summarizes and debunks many of the false and counterproductive “mandates.” This 22,000-word paper was produced by authors from the Isle of Man of all places.

It is divided into five sections including in-depth treatment of virus origins, iatrogenic deaths, lockdowns, mandated masking and “vaccines.” I think it might be the most impressive and persuasive piece of Covid writing I’ve read.

After reading the document, I was struck by the sheer number of massive scandals that have overlapped and cascaded – like a series of tsunamis – on the world in the past three-plus years.

By orders of magnitude, every one of these scandals dwarfs Watergate. As the authors point out, all are “horrific” and “nightmarish.”

Building upon the author’s arguments and adding a few of my own “scandals” that weren’t highlighted in this paper, I’ve identified 10 of these scandals. Again, each one by itself would probably qualify as the greatest scandal and outrage of our lifetimes.

When listed one after the other, readers are left with overwhelming evidence that our world must have gone completely mad. These scandals, roughly in chronological order, include:

(Mad) Scientists – funded and encouraged by our own government – probably created this virus.

The above  possibility is not discussed in the document. However, from my perspective, I see only three virus-origin possibilities:

  1. The virus crossed over into the human population via bats and then other animals.
  2. The virus was created or modified in a lab and either accidentally “escaped” or was intentionally released.
  3. … And a theory that is embraced by a growing number of people … there was no new novel coronavirus.

The latter two possibilities should, of course, qualify as massive, historic scandals.

If government-funded scientists (in America and China and perhaps other countries) created this virus, all they did was turn the world upside down and kill and sicken tens of millions of people (either from said lab-created virus and/or from the response to the alleged pandemic.)

Similarly, if one is convinced there was no new novel virus, our scientific experts and authorities would have perpetrated the Mother of All deadly scams on the world (somehow no virus ended up causing tens of millions of deaths).

(I happen to think there is a novel coronavirus and it probably was created in a lab, but it’s not any more lethal than the common flu.)

“Early spread” was either completely missed by the experts or, once certain officials realized this was happening, they covered up evidence of widely-circulating early transmission.

The authors of the Isle of Man document do address this possibility and even twice cite an article that I wrote on this topic.

As mega scandals go, “missed early spread” probably doesn’t register on the radar of 99 percent of the population.

However, I still think this might be the most important unreported story as, if this was known, the world should not have had to endure lockdowns and experienced mass panic. People would have realized there was no way to “slow” or “stop” the “spread” of this virus as the virus horses had already galloped across the globe.

This theory would also tell us that the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of this virus was minuscule as millions of people had already been infected with no noticeable spike in all-cause deaths. So the necessity of rolling out a new mRNA “vaccine” to “save millions of people” would have been viewed as a nonsensical head-scratcher to far more people.

The question would have become why do we need a possibly dangerous and rushed vaccine to save people … who weren’t dying or who faced no real risk from this virus.

The scandal here would have two components: Either our trusted public health officials didn’t know early spread was happening; or at least some did know this and went to great extremes to cover up this knowledge.

The bottom-line is the same with all these scandals: The public should NOT trust the experts. In fact, large numbers of alleged experts and government officials should be arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned or at least disgraced and charged with professional malfeasance, a result that would make sure these people could never “serve” (harm) the public again.

Lockdowns were a public health, economic, psychological, sociological and civil-liberties-eviscerating disaster. Any benefit from this unprecedented mitigation strategy was dwarfed by massive harms.

The authors excel in their effort to expose this particularly mind-boggling scandal.

Iatrogenic deaths almost assuredly killed far more people than Covid proper. 

Faulty medical protocols and guidance – coupled with (unnecessary) mass panic in the population and among health-care professionals – killed untold numbers of people and, by themselves, account for the massive spike in deaths in some cities.

Said differently, the surge in deaths that largely explains the ramped-up panic and justified all the draconian mandates probably had little or nothing to do with this virus.

This outstanding section includes many first-hand testimonials from witnesses to (arguably) mass murder that will leave readers irate. Iatrogenic deaths is perhaps the least-publicized massive Covid scandal.

Mandatory masking was a scientific farce and the masks caused far more harm than has been fully acknowledged.

The authors note that mask mandates perhaps seem “trivial” compared to other Covid scandals. However, the authors then proceed to make readers better appreciate the harm caused by these unnecessary mandates. They also do an excellent job showing how the alleged “science” on masks rapidly flipped.

I’ve been reading Covid stories for three-plus years and hadn’t seen some of the compelling arguments the authors make about masks. The document is worth reading just for the excellent points made about iatrogenic deaths and masks.

Vaccines are not safe and effective, weren’t needed and are causing untold numbers of deaths and serious medical conditions.

The authors dive into politically-incorrect waters by providing contrarian history on vaccines and questioning the conclusion that other well-accepted vaccines produced the positive health results they are widely considered to have made possible.

In my opinion, the authors could have included far more evidence and anecdotes about the obvious harm the Covid “vaccines” have produced, but the items they do include are compelling and worth the read.

Accurate Covid data is being concealed, spun or obfuscated by public health agencies.

This header is not included as a separate category in this document, but every section provides evidence this is occurring to a scandalous degree.

Genuine transparency does not exist with important Covid data. Indeed, the authors show that officials charged with reporting important health data seem to be going out of their way to conceal this data from the public. This by itself should be another major scandal and has already eroded “public trust” in public officials and our medical/science community.

The following are my own contributions to any inventory of massive societal scandals.

Censorship is out of control. We now live in a world where genuine free speech is considered a threat to the state and the world’s real rulers.

It should be noted that censorship is not yet all-encompassing. The Isle of Man document proves this good news by citing hundreds of articles and studies that did reach the attention of the authors.

However, most of these citations are from the “alternative press” (including plenty of independent Substack authors).

The important studies the authors cite – FWIW, studies produced by “real” scientists – never or rarely received significant coverage from the corporate or mainstream press. Many of these contrarian authors or dissident voices have indeed been censored, attacked, de-platformed, bullied and even lost their jobs.

It could be argued that every scandal itemized in this document might not have happened if censorship did not exist. The authors make clear that the promulgation of false fears is the root of all totalitarian mandates. It should be obvious that this level of requisite fear would have been much lower if the public had received fair and balanced coverage of true, off-limits facts.

The mainstream press is 99.9 percent captured.

The “gatekeepers of the news” have become stenographers of virtually every dubious or false public health narrative. Nobody (who really matters in the Big Picture) is challenging the never-ending lies, manipulated data and false narratives.

If this lack of skepticism persists, it seems almost a certainty that all the important organizations in the world will continue to be led by people who either aren’t intelligent enough to challenge false narratives or know the narratives are false and simply don’t care.

Big Tech and social media companies are actively censoring real debate and genuine free speech. 

Furthermore, many of these companies seem to be working in concert with government officials and agencies to target individuals who are not afraid to dissent from the various “authorized” narratives.

The above points make it far more likely that past scandals will not be exposed and that future society-damaging agendas will be more likely to be brought to fruition.

In sum, these waves of over-lapping and cascading scandals produce a tale that does qualify as a real-world horror story.

The greatest horror might be the realization that most citizens are still unaware they’re living through an unfolding nightmare. Hopefully, excellent and important documents like the one just described will open more eyes.

May 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Fake Scientific Studies by Nobel Prize Winner and Johns Hopkins Prof. Gregg Semenza

BY IGOR CHUDOV | MAY 28, 2023

Gregg Semenza, a pediatrician and a professor of Genetic Science, is a prominent researcher. Prof. Semenza works at Johns Hopkins University, a premier scientific institution so important that it received $1,050,368,895 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (JHU played the most prominent role in the Covid pandemic response.)

Prof. Semenza made major discoveries regarding how cells adapt to oxygen availability. Those findings could potentially lead to curing cancer! So important was his work that he was awarded a Nobel Prize in medicine in 2019.

There was a small problem, however.

Seven of his studies were fake and were eventually retracted. Retraction Watch has the details. Even the pictures of mice used in the studies were photoshopped:

The authors have retracted this article as multiple image irregularities have been noted within this article, specifically: Figure 1A, upper panel (HIF-1a blot), lanes five and seven appear to be duplicates. Figure 6B, lower panel (b-actin blot), the first six lanes appear to be identical to Fig. 6G, lower panel (b-actin blot). Figure 3G, the image of the third mouse in the D10 Saline group is identical to the image of the third mouse in the D21 Digoxin group.

Here’s one retracted article and the retraction notice. I downloaded the image from that study and highlighted the mouse in question, which appears in two pictures but with different scan results.

The authors copied/pasted the mouse picture and overlaid different scan results on the two copies. So, they did not have the scientific measurements they claimed to have!

Other retractions expose similarly ridiculous scientific fraud, including fake Western blots and more.

This fraud was not perpetrated by an obscure researcher languishing at a third-rate institution. Quite to the contrary, Prof. Semenza is a world-renowned scientist, occupying a position at a premier facility favored by the major funder of science, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Prof. Semenza shares the honor of receiving a Nobel prize with other famed recipients, such as Barack Obama, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, and António Egas Moniz, inventor of lobotomy and the winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize in medicine.

Antonio Moniz, Inventor of Lobotomy

So, the world of Nobel prizes is very special!

In consolation, we at least know about this fraud, and Semenza’s articles in question were properly retracted. So the self-correcting scientific process worked as intended, at last.

Sadly, as we know, retractions do not always work in an evidence-based, scientific way. For example, many honest articles questioning Covid vaccines or masks were retracted under pressure from science funders.

I feel that my trust in scientists has been violated by “COVID science” and certain other new scientific developments, but I still like the science of the good kind. I have much less faith in Nobel Prizes, however.

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

BMJ: “We need RCT gold standard to study misinformation & vaccine hesitancy on social media”

HART Rapid Response to BMJ

Health Advocacy & Recovery Team | May 28, 2023

The BMJ published an article on 5 May entitled We need a gold standard for randomised control trials studying misinformation and vaccine hesitancy on social media. This lends yet more weight to the thesis set out in our article relating current events to the Orwell 1984 classic. Here we have yet another example of Newspeak trying to eradicate dangerous Wrongthink, in one of the supposedly most ‘prestigious’ scientific journals.

Their piece begins:

“Vaccine hesitancy and the spread of misinformation on social media have been recognised by the World Health Organization as an urgent threat to public health, with potentially lethal consequences.”

Well that’s settled then. Being recognised by the unelected, pharma-funded, supranational organisation that is the WHO does not lend any credibility to the article’s claim.

They go on to say:

“US president Joe Biden concluded that misinformation on social media was “killing people”.

If this Biden quote is the best they can find to lend support to their hypothesis, it may be time for the authors to go back to the drawing board.

A final excerpt (we recommend reading the whole piece):

“Although doctors are typically among the most trusted professionals, during the covid-19 pandemic some medical credentials were used to peddle fake cures and outright misinformation about vaccination.”

Given the well-established, proven vaccine (in)efficacy, and the military grade coercion that was employed to get people to take them, it’s hard to know where to start in critiquing this particular sentence.

HART felt compelled to write a Rapid Response to the BMJ pointing out that there may in fact be a more pressing need to address the glaring holes in current vaccine trial methodologies, rather than ‘studying’ those raising valid questions.

HART Rapid Response (which unsurprisingly the BMJ chose not to publish):

Dear Editor,

Rather than working out rules for gold standard RCTs on how to reduce online misinformation and vaccine hesitancy, maybe the best thing would be to re-address the golden rules for RCTs of vaccines in the first place.

The Covid-19 vaccine trials provide a classic example of how to increase vaccine hesitancy.

Firstly, the clinical trials were commenced before any human pharmacokinetic and biodistribution studies of all the components were carried out let alone published.

Secondly, they allowed unblinding to take place and many of the control arm then received the vaccine, making the longer term safety assessment from the Phase 3 trials meaningless.

Thirdly they looked at mortality only from the disease in question rather than looking at all cause mortality.

Fourthly, they failed to provide raw anonymised data so that readers could check the results. The dangers of lack of transparency have been highlighted before.[1]

Fifthly, there was no clear separation of the authors from the drug company sponsors, which has its own dangers.[2]

Sixthly, the manufacturers required unlimited indemnity, which tends to make the public ask why.

Seventhly, many studies are underpowered. The children’s trials in particular were too small to elucidate safety – their efficacy was largely based on the concept of ‘immunobridging’.

Eighthly, use of saline placebo. Some vaccine trials used other unrelated vaccines as a control rather than a saline placebo, which is a problem if the comparator vaccine also has under-reported side effects.

It is time to return to proper independently conducted RCTs in which the trial organisers are genuinely in ‘equipoise’, previously the ethical basis for any trial. It is also time to ensure that ‘all cause’ morbidity/mortality are used as end points rather than allowing the investigators to decide whether an individual SAE was or was not related to the vaccine under investigation and use a double-blind placebo-controlled methodology with a minimum 12 month follow-up as recommended by the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA)[3]

Such an approach could go a long way to restore faith in the whole process of approvals.

Dr Rosamond Jones, retired consultant paediatrician

  • [1]Doshi, P. (2018). Pandemrix vaccine: why was the public not told of early warning signs? BMJ, 362:k3948. doi: 10.1136/bmj.k3948
  • [2]Jureidini J, McHenry L B. (2022).The illusion of evidence based medicine BMJ 2022; 376 :o702 doi:10.1136/bmj.o702
  • [3]https://www.icmra.info/drupal/en/covid-19/statement_on_continuation_of_vaccine_trials

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | 1 Comment

GOP Lawmakers Demand FBI Briefing on Jan. 6 Pipe Bomb Investigation Following Whistleblower Disclosures

By Debra Heine | American Greatness | May 25, 2023

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee are demanding an FBI briefing on the status of their January 6 Pipe Bomb Investigation following disclosures that the feds have enough information to identify a suspect.

In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) said the slow progression of the Bureau’s investigation into the pipe bombs “raises significant concerns about the FBI’s prioritization of that case in relation to other January 6 investigations.”

Former FBI agent Kyle Seraphin, a whistleblower who worked on the pipe bomb investigation, told the Washington Times that after planting the bombs, the suspect used a MetroRail SmarTrip card to travel through the Washington metro system to a stop in northern Virginia.

“The FBI used security footage in the Northern Virginia to identify the license plate of the car that the individual entered,” the congressmen wrote. “Still, the FBI has not identified the subject.”

The suspect was caught on surveillance video. He wore a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, a pair of Air Max Speed Turf shoes with a yellow Nike logo, a backpack and gloves. He was recorded walking through Capitol Hill neighborhoods carrying what federal investigators said were two live pipe bombs.

However, Mr. Seraphin said technicians determined the pipe bombs were inoperable.

His story runs counter to the FBI’s official version that the devices could have detonated at any time. The bureau repeated that story in January while offering a $500,000 reward for information leading to the suspect’s arrest.

Seraphin also told Times reporter Kerry Picket that a separate individual bought the Metrorail SmarTrip card one year before the pipe bomber suspect used it on Jan. 5, 2021.

“The card had never been used before. It was bought a year prior by a retired chief master sergeant in the Air Force, and he was a security contractor. So he held a security clearance,”  Seraphin said.

Mr. Seraphin and his team surveilled the retired airman, who lived in a Northern Virginia townhouse, for a couple of days and learned about his background.

Although Mr. Seraphin, who also served in the Air Force, wanted to approach the Air Force veteran and talk to him, his bureau superiors forbade him to do so before his team was removed from the case.

“I don’t know what they [eventually] did on that case, but I know that it was BS and the bombs were BS, and it seems like they had a good lead, and they could have run it down. But as far as I know, they never did,” he told the Times. “He may still be occasionally surveilled. That’s how dumb it gets.”

The congressmen cited former FBI assistant director Christopher Swecker, who told Picket, “[i]t just doesn’t add up . . . [t]here’s just too much to work with to not know who this guy is.”

The committee requested an update on the case in a briefing no later that June 7, 2023.

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , | Leave a comment

Government report claims pandemic as a precedent for ‘environmental’ policy

Lockdowns show behavioural restrictions are possible with the right messaging, a political disease we have yet to learn the extent of

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | May 22, 2023

The Advisory Council on the Environment is a body of experts convened by the Federal Republic of Germany to advise the state on matters of environmental policy. I’m grateful to @tomdabassman on Twitter for drawing attention to their recent and deeply creepy 200-page report on “The obligation of policymakers: Facilitating environmentally friendly behaviour.” It abounds in remarkable and revealing statements, and I’ve spent a good part of the day studying it for a longer post that I hope to write in the coming weeks.

For now, I want to draw your attention to the introduction, which is bad enough. Its authors depart from the premise that the state currently lacks “policy measures … targeting environmentally relevant behaviour,” and join others in affirming that it is the job of the state to nudge individual decisions in the right direction. Tellingly, both the pandemic and the sanctions-induced European energy crisis play a very large role in their thinking:

Although the key environmental crises, such as loss of biodiversity and climate change, are less directly visible and tangible than the energy crisis and the pandemic, environmental policymakers can learn from the sometimes painful but also important experiences of recent years: Behavioural changes in the population can be a part of the solution to crises such as these, and it is possible to adopt and implement policies aimed at changing behaviours.

For example, Germany introduced a series of measures in mid-2022 to alleviate the energy crisis … These measures targeted the behaviour of citizens. In addition to general calls to save energy, building owners were obliged to optimise their heating systems, employees had to accept lower room temperatures at work and it was forbidden to heat private swimming pools …. Earlier, Germany imposed far-reaching pandemic measures to contain the spread of Corona. For example, since 2020, the stated adopted and imposed various lockdowns and social contact limitations. Both highlight the contribution of behavioural changes, whether in energy consumption or social behaviour, to the project of combating a collective problem …

The aforementioned measures doubtless demanded a lot from people and in the specifics of the necessary extent of the restrictions, they proved controversial, as also in their unequal impact on different social groups. Nevertheless, the two crises show that political measures to carefully restrict the behaviour of citizens are possible if the threat is correspondingly great and the importance of the protected good – in these examples, health and energy – is recognised. The state has succeeded (even if not in every individual case) in devising measures such that they achieve their goal while maintaining proportionality. It is also clearly possible for these policies to be designed and communicated in such a way that the majority support them.

Emphasis mine. All of this speaks for itself, and I don’t have much to add, except to observe that the only way for restrictions to be “communicated” such that “the majority support them,” is by renewed forays into state media-fuelled mass panic and hysteria. Corona has taught our rulers that a great deal more is possible than they ever imagined, and they will spend the coming years exploring the limits.

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | 1 Comment

Phasing out petrol and diesel cars is just pie in the sky

By Roger J Arthur | TCW Defending Freedom | May 25, 2023

How many people, I wonder, have thought about the sheer quantity of raw material required to deliver Net Zero by the end of this century, let alone by 2050? How many are aware that Tesla alone may consume most of the associated raw materials in the world to make a few million electric vehicles (EVs)? Tesla are making around a million a year but more than 1,500million internal combustion engine (ICE) cars will need to be replaced in the great renewables utopia. Will there will be enough minerals and other raw materials to go round to allow ICE cars to be phased out by 2035 and for Net Nero to be delivered by 2050?

The key materials range from copper to rarer metals such as lithium, the refinement of which involves the release of CO2.

One specialist study reports that by 2050 Europe’s plans for producing clean energy technologies will require annually 4.5million tonnes of aluminium (an increase of 33 per cent on today’s use), 1.5million tonnes of copper (35 per cent), 800,000 tonnes of lithium (3,500 per cent), 400,000 tonnes of nickel (100 per cent), 300,000 tonnes of zinc (10 to 15 per cent), 200,000 tonnes of silicon (45 per cent), 60,000 tonnes of cobalt (330 per cent) and 3,000 tonnes of the rare earths metals neodymium, dysprosium and praseodymium (700-2,600 per cent). And currently the primary sources are in Russia and China.

Global copper production alone (unsurprisingly given the huge government subsidies behind renewable technology) has risen from around 16million tonnes in 2010 to more than 22million tonnes in 2022. Renewable energy plant requires on average eight to 12 times more copper than fossil-based power generation, and EVs three to four times more copper than ICE vehicles.

Perhaps the most challenging demand is for lithium, used to make batteries, including those in electric vehicles (EVs) which each take 63kg. So around 95million tonnes of lithium will be needed to make batteries for 1,500 million EVs globally. But only 130,000 tonnes came from mines in 2022, at which rate it would take more than 700 years to make enough batteries. If those EV batteries have to be replaced on average every ten years (assuming no increase in the number of EVs) the continuing demand will average around 9.5million tonnes pa, which is around 70 times the current rate of mining.

On that basis alone, the plan to replace ICE cars by 2035, 12 years hence, is pie in the sky.

The possible use of sodium-ion batteries is being explored but it is inconceivable that development will be complete or that sodium mines will be producing at the capacity needed by 2035.

Another alternative would be the use of hydrogen engines, which Toyota and others are pursuing, assuming that there will be enough H2 available. But the government plans to bring only 10,000MW of H2 production onstream during the 2030s, when the grid system alone will need several times that to keep the lights on when there is little sun or wind. A doubled maximum demand capacity will also be needed to carry the load of 300,000 new EV chargers in service stations on the strategic road network, plus 10million heat pumps.

If there are 30 petrol pumps per service station and it takes around ten times longer to charge an EV battery than to fill an ICE car, then 300 chargers (probably at 100kW each) would be needed per station. That would require a local grid substation capacity of 30MW, enough to supply a town of 30,000.

So the UK’s 2035 target for phasing out ICE cars looks unachievable because we will have neither the materials, the money nor the skilled resources needed to deliver Net Zero this century. Legislating to phase out ICE cars before affordable alternatives were available is not the way to run a country. Destruction of our ICE-making capacity will take us back to a pre-industrial era.

What prize might we miss out on by failing to eliminate the UK’s 0.00048 ppm contribution to current CO2 levels at a cost of over £5trillion, or over £200,000 per household? It would take 3,000 years for the UK to add 1.6ppm (the average annual rise over 60 years) to current CO2 levels. Bear in mind that the greenhouse gas impact of each ppm rise declines rapidly, and that the sun is the main driver of the 97 per cent of natural CO2 emissions.

Without a referendum, we are being subjected to taxation without representation. The government won’t risk giving us a choice and causing them to have to stand up against the UN, IEA and WEF. Sadly, none of the mainstream parties has the backbone to confront these issues.

All are happy, too, to accept the horrific exploitation and abuse of children in Congolese cobalt mines (and no doubt in other countries too), sacrificed to the ‘clean’ energy revolution.

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

Spiegel, after running multiple stories blaming the Nord Stream attack on “Russian ships”, reverses course

Points the finger once again at Ukraine

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | May 28, 2023

Der Spiegel, after running multiple stories peddling the canard that mysterious “Russian ships” were implicated in the Nord Stream attacks of 26 September 2022, has in a familiar pattern now totally reversed course and declared instead that there is increasing evidence pointing to Ukrainian attackers. They report that the theory of a Russian “false-flag operation,” to which they’ve given so much attention, is in fact “considered extremely unlikely” by “those familiar with the case.” The key evidence is unspecified “email metadata” from the mysterious parties who rented the Andromeda.

The investigators of the Public Prosecutor General Peter Frank … are now certain that the sailing yacht “Andromeda” was used for the attack. She sailed from Rostock-Warnemünde in early September 2022 and returned after the attacks. Forged identity documents were apparently used for her charter.

Remains of an underwater explosive were found across a large area of the cabin of the “Andromeda.” It is said to be octogen, an explosive widely used both in the West and in the former Eastern Bloc. …

Octogen is much lighter than TNT, capable of transport in a relatively small boat. Experienced combat divers could have placed it at the site of the attack on the bottom of the Baltic. The often-heard argument, that the weight of the explosives would have required a larger ship and perhaps a miniature submarine, is therefore no longer convincing.

The traces found by the Federal Criminal Police Office align with the assessments of several intelligence services, according to which the perpetrators hail from the Ukraine. Intelligence services have also asked whether the attack could have been carried out by an uncontrolled commando, or by Ukrainian intelligence services – and to what extent elements of the Ukrainian state apparatus may have been implicated. ,,,

Even before the attacks, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) received a warning from the American CIA that were indications Ukrainian perpetrators were planning an attack on the pipelines. The BND did not, however, consider the reports to be very credible.

The story, picked up within hours by multiple German press outlets, follows slightly earlier reporting from the Süddeutsche Zeitung and German state media broadcasters WDR and NDR that likewise claims to have evidence of Ukrainian complicity, though the details of these earlier reports are so murky and unclear, I decided it was better to ignore them at the time. Allegedly, these news organisations discovered that the entity which rented the Andromeda is a shell company masquerading as a travel agency registered in Poland. The unnamed president of this unnamed company lives in Kiev; her name is also on the paperwork of various other companies, and so it seems likely she’s merely a frontman who has no specific involvement with the firm.

The same journalists also reported that, among the forged passports used to rent the Andromeda, was a Romanian document in the name of a certain “Stefan M.”

A person with this name and date of birth appears actually to exist, but according to the findings of the BKA [the German Federal Criminal Police Office], he was likely in Romania at the time of the explosions. But who was the man who presented the passport in the Baltic? According to research by WDR, NDR, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and their media partners, German investigators believe it could be a Ukrainian national – a man in his mid-20s from a town southeast of Kiev …

Social media photos show a young man, often smiling, sometimes in military uniform with a helmet – and with conspicuous tattoos. The young Ukrainian is said to have previously served in an infantry unit. Investigators are apparently following up on other names and clues. Only one of the young man’s relatives can be reached on the phone: she says he is currently serving in the military. … So far, official Ukrainian agencies have not responded to enquiries.

So, to sum up: One of the emails sent to rent the Andromeda came from Ukraine; the shell company that rented the Andromeda is registered under the name of an unrelated Polish woman living in Kiev; and one of the forged passports presented in this transaction carried a photo that might be of a Ukrainian soldier.

The duelling narratives here are clearly more significant than the specific facts (or, “facts”) which they relate. As I noted in my last Nord Stream update, the Russian-ships theory of the attack has been put about by some source within NATO and laundered through OSINT propagandists, and it looks for all the world like an implicit attack on Hersh’s story, for it centres on the alleged movements of the SS-750, a Russian ship outfitted with a miniature submarine designed for underwater rescue operations. The subtext is that the divers of Hersh’s scenario could never have done the job.

The Andromeda story, meanwhile, hails from intelligence services, specifically the CIA and (probably at second-hand) the German BND, whence it flowed to German criminal investigators and the press. This scenario is framed as an explicit attack on the Russian-ships theory, which the anonymous Spiegel informants go out of their way to discredit. The reason, as far as I can tell, is that the Russia-did-it line has overtly escalatory potential, for it posits a Russian attack in Swedish and Danish waters on energy infrastructure that, in the case of Nord Stream 1, is even partly owned by Germany. The Andromeda story generally strives to make room for a non-state actor, thus removing the immediate diplomatic significance of the attacks. This would explain the bizarre and thinly veiled suggestion of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, back in March, that former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko may have been involved in orchestrating the explosions, because they took place on his birthday.

Once again, it remains an enduring mystery, why none of the major published scenarios – not even Seymour Hersh’s detailed account of How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline – accounts for the specifics of the sabotage, which featured two sets of explosions at two separate locations, exactly 17 hours apart. John Mearsheimer recently remarked that if he “had to bet,” he’d “bet that the United States destroyed Nord Stream,” because such an action would be “completely consistent with what America’s overall policy is towards Russia.” It’s very easy to imagine that the United States would have orchestrated the attack through proxies, and it’s at least worth asking whether Hersh’s source fed him an incomplete account for the purposes of obfuscating Ukrainian involvement. On the other hand, the Andromeda theory is very hard to believe; if it is an intelligence service “cover story,” as Hersh claims, we must ask why it is so implausible.

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Professors: The Entire Fossil Fuel Industry Must Be ‘Euthanized’ To Save Humanity From Warmth

By Kenneth Richard | No Tricks Zone | May 25, 2023

Two University of Michigan professors insist we “must reduce the emission of greenhouse gases to zero” to stabilize the planet’s temperature. But because 80% of our energy use still comes from carbon-based sources today, “ending it will not be easy.” The death of all fossil fuel industry must be imposed, euthanasia-style.

It has now reached the point that academic elites are no longer concealing their real inclinations and intentions in massaged semantics or subtleties.

Two US business professors argue that the looming climate catastrophe (which they believe has been caused solely by human greenhouse gas emissions) necessitates that “the shape and structure of modern capitalism will have to be changed.”

No more roads. No more plastic or steel  or electronic products. No more air travel. All the industries that use petroleum products of any kind, no matter how essential, must end this practice, effective immediately. Fossil fuel use must be 100% eliminated.

The cost to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions? Estimates range from $100 to $150 trillion over the next 30 years.

And putting a price on carbon use doesn’t nearly go far enough. It’s not possible to get to zero emissions just by making fossil fuel use more expensive. The entire fossil fuel industry – the producers as well as the recipients – must undergo, as the authors put it, “compassionate destruction.”

If there is any resistance to the total destruction of fossil fuel use, then euthanasia – “the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals,” must be put into practice. Imposed. Forced.

“A future in which we address climate change may require that the entire sector be euthanized, imposing death ahead of its imminent arrival.”

It is not our job to question. The situation is so real, so dire, that our only job now is to “come to terms with the extreme decision that has to be made for the patient.”

Image Source: Hoffman and Ely, 2023

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | 2 Comments

The USAF Chief Said That F-16s Won’t Be A Game-Changer For Kiev So Why’s The Kremlin So Upset?

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 28, 2023

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko recently warned that the West’s possible shipment of F-16s to Kiev “is fraught with colossal risks” for that de facto New Cold War bloc, shortly after which his boss Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described this scenario as “an unacceptable escalation.” The Kremlin’s assessment clashes with the Pentagon’s, whose Air Force chief Frank Kendall claimed last week that “it’s not going to be a dramatic game-changer…for their total military capabilities.”

Biden’s support at the G7 Summit for training Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16s and some countries’ like the UK’s plans to assemble a so-called “jet coalition” for their Eastern European proxy suggest that these opposite predictions will be put to the test after some time unless a ceasefire is reached first. Considering this possibility, it’s timely to weigh the merits of each side’s assessment in order to get a better idea of whether the Kremlin’s or the Pentagon’s will more closely reflect reality in that scenario.

Sky News’ explainer that was published on Sunday provides a good starting point for answering this question. According to military analyst Sean Bell, Kiev will likely receive old F-16s that are “heavily dependent on spares” and urgently in need of being updated with modern equipment. “Anything less” than “Modern air-to-air missiles married to a modern F-16 radar”, which he said “would pose a credible threat”, “risks emboldening the Russian Air Force.”

Before reaching his conclusion, Bell also informed readers that “In addition to radar, modern fighters also need state-of-the-art electronic warfare, defensive aids, infrared sensors, link-16 datalinks, and a computer system to programme and deliver the latest generation of high-tech air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons”, not to mention “trained pilots and groundcrew, weapons, spares, ground planning facilities, intelligence, and a suite of supporting infrastructure are also required.”

Quite clearly, it’ll be an herculean task for the West to make Kiev’s possible F-16 fleet a formidable challenge for Russia’s much more modern one that’s already manned by very experienced pilots. This take therefore extends credence to Kendall’s claim that it won’t be a game-changer. Nevertheless, Kiev reportedly envisages arming the F-16s with Swedish-German Taurus missiles that could reach Moscow with their 500-kilometer maximum range, though it’s unclear whether they’ll receive them.

Even if they do, then this doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to break through Russia’s air defenses. Should they succeed in striking targets near or within that Great Power’s capital, however, then it would certainly be spun by them and their supporters as a soft power coup. This is especially the case if verified footage emerges of an F-16 taking down a much more modern Russian jet. Both scenarios are unlikely, though, but their political significance partially explains why Kiev wants these planes so badly.

The other motivation behind obtaining these systems is for them “to strike the command centers and logistical networks of the Russian forces” in the former Ukrainian regions that Kiev claims as its own according to their Air Force spokesman Yuri Ignat. While it’s obviously better for them to have more capabilities available than less, this use of the F-16s also wouldn’t be a game-changer and could even be counterproductive for the West’s soft power if Russia ends up shooting them down.

