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Spending 5% of GDP on military now would be absolutely nuts

By Marcus Stanley | Responsible Statecraft | January 24, 2025

As a brand new Congress and administration settles in, the groundwork is being laid for a historic increase in military spending that could lead to catastrophic implications for the federal budget.

Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), the new head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is calling for a $120 billion hike over the next two years, and other key Republicans are calling for an increase of up to $200 billion. This follows a rise of some $160 billion over the four years of the Biden Administration.

But the accounting of annual dollar figures amid the technicalities of the budget reconciliation process today is perhaps less important than the conceptual and practical sea change in the long term approach to military budgeting being planned. Sen. Wicker is advocating setting a new floor for military spending at 5% of the national economy – a scheme apparently endorsed by President Donald Trump at Davos yesterday when he called for “all NATO nations” (presumably including the United States) to spend at least 5% of GDP on defense.

The implications of spending at least 5% of the entire national economy on the military each year are striking. The first is the sheer dollar figures involved. In 2024, a 5% floor would have led to approximately $1.45 trillion in military spending as opposed to the actual level of $886 billion — a difference of over $550 billion or some 60%.

That level of spending won’t happen overnight. The scale of the increase implied by a 5% floor is such that it can’t be accommodated in one or even two to three years. The additional funds are so great that the entire U.S. military-industrial complex would need to be scaled up to absorb them. But the long-run budgetary implications of such an increase are extremely concerning.

In recent work for the Quincy Institute, Steve Kosiak, a former senior White House defense budget official, projects that by 2034 a 5% of GDP floor on military spending would lead to an almost 90% increase in real (inflation adjusted) spending as compared to the current path for Pentagon spending.

A sustained expansion in military spending of this size would have a tremendous impact on the ability of the government to pursue other national priorities. This is especially true since the Trump Administration also appears committed to a major tax cut (far larger than any new revenues brought in by potential tariffs).

As Kosiak’s work documents, the combination of a massive boost in Pentagon spending and tax breaks would require either major cuts in central entitlement programs like social security or health care, or a long-term explosion in the Federal debt to levels two to three times the highest levels ever previously recorded. While it’s become fashionable to claim that “deficits don’t matter,” expanding the Federal debt to such unprecedented levels carries significant risks to economic growth.

Besides the implications for spending and deficits, a commitment to spend at least 5% of national economic production on the military would change the essential nature of military budgeting. Instead of setting the budget by assessing actual concrete needs for national defense — a process that already leads to a significant degree of waste and abuse— a spending floor would require spending to mechanically increase as the size of the economy grows, regardless of documented military needs.

The effect would be like a “military tax” on the U.S. economy, requiring a nickel of each additional dollar of production to go to the Pentagon.

The policy would also have significant effects globally, as it would tend to hard-wire an arms race dynamic into the world economy. With the U.S. and close allies increasing military spending each year as their economies grew, U.S. rivals would also feel pressure to spend more in order to keep up. Global military expenditures, already at the highest levels ever recorded, would likely spiral upward. This in turn would feed the U.S. justification for continuing to increase military spending.

While rivals that are significantly poorer than we are, such as Russia, Iran, or North Korea, would certainly feel stress to their economy in trying to keep up with our spending, a wealthier manufacturing power like China has a great deal of ability to boost military spending in response to a U.S. buildup. Estimates of Chinese military spending vary, but are generally at around 2% of GDP, leaving substantial room for growth.

At various times, when the economy was much smaller, the U.S. has certainly spent more than 5% of GDP on the military. But today, this would represent a much higher absolute level of military expenditure. More importantly, it is not necessary to actually defend the American public or secure vital national interests.

Sen. Wicker’s defense spending plan claims that the U.S. confronts “the most dangerous threat environment since WW2” due to facing an “axis of aggressors” that includes China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. It claims that America needs to budget for fighting at least two active and protracted wars simultaneously, one to defeat China and another to defeat a second aggressor in another part of the world, while maintaining additional military forces in reserve to intimidate other potential aggressors.

Further, it insists that during such a conflict we must assume that America could not rely on effective military assistance from its alliance network.

Rather than assuming that it is necessary to prepare for this terrifying and extreme scenario of an isolated America fighting a two-front global war against multiple nuclear powers, we should ask whether it can be averted by less risky and expensive means than almost doubling our military budget over the next decade.

The decision to prepare for a “nuclear WW3” scenario would require major economic sacrifices for the entire American population. Unfortunately, it appears that many in Washington wish to take us in this direction.

Marcus Stanley is the Director of Studies at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Prior to joining the Quincy Institute, he spent a decade at Americans for Financial Reform. He has a PhD in public policy from Harvard, with a focus on economics.

February 10, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Blocking Iran’s oil exports unattainable dream: Minister

Press TV – February 9, 2025

Iran’s Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad has said that the United States will never achieve its dream of cutting Iran’s oil exports to zero as touted by its new president Donald Trump.

“Blocking Iran’s oil exports is an unattainable dream,” said Paknejad on Sunday while reacting to Trump’s recent signing of an executive order to impose maximum pressure on Iran’s oil industry.

He insisted that Iran will always come up with solutions to circumvent US bans on its oil exports.

“The more the restrictions increase, the more complicated our solutions will be,” said the minister, adding that the experts and staff working in the Iranian petroleum industry have the capacities to deal with problems caused by US sanctions to the country’s production and exports of oil.

He said the US once experienced the futility of its maximum pressure policy on Iran during Trump’s first term in office in 2016-2020.

“They want to test it one more time and they will fail again,” said the minister.

The comments came several days after Trump announced he would use Washington’s unilateral regime of sanctions to disrupt Iran’s oil flows to markets in Asia and elsewhere.

Trump enacted a first round of sanctions on Iran’s oil exports in 2018, causing the country’s oil exports to drop for a brief period in late 2019 and in early 2020.

However, Iranian oil exports have gradually returned to pre-sanctions levels in recent years with estimates suggesting that the country is shipping more than 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil, mostly to customers in China.

That comes as Iran’s oil exports had reached as low as 0.3 million bpd in 2019 when Trump removed sanction waivers granted to major Iranian oil customers.

