Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Top Five Climate Change Narratives in the Media

Coverage of climate has become more about narrative promotion than news

BY ROGER PIELKE JR. | THE HONEST BROKER |APRIL 28, 2023

I’ve seen a lot over the past three decades. For instance, I’ve seen my own research on climate go from being widely covered in the late 1990s to 2000s, to journalists actively advocating for me to be fired in the 2010s to today, where thankfully my writing exists in this parallel universe called Substack. All this time my work remains pretty much the same — my research remains widely cited in the research community, including most recently by all three working group of the IPCC. It is not me that has changed.

Along the way I’ve been very public with my criticism of parts of the media, as I have watched climate journalism evolve from reporting of news to narrative promotion and protection. I have come to understand that it just so happens that some of my research happens to clash with leading narratives (e.g., disasters, RCP8.5) promoted nowadays by journalists on the so-called “climate beat” — itself a troubling concept.

Below I provide a list of the five most common types of climate stories that I see in the legacy and specialist media. I’ll admit to being a bit cheeky — it is Friday after all, but at the same time I also think there is a lot of truth to the list below. I’m calling out climate journalism because I am seeing its pathological effects on public views (especially among young people), on the research community and in policy discussions, including political advocacy. Climate is too important to be just another cul-de-sac of identity politics.

As ever, I am happy to hear from those on the climate beat, especially those whose work is implicated in the list below. I am happy to publish their responses or views here. I won’t hold my breath — as multiple journalists have told me in conversations that there is no way they can ever be seen to engage with me, as it is a professional hazard. But still, the invitation will remain open.

With that, let’s get to the list!

Climate reductionism
  1. We can explain everything with climate change

Hay fever? Bumpy fight? Home runs? Infertility? There is probably no phenomena in the world that has not at one time or another been linked to climate change. Part of the ubiquity of this type of article is the presence of so many journalists now on the “climate beat” having to come up with frequent climate-themed stories to satisfy their editors and their niche. This has the knock-on effect of creating incentives for researchers to produce studies with links to climate — no matter how tenuous or trivial. This dynamic has been well described my Mike Hulme as “climate reductionism.”

We ❤️ the apocalypse
  1. The coming apocalypse

If it bleeds, it leads. There is a great market for studies that offer scary predictions of the future, typically employing implausible scenarios (hello RCP8.5). These studies are readily transformed into university and research institute press releases, which are then pretty much reprinted as news. The stories, they write themselves. Stories on our doomed future based on the latest predictions are a staple of the climate beat.

Your guide to the players
  1. Good guys and bad guys

In any morality tale, it is important to know who the good guys and bad guys are. Usually this is easy, but in climate it is difficult as there are a lot of legitimate experts out there, but only a subset share the proper views. Hence, the media produces a steady stream of articles helping to identify those who are heroes and those who are villains. Associating someone with Republicans or fossil fuels is a tip that this person is a villain, and a similar association with the renewable industry or Democrats means that they are onside.

Extreme weather, we can explain that
  1. The extreme weather that just happened

Weather is a renewable resource. It happens every day, and somewhere it is extreme. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought, hail, oh my! It has become fundamental to the climate beat to associate, link, connect — pick your favorite — the extreme event that just happened with climate change. Forget the IPCC and rigorous standards of detection and attribution. There are studies to cherry pick, quotable experts and a new cottage industry of rapid event attribution studies. Extreme weather is no longer about the weather.

Go team!
  1. Cheerleading for our team

Recently I saw somewhere on Twitter where someone had calculated how many followers good guys and bad guys had gained on Twitter since Elon Musk took it over. Apparently the bad guys saw a big surge. But what I found most interesting was the lumping in of climate reporters at places like The New York Times and The Guardian with activists like Greta Thunberg — clearly indicating that they were viewed to be as being on the same team. A big part of climate reporting these days is simply climate advocacy. For instance, when the Inflation Reduction Act was being debated earlier this year, the media simply cheered its passage, printing the views of those paid to promote it by the renewables industry, and nary a critical voice to be heard. More recently, criticism of the IRA has appeared to become legitimate as part of the cheerleading to go beyond the IRA. Climate reporting is apparently a team sport.

May 1, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Transplant surgery highlights evidence of vaccine deaths

By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | May 1, 2023

The writer is in New Zealand

More critical evidence of increased vaccine-induced strokes and deaths has come to light.

The Wellington Region health data leaked directly to me, on which I’ve reported here, shows that the incidence of strokes requiring hospitalisation in 2023 was up by 25 per cent on pre-pandemic levels. These rises in stroke incidence began in 2021, before the arrival of Covid in New Zealand, but after the vaccine rollout began. Despite this, published scientific papers continue to point to Covid-19 infection as the sole source of increased stroke incidence, in some cases, as in this paper, not even mentioning a possible role of Covid vaccination.

Accordingly, NZ Medsafe has been able to maintain that there have been only two vaccine-induced deaths, allowing politicians and health authorities to cling to the fiction that Covid vaccination is safe.

A pre-pandemic 2016 paper found that victims of fatal strokes are generally robust sources for organ transplant donation, especially if they are younger in age. The one exception was the need for caution with livers transplanted from those dying as a result of immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) whose recipients suffered poorer survival outcomes.

This paper published last month describes the case of an individual who in October 2021 died from a stroke caused by Covid vaccination, and whose organs were harvested for transplant. The paper notes in passing that: ‘Thrombosis combined with thrombocytopenia generally occurs in the first month following vaccination and can lead to fatal outcomes, even in young, previously healthy individuals. These young adults ultimately may become solid organ donors.’

In other words, young adults are dying following Covid vaccination in sufficient numbers to be appreciated by transplant surgeons as a new source of viable organs. In this single case, two harvested kidneys are still functioning well for the recipients. The authors leap from the one case study to a general conclusion: ‘Kidney allografts transplanted from vaccine-induced thrombosis and thrombocytopenia donors can have a good overall function with favourable outcomes.’

A September 2022 paper reports on kidney transplants from 16 (yes, 16) victims in Britain of Covid vaccine-induced immune thrombocytopenia and thrombosis (VITT) to 30 recipients. Five of the recipients had concerning test results following surgery and two of them lost the graft. The authors conclude: ‘The involvement of VITT could not be completely excluded in one of these cases.’They go on to describe these outcomes as ‘favourable’ (?)

This paper published in August 2022 studying four successful transplants from a single deceased donor following VITT, notes: ‘There are increasing reports of thrombotic complications with various Covid-19 vaccines such as the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA, Moderna mRNA, AstraZeneca Oxford (serum institute), and Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccines.’

This paper from Italy reports two cases of VITT and subsequent successful transplants, but this letter to the American Journal of Transplantation in July 2021 presents a far more concerning picture. Ten donors likely to have died from VITT donated 27 organs in total. Three of these organs subsequently failed, two had impaired function, and one patient died of a cardiac arrest. In total there were seven major thrombotic or hemorrhagic postoperative complications among six recipients (22 per cent) within nine days of transplant.

The authors concluded that the potential risks of transplanting organs from donors with VITT are twofold. First, early major thrombosis or clinically significant bleeding. Second, possible transmission of pathogenic lymphocytes (anti-PF4), characteristic of blood clotting associated with strokes. In other words, VITT deceased donors may somehow pass on aspects of their vaccine-induced fatal illness to transplant organ recipients.

You are probably beginning to get the picture. Transplant surgeons are very excited to have more available young donors. They announce that the use of organs from VITT is probably viable based on some case studies with very mixed results, but completely fail to comment on the significance of the increased number of cases of vaccine-induced death.

Transplant surgeons are narrowly focused on their discipline. Despite being aware of increases in Covid vaccine-induced death, they wrote papers which failed to sound the alarm. But it is worse than that: medical authorities, the people who collate statistics of hospitalisation and death, failed to communicate to medical personnel and specialists in disparate fields that there were many categories of vaccine-induced illness, including not only strokes, but also cardiac disease, kidney disease, reproductive disease, cancer and neurological disease.

Since releasing the leaked data last month, I have heard from a number of practising health professionals. Their reports include descriptions of unprecedented increases in the incidence of rare conditions that they would not normally see, including cancers. There are also reports of test result scores which are off the chart, for example D-dimer scores in the 20,000 to 30,000 range. D-dimer tests are designed to monitor the formation of blood clots associated with deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and stroke, and a normal score is considered less than 0.50. It is notable that the leaked Wellington Region health data reports around 4 per cent of D-dimer test results for both men and women are registering at elevated levels.

Most health professionals and the public are still being left in the dark as far as the overall data picture is concerned. When you hear politicians such as Ardern and Hancock calling for more censorship of discussion, it has to ring alarm bells.

The revelations of widespread ill health contained in the Wellington Region data leak demonstrate how the reverse is true. Government policies restricting access to health data and suppressing open debate are the real drivers of health misinformation and poor pandemic health outcomes.

May 1, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Texas Launch­es Inves­ti­ga­tion into Gain-of-Func­tion Research and Mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions by Covid-19 Vac­cine Manufacturers

By Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas | May 1, 2023

Attorney General Paxton launched an investigation into the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson concerning whether they engaged in gain-of-function research and misled the public about doing so.

Paxton is also investigating whether the companies misrepresented the efficacy of their Covid-19 vaccines and the likelihood of transmitting Covid-19 after taking the vaccines in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The investigation will also look into the potential manipulation of vaccine trial data. This investigation concerns potentially fraudulent activity that falls outside the scope of legal immunity granted to manufacturers of the Covid-19 vaccine. It will also review the companies’ controversial practice of reporting the metric of “relative risk reduction” instead of “absolute risk reduction” when publicly discussing the efficacy of their vaccines.

In recent years, certain pharmaceutical companies have had record-breaking financial success, driven in part by sales made from products related to the Covid-19 pandemic. This vested interest in the success of these Covid-19 products, combined with reports about the alarming side effects of vaccines, demands aggressive investigation.

Texas’s investigation will force these companies to turn over documents the public otherwise could not access. Attorney General Paxton is committed to discovering the full scope of decision-making behind pandemic interventions forced on the public, especially when a profit motive or political pressure may have compromised Americans’ health and safety. Efforts by the federal government to coerce compliance with unjust and illegal pandemic interventions, even at the cost of citizens’ employment, means this investigation into the scientific and ethical basis on which public health decisions were made is of major significance.

Given the unprecedented political power and influence over public health policies that pharmaceutical companies now wield, it is more important than ever that they are held accountable if they take dangerous, illegal actions to boost their revenues.

“The development of the Covid-19 vaccine, and the representations made by and knowledge of Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, are of profound interest to the public’s health and welfare. This investigation aims to discover the truth,” said Attorney General Paxton. “This pandemic was a deeply challenging time for Americans. If any company illegally took advantage of consumers during this period or compromised people’s safety to increase their profits, they will be held responsible. If public health policy was developed on the basis of flawed or misleading research, the public must know. The catastrophic effects of the pandemic and subsequent interventions forced on our country and citizens deserve intense scrutiny, and we are pursuing any hint of wrongdoing to the fullest.”

To read the CID for Pfizer, click here.

To read the CID for Moderna, click here.

To read the CID for Johnson & Johnson, click here.

May 1, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Arab states call for withdrawal of foreign forces from Syria

RT | May 1, 2023

The government in Damascus should re-establish the rule of law on all of Syria’s territory, ending the presence of foreign armed groups and terrorists, the foreign ministers of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq said on Monday after meeting in Amman.

Jordan hosted the meeting, the first of its kind since Syria’s membership in the Arab League was suspended in 2011. Prior to the multilateral meeting, Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad met with his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi to discuss refugees, border security and “water issues,” according to Amman.

In a joint statement distributed by state news agencies, the five ministers called for “ending the presence of terrorist organizations” as well as “armed groups” on the territory of Syria, and “neutralizing their ability to threaten regional and international security.” They also pledged to “support Syria and its institutions to establish control over all of its territory and impose the rule of law.”

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq pledged to establish ties with the Syrian military and security institutions in order to “address security challenges.” The five ministers also called for stopping “foreign interference in Syrian domestic affairs.” Their joint declaration also called for setting up technical teams of experts that would follow up on the summit and implement practical measures to resolve the conflict in Syria.

The Amman meeting comes just weeks after Mekdad visited Saudi Arabia and received the kingdom’s endorsement for Syria’s territorial integrity. Currently, Turkish-backed militants control parts of northern Syria, while the northeast is under the control of US-backed Kurdish militias. Several hundred US soldiers are also in Syria, controlling most of the country’s oil wells.

MIlitants backed by Saudi Arabia and the US launched an uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2011. With the help of Russia and Iran, the government in Damascus eventually prevailed over the collection of rebels, including terrorists affiliated with Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). While Syria’s neighbors and regional powers have moved to improve relations with Damascus in recent months, the US has not changed its “regime change” policy.

May 1, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

What the China Literature Gets Wrong

By Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute | May 1, 2023

For more than a decade it’s become expected for books peddling the “China threat” to pop up as best sellers. From Martin Jacques’ When China Rules the World (2009) to Michael Pillsbury’s The Hundred-Year Marathon (2015), the best response has been to just shrug and move on. Talk in serious policy circles and major media were still primarily focused on Beijing’s integration into the “liberal world order” as a “responsible stakeholder,” and of the gains in trade made (and still to be made) in exchange between the United States and China.

The transformation of China from global partner to enemy number one seemed to happen, in Hemingway’s words, gradually, then suddenly. Indeed, despite Donald Trump’s early bellicosity when it came to China, the corporate press didn’t immediately play along with the China threat narrative. Rather, they proclaimed the folly of his trade war and seemed to revel in reporting the losses it was inflicting on American farmers, whose exports to China had been interrupted as a result of retaliatory tariffs.

But in the background the slow, ominous drip of the China threat narrative continued with Graham Allison’s Destined For War (2017). Then, in quick succession, Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elite Slept (2019) by Robert Spalding, Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy (2019) by Bill Gertz, Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America (2020) by Qiao Liang, Has China Won? (2020) by Kishore Mahbubani, The Long Game: China’s Strategy to Displace American Order (2021) by Rush Doshi, The World According to China (2021) by Elizabeth Economy, War Without Rules: China’s Playbook for Global Domination (2022) by Robert Spalding, No Limits; the Inside Story of China’s War with the West (2022) by Andrew Small, and Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy (2022) by Erich Schwartzel.

It was as though even before the COVID pandemic—which exacerbated already strained relations between the United States and China—the movement was underway to translate for the public the policies pursued through multiple U.S. administrations aimed at containing China. It suddenly became normal to pick up one of the so-called “papers of record,” corporate media giants like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, or Washinton Post and encounter a headline about China presented as ominous or threatening. Indeed, by the time Hal Brands and Michael Beckley’s Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict With China (2022) hit bookshelves last August, entire opinion pages of the major papers sounded like talking points from the 2017 U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS), the 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy (NDS), or the 2018 special report from the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) which all painted China as a direct threat to vital U.S. interests, and one that needed to be vigorously countered and contained militarily, geopolitically, economically, ideologically, and technologically.

While many of the books mentioned above are written in the breathless, alarmed manner of their earliest forerunner, the eponymous China Threat (2000) by Bill Gertz, there have been some notable exceptions which have sought and obtained some measure of balance even when they could not completely escape the China threat paradigm. Kevin Rudd’s The Avoidable War (2022) and James Fok’s Financial Cold War (2021) both do a reasonable job presenting the facts, perspectives of both Washington and Beijing on key issues, and have as their aim deescalating the growing crisis that is the present state and trajectory of U.S.-China relations.

Tellingly, outright dissenters, those that questioned any part of the ascendent China narrative, were few. Red Flags: Why Xi’s China Is In Jeopardy (2018) by George Magnus and Thomas Orlik’s China: The Bubble That Never Pops (2020) both deserve credit for seeing through to the true mess that is China’s economy. Though their critiques of the China threat narrative are incomplete, and scarcely touch on the demographic, environmental, and geostrategic mountains confronting Beijing, China’s economy is central to everything else (the one-party CCP dictatorship included) and an expansion of their critiques is all one needs to cast the prospect of a future “Chinese Century” into serious doubt.

And it is here that a point needs to be clearly parsed. There is a significant difference between China ruling the world in a manner like the United States has for the past three decades, and Beijing enjoying preponderance in its immediate environs and proportional heft for its relative weight where its interests are concerned around the globe. For while it is increasingly unlikely that China’s economy will ever surpass that of the United States—either in total or per capita output—or that it will ever have the military reach enjoyed by Washington, Beijing has grown powerful enough relatively that it can assert and more or less get what it wants in its immediate environs. Trivial, obvious, or realistic though that may seem to the objective observer, to Washington this fact constitutes the whole of the China threat. The existence of an independent China (or Russia, for that matter) is a threat to Washington’s accustomed ability to do more or less whatever it wants wherever it wants. However, the existence of an independent China is already a fact and continued refusal on the part of Washington to accept it will cause more than theoretical problems.

I did not imagine or intend, when I started graduate school several years ago, that any serious amount of my time would be spent reading Chinese history, learning Mandarin, or studying the specifics of the Maoist interpretation of the Marxist dialectic. As a political scientist, economist, and historian with an interest in the emergence of different political and economic structures in Europe from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century, my initial diversion into Sino-American relations, both past and present, came as something of an annoyance.

Writing at the Mises Institute, I’ve done my best to push back against this fake China threat narrative. It’s become clear, however, that a more comprehensive case needs to be made against the ludicrous idea that China is on the cusp of taking over the world. Alas, public fear has been continually stoked and the China threat narrative is worse than ever—hence, The (fake) China Threat (and its very real danger) has taken on book-length form and will be published by the Libertarian Institute in 2023. In the meantime, I will do my bi-weekly best to pour cold water on whatever the latest hawkish nonsense from DC towards China happens to be, as well as inform and contextualize for readers what is going on in China and the wider Indo-Pacific. While I cannot promise readers will always like what I have to say, with no conflicts of interest to declare they can at least be rest assured that I have no reason whatsoever to lie to them—which is (tragically) more than can be said for practically anyone anywhere else.

Joseph Solis-Mullen is a political scientist with degrees from Spring Arbor University and the University of Illinois, and is currently a graduate student in the economics department at the University of Missouri. An independent researcher and journalist, his work can be found at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, Eurasian Review, Libertarian Institute, Journal of the American Revolution, Antiwar.com, and the Journal of Libertarian Studies. You can contact him through his website http://www.jsmwritings.com or find him on Twitter @solis_mullen

May 1, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

The US Is Rounding Up Allies Ahead Of A Possible War With China

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 1, 2023

The US is shaping the Asia-Pacific in preparation of a conventional conflict with China, to which end it unveiled the AUKUS alliance in late 2021. This platform is intended to form the core of a NATO-like military structure for containing the People’s Republic, and it’ll replace whatever related role American policymakers initially envisaged the Quad playing. This makes AUKUS extremely dangerous, especially as other regional countries tacitly expand their cooperation with its American leader.

South Korea’s recent decision to let US nuclear-armed submarines dock at its ports for the first time in decades, which was made during President Yoon’s trip to DC last week, signals its interest in de facto integrating into this anti-Chinese bloc. Nearby Japan can already be regarded as an informal member of that alliance after Prime Minister Kishida reaffirmed his country’s commitment to the US’ regional goals in January and implied that it’ll rapidly remilitarize in the coming future in order to contain China.

Taken together and paired with the recent Japanese-Korean rapprochement, it can therefore be concluded that the US has strengthened its alliance network in Northeast Asia in order to facilitate the region’s unofficial integration into AUKUS+. At the same time, it’s also doing something similar with the Philippines in Southeast Asia, whose president visits the US this week. He’s expected to also de facto integrate his country into AUKUS+ too exactly as his South Korean counterpart just did.

The Philippines’ northernmost core island of Luzon is much closer to Taiwan than the Japanese Home Islands are, thus making it an ideal staging post for any American military intervention in that Chinese province. Although President Marcos just denied that his country intends to facilitate anyone’s regional military plans, it was recently revealed that the four new bases that he agreed to let America use are located on that island, thus casting serious doubts on the sincerity of his claim.

Three other recent developments bode ill for peace in this part of Asia. CNN published a lengthy analysis in mid-April arguing that the US should maximally stockpile weapons in Taiwan in order to help its ally’s forces survive in the event that China blockades the island prior to launching a special operation there. Curiously, such resupply challenges were then confirmed a few days later during an anti-Chinese congressional committee’s wargame of precisely that scenario.

The second development concerned top EU diplomat Borrell’s suggestion that the bloc’s navies patrol the Taiwan Strait. This came just several weeks after NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg declared that “We are now stepping up our cooperation with our partners in the Indo-Pacific: Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia.” The indisputable trend is that the US’ European partners are poised to play a larger military role in the region, including a provocative one if they end up patrolling the Taiwan Strait.

And lastly, it was reported last weekend that US special forces carried out their first-ever drills simulating what they’d do if their country went to war with China over Taiwan, thus removing any so-called “strategic ambiguity” about how Washington would respond to that scenario. It can no longer claim any pretense to neutrality after literally preparing its most highly trained forces for infiltrating into Taiwan to kill whatever Chinese forces might eventually enter that island.

These three developments prove that the US is rounding up allies in both the Asia-Pacific and Europe ahead of a possible war with China, but there are two important players that either won’t participate in this plot or have yet to decide, with these being India and Indonesia respectively. The influential Council on Foreign Relations’ official magazine just published a piece about why India won’t get involved, while Indonesia is being pressured to allow American and Australian forces to transit through its territory.

Even without those two, the US’ emerging anti-Chinese containment coalition is still very formidable and represents its success in getting a multitude of countries to converge around AUKUS. South Korea will serve as an intelligence and missile outpost, Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and the Philippines’ Luzon are complementary staging points for facilitating a US intervention in Taiwan, and NATO will provide back-end support all across the region as well as possibly provoke China by patrolling the Taiwan Strait.

Amidst the solidification of the Asia-Pacific’s NATO-like military structure, the US and its allies will likely fill Taiwan to the brim with weapons exactly as CNN suggested and an anti-Chinese congressional committee curiously confirmed should be a top priority just a couple days later. These interconnected trends represent extremely pressing challenges for China’s objective national security interests, which are being threatened ever more by the day as it holds off on launching a special operation in Taiwan.

There are justifiable reasons for China’s stance, especially since its leadership would truly prefer to peacefully reunify with their country’s wayward region and thus want to completely exhaust all related possibilities before resorting to military means. This moral approach is predicated on their reluctance to be the first to initiate what would be a fratricidal conflict, which is commendable, but it comes at the expense of military interests in the event that a war over that island is inevitable.

No one knows whether it is or not, but the US is doing its utmost to be in the best position possible should that scenario unfold, which thus complicates China’s own position in that event. If the US feels that it’s obtained a decisive edge over China through the crystallization of AUKUS+ and upon maximally stockpiling weapons in Taiwan, then it might even seek to provoke a conflict that wargamers convinced themselves Beijing would lose, which is a frightening scenario that can’t be ruled out.

May 1, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia seeks dialogue with Hezbollah

The Cradle | May 1, 2023

Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar released a report on 29 April claiming that Saudi Arabia is seeking to establish a line of dialogue with Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, coming in the aftermath of Riyadh’s reconciliation with Iran and Syria and following years of non-existent relations between the two sides.

According to Al-Akhbar, information provided by an unnamed Saudi official “reached Lebanese officials from a European capital,” which reveals that the kingdom hopes to open dialogue with Hezbollah “soon.”

The newspaper vaguely cites “unofficial sources in Beirut” as saying that the dialogue would “be conducted through a third party.”

“Whether the endeavor succeeds or fails, it reflects the new phase in which Riyadh is rearranging regional relationships on the path of asserting its Arab leadership,” Al-Akhbar writes, referring to Saudi Arabia’s newfound shift in policy as “unprecedented.”

Saudi Arabia has recently distanced itself from Washington significantly – economically and politically.

A Chinese-brokered reconciliation of Saudi-Iranian ties has been followed by the kingdom’s openness to reestablish ties with the Syrian government, as well as Hamas – with whom longstanding tension also exists.

This has resulted in significant Israeli frustration, and Hebrew media has referred to it as a blow to potential normalization with Riyadh.

A 1 May report by Israeli outlet Maariv laments that the “Saudi train is expected to stop at a station bearing a large sign with the name Hezbollah on it.”

Reports of dialogue between Hezbollah and the kingdom emerge as Lebanon finds itself in a presidential deadlock that has been ongoing since the term of former president Michel Aoun expired in October last year.

A lack of consensus and parliamentary quorum, as well as external political pressure, have resulted in eleven failed sessions to elect a president.

The two main candidates are the chief of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the US-backed Joseph Aoun, and the Hezbollah-backed MP Suleiman Franjieh of the Christian Marada party.

If dialogue between Hezbollah and the Saudis is achieved, this would be the first line of official contact between the two sides in 16 years.

However, last year, Middle East Eye cited sources as saying that a secret meeting between Hezbollah deputy chief, Naim Qassem, and a Saudi delegation in Beirut helped “pave the way” for the renewal of a ceasefire in Yemen, as well as the removal of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.

May 1, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

The Leaked Plan to Attack Russians in Syria Revealed

By Steven Sahiounie | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 1, 2023

The war in Ukraine was planned to extend to Syria. Leaked secret documents revealed the Ukrainian military were planning to attack Russian troops stationed in Syria in an effort to distract Russia and cause losses and casualties far from the battlefield in eastern Europe.

Jack Teixeira, a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was arrested by the FBI in the investigation of leaked classified military intelligence which were viewed on the Discord chat platform.

Among the documents were details of the planning and assessment of attacks on Russian military capabilities in Syria, to be carried out by the U.S. military partner there, the SDF.

The SDF control the northeast quarter of Syria and the troops are made up of about one-third Kurds and two-thirds Arab tribal members. The Kurdish semi-autonomous region in Syria was created by the U.S. alliance with the Communist administration of the Kurds under Ilham Ahmed and General Mazloum Abdi.

The area the U.S.-Kurdish alliance controls is not populated by a majority of Kurds, but the Kurds do represent a sizable ethnic population. Once they became financially and militarily supported by the U.S., the Kurds were able to carry out a program of ethnic cleansing which displaced the original inhabitants from their homes, lands and businesses.

The SDF working alongside the U.S. occupation forces in Syria were planned to be supplied with drones and other equipment to attack the Russian troops in Syria. The Russian airbase on the coast in Latakia was cited to be attacked as well as other areas.

The Ukrainian military intelligence had planned the attacks in Syria, using the U.S. allied paramilitary force the SDF, for the purpose of opening a second front in the war with Russia. The planning strategized that Russia would be distracted by attacks on its forces in Syria, and become weaker in their military capabilities.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, a former TV comedienne, cancelled the operations while still in the planning stages.

The Russian military was invited into Syria in October 2015, when the terrorist group Jibhat al-Nusra was at its height and threatened to over-run the coastal region. After the Russian military arrived in Syria, the Russian forces alongside the Syrian Arab Army were successful in pushing the terrorists back. Today, the central government in Damascus controls almost all of Syria with the exception of the Kurdish region previously described, and the small province of Idlib in the north west which is under the occupation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the current name of Jibhat al-Nusra. Mohammed al-Julani is in control of Idlib. He started off in Iraq with Al Qaeda, then was sent to Syria by the leader of ISIS, and finally is holding about 3 million civilian hostage in Idlib, while being supplied with humanitarian aid by the U.S., UN, EU and other charities.

The Russian presence in Syria today can be termed a peace-keeping mission. They still attack ISIS and terrorist positions, but most of their presence is in holding the peace between the Kurds and their sworn enemy, Turkey. If it was not for the Russian military presence in Syria, Turkey would have invaded even further into the Kurdish region, and there could have been massacres.

Russia has a working relationship with Syria, Iran and Turkey and has been negotiating for a peaceful settlement to the Syrian crisis.

Turkey had been a U.S. ally, but has felt betrayed by the U.S. support of the Kurdish paramilitary SDF, which consists of the core military group YPG, which is aligned with the PKK, a terrorist group responsible for about 30,000 deaths over decades.

Had the Ukrainian plan to attack Russians in Syria been carried out, the response could have been a joint Turkish-Russian military operation against the Kurds, which could have resulted in U.S. military deaths or injuries, and would likely have ended with the U.S. occupation forces withdrawal to Iraq.

If Zelensky hadn’t stopped the plans, Syria could have regained the north east quarter from the Kurds, and Turkey could have vanquished the SDF and YPG. That would then leave Idlib and the terrorists sitting on the border without their U.S. supporters. It could have resulted in Idlib’s terrorist occupiers fleeing under cover of darkness, and the 3 million hostages being set free after more than a decade of captivity.

Under the plan, the SDF asked for protection that they would not be revealed as the source of the planned attacks on the Russian military in Syria, and instead make it appear that the U.S. protected terrorists holding Idlib would be blamed.

Turkey has military troops occupying Idlib, and should the plan have been carried out, Russia could have attacked Idlib as the source of the planned attacks, and this would have been a direct confrontation between Turkey and Russia on Syria soil.

The U.S. may have ordered Zelenskyy to halt the planned attacks on Russians in Syria. Washington, DC. is insisting to remain occupying bases in Syria to prevent Syria from access to its energy resources, and thus preventing Syria from recovery from the U.S.-NATO attack on Syria beginning in 2011. The U.S. has failed in their plan to install an American puppet in Syria, but they were successful in making sure they have a compliant and easily manipulated leader in Ukraine.

May 1, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

DETRANSITIONING: LUKA’S STORY

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | April 27, 2023

Del sits down with Luka, an advocate for protecting kids from gender medicine, who herself medically transitioned as a teen before transitioning back to a female. Hear her trying journey telling of how the medical and trans communities have turned their backs on her.

May 1, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

“No Bricks, No Glass, No Cement” – What Net Zero 2050 Demands According to Government-Funded Report

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 28, 2023

No bricks, the walls and foundations made of compacted earth, cement made from clay and glass scavenged from demolition skips are just some of the construction changes needed to comply with Net Zero by 2050. The latest paper from Government-funded U.K. FIRES looks to “minimise new construction”, and notes the shape of the urban environment will change, allowing for “denser living and reduced transport needs”.

The latest U.K. FIRES paper seems to have slipped out quietly at the end of last year and has to date attracted little publicity. But the group, which comprises a number of academics led by Cambridge engineering professor Julian Allwood, made headlines around the world recently with previous work noting that all flying and shipping must stop by 2050, beef and lamb must be banned, and only 60% of energy will be available to cook food and heat homes. The group, which receives £5 million from Government sources,  is interesting because it bases its recommendations on the brutal, and many would argue honest, reality of absolute Net Zero. It does not assume that technological processes still to be perfected or even invented will somehow lead to minimal disturbance in comfortable industrialised lifestyles. It could be further argued that its continued existence and pronouncements are important, since they highlight the dishonesty and deceit that surrounds many other Net Zero promoters.

U.K. FIRES sees the future of construction based on stone, earth and timber, along with components “reused and repurposed” from demolition. Recycled steel, cement and bricks can be used, although this will be “constrained” – rationed might be a better word – by a supply of “non-emitting electricity under high demand”. Transformational construction changes will take longer to achieve, state the authors, but the U.K.’s ambitious target of a 45% reduction in emissions by 2030, “can only be achieved through reduced material demand”.

Building without bricks is an interesting suggestion and over two billion are currently produced each year. But bricks require high firing temperatures, and the enormous cost of Net Zero energy makes them uneconomic to produce. Cement also requires energy to make but it can be mixed with calcined clay. Nevertheless, calcined clay is also energy intensive and can only supplement 50% of Portland cement. “As a result, the mass low-cost consumption of concrete will no longer exist,” the authors note. Together, bricks and cement generate annual turnover of over £10 billion. Rammed earth, which can be used for foundation screeds and walls, is said to be a proven and potentially zero emission alternative, “which can utilise abundant local materials”.

Glass looks to be a complete no-no, with production requiring temperatures of 1,700°C and producing additional process emissions which cannot be avoided by electrification. Only recycled glass seems to be acceptable for the absolutist authors, so the need for complete circularity, “will somewhat constrain the supply of glass”. However, add the authors helpfully, this will “encourage direct re-use and reconditioning of glass panels from demolition sites”.

Steel is widely used in modern construction due to its large load-bearing properties. Around the world, recycled steel accounts for about a third of current production. To have zero emissions from producing steel relies on energy-intensive carbon capture and storage technology, which the authors observe, with their customary honesty, “is unlikely to be economical by 2050”. In the U.K., 85% of steel is already recycled, and it is explained that the Net Zero transition will heavily restrict its supply. Recycling of aluminium is said to be the “preferred zero emission compatible pathway”, and this will lead to “higher prices due to a restricted supply of the material”.

Timber is also constrained by carbon emission production processes, and sustainable supply is limited by forests unable to rapidly match increased demand. The construction industry accounts for a seventh of all plastics used in the U.K., but needless to say, there are problems. Although plastics play a vital part in insulating buildings – plastic doors and windows can be sealed much more effectively than wood – the authors note that they will become “increasingly constrained and expensive to produce”.

At times, your correspondent might be accused of exaggerating the effects of Net Zero, a collectivist political agenda increasingly divorced from the reality of modern living. But phrases such as “economic and societal breakdown”, and “mediaeval mud huts within 30 years”, would appear to be increasingly justified. Look at what is actually being said and done. In the Brecon Beacons, a new college called Black Mountains (BMC) is promoting its new climate breakdown university degree. One short course offered by this seat of learning is ‘Composting Toilets‘. This will serve as a “high quality exemplar” that will inform the design and building of some of the “potential future facilities on the BMC campus”.

As well as learning, this new college is obviously a seat of great easement as it moves effortlessly to a Net Zero future. The World Economic Forum says you will eat bugs and own nothing – to this might be added that you will crap into a hole in the ground, and, of course, be happy.

April 30, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

An open letter to Madame Ursula Von Der Leyen, President of the European Commission

By Dr Salman Abu Sitta | MEMO

On 29 April 2023

Your Excellency,

You made a speech this week praising the establishment of Israel on its 75th anniversary.

For someone in your position, it is surprising that it had so many errors of fact, misguided judgment, violation of international law, and deviation from basic norms of justice.

You congratulated Israel on 75 years of existence on a land area of 20,500 km2, which is 78% of Palestine. Not one square kilometer of this area is obtained by any legal or just means.  Six percent was obtained through the treacherous British collusion and 72% by military conquest.  How could you congratulate a regime which obtained this land by spilling the blood of the innocent?

Israel has no boundaries, neither by international law nor by its own admission. The Armistice Agreement of 1949 confers no legal title on any boundary. Which Israel are you congratulating? Is it in the land occupied by Israel in 1948, or in 1967?

There is not a single line in UN resolutions that supports you in either.

You congratulate Israel on its “dynamism ingenuity and groundbreaking innovations”.

I ask you if you gather the best German scientists and locate them on Madagascar Island, where they killed the people of the island and set up the best laboratory. Would you consider that a scientific achievement?

Einstein did not discover the Theory of Relativity because he was a Jew or a Swiss; he discovered it because he was a brilliant scientist. To his credit, he refused the idea of Israel and condemned the Jewish massacre of Deir Yassin.

Your European government poured billions of Euros into Israel for “scientific research” under the EU-Israel Association. The agreement contained a clause requiring Israel to abide by Human Rights in the conduct of research. But you, in particular Germany and Holland, waived this clause on demand by Israel.

Your Israel did not waste time. Its arms industry company Elbit sold weapons of mass destruction to many countries, spreading death and destruction in many parts of the world.

The prime victim is our people in Gaza. In four Israel wars against Gaza in the last six years, not only Elbit products were used to kill women and children, but its operators were in the field to guide the Israeli soldiers.

People of good conscience in the UK protested against that and demonstrated against the Elbit factory in England. Similar people in Germany protested against Elbit but your government jailed them.

Is this the Israeli science you celebrate?

You say also “Israel made the desert bloom”. You fell into the trap of Israeli propaganda. With your government capabilities, you could have done a better job.

The area of the southern district is 12,500 km2. Israel irrigated at best 800 km2. The remaining 94% was and is still desert. The irony is that the irrigation water is stolen water from the West Bank and Golan Heights. All the stolen water used in agriculture produces only 1.5% of Israel GDP.

Making “the desert bloom” is a myth. How can this escape you?

You paid for your guilt about atrocities against your Jewish citizens with Palestinian blood. Your leaders flocked to Yad Vashim, erected in Palestine not in Germany, to shed tears and ask for forgiveness. But none of your leaders had the moral courage to look at the opposite hill, 3 km away, at Deir Yassin and confront your hosts, the criminals who committed the massacre there.

You paid no notice or care about the Israeli-run concentration camps and forced labour camps for captured Palestinian civilians in 1948, set up by your citizens who fled to Palestine, only three years after those camps were closed in Germany, even though they were reported by ICRC.

The major defect in your speech is that you did not see the elephant in the room. You did not see or recognize Al Nakba, the worst disaster in Palestine’s 4000 years of history.

You did not mention the Zionist invasion by 120,000 European soldiers in 9 brigades carrying out 31 military operations. This invasion depopulated 560 towns and villages through massacres, making refugees of two-thirds of the Palestinian people.

How can you escape this calamity? Do you not know Palestine?

Go back to maps in the mid-19th century by your geographers Kiepert and Van de Velde. They tell you about 1200 localities in Palestine. You are a fluent French speaker. Go to seven volumes of Victor Guerin describing every village in Palestine.

If you miss all that, you cannot miss the historical visit of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to Palestinian Jerusalem on 31st October 1898. You cannot miss the voluminous scholarly work of Gustav Dalman about Palestine’s people.

With this knowledge, it is very sad, and indicative of the Western racism, that you voted frequently against Palestinian Inalienable rights in the United Nations, invoking the sordid European history of colonialism.

But it is not too late. You can retract your words and actions and come back to the true path, peace, and justice for Palestinians. They are the true heirs of Jesus Christ, after whom your political party was named.

Yours respectfully,

Dr Salman Abu Sitta

April 30, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »