Former PM says Ukraine has no opposition: ‘They are in prison or abroad’
By Ahmed Adel | June 25, 2024
Currently, in Ukraine, there is no opposition and politicians challenging Volodymyr Zelensky as they are either in prison or abroad, according to the country’s former prime minister, Mykola Azarov. He also highlighted that Kiev would be forced to accept any agreement between Russia and the United States.
“There is no opposition in Ukraine now. [Pyotr] Poroshenko or [Yulia] Tymoshenko are not opposition. Their policy was no different from the current policy of the Kiev regime. The real opposition was eliminated. Some were killed, others are in prison, and some were forced to go abroad,” Azarov said in an interview with the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty published on June 24.
According to the former prime minister, the left-wing parties and opposition forces in Ukraine now do not exist.
“In addition, trade unions are absent, and there is strong persecution of the Church. The current conflict is often presented as a confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, but this is not true,” he added.
Azarov also mentioned that some people want to oppose Zelensky in Ukraine but do not speak out.
Zelensky was elected in 2019, and his first term was supposed to have ended in May. However, the regime introduced a new martial law, saying no election could be held during the war. The Ukrainian president is consolidating his power and has even purged political opponents.
It is recalled that the former head of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valeriy Zaluzhny, was appointed as the country’s ambassador to the UK only a few months ago after being touted as a potential rival to Zelensky. After being removed from Ukraine, Zaluzhny has now stayed quiet on the political front. The case of the former general is just one of many examples of individuals purged in Ukraine if they threatened Zelensky’s power.
The Ukrainian president has also jailed his political rivals, even Petro Poroshenko, shut down independent media outlets, such as ZIK, NewsOne and 112 Ukraine, and used the SBU state security agency to go after his critics, like Gonzalo Lira.
Azarov also stated that the US understands that the world cannot be subjected to the risk of a nuclear war, and Washington can start an informal dialogue with Moscow on this issue and influence Kiev.
“On the other side [USA], there are still some sensible ideas that the world cannot be subjected to the risk of a nuclear war. There are hopes that an informal dialogue could emerge that would result in some kind of concrete agreement,” he said.
According to the former prime minister, Zelensky’s regime will have to comply with this agreement between Moscow and Washington.
“There is no way around this. The Americans have one hundred percent influence over the current leadership of Ukraine. Just stop providing funding and weapons, and the regime will literally fall and physically disintegrate. The regime cannot exist without money when salaries are not paid to soldiers and the security service,” Azarov explained.
His comments on the nuclear issue come following a Ukrainian attack on the Raduga substation of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant on June 21.
“As a result of the attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Raduga substation of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, work on the infrastructure facilities was interrupted,” the press service of the nuclear plant published on its Telegram channel.
Compounding the nuclear issue, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed on the same day as the attack the intentions to modernise the nuclear triad, the three components of the country’s atomic arsenal, by adding the nuclear-capable Sarmat (RS-28) intercontinental ballistic missiles, with a range of 18,000 kilometres, to its arsenal.
“We plan to continue improving the nuclear triad as a guarantee of strategic deterrence,” Putin said, adding that the advances in the land, air and naval components of the nuclear forces guarantee balance in the world.
“Taking into account the difficult international situation, the emergence of new challenges and risks, we will continue to improve our Armed Forces,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on June 24, citing Putin’s statement, told a briefing that “work is underway to bring the doctrine in line with current realities.”
This was the inevitable course of action after the US allowed the Kiev regime to use American-made weapons to strike inside Russian territory. Besides the attack on the nuclear power plant, there was also the brutal attack with ATACMS missiles on civilian infrastructure in Crimea that left four people dead and 153 seeking medical help on June 23.
The Kremlin previously vowed to respond to any Ukrainian attacks with US-made weapons, and Azarov’s assessment that Kiev may be forced to accept any agreement made between Moscow and Washington could eventuate if the Americans feel that the situation is escalating in a way that cannot be controlled. Meanwhile, despite the escalation, the US will continue to hypocritically overlook that Zelensky is heading a regime that has subverted democracy and human rights whilst lying that liberalism and Western values are being defended in Ukraine.
Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Key Talking Points on Current Bird Flu Situation
Knowledge is Powerful Amidst Government False Narrative
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | June 24, 2024
The McCullough Foundation, informative update on the current H5N1 global situation has received considerable attention and garnered valuable feedback. Here are the key takeaways:
- Practice of culling (mass destruction of entire healthy flocks) when a PCR test is found positive to “eradicate” the virus is futile and may work to constrain the food supply. The current strain H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4.b is not thus far causing necropsy or radiographic confirmed fatal pneumonia in birds or mammals.
- H5N1 host range expansion into migratory birds and mammals likely occurred as a result of gain-of-function serial passage research and a lab leak [or release].
- Increased transmissibility of H5N1 has a tradeoff of decreased virulence. Using legacy human mortality rates from cases in Southeast Asia is not appropriate. The US has never had a fatal human case of bird flu.
- Fear-mongering promulgated by the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex is designed to promote mass vaccination of animals and humans with lucrative pre-purchased contracts to the vaccine manufacturers and their NGO backers. Mass vaccination into a highly prevalent pandemic promotes resistant strains of the virus in the vaccinated.
- If human-to-human spread occurs in the future as expected by many, it will be the product of gain-of-function research that has gone on for years with the goal of creating harm to human populations.
- Be prepared with early prevention and treatment strategies on hand. Courageous Discourse has covered dilute iodine nasal sprays and gargles, oseltamivir, hydroxychloroquine, and other antivirals. The Wellness Company has extended its Contagion Kit to cover the case of serious human avian influenza in the event it occurs.
EU accuses Telegram of hiding its reach
European Commission vice-president for values and transparency Vera Jourova, March 14, 2024. © Getty Images / SOPA Images / Contributor
RT | June 24, 2024
Telegram underreports its user numbers to avoid being targeted by EU regulators, the vice-president of the bloc’s Commission for Values and Transparency, Vera Jourova, has alleged. She also accused Moscow of using the platform to spread “disinformation” among Russian-speaking EU residents, claiming that the Baltic nations, Poland, and Bulgaria are among the most exposed.
“I don’t trust Telegram, I don’t think they only have 42 million users,” Jourova said in an interview with Suddeutsche Zeitung on Sunday. She added that the European Commission is convinced that Telegram’s audience amounts to more than 45 million people – the threshold for regulatory control.
The commission is currently examining whether it should investigate the platform, Jourova revealed.
Last month, Bloomberg cited anonymous sources as saying that EU lawmakers were considering listing Telegram, founded by Russian-born entrepreneur Pavel Durov less than ten years ago, as a “very large online platform.” The move would open the privacy-focused messaging app up to strict censorship regulation.
As of February 2024, Telegram had an estimated average of 41 million monthly active EU users over the preceding six months. The figure is lower than the threshold required for social media platform to be subject to more specific obligations under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The regulation requires companies located outside the bloc to have legal representation in one of its member states.
The DSA, which came into force in February, allows the bloc’s regulators to fine platforms as much as 6% of their global annual turnover if they are found to have broken its rules. The regulation also provides the EU watchdog with the right to ban repeat offenders from operating in the bloc.
According to Durov, Telegram respects the rights of its users to privacy and freedom of expression. In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson earlier this year, Durov said he had rejected requests from Washington to share user data with US authorities or to build so-called surveillance “backdoors” into the platform.
Brussels has already launched investigations into X (formerly Twitter) over alleged breaches of EU rules in areas linked to risk management, content moderation, dark patterns, advertising transparency, and data access for researchers. Similar probes have been opened in relation to TikTok and Meta, the latter of which is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Why Israel is Unprepared for War With Hezbollah
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 24.06.2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the country’s Channel 14 Television that Tel Aviv is ready to move some forces to the north to confront Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah. Could Tel Aviv wage a war on two fronts?
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah fighters have increasingly exchanged strikes across Lebanon’s southern border since the beginning of Tel Aviv’s Gaza war launched over Hamas’ attack on October 7 2023.
“From an Israeli perspective it would be very hard to imagine a double front war, even though we know that within the Israeli Cabinet of war, there are many ministries who are willing to try to open the second front with Hezbollah,” Dr Lorenzo Trombetta, Beirut-based scholar and analyst specialising on the Middle East, told Sputnik.
Hezbollah has repeatedly warned it would step up military actions unless Israel stops killing Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah has intensified attacks over Israel’s Rafah invasion.
Last week Hezbollah Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah played down Israel’s threats to launch an all-out war against the resistance group, warning that it has a 100,000-strong military force capable of waging military actions against Israel in all three domains – land, air and sea.
Nasrallah added that the movement does not want a “total war” with Israel and called for a complete and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
Hezbollah released a nine-minute video last week, filmed from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which penetrated Israeli air defenses and returned to Lebanese airspace without being detected. The footage shows sensitive civilian and military locations in and around Haifa, one of Israel’s largest cities.
According to some estimates, Hezbollah has up to 150,000-200,000 rockets and missiles and has also mastered the use of unmanned vehicles.
But Dr Hasan Selim Ozertem, an Ankara-based security and political analyst, told Sputnik that a repeat of the Israeli invasions in 1982 and 2006 would bring “catastrophe” to southern Lebanon.
“The plot is valid for a possible operation against Lebanon because looking in the past, in 2006, Israel also could carry out another operation against Hezbollah and, as you remember, left behind a kind of catastrophe in the Lebanese terrain,” Ozertem said. “Israel has all the capabilities, especially the air capability and also land capability to carry out an operation.”
While conceding that the Israeli military capabilities are “very strong and very high,” Trombetta expressed doubts about Tel Aviv’s chances of succeeding in a war against Hezbollah.
“Technically speaking, Hezbollah has drones and mainly it showed recently, during May and June, its abilities to launch soil-air missiles that can hit or can counter not only Israeli drones, the Hermes 450 and Hermes 900, but also Israeli jet fighters,” the pundit said. “So first of all, Hezbollah could try to increase its abilities to defend the Lebanese territory with these surface-to-air missiles.”
“Secondly, they also showed in the last weeks the ability to offend, to pose a threat within the Israeli territories with armed drones, suicide drones, and other flight weapons that breached the Iron Dome system on more than one occasion, even recently,” Trombetta continued.
The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published analysis in March describing how a potential Israel-Hezbollah conflict in 2024 could be more challenging for Tel Aviv than the 2006 Israeli-Lebanese war.
The think-tank drew attention to the fact that Hezbollah has for years built upon its successful 2006 tactics of “decentralizing its command and control and reorganizing to force the IDF into more urbanized terrain where [Hezbollah] fighters can take advantage of concealed, fortified positions.”
Hezbollah has beefed up its military stockpiles with new weapons over the past 18 years. It has also gained extensive military experience during the war against ISIS and other Islamist terrorists in Syria and has had “access to capabilities and competencies used by conventional armies.”
The CSIS also noted that the geography of southern Lebanon offers advantages for Hezbollah guerrillas, including positions on rocky hills where they can hide and fire rockets, unmanned aircraft systems and anti-tank guided missiles at Israeli positions on the border.
The Israeli Reichman University Institute for Counter-Terrorism assumes that Hezbollah could fire up to 3,000 missiles a day and overwhelm Israel’s air defenses.
The researchers warned that intensive attacks would deplete the Israeli stockpiles of surface-to-air missiles within a few days of combat, exposing the nation to further Hezbollah missile and drone attacks. They argued that Tel Aviv is unprepared for an all-out war with the resistance force.
“We should include also the fact that in case Israel will launch a war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, it is very possible, it is very likely that Iran and other Iranian allies in the region will activate their forces against Israel and the US interests,” Trombetta said, adding that Yemen’s Houthi-led government, the Iraqi Islamic Resistance and others could come to Hezbollah’s aid in the event of an all-out Israeli attack on Lebanon.
Euro-Med: Israel destroyed 75% of Gaza’s farmlands, uses starvation as weapon
Press TV – June 23, 2024
An international human rights organization says Israel has rendered over 75 percent of farmlands in Gaza unusable either by isolating them to annex those lands to its so-called buffer zone, or by bulldozing them.
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor made the comment in a Sundy report, adding that the regime’s forces seek to destroy Gaza’s food basket of vegetables, fruits and meat, in addition to destroying its local food production system.
The organization noted that “in addition to destruction of all components of local food production,” Israel is also preventing the entry of food supplies and humanitarian aid in order to “perpetuate famine in the Gaza Strip and use starvation as a weapon of war as part of its ongoing crime of genocide, which continues for the ninth month in a row.”
Euro-Med added that its teams have documented evidence of the occupation army intentionally killing farmers who were either working or attempting to access their lands and farms.
In addition, Euro-Med said it has also documented extensive destruction of farms, greenhouses, water wells and tanks, and agricultural equipment by the regime’s forces.
Euro-Med urged the international community “to ensure the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, including essential food and non-food items, in order to address the territory’s health and environmental disaster in an immediate, safe and effective manner.”
The organization’s report came after the Gaza media office decried the use of starvation as a tool by the United States and Israel to achieve their political goals in Gaza despite the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the besieged territory.
“We condemn the inhumane crime of starvation used by the occupation and the American administration in a gruesome manner to achieve political goals,” it said in a statement last Monday.
According to the statement, thousands of sick and wounded people have no access to food or medicine amid the continued closure of Gaza’s crossings by Israeli forces.
“The situation in the Gaza Strip is becoming increasingly catastrophic and difficult, with the humanitarian crisis significantly worsening, especially for children, the sick, and the wounded who lack food and treatment.”
Earlier, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, had said in a separate statement that more than 50,000 children in Gaza require immediate medical treatment for acute malnutrition.
India supplied Israel with arms amid war on Gaza
MEMO | June 24, 2024
India has reportedly provided Israel with advanced Hermes 900 drones as well as other weaponry manufactured in the city of Hyderabad, Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on Sunday.
The report said the factory, established by Israel to supply these drones to the Indian military, converted 20 of them specifically for the Israeli army due to the shortage created during the war back in February.
The factory, a joint venture between the Israeli defence company, Elbit Systems, and the Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani’s consortium, is the first in the world to produce these drones outside of Israel.
This dramatic decision was likely approved by the highest officials in India, likely due to Israel being one of its main arms suppliers to the country.
The move joins other reports indicating India has supplied Israel with artillery shells and weapons since the start of the war. The strategic partnership between the countries has proven highly beneficial for Israel, according to the Israeli paper.
Plan to establish US Marine regiment in Guam ‘to escalate camp confrontation, stir up regional tensions’
Global Times | June 23, 2024
The US Marines plan to deploy to Guam a littoral regiment capable of a flexible and rapid response in a “few years,” media revealed on Saturday, which Chinese observers said is aimed at preparing for great power competition, blatantly exposing the US’s combat intentions against China.
On Saturday, Japanese media outlet Kyodo News reported that General Eric Smith, commandant of the US Marine Corps, told a press conference in Washington that the Marine Littoral Regiment is “designed as a counter to PRC aggression,” to protect Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.
Smith said the regiment, due to be based on Guam, “will have responsibility to rapidly deploy inside the first island chain into the Philippines in order to spread the battlespace out and to protect those strategic lines of communication that emanate from Japan, back to the Philippines, back to Hawaii.”
The island chain refers to an area that includes Japan as well as the island of Taiwan and the northwest Philippines.
In the event of potential conflicts with China, such as China advancing its cause of national reunification, or conflicts erupting between China and the Philippines or Japan over territorial disputes, the US may use these deployments to strike against China, Chinese observers noted.
“This demonstrates the US’ relentless preparation to compete with China, with a clear Cold War mentality,” Zhang Junshe, a Chinese military expert, told the Global Times on Sunday.
The plan to establish a littoral regiment in Guam again demonstrated that the US is engaging in camp confrontation, seeking to rally countries like Japan and the Philippines, as well as to strengthen its control over these allies through military deployments and cooperation, enticing them to join the US’ chariot and making these countries work for its anti-China strategy, Zhang said.
This will undoubtedly add fuel to the fire and stir up regional tensions, Zhang warned, noting that the US wants to benefit from the chaos, such as selling more military equipment.
Kyodo reported that the new regiment in Guam will be the third of its kind that is capable of long-range detection and engagement using mobile missile batteries, as well as deploying small groups of marines to remote islands. The first unit was activated in March 2022 on Marine Corps Base Hawaii and the second was set up in Okinawa in November last year.
This exposed the US attempt to adopt a strategy of dispersion of its military forces, as the commandant of the US Marine Corps confirmed that the relocation of US Marines from Okinawa to Guam will begin in December.
Some observers believe that the US military forces’ shift from Okinawa to Guam is a strategic retreat, indicating a lack of security in Okinawa.
But Zhang sees it differently.
“Strategically, the US military is not retreating from Okinawa; it may withdraw its forces, but some weapons and firepower will remain in place. On the one hand, the US is instigating conflicts, while on the other hand, it does not want its forces to suffer losses. Therefore, it is pushing countries like the Philippines and Japan to be firmly tied to its warship as cannon fodder,” Zhang remarked.
Zhang also revealed the ongoing competition between the US Army and the Marine Corps for roles, funds and functions. He noted that the deployment of these assets is not actually the Marine Corps’ expertise, but should instead be a focus of the US Army.
The US Marine Corps primarily focuses on amphibious operations, but now there is a need for the corps to undergo a tactical transformation toward littoral operations, emphasizing land-sea integration. This in itself will bring about significant changes to the Marine Corps’ functions, which presents a considerable challenge, said another Chinese military expert, who requested anonymity.
If the Marine Corps insists on transformation, these disputes with the US Army will intensify, making the regiment’s implementation more challenging, some military experts warned. They believe that in reality, it is impractical for the regiment to target China.
EU to bypass Hungarian veto on tapping Russian assets – FT
RT | June 24, 2024
The European Union has developed a scheme to use profits from frozen Russian assets to secure a $50 billion loan for Ukraine, which will be used to purchase arms, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell and other sources. The loophole effectively bypasses Hungary’s opposition to legislation that would have allowed the EU to hand over interest accrued on Russian funds to Ukraine.
In an interview with the FT, Borrell said that since Budapest had opposed an EU agreement to transfer revenue to Ukraine, it “should not be part of the decision to use this money.” He added that the bloc’s workaround was “sophisticated as every legal decision, but it flies.”
The West froze around $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets when the Ukraine conflict escalated, trapping around $280 billion in the EU.
Earlier this year, Brussels proposed seizing the interest earned on the assets to acquire weapons for Ukraine. The suggestion faced resistance from Hungary, a vocal critic of the West’s approach to the Ukraine conflict, particularly its arms shipments to Kiev.
Under the US-led initiative, proceeds generated by Russia’s frozen assets from next year will be used to pay off the loan.
The legal loophole allowing the EU to tap Russian assets is likely to suffice in guaranteeing the payout of the loan, the outlet said, citing officials familiar with the matter.
However, Budapest can still block an EU decision to extend sanctions on Russian funds, which has to be renewed every six months by the bloc’s 27 members, the officials added.
To placate Hungary, the EU proposed a deal under which its share of the bloc’s funds would not be used to purchase weapons for Ukraine in exchange for not vetoing other members transferring the revenue to Kiev, according to Borrell.
“We have offered Hungary: your money will not be used to support Ukraine in any means. Not just lethal, but on anything,” Borrell said. The proposal, however, has been rejected by Budapest.
Moscow has denounced the decision to transfer profits from its assets to Ukraine as a blatant and illegal “expropriation.”
Pentagon has ‘nothing to say’ about strike on Crimean beach with US-supplied weapons
RT | June 24, 2024
The Pentagon has refused to comment on the deadly Ukrainian cluster munition attack on a crowded beach in Sevastopol, Russia on Sunday, RIA Novosti has reported. The Ukrainian attack carried out with US-supplied ATACMS missiles killed at least four people, among them two children, and injured 151, according to local officials.
Four missiles were intercepted by air defenses, while a fifth deviated from its trajectory and detonated its cluster warhead over the busy Black Sea beach, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
When RIA asked the Pentagon about the use of US supplied weapons in the strike on Sunday, an official replied, “we have seen the reports and have nothing to say.”
Moscow has placed the blame primarily with Washington, accusing it of enabling the “premeditated terrorist missile attack.” The targets for these US-provided missiles are assigned to Ukrainian troops by American specialists, based on their own intelligence data, the Defense Ministry stated.
According to data from the flight tracker Flightradar, a US RQ-4B Global Hawk reconnaissance drone was patrolling in the Black Sea south of Crimea during the Ukrainian missile strike.
The number of people injured in the strike stood at 151 as of Sunday night, according to Sevastopol’s governor, Mikhail Razvozhaev. A joint team of specialists from the Health Ministry’s Federal Center for Disaster Medicine arrived in the city to work with the victims, he wrote early Monday.
Kiev deliberately chooses mass gatherings of people as targets, both out of hatred and to sow panic, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said following the attack. The day of the Holy Trinity holiday was picked deliberately, she claimed.
Ukraine has previously targeted the Crimean Peninsula with US-provided ATACMS missiles. In May, ten ATACMS were shot down on a trajectory aimed at the strategic Crimean Bridge, Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov said at the time.
Max Blumenthal: ‘TARGETED FOR EXPOSING ISRAEL’S LIES’- The Washington Post Attacks The Grayzone
Afshin Rattansi’s Going Underground | June 21, 2024
Catching Up To Germany, The “Climate Leader”
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | June 15, 2024
Here in New York, our leaders fancy us to be the “climate leader.” After all, our legislature has enacted the “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act” of 2019, setting out the most aggressive mandatory emissions-reduction targets of all the U.S. states. Allegedly, 70% of our electricity will come from “renewables” by 2030. Nobody can top us!
But can we really catch up to Germany? Germany was in the “climate leadership” game before almost anybody else had even heard of it. It was all the way back in 1990 that Germany adopted its first emissions-reduction target — 25 to 30 percent fewer CO₂ emissions by 2005, compared to 1987 levels. In 2000, while New York was still in its climate diapers, Germany passed its Renewable Energy Act, granting large subsidies for the development of wind farms. In 2010 Germany adopted its “Energiewende” legislation with mandatory emissions-reductions targets of 80-95% by 2050. All along, the country has been on a crash program to build wind turbines and solar panels for well over 30 years.
So sorry, New York. Germany is the true “climate leader.” Perhaps we should check in on how it is going over there.
In a piece on January 3, Reuters provided the statistics from Germany for the most recent full year, 2023. The headline is “Renewable energy’s share on German power grids reaches 55% in 2023.”
The share of renewables on Germany’s power grids rose by 6.6 percentage points to 55% of the total last year, the sector’s regulator said on Wednesday, as Europe’s largest economy moves closer to its 2030 target. . . [of] 80% of its [electricity generation].
The achievement elicited some self-congratulatory happy talk from Environment Minister (and Green Party member) Robert Habeck:
“We have broken the 50% mark for renewables for the first time,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck said in a statement. “Our measures to simplify planning and approvals are starting to take effect.”
Read a little farther, though, and you find out that only 43.2% of the 55% came from wind and solar generators. Most of the rest (8.4%) came from “biomass,” otherwise known as wood chips imported from the U.S. — probably not what you were thinking of as the supposedly emissions-free “renewables.” (The remaining 3+% consists of hydro and some unspecified “other renewables.”).
Perhaps you are wondering, despite Habeck’s happy talk, how can it be that after 30+ years of a crash program, with enormous subsidies, to build wind and solar generators to provide electricity, Germany is only up to getting 43% of its electricity from those sources? Is there maybe some problem? If you are wondering about those things, you will not find the answer here.
And then there’s the question of whether a huge build-out of wind and solar electricity generation might have any collateral consequences for a modern industrial economy. For example, might wind and solar generation be more expensive than electricity generation by fossil fuels? Here are the latest consumer electricity price data from Eurostat, covering the second half of 2023. Key quote:
For household consumers in the EU (defined for the purpose of this article as medium-sized consumers with an annual consumption between 2 500 Kilowatt hours (KWh) and 5 000 KWh), electricity prices in the second half of 2023 were highest in Germany (€0.4020 per KWh), Ireland (€0.3794 per KWh), Belgium (€0.3778 per KWh) and Denmark (€0.3554 per KWh).
Somehow, great “climate leader” Germany has the very highest consumer electricity prices in all the EU. The 40.2 euro cents per kWh is equivalent to 43 U.S. cents at the recent exchange rate of 1.07. The latest data from the U.S. EIA gives the average U.S. consumer electricity price as 16.68 cents per kWh for March 2024. That makes the German electricity price more than two and a half times the U.S. price.
Aren’t wind and solar generation supposed to be cheaper than fossil fuels? Somehow that doesn’t seem to be working out. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that no matter how much wind and solar you build, you can’t get rid of any of the fossil fuel generators, because you need them all for backup of intermittency. So you end up paying for two redundant systems.
Then there is the effect of high energy prices on economic growth. How’s that going in Germany? Here’s a February 23 report from Euronews, with the statistics from Germany for the 2023 year:
Year-on-year GDP growth was -0.2% in Q4 2023, a notch better than Q3 2023’s -0.3% and also in line with market expectations. For the full year 2023, Germany’s GDP shrank 0.3%.
U.S. GDP growth for 2023 was reported as 2.5% by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
A guy named Theodor Weimer, head of the Deutsche Börse, gave a speech in April to a group of Bavarian business leaders. The speech became public when it was released on YouTube last week, and it was then covered by the Telegraph. Key quote:
The coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz was, [Weimer] argued, a “catastrophe,” Germany was “economically on the way to becoming a developing country” and “one thing is clear: our reputation in the world has never been so bad.”
And finally, in the European elections just held last week, the German Green Party has been reported one of the biggest losers, going from 21 seats to just 12, a loss of 9, or almost half of the prior total.
Well, maybe being the “climate leader” is not so great after all. At least, maybe, the people are starting to catch on. Here in New York, it will take a while longer.
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Book Review & Summary
Calling of an Angel: The True Story of Rene Caisse and an Indian Herbal Medicine Called Essiac (1988)
Dr. Gary L. Glum – 30 Q&As – Book Review & Summary
Lies are Unbekoming | October 17, 2026
On June 10, 1975, Dr. Chester Stock, a vice president at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, wrote to a Canadian nurse named Rene Caisse: “Enclosed are test data in two experiments indicating some regressions in sarcoma 180 of mice treated with Essiac.” The sentence sat in a letter from one of the world’s largest private cancer research centers, concerning an herbal tea an elderly English woman had learned from an Ojibwa medicine man at a northern Ontario mining camp in the 1890s. The tests were terminated the following year after Sloan-Kettering admitted, in sworn affidavit three years later, that they had prepared the injectable solution improperly from the dried material supplied — freezing and thawing the herb rather than boiling it as Rene had instructed. By the time Calling of an Angel was published in 1988, Rene Caisse had been dead for a decade, having treated thousands of cancer patients across fifty-six years in her Bracebridge, Ontario kitchen, never charging a fee, and refusing every offer — from Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the National Cancer Institute, Merck, Parke Davis, and private corporations dangling contracts up to $1 million — to release her formula before the medical establishment admitted her remedy had merit. … continue
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- South Korean Assistance to the U.S. in the War with Iran: Between Allied Duty and National Interests
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- Inside Bill C-22, Canada’s Patriot Act.
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- Tucker Carlson exposes Israeli Lies about the Oct 7th attack, Charlie Kirk, and the U.S.
- Israel has detained thousands of Palestinian children since Oct 7th – over half spent time in solitary, many uncharged
- Israeli Analysis: Is Netanyahu Planning an ‘October Surprise’ Attack Before Israel’s Election?
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- Words Have Changed, Occupation Continues: The Reality of the Gaza Ceasefire
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- Israel keeps Palestinians struggling just to survive–Daily Update
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- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
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- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
