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‘Not One Inch’: A Brief Look at the Written Record

By Michael Chapman | The Libertarian Institute | July 24, 2023

Although the Joe Biden administration and much of the major media contend that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO expansion, U.S. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.) told Valuetainment Founder Patrick Bet-David that Vladimir Putin has opposed “the movement of NATO to his borders” for “at least 15 years” because he sees such expansion “as a threat.”

Macgregor’s view is shared by the University of Chicago’s Distinguished Service Professor John Mearsheimer, considered one the world’s leading scholars on “realist” foreign policy. He argues that Russia considers NATO expansion into Ukraine as an “existential threat,” a position it has publicly held since at least 2008.

Yet U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the conflict “was never about NATO enlargement” or “about some threat to Russia’s security.” Blinken also claims that Russia’s assertion that it was promised NATO would not spread eastward after the collapse of the USSR is false.

So who is telling the truth? Let’s look at the record.

On Bet-David’s June 28 PBD Podcast, Macgregor explained that Putin has “been talking at least for 15 years about his opposition to the movement of NATO to his borders. He’s made it very clear that he regarded it as a threat. One of the reasons he moved into Crimea was that he saw that becoming a NATO naval base principally for the U.S. Navy, obviously in the Black Sea. So, he moved on that first and then said, look, this has got to stop.”

Declassified documents in the National Security Archive at George Washington University show that former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, starting in 1990, was given many assurances by U.S. and European leaders that they would not expand NATO eastward to Russia. “Not one inch eastward,” said then-Secretary of State James Baker.

Ukraine, the cradle of Kievan Rus (Russia), is on Russia’s western border, and western Ukraine borders Poland, Hungary, and Romania.

The archives document that one of the earliest assurances to Gorbachev came from a speech by the German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in January 1990. In a cable to Washington, DC, the U.S. Embassy stated that Genscher made clear that NATO should rule out an “expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e., moving it closer to Soviet borders.”

In a February 10, 1990 meeting between German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Gorbachev, the archive reports that the “West German leader achieved Soviet assent in principle to German unification in NATO, as long as NATO did not expand to the east.”

The archive further states, “Not once, but three times, [U.S. Secretary] Baker tried out the ‘not one inch eastward’ formula with Gorbachev…He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in response to the assurances that ‘NATO expansion is unacceptable.’”

Baker also assured Gorbachev that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” [Emphasis added]

After being briefed by Baker, Chancellor Kohl told Gorbachev, “We believe that NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity.”

On May 31, 1990, President George H.W. Bush said to Gorbachev, “[W]e have no intention, even in our thoughts, to harm the Soviet Union in any fashion. That is why we are speaking in favor of German unification in NATO…Such a model, in our view, corresponds to the Soviet interests as well.”

In 1991, British Prime Minister John Major assured Gorbachev, “We are not talking about the strengthening of NATO.” As for NATO inclusion of East European countries, Major said, “Nothing of the sort will happen.”

After a meeting in July 1991 with NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner, a Russian memo reads, “Woerner stressed that the NATO Council and he are against the expansion of NATO (13 of 16 NATO members support this point of view).”

The archive article concluded, “Thus, Gorbachev went to the end of the Soviet Union assured that the West was not threatening his security and was not expanding NATO.”

After Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin became the first president of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. Vladimir Putin became president in May 2000, serving until 2008. He then returned to the presidency in 2012.

According to Professor Mearsheimer, author of “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin,” “Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion.”

“For Putin, the illegal overthrow [in 2014] of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president—which he rightly labeled a ‘coup—was the final straw,” said Mearsheimer. “He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.”

“The United States pushed forward policies towards Ukraine that Putin and his colleagues see as an existential threat to their country, a point they have made repeatedly for many years,” Mearsheimer said in a June 2022 speech at the European Union Institute. “Specifically, I am talking about America’s obsession with bringing Ukraine into NATO and making it a Western bulwark on Russia’s border.”

“The United States is not seriously interested in finding a diplomatic solution to the war, which means the war is likely to drag on for months, if not years,” added Mearsheimer. “The United States and its allies are helping lead Ukraine down the primrose path.”

Mearsheimer made those remarks one year ago. Today, the Ukraine-Russia war is still ongoing and the U.S. has made no serious effort to broker a peace deal.

President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and their cheerleaders in the major media relentlessly deny that potential NATO expansion into Ukraine had anything to do with Russia’s invasion in 2022. Such an assertion, they claim, is Putin propaganda. However, the historical record does not support their story, “not one inch” of it.

Michael W. Chapman, a longtime writer on Russian-American relations, is the former managing editor of CNSNews.com

July 24, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

The coming Russian – Polish war

By Gilbert Doctorow | July 23, 2023 

This evening’s News of the Week program on Russian state television opened with a 30 minute documentary survey of Polish-Russian relations from the end of WWI and during the period of the Russian Civil War, when the government under Marshall Pilsudski wrested substantial territory from Russian control. It also dealt extensively with Poland’s well documented role as aggressor and occupier of Czechoslovak, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Belarus lands from before the start of WWII and until Hitler overran Poland.

This reportage was all built around Vladimir Putin’s speech to the RF Security Council on Friday which was partly broadcast then. Excerpts from that speech were used to introduce segments of the overall documentary.

Let us recall that on Friday, Putin explained how and why we may expect the formal entry into the war of a Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian joint military force that will officially be presented as defending Ukrainian statehood by occupying the Western Ukraine. However, Putin described this as an occupying force which once installed in Lvov and Western Ukraine would never leave. This would in effect be a repeat of the sell-out of Ukrainian interests to Poles and cession of territory to Poland such as had been perpetrated by their leader Semyon Petlyura in April 1920 and has now been repeated in the secret agreements between presidents Zelensky of Ukraine and Duda of Poland.

However, that was not the only pending Polish aggression announced by Vladimir Putin on Friday. He said that Poland also had designs on Belarus land. The documentary this evening fleshed out that remark and reminded us of what Belarus territory Poland had grabbed by force in the 20th century when it had the opportunity. It also pointed a finger at those Belarus fighters abroad who will be used by Poland to spearhead their move against Minsk from Polish territory, and what armaments they are receiving from the United States and NATO member countries.

With respect to Polish designs on Ukraine, Putin did not tip his hand on what Russia’s response may be. But as regards Belarus, he stated directly on Friday that any act of aggression against Belarus will be considered an attack on Russia and Russia will respond with all the military force at its disposal. He warned Warsaw to consider the consequences of their actions.

Putin’s speech on Friday appeared to be directed at Warsaw. The program this evening was clearly directed at the broad Russian public, to prepare them for the onset of a possible Russian-Polish war in the immediate future.

This point was highlighted by the ongoing visit of Belarus president Lukashenko to Petersburg. There has been pomp and ceremony in this visit. Both presidents today visited Kronstadt, touring its principal church, which is the spiritual home of the Russian Navy. They also visited the about to be opened new museum of the Russian Navy, and its featured exhibit, which is Russia’s first nuclear submarine, the country’s answer to the American Nautilus at the time. And they held talks on the military and political threats their countries face. These talks unexpectedly will continue in the Konstantinovsky Palace outside Petersburg tomorrow. The reason for extensive consultations was clear from remarks that Lukashenko made to the press during his meeting with Putin: namely that Belarus military intelligence has been following very closely the massive build-up of Polish forces including tanks, helicopters and other heavy military equipment close to the Belarus border at several locations.

