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50 injured as NATO troops clash with Serb demonstrators

RT | May 29, 2023

NATO forces attacked a group of demonstrators in the majority-Serb town of Zvecan in Kosovo, RT Balkan reported on Monday. Stun grenades and tear gas were deployed, and around 50 people were injured.

Serb demonstrators staged a sit-down protest outside municipal buildings in Zvecan, Zubin Potok and Leposavic on Monday morning, preventing ethnic Albanian officials from taking office after elections boycotted by the Serb population as illegitimate.

Kosovo police officers arrived on the scene in Zvecan, backed up by members of NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR). The heavily-armored NATO troops surrounded the demonstrators, who refused to disperse, RT Balkan’s journalist on the scene reported.

KFOR then threw stun grenades and tear gas into the crowd, provoking a riot. The Serb demonstrators pelted rocks at the NATO troops, and received baton strikes and rubber bullets in return. Fifty people went to a hospital in nearby Mitrovica, and two were admitted to the emergency room.

25 KFOR soldiers were injured in the melee, Italy’s ANSA news agency said. 11 of those reportedly hurt were Italians.

The protesters broke up shortly after the clashes, vowing to return and continue their demonstration on Tuesday.

The latest flareup in tensions began when local mayors in four majority Serb towns in northern Kosovo resigned last year after authorities in Pristina announced plans to force residents to switch their Serbian identity documents for Kosovo-issued ones. The Serb population of these four towns boycotted elections in April in which four ethnic Albanian mayors won with a turnout of less than 4%.

Nevertheless, the government in Pristina treated the votes as legitimate and the mayors were installed on Friday amid fierce opposition from the Serbs, who view the debacle as a naked power grab aimed at driving them from the breakaway province.

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in 2008 with the support of the US and many of its NATO allies. Kosovo was historically a province of Serbia, and Belgrade – along with many world governments – does not recognize Kosovo as an independent state.

While NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and a number of Kosovo’s Western backers have urged Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leader, Albin Kurti, to de-escalate the situation in the north of the province, he has apparently not heeded their warnings. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Sunday that Kurti “longs and dreams of being a [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky.”

Due to the clashes, Serbia placed its army on high alert, moving some units closer to the region’s border. Defense Minister Milos Vucevic said that “it is clear that terror against the Serb community in Kosovo is happening.”

May 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Zelensky wants to sanction Iran ‘for 50 years’

The Cradle | May 29, 2023

President Volodymyr Zelensky drafted and submitted a law to Ukraine’s parliament calling for the imposition of sanctions against Iran for a period of 50 years, Ukrainian state-media reported on 28 May.

“The document has already been submitted for consideration by the parliament’s leadership and the Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence,” state-media outlet Ukrinform said on Monday.

The draft was initially put forward on Saturday, 27 May.

“To approve the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine dated May 27, 2023 ‘On the application of sectoral special economic and other restrictive measures (sanctions) to the Islamic Republic of Iran,’ put into effect by Presidential Decree No. 308/2023 dated May 27, 2023,” Ukrinform cites the draft as reading.

“The sanctions are to be imposed for 50 years,” it adds.

According to Kiev, the early hours of Sunday saw a massive Russian attack against Ukrainian forces, which involved the use of over 50 Iranian Shahed drones.

The Ukrainians claimed to have shot most of them down.

“This was the largest-ever drone attack on the capital since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, particularly using Shahed loitering munitions,” Ukrainian media cited a military official as saying.

Ukraine has consistently condemned Iran for its alliance with Russia, accusing Tehran of supplying military assistance, namely its Shahed 136 drones, to Russian forces fighting the Ukrainian army.

The Islamic Republic has denied supplying any drones to Russia during the conflict, admitting only to deliveries made before the war in Ukraine.

In November last year, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian revealed that Tehran and Kiev had agreed to hold a meeting to discuss the drone issue diplomatically but that the US and its allies sabotaged the meeting.

The US pressured Ukraine to cancel the talks because of its wish to take advantage of the Iranian drone issue and use it as part of its policy against the Islamic Republic, Abdollahian claimed at the time.

Iran has repeatedly asserted its neutrality in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and has, on many occasions, offered to mediate between the two sides.

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

Iran to unveil hypersonic missile ‘soon’: IRGC commander

Press TV – May 29, 2023

Iran’s Mersad air defense system fires a missile during the final stage of a massive maneuver, codenamed ‘Guardians of Velayat Sky-98,’ in the central province of Semnan.
A top commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says the country will unveil a homegrown hypersonic ballistic missile in the near future.

“The hypersonic missile has passed its tests and will be unveiled soon,” Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the IRGC’s Aerospace Division, said on Monday.

He added that the new missile is capable of bypassing all air defense missile systems and targeting the enemy’s anti-missile systems.

The IRGC commander described the development of the missile as a “great leap in the field of missiles.”

“The hypersonic missile has a high speed (around 12-13 Mach) and can maneuver both in and out of the Earth’s atmosphere,” Hajizadeh said.

Hypersonic missiles can fly at speeds at least five times faster than the speed of sound, making them virtually impossible to intercept.

Back in November, Hajizadeh for the first time announced that Iran had developed a homegrown hypersonic ballistic missile capable of penetrating advanced aerial defense shields and striking designated targets.

Iran on Tuesday successfully test-launched its most advanced Khorramshahr-class ballistic missile, called Kheibar, a medium-range precision-guided missile that can carry a 1,500 kg warhead.

Kheibar is a liquid-fueled missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers and a warhead weighing 1,500 kilograms, designed by the Ministry of Defense’s Aerospace Industries Organization.

Despite being under sanctions for decades, Iran has become self-sufficient in designing and manufacturing different types of military equipment, including missiles.

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

Washington’s obsession with crushing Russia has dismantled its Middle East agenda

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | May 29, 2023

Once the undisputed hegemonic power in the Middle East, thought to be indispensable for the security and success of a range of regional leaderships, the US has been fading into the background to the benefit of its adversaries.

As armed conflict erupted between NATO-backed Ukraine and Russia in February of 2022, the Joe Biden administration in Washington decided to throw its weight behind Kiev and focus on a project to bog down Moscow, while unleashing wave after wave of sanctions. Despite spending at least $75 billion dollars on assistance to Ukraine and making Russia the most sanctioned nation on earth, the US has failed to bring Moscow to its knees. In fact, one could say that it is the US that has been cut down to size in the global arena, especially in the Middle East, an area it once considered its own backyard.

As the months pass, blow after blow has been inflicted on US power in the Middle East. In direct opposition to Washington’s agenda, the Syrian Arab Republic was readmitted to the Arab League following a 12-year hiatus, paving the way to end the crisis in Syria, which the US seeks to prolong. China has also entered Middle East politics in a dramatic way, brokering an Iranian-Saudi rapprochement back in March, and this then spurred a wider normalization wave. Although the US attempted to play off the Saudi Arabia-Iran agreement as an acceptable and welcomed move, this has now clearly worked to collapse Washington’s long-term effort towards regional supremacy, which was based on feeding a proxy conflict between the two powers.

The failure of US sanctions

Western leaders publicly predicted that Russia’s economy would collapse under sanctions, a result which clearly has not materialized, with the IMF predicting the Russian economy will grow. Similarly, the US “maximum pressure” sanctions that were first introduced against Iran under the Trump administration, were expected to severely hinder the Islamic Republic’s ability to continue its developments in the defense field, but have failed to achieve those goals.

Russia is now exporting more oil than it did in 2021, as its relations with China, the primary global competitor to the US, have advanced. Gulf States have also repeatedly let the US down and refrained from yielding to pressure to cut oil production. There is also the example of Algeria, which has become Italy’s largest gas supplier and raked in over $50 billion dollars in oil and gas revenues during 2022 alone, even as it retains close relations with Moscow. And when it comes to the West’s ban on Russian gold bullion, the UAE, Türkiye and China have reportedly stepped in to fill the gap.

However, perhaps the worst blowback against Russia sanctions has been the nullification of previous limits to Moscow-Tehran economic relations. The two nations are already the most sanctioned on earth, so they need not worry about the potential consequences from their trade, which has encouraged further cooperation between them. Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi signed a deal to finance an Iranian railway line as part of a North-South Transport Corridor.

Failed propaganda

The Biden administration has employed hardline propaganda tactics in order to demonize Russia and lionize Ukraine. Although for some Western audiences the arguments set forth may have proven effective, in the global community and especially the Middle East, such rhetoric is tiresome and clearly hypocritical.

After having illegally invaded Iraq, inflicting around a million deaths, over a concoction of factually-challenged conspiracy theories about weapons of mass destruction, it comes off as laughable that the US is now claiming to oppose illegal invasions. Former Bush administration officials, such as Condolezza Rice, have even appeared on national television shows in the US to condemn illegal invasions of foreign countries. Even former US President George W. Bush seemingly condemned the “holy unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq… I mean of Ukraine” in a Freudian slip.

The US has positioned itself now as being opposed to the illegal occupation of foreign territory, in addition to claiming it stands in principle against annexation. When US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked by a CNN correspondent whether his government supported the annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights by Israel, he answered: “Look, leaving aside the legalities of that question, as a practical matter, the Golan is very important to Israel’s security,” again demonstrating Washington’s double standards. Washington continues to maintain its recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, which not only defies international law, but also the majority opinion at the United Nations.

The faltering image of the US

From the perspective of Middle Eastern nations, the US is overcommitted to the conflict in Ukraine, even as they have refrained from taking a clear side and instead remained neutral for the most part. Neither the people nor the governments of these countries buy the platitudes espoused by US officials when it comes to Ukraine. The stark difference between the way Palestinians and Ukrainians are portrayed for the exact same actions are enough to make eyes roll.

Now that China is presenting opportunities for countless Middle East nations, especially in the economic sphere, the US has a real competitor. However, the US continues to operate as if the world has not undergone a dramatic shift and refuses to rein in its allies. Ukraine in some respects is getting the special treatment that Israel has enjoyed for years: unlimited aid with few or no questions asked. In the case of Israel, as its government proceeds with introducing controversial legal reforms, takes steps to change the status quo at the al-Aqsa Mosque and pursues hardline far-right policies against the Palestinian people, all coming at a cost to Washington itself, the Biden administration refuses to put it in its place. What Israel is currently doing is embarrassing its own Arab allies that recently normalized ties, even threatening to put a wedge in relations with the likes of neighboring Jordan.

It is this refusal to recalibrate that is not only costing the US its influence, but also evaporating the prize of bringing Israel and Saudi Arabia together, which has clearly been a foreign policy achievement goal dear to the Biden administration. Now that Riyadh and Tehran have restored relations, the excuse of combating Iran’s regional influence is gone for negotiating a Saudi-Israeli rapprochement. The refusal to punish Israel for its constant provocations also makes it more difficult for Saudi Arabia to normalize with an unrestrained Israeli government that continues to insult the Muslim world and invites popular Arab support for the Palestinian cause. If there is no change to the arrogant and out of touch approach of the US, which rules with an iron fist and a “my way or the highway” approach, it will be the US itself that is going to be taking a hike from the Middle East.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.

May 29, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

What Are Anti-Drone Systems and How Do They Work?

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 29.05.2023

The NATO-Russia proxy conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated the significance of drones in modern warfare, with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used by both sides for reconnaissance, targeting, and kamikaze attacks. What are the four main kinds of anti-drone defenses? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Sputnik explores.

“The wars of the future will not be fought on a battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots and as you go forth today remember always – your duty is clear: to build and maintain those robots.”

That was the humorous but eerie prediction by the military school commandant in the 1997 The Simpsons episode “The Secret War of Lisa Simpson.” A quarter of a century later, the idea of using drones in warfare has become ubiquitous, and The Simpsons’ comedic flourish has been forever tainted by real-life conflict.

Although small propeller and rocket-propelled reconnaissance drones fitted with film cameras have been around since the Cold War, modern drone warfare, including camera-mounted, remote-operated GPS-equipped spy and strike drones, is a product of the early 21st century, with the United States kicking off the world’s first campaign of targeted killings using UAVs in 2002.

As small, inexpensive, off-the-shelf drones began entering the commercial market in the 2010s, they started to be used by non-state actors to attack armies and governments – with US-backed terrorists using them in the Syrian dirty war against Syrian and Russian forces, and Yemen’s Houthi militants deploying them against the Saudi-led coalition.

Large, military-grade drones were used to effect in the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenian volunteers in Nagorno-Karabakh, and, starting in 2022, have been deployed extensively by NATO-backed Ukrainian forces in Donbass and throughout Ukraine against Russian forces. Russia has countered them using a series of domestically-developed drone defense systems. But more on that below.

Drone Defenses: What Types Are There?

In the second half of the 20th century, the USSR and the USA focused their air and missile defense research on targeting big, expensive manned fighters, bombers, transport planes, and ballistic and cruise missiles. Although this included research into fantastical concepts including the use of powerful lasers in space under Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars missile defense program, its main focus remained missiles – rocket-powered projectiles designed to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft and missiles.

Can Missiles Be Used to Down Drones?

For drones that are large enough – including unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) like the Bayraktar TB2, the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, or the Northrop Grumman RQ-4A Global Hawk, which have wingspans of 12, 20, or even 40 meters, respectively, the most effective defenses are still good old-fashioned missiles designed to target jet aircraft.
Last month, Russian Air Defense Force Commander Andrey Demin reported that over 100 Bayraktar drones had been destroyed in fighting in Ukraine.

“There are practically no fundamental distinctions between fighting against strategic drones like the US Global Hawk (RQ-4) or Reaper (MQ-9) or Turkiye’s operational-tactical Bayraktar-TB and counteraction to crewed aircraft. The elimination of more than 100 Bayraktars, delivered to Ukraine throughout the period of the special military operation, is clear evidence of this,” Demin said, speaking with Russia’s official army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda.

For the battle against large drones, including their detection and destruction, the same monitoring and strike systems as those used against traditional aircraft can be used. This has been demonstrated not only in Ukraine, but with the June 2019 shootdown over Iranian airspace in the Strait of Hormuz of a $220 million Global Hawk operated by the US Navy by an Iranian road-mobile air defense system known as the 3rd Khordad.

How Can Electronic Countermeasures Be Used to Destroy Drones?

Smaller drones, including so-called mini and micro UAVs, are more difficult to detect, Demin admitted, pointing to these weapons’ “small effective reflective surface” for radar detection, and saying that tracking such systems and revealing their trajectory using standard radar equipment is “rather problematic.”

For this purpose, the Russian military has developed an air defense system of a different sort – the RLK-MTs Valdai, a special-purpose radar designed specifically to detect, suppress, and neutralize small drones with extremely low radar cross sections.

Developed by Almaz-Antey, manufacturer of the Buk and S-300/S-400/S-500 series of air and missile defense systems, the RLK-MTs is a vehicle-mounted radar complex designed to detect enemy drones at distances of up to 15 km, and to take them down using electronic countermeasures (using a control and navigation signal suppression module) at close-in ranges of 2 km or less. The complex’s detection systems include an X-band radar module, thermal imagers and cameras, a radio signal source-finder module. The vehicles can be operated remotely.

Demin confirmed that the RLK-MTs is “already performing combat missions to cover critical military and state facilities, including those in the special military operation zone,” and said he expects production of the systems to ramp up dramatically in the coming years.

Large, vehicle-based systems stuffed with detection systems and powerful electronic countermeasures are arguably the most capable defenses against small drones, but certainly aren’t the only ones. Smaller systems, ranging from commercial and industrial anti-drone monitoring and suppression hardware, to military-grade man-portable anti-drone rifles have been created by several Russian manufacturers. These weapons include the PARS-S Stepashka – a 9.6 kg anti-drone gun with the capability to hijack enemy drones and force them to land or return to their launch sites. The system is effective at ranges between 500 meters and 1.5 km.

Other, similar portable anti-drone systems have been spotted in footage from the battlefield, including the Stupor electromagnetic rifle – which uses electromagnetic pulses to suppress drones’ control channels and force them down.

How Can Lasers Fight Drones?

Advances in laser pulse weaponry have enhanced prospects for their use in modern warfare. Last year, Yuri Borisov – the former Russian deputy prime minister responsible for defense and the space industry since appointed boss of Roscosmos, revealed that the Russian military has tested a mystery combat laser system known as the Zadira that’s capable of incinerating drones in seconds at distances of up to 5 km in Ukraine. Its development began in 2016 under the auspices of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center, a subsidiary of Rosatom.

The Zadira is not to be confused with the Peresvet – a strategic laser weapon designed to target an enemy up to 1,500 km in orbit over the planet. That system entered combat duty on a test basis in December 2018, but has not been used in Ukraine.

Russia is not the only country tinkering with the use of laser weapons for anti-drone warfare, with the United States and Israel also working on such weapons.

Lasers have several clear advantages over conventional air defense missiles – including their low cost (Israeli officials have boasted, for example, that the new Iron Beam laser-based air defense system uses just $2-worth of electricity – 10,000-50,000 times less than conventional Iron Dome missiles). But lasers also have a number of drawbacks, including the need to secure large amounts of electricity (limiting their mobility), plus problems operating in certain weather conditions, including fog and cloud cover).

Can Drones Be Used to Counter Other Drones?

Last but not least in the list of portable anti-drone defenses are other UAVs. Systems like the ZALA Lancet multipurpose loitering munition/kamikaze drone are capable of targeting enemy UAVs, with its developers creating a concept which they’ve dubbed “air mining” involving the deployment of large numbers of Lancets in an area of the front to protect against incursions by heavy attack drones. As an enemy drones approach, the Lancet locks on to the enemy target and dives onto it at high speeds to force it from the skies.

How Successful Has Russia’s Anti-Drone War Been?

Since Russia entered the Ukraine crisis, it has made many of the difficult but necessary changes to supply the Army with the equipment it needs for effective drone warfare.

Last week, an unclassified intelligence assessment by Britain’s Ministry of Defense concluded that Russia’s military had successfully integrated drone reconnaissance into operations involving long-range missile strikes in the Ukrainian hinterland. Also last week, a separate report by Britain’s Royal United Services Institute calculated that Russia has been using electronic warfare capabilities to destroy upwards of 10,000 Ukrainian drones per month. According to the assessment, Russia maintains “a major electronic warfare system roughly every 6 miles (9.6 km)” along the entire 1,200 km front line.

These assessments echo complaints by an insider at Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, who told one Western outlet in March that Russian forces had obtained “black magic” capabilities against Ukraine’s vast arsenal of NATO-supplied drones, including the ability to “jam frequencies, spoof GPS, [and] send a drone to the wrong altitude so that it simply drops out of the sky.”

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

Ukraine’s prized drone fleet almost grounded

RT | May 29, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cataloging a tsunami of Covid scandals

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

BY BILL RICE, JR. | MAY 26, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mainstream press is 99.9 percent captured.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BY IGOR CHUDOV | MAY 28, 2023

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

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

There was a small problem, however.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Antonio Moniz, Inventor of Lobotomy

So, the world of Nobel prizes is very special!

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

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

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

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

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

HART Rapid Response to BMJ

Health Advocacy & Recovery Team | May 28, 2023

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

Their piece begins:

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

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

They go on to say:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Editor,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr Rosamond Jones, retired consultant paediatrician

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

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

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

By Debra Heine | American Greatness | May 25, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | May 22, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 28, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

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