On the other hand, there are still plausible reasons for why the Kremlin would regard the West’s transfer of these planes to Ukraine as an unacceptable escalation. For starters, it represents yet another unilateral escalation by NATO in its proxy war with Russia, which could prompt Moscow to respond in ways that risk bringing the conflict closer to nuclear brinksmanship. The Kremlin might feel forced to react more seriously than usual in order to “save face” after yet another of its “red lines” was crossed.

The US is basically taunting Russia to do so at this point per an interpretation of Politico’s recent report. According to their unnamed administration sources, “The Pentagon, including top military officials, have long worried about the potential of escalation on the Russian side should the West take such a step as giving Ukraine F-16 capabilities. But Blinken had observed over the past year that Russia rarely escalates beyond rhetoric, even as the West has introduced more military offerings into Ukraine.”

Russian policymakers might therefore calculate that they finally have to do something meaningful to signal their displeasure if this latest “red line” is crossed, particularly if Moscow gets bombed by the F-16s and/or verified footage emerges of them taking down one of their jets. The odds of that happening would spike if a few of those planes are secretly modernized. In that case, Russia risks becoming a laughingstock if nothing serious is done in response, after which even more escalations might follow.

Other than possibly being placed in this particular dilemma, there’s another reason why the Kremlin considers the West’s potential transfer of these planes to Ukraine to be unacceptable, and that’s the chance that they could be based in NATO states and/or manned by “volunteer pilots” from NATO. The first scenario would already be provocative enough, but could prompt an unprecedented crisis if those NATO-based F-16s are used to bomb Russia’s pre-2014 territory.

As for the second, it would almost certainly entail the most modern F-16s being used since NATO likely wouldn’t risk its “volunteer pilots’” lives by having them fly outdated deathtraps. Furthermore, these planes would then probably be based in a NATO state for additional protection even if they’re only used to hit targets over the airspace or in the territory that Kiev claims as its own. As with the first scenario, that would already be a major provocation, let alone if they’re used to bomb Russia’s pre-2014 territory.

To be absolutely clear, there’s nothing credible in the public domain to suggest that these last two worst-case scenarios are being contemplated, but it’s likely the Kremlin’s concerns that the West’s possible transfer of F-16s to Ukraine could lead to those escalations that it considers this unacceptable. Russian policymakers probably expect that any reluctance to meaningfully signal their displeasure at the crossing of that latest “red line” would embolden the West to eventually think about doing precisely that in time.

They obviously don’t want to be placed in the dilemma whereby they might feel damned if they express such a signal by escalating in response for deterrence purposes and equally damned if they decline. In either case, the consequences are unpredictable and could result in everything spiraling out of control, hence why they prefer for Kiev not to obtain any F-16s in the first place. Nobody can therefore say with certainty what will ultimately happen, which is why many observers are becoming worried about this.

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | 1 Comment

Iraq unveils $17bn infrastructure project linking West Asia to Europe

The Cradle | May 27, 2023

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani on 27 May unveiled a $17 billion infrastructure project to link West Asia and Europe and make Iraq a regional transportation hub.

Once finished, the “Route of Development” project would run the length of the nation, reaching 1,200 kilometers from Turkiye’s northern border to the Persian Gulf in the south.

The project was announced by Sudani during a meeting with transport ministry representatives from Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkiye, and the UAE.

“We see this project as a pillar of a sustainable non-oil economy, a link that serves Iraq’s neighbors and the region, and a contribution to economic integration efforts,” he said.

While more negotiations are needed, the Iraqi parliament’s transport committee stated that any country that desires “will be able to carry out part of the project,” adding that the project may be finished in “three to five years.”

“The Route of Development will boost interdependence between the countries of the region,” Turkiye’s ambassador to Baghdad, Ali Riza Guney, said, without specifying what role his country will play in the initiative.

Sudani has prioritized the repair of the country’s road network as well as the upgrade of its aging energy infrastructure.

On 25 May, Iraq’s Oil Minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani announced that Saudi Aramco is seeking to invest in Iraq’s Crutch gas field and expand its capacity to 400 million cubic feet.

Additionally, in February, the Iraqi government signed an agreement with the UAE firm Crescent Petroleum to develop two gas fields in northeastern Diyala governorate to supply local power plants.

The UAE’s private upstream oil and gas company disclosed that the Gilabat-Qumar and Khashim gas fields are expected to produce seven million cubic meters within an 18-month span.

In recent months, Baghdad has bolstered its efforts to increase its relations with Gulf states. On 19 February, Iraq and Saudi Arabia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to share sensitive intelligence and deepen security cooperation, marking the first time the two nations have signed a security pact since 1983.

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Post-Bakhmut scenario in Ukraine war

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MAY 28, 2023 

Ukraine President Zelensky and US President Biden met on the sideline of the G7 Summit at Hiroshima within hours of the statement  from the Kremlin at 1 am last Sunday, transmitting President Vladimir Putin’s greetings to the Russian forces for the “completion of the operation to liberate Artemovsk” (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine.) 

The operation lasted 224 days and turned into an epic battle. Ukraine paid a heavy price in blood in trying to hold onto Bakhmut, which came to be called a “Meat Grinder”. American analysts have listed twenty five Ukrainian brigades and at least 9 battalions and 5 regiments —  an estimated deployment 120,000 troops at the very least — thrown into the battle by Kiev. An estimated 70% casualties would mean that Ukraine suffered as many as 94,150 killed and wounded. It is a devastating defeat. 

Conventional military doctrine says that an army attacking an entrenched force will need at least three times more soldiers than the defending force entrenched in fortifications. But Wagner fighters numbering 32,000 fighters faced off with a NATO proxy force almost 4 times bigger in numbers and equipped with modern weaponry. 

The shock over the crushing defeat was writ large on the faces of US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky as they faced the media at Hiroshima a few hours after the Kremlin statement appeared. Reading from a prepared text, Biden announced, in a major reversal of policy, that the US would be “launching some new joint efforts with our partners to train Ukrainian pilots on a fourth-generation fighter aircraft like the F-16.” 

Meanwhile, in a series of showy incidents, Ukraine began hitting targets in Russia with US and British supplied weapons. There have been sporadic artillery and Himars missile attacks on Russian civilians in border towns; two drone attacks on the Kremlin; and British Storm Shadow cruise missile strikes on targets in Russia. In one particular instance last week, there has been a cross border incursion in the Belgorod region with US supplied vehicles and weapons. But none of these attacks can be deemed as “game changers.”

While the US and the rest of NATO are feigning ignorance about these attacks, the key fact is that Ukraine gets targeting data that only NATO intelligence sources could provide. Thus, the decades-old red line dating back to Cold War has been breached — namely, that neither the US nor Russia would attack the other side’s territory directly or indirectly. (They held the guardrails even during the Afghan jihad in the 1980s.)

There are going to be consequences. The first sign of it came with the news that nuclear weapons are already being deployed in Belarus and Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu was in Minsk to sign the necessary agreement detailing the logistics of deployment. Biden told reporters on Friday after returning from Japan that his reaction to the Russian deployment is “extremely negative.”

But in reality, Moscow’s intention is to provide Belarus with deterrent capability against any rash moved by NATO such as cutting off access to Kaliningrad. Incidentally, the US too has been keeping nuclear weapons on European soil for many years. 

But a flashpoint can always arise. The upcoming NATO exercise codenamed Air Defender 23 (June 12-23) will be the most significant military exercise ever carried out over the European skies and the most extensive deployment exercise of air forces in the history of the western alliance — involving 25 NATO countries, 10,000 military personnel and approximately 220 aircraft. 

According to Larry Johnson, well-known American blogger and former analyst at the CIA, “a training operation of this size and scale against the backdrop of heightened tensions in the region is akin to lighting a match in a gasoline storage tank.” That said, at the tactical level, the Russian military is also positioning itself for further operations to complete the liberation of Donbass, after having gained control of Bakhmut, which is a major communication hub through which all Ukrainian logistics passed along the Donetsk arc up to Seversk.

A report in Izvestia on Wednesday said, quoting expert opinion, that Avdiivka and Maryinka are “next in line… so that there will be no shelling of Donetsk city… Next, we will have to turn off the big Donetsk arc — from Ugledar to Seversk with access to Konstantinovka and Slavyansk. These are the last two cities of the large Donbass agglomeration, followed by the steppe (leading toward Dnieper River) where it will be very difficult for the enemy to hold on.” 

Again, the Wagner fighters being replaced by regular Russian forces for further operations. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview on Russian TV on Friday: “It’s hard to say where the breaking point is… Obviously, the degree of direct and indirect involvement in this conflict by the countries of the collective West is surging day by day. This may protract the conflict, but will not turn the tide drastically. It cannot turn the tide at all. Russia will press on with the operation, and Russia will ensure its interests one way or another and achieve the designated objectives.” 

Meanwhile, Russia has been conducting an intensive bombing campaign to make it difficult for Kiev to assemble the manpower and firepower required to launch and sustain an offensive operation beyond a few days, and is  intensifying its operations overall to decimate Ukraine’s military capabilities. 

The “known unknown” is how the 2024 US election campaign will affect the trajectory of the war. Biden’s shift on F-16s can be seen as a knee-jerk reaction. Even Gen. Mark Milley, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff admits  that F-16 isn’t a “magic weapon.”

Meanwhile, Russia continues to probe the US intentions. In an interview with the prestigious International Affairs magazine, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Friday that “The US ruling elite has consolidated itself to a great extent on an anti-Russian basis, regardless of party affiliation. In my opinion, the situation is turning into a force majeure.” 

However, Ryabkov who is the highest ranking “point person” for relations with the US at the foreign ministry also added, “No matter how things turn out, we are willing to maintain dialogue with whoever comes to power (in the US), stays in power.”

Therefore, Ukraine relinquishing the accession to NATO and the EU and returning to neutral non-aligned status will remain one of the key conditions of a successful peace process in Ukraine. The big question is how far the NATO will go at its forthcoming summit in July in Vilnius; would this mean Ukraine’s full membership or something else? The likelihood of any big decisions in Vilnius doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

Interestingly, the Kremlin instinctively warmed up to the idea of a phone call to Putin “in due course,” voiced by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz after his return to Berlin from the G7 summit in Hiroshima. Berlin has consistently disfavoured any precipitate move by NATO apropos Ukraine’s membership.

In an interview with Wall Street Journal on Friday celebrating his centennial, Henry Kissinger also remarked that “the offer to put Ukraine into NATO was a grave mistake and led to this war.” Kissinger advocated instead greater clarity in Russia’s stance on Europe, flagging that while Russia is interested in fostering ties with Europe for its own development, it is also cautious of potential threats coming from the West. 

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | 1 Comment

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