Tonight’s News of the Week program explained to the Russian public that the Poles’ new aggressive plans are proceeding only because of their confidence that Uncle Sam supports them. And they named the person embodying this link as former Foreign Minister of Poland Radoslaw Sikorsky (2014-15), who is today a Member of the European Parliament and delegate responsible for relations with the United States. A photo of Sikorski’s latest meetings with Pentagon officials and with Joe Biden and his advisers was put on the screen. For those who may wonder about Sikorsky’s political views, it pays to remember that he is the husband of neo-con, Russia-hating journalist Anne Applebaum, who is very well known to American audiences for her regular columns in The Washington Post.

From Russian talk shows of the past several days, it is easy to understand the Kremlin’s reading of the present proxy war in and around Ukraine: Washington sees that the Ukrainian counter-offensive is a complete failure that has cost tens of thousands of lives among the Ukrainian armed forces and has seen the destruction of a large part of the Western equipment delivered to Ukraine over the past months. Instead of suing for peace, Washington seeks to open a ‘second front,’ using Poland for this purpose.

One possible Russian response to any move against Belarus has also been discussed on air: to seize the Suwalki corridor that connects Kaliningrad to Belarus across Polish territory. Taking control of that corridor would have the effect of isolating the Baltic States from Poland and thereby put their security at peril.

The inescapable conclusion from the latest news is that Washington’s incendiary policies and continuing escalation of the conflict cannot secure Russia’s defeat. On the contrary, they may well lead to the total collapse of the NATO alliance once its military value is disproven in a way that cannot be talked away or papered over by the most creative propagandists in DC.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

July 24, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s Surgical Strike On The Moldovan-Romanian-Ukrainian Tri-Border Sent Several Messages

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JULY 24, 2023

Russia carried out a surgical strike early Monday morning against targets in the town of Reni on the Ukrainian side of the Danube River near the tri-border with Moldova and Romania. This video alleges to show one of the explosions at its port while this image purports to be of a grain warehouse that was supposedly destroyed in the aftermath. It can’t be ruled out that military and/or terrorist assets were hidden there, however, since Russia insists that it doesn’t strike purely civilian infrastructure.

In any case, Monday morning’s surgical strike was very important since it sent several messages that Russia’s opponents would do well to heed. For starters, Reni is located on the other side of the Danube from NATO-member Romania, which demonstrated that Russia will hit targets anywhere in Ukraine and can do so with maximum precision. Those military and/or terrorist assets based on the literal border of that bloc but just outside of Article 5’s jurisdiction can no longer take their security for granted.

The second message is that Russia is serious about cracking down on those threats to its security that were previously untouchable due to Kiev exploiting the grain deal to protect some of its aforesaid assets. Russia remained committed to that agreement in spite of that since it sincerely expected that the West would eventually remove those sanctions that impeded its agricultural exports. Since that didn’t happen and Russia therefore declined to extend the deal, Kiev’s selfsame assets are now fair game.

Third, carrying out a surgical strike on Reni proved that Russia had actionable intelligence regarding the Danube’s role in Kiev’s military logistical network, which many observers have suspected for a while. Related targets were previously untouchable for the abovementioned reason, but that’s no longer the case now that the grain deal expired. Accordingly, it can be expected that this won’t be the last surgical strike on the Danube, though it of course can’t be known when the next ones will occur.

The fourth message is that Russia now knows that NATO won’t extend its air defense umbrella over any part of Ukraine after no effort was made to stop its surgical strike in Reni on the Romanian border. The bloc either didn’t see the missiles approaching their air defense zone or detected them but declined to attempt an interception in order for Russia not to think they’re ready to get directly involved in this proxy war. Either way, NATO looks weak and Russia thus feels emboldened to continue striking near its borders.

And finally, this successful strike signifies that no part of Kiev’s military logistical network is safe, which could lead to Moscow’s edge in the NATO-Russian “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” growing even larger if it keeps up the tempo of these attacks against its opponent’s previously untouchable assets. In that event, peace talks might resume earlier than many expect if this accelerates the erosion of Ukraine’s military capabilities and thus forces its patrons to move up their timeline for freezing the conflict.

With these five messages in mind, there’s no doubt that Russia’s surgical strike against military and/or terrorist assets on the Moldovan-Romanian-Ukrainian tri-border is much more important than it might appear at first glance. Not only did Russia hit closer to NATO than ever, but that bloc didn’t even try to stop it, thus suggesting that they’re reluctant to get dragged even deeper into this proxy war. If Poland doesn’t unilaterally intervene by summer’s end, then peace talks might recommence shortly after.

July 24, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Kiev regime kills Russian journalist with illegal US-supplied weapons

By Lucas Leiroz | July 24, 2023

Cluster munitions have already begun to generate civilian casualties in the Ukrainian conflict. Russian journalists were attacked with illegal US-supplied weapons, resulting in the injury of three people and the death of RIA Novosti’s war correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev. Once again, the Kiev regime shows its terrorist nature, also having NATO’s co-participation in the crimes, as the alliance is responsible for supplying the weapons used in the murder of Russian civilians.

The attack took place in the Zaporozhye region. A civilian vehicle with journalists inside was hit by cluster bombs, injuring all the reporters, and killing Zhuravlev. According to information given by spokespersons for the “Rossiya Segodnya” group, the media crew was near the village of Pyatikhatki when it came under fire from Ukrainian forces. It is believed that they were in that area precisely to report the use of cluster munitions in some nearby residential zones.

Considering that it was not a military convoy, but just a civilian vehicle with journalists, the attack was illegal, contrary to basic rules of international humanitarian law. For this reason, Russian authorities have already commented on the case, classifying it as terrorism. It is well known that Ukrainian soldiers deliberately target and kill Russian media professionals, both on the ground war correspondents and commentators outside the combat zone – as previously seen in the cases of Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky. In this sense, Zhuravlev’s murder represents a continuation of the Ukrainian regime’s terrorist and anti-humanitarian practice of attacking the Russian press.

On social media, pro-Ukrainian militants reacted to the case by supporting the attack and “justifying” it with the allegation that Zhuravlev was a “military” or even a “war criminal”. To support this narrative, Ukrainian neo-Nazi activists spread photos of the journalist holding weapons and wearing military uniforms in the conflict zone. However, they omitted the fact that these photos are not recent.

Before becoming a war correspondent, Zhuravlev actually fought on the battlefield, having joined the Donbass militias in 2014, in the early months of the conflict. After completing his voluntary military service, Zhuravlev became an ordinary civilian journalist. He worked on the battlefield as a mere employee of Russian media agencies, not as a soldier, which makes the Ukrainian attack absolutely illegal.

Furthermore, it must be remembered that the attack was against a civilian car, with other media professionals inside. These other reporters, unlike Zhuravlev, did not have any military background. So, the tale spread by propagandists is not only false but also baseless, being easily refuted with a simple analysis of the case.

However, the most important point of this topic is the use of cluster munitions. As predicted by several experts, journalists and Russian officials, Kiev’s forces are actually using these weapons to kill civilians, deliberately targeting people that have no military involvement. There was a strong pressure for the US not to approve the delivery of these bombs to Kiev as their use could affect civilians as a side effect. However, what is happening now is even more serious. These weapons are not accidentally killing civilians, but are being purposefully used by the regime’s forces to target non-military Russian citizens.

Furthermore, Russia sees the US as co-responsible for the crime. Since the US is the supplier of the weapons with which Kiev murders Russian civilians, then Washington is to blame for the attacks as well as the neo-Nazi regime. The Russian understanding on the subject should be shared by the entire international society, especially by organizations that defend international law and human rights. But unfortunately, biased opinions in favor of the West continue to be imposed on states and organizations, making it impossible to sanction countries that sponsor the war.

So, in the absence of diplomatic and legal alternatives to prevent the West from continuing to supply weapons that are used to kill civilians, Russia can only try to resolve the situation through military means. In this sense, severe responses from Moscow are expected in the near future, possibly intensifying attacks on Ukrainian command centers and weapons depots where cluster munitions are being stored.

Although Russian forces have repeatedly withheld retaliation to avoid escalating the conflict, the latest moves show that Moscow is no longer willing to tolerate violations of redlines. The cruise missile attacks on the ports of Odessa in response to the killing of civilians in Crimea made it clear that Moscow is ready to retaliate for crimes committed against its citizens.

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

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

July 24, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Russia does not target civilian buildings – Kremlin

RT | July 24, 2023

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has reiterated Russian denials that one of its missiles was responsible for the damage done to the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odessa over the weekend. The claims coming from Kiev are “absolutely not true”, he told journalists on Monday.

“Our armed forces never conduct strikes on objects of social infrastructure, even less so on temples, churches and similar objects,” he assured. The Russian Defense Ministry previously said a Ukrainian interceptor missile was likely to blame, an assertion that Peskov endorsed.

The cathedral was heavily damaged on Sunday morning amid a Russian missile attack on targets in several Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said later in the day that a Russian Kh-22 anti-ship missile had struck the church’s altar.

The Ukrainian leader alleged that Moscow was targeting “the people and the foundations of our pan-European culture” and pledged that the church would be rebuilt, with Italy potentially footing the bill.

The Russian Defense Ministry denied the Ukrainian charge, suggesting later on Sunday that the incompetence of the country’s air defense forces was the most probable cause of the damage.

Russia targets only military locations and takes care to select only those far from civilians and sites of cultural value, it said. Meanwhile Ukrainian military leaders “place air defense assets in residential areas on purpose.”

The practice was acknowledged earlier this month by a spokesman for the Ukrainian military, who claimed that it was necessary because the country doesn’t have enough longer-range air defense systems.

Kiev has previously accused Russia of damage done by its own troops. The most notable case happened last November, when Zelensky accused Moscow of killing two Polish farmers in a border region and urged NATO to retaliate. Warsaw swiftly acknowledged that the projectile was likely fired by the Ukrainian side.

Last week, Russia started a series of attacks on targets in Ukrainian ports, which the military described as retaliation for Kiev’s drone strike on the Crimean Bridge last Monday. The Sunday barrage was aimed at sites where “the Kiev regime and foreign specialists planned terrorist attacks against Russia,” the Defense Ministry said.

The Transfiguration Cathedral in Odessa was founded in 1794 and was one of the primary Christian places of worship in Imperial Russia. The Soviet government blew it up in 1936, after declaring that it had no historic value. The building was restored over a decade starting 1999 and re-concentrated in 2010.

July 24, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine is ammunition-starved, and the West simply cannot keep up with its pledges

By Uriel Araujo | July 24, 2023

While Western discussions have focused on sending sophisticated weapons to Kiev, Hal Brands, a Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, argues that what Ukraine needs the most, besides air-defense systems, is artillery ammunition. He describes the current conflict as an artillery-centric one: “if Kiev can’t find enough artillery pieces and ammunition, especially 155mm shells, it will be at a dire firepower deficit along the conflict’s front lines.”

Already on March 29, Earle Mack, former US ambassador to Finland, writing in a piece for The Hill, described the current confrontation as proxy attrition warfare, that is one which seeks military victory by wearing down the enemy. He worried that Ukraine seemed bound to tire out first. Things have not gotten much better for Kiev, so far.

A July 23 New York Times story, by former Marine infantryman Thomas Gibbons-Neff, based on “dozens of visits to the front line” quotes a Ukrainian commander: “we’re trading our people for their people and they have more people and equipment.” According to the story, “Ukraine has made marginal progress in its ability to coordinate directly between its troops closest to Russian forces on the so-called zero line and those assaulting forward.” Moreover, the country’s artillery is in short supply, and “a mixture of munitions sent from different countries” is employed. The thing is that accuracy varies greatly between them and the Ukrainians need to use more ammunition. In addition, according to the same news report, “some of the older shells and rockets sent from abroad are damaging their equipment and injuring soldiers.” 

Rather than using the complex military communication equipment, Ukraine’s troops employ “less sophisticated, but easier-to-use programs like smartphone messaging apps, private internet chat rooms.” Most of this system is dependent on Starlink satellite internet, and therefore it takes longer to communicate important military information when the units are assaulting and a Wi-Fi router is absent. In this case, unbelievably, “attacking troops have to reach someone with an internet connection to call for support.”

Regarding ammo, the problem is that US authorities themselves estimate that Moscow is capable of producing “1 million rounds of 152mm artillery ammunition per year.” The US, in contrast, produces merely a seventh of that, according to Hal Brands. 

Right now, the US itself needs to purchase conventional artillery ammunition from its South Korean ally. In what Brands describes as a “desperate global scavenger hunt for munitions”, Washington has also been seeking ammo from Japan, as well as “repositioning  rounds stored in Israel to Ukraine.”

Europe’s stockpiles are in no better shape. According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, NATO European states armed forces are “hollowed out, plagued by unserviceable equipment and severely depleted ammunition stocks.” Bloomberg’s journalist and military historian Max Hastings writes that, over a year ago, Berlin had committed itself to €100 billion to rebuild its worn out forces. So far, however, only an estimated 1% of that has been spent. The German National Security Strategy, last month, stressed the weakness of Germany’s economy. According to Hastings, the “political will” to strengthen their armed forces is “absent” not only in Germany, but also in other European countries. 

As I wrote before, the problem for Europe goes way beyond depleted weapons stockpiles: for it to rearm itself, re-industrialization is badly needed, something which, quite ironically, Washington itself has consistently opposed via its subsidy war against the European bloc. In addition, Europe, with its heavily diffused and fragmented defense, lacks a European Union common defense market and a legal and bureaucratic framework, as Sophia Besch (a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace fellow), and Max Bergmann (former member of the US Policy Planning Staff and Director of the Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies) write

Britain’s industry today faces many difficulties, and the same thing happens with other European nations – manufacturers badly need funding expansion and governments are increasingly growing “tired” of the conflict’s costs.

As for the US, lecturer in History at Yale Michael Brenes argues that America’s own “war machine” is “broken”, with privatizations and several problems. He paints a picture of “shortages in production”, and “interruptions in supply chains”, all of which have compromised Washington’s ability to “deliver weapons to Ukraine.”

To sum it up, the current state of affairs, with a Western deindustrializations crisis, makes it very difficult for the political West to pursue its proxy attrition war. It simply cannot produce all the weapons it is pledging Ukraine. For the West, in fact, it is already a challenge to provide Kiev with enough ammunition.

July 24, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

American Military Disasters in 1942

Tales of the American Empire | July 20, 2023

The six months after the United States declared war on Japan in December 1941 were disastrous. Political treachery and military incompetence led to a series of major military defeats despite years of preparation. Official American history portrays President Franklin Roosevelt and his team of Admirals and Generals as great professionals. Actual history proves they were incompetent clowns who caused embarrassing defeats that the American media covered up. Most of this history remains hidden to this day, especially in school and college textbooks.

_______________________________

HIGHLIGHTS OF MOBILIZATION, WORLD WAR II, 1938-1942; Office of the Chief of Military History; Department of the Army; Dr. Stetson Conn; 10 March 1959; https://history.army.mil/documents/WW…

Related Tale: “The Attack on Pearl Harbor Was No Surprise”; also watch Part II;    • The Attack on Pea…  

Related Tale: “U-boats Slaughtered Americans in 1942”; defenses did not exist;    • U-boats Slaughter…  

Related Tale: “The Lost Victory on Wake Island”; cowardly Admiral Pye withdraws three carriers;    • The Lost Victory …  

Related Tale: “The Empire’s Disastrous Defeat in 1942”; MacArthur’s rapid defeat in the Philippines;    • The American Empi…  

Related Tale: “Treachery of US Army Generals in World War II”; treason and incompetence in the Philippines;    • Treachery by US A…  

Related Tale: “The Destruction of the Asiatic Fleet”; twenty American warships were sunk in a disorganized defensive effort;    • The Destruction o…  

Related Tale: “World War II Suicide Missions”; The Doolittle Raid failed;    • World War II Suic…  

July 24, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

RFK Jr’s cautionary position on Cell Phone radiation is supported by “the science”

Unlike mRNA technology, exposure to Cell Phone radiation cannot be avoided. Many studies confirm that it is far from harmless.

By Madhava Setty | An Insult to Intuition | July 11, 2023

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates communications technology but does not independently review its safety. It relies on the FDA, an agency that has been derelict in its duty to protect the public from emerging technology like mRNA “vaccines”. 


Last month RFK, Jr appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast for another long form discussion. Rogan announced up front that he intended to allow Kennedy to speak without interrupting him. A lesson he learned after watching an embarrassing exchange between Kennedy and Krystal Ball, co-host of “Breaking Points”, in May.

In that interview, Ball stated that although she believed that Kennedy was a genuine person, she disagreed with his views on vaccines. But rather than allowing Kennedy to explain his position and cite the evidence that supported it, Ball stepped out of her role as an objective journalist and played the part of a defense attorney for the medical establishment, repeatedly raising objections every few seconds.

Her audience took note. She was skewered in the comment section while Kennedy was lauded for his composure and patience.

With license to riff on JRE, Kennedy laid out coherent and defensible explanations for the decline in our population’s physical and psychological health. As to be expected, the schismatic MSM framed his hypotheses as more kooky conspiracy theories from the biggest spreader of dangerous misinformation who also happens to be arguably the biggest and most successful environmentalist on the planet who has fought polluters in the interest of public health for over three decades.

What they still cannot seem to grasp (or purposefully choose not to) is that Kennedy is asserting that there are plausible explanations for our deteriorating health that need to be sincerely investigated before being dismissed out of hand.

Chronic diseases among children exploded with the expansion of the Childhood Vaccination Schedule. Shouldn’t we rule this out as a potential cause if we care about our kids?

How do we know that environmental toxins aren’t contributing to gender dysphoria? We don’t.

Midway through the conversation with Rogan, Kennedy floated the possibility that 5G radiation is opening up our blood brain barrier to toxins. The blood brain barrier is a highly selective biological system designed to protect our central nervous system.

Kennedy asserted that he never puts his cellular phone next to his ear while speaking and that he carries his phone in his rear pocket. Kennedy let us know that he has seen enough evidence that incriminates ElectroMagnetic Radiation (EMR) as the cause of brain tumors in some cases.

Rogan asked Kennedy how 5G EMR could mess with the Blood Brain Barrier. Kennedy admitted that it was outside his scope of knowledge. Kennedy critics mocked the pair, criticizing him for his inability to explain complex biochemistry and Rogan for accepting the “crazy” theory prima facie.

Even Dr. Vinay Prasad, a sensible critic of public policy over the last three years tweeted that while Kennedy would be a formidable opponent in a debate with the scientific orthodoxy, his position on radiation spewing from your wifi router was nuts:

In his tweet above Prasad lets us know that he thinks Kennedy has made good points in his criticism of the pandemic response but is still prone to unsubstantiated opinions.

Prasad, a professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF, has been one of the saner voices coming from the medical establishment. He’s been critical of lockdowns, masking and the exaggeration of “long Covid”. He is a proponent of evidence-based medicine, peer-reviewed literature and meta-analyses of randomized controlled studies.

My biggest criticism of Prasad is that he doesn’t seem to acknowledge the bias in published literature nearly enough. I believe this has led him to reject the possibility of effective early treatment of Covid-19. Though I disagree with him on this subject, I acknowledge that he has investigated the evidence before coming to any conclusion.

For someone who prides himself on only taking stands that are backed by “good” data, Prasad’s blithe dismissal of the dangers of WiFi radiation is puzzling. I don’t think he has actually done any research into the topic. At the very least he hasn’t cited any data that proves that wifi technology is safe. Instead he is relying on his own common sense, which somehow in this case suffices for decisive proof.

Electromagnetic Radiation Basics

Your wireless device exchanges vast amounts of information with cellular towers and wifi routers using electromagnetic waves. Download and upload speeds are dependent upon the frequency of the EM waves used. The higher the frequency, the more information that can be transferred in a given amount of time.

All good. Want quicker downloads of hi-def video? You’re going to need a system that relies on higher frequency photons.

The problem is that frequency of the EM waves is directly proportional to its energy. This fundamental relationship is known as the Planck-Einstein relation:

E = hv

Where v = frequency, h = Planck’s constant and E = Energy.

As you can see, our 3G phones from just a decade ago emit and receive EMR at frequencies 100x less than today’s 5G devices. The energy of photons emitted and received by our new phones is 100x greater than 3G phones, more or less.

Prevailing opinion assumes that photons are generally safe if their frequency is below a certain threshold, making it non-ionizing. Non-ionizing radiation cannot break chemical bonds. However with regard to the complex physiology of living beings where cellular function relies on tiny and ephemeral membrane potentials, this explanation is intuitively over simplistic.

The FCC has been busy auctioning 5G frequency bands to telecommunications companies:

“The FCC has made auctioning high-band spectrum a priority. The FCC concluded its first 5G spectrum auctions in the 28 GHz band; the 24 GHz band; and the upper 37 GHz, 39 GHz, and 47 GHz bands.”

Moreover they believe that this technology is vital for economic growth and needs to be pushed along:

“The FCC must update infrastructure policy to encourage investment in 5G networks. As Chairwoman Rosenworcel has said: ‘if we want broad economic growth and widespread mobile opportunity, we need to avoid unnecessary delays in the state and local approval process. That’s because they can slow deployment.’”

If the FCC is so clearly interested in the expansion of wireless technology, it must be safe, right?

Wrong.

Going down the Rabbit Hole…

The FCC has no formal body that investigates the safety of the technology it manages/regulates. The FCC takes its cues from the FDA and states:

“According to the FDA and the World Health Organization (WHO), among other organizations, to date, there is no consistent or credible scientific evidence of health problems caused by the exposure to radio frequency energy emitted by cell phones. The FDA further states that “the weight of the scientific evidence does not support an increase in health risks from radio frequency exposure from cell phone use at or below the radio frequency exposure limits set by the FCC”

This statement on the FCC website then directs us to this page from the FDA, “Scientific Evidence for Cell Phone Safety” where it is definitively stated:

“The state of scientific knowledge continues to demonstrate that:

Okay. Now let’s look at this letter from the FDA that apparently provides an updated assessment of the available evidence.

It is a letter from Jeffrey Shuren, M.D., J.D., Director Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the FDA to Mr. Julius Knapp, Chief Office of Engineering and Technology at the FCC in response to Knapp’s request for guidance with regard to safety standards of 5G technology. This letter was written on April 14, 2019.

Here’s the key paragraph from the letter:

Dr. Shuran, from the FDA, assures the FCC that no changes to safety standards are warranted at this time.

The rodent study from the NTP mentioned is titled “Cell Phone Radio Frequency Radiation”. They summarize:

NTP conducted two-year toxicology studies in rats and mice to help clarify potential health hazards, including cancer risk, from exposure to RFR (Radio Frequency Radiation) like that used in 2G and 3G cell phones which operate within a range of frequencies from about 700–2700 megahertz (MHz). These were published as Technical Reports in November 2018.

The NTP studies found that high exposure to RFR (900 MHz) used by cell phones was associated with:

  • Clear evidence of an association with tumors in the hearts of male rats. The tumors were malignant schwannomas.
  • Some evidence of an association with tumors in the brains of male rats. The tumors were malignant gliomas.
  • Some evidence of an association with tumors in the adrenal glands of male rats. The tumors were benign, malignant, or complex combined pheochromocytoma.

NTP scientists found that RFR exposure was associated with an increase in DNA damage. Specifically, they found RFR exposure was linked with significant increases in DNA damage in:

  • the frontal cortex of the brain in male mice,
  • the blood cells of female mice, and
  • the hippocampus of male rats.

So… the latest safety guidelines with regard to 5G radiation cite a study from 2018 that found evidence of heart, brain and adrenal tumors in rodents that were associated with exposure to 2 and 3G cellphone radiation.

The study also showed an association of RFR with DNA damage. This is reasonable evidence that there is more to be understood about the safety of non-ionizing radiation.

Moreover, there are studies like this one that was done over 40 years ago demonstrating that periods of RFR exposure in the 1.3 GHz range do, in fact, make the blood brain barrier more permeable in rats. Still sound nutty to you, Dr. Prasad?

But there’s no cause for concern because Dr. Shuran says that “NTP’s experimental findings should not be applied to human cell phone usage.”

Most people in this country have abandoned their 2 and 3G devices years ago for ones that use the updated networks. Perhaps it’s time to do a few more studies around the technology that the FCC is so excited for us to enjoy.

What other scientists are saying

Contrary to the public’s and the FDA’s complacency around this rapidly deployed technology, scientists from around the world have been urging the FCC to place a moratorium on the expansion of RFR bands required for 5G communications.

This is an excellent summary article that appeared in the Observations/Opinions section of Scientific American in 2019 around the time the FDA vouched for the technology: “We Have No Reason to Believe that 5G is Safe”.

Author Joel Moskowitz lays out a damning refutation of the FDA’s position citing over 500 studies that demonstrate biological effects from RFR from cellphones, celltowers, wifi routers and power lines. Furthermore, Moskowitz reports that:

Why aren’t we “following the science”?

Beyond influencers like Dr. Prasad who call the potential risk of increasing EMR in our environment “nutty”, there is a clear campaign to frame any such danger as another “conspiracy theory”.

Articles like this one from the Science section of the NYT titled, “Your 5G phone won’t hurt you, but Russia wants you to think otherwise” attempt to convince us that EMR in the 5G band must be safe because publications like RT America (formerly known as Russia Today) say it isn’t.

The piece is a wonderful of example of propaganda from what is widely considered a reliable source of information among “educated” readers. It’s loaded with pseudoscience and citations that don’t actually substantiate the author’s thesis that 5G EMR is perfectly safe. It’s written for an audience that would rather be spoonfed than educated.

This was the article that opened my eyes to how far the Gray Lady would go to spin the truth. I was embarrassingly late to the game. I didn’t write a rebuttal until 2020:

Does the New York Times use “SPIN”?

What we are seeing today is an inexplicable abandonment of common sense. Highly profitable, international entities are granted the same rights as a defendant in a trial. They are innocent until proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt.

Why is the standard of proof of harm for new technologies like mRNA therapies and 5G so high?

One may argue that the Covid shots afforded a brief period of protection from a highly survivable disease and should be given some latitude, but what is the life saving benefit of faster downloads?

Unlike the jabs, which could be avoided (albeit often impractically), every person is constantly being bombarded with higher frequency radiation whether they like it or not. Shouldn’t this technology meet an even greater standard of safety?

July 23, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Indisputable – Covid ‘cures’ caused the excess deaths

By Serena Wylde | TCW Defending Freedom | July 21, 2023

‘Virologists have been exploiting us and screaming fire where there was none’: Dr Denis Rancourt giving his testimony to the National Citizens’ Inquiry in Ottawa, Canada.

This citizen-led, citizen-funded inquiry into Canada’s Covid-19 response, by definition cannot be commissioned or conducted impartially by the government whose responses and actions are the subject of the investigation. It has already held hearings in Vancouver, Ottawa and Quebec City at which scientific, medical, and legal experts have testified under oath, along with journalists and Canadian citizens who have pertinent testimony to offer. On May 17 Dr Rancourt, a scientist with a PhD in physics who has held key research positions in France and the Netherlands prior to becoming a physics professor and lead scientist at the University of Ottawa 23 years ago, gave his evidence. 

For the last three years, with a team of statisticians and scientific researchers, he has been conducting a vast number of studies on all-cause mortality. These have focused on North America but have  included other Western nations, resulting in more than 30 scientific reports. His findings appear conclusive, and establish that there was no particularly virulent pathogen on the planet in 2020; that excess deaths that year were entirely caused by the measures imposed against a fictitious threat, and then from 2021 onwards, by the vaccines.

He further concludes that none of the various ‘pandemics’ announced by the US and Canada since the Second World War was reflected in excess all-cause mortality. In other words, they too were fiction.

Importantly, at the inquiry hearings Dr Rancourt explained his focus on all-cause mortality data. It is because it contains no bias. It is a simple counting of deaths per age group, by sex, state, city and as a function of time. It enables one to spot and correlate events such as heatwaves, earthquakes, wars, economic depressions; anything that perturbs the population sufficiently to cause mortality. Its ‘power’ is that it provides a clear, unmanipulated picture of a given population.

During a 97-minute testimony he provided detailed evidence to show how he arrived at three core conclusions:

1.    ‘If governments had done nothing out of the ordinary, if they had not announced a pandemic, not responded to a presumed new pathogen, done nothing more than what is usually done when there is high seasonal mortality in the winter, there would have been no excess mortality. There was the usual ecology of pathogens which we live with and are always present. People get ill, they recover, some die, but there was no pandemic that caused excess mortality beyond the historic trend, and that would have remained the case if we had just left things alone.’

2.    The measures that governments applied were many different forms of assault, all of which contributed to excess mortality.

3.    The Covid-19 vaccination campaign has caused huge excess mortality in clearly visible peaks which are seen directly associated with the roll-out of various vaccine doses to different age groups and in different jurisdictions, and likewise with the administration of boosters. The excess mortality occurs immediately following vaccination and lasts a few days, then the curve of mortality declines exponentially over a period of about two months. Dr Rancourt emphasises that it is not possible to have such an unusual pattern without it being causally connected to the injections.

Explaining why there was no pandemic of a viral respiratory disease, Rancourt shows that when one integrates the all-cause mortality in the ‘Covid’ period there were huge variations from area to area, which defies the hypothesis of viral spread.

The US excess mortality in this period was five times higher than that of neighbouring Canada proportionately to its population, which is epidemiologically impossible. These differences were also visible between US states, which means one has to look at social factors to explain the phenomenon. The excess deaths occurred mainly in the Southern states, which have a high incidence of seasonal bacterial pneumonia, and these infections went inadequately treated because during the ‘Covid’ period all Western nations cut antibiotic prescriptions by at least 50 per cent. Another strong population correlation factor was the number of people with disabilities. The US has a large number of registered disabled, and people who rely on outside support for everyday needs cannot function in a society in lockdown. It also has high numbers of poor people, and with the closure of churches, schools and community facilities, these populations were utterly stripped of their usual mechanisms of survival.

Excess mortality in 2020 in Europe was equally inconsistent with the notion of viral spread. Immediately after the pandemic was announced Lombardy in Italy became a hotspot, where hospitals put two people at a time on mechanical ventilators. But Italy’s crisis did not flow into Switzerland, nor did Spain’s high death toll cross the border into Portugal, and Alsace’s peak in Eastern France did not affect neighbouring Germany. This constitutes counter-evidence of a viral respiratory disease. Furthermore, although the lethality of ‘Covid’ was said to be exponential with age, mortality data shows no correlation with age.

Dr Mike Yeadon, who understands the biological effects of fear, told James Delingpole in their recent discussion: ‘Two mg of diazepam, a cup of tea and a biscuit, arm around the shoulder and give them an oxygen mask. I think most people would have gone home, but instead they admitted and murdered them.’ 

As the fraud began with the seeding of an idea of a pandemic, solid, irrefutable data is key in dismantling the illusion. This Dr Rancourt provided.

He completed his testimony with a plea to scientists and physicians to go back and look at the data of who is dying, and where and when, and what it correlates to. He believes there has to be a reset of thinking to recognise that virologists have been exploiting us and shouting fire where there was really nothing present. Clinicians and emergency staff have donned ‘Covid glasses’, he believes, making them see things as dangerous which at any other time would appear perfectly normal.

He postulates that the way to reset thinking is to use hard data that cannot be disputed, and that is all-cause mortality data. Unless this central data issue is addressed, he fears pandemics will be declared without basis, and populations will be assaulted at will.

July 23, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

FDA Approves New Anthrax Vaccine for Adults Despite Lack of Publicly Available Information on Testing, Ingredients

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 21, 2023

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday approved an anthrax vaccine for adults ages 18-65, according to Emergent BioSolutions, the vaccine’s maker.

The vaccine, Cyfendus, is approved for use after suspected or confirmed exposure to Bacillus anthracis, also known as anthrax, but must be administered together with other antibacterial drugs, Reuters reported.

Emergent said it had been delivering Cyfendus to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since 2019, under pre-emergency use authorization status.

The efficacy of Cyfendus for post-exposure prophylaxis was tested only on animals.

Dr. Meryl Nass, bioterrorism and anthrax expert, told The Defender she is skeptical about whether the vaccine offers any new substantive health benefit.

“Given the history of the company’s many failures, and the lack of proper safety or efficacy testing of prior anthrax vaccines, one can only expect problems,” Nass said.

“The fact that there is no label available, there is no information on how it was tested, what placebo was used, et cetera — that all adds to the consternation and concern people should have about the value of this product,” Nass added.

Emergent said the drug has been in development for 20 years in collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), formerly headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Paul Williams, senior vice president at Emergent, said anthrax “remains a high-priority national security threat.”

Cyfendus is comprised of Emergent’s anthrax vaccine adsorbed (AVA), marketed as Biothrax, plus an additional adjuvant, the name of which the company did not disclose.

Cyfendus is administered in two doses over 14 days to elicit an immune response that the company said: “can be especially important in response to a large-scale public health emergency involving anthrax.”

Nass said that during the 2001 anthrax scare, where politicians and media organizations across the country received anthrax in the mail, five people died — but “everyone who got antibiotics early did not come down with anthrax and none of them died.”

“So,” Nass said, “antibiotics worked.” Nass emphasized that after exposure to anthrax, one needs treatment immediately — not over the longer period of time it takes for a vaccine to work.

“The fact that it’s required to be given with antibiotics,” Nass said, “which is what you should have when exposed to anthrax, raises the question: What additional benefit are you gonna get from this vaccine? I don’t know.”

Emergent’s stock shares gained 16.2% in pre-market trading after it announced the FDA approval.

Benchmark analyst Robert Wasserman said the approval provides “greater assurance” the company will reach its projected 2023 earnings of $260-$280 million, Bloomberg Law reported.

The price spike comes on the heels of “a difficult few years,” financially for the company, FiercePharma reported.

The company, founded in 1998 as government contractor BioPort to distribute and produce the anthrax vaccine for the U.S. military, reached its financial zenith early in the pandemic after earning lucrative contracts to produce Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines.

But a congressional report in 2021 revealed the company hid likely contamination problems at the plant from FDA inspectors and eventually had to destroy 400 million vaccine doses — which led its share price to fall from $133 to $7.

History of the anthrax vaccine

The anthrax vaccine was developed and in limited use in the military since 1970.

Biothrax has been produced by Emergent since 2002. Prior to Thursday’s announcement, it was the only anthrax vaccine licensed for humans in the U.S.

Nass explained that in 1997, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) made the vaccine compulsory as part of the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program (AVIP) for all 2.5 million military service members — including active duty and reserve personnel and civilian contractors.

The DOD implemented the mass vaccination program in 1998.

Reports of adverse reactions and dissent on the part of service members led to congressional hearings and in early 2000, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform recommended halting the mandatory program, although it was not officially halted.

As of 2000, more than 500,000 service members had received at least one dose of the vaccine, which was designed to be administered in six doses.

The plant where the government produced the anthrax vaccine faced a series of regulatory issues and was closed in 1997, according to Nass.

BioPort acquired it from the state-owned Michigan Biologic Products Institute in 1998 and rebuilt it, but was not FDA-authorized to produce the vaccine. So for a period, the vaccines were unavailable.

Then, starting on Sept. 18, 2001 — a week after the 9/11 attacks — when Americans were in a state of fear or heightened concern, media outlets began reporting that a sophisticated, weaponized and fatal form of anthrax had been sent via mail to numerous news outlets and American politicians.

New letters continued to appear over the next six weeks and the media and the government implied they were somehow linked to the 9/11 attacks.

Later, the media and figures such as John McCain linked the anthrax to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In 2008, the FBI accused U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins of being responsible for the attacks, although Ivins took his own life before he could be prosecuted and the FBI’s claims are widely doubted.

ProPublica, McClatchy and PBS Frontline, which did their own investigation, questioned the FBI’s evidence.

The Government Office of Accountability (GAO) and the National Academies of Science both also found that the FBI lacked data to back its claims.

But the hype created by the anthrax letters primed the American public to support draconian legislation such as the Patriot Act, Dr. Joseph Mercola argued.

It also became the primary justification for continuing to produce the vaccine and administer it to service people, Pam Long wrote in The Defender.

In 2002, shortly after the FDA approved BioPort’s new vaccine plant, the GAO issued a report to Congress on the AVIP.

The report enumerated a significant number of adverse reactions to the vaccine — more than double the rate reported by the manufacturer — along with the mass exodus of military pilots and other valuable military personnel who refused the mandate.

It also noted that anthrax adverse reactions were very similar to Gulf War syndrome symptoms and that many veterans reported the vaccine as the cause of this illness, which they also reported in congressional hearings, according to Nass.

From 2000 to 2018, the military anthrax mandate was challenged several times in court for lacking FDA approval and licensure, and for lacking proven potency against fatal inhalation of anthrax.

During this time, the DOD restricted the anthrax vaccine to a smaller group of “at-risk troops” and halted and resumed the program several times.

Prior to 2001, the DOD concluded that biological agents such as anthrax were not a threat for mass casualties due to the limited number of countries with the expertise and sophistication required to weaponize and disseminate anthrax.

According to an investigation by investigative journalist Whitney Webb, the 2001 anthrax attacks also rescued Emergent Biosolutions, then BioPort, from certain financial ruin.


Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

July 23, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

The heat is getting to everyone’s head

Heatwave across Europe on the morning of 10 July 2023 via ESA
By Alex Starling | Reaction | July 21, 2023

Nothing beats a good silly-season panic, it seems, but the latest handwringing about Summer heat is surely a step too far. Yes, it’s hot – “Southern Europe on fire” – but is this unusual when the jet stream is aligned as it is now, with hot Saharan air being pulled up from Africa? Judging by recent reporting, you’d be forgiven for thinking the end is nigh. There’s a climate emergency, didn’t you know?

Such scaremongering is of course a free pass, as usually no one really checks up on what actually takes place, but the catastrophic outcome can be milked to its full potential. “Drizzly day in Derby” never did sell any papers.

However, the fourth estate does have an obligation to present its viewers and readers with accurate information. This is where the story gets interesting – this is not just a case of eye-rolling pushback against apocalyptic hyperbole. Ranging from casual sloppy reporting to highly targeted attempts to influence the narrative, there is now a weight of evidence demonstrating the existence of a systemic bias towards catastrophising otherwise run-of-the-mill data.

Consider the following vignettes.

It is currently hot in Southern Europe. Earlier this month the European Space Agency (ESA) issued an attractively-coloured map as part of a press release forecasting air temperatures of 48°C in Sardinia and Sicily that would be “potentially the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe”. The quotable quote was suitably amplified by the media, only this time it was picked up by astute observers who pointed out that the ESA had conflated land temperatures with the much cooler air temperatures at the standard 2m measuring height (i.e. while you might be able to fry an egg on tarmac, the same egg suspended 2m on the ground will take much longer to become a culinary delight). The ESA subsequently issued a clarification, with corrections being issued by media organisations such as Der Spiegel which had picked up the original story.

A recent article in this publication also came to my attention. Walter Ellis wrote a piece about urban migration in Zaragoza in Spain. Fascinating though it was, he included some doom-laden forecasts regarding an ongoing summer drought: “It hasn’t rained here for months and the [official forecast] prognosis is for more – that is to say, less – to come… today, as a direct result of climate change, temperatures even in the more northerly regions, including Aragon, are at record highs”. Walter is just relaying official forecasts – hardly a mortal sin and you would hope official forecasts could be relied upon. But a slightly inconvenient truth is that these forecasters managed to get these (very short-term!) predictions completely wrong – the Iberian Peninsula was given an absolute drenching throughout May and June. Oops.

None of this would particularly matter if this idle chatter about the weather was just that; reporting on meteorological curiosities du jour. But quoting Twain: “A lie can travel halfway round the world and back again while the truth is putting on its boots”. And these weather untruths – whether they be honest mistakes, sloppy reporting or cynical ploys – tend to have one thing in common: they are seemingly always yoked to a great article of faith. That is, they are always indicative of a climate ‘emergency’, or at least ‘climate change’ (the old term ‘global warming’ seems to have temporarily gone out of fashion following various postponements of the previously imminent Armageddon).

Walter Ellis’s passing comment mentioned above lays the blame for an (incidentally totally incorrect) forecast of ongoing drought “directly on climate change”, begging the question about this direct causal link given that the prediction did not come to pass. The ESA is able to state that as “climate change takes grip, heatwaves such as this are likely to be more frequent and more severe, with far-reaching consequences”. A Met Office spokesman recently produced this cryptic quote in The Times : “As we get this climate warming, the extremes are becoming more extreme”, in an article worrying about a temporary warm spell in Greenland when the actual data shows that the snow mass was way above average at the height of summer. Even Reaction – if you can believe it – has managed to publish bold conjecture: “As temperatures continue to rise, heatwaves will become more severe. It’s crucial that governments worldwide take swift and decisive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately… while we can slow down the rate of global warming, the effects of climate change will continue to be experienced in the future”.

These are not cherry picked examples – this climate Lysenkoism is given blanket coverage. The message is ubiquitous (albeit sometimes subliminal) and in starker terms can be summarised as: “hot weather is caused by climate change, and mankind has caused climate change by producing CO2. There is an existential emergency!”

This ‘consensus’ is so consensual that it seemingly needs to be rammed home at every opportunity – almost as if this message (rather than the planet) is fragile, a complex construct that needs protection from awkward questions or detailed analysis. Grand proclamations and joint public statements are made by very serious organisations declaring The Truth that the faithful shall adhere to. Data is continually adjusted such that the graphs have suitable hockey sticks, and academics behind the scenes really know what they are doing. Armies of sycophants can be trusted to hound those who merely report on the weather without anchoring it to a climate scare, and senior sympathisers within the BBC enforce ‘appropriate’ edits and encourage activists to “flag similar cases in the future so they can adapt the content accordingly”.

Or consider Quentin Letts. He was court-martialled to have committed a “serious” breach of BBC rules on impartiality after producing a light-hearted Radio 4 programme entitled “What’s the point of the Met Office?” The recording was so offensive that it was eviscerated from BBC Sounds, lest a member of the public should stumble on such heresy. Not only that, the BBC has claimed that Letts had ignored a pre-production agreement “never to touch on climate change” – Letts categorically denies that this was ever agreed, let alone discussed. And in academia, even if the occasional journal paper with the ‘wrong’ conclusions does slip through the peer-review process, publishers can be relied on to create murky procedural grounds for retraction, especially when newspapers like The Guardian apply a modicum of pressure and editors are made to “think of the implications of publishing”.

That is quite a statement. Scientific curiosity is sidelined by today’s regime, which is tough on thought crime and tough on the causes of thought crime. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command”:  do not, under any circumstance, ask questions about recent cold weather events and records – which have seemingly abounded of late. Did you know that the Antarctic has been particularly and persistently cold in recent years? That the snow pack in California has been at extraordinarily high levels, resulting in mind-blowing skiing and white-water rafting conditions? That China and much of Siberia experienced record cold earlier in 2023? And that miserable and cold weather has persisted in Australia for many years now?

These are just anecdotes about the weather – our climate changes, after all. We should keep a weather (!) eye on this, as it was not that long ago that we were warned of an imminent ice age, and the earth’s magnetic field has been waning over the last century. Why don’t the BBC and The Guardian investigate and report on these fascinating phenomena rather than regale us with anecdotes about hot weather, as decreed by ‘Group Sustainability Directors’ who get to post-edit technical output within their organisations?

Perhaps, though, we should be grateful that the green lobby – this veritable hydra of loosely aligned eco-activists, shrieking media and sustainable energy salesmen – are there to protect ‘The Science’ from coming to harm at the hands of the scientific method.

Because surely – surely? – the public at large will eventually notice this pseudoscientific quackery and reject increasingly desperate attempts to apply cancel culture techniques to silence or ridicule heretics. Consider Dr John Clauser, the recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, who recently criticised the climate emergency narrative, calling it “a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people” and that “there is no climate crisis and that increasing CO2 concentrations will benefit the world”. People with such credentials should have their hypotheses examined — not shouted down.

How much more hot air will we have to put up with until a more reasoned debate ensues? It is clear to many that nihilistic climate alarmism is stopping us from investing in reliable energy and pursuing economic growth. If we continue down this Lysenkoist path, we risk deindustrialisation and pauperisation, which would spell an end to the quality of life that we have enjoyed in recent decades – and that our forebears could only dream of.

July 23, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Bright Red Weather Maps and Fake Temperature ‘Records’ Drive Climate Panic

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JULY 18, 2023

It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere so the heat hucksters are out in force. Alas, there are currently thin pickings in the U.K. – last year’s star of the show – where the summer has turned distinctly chilly. Further north is also very disappointing and largely absent from the public prints. Arctic sea ice continues its steady decade-long recovery, and current levels on the Greenland ice sheet are above the 1981-2010 average. But no matter – African countries surrounding the Sahara and nearby southern European locations can always be guaranteed to raise a scorchio cheer, along with Death Valley in the Arizona desert. Guaranteed climate change fearmongering in action here, every day of the week.

Come rain or shine, flood or drought, the weather is being ruthlessly weaponised to persuade us to embrace a collectivist Net Zero plan. Last week, heavy rain caused some flash flooding in Vermont. USA Today claimed that “dramatic flooding” was rare in Vermont, adding: “Expect more amid climate change.” The BBC reported the event, adding the routine house scare that “climate change makes extreme rainfall more likely”. What is missing in all this propaganda is any proof of the claims and any attempt to put bad weather into an historical perspective.

In a paper looking at the climate variability of the American state’s natural hazards, published in 2002 by the Vermont Historical Society, it was noted:

One of the most pervasive hazards that impinges upon and marks the Vermont landscape is flooding. Rarely does a year elapse without a flooding event of a significant magnitude being reported in at least one of Vermont’s 14 counties or perhaps state-wide, making this the number one hazard across the state.

On July 4th, Matt McGrath of the BBC reported that the world’s average temperature had reached a new daily high of 17°C. McGrath partly attributed the rise to “ongoing emissions of carbon dioxide”, and reported the view that July will be the hottest month in 120,000 years. Quite how anyone can know that is a mystery.

It turns out that the hottest day claim, which provided clickbait for headlines around the world, was the product of a computer model called Climate Reanalyzer, run out of the University of Maine. The operators perhaps felt a pang of guilt over the widespread use of their modelled figure noting, a few days later, that much of the elevated global temperature “can be attributed to weather patterns in the Southern Hemisphere that have brought warmer than usual air over portions of the Antarctic”. In other words, long-term climate change, human-caused or natural, had nothing to do with any rise, it was a local meteorological event.

It is important to understand that all these ‘records’ are based on historical data that are incomplete, often inaccurate and are rarely more than 100 years old. Until recently, sea temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere were recorded from a bucket thrown from a passing ship. All the major land surface temperature datasets are ravaged by growing urban heat corruption, and recent temperatures have been further warmed on a retrospective basis via ‘adjustments’. Growing questions are being asked about the accuracy of many recordings, with the U.K. Met Office willing to declare ‘records’ from a runway used by Typhoon fighter jets and other sites that the World Meteorological Organisation states come with an error estimate of up to 2°C. Meanwhile, the most accurate record we have of air temperatures is compiled from satellite data by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and this shows less warming since 1979. The results are rarely noted in mainstream media, and last year Google demonetised one of the compilers by banning him from receiving money from its AdSense scheme.

Climate historian Tony Heller has released a short film noting that “fake historical data” and bright red maps are key tools being used to scare people into compliance with an anti-energy agenda. The highest temperature ever recorded on the planet was 58°C in the Libyan desert, and the record stood for 100 years before climate alarmists managed to erase it from the record. Temperatures over 50°C are not unknown in Libya, with 50.2°C recorded in June 1995 at Zuara.

In the past, Heller notes temperatures over 38°C were recorded in Alaska over 70 years ago. In 1957, the Soviet weather service reported a week of 38°C temperatures north of the Arctic circle. In Phoenix, Arizona, there were 18 consecutive days of 43°C in 1974, at a time, Heller notes, when there was a fear of global cooling. This record may be broken in the near future he continues, but it will not have anything to do with global warming, just as the temperatures in 1974 had nothing to do with global cooling. The U.S. is likely to see highs of 38°C in Texas and the desert southwest, observes Heller, but in 1936, 13 states were over 43°C and 30 passed 38°C. Illinois was over 45°C, and people were reported to be dying from the heat in Detroit at the rate of one every 10 minutes.

The fact is that the percentage of the United States that reaches 38°C sometime during the year has plummeted since the 1930s.

The graph above shows that since the mid 1930s, the number of U.S. weather stations recording at least 38°C (100°F) has fallen by half. In addition, it shows the trend sharply decreasing since the turn of the century. People in authority, argues Heller, are pushing for the demise of fossil fuels using fake statistics and blood-red maps. The red fires of hell, he suggests, have always been used to scare the public into conforming.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptics Environment Editor.

July 23, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | Leave a comment