February 10, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU nations aim to seize alleged ‘Russian shadow fleet’ vessels – Politico

RT | February 10, 2025

Several EU members are considering strengthening the legal framework for seizing ships in the Baltic Sea with the aim of undermining Russian trade, Politico reported on Monday, citing insiders. Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia are allegedly seeking to target vessels on environmental and piracy grounds.

Western nations, which have been seeking to find ways to curb Russian energy exports, have accused Moscow of employing a “shadow fleet” to evade sanctions. In recent months, officials have also accused Moscow of sabotaging undersea cables in the Baltic, though no evidence has been provided to substantiate these allegations.

According to Politico’s sources, the four states intend to seize suspected shadow fleet ships based on the alleged threat they pose to the environment and to infrastructure, and are seeking EU backing for the initiative. They could amend national legislation to “make it easier to grab ships further out at sea,” including by mandating a list of insurers for maritime operations in the Baltic. Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told the news outlet that there are “lots of opportunities” for enforcing trade restrictions against Russia.

Last December, Finland seized the tanker ‘Eagle S’ amid an investigation into the damage to the Estlink 2 power cable. The vessel remains impounded despite the Finnish authorities reportedly finding no evidence of wrongdoing.

Conversely, a Norwegian cargo ship with an all-Russian crew was released in late January after Norwegian police concluded there were no grounds to continue its detention. The Latvian authorities had requested the seizure of the Silver Dania over an incident involving an optic cable owned by the national broadcaster LVRTC earlier the same month.

Moscow has accused Western nations of peddling a false narrative that frames routine accidents as evidence of a Russian sabotage campaign. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has criticized purveyors for “fantastic hypocrisy,” citing the lack of findings in European inquiries into the September 2022 destruction of Nord Stream gas pipelines.

The “non-investigation” of that incident suggests that EU nations deem Joe Biden’s threat against Russian-German infrastructure “proper,” Zakharova said last month, referring to remarks made by the then-US president months before the attack.

President Vladimir Putin has characterized Western sanctions as tools of non-economic pressure wielded by countries unable to compete with Russia on an equal footing. He views them as a challenge to make the national economy better.

“No blackmail or attempts to impose anything on us will ever yield results. Russia is confident in its rightness and strength,” he said in a recent speech.

February 10, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Senior Ansar Allah official on why Yemen fought for Gaza

The Grayzone | February 9, 2025

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, welcome back to the Gray Zone. The Gaza ceasefire has finally been achieved after 15 months of gruesome fighting. And Western commentators, many of them referred to Ansar Allah as mad or insane for its refusal to back down in the face of U.S. and U.K. and Israeli airstrikes.

And to end its blockade of the Red Sea, its naval blockade. Why was Ansar Allah willing to risk so much to attempt to force a ceasefire in Gaza? And was the price worth it?

In the name of God, the most merciful, we in the Ansarullah movement act based on religious and moral principles, not agendas or self-interest.

That is why we were prepared to make every sacrifice to defend the oppressed in Gaza. We successfully pressured the US and the Zionist entity, ultimately leading to a ceasefire. Our operations became the most significant leverage for the Palestinian resistance. Without them, I feared the Palestinian people would have suffered even greater losses and the war would still be ongoing today. Yemen has endured immense suffering due to American and British policies. The price we paid was heavy, but it is insignificant compared to our duty toward Hamza. Our ultimate goal is to help establish a global order based on justice for all peoples of the world.

Many in the Gaza Strip, after the ceasefire was declared, profusely thanked Ansar Allah and the people of Yemen. That was the first party that they thanked, as well as Abu Abaydah, the spokesman for the Al Qasem Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. What message do you want to send back to them?

We consider what we did a moral, religious and humanitarian act. We consider the Palestinian people the first line of defense for the Arab and Muslim nations, as well as the nations of all those who are oppressed given the sacrifices they have made in the pursuit of justice.

For that reason, they are more deserving of gratitude than we are. They are confronting a global alliance of oppression and injustice.

Israel lobby-connected think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said last October that the Houthis are stronger, more technically proficient, and more prominent members of the axis of resistance than they were at the war’s outset. At the same time, the U.S. government, Tel Aviv, Even Riyadh, Doha have said that the axis of resistance as a whole has been significantly weakened by Israeli attacks. So what is your message to them? Is the axis of resistance still intact? What’s your message to those who say it’s been defeated?

Al-Khan al-Sahyuni wa-Hulafaa.

The Zionist entity and its allies failed to achieve their objectives. The Hamas movement not only endures, but has grown more popular than ever. Not just in Palestine, but across the Arab and Muslim world. Additionally, global awareness has increased significantly. The Zionist entity is built on lies and deception and its defeat in the arena of public opinion is a major blow. Yemen’s military operations inflicted significant costs on the US and its allies by draining financial resources, undermining the security of the entity and weakening the credibility of their military presence in the region. the american navy despite its overwhelming strength was forced to yield to us as a result the losses suffered by global zionism and its allies far outweigh those of the axis of resistance while syria was a significant loss for the axis the zionist alliance has suffered even more especially in the battle of global awareness.

Well, we’ll get to the issue of Syria, but first I want to ask you, what did you do when Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced his intention, the intention of the Israeli military, to assassinate the leadership of Ansar Allah, including Abdul Malik al-Houthi and yourself? You appeared on a public Israeli kill list.

What did you do and do you believe Israel still has the intention to assassinate you and other leaders of Ansar Allah?

We have made it clear to the US and the Zionist entity that we are ready for modernism. Our message has also been clear that any targeting of leadership in Yemen will be met in an equal retaliation, whether that be in the US, the UK or in the entity. We are serious.

If they want this war to become one of assassinated leaders, we are ready. We would advise them to focus on maintaining the ceasefire rather than further escalation of the war. An escalated war and a war of assassinations will not go in their favor. We are ready for all options. The ball is in their court.

The new U.S. President Donald Trump is clearly driven by rabid Zionist forces.

Some of the most extreme forces on the political spectrum in Israel support Donald Trump. which leaves open the possibility of a U.S. war with Iran, which has been Netanyahu’s top objective. Now, if that happens, what will Ansar Allah do? Will you intervene, for example, by opening a front against American Gulf interests, attacking oil facilities, which has been put on the table by other members of the Axis?

First, we are focused on achieving stability in the region. We want peace for the region and the whole world. We will never start a war. We do not believe in pre-emptive strikes even if we know that the Trump administration will escalate. That said, in the case that one member of the Axis is targeted, we will not leave them alone and we will support them exactly like we supported our brothers in Gaza. We consider that the American foreign policy and that of its allies aims to break each member of the resistance individually.

We won’t let that happen. Are you concerned after the devastation of the war and with a new president in Washington, that the plans for the Abraham Accords and normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states could go ahead, could be reignited. And what will be the consequences for Ansar Allah if this takes place and what would you do to prevent it?

We are always advising Arab and Muslim nations not to normalize or design this entity, as this will not be in their own interest. This goes against their duties towards their people in Gaza, especially considering that the Zionist entity is backed by powerful and rich countries. But if the Saudis and the Emiratis continue with further normalization,
we send them nothing but the advice. We will never escalate militarily against them unless they attack us first.

You had warned that Syria was the weakest link in the axis of resistance. How damaging to the axis was the loss of Syria to Mohammad al-Jolani’s NATO-backed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham forces? And why do you think the Syrian government folded so quickly along with its Iranian and Russian allies?

Yes, I had mentioned that Syria was the weakest link. I also advised that the Syrian government should have opened a front against the Zionist entity. That would have made Syria the strongest link. But sadly, the Syrian government made the wrong calculations. The enemies of Syria and the enemies of the resistance were able to focus their efforts on Syria, while the rest of the Axis was preoccupied with its engagements with the United States, the United Kingdom and the Zionist entity. The Syrian army was also struck on many occasions, strikes that went without retaliation, which I believe weakened morale on the army. Also, we can’t forget the massive support that Al Jawlani’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham received from the United States and its allies, and especially Turkey. Al Jolani’s people learned some lessons from their handlers and they pretended to offer amnesty to all their former rivals in Syria. This eased their consolidation of power, but now we are seeing that these initial actions were fake and those who believed them are paying the price.

What does it mean for the Axis to lose an ally like Syria? Does it fundamentally cripple Hezbollah because it loses the land bridge with Iran? Where does the Axis stand today without Syria?

The Syrian front was an important one for the Axis for two reasons. The first, because it was an important path for delivering supplies and arms to the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements. And the second, because it was the last sovereign Arab nation that shared their border with Palestine. No such state exists any longer. Lebanon’s government is not sovereign. Therefore, the loss of Syria cannot be understated.

Still, we must also remember that Syria had become a huge burden on the Axis in the last years. Syria’s loss is not the end of the Axis. The Axis will adjust to this loss. The losses of the Axis, as large as they were, are minute in comparison to the losses of the Americans and their allies.

More close to home in Yemen, Ansar Allah unilaterally released 153 war detainees, detainees from the Yemeni Civil War, in a good faith gesture to your adversaries in the south. This took place obviously in the wake of the ceasefire. So what message are you trying to send to southern Yemen and to the quote-unquote international community?

Our decision to unilaterally release the hostages had nothing to do with Gaza or the ceasefire. In the past, we have done dozens of similar unilateral overtures as a message to all that we aim to turn the page on the practice of hostage-taking on both sides. However, it is evident that our internal opponents did not return the favor.

At the end of the day, we would not have any of their hostages if they did not have any of ours. We strive to turn the page on the practice.

And southern Yemen state media is calling for the purification of the country from the sectarian Houthi militia. They’re using this sort of language. They’re accusing you of all sorts of crimes, of using human shields, pointing fingers. What’s your response to the… to these accusations? And have you considered actually just seceding and declaring independence given the seeming intransigence?

The mercenary leadership in southern Yemen no longer holds a popular mandate, nor does it represent the Yemeni people. They represent our oppressors in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Everyone knows that the Saudis and their allies picked this mercenary government that is represented by Rashad Al Alimi and his leadership council.

They do not in any way represent the interests of the Yemeni people. Therefore, we are not surprised that this is their stance. For us, we still advocate for the unification of Yemen and a political solution that deals with the territorial and political concerns of all parties.

We are open to all solutions that address the interests of all the Yemeni governorates including the southern ones. And we must emphasize that the overwhelming majority of the Yemenis from the southern and eastern governorates are against secession. They equally desire the reunification of the country, especially after what they witnessed in terms of abuses from the militias that are supported from the outside, especially the militias that are controlled by the United Arab Emirates.

The forces of imperialism from Washington to Tel Aviv to the Wahhabi Gulf states are bringing enormous amounts of power down on Ansarallah and Yemen, seeking to dislodge you from power. And these are very powerful forces. Have you considered or undergone any process to reach out to China or Russia or any
other BRIC states to offset the impact of this imperial pressure?

Radical Islamic ideology exists in the world, but it is limited and weak. The problem is that the United Kingdom and the United States supported these radical movements, and on top of them, the Wahhabi movement, that considered all other Muslims infidels. The United Kingdom and then the United States benefited from these radicals.

They weaponized them against their opponents in the Muslim world and the rest of the globe. These radical forces were weaponized against the leftist movements in the Arab world. and the movements of Arab nationalism.

And most recently, they have been weaponized against the members of the axis of resistance in the name of a Sunni versus Shia sectarian war. They were also weaponized against countries that have stood by the Palestinian people historically, such as the USSR, as represented by Russia, and China, and even India.

We have sadly now lost India and its support in the struggle, and it is now one of the strongest allies of the United States and the Zionist entity. The victims of America and her politics are numerous. They include the Russians and the Chinese. Of course, there must be a form of an alliance between them and all the other victims of the United States around the globe, an alliance that could help each withstand the threats, external or internal, imposed by the United States. The United States today is the force that controls radicalism, whether that be by ISIS or Al-Qaeda.

Of course, it controls them indirectly through its Saudi and other Gulf puppets. Still, we emphasize that any alliance between said allies must be built on a strong foundation of humanitarian and ethical grounds. This is a sacred priority for us. And as I mentioned before, according to our military doctrine, we only engage in defensive military action, or military action to support the oppressed. We do not believe in preventative war. There are many shared interests that we can unite for with other nations of the resistance. Still, there are many shared interests that we can unite under with all the other nations that are equally suffering from American policies.

And finally, I asked you this question during our last interview, which took place at a different time in the midst of war. What is your message to the American people at the dawn of the second Trump administration?

My message to the American people and the people of the West in general is that every civilization is built on a set of foundational pillars. And when a civilization loses these pillars, it crumbles. Today, Western civilization is dangerously close to collapse due to its abandonment of many of its moral and ethical foundational values.

The ethical and moral values of the West seem to exclude the Palestinians and deprive them of their rights while excusing all the crimes of the Israelis and offering them no accountability. This is a massive problem for the Western mentality. Also, they must recognize that the peace that will come by way of Trump and his Abraham Accords is not a real peace, but a submission. Every time the West speaks of stability and security, they mean security and stability only for them and their people. We see how the Zionist entity is aiming to achieve a ceasefire for only one side. They want to keep targeting Gaza, the south of Lebanon, and the West Bank with impunity and without a response. That’s why we must all re-examine our moral and humanitarian ideology and worldview. Our ideologies must be built on the foundation that everyone deserves peace, everyone deserves freedom, and everyone deserves human rights. Not human rights, freedom, peace, for some, at the expense of others.

Okay, well, Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti, spokesman for Ansar Allah, thank you for joining us again at the Grey Zone. Best of luck.

Thank you, Max, for all that you do in this fight for the rights of the Palestinian people. We count on voices like yours to achieve real change in the world, in America and in the West.

Absolutely. And I look forward to talking again with you.

February 10, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Slaughtered on Suspicion

Ivor Cummins | January 29, 2025

This is one great and revealing movie – on the political corruption which led to the slaughter of UK herds! Shocking stuff – great job by UK Column, make sure to join up with them here: https://www.ukcolumn.org/

February 9, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

New Report Contradicts Telecom Industry Claim That Wireless Radiation Is Safe

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 6, 2025

The basis for the wireless industry’s claim that radiation is safe for humans is scientifically erroneous, according to the author of a new peer-reviewed scientific report.

Paul Héroux, Ph.D., authored the report, which was published Jan. 30 in Heliyon, one of Elsevier’s journals on its ScienceDirect platform.

Héroux, an associate professor of medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and a medical scientist in McGill University Health Center’s surgery department, has years of experience in physics and electrical engineering.

He is also vice chair of the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF), a “consortium of scientists, doctors and researchers” who study wireless radiation and make recommendations for wireless radiation exposure guidelines “based on the best peer-reviewed research publications.”

Héroux told The Defender :

“Industry’s most important argument to deny the health impacts of electromagnetic radiation has been that these health effects are impossible based on solid physics, specifically that the radiation is ‘non-ionizing.”

Héroux detailed the scientific faultiness of that argument:

“Ionization by the radiation itself is irrelevant because life processes produce ionization within the body itself.

“In fact, the basic laws of physics (Maxwell’s Equations and the Second Law of Thermodynamics) together with established biology confirm that health effects of electromagnetic radiation are in fact inevitable, and at levels much lower than those considered safe by industry.”

Dr. Robert Brown, a diagnostic radiologist with more than 30 years of experience and the vice president of Scientific Research and Clinical Affairs for the Environmental Health Trust (EHT), praised Héroux’s report.

Brown said the report “effectively outlines a mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can disrupt the biology of living systems” — even at levels much lower than what’s needed to heat tissues.

Fariha Husain, manager of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless Program, called the report “groundbreaking.”

“Héroux’s report fundamentally challenges the flawed ‘thermal-only paradigm,’ which falsely claims that non-ionizing radiation — including radiofrequency (RF) radiation emitted by Wi-Fi routers, cell towers, smart meters and cellphones — can harm biological tissue only via excessive heating,” Husain said.

The report is novel in that it systematically breaks down the flawed industry arguments used to justify the thermal-only paradigm.

“But the truth of the matter is that the harm caused by RF radiation has been known for decades,” Husain said. “Unfortunately, this knowledge has been intentionally suppressed by industry.”

The wireless industry and regulatory agencies, including the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), contend that harm can occur only at radiation levels high enough to cause tissue heating.

Lawyers with CHD and EHT in 2021 successfully showed before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the FCC ignored massive scientific evidence suggesting that RF radiation has negative biological effects at levels currently allowed by the FCC.

CHD and EHT’s historic case alleged that the FCC failed to provide a reasoned explanation for its determination that its current RF exposure guidelines — which haven’t been updated since 1996 — adequately protect against the harmful effects of exposure to RF radiation.

The FCC has yet to comply with the court’s mandate to explain how the agency determined that its current guidelines adequately protect humans and the environment against the harmful effects of exposure to wireless radiation.

Studies on dead tissues can’t detect health effects

In the report, Héroux provides a scientific rationale for why biological harm occurs at non-thermal levels of RF radiation.

Brown summarized key parts of that rationale:

“Héroux initially explains the difference in physical distance between redox reactions occurring in inorganic matter and those occurring in living systems. The ongoing processes of glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation require electrons and protons to continually engage long pathways in mitochondria to produce chemical energy from the breakdown of sugars.

“He clearly details why it is this increased distance that makes living systems vulnerable to the effects of non-ionizing radiation.

“I believe Dr. Héroux has presented a compelling case that non-ionizing radiation can impact the path of these charged particles and affect not only the efficiency of energy production in the cell but also increase the production of reactive oxygen species, which can lead to cellular oxidative stress.”

Oxidative stress due to RF radiation exposure has been “clearly documented” in the scientific literature, Brown added.

Héroux said his report also shows that the FCC’s safety assessments of RF radiation failed to consider basic physics in addition to its biological effects.

The current regulatory limits “completely ignore” this science, Husain said. “The expansion of wireless technology is in direct conflict with protecting public health and the environment and it is long overdue for regulators to acknowledge the growing body of evidence and take immediate action to establish safety standards that protect both human health and the environment.”

The report also explains why health effects from non-ionizing radiation cannot be detected in experiments performed on dead tissue.

“No electron transport occurs in dead tissue, regardless of whether or not it is ‘fresh.’” Brown said. “Research performed on the effects of electromagnetic radiation on dead tissue has led to erroneous conclusions in many in vitro scientific studies.”

Scientists call out WHO-funded study for ‘serious flaws’

Héroux published his report just weeks after he and other scientists with ICBE-EMF published a scathing letter to the editor of Environmental International criticizing a recent systematic review funded by the World Health Organization (WHO) that claimed it found no link between cellphone use and brain cancer.

The study — part of a WHO-commissioned series of scientific reviews of the possible health risks of wireless radiation — was available online Aug. 30, 2024, in Environmental International.

In their letter, the IBCE-EMF scientists said the WHO’s study had “serious flaws” that undermined the validity of the study’s conclusions.

“It is dishonest to assure the public that cell phones and wireless radiation are safe based upon such a flawed review,” said Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., in an ICBE-EMF press release.

Moskowitz is director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, and an ICBE-EMF member.

The WHO commissioned 10 systematic reviews on the evidence of the health risks from wireless radiation, according to the ICBE-EMF.

So far, nine have been published. All “suffer from serious methodological problems and seem biased to dismiss the substantial evidence of heart risk reported in the peer-reviewed scientific literature,” Moskowitz said in a Sept. 30, 2024, presentation.

Once all 10 are published, the WHO plans to use the reviews as the basis for updating its 1993 “Environmental Health Criteria Monograph” on RF-EMF, ICBE-EMF said.

“A monograph is a report which overviews the scientific evidence on biological effects, identifies gaps in knowledge to direct future research and provides information for health authorities and regulatory agencies regarding public health,” according to ICBE-EMF.

In a post on his Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website, Moskowitz noted that all of the WHO’s scientific review teams have one or more ICNIRP members.

ICNIRP, which Moskowitz called a “cartel,” is a German nonprofit that issues RF radiation exposure limits “produced by its own members, their former students and close colleagues.”

According to EHT, ICNIRP is an invite-only group with “deep industry ties” and no oversight.

Scientists in 2020 sent a letter to the WHO’s leadership asking how the research teams were selected but did not receive a response, according to EHT.

Related articles in The Defender

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.

February 9, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Practising the Inexcusable: Vaccinating Children Against Covid-19

By Vasko Kohlmayer  | LewRockwell.com | January 23, 2025

“Pediatricians urge everyone to keep your immune system updated by getting the 2024-2025 COVID vaccine,” we read on Healthychilren.org, a website maintained by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Unbelievable as it may sound, there are still pediatricians in America today who vaccinate healthy children against Covid-19. They do this in the absence of any good medical reason for doing so. These pediatricians keep engaging in this senseless and dangerous practice even though data, science, and common sense clearly indicate that this should not be done.

To begin with, children are at virtually no risk of serious Covid. The infection fatality rate for ages 0-19 is only around 0.0003. This is a very low figure, indeed. Low as it is, this number includes all children, including seriously ill ones with weakened immune systems who are especially vulnerable to fall victim to viral infections. Thus, for healthy youngsters, the chances of dying of Covid are for all practical purposes zero.

As early as October 2021, the New York Times conceded that to healthy children “the danger of severe Covid is so low as to be difficult to quantify.” In other words, the risk is essentially non-existent. To give a sense of perspective, a healthy child is far more likely to perish in a car accident than to die of Covid-19.

Secondly, it is widely known that the Covid vaccines do not prevent transmission. Those who receive them are no less likely to contract Covid than those who do not. Perhaps the most glaring manifestation of this took place in December of 2021 when dozens of U.S. universities – including Yale and Princeton – had to close early because of widespread outbreaks of Covid-19 among their student populations. This happened even though – due to strict mandates – the vaccine uptake at those institutions was generally 96 percent or higher.

Not only do the Covid vaccines not prevent transmission, but some reiterations in their ever-growing series – we are currently at number ten – have had what experts euphemistically call “negative efficacy.” This means that people who receive the shots are more likely to contract Covid-19 than those who do not. This should make it clear that there is no public health utility in vaccinating children against Covid, since the vaccine will not stop or slow down the spread of the virus. If anything, it may increase the rate of its proliferation.

Thirdly, it is a well-established fact that Covid injections carry a range of severe side effects. A great deal has been said, for example, about blood clots and myocarditis in young men. As early as 2022 there were already more than one thousand studies and articles published discussing adverse reactions to the Covid-19 vaccines. This material had appeared in scientific and medical journals and publications and much of it was peer-reviewed. Below are some of the side effects of the Covid vaccines documented in these publications:

  • Blood clotting
  • Cerebral haemorrhage
  • Venous thrombosis
  • Myocarditis
  • Pericarditis
  • Myopericarditis
  • Lymphadenopathy
  • Acute thrombosis of the coronary tree
  • Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis
  • Anaphylaxis
  • Cardiomyopathy
  • Thrombophilia
  • Guillain-Barré syndrome

What these clearly show is that the vaccines are far from safe. Quite apart from being ineffective, they are, in fact, very dangerous. The reports of injuries and deaths in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database have exploded exponentially since the introduction of the Covid injections. The reported side effects for these medicaments in the last four years well exceed the combined total of all reported events for all vaccines in the 35-year history of the database.

Many children have been killed or seriously injured by these unsafe, improperly tested substances. There have been, for example, dozens and dozens of reports of high school football players collapsing with heart attacks (see, for instance, here and here and here and here). Even though it was not unheard of for a high school athlete to collapse in the past, such events were relatively rare. The rapid explosion of these incidents following the introduction of the Covid shots shows their deadly nature.

Below is a selection of entries from the VAERS database of heart injuries to children following vaccination against Covid-19 (for a fuller account see the source article here):

  • VAERS 1199455: 17-year-old girl had difficulty breathing and chest pain, suffered cardiac arrest 8 days after 1st Pfizer dose, and died on April 10, 2021
  • VAERS 1225942: 16-year-old girl had cardiac arrest at home 9 days after 1st Pfizer dose, and died on March 30, 2021. Had pulmonary emboli
  • VAERS 1420762: 17-year-old girl had cardiac arrest 6 days after Pfizer dose, and died on June 23, 2021
  • VAERS 1431289: 13-year-old boy had out-of-hospital cardiac arrest 17 days after 1st Pfizer dose, had large cerebellar haemorrhage, and died on June 20, 2021
  • VAERS 1693654: 15-year-old boy had cardiac arrest while driving a friend 10 days after 2nd Pfizer dose, suffered severe anoxic brain damage, on life support
  • VAERS 1702154: 16-year-old boy had out-of-hospital cardiac arrest 6 days after 1st Pfizer dose, and died on Sep.1, 2021
  • VAERS 1796194: 14-year-old boy had myocardial infarction and pericarditis 19 days after 1st Pfizer dose and was hospitalized in ICU. Permanently disabled (did not recover)
  • VAERS 1828901: 17-year-old girl presented with chest pain and dyspnoea for 48 hours, 36 days after 2nd Pfizer dose, had cardiac arrest, and died on Oct. 21, 2021
  • VAERS 1830419: 16-year-old boy had cardiac arrest while running, after 2nd Pfizer dose, had hypoxic encephalopathy, permanently disabled
  • VAERS 1959638: 15-year-old girl presented with chest and arm pain, had myocardial infarction 1 day after 1st dose of Pfizer, permanently disabled
  • VAERS 1971636: 14-year-old girl had dizziness, headache, then cardiac arrest 15 days after 1st Moderna dose, same day brain injury, died in hospital on Oct. 10, 2021
  • VAERS 1991078: 14-year-old girl presented with dyspnoea, seizure, had cardiac arrest 8 days after 1st Pfizer dose, died Nov. 6, 2021
  • VAERS 2042005: 13-year-old boy had cardiac arrest 7 months after 2nd Moderna dose, and died suddenly on Jan. 1, 2022
  • VAERS 2152560: 7-year-old boy had cardiac arrest 13 days after 1st Pfizer dose, and died on Feb.16, 2022
  • VAERS 2264954: 13-year-old boy had myocardial infarction and pericarditis 3 days after 1st Pfizer dose, permanently disabled
  • VAERS 2398786: 17-year-old boy had an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest 6 days after 3rd dose of Pfizer, and died on Jun. 22, 2022
  • VAERS 2458174: 15-year-old girl had a cardiac arrest after 2nd Moderna dose, and died (location unknown)
  • VAERS 2535782: 11-year-old boy had 3rd dose of Pfizer at 3:40pm; at 7:15pm, was found face immersed in bathtub, cardiac arrest, died 9pm, Dec. 13, 2022
  • VAERS 2543364: 14-year-old girl had 1st dose of Moderna, 16 days later had headache, dizziness, fever, then cardiac arrest, died on Oct. 11, 2021
  • VAERS 2582452: 12-year-old girl had acute myocardial infarction 5 days after 1st Pfizer dose, and died on Nov. 10, 2021

Tragic as this is, the entries above touch only heart attacks, which is only one of the serious side effects of the Pfizer and Moderna injections. In addition to heart attacks, these vaccines cause a wide array of side effects ranging from strokes to neurological damage.

One of the most poignant cases is that of Yonatan Moshe Erlichman, a lovely Israeli boy who was used as part of a state-sponsored TV campaign to push vaccines on Israeli children. Fully vaccinated poster child for the government’s effort to have all youngsters jabbed, the eight-year-old Yonatan suffered a fatal heart attack while in his bath.

Yonatan Moshe Erlichman, a poster child for Israel’s Covid vaccination campaign died of a heart attack at the age of eight.

Unbelievably, a similar fate was met by Santino Godoy Blanco, the poster child for the Argentine state-sponsored campaign to inject the children of that nation. This is what we learned about his tragic story:

“at the age of four, he died “suddenly and unexpectedly” in November 2022. Shortly before, he had been admitted to a clinic with a high fever and nausea. His death certificate states “bilateral pneumonia” as the cause; Even the Paul Ehrlich Institute admits in a “safety report” that Covid vaccinations can trigger pneumonia. Santino appeared on television as a telegenic animator for the nationwide vaccination campaign “Activá Vacunas.”

Santino Godoy Blanco, a young boy who was used by the Argentine government to push the Covid vaccine on children, died at the age of four.

To summarize the basic facts of the case:

  • Healthy children are at virtually no risk of serious Covid.
  • Covid injections do not prevent transmission.
  • Covid injections carry the risk of very serious side effects.

In light of these well-established facts, there is no medical, scientific, or logical basis to vaccinate healthy children against Covid.

The question is: Why, then, are there pediatricians in the United State who still needlessly inject young people with these dangerous substances?

Given what we know, vaccinating children against Covid makes zero sense. It produces no objective health benefits either to individual children or to society. It only exposes children to the risk of harm and, if anything, increases the possibility of transmission.

Vaccinating children against Covid flies in the face of the evidence, facts, and common sense.

Doctors who engage in this practice have no regard for facts, truth, or science. They are endangering the well-being of the children entrusted to their care. By doing this they violate the sacred principle of the Hippocratic oath: “Do no harm.”

Every doctor who continues to engage in this senseless practice should realize that there is a good chance that he or she will sooner or later either seriously injure or kill a child. These unfortunate children will have suffered for nothing, since from a medical point of view, these shots are useless. They are, in fact, worse than useless: they are outright harmful and dangerous.

Unnecessarily injecting healthy children with the mRNA substances that have an abysmal safety profile is an act of reckless medical malpractice. Doctors who do this are either willfully blind or worse. What they do is demonstrably wrong and harmful. Their actions are unconscionable and inexcusable.

The practice of vaccinating healthy children against Covid-19 must be stopped, because there is no medical, scientific, or logical reason for doing so.

Vasko Kohlmayer (email) was born and grew up in former communist Czechoslovakia. You can follow his writings by subscribing to his Substack newsletter ’Notes from the Twilight Zone’. He is the author of The West in Crisis: Civilizations and Their Death Drives.
Copyright © Vasko Kohlmayer

February 9, 2025 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Senator Ron Johnson Demands Meta Releases Records on COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Censorship

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | February 9, 2025

Senator Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has escalated his scrutiny of Meta’s alleged suppression of COVID-19 vaccine injury discussions, demanding that CEO Mark Zuckerberg release internal records detailing Facebook’s content moderation practices.

In a letter dated February 4, 2025, Johnson specifically questioned Facebook’s removal of vaccine injury support groups, including A Wee Sprinkle of Hope, which was described in the book Worth a Shot? as the largest such group in the world before it was shut down just five days after Johnson’s June 28, 2021, roundtable with vaccine-injured individuals.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

The letter also reiterated claims that Facebook engaged in shadow banning, appended warning labels to users’ posts about vaccine injuries, and even censored private messages. One particularly tragic case cited in Worth a Shot? described a woman who took her own life after her private messages seeking help from fellow vaccine-injured individuals allegedly went unnoticed due to Facebook’s restrictions on message visibility.

The book in question: Worth a Shot? by Caroline Pover

Johnson’s letter followed recent remarks by Zuckerberg on The Joe Rogan Experience, where he acknowledged that the Biden administration exerted intense pressure on Facebook to suppress content about vaccine side effects. According to Zuckerberg, the government “pushed [Facebook] super hard to take down things that were honestly true” and even resorted to “yelling, cursing, and threatening repercussions” if the platform did not comply.

The senator’s letter outlined a sweeping request for documents, including records of Facebook’s interactions with government agencies, vaccine manufacturers, and third-party groups involved in content moderation policies. He specifically asked whether any federal entity requested the censorship of vaccine injury support groups and demanded details on Facebook’s policies regarding the suppression or removal of posts related to vaccine injuries.

Johnson has set a deadline of February 18, 2025, for Zuckerberg to comply with the request, emphasizing that the investigation seeks to uncover the full extent of the Biden administration’s involvement in what he characterizes as an aggressive censorship campaign in collaboration with Big Tech.

More: Facebook and YouTube Censored Victims of AstraZeneca COVID Vaccine

February 9, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

No long-term trend in global hurricane activity

The 2024 Hurricane Season

By Paul Homewood | Global Warming Policy Foundation | January 28, 2025

London – The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has today published its periodic review of global hurricane activity. The review is based on the findings of key scientific bodies, comparing them to sensationalist news reporting and popular perceptions.

  • Trends in landfalling Atlantic/western Pacific hurricanes have been stable or decreasing since 1950.
  • There is also no global trend in overall hurricane frequency since reliable records began in the 1970s.
  • The apparent increase in the number of hurricanes since the 19th century has been due to changes in observation practices over the years, rather than an actual increase.
  • Data show no long-term trends in US landfalling hurricanes since the mid-19th century, when systematic records began, either in terms of frequency or intensity.
  • Similarly, after allowing for the fact that many storms were not spotted prior to the satellite era, there are no such trends in Atlantic hurricanes either.
  • There is growing evidence that wind speeds of the most powerful hurricanes may now be overestimated in comparison to pre-satellite era ones, because of changing methods of measurement.
  • The increase in Atlantic hurricanes in the last fifty years is not part of a long-term trend, but is linked to a recovery from a deep minimum in hurricane activity in the 1970s, associated with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.

The author, climate researcher Paul Homewood, said:

“The observational findings of meteorological agencies in 2024 once again confound those who claim to see a ‘climate crisis’ in the hurricane data. It is clear that we have not seen an increase in hurricane frequency, even though the public have been scared into thinking that tropical storms are getting worse.”

GWPF Director, Dr Benny Peiser, said:

“The gap between media hype, popular perceptions and the reality of empirical data is becoming ever more evident. This report sets out the facts and is a welcome corrective to misleading news coverage of hurricanes.”

Read the full paper here: The 2024 Hurricane Season (pdf)

February 9, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

BBC’s Fake Wildfire Claims

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | January 30, 2025

The climate establishment are going to great lengths to blame the Los Angeles fires on global warming.

One attempt has already bitten the dust, with claims of increasing winter droughts contradicted by the real world data.

So another team of so-called scientists have come up with an even more ridiculous idea – that it is now both to wet and too dry in California.

The BBC report:

Climate change has made the grasses and shrubs that are fuelling the Los Angeles fires more vulnerable to burning, scientists say.

Rapid swings between dry and wet conditions in the region in recent years have created a massive amount of tinder-dry vegetation that is ready to ignite.

Decades of drought in California were followed by extremely heavy rainfall for two years in 2022 and 2023, but that then flipped again to very dry conditions in the autumn and winter of 2024.

“Scientists” say in a new study, external that climate change has boosted what they call these “whiplash” conditions globally by 31-66% since the middle of the 20th Century.

“This whiplash sequence in California has increased fire risk twofold,” said lead author Daniel Swain from UCLA.

“First, by greatly increasing the growth of flammable grass and brush in the months leading up to fire season, and then by drying it out to exceptionally high levels with the extreme dryness and warmth that followed.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0ewe4p9128o

Once again though the actual data shows the new study to be just as fake as the previous one. Most of California’s rain comes in the winter half, October to March; the last two years have been wetter than average, but no more so than many other years on record:

 

The same applies to the South Coast Drainage Division, which includes Los Angeles:

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/national/time-series

Neither is there any evidence of bigger swings from year to year.

Patrick Brown of the Breakthrough Institute has written a full scientific rebuttal here, which demolishes this latest fake science.

This is his summary:

Summary

So, let’s recap. At the annual timescale that is most relevant to the Los Angeles fires…

    • Figure 1: There is no clear increase in overall whiplash occurrence or wet-to-dry whiplash occurrence in Los Angeles in the premiere observational dataset (ERA5) using data directly from Swain et al. (2025).
    • Figure 2: There is no clear increase in overall whiplash occurrence or wet-to-dry whiplash occurrence over southern California in the premiere observational dataset (ERA5) using data directly from Swain et al. (2025).
    • Figure 3: There is a long-term decrease in whiplash events globally over land (where it matters) in the premiere observational dataset (ERA5) using data directly from Swain et al. (2025).
    • Figure 5: There is no increase in the variability (standard deviation) of annual SPEI either for all months or centered on January) in the Los Angeles grid point using the pre-existing standard SPEI dataset.
    • Figure 6: There has been a decrease in the variability (standard deviation) of SPEI over global land since the 1980s using the pre-existing standard SPEI dataset.
    • Figure 7: There is no agreement on the direction of change (if any) in annual precipitation variability (standard deviation) over the Los Angeles area across eight different precipitation datasets.
    • Figures 8 and 9: There is no agreement on the direction of change (if any) in annual precipitation variability (standard deviation) globally across eight different precipitation datasets.

While “climate whiplash events” may be increasing in frequency under most of the very specific, selected definitions used and datasets investigated in Swain et al. (2025), the general idea that annual precipitation (or more generally, the water cycle, which includes evaporation) is becoming dramatically more variable is not supported when a broader set of datasets and definitions are used.

Would a reader of Swain et al. (2025), or especially its coverage, have any idea about the weakness of its broader conclusions or the lack of robustness of its results to different definitions and datasets? Almost certainly not, and I contend that this is a major problem for public understanding and trust in climate science.

Why don’t we see a robust increase in water cycle variability given the strong theory underpinning “wet gets wetter, dry gets drier”? For one thing, the theoretical size of the effect is known to be quite small relative to natural, unforced variability, making it inherently difficult to detect. For example, we see in Figure 7 above that year-to-year rainfall in Los Angeles naturally varies by as much as 300%, yet the signal we are looking for is one to two orders of magnitude less than this. It is also apparently the case that observational uncertainty is larger than the signal (or there would not be such disagreement between datasets). Physically, perhaps increasing mean precipitation is offsetting the increase in calculated evaporation in the SPEI index, reducing its variability. Maybe reduced temperature variability (via arctic amplification) is reducing calculated evaporation variability.

I don’t know the full answer, but these would be great research questions to identify and outline in a Nature review like Swain et al. (2025). Unfortunately, Swain et al. (2025) missed this opportunity because the paper seemed so focused on assembling evidence in favor of increasing water cycle variability that contradictory evidence was never presented or seriously grappled with.

My main discomfort with Swain et al. (2025) and its rollout is that it appears that the primary goal was to create and disseminate the “climate whiplash” meme rather than conduct a truly rigorous evaluation of the evidence, including countervailing evidence. Ultimately, this makes the research a much larger advance in marketing than an advance in science.

https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/how-much-did-increasing-climate-whiplash

Of course, studies like Swain’s are not intended to be serious science; they are written to generate headlines.

And the climate industry is now highly organised to ensure that theses fake studies are disseminated worldwide via a corrupt media.

February 9, 2025 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Whose Universities are Better – China vs. the US? Nature Magazine might upset the conventional wisdom

By Hua Bin | February 9, 2025

It’s a widely held truism that the US has the best universities in the world despite a mediocre secondary education system. Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale and U Penn are marque brands that are admired worldwide. They attract students from every country and enjoy enormous financial resources from tuitions, endowments, and grants.

On the other hand, Chinese universities are generally considered by the west as diploma mills with unrecognizable and generic names – who can remember the Southern University of Technology.

While Chinese universities may not graduate many students that command astronomical starting salaries or hotly sought after by high flying hedge funds, they seem to be progressing quite nicely in one of the core missions of academic research institutions, i.e. conducing world class research in science and technology.

The prestigious Nature Magazine published its annual Nature Index ranking of the world’s top research institutions and universities in 2024. The Index is illuminating.

– The ranking was based on 75,000 high impact papers in the Nature Index 2024 Global Research Leaders from Nov 2023 to Oct 2024

– It ranked 18,588 research institutes and universities worldwide

– China Academy of Sciences (CAS) is ranked No. 1 global research institute, with 8881 counts of top research output, more than double of No. 2 ranked Harvard University (3830 counts). I wrote about the research prowess of CAS in an earlier Substack article.

– 8 out of top 10 research institutes are Chinese. They include the University of Science and Technology of China, Peking University, Zhejiang University (where the DeepSeek founder graduated from), and Tsinghua University. The other non-Chinese institutes are Harvard University and Max Planck Society in Germany.

– 12 out of top 20 research universities are Chinese. 3 are American (Harvard, Stanford, and MIT). Sichuan University (No. 15), a regional university in Southwest China, is ranked higher than Stanford (No. 16), MIT (No. 17), Oxford (No. 18) and University of Tokyo (No. 19).

– 26 out of top 50 are Chinese. 14 are American. Soochow University (No. 30), decidedly not considered a top tier school by Chinese high schoolers, outranks Yale (No. 31). Xiamen University (No. 37) is ranked higher than Berkeley (No. 38), Columbia (No. 39), Cornell (No. 44), and University of Chicago (No. 49).

– Roughly half of top 100 are Chinese. Hunan University (No. 51) outranks Princeton (No. 52). You get the drift. Interestingly, Russia Academy of Sciences (RAS) made a cameo at No. 98. No universities from India or Australia made it to the top 100 list.

Westerners look at Chinese technological breakthroughs like DeepSeek or Huawei in disbelief and sour envy. Once you dig into the foundational causes of the emergence of these tech successes, you will understand they only represent the tip of the iceberg. Soon enough, you will see the Bummock, i.e. the bulk of the iceberg. Many upsets waiting ahead.

February 9, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Moscow demands answers from UK in journalist assault case

RT | February 8, 2025

Moscow expects the UK to provide all necessary assistance to Russian law enforcement investigating an assault involving an embassy staff member, the Foreign Ministry said on Saturday. In October, a female reporter was allegedly attacked at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport as she sought to interview a group of British diplomats.

The Foreign Ministry sent an official note to the UK embassy over the incident, spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated. “The ministry expects the embassy to provide every kind of assistance to the Russian law enforcement authorities investigating the relevant criminal case,” she said, adding that embassy staff could be asked to take part in legal proceedings.

Earlier this week, the Russian Interior Ministry confirmed that the authorities had launched a probe into the incident involving a 23-year-old female Russian journalist whose identity was not made public. She was attacked as she attempted to interview a newly arrived group of British diplomats at Vnukovo Airport, according to the statement.

The unidentified assailant could have been an embassy staff member, according to police. The attacker forcefully pushed her away, causing the woman to “lose her balance,” the statement said. The suspect will face battery charges, which carry a maximum penalty of up to two years behind bars.

Russian authorities reached out to the embassy to request clarification of the man’s identity and possible diplomatic status. Law enforcement officials said the request was ignored.

Moscow has called on the British embassy to respond to any further such requests “in a proper and timely manner,” Zakharova said. She also remarked that the treatment of the Russian journalists by some Western diplomats is “unbefitting their high status of a foreign diplomat.”

Western countries have blacklisted multiple Russian media outlets, including RT, since 2022, citing “disinformation” related to the Ukraine conflict. Moscow has responded in kind, banning several Western news organizations, including state-funded broadcasters BBC and Voice of America.

In October 2024, a group of Russian reporters from the newspaper Izvestia was detained and questioned after arriving in Washington DC to cover the presidential election. The team’s cameraman was denied entry into the US and forced to return to Russia. He later stated that he had been questioned by border officers for nearly ten hours.

The Kremlin branded the treatment of Russian journalists in Washington as “unacceptable” and a violation of the freedom of the press.

February 9, 2025 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

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