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Denmark is the latest European country turning away from transgender mutilation of children

By Jonathon Van Maren | Life Site News | September 15, 2023

The news that Denmark is moving away from the so-called “affirmative model of care” approach to youth struggling with gender dysphoria exposes, once again, how utterly radical and out of step with the rest of the world Canada and blue America are on the issue of “sex changes” for minors. Predictably, mainstream media outlets have ignored this development entirely — there is no press coverage that I can find. This may be due to the fact that this shift was published in the major medical journal Ugeskrift for Læger, the Journal of the Danish Medical Association, in Danish.  

Fortunately, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) has published a synopsis, noting that most “youth referred to the centralized gender clinic no longer get a prescription for puberty blockers, hormones, or surgery—instead they receive therapeutic counseling and support.” SEGM published a summary of the shift:  

In the last several weeks, health journalists have reported that change may be afoot in Denmark. The article in Denmark’s Medical Association journal Ugeskrift for Læger leaves very little doubt that Denmark too has made a course correction in youth gender transitions, restricting this option to very few cases, while prioritizing counseling for the vast majority of the currently presenting youths. The article is an excellent summary of the rise-and-fall-of the “gender affirmation” model of care in Denmark. It describes how in 2016, following the influence of other northern European countries, Denmark chose to offer “a treatment approach with few barriers to hormone treatment for children and young people with gender dysphoria.” The treatment was justified by the foundational Dutch studies, “which indicated better well-being and body satisfaction after hormone treatment, a low degree of regret and few side effects.” However, the increasing number of referrals, changes in the presentation in gender dysphoria, and growing reports of regret—combined with a lack of long-term outcomes of the one and only sample of youth (n=55) on which the entire practice of gender transition rests—led the Danish clinicians to reverse course.

This is consistent with developments in the U.K., where the Tavistock gender clinic has been shut down and the NHS is changing course on “sex change” surgeries, and Sweden, which halted “hormone therapy” for minors in February 2022.  

The Finns are following a similar path. In fact, Finnish medical guidelines distinguish between early-onset child gender dysphoria and adolescent-onset gender, stating that some gender confusion or exploration can be a natural part of growing up and almost entirely forbidding medical intervention until “identity and personality development appear to be stable.” In the meantime, psychotherapy is recommended for gender dysphoria, and surgical interventions are forbidden for those under the age of 18. Puberty blocking is also considered explicitly experimental, and if utilized in severe circumstances, the patients are sent to a research clinic and medical professionals ensure that they are “able to understand the significance of irreversible treatments and benefits and disadvantages associated with lifelong hormone therapy, and that no contraindications are present.”  

Meanwhile, in Canada the National Post is reporting that Canadian surgeons are performing double mastectomies of healthy breasts on girls as young as age 14. The lawsuits have already begun as horrified young women realize they were ushered on the path to “transition” and “gender affirming care” before they could truly understand what they were doing — most recently, 21-year-old Luka Hein of Minnesota filed a lawsuit against the doctors who surgically removed her breasts at the age of 16, when she was going through a difficult time and struggled with gender dysphoria.  

“I was going through the darkest and most chaotic time in my life, and instead of being given the help I needed, these doctors affirmed that chaos into reality,” she told the Daily Mail. “I don’t think kids can ever consent to having full bodily functions taken away at a young age before they even know what that means.” She’s right. The Swedes, the Finns, and now the Danes are coming to the same conclusion.   

September 17, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Dr. Michael Yeadon: A message to a friend struggling to accept that what is happening is intentional

“I’m afraid we cannot hide from the reality that this is a global coup and deliberate mass murder.”

By Michael Yeadon | Exposing The Darkness | September 10, 2023

A message written to a trusted campaigning friend, who is struggling to accept that what is happening is intentional.

It is indeed a big step to go from legitimate criticism of allegedly incompetent politicians and industrialists to putting the pieces together in such a way that they can only point to intentionality. See what you think.

***

Dear X,

I find it impossible to try to put all the information together in such a way that the whole thing could even be benign or at least not entirely malignant.

That’s because, as I’m sure you’ve heard me say, I believe it’s evil!

I also had difficulty with it early on, with the argument “they must have known this!?”, etc. Once I allowed the possibility that all the bad things were intentional, I found everything else fell into place. Of course, that alone doesn’t prove it was intentional.

Some early indications of deliberateness are the coordinated responses of dozens of governments to the alleged pandemic: lockdowns, masking, mass testing of the source, the misapplication of PCR-based techniques to bulk testing of clinical samples, selective closures of businesses and schools, border restrictions, etc.

No country had any of this as a core part of its own pandemic preparedness plan.

Even the WHO’s scientific review of NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions) concluded that none worked and that the only changes worth anything were asking people with symptoms to stay home until they recovered and increasing the frequency of washing hands (because the route of transmission would initially be uncertain).

I argued at the time that the only way all countries could have adopted all these useless but harmful and expensive NPIs was if there was supranational coordination. I don’t know whether that was from the WHO, WEF, etc. Don’t know. But it is certainly illegal.

We now know that they knew that imposing these restrictions would not save anyone, but that the negative consequences would be devastating, even fatal, for some, who would no longer have access to the medical care they needed. Moreover, the use of furlough would of course be enormously damaging for governments that were already deeply in debt.

This is why millions still believe the absurd COVID lies.

I note that an American term, furlough, is widespread in public debate. In Britain we have never used that term before. No one commented on its arrival, which betrayed the leading role of the Americans.

Then there is the imposition of radically changed medical protocols.

Because of my long exposure to respiratory matters, I knew right away when they started panicking about needing 30,000 mechanical ventilators that something truly diabolical was going on. It is never appropriate to anesthetize, intubate, and ventilate a patient with an unobstructed airway and an intact chest wall.

Mechanical ventilation is certainly a wonderful, life-saving tool, but it carries serious risks for the vulnerable patient, in the form of ventilator-induced pneumonia, lung injury from the use of pressure to inflate the lungs, and much more.

The correct treatment would consist of an oxygen mask, a single, low dose of benzo, a cup of tea and a biscuit, and a caring hand on an arm.

Also in the US, many in this vulnerable condition received remdesivir and not full intravenous nutrition. In most cases it was only a matter of time before they died.

High doses of midazolam (a benzodiazepine) and morphine were used indiscriminately in nursing homes. Not only high doses, but also administered repeatedly to their elderly patients. The highest medical authorities in the country had told them to do this and so few questioned it.

My Ph.D. happened to be in this area, the effect of opiates on respiratory function. The discovery of multiple opiate receptors raised the possibility of inventing receptor-selective ligands that would relieve pain with reduced respiratory depression. Unfortunately, both are primarily mediated by mu opiate receptors, both centrally and in the periphery.

The combination of opiate agonists and benzodiazepines is contraindicated in patients unless closely monitored (for signs of respiratory depression).

That is not the case and is not possible in a nursing home. They too were murdered en masse.

Finally, community GPs were warned not to prescribe antibiotics in cases of Covid “because antibiotics cannot treat viral diseases”.

It is well known that what is commonly called a secondary bacterial infection results in death in this situation. However, the data shows that antibiotic prescribing for suspected bacterial infections of the lungs fell by 50% and large numbers of people died avoidable deaths (and a rather gruesome ones at that).

It is not possible to look at all this evidence without concluding that this was intentional. What they have done is literally diabolical.

I’m still confused as to how it was done with so little opposition. I do know that from the late 1990s to the end of 2019, a series of simulations of global pandemics and bioterrorism scenarios were carried out, allowing the perpetrators to hone their skills in the responses and control measures imposed.

I believe some of these simulations were conducted in the field so that the emergency response teams could form and practice what most of them felt was appropriate given the fictional setup, although this is speculative.

Then we come to the “vaccines”.

Given my career in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, I knew that it was impossible to produce a vaccine in less than 5-6 years if one wanted to demonstrate clinical safety and improve production to the usual high quality required to to create a precisely defined end product.

If the latter is not done, there is no point in doing the former, because what would otherwise be injected would not be what was used in the clinical tests.

In other words, if there was a need for a new vaccine, you would never even consider implementing such a program, because no pandemic in history has lasted even a fraction of the minimum time it takes for a safe and to create an effective new vaccine.

Yet they continued with it. This is also malicious, let alone the extraordinary lying, censoring and slandering of those who think differently.

Since my entire career has been based on the principles of “rational drug design” to design and test molecules, I could put myself in the shoes of the vaccine designers.

There are several obvious safety issues built into these products. One of these is the axiomatic induction of “autoimmune” responses, regardless of which antigen is chosen.

Next was the choice of antigen, where no one would choose the spike protein as it would most likely be directly toxic, it is subject to the fastest mutation (so a vaccine could lose its efficacy) and it is also the least different from human proteins (and thus could provoke bystander attacks on even somewhat similar self-proteins).

Yet the four protagonists all chose this antigen. What a coincidence! I would have called on my colleagues in the other companies to make sure we didn’t do that. This is because it would be highly undesirable to have common risks for all programs.

When formulated, the mRNA-based products both chose LNPs (highly toxic lipid nanoparticles) to encapsulate their message. Yet the industry knew that not only do these travel throughout the body, including the brain, but they also accumulate in the ovaries.

Yet, knowing this, companies and regulators went ahead and others exacerbated the toxicity risk by recommending these injections in pregnant women and children.

I was still slow to piece together all this evidence of carefully crafted damage. But I got there eventually and have been speaking in what many consider extreme terms ever since.

I fear we cannot hide from the reality that this is a global coup and deliberate mass murder.

Worse still, we see the advance of surveillance technology and legal powers to introduce digital ID & CBDC and eradicate cash. It is not difficult to imagine scenarios where showing a digital ID becomes mandatory.

All it takes is for the WHO to make up fake pandemics, for the pharmaceutical industry to produce billions of doses of fake mRNA-based vaccines, and for governments to insist that digital IDs only remain valid if you take these harmful injections, and there will be a near-perfect unacceptable means of depopulation.

They can do other things, too, but I think they’ll try this. We must continue to raise our voices and try to wake people up.

It only takes a large minority to say NO & these diabolical plans fail.

With best wishes,

Mike

September 17, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Remembering the Zionists’ assassination of UN Palestine mediator Count Bernadotte

By Muhammad Hussein | MEMO | September 17, 2023

What: Assassination of Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte

Where: Jerusalem, Palestine

When: 17 September 1948

What happened?

In May 1948, as the war raged between the military forces of the budding Zionist state and the various Arab armies, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) appointed as UN mediator in Palestine, a Swedish diplomat named Count Folke Bernadotte.

As a member of Sweden’s royal family, Bernadotte had served as a diplomat during the Second World War Two, helping to free tens of thousands of prisoners held in Nazi Germany and having attempted to negotiate an armistice between the Nazis and the Allies.

He took that diplomatic experience into the conflict over the creation of the state of Israel on the land of Palestine in the late 1940s, conducting mediation efforts and helping to negotiate an initial truce in the conflict before that broke down shortly after.

His most notable contribution, however, was the peace plan he worked on during the summer of 1948, following his appointment as UN mediator, in which he first called for the establishment of a union between Transjordan (currently Jordan) and British Mandatory Palestine, operating with certain areas allocated to Jews or Palestinians.

Examples of that plan included Palestinians controlling territories in the Naqab – or Negev – desert, while the Galilee area would be controlled by the Jews. Some areas were to be freely accessible to both, such as Haifa and its port and the airport at Lod, now called Ben-Gurion Airport. As for Jerusalem, it would be an international city controlled by the UN.

This was rejected by all sides and prompted the conflict to resume once the truce’s validity ceased.

His second proposal was more of a complex and reconciliatory one, however, affirming the existence of the state of Israel while at the same time firmly supporting the Palestinian right of return, advocating that Palestinians expelled from their lands and properties during the Nakba should be allowed to return and reclaim them. Those who did not return, he said, should be repatriated, resettled and financially compensated.

“It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries,” he is quoted as stating in his proposal.

He submitted the ‘Bernadotte plan’ to the UN General Assembly on 16 September 1948, sparking fears amongst Zionist militants and paramilitary groups that the plan would actually be approved and implemented. The Stern Gang – or ‘Lehi’ – and its leadership, took decisive action to attempt to prevent its approval.

On 17 September, only a day after the proposal’s submission, four Lehi terrorists ambushed Bernadotte’s motorcade in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighbourhood, firing six rounds into the UN mediator and another 18 at Colonel Andre Serot, a French military officer who was sitting next to him. Serot was killed immediately, while Bernadotte was rushed to hospital and died shortly after.

What happened next?

Following the assassination, the new Israeli government finally declared Lehi a terrorist organisation, disarmed what remained of the group, arrested around 200 members and convicted some of the leadership.

Whatever condemnation there was from the Israeli side was short lived, however, as authorities granted a general amnesty to Lehi members prior to the first Israeli elections in January 1949. No members or leaders were charged with involvement in the assassination or convicted either.

In May 1949, the Israeli government even persisted in covering up the Stern Gang’s involvement in the killing, claiming in a report to the UN that no members had been tied to it. Despite that denial, several Lehi members eventually came forward over the years and admitted their involvement, after the statute of limitations for the murder expired in 1968.

Only in 1977, around nine years after that expiration, was the first public admission of the organisation’s assassination of Bernadotte actually made.

Despite that, leaders of Lehi had been allowed to enter and advance in Israeli politics, taking up prominent roles such as Yitzhak Shamir becoming the future Israeli prime minister, Natan Yellin-Mor becoming a future member of the Israeli Knesset, and Yehoshua Cohen – the actual killer of Bernadotte – becoming the bodyguard of Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.

In 1980, Israel further expressed its pride in the terror organisation by instituting a military decoration named the Lehi ribbon, signifying an “award for activity in the struggle for the establishment of Israel”.

The assassination of the UN mediator also had diplomatic repercussions, with Sweden condemning and severely criticising Israel’s investigation into the murder, leading to the two countries suffering a fallout in relations.

Decades after Bernadotte’s assassination, however, his legacy remains one that is hailed as a standard of peace diplomacy during times of conflict. As with other UN efforts in occupied Palestine and the wider region, Bernadotte was instrumental in establishing much of the infrastructure of UN operations on the ground, and is considered to have laid the foundation for the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Read also: 

The IDF’s violent origins and Israel impunity

September 17, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Another Magical JFK Assassination Pseudo-Debate and Limited Hangout

By Edward J. Curtin, Jr. | Behind The Curtain | September 14, 2023

Much has been made of the September 9, 2023 simultaneous reports in The New York Times and Vanity Fair of the claims of a former Secret Service agent, Paul Landis, who was part of the security detail in Dallas, Texas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.  Like so many reports by such media that have covered up the truth of the assassination for sixty years, this one about “the magic bullet” is also a red herring.

It encourages pseudo-debates and confusion and is a rather dumb “limited hangout,” which is a strategy used by intelligence agencies to dangle some truth in order to divert attention from core facts of a case they are desperate to conceal. With these particular articles, they are willing to suggest that maybe the Warren Commission’s magic bullet claim is possibly incorrect. This is because so many people have long come to realize that that part of the propaganda story is absurd, so the coverup artists are willing to suggest it might be wrong in order to continue debating meaningless matters based on false premises in order to solidify their core lies.

Despite responses to these two stories about Landis that credit them for “finally” showing that the “magic bullet” claim of the Warren Commission is now dead, it would be more accurate to say they have revived debate about it in order to sneakily hide the fundamental fact about the assassination: that the CIA assassinated JFK.

We can expect many more such red herrings in the next two months leading up to the sixtieth anniversary of the assassination.

They are what one of the earliest critics of The Warren Commission, Vincent Salandria, a brilliant Philadelphia lawyer, called “a false mystery.” He said:

After more than a half century, the historical truth of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has been finally established beyond rational dispute. The Kennedy assassination is a false mystery. It was conceived by the conspirators to be a false mystery which was designed to cause interminable debate. The purpose of the protracted debate was to obscure what was quite clearly and plainly a coup d’état. Simply stated, President Kennedy was assassinated by our U.S. national security state in order to abort his efforts to bring the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion.

That the corporate mainstream should trumpet these reports as important is to be expected, but that they are also so greeted by some people who should know better is sad. For there is no mystery about the assassination of President Kennedy; he was assassinated by the CIA and the evidence for this fact has long been available. And the Warren Commission’s claim that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the so-called “magic bullet” – Commission Exhibit 399 – that entered JFK’s back and exited his neck and then went into the back of Gov. John Connally, who was sitting in the front seat, zigzagging in multiple directions, causing him five wounds and then emerging in pristine condition, has always been risible. Only fools or those ignorant of the details have ever believed it, but desperate conspirators led by the late Arlen Specter, the future Senator, did desperate things for The Warren Commission in order to pin the rap on the patsy Oswald and cover-up for the killers.

I could spend many words explaining the details of the government conspiracy to assassinate JFK, why they did it, and have been covering it up ever since. But I have done this elsewhere. If you wish to learn the truth from credible sources, I would highly recommend that you watch the long version of Oliver Stone’s documentary JFK Revisited; Through the Looking Glass and then closely read the transcripts and interviews in James DiEugenio’s crucial compendium of transcripts and interviews for the film. You will immediately realize that these recent revelations are a continuation of the coverup.

This should be immediately intuited by the titles of the two pieces. The New York Times’ article, written by its chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, who previously worked for the Washington Post for twenty years, including four years as its Moscow bureau chief, is entitled JFK Assassination Witness Breaks His Silence and Raises New Questions. (The Times and Washington Post have long been the CIA’s mouthpieces.) The Vanity Fair article is written by James Robenalt, a colleague of John Dean of Watergate infamy, and is entitled A New JFK  Assassination Revelation Could Upend the Long-Held “Lone Gunman” Theory.

For anyone with a soupçon of linguistic analytical skill and a rudimentary knowledge of the JFK assassination, those titles immediately induce skepticism. “New questions”? Don’t we already have the answers we need. “Could Upend the Long-Held ‘Lone Gunman’ Theory”? So we must keep debating and researching the obvious. Why? To protect the CIA.

Both articles go on to expound on how the sympathetically described poor conscience-stricken old guy Landis’s claim that he found the so-called pristine magic bullet on the top back of the car seat where JFK was sitting and placed it on Kennedy’s stretcher in Parkland Hospital without telling anyone for all these decades is an earth shattering revelation. And as they do so, they make sure to slip in a series of falsehoods to reinforce the essence of the government’s case.

If anyone is interested in the facts concerning the physical evidence, all one need do is read Vincent Salandria’s analysis here. Once you have, you will realize the hullabaloo about Landis is a pseudo-debate.

These articles about Landis reinforce what Dr. Martin Schotz describes in his book History Will Not Absolve Us, and what he said in a talk twenty-five years ago. He made a distinction between the waters of knowledge and the waters of uncertainty. In the case of the JFK assassination, the public is allowed to think anything they want, but they are not allowed to know the truth, although since the Warren Commission was released it was evident that “no honest person could ever accept the single bullet theory.” And he then added this about pseudo-debates:

The lie that was destined to cover the truth of the assassination was the lie that the assassination is a mystery, that we are not sure what happened, but being free citizens of a great democracy we can discuss and debate what has occurred. We can petition our government and join with it in seeking the solution to this mystery. This is the essence of the cover-up.

The lie is that there is a mystery to debate. And so we have pseudo-debates. Debates about meaningless disputes, based on assumptions which are obviously false. This is the form that Orwell’s crimestop has taken in the matter of the President’s murder. I am talking about the pseudo-debate over whether the Warren Report is true when it is obviously and undebatably false. . . . Perhaps many people think that engaging in pseudo-debate is a benign activity. That it simply means that people are debating something that is irrelevant. This is not the case. I say this because every debate rests on a premise to which the debaters must agree, or there is no debate. In the case of pseudo-debate the premise is a lie. So in the pseudo-debate we have the parties to the debate agreeing to purvey a lie to the public. And it is all the more malignant because it is subtle. The unsuspecting person who is witness to the pseudo-debate does not understand that he is being passed a lie. He is not even aware that he is being passed a premise. It is so subtle that the premise just passes into the person as if it were reality. This premise—that there is uncertainty to be resolved—seems so benign. It is as easy as drinking a glass of treated water.

But the fact remains that there is no mystery except in the minds of those who are willing to drink this premise. The premise is a lie, and a society which agrees to drink such a lie ceases to perceive reality. This is what we mean by mass denial.

That the entire establishment has been willing to join in this process of cover-up by confusion creates an extreme form of problem for anyone who would seek to utter the truth. For these civilian institutions—the media, the universities and the government—once they begin engaging in denial of knowledge of the identity of the assassins, once they are drawn into the cover-up, a secondary motivation develops for them. Now they are not only protecting the state, they are now protecting themselves, because to expose the obviousness of the assassination and the false debate would be to reveal the corrupt role of all these institutions. And there is no question that these institutions are masters in self-protection. Thus anyone who would attempt to confront the true cover-up must be prepared to confront virtually the entire society. And in doing this, one is inevitably going to be marginalized.

And to mention just one false premise of the Landis saga (beside the one that there is uncertainty to be resolved; and there are many others, but one will suffice, since I don’t want to enter into a pseudo-debate), it is that the so-called magic bullet in evidence – CE 399 – the one discussed in these articles, is not even the one said to be found somewhere in Parkland Hospital, and the chain of custody for that bullet – or some bullet – is broken in many places (see James DiEugenio, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass ).

Phantom bullets and plenty of magic go into the creation and destruction of this tall tale told to camouflage the CIA’s guilt in its killing of President Kennedy. If you believe in magic and mystery, The New York Times’ Peter Baker has these words for you, if you can understand them:

Mr. Landis’s account, included in a forthcoming memoir, would rewrite the narrative of one of modern American history’s most earth-shattering days in an important way. It may not mean any more than that. But it could also encourage those who have long suspected that there was more than one gunman in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, adding new grist to one of the nation’s enduring mysteries.

Yes, those four English lads said it in 1967: “The magical mystery tour is hoping to take you away” into an enduring mystery, even though the case was solved long ago.

September 17, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

RFK Jr. demands Secret Service protection after assassination scare

RT | September 17, 2023

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose father and uncle were both killed on the campaign trail, had a tense moment at a rally in Los Angeles when a heavily armed man posing as a federal law enforcement officer was apprehended by his security guards.

Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Kennedy expressed his gratitude for his private security team.

“I’m very grateful that alert and fast-acting protectors from Gavin de Becker and Associates (GDBA) spotted and detained an armed man who attempted to approach me at my Hispanic Heritage speech at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles tonight” Kennedy said in an X post on Saturday, adding that he hopes the administration of US President Joe Biden will grant his request for Secret Service protection, noting that he is “the first presidential candidate in history to whom the White House has denied a request for protection.”

According to a statement issued by his campaign, the man claimed to be part of Kennedy’s security team and told them that he “needed to be taken to the candidate immediately.” Spotting a gun, the security team removed the man from the area and notified the Los Angeles Police (LAPD).

The campaign also claims that there was a second man, who was arrested by the LAPD along with the prime suspect, who had a backpack that contained at least one other handgun, multiple knives, and extra ammunition.

The LAPD confirmed in a statement that they received a call at around 4:30pm on Friday reporting a man with “a loaded gun in a shoulder holster and a badge stating he was a U.S. Marshal.” The suspect, identified as Adrian Paul Aispuro, 44, was arrested and taken into custody. He is being held on $35,000 bond and is facing a felony charge for carrying a concealed weapon.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose uncle, former US President John F. Kennedy, and his father, a New York senator and presidential candidate, were both assassinated over half a century ago, filed an application for Secret Service protection in April, but despite several follow-ups, his requests were rejected by the White House.

In an X post last July, Kennedy claimed that since his father’s assassination in 1968, all candidates for president have been provided with Secret Service protection, “but after 88 days of no response and several follow-ups”, he received a letter from the Biden administration saying that “the protection is not warranted.”

Kennedy’s campaign manager, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, called the decision “shocking and repugnant,” and accused Biden’s office of politicizing the Justice Department and security apparatus.

September 17, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

US waging war against Russia – Lavrov

RT | September 17, 2023

Washington’s massive campaign to support Ukraine with arms amounts to a war against Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said, adding that the US has long groomed Kiev for this very purpose.

In a comment to Russian reporter Pavel Zarubin released on Sunday, Lavrov suggested that rumors about Washington possibly giving the green light to the delivery of Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of up to 300km, were aimed at “shaping public opinion.”

According to the minister, these deliberations would not change the fact that “for many years Ukraine has been groomed to fight with its hands and bodies in order to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.” Lavrov accused the US of controlling the hostilities between Kiev and Moscow.

“They are sending weapons, ammunition, intelligence, and satellite data. They are waging war against us.”

In recent weeks, several Western media outlets have reported that the administration of US President Joe Biden is edging closer to approving deliveries of the ATACMS, which Kiev has been requesting for several months. The US has been reluctant to approve sending these missile systems, arguing that potential Ukrainian strikes deep into Russia could trigger a major escalation in the conflict.

Ukraine has already received long-range missiles from the UK and France, which, according to local officials, have been used to attack civilian targets and infrastructure in Russia’s Crimean Peninsula and Donbass.

While the US has yet to grant Kiev’s request for ATACMS, it has committed more than $43 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the conflict began, including air defense systems, armored personnel carriers, and M1 Abrams tanks.

Moscow has repeatedly warned the West against supplying Ukraine with arms, saying that doing so will only prolong the conflict but will not change its ultimate outcome.

September 17, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia pulls out of Israel normalization talks

The Cradle | September 17, 2023

According to a 17 September report by Saudi media, the kingdom has told Washington that it aims to withdraw from US-sponsored efforts for normalization with Israel due to an Israeli reluctance to make concessions towards the Palestinians. 

“Saudi Arabia has informed the American administration to stop any discussions related to normalization with Israel,” the London-based, Saudi-owned Elaph newspaper cited an official from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying. 

The outlet cites an official from the prime minister’s office as saying that the actions of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, and their insistence on not making any concessions is “torpedoing any possibility” of peace with Saudi Arabia. 

The official confirmed “that the United States informed Israel of Saudi Arabia’s decision,” adding that the “Israeli leadership is confused about it” and that experts, politicians, and even the prime minister did not think that Riyadh would link normalization to the Palestinian issue. 

Recent reports have suggested that Saudi Arabia has been inching closer towards a deal that would see the kingdom normalize ties with Israel.

In recent months, officials have suggested that Riyadh has been privately demanding a US-sponsored civil nuclear program, the ability to purchase more advanced US weapons, and a firm defense and security pact between Washington and the kingdom in order for a deal to go through. 

Publicly, however, Saudi Arabia has maintained that any normalization agreement must depend on major concessions towards the Palestinians – based on the 2002 Arab Peace initiative, which calls for an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital and a just solution to the refugee issue. 

Last month, Netanyahu suggested in an interview that he would be open to making “gestures” to the Palestinians if normalization with the kingdom depended on it. He added that his coalition members would not block such an agreement. 

The prime minister also said at the time that “the Palestinian thing is brought in all the time, and it is sort of a check box. You have to check it to say that you’re doing it.” 

Netanyahu added that talk about concessions happens “a lot less than you think” behind closed doors. 

Members of Netanyahu’s government, including Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, have taken a strong stance against making any sort of concessions towards the Palestinians.

“We will not make any concessions to the Palestinians. It’s a fiction … it has nothing to do with Judea and Samaria,” Smotrich said recently. The finance minister has been among the leading figures pushing for annexation of the West Bank through continued expansion of illegal settlements. 

Much of the West Bank’s administration was recently placed under Smotrich’s sole authority, dimming even further the prospects of Palestinian statehood. 

On 13 September, an Emirati official said that the UAE was powerless to halt Israel’s plans for annexation of the West Bank, suggesting that it was now “up to future countries” involved in peace talks to attempt this. 

Earlier this month, Saudi officials told a visiting Palestinian Authority (PA) delegation that they “will not abandon” the Palestinian cause. 

September 17, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran Withdraws IAEA Designation of French, German Inspectors

Al-Manar | September 17, 2023

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) director general said on Saturday that Iran has withdrawn the designation of a number of the agency’s inspectors with Iranian media reporting that those inspectors are from France and Germany.

Iran’s move seems to have been made in response to a recent hostile and unconstructive move by the IAEA’s Board of Governors against Tehran, which was sponsored by the E3 (the UK, France and Germany) and the United States, Tasnim news agency reported.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi in a statement condemned what he called Iran’s “disproportionate and unprecedented” move to withdraw the designation of several of the agency’s “most experienced” inspectors assigned to conduct verification activities in the country under the NPT Safeguards Agreement.

He said Iran’s unilateral measure affects the IAEA’s “normal planning and conduct” verification activities in the country and “openly contradicts the cooperation that should exist between the Agency and Iran.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani reacted to the latest claim made by the IAEA chief, saying the United States and the three European parties to the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) have abused the UN nuclear watchdog with the purpose of achieving their own political objectives.

“Unfortunately, despite Iran’s positive, constructive and continuous interaction with the IAEA, the three European countries and the United States abused the Agency’s Board of Governors for their own political purposes with … the aim of damaging the atmosphere of cooperation between Iran and the Agency,” Kanaani said, referring to the three European countries.

He said Iran has previously warned against the consequences of such efforts to politicize the UN nuclear agency.

The spokesman reiterated that Iran made the decision in accordance with Article 9 of the agreement between the Islamic Republic and the IAEA for the application of safeguards in connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Kanaani once again urged the Western countries to stop abusing international organizations, including the IAEA, and allow such world bodies to carry out their “professional and neutral” activities under no political pressure.

He, however, said Iran emphasizes the need for the IAEA’s impartiality and will continue its positive cooperation based on bilateral agreement.

On Wednesday, the IAEA’s Board of Governors issued a Western-sponsored statement that accused Iran of non-compliance with its safeguards commitments.

The document, signed by 62 member states of the agency, called upon Iran to take steps to address outstanding safeguards issues and provide the IAEA with information concerning its new nuclear facilities.

Separately on Wednesday, the three European signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal, France, Britain and Germany, also issued a joint statement on the sidelines of the meeting of the IAEA’s Board of Governors.

They accused Iran of non-compliance with the nuclear deal, even though it was the United States that unilaterally abandoned the deal in 2018 and put its fate in limbo.

Kanaani rejected the statement as politically motivated, saying Iran and the IAEA have made “considerable progress” in boosting cooperation.

September 17, 2023 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger Sign Charter to Create Defense Alliance

Sputnik – 17.09.2023

The leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have signed a charter establishing an alliance of Sahel states to create a collective defense architecture, Mali’s interim president for the transitional period, Assimi Goita, said on Saturday.

“I have signed today with the leaders of Burkina Faso and Niger the Liptako Gourma Charter, establishing the Alliance of Sahel States to create an architecture of collective defense and mutual assistance for the benefit of our people,” Goita said on X.

An attack on the sovereignty or territorial integrity of one or more parties to the charter will be regarded as aggression against the other parties and will require their assistance, including the use of military force, the document read.

The parties also commit to fighting terrorism and organized crime on the territory of Sahel states, the charter added.

September 17, 2023 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Dr Peter McCullough testifies in the European Parliament

Twitter link

Transcript

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Link

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MEP Christine Anderson concluding remarks

September 17, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

New York urgently needs to confront the contradiction of trying to electrify everything while also eliminating fossil fuels

By Jane Menton and Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | September 13, 2023

In New York, politicians are selling the public a narrative that electricity is going to be the solution to climate change. We will eliminate all CO2 emissions by banning gasoline-powered cars, banning natural gas infrastructure, banning gas heat in buildings, and banning gas for cooking. All of these are to be replaced with supposedly “green,” emissions-free, alternatives – which in practice consist of only one thing, electricity. We’ve been told that this is how we are going to protect the planet for future generations.

But there is nothing emissions-free about the way electricity is currently generated in New York. About half of our electricity comes now, as it traditionally has, from burning fossil fuels. New York has announced plans to eliminate those from electricity generation by 2030, but as of now has no realistic plan to replace them. Meanwhile, it is forcing its citizens to convert essential systems like heating to electricity, with no basis to believe that the electricity will be available to prevent people from freezing in the winter only a few years from now. This is a glaring contradiction, that needs urgently to be addressed before we suffer a self-inflicted catastrophe.

At present, fossil fuels are critical to our generation of electricity. According to the most recent data from the federal government’s Energy Information Administration, in 2021 New York got some 46% of its electricity from burning natural gas and another 1% from fuel oil, and almost all of the rest from either nuclear (25%) or hydropower (23%, most of which comes from Niagara Falls). Non-hydro “renewables” (wood, wind and solar) provided only about 6% in total, and about 2% of that was from wood. After decades of hype about their wondrous future, wind and solar provided only about 4%. And in 2021, the state closed the Indian Point nuclear plant, replacing its output almost entirely with natural gas generation, meaning that the percent of our electricity supply coming from fossil fuels is now up near 50% today.

If more electricity is needed, the options are few. New nuclear plants face vociferous opposition from environmentalists, with almost no prospect that that can be overcome. A completely finished nuclear plant called Shoreham sits idle on Long Island, having never been approved for commercial operation in the face of vigorous environmental opposition. As to hydropower, we do not have another Niagara Falls. Wind and solar produce remarkably small amounts after decades of hype and massive subsidies; and what they do produce is intermittent and often unavailable when most needed on the hottest and coldest days. The last option, natural gas – the one that is available, scalable, and actually works – is the one our politicians are pledging to eliminate without anything to replace it.

In the face of this generation picture, the State and New York City are proceeding with proposed electricity mandates that will have the effect of greatly increasing demand for the power. This will either require scaling up our electric grid to match that need or else leaving people without functioning infrastructure. Policies already in place in New York City require electrification of cars, heat, and cooking, aiming for widespread conversion by 2035, and continuing thereafter. A piece in the Daily News on June 3 includes a projection from National Grid (one of our utilities) that the State will need to increase the capacity of the grid by 57% by 2035, and 100% by 2050.

In scenarios where people’s cars, heat, cooking and more are all entirely dependent on reliable electricity, ensuring that our electricity sources are adequate and reliable is critical to the functioning of everyday life. Yet, even as our government is rapidly rolling out electrification mandates, it is simultaneously closing the biggest piece of our reliable generation.

New York is Exhibit A of a current crisis-in-waiting. At the State level, Governor Hochul has committed to closing all of the State’s fossil fuel electricity plants by 2030.  Current  New York State summer installed capacity is 37,520 MW, or 37.5 GW. Of that, about 60%, or more than 22 GW, consists of natural gas facilities, which are capable of running nearly all the time and ramping up to maximum output when most needed. Based on National Grid’s projection of 57% increased demand by 2035, New York should be planning to have 37.5 GW x 1.57, or almost 59 GW of always-available capacity on hand by that year.  Yet the only significant plans for additional capacity by 2035 consist of about 9 GW of offshore wind, and another 1.25 GW to come from a transmission line to bring hydropower from Quebec.  (In recent weeks, all of the offshore wind developers have demanded major contract price increases of 50% and up, failing which they threaten to walk off the job.)

Something here does not remotely add up. If New York state succeeds by 2030 in closing its natural gas plants — the plants that account for 60% of the State’s generation capacity — that would bring our total installed capacity down from 37.5 GW to as little as 15 GW. But we need almost 60 GW to meet projected demand. And that’s 60 GW that can be called on any time as needed to meet peak usage. The 9 GW of projected offshore wind turbines wouldn’t make much of a dent even if they operated all the time and could be dispatched to meet peak demand, which they can’t.  Instead, they will operate only about a third of the time, and at their own whim. At best they will provide about 3 GW on average, when what we need for this full electrification project is more like 45 GW of dispatchable power to add to our existing hydro and nuclear.

The New York Independent System Operator, which is well aware of this gigantic contradiction, talks vaguely of something they call a “dispatchable emissions-free resource” to fill the enormous gap. Other than nuclear, which is blocked, that is something that is a pure fantasy and does not exist.

Our State’s and City’s proposed plans are putting New Yorkers on a path to catastrophe, with greatly increased dependence on electricity, but without nearly enough of the stuff to function at even the current usage level. New York City got a huge lesson on dependence on electricity from Hurricane Sandy a decade ago, when a week-long blackout left people in high-rises without elevator service and without water. Now they plan to add all heat, cooking, and transportation to the things that absolutely require electricity.  In that world, insufficient electricity becomes a humanitarian crisis.

It is high time for the politicians writing electricity mandates to demonstrate that it is even possible to build and scale an emission-free grid, one that is dispatchable (meaning it will work when we need it), reliable, and resilient. In today’s world, no demonstration of such a grid exists anywhere in the world.

If these mandates are allowed to go forward unabated, the real cost of will be the impoverishment of communities and destruction of quality of life. It’s up to us to realize we’re being sold a false narrative and to stop playing along.

September 16, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

The Biden Administration Misleads the Public on the Vast Expanses of Land Needed for ‘Net Zero’

By James Varney | RealClearInvestigations | September 12, 2023

The Biden administration is misleading the country about the amount of land that will be required to meet its ambitious renewable energy goals, RealClearInvestigations has found.

The Department of Energy’s official line – echoed by many environmental activists and academics – is that the vast array of solar panels and wind turbines required to meet Biden’s goal of “100% clean electricity” by 2035 will require “less than one-half of one percent of the contiguous U.S. land area.” This topline number translates into 15,000 of the lower 48’s roughly 3 million square miles.

However, the government report that furnished those estimates also notes that the wind farm footprint alone could require an expanse nine times as large: 134,000 square miles.

Even that figure is misleading because it does not include land for the new transmission systems that would connect the energy, created by the solar panels carpeting the ground and skyscraper-tall wind turbines filling the horizons, to American businesses and homes.

Solar Energy Industries Association

Not counted: space for new high-voltage transmission lines, key to utility-scale solar and wind projects.

“It’s hundreds of thousands of acres if not millions for transmissions alone,” said David Blackmon, an energy consultant and writer based in Texas. “The wind and solar farms will take enormous swaths of land all over the country and no one is talking about that.”

And these vast plots, along with the chains of transmission towers, do not include other aspects that would take up even more land: nationwide vehicle charging stations, mines for rare-earth minerals, maintenance space for huge propeller blades and panels, and so forth.

In addition, all projections increase substantially if the U.S. were to meet Biden’s larger goal of aligning the nation with a global plan, set by the International Energy Association and pushed by the World Economic Forum of Davos, dubbed “NetZero 2050.”

Professor Jesse Jenkins at Princeton University, whose work is often cited by renewable energy advocates, did not respond to RCI’s questions, but he detailed the scope of the challenge in the May/June issue of progressive Mother Jones magazine. He urged the U.S. to embark on a moon-shot level transformation of its energy sector, using hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars that Biden provided for the renewable sector in the spending bill that Democrats named the Inflation Reduction Act.

“We’ll have to build as much new clean generation by 2035 as the total electricity produced by all sources today, then build the same amount again by 2050,” Jenkins wrote. “This could ultimately require utility-scale solar projects that cover the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined, and wind farms that span an area equal to that of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.”

Given the ambitious goals and tight time frames Biden has committed the nation to, it seems natural to assume there would be a master plan detailing where and when this renewable infrastructure will be built and come online. Yet despite strong resistance by many communities across the country to serve as hosts for these massive projects, there has been no robust public debate about how all the necessary land will be acquired – and whether, for example, it will include the taking of private property through eminent domain or use of national park lands, an idea the government officially dismisses.

In fact, no such master plan exists. The closest thing to it, according to a spokesperson for the federal National Renewable Energy Laboratory, is a “long-term strategy” put out by Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry. The optimistic, 65-page document does not, however, address the question of land use. The White House did not respond to questions from RCI.

Experts skeptical about Biden’s goals say the land requirements are so immense and problematic that such detail would likely reveal how unworkable the entire program is.

“Of course it will never happen,” said William Smith, a professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and a member of the CO2 Coalition, a group of scientists who do not believe global warming is an apocalyptic development.

The “less than one-half of one percent” figure is fantasy, according to Smith.

“A lot more area is required.”

Instead of being the focus of vigorous debate regarding a crucial issue, the land requirements are routinely finessed or, most commonly, ignored by policymakers and environmentalists who promise that the radical transformation during the coming decades to the world of supposedly clean electricity will have minimal impact on people’s lives and the landscape. In reviewing government documents and speaking with experts, RCI found widespread disagreement and murkiness in part because the questions surrounding renewables are filled with so many dynamic variables and unknown factors.

The U.S. currently uses an estimated 126,562 square miles for energy production, a bit more than the combined land mass of Missouri and Florida, with by far the biggest chunk devoted to growing corn for heavily subsidized ethanol fuel. In 2021, the last year for which figures are available, the U.S. got 2.8% of its energy from solar sources and 9.2% from some 72,000 wind turbines, according to government figures.

In theory, one should be able to easily determine the nation’s future energy needs by working backward – estimating the nation’s total need for electricity in 2030 or 2050 and then determining how many wind turbines and solar panels would be required to meet that demand.

From Federal Agencies, the Rosiest Picture

There is little agreement, however, on how much electricity the U.S. will need in 2035 or 2050 – and, hence, the number of solar installations and wind turbines – because that depends on a variety of lifestyle decisions, such as the type of cars people will drive and the size of the homes they will live in. In addition, the power generation of those turbines and solar panels depends on where they are situated – which is also unknown – and their age.

These and other variables, in turn, can politicize an ostensibly scientific problem as the factors and assumptions one uses to ask key questions necessarily influence the answer.

The rosiest picture is presented by federal agencies, which rely on estimates from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and environmental activists.

Alex Hobson, a senior vice president at the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), a nonprofit that “represents all facets of the renewable energy marketplace,” echoed the Department of Energy when she told RCI that the U.S. would need “less than 1% of the land in the contiguous United States to fully transition to a clean energy economy.” All told, the U.S. could hit the Biden administration’s target of a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 by adding 19,000 square miles of renewables, a parcel roughly equal to Maryland and Vermont, Hobson said.

Although the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s own work includes such projections, Hobson characterized estimates putting the square mile requirements for largely carbon emissions-free energy in the hundreds of thousands as “a narrative often espoused by critics of renewable energy.”

Nevertheless, estimates by other outfits favorably disposed to Biden’s climate agenda offer larger projections. An analysis by Bloomberg News, controlled by billionaire environmental activist Michael Bloomberg, concluded that “expanding wind and solar by 10% annually until 2030 would require a chunk of land equal to the state of South Dakota.” South Dakota is roughly 77,000 square miles, or five times the “one-half of one percent” figure that federal officials like to tout.

Pushing the goal to a “NetZero” future in 2050, Bloomberg reported, would “need up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean energy to run all the electric vehicles, factories and more.”

The different dates – a reduction by 2030 and “NetZero” by 2050 – are yet another set of many variables that contribute to the fuzzy math.

Spinning Turbines

Probably the greatest area of confusion surrounds the amount of land required by wind turbines. In support of its claim that the U.S. will need only 15,000 square miles of land to meet Biden’s renewable goals by 2035, a Department of Energy spokesperson told RCI that the country will need an estimated 5,800 to 11,200 square miles for solar installations and between 1,930 and 3,100 square miles for wind turbines by 2035. But those numbers account for just the physical space required by each turbine – the stake in the ground, which is small – and not the broader area required by turbines, which must be spaced far apart from one other and require huge bases made from 2,500 tons of concrete.

Those who support renewables claim that almost all of the surrounding land can still be used for farming, ranching, or other purposes. Even here, however, the numbers do not align. The Energy Department told RCI that “95% of the land” in wind farms remains untouched by the renewable energy apparatus, meaning the turbines would occupy but 5% of the land. But the National Renewable Energy Laboratory lowers that figure further, claiming only 2% of the land is removed from circulation and, in parentheses in his Mother Jones piece, Jenkins marks it down to 1%.

Those who believe the emissions goals set for 2035 and beyond are unrealistic and unnecessary say those numbers are absurdly low, and characterize as false the notion that towering turbines – plus the construction needed to store and transmit energy that relies on fickle sources like sunshine and wind – will not eat up many thousands of additional square miles.

When factors beyond sticks on the horizon are factored in – that is, the total parameters of wind farms – the plots needed get much bigger, as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (134,000 square miles) and Jenkins (213,000 square miles) acknowledge in their studies.

Then, given that power weakens the further it must travel to the end user, a gigantic new transmission system will be needed.

Here again, RCI found widely disparate estimates. In March, a DOE study said that 47,000 new miles of high-voltage transmission wires would have to be constructed, but a National Renewable Energy Laboratory study looking at 2035 noted that the U.S. could need up to 100,000 miles of new lines during the next decade. The low end of that estimate is the distance of 10 round trips from New York to Moscow, while the high end is four times the earth’s circumference at the equator.

Again, the jumping numbers underscore how policymakers consistently highlight the lowest possible figures, which are derived using what could prove fanciful assumptions.

The renewable energy lab’s suggestion that turbines will take up only 2% of land is false, according to Smith.

“No matter how you slice it, the NREL estimate is utter rubbish, but is 100% accepted since it toes the narrative line,” he said. “It is comforting until it is proven to fall drastically short by sad experience. Ten percent of that land, at least, is useless for other purposes. No one wants to live under, near, or in the line throw from a wind turbine in northern latitudes.”

In addition, there is something disingenuous about pretending enormous windmills and high voltage transmission towers and wires are mere blips in the landscape, said Mark Mills, a senior fellow at the free-market Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

“Like all scenarios, it depends on boundary condition assumptions,” Mills said. “NREL, for example, uses the specific footprint of the concrete pad on which the wind turbine physically sits, rather than the acres of land occupied by the array of turbines. That yields a very small number of course, despite the visual scale of the array.”

Mills acknowledged wind farms do not completely rule out farming or other land uses nearby, gaps that are not available with solar panels in which “literally square miles of land are rendered useless for other purposes.”

These factors tend to be elided when enthusiasts predict smaller and smaller allotments of land being required for the transformation envisioned.

“I don’t hear any of them talk about the land footprint at all,” said H. Sterling Burnett, director of Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, a conservative think-tank opposed to massive renewable energy projects. “The whole NIMBY mindset is not unique to fossil fuels. But if you’re talking about building turbines in Kansas and shipping power to New York City, or all the power lines that will be needed – nobody talks about that.”

September 16, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism | | Leave a comment