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Myth of Big Oil’s Funding of Climate Scepticism vs Reality of Big Green’s Billions Driving Climate Alarmism

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JUNE 15, 2023

In 2019 the climate activist and UCL Geography Professor Mark Maslin wrote that oil companies were spending $200 million a year promoting something he termed “climate change denial”. The ‘dark forces’ claim has been in regular use ever since. The Guardian recently reported Big Oil was “wringing humanity dry”, noting once again the annual $200m spent on climate change lobbying. Great story. Shame there is no actual evidence to back it up.

That can be concluded from a major new work from the investigative journalist Ben Pile. He traces the Maslin claim to a Forbes article, which in turn was based on the work of InfluenceMap, an international think tank at the “cutting edge of climate and sustainability issues”. InfluenceMap claims to use a funding methodology based on “best available records”, but Pile notes the presence of a “tower of estimates”. This is largely guessing, “not the discovery of a cache of receipts”, he observes.

In more detail, Pile notes that this stack of assumptions involves defining areas of corporate activity that might be used for climate lobbying and then estimating spending associated with these activities, and then further estimating the proportion of spending directed at climate change related issues, before finally categorising as ‘lobbying’ or ‘branding’ based on whether the activity pertains to a political agenda. Overall, Pile concludes, “it is just guesses”. The work is “performative” in nature, and gives the impression of an investigation in order to make real one of green ideology’s major articles of faith.

He goes on to note: “And so the idea of an entire industry of climate denial servicing the interests of big oil companies has become the most respectable conspiracy theory at all levels of society – the online troll is as comfortable reproducing the smear as the chair of the internationally-renowned scientific organisation.”

Of course there is no reason why Big Oil, which includes Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Chevron and Total, cannot spend money in the course of contributing to the energy debate. Fossil fuels provide over 80% of global energy needs and make huge contributions to society, including the pumping of billions of pounds into state funds and individual pension schemes. The oil business is a lawful enterprise that has helped provide humankind with a current standard of living almost unimaginable to the vast majority of people that existed previously. But the actual evidence indicates they have been keeping a lowish profile in the current debate, possibly taking the view that when the madness of Net Zero subsides, they will still be required to provide 80% of the world’s energy.

Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT notes that the current climate narrative – from ‘settled’ science to Net Zero – is “absurd”, but trillions of dollars currently says it is not absurd. Pile’s latest work – an excellent examination of many of the sources funding climate and Net Zero extremism – goes into great detail about many of the green billionaire foundations that bankroll everything from activist scientists, political campaigns and parts of the mainstream media, including, of course, the Guardian. The Daily Sceptic has reported on many of these activities, noting for instance the funding of green propaganda in schools and the provision of Armageddon-friendly copy for newsrooms and TV meteorologists.

To provide an insight into the vast amount of money available to fund the green agenda, Pile tabulated the information below estimating all the annual grants made by InfluenceMap’s own benefactors.

In total, InfluenceMap’s funders alone are making grants of about $1.2 billion every year to fund climate change lobbying. And these are only the funds with which InfluenceMap has a direct relationship. There are many others, including the Rockefeller family, Bezos, Bloomberg, Gates along with the Hewletts, Packards and Gettys.

Set against this, Pile goes on to note that in a small Westminster office building at 55 Tufton Street, scene of Extinction Rebellion paint-throwing and protests, is a clutch of small think tanks including the Global Warming Policy Foundation that are, as he gently puts it, “somewhat misaligned to the dominant ideologies of woke Western politics and media”. In total, Pile estimates the income of all nine campaigning organisations at just $6.7m.

Pile is able to show that billions of dollars have been poured into “manifestly false” philanthropic foundations with the money claimed to have been used to construct narratives, to found fake civil society organisations, to actively misinform the public, policymakers, governments and intergovernmental agencies, and to buy favours from or into research organisations, media companies and public institutions. Any contrary influence from Big Oil simply does not compare, he adds.

The vast sums spent by the Green Blob are noted, but Pile observes that members are confused as to why they are not living in a green Utopia. They have long felt it unnecessary to explain themselves, preferring to smear, fearmonger, block roads, use moral blackmail in place of reason – and invent conspiracy theories around oil companies. Furthermore, even after nearly two decades of lobbying, adequately effective green tech remains a distant dream. Wind power has been a failure, EVs are an expensive luxury and heat pumps cost multiples of gas boilers. As we have started to see all too clearly, nudge has now come to shove as activists demand that society must reorganise around the shortcomings of green technology and the ‘climate emergency’. This requires the construction of supranational political agencies in the form of technocratic bureaucracies with unprecedented power, beyond democratic control, populated by unaccountable wonks.

“Environmentalism is an elite ideology, and climate change fearmongering is a preoccupation only of the topmost parts of society. The rest of us find it implausible, somewhat ridiculous and manifestly self-serving,” Pile concludes.

June 17, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Gender-affirming hormones in children and adolescents

By Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan | Trust the Evidence | June 15, 2023

In February 2019, we wrote about a delicate problem: Gender-affirming hormones in children and adolescents.

We wrote about gender dysphoria, a growing problem in Europe and the stages of “treatment” proposed by international guidelines:

And then proceeded to do what we do for a living: look at the evidence from systematic reviews, focussing on the most up-to-date and most of all, we looked at the quality of the 16 studies in the reviews.

We listed the presumed benefits and possible harms of interventions for stages 1 and 2, with stage 3 (surgery) being irreversible.

We concluded that the evidence for interventions for both stages was very low quality. Still, the range of psychological and physical harms induced by the hormones was likely to be high.

All this would matter less if these were offered to individuals who could make up their minds, but they were offered to people as young as 12.

In any case, we concluded that none of these hormone interventions should be offered outside clinical trials, of which there were none in the reviews we identified.

We wrote: ‘The development of these interventions should, therefore, occur in the context of research, and treatment.’ Our conclusions were reported in the Times. The work was also worthy of a BBC Panorama programme.

However, our work drew a complaint to the Editor in Chief of the BMJ, enough to close down our work in that outlet.

Well, four years after all this, NHS England has come to the same conclusions:

“Puberty suppressing hormones will not be prescribed to under 18s for gender dysphoria, except in exceptional circumstances, because of a lack of evidence to support their safety or clinical effectiveness. Puberty blockers will only be accessible to children as part of research, interim guidance states. As such, a study into the impact of puberty suppressing hormones on gender dysphoria in children and young people with early onset gender dysphoria is being developed by NHS England’s new national children and young people’s gender dysphoria research oversight board.”

The tale shows that we found poor-quality evidence wherever we looked, which appears to be a problem swept under the table.

EBM applied correctly will eventually come up with the right answer, especially in the matter of harms that most people are uncomfortable with. What matters now is how many children have been harmed in the intervening four years it took NHS England to review the evidence and come to the same conclusion.

June 17, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Secret Pfizer Document Shows Company Observed 1.6 Million Injuries Following COVID Vaccination

BY MEGAN REDSHAW | JUNE 15, 2023

A recently released Pfizer document shows the pharmaceutical giant in August 2022 was aware of 1.6 million adverse events reported by those who had received its COVID vaccine.

The adverse events spanned more than 10,000 different categories and affected nearly every organ system in the body. Yet, Pfizer still concluded its shot was safe and effective.

According to Pfizer’s 396-page “confidential” pharmacovigilance document obtained by the European Medicines Agency, the company observed 508,351 case reports containing 1,597,673 adverse events. One-third of all adverse events were classified as “serious” — a number well beyond the 15% threshold that should trigger a safety signal.

The document shows that adverse events were three times more common in women than men, with 60% of all reports classified as “not recovered” or outcome unknown. The highest number of cases affected the 31-50 year age group.

Because 92% of individuals did not have a comorbidity, it’s unlikely their adverse events could be attributed to anything but Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

The document further categorized the 1.6 million adverse events observed by Pfizer into categories and subcategories based on injury. According to journalist Daniel Horowitz, Pfizer observed more than 10,000 categories of diagnosis, many of which were severe or rare.

For example, 73,542 cases in 264 categories of vascular disorders were reported by individuals after receiving Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, 696,508 cases of nervous system disorders were reported, and 61,518 reported eye disorders in 100 different categories.

More than 47,000 ear disorders were reported, including 16,000 cases of tinnitus, 225,000 reports of skin and tissue disorders, 190,000 respiratory disorders, and more than 178,000 reproductive and breast disorders.

There were 77,000 reports of psychiatric disorders reported following vaccination, 3,711 cases of tumors, more than 100,000 reports of lymphatic disorders, and 127,000 reports of cardiac disorders in more than 270 categories.

The document also shows Pfizer was aware of 68 cases of chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy — the rare and severe neurological disorder experienced by Maddie De Garay during Pfizer’s clinical trials that left her confined to a wheelchair.

At the end of hundreds of pages of observed injuries, Pfizer concluded the risks of its COVID-19 vaccine “evaluated in the context of the benefits” showed the shot had a favorable benefit-risk profile.

“No additional changes to the BNT l 62b2 RSI or additional risk minimisation activities in addition to those in place are warranted at this time,” the company, which made billions off its COVID vaccine, wrote.

To date, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not updated the product label for Pfizer’s COVID vaccine to include a list of its potential adverse events, nor has Pfizer been held accountable for failing to disclose these potential vaccine injuries to the public.

June 17, 2023 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Can We Please Have Some Honesty About Trump’s Lockdowns?

By Alan Dowd | Brownstone Institute | June 15, 2023

The salvos being lobbed between former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over their respective handling of the COVID-19 pandemic are at once troubling, encouraging, and revealing. Citizens who believe in individual liberty, individual responsibility, and constitutional government should listen to what these men and all policymakers are saying about COVID-19 today—and equally important—remember how they responded in 2020.

Causes and Consequences

With global health experts initially warning that the virus was killing 3.4 percent of those infected—and the now-disgraced British epidemiologist Neil Ferguson churning out computer models that offered policymakers a false choice between mass death or mass lockdowns—Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services drafted a document aimed at containing COVID. It was on March 13, 2020.

Stamped “not for public distribution or release” and indeed kept from public view for several months, that document would guide decision-makers at every level of government and every sector of the economy in dealing with COVID-19.

In March 2020, the Trump administration unveiled elements of the document under the banner “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” Among other things, the document introduced us to phrases like “social distancing,” “workplace controls,” “aggressive containment,” and “non-pharmaceutical interventions” at the federal, state, local and private-sector level. These would include “home isolation strategies,” “cancellation of almost all sporting events, performances, and public and private meetings,” “school closures,” and “stay-at-home directives for public and private organizations.”

A PDF sheet handed out at the March 16 press conference said: “In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”

This was the blueprint for locking down and closing down our free and open society. With that one sentence, an attempt to nationalize the pandemic response, the Bill of Rights became a dead letter, free association was abolished, and free enterprise itself was put on hold.

It’s no surprise that, when faced with estimates of such a high infection-fatality rate (IFR) and such terrifying computer models, some of the people advising the president would recommend locking down.

What is surprising and telling is that, apparently, the president didn’t respond to those recommendations with questions that would serve to defend individual liberty, encourage individual responsibility and challenge the default position of locking down—questions like: “Haven’t we, as a society, dealt with viruses like this in the past? Didn’t something like this happen in the late 1960s and late 1950s?

What did government do—and not do—back then? How dependable are those IFR numbers? Can we trust those computer models? Are the costs of locking down—economic, societal well-being, individual well-being, constitutional, institutional—worth the benefits? Are there any computer models on that? What are the trade-offs? Is there anything in the scientific canon that challenges this lockdown strategy?”

Americans don’t expect their Presidents to have all the answers. What they expect—and need—from their Presidents is a breadth of knowledge and experience to ask those kinds questions, the capacity to build a diverse team to help answer such questions and to challenge the answers, the ability to instill a sense of calm in the face of chaos, and enough wisdom to navigate a crisis without first worsening it.

Trump did not display any of those characteristics in mid March 2020, which came as no surprise to some of us. There was a revealing moment during the 2016 campaign when Trump was asked, “Who do you talk to for military advice?” Candidate Trump answered, “I watch the shows”—as in the cable-news shouting matches, where the loudest voice or scariest scenario or biggest bang or best one-liner or sharpest elbow or nastiest rejoinder or last word wins. That’s no way to learn about or understand issues of war and peace, life and death. But it revealed much about how a President Trump would respond in a time of crisis.

He seemed to have no intellectual curiosity, no sense of history, no nuance or depth, no wisdom, not a modicum of humility to ask questions. And so, when the COVID crisis slammed into America, Trump was influenced by the last words he heard, impressed by the most maximalist course of action, and drawn to the loudest, biggest-bang advisors—people who had no interest in anything beyond their enclaved neighborhood of expertise, no grasp of the law of unintended consequences, no desire to try to balance public health with individual liberty.

The consequences were devastating—far worse than COVID-19 itself. Aimed at saving life, the lockdowns—ironically but predictably—were a hideous destroyer of life and living. The evidence is literally everywhere: a 25.5 percent increase in alcohol-related deaths, a 30 percent surge in homicides, huge spikes in domestic violence and child abuse, thousands of preventable cancer deaths and heart-disease deaths, decreased life expectancy and decreased earnings for a generation of children, every level of government utterly failed, hundreds of thousands of businesses shuttered, millions left jobless, tens of millions of Americans barred from gathering for worship, the devaluing of work, the expansion of government, the acceleration of dependency.

As a recent study conducted by scientists at Johns Hopkins University and Lund University concludes, the lockdowns were a “policy failure of gigantic proportions…the biggest policy mistake in modern times.”

Yet in the wake of all that wreckage and destruction, we are left to conclude that Trump has no second thoughts, no regrets, no apologies, no lessons learned, no remorse, no sense of responsibility.

While he claims, “I never was for mandates,” and his campaign gushes that “President Trump saved millions of lives, opposed mandates and embraced the federalist system to allow states to make the decisions best for their people,” his record and rhetoric say otherwise.

For example—ignoring factors such as age, comorbidities and population size—Trump recently jabbed, “How about the fact that [DeSantis] had the third most deaths of any state having to do with the China virus? Even [New York Governor Andrew] Cuomo did better.”

He’s comparing here a lockdown state—a state that followed his HHS “guidelines,” quarantined the healthy and tried to control a virus through government coercion—with an individual-liberty state. And he’s applauding the former while criticizing the latter.

“I did the right thing,” he has said about his response to COVID. Almost boasting, he huffs, “We closed the country down…I had to shut down.”

But it wasn’t the right thing to do—not in light of the prescient warnings of people like Donald Henderson, not in light of the Constitution, not in light of history.

He did not have to shut the country down. Other free societies did not imitate the PRC and lock down in response to deadly new viruses—Taiwan, South Korea and Sweden in 2020, America in 1957 and 1968.

And while Trump says he never imposed mandates, his administration drafted and disseminated the blueprint for locking down—a blueprint almost every state followed. If he “had to shut it down,” to use his words, did he do so with gentle suggestions? In fact, Trump himself used the bully pulpit to publicly scold governors for ending lockdowns, especially Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. As Kemp tried to pry open his state after a month of lockdowns, Trump warned him he was “in violation” of the administration’s “phase one guidelines.” This had a chilling effect on other governors who wanted to follow Kemp’s lead. So much for “the federalist system.”

The reality is that by bringing in Scott Atlas—who was using reason and facts to fight the mass psychosis unleashed by the lockdown herd—in August 2020, Trump was tacitly admitting his mistake in handing over the reins of America’s government and economy to unelected public-health officials.

But by then it was too late. In their refusal to allow a return to normalcy and their Orwellian lexicon—“15 days to slow the spread…30 days to slow the spread…the next two weeks are critical…essential workers…together apart…follow the science…six feet apart or six feet under…shelter in place…no mask no service…proof of vaccination required…get the shot and get back to normal”—we were reminded of the human tendency to control other humans, the penetrating potency of fear, and the state’s default desire to expand its reach and role. Once these pathologies are let loose, as they were in March 2020, they are not easily or quickly subdued.

The New Normal

DeSantis—a kind of stand-in for all of us who have a default belief in individual liberty and individual responsibility—initially deferred to Washington’s mandates and threats masquerading as “guidelines.” He says he regrets not challenging Trump and the high priests of scientism from the outset. He deserves credit not only for admitting his initial reaction was wrong, not only for changing course once he recognized what the lockdowns were doing to America and Americans, but also for making this a front-and-center issue today.

Although the Trump camp has resorted to a “My opponent did it too” defense, the New York Times reported in spring 2020 on DeSantis’s “resistance to closures throughout the coronavirus pandemic.” DeSantis reopened and returned his state to normalcy so early that people like Cuomo attacked him: “You played politics with this virus, and you lost,” Cuomo preened in mid-2020. In his backslapping exchange with Trump, Cuomo recently added, “Donald Trump tells the truth…Florida’s policy of denial allowed COVID to spread, and that’s why they had a very large second wave.”

But the numbers tell a different story. “Florida had less excess mortality than California or New York,” as DeSantis points out. Plus, a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, using CDC data, found free Florida’s age-adjusted COVID deaths per 100,000 (265) to be far lower than locked-down New York’s (346).

“Leaders,” DeSantis argues, “don’t subcontract out their leadership to health bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci.” He bluntly calls “Fauci-ism” and its lockdowns “wrong” and “destructive.” He openly wonders why Trump—best known before his presidency for his trademark tagline “You’re fired!”—couldn’t bring himself to fire Anthony Fauci or at least shut down the White House Coronavirus Taskforce. And he challenges Americans—the tens of millions who were impoverished, broken, left alone by the lockdowns—to wrestle with an unsettling idea: “If [Trump] thinks Cuomo handled it better, that’s an indication if something like this were to happen again, he would double down and do what he did in 2020.”

This isn’t about supporting DeSantis or any other candidate. It’s about discovering who has learned from history and who would repeat the mistakes of March 2020. Every candidate running for every federal office and statewide office should be asked where they stand on this fundamental issue—because there will be other viruses, other pandemics, other computer models that tempt or terrify those in power. In a nation founded on individual liberty and individual responsibility, lockdowns cannot become the new-normal response to such events.

Alan Dowd is an essayist and a Senior Fellow at the Sagamore Institute in Indianapolis.

June 17, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

HHS is Still Wasting Money Fighting Online Covid “Disinformation”

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | June 17, 2023

Apparently, Covid discussions are still a thing worth cracking down on. That’s at least according to The Biden administration, which is injecting $500,000 into Texas Woman’s University as part of a grant program aimed at curbing COVID-19 “misinformation” and “disinformation” allegedly aimed at Hispanics, according to funding records reviewed by the Washington Examiner. The grant aims “to expand research on mitigating the effect of misinformation and disinformation” regarding “COVID-19 prevention and treatment initiatives among Hispanics.”

Timeline: Kicking off on May 10 and set to wrap up in April 2024, this grant is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)’s Food and Drug Administration’s portfolio. It’s part of Biden’s broader push to censor alleged disinformation by joining forces with social media platforms on content moderation – a move likened to “censorship” by some Republicans.

What GOP says: This funding allocation may prod GOP lawmakers to probe deeper into the Biden administration’s methods in countering certain types of speech. House Republicans, according to the Washington Examiner, are considering wielding the appropriations process as a tool to block federal agencies from pumping money into domestic initiatives tagged as combating “disinformation.”

What HHS did before: In 2021, HHS, spearheaded by Secretary Xavier Becerra, allegedly dabbled in misinformation tracking, by offering guidance to Twitter and Facebook on handling virus-related content. The US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy admitted in an August 2021 call with education groups, that the government was “working to combat misinformation in many ways, one being working with tech companies.”

Skeptical voices: Brian Harrison, a former HHS chief of staff under Trump and a current GOP Texas state House member, communicated his skepticism to the Washington Examiner: “I have no confidence this is anything more than Biden’s HHS spending money we don’t have on government censorship efforts.”

Inside the project: Texas Woman’s University’s venture consists of crafting a “social network analysis” to scrutinize “misinformation consumed by the Hispanic community.” It involves conducting focus groups, creating “an economic impact analysis of proposed informational strategies for Hispanics,” and establishing a “longitudinal misinformation/disinformation index.” The study, set in El Paso, Texas, is also sifting through social media content in both English and Spanish.

Deja vu?: The aforementioned “index” has set off alarm bells due to its echo of a tool from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which previously backed the Global Disinformation Index, a British entity that faced criticism for supposedly operating blacklists of conservative media outlets.

HHS’s stance: In response, HHS spokeswoman Anne Feldman said: “HHS does not censor speech.”

June 17, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Pentagon program hunts those who ‘embarrass’ its generals – Intercept

RT | June 17, 2023

A secretive division of the Pentagon is now tasked with protecting its high-ranking officials not only from assassination and other bodily harm, but also from negative portrayals on social media, according to a procurement document obtained by The Intercept and published on Saturday.

While military records officially state the US Army Protective Services Battalion protects its charges from “assassination, kidnapping, injury or embarrassment,” this now includes monitoring social media for “direct, indirect, and veiled” threats, as well as identifying “negative sentiment” about individuals like Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, according to the document, which is dated September.

The document describes the program as “a reliable social media threat mitigation service” with an “Open-Source Web based tool-kit with advanced capabilities to collect publicly available information (PAI).” Beyond the data slurped up from Twitter’s “firehose,” 4Chan, Reddit, YouTube, VK, Discord, Telegram, and the like, “PAI” also includes a wealth of commercially acquired information from surveillance firms and private contractors like Dataminr, other data brokers, and unscrupulous smartphone apps and advertisers.

All this would be apparently combined with geo-fencing capabilities and actual cellular location data, allowing for near-exact pinpointing of the location of the supposedly “signal-rich discussions from elicit threat-actor communities” – keeping in mind that the “threats” discussed in the procurement document potentially include unkind tweets about current and retired generals.

The entirety of this information hoard – including CCTV feeds, radio stations, personal records, even individuals’ webcams – would be accessible through a “universal search selector,” according to the document.

The document specified the need for a two-way stream, requiring the contractor to maintain “the anonymity and security needed to conduct publicly accessible information research through misattribution” by “using various egress points globally to mask their identity.” The contract was given to SEWP Solutions LLC, described as the only company capable of “tunnel[ing] into specific countries/cities like Moscow, Russia or Beijing, China and come out on a host nation internet domain.”

The procurement document specifies that it does not want the Pentagon advertising its interest in wholesale violating the online and potentially even physical privacy of those it deems threats to the reputation of generals retired and current. It is stamped “Controlled Unclassified Information”/FEDCON, meaning it is not meant to be seen by those outside the federal government and contractor system.

The revelation that still more intrusive powers are being sought by the national security state has outraged privacy advocates. “Expressing ‘positive or negative sentiment towards a senior high-risk individual’ cannot be deemed sufficient grounds for government agencies to conduct surveillance operations, even going as far as ‘pinpointing the exact locations’ of individuals,” Ilia Siatitsa of Privacy International told The Intercept.

“The ability to express opinions, criticize, make assumptions, or form value judgments – especially regarding public officials – is a quintessential part of democratic society.”

June 17, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | 2 Comments

Beijing responds to new hacking allegations

RT | June 17, 2023

China has dismissed a report from a US cybersecurity firm, which accused Beijing of carrying out a major hack targeting hundreds of people and organizations around the world, calling the charges “far-fetched and unprofessional.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin responded to the allegations on Friday, telling reporters that the agency behind them, Mandiant, has a track record of false reporting about China.

“The cybersecurity firm that you mentioned has repeatedly sold disinformation on so-called Chinese hacking attacks. The stories are far-fetched and unprofessional,” Wang said at a daily press briefing.

Mandiant released a lengthy report on Thursday describing an attack by an “aggressive and skilled actor” with “suspected links to China,” claiming the hackers engaged in “espionage activity” starting last October. The attackers allegedly used a vulnerability in the Barracuda Networks email system to target diplomatic officials and government agencies across East and Southeast Asia, including in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Founded in 2004, the firm has frequently cast blame on China for various hacks over the years, and rose to prominence in 2012 after another high-profile hacking allegation pinned on Beijing. The company was later purchased by Google for $1.2 billion and remains a subsidiary of the tech giant.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman went on to state that “by making up reports about so-called foreign cyberattacks,” some American companies have “become accomplices in the US government’s smearing campaigns against other countries,” going on to accuse Washington of its own hacking operations.

In April, the Chinese government published a review of alleged US government cyber attacks, claiming that American intelligence agencies have “been intruding on, dividing and suppressing foreign cybersecurity vendors” for years. The report outlined several major hacking incidents, including a 2010 attack on Iranian nuclear facilities using the US and Israeli-developed Stuxnet virus, and also pointed to Washington’s mass-collection surveillance program under the National Security Agency.

June 17, 2023 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | , | 1 Comment

US Submarine That Crashed in South China Sea Two Years Ago Won’t Be Ready Until 2026

By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 17.06.2023

The US attack submarine that crashed traversing the South China Sea in 2021 will reportedly not be ready for redeployment until at least 2026.

The USS Connecticut won’t be repaired until 2026 and will cost $80 million, according to a recent US media report. The delay is due to US Navy shipyard backlogs filled with other repairs and routine maintenance that predate the USS Connecticut.

One of three Seawolf-class submarines, the nuclear-powered attack vessel is armed with tomahawk cruise missiles and torpedoes. Its crash in 2021 injured 11 of its crew and was not only embarrassing for the US military but also inflamed relations with China, which took issue with the US operating clandestine nuclear-powered attack subs so close to their shores.

China also accused the United States of being less than forthcoming with details about the crash, including the objectives assigned to the attack submarine.

“I want to stress that the root cause of the incident, which also poses a serious threat and significant risks to regional peace and stability, is the US’ constant stirring up of trouble in the South China Sea over a long period of time,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian shortly after the incident.

The US Navy took five days to make a statement on the accident and then gave no details on how the submarine crashed or what it hit. More than a month later, a US Navy investigation stated that the vessel had struck an underwater mountain. Senior members of the submarine’s command were relieved of duty due to a loss of confidence.

Roughly a month before the crash, the USS Connecticut crashed into a pier in San Diego, California. An investigation by the Navy determined the crash in the South China Sea was avoidable.

“A grounding at this speed and depth had the potential for more serious injuries, fatalities, and even loss of the ship,” the report said, continuing that it “resulted from an accumulation of errors and omissions in navigation planning, watchteam execution, and risk management that fell far below US Navy standards.”

The accident led the Navy to issue a temporary “stand down” order for its submarine force.

After the crash, the $3 billion submarine limped itself to a port in Guam. It arrived at Bremerton, Washington, in February 2022 for repairs, but its current status hasn’t been publicly disclosed.

A statement given to a US military news outlet last year said repairs were expected to start in February of this year and finish by no later than September 2025 and cost around $50 million, but the more recent report indicates that additional delays have occurred.

US Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) decried the long delay on Twitter. “It will have taken AT LEAST 5 YEARS of repairs for the USS Connecticut – one of our most formidable submarines – to return to the fleet,” he said. “This delay is a reminder of the kinds of monumental investments we need to make in maritime infrastructure.”

The US Navy’s official news portal reported in January that four of the six dry docks at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, are temporarily closed due to concerns about their ability to withstand earthquakes.

The report stated that upgrades to the docks could take between 18 and 24 months.

June 17, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | 1 Comment

700,000 People Without Clean Water As Fallout From Nova Kakhovka Flooding Mounts

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | June 16, 2023

While much media reporting on the June 6th destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine has focused on the ‘whodunnit’ aspect to the explosion, many thousands of people downriver continue to suffer, after nearly five cubic miles of water has submerged villages and farmland in the Kherson oblast.

Basic infrastructure and utilities have been destroyed in much of the region, leaving an estimated 700,000 people in the broader area in need of clean water.

Al Jazeera writes that “Among displaced communities along the banks of Ukraine’s Dnipro River, bottled water has become the most coveted commodity.”

“It is all poisoned,” a representative with the NGO Project Hope told the publication, describing the impacted population as “very tired” and “very stressed” due to the ongoing humanitarian disaster.

Al Jazeera observes that “The man-made flood washed away chemical fertilisers from cultivated fields, flushed away pollutants from the riverbed, submerged cemeteries and released at least 150 tonnes of machine oil from the breached dam with additional fuel and industrial waste likely to have been discharged from plants around it.”

There are growing fears the floodwaters could bring waterborne diseases based on decomposing bodies – both human and animal – which were killed during the initial massive flooding. Health workers are concerned over possible cholera outbreaks in particular.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has continued to maintain that Russia had deliberately blown up the dam as “an act of terrorism”, calling it a “brutal ecocide”.

But the Kremlin has pointed out it would have no reason to blow up a critical piece of infrastructure vital to sending water to the Crimea. Western officials and media reports too have grown largely quiet in terms of any potential “investigation” into which side was behind the sabotage.

June 17, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian Counteroffensive’s Second Week Ends in Failure

By Scott Ritter – Sputnik – 17.06.2023

Operation enters the second week of Ukraine’s long-awaited and highly touted counteroffensive, some basic conclusions can be drawn even though the fighting continues, and will continue to rage, for some time to come.

First and foremost, the counteroffensive gambit has failed. While there is still considerable combat strength left in the Ukrainian military, including more than 75% of the NATO-trained and -equipped 60,000-strong cohort Ukraine had assembled in the past eight months, fundamentally flawed assumptions about the quality of the force on which Ukraine and its NATO allies had placed their collective hopes for victory over Russia have been exposed. In short, Ukraine lacks the military capacity to overcome Russian defenses.

Ukraine’s most elite assault brigades, equipped with the latest Western military technology, failed to advance out of what Russian defensive doctrine calls the “cover” line of defense—the buffer that is designed to channel and disrupt an attacking force prior to reaching the “main” line of defense. Ukrainian casualties were extremely heavy, with Russia achieving a 10:1 kill ratio in terms of manpower, which is unsustainable from the Ukrainian perspective. The reasons for the Ukrainian failure are fundamental in nature, meaning that they cannot be overcome as things currently stand and, as such, the Ukrainian military has zero chance of success, no matter how hard they press subsequent attacks.

First and foremost is the quality of the Russian defenses, especially in terms of the barrier network (minefields, obstacles, and trenches) which, when combined with the tenacity of the Russian defender and the overwhelming superiority Russia enjoys in terms of fire support (both artillery and air-delivered), is the reason the Ukrainians are unable to advance beyond the “cover” layer of the Russian defenses. Ukrainian equipment and tactics are insufficient to the task of breaching the Russian obstacle barriers in any meaningful manner, dooming the attacking forces to be destroyed piecemeal by Russian artillery and air strikes, as well as local counterattacks mounted by Russian special forces.

Besides the poor tactics and equipment deficiencies (yes, the Leopard tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles were not the miracle weapons Ukraine and its Western supporters had hyped them up to be), the Ukrainians are paying the price for Russia’s impressive suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD) campaign that has been ongoing for many weeks now.

Russian fixed-wing aircraft have been able to deliver precision-guided munitions with deadly effect to the assembly areas used by Ukraine to gather their attacking forces prior to committing them to the battlefield. It is estimated that between 25-30% of Ukraine’s casualties occur from these strikes. Russian helicopters can use their anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) with lethal effect on Ukrainian forces operating in the zone of contact, and Russian loitering munitions (i.e., “kamikaze drones”) have taken a heavy toll of Ukrainian forces as well. Unless Ukraine can reassert some semblance of air defense onto the battlefield, both in the rear areas as well as the frontlines, and sortie its own air power capable of challenging Russian air superiority over the battlefield, then no amount of courage and tactical innovation on the part of the Ukrainian ground forces will alter the deadly calculus of war that currently prevails today.

One of the many tragedies of the ongoing Ukrainian-Russian conflict is the fact that much of what Ukraine does on the battlefield is dictated not by military necessity, but rather political imperative. The recently concluded months-long Battle for Artemovsk (Bakhmut) is a case in point, where Ukrainian President Zelensky insisted on pouring manpower and equipment into a battle for a town that most military experts believed to hold minimal strategic military value. The geography, however, did not dictate the scope and scale of the battle, but rather the perception of Ukrainian defensive tenacity, and as a result between 60-75.000 Ukrainian soldiers lost their lives in what was a losing effort. Similarly, the Ukrainian army is being asked to make what amounts to a suicide attack against well-prepared Russian defenses under conditions which, as detailed earlier, can only result in a decisive Ukrainian defeat. This time, the culprit is Ukraine’s NATO allies who, on the eve of their annual summit, are desperate for any sign that the multi-billion-dollar investment they have collectively made in the Ukrainian military can pay even the most rudimentary dividends. For this reason, NATO will continue to pressure Ukraine to double down on defeat, pressing the Russians offensively even though any gains, if in fact any can be had, would be pyrrhic in nature and unsustainable over the long run.

The reality is that when NATO gathers in Vilnius on July 11, the Russians will be well into the process of destroying the third Ukrainian army built by NATO. The first was assembled during the buffer provided by the diplomatic “sham” of the Minsk Accords, from 2015-2022. Some 260,000 strong, this force was largely destroyed by June of 2022. The second army, consisting of some 80,000 newly trained and equipped Ukrainian soldiers backed by thousands of foreign mercenaries, the direct result of tens of billions of dollars of military aid provided by NATO, was able to launch the successful Ukrainian counterattack in the fall of 2022, before being decimated in the positional war that followed (including the Bakhmut slaughter).

The 60,000-strong 12-brigade Ukrainian counterattack force currently operating against the Russians, again the result of tens of billions of dollars in military equipment (including modern Western tanks, artillery, and infantry fighting vehicles), will most probably be destroyed, or facing imminent destruction, by the time the NATO summit convenes. The primary question facing NATO is does it have the political, economic, and military capacity to raise a fourth Ukrainian army, and after its demise, a fifth, sixth, and more?

NATO is politically committed to waging a proxy conflict with Russia “to the last Ukrainian.” This tragic reality means that, regardless of the battlefield reality that exists in Ukraine, NATO will continue to push Ukraine to sacrifice its manpower in a fruitless struggle against Russia for the simple fact that NATO is unwilling to willingly lose political face at home and abroad.

However, this political will does not automatically mean that NATO will be able to sustain this objective either economically or militarily.

While recent statements made by US General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicate that there are tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in the US/NATO training “pipeline”, and that the US/NATO is assembling equipment sufficient to equip these soldiers, they will not be ready for combat for several months yet—long after the third Ukrainian army has met its fate on the field of battle.

Milley spoke of new air defense systems for Ukraine, and other NATO officials speak of the possibility of providing Ukraine with (old) F-16 aircraft. New air defense systems, however, cannot in and of themselves alter a military reality imposed by Russia on Ukraine through its strategic SEAD victory. Ukraine will simply continue a losing struggle against Russian air power. The same holds true of any F-16 fighters that might be provided to Ukraine—too little, too late, and in any event incapable of achieving a meaningful battlefield result.

In Vilnius, NATO will be confronted with the reality of its impotency as a military alliance when it comes to countering Russia in Ukraine. Any military analyst of any competence will know that, as things currently stand, Ukraine simply cannot prevail over Russia. NATO illusions of a “frozen conflict” that seem to drive their insane desire to arm Ukraine to infinity and beyond, moreover, are driven by fundamentally flawed assessments regarding Russian economic competence and capacity, Russian military proficiency, and the will of the Russian people to sustain this conflict.

Here is the root cause of NATO’s strategic failure in Ukraine—a complete lack of understanding about the reality of Russia today. Russia will be able to out-produce NATO from a standpoint of military technology until which time NATO nations fully transition into a wartime economy, something NATO nations neither have the political will nor economic means to accomplish.

The Russian military has largely overcome the deficiencies which plagued it in the initial phases of the Special Military Operation, and the Russia armed forces assembled in the Special Military Operation zone are highly trained, well-equipped, and properly trained for the tasks they have been assigned. Moreover, the Russian nation has rallied around the leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin in an overwhelming fashion, united in the belief that the proxy war NATO is waging against Russia in Ukraine is existential in nature and, as such, one that Russia cannot lose.

NATO will not alter course in the immediate period following the Vilnius summit—there is simply too much political momentum in place to bring about any meaningful alteration of the current trajectory in Ukraine. But neither will NATO produce a winning formula in Ukraine. Rather, NATO will continue to pursue little more than a variation of an existing theme—to arm Ukraine so that it can fight as long as it is capable of sustaining the fight.

This short-sighted posture will result in the inevitable military collapse of Ukraine, probably sometime between late summer/early fall of this year. When this happens, NATO will be left scrambling to construct some sort of face-saving mechanism to salvage its weakened geopolitical position vis-à-vis Russia. What that will look like is unknown at this time. But one thing is for certain—because NATO refuses to consider an off-ramp from the Ukrainian conflict today, there will be no future for Ukraine tomorrow. NATO political pride will be the downfall and destruction of the Ukrainian nation, its military, and its people.

June 17, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 2 Comments

Ukraine drone attack on Russian oil pipeline to EU failed, official says

RT | June 17, 2023

Ukrainian drones have attempted to strike the Druzhba pipeline that delivers Russian oil to several European countries, Bryansk Region governor Alexander Bogomaz has said. He added that the attack was thwarted by Russian air defenses.

On his Telegram channel on Saturday, Bogomaz wrote: “Last night, air defense units of the Russian armed forces… repelled the Ukrainian military’s attack on the oil-pumping station ‘Druzhba’.” According to the official, a total of three UAVs were brought down.

Last month, the Washington Post claimed, citing leaked Pentagon documents, that back in February Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had suggested to Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko that Kiev “should just blow up the [Druzhba] pipeline,” which pumps oil to Hungary and other states.

According to the report, Zelensky described the destruction of “Hungarian [Prime Minister] Viktor Orban’s industry” as one of his goals.

While Zelensky dismissed the allegations as “fantasies,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto several days later accused Kiev of “virtually attacking Hungary’s sovereignty” by supposedly plotting to undermine the security of Budapest’s energy supply.

Around that same time, a loading station of the Druzhba oil pipeline in Bryansk Region was shelled by Ukrainian forces, with three fuel storage tanks, all of them empty, damaged as a result.

In March, Transneft, the pipeline operator, reported that several drones had dropped explosives in the vicinity of an oil-pumping station. Multiple incidents of shelling had taken place before that as well.

The Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline is one of the largest oil-transport networks in the world, spanning some 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) and transporting oil from Russia to Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany.

Bryansk Region, which is adjacent to Ukraine, has repeatedly been targeted by cross-border strikes.

In March, a Ukraine-based neo-Nazi unit conducted a sortie into the region.

June 17, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

CRITICAL CARE PIONEER EXPOSES WAR ON REPURPOSED DRUGS

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | June 15, 2023

World-renowned Critical Care Pioneer, Dr. Paul Marik, is back in the news as the CHEST Journal, which published his benchmark life-saving Vitamin C Protocol for sepsis, reaffirmed the study after it came under attack. Dr. Marik joins Del to detail the pharma-driven war on repurposed drugs, and cheap early, non-pharmaceutical interventions for weight loss, overall health, cancer, and more. These are the treatments that pharma doesn’t want you to know about.

June 17, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment