Insurance Industry Execs ‘Alarmed’ by Surge in Deaths Among Young People — But Stop Short of Blaming COVID Shots
By Mike Capuzzo | The Defender | November 6, 2023
Executives at the largest insurance companies in the United States are alarmed that teenagers, young and white-collar Americans in the prime of life are inexplicably dying at a record pace, causing a “monumental outflow” of death claims and drag on profits that is shaking the industry and causing some to take a fresh look at the problem.
According to an Oct. 26 report in InsuranceNewsNet, U.S. insurance companies expected higher-than-normal payouts from excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Insurers saw death benefits rise 15.4% in 2020, the biggest one-year increase since the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, followed by a record $100.28 billion — nearly double the historic norm — in total death benefits paid out by the industry in 2021.
“The numbers were naturally forecasted to climb during the pandemic, but some industry and health authorities are concerned the rates haven’t greatly diminished as COVID infection rates have declined,” InsuranceNewsNet reported.
According to InsuranceNewsNet, insurers are especially concerned by data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that show “mortality rates alarmingly rising for different categories,” including younger adult mortality rates that are up more than 20% above historic norms in 2023.
The CDC numbers reported in August show the death rate for Americans ages 15-45 rose 20-24% above normal in 2020, and soared in 2021, to a nearly 30% death increase for 15-year-olds and a more than 45% increase for 45-year-olds.
Surge in excess deaths ‘caught carriers off guard’
Most troubling to insurers, CDC data reported in August showed that Americans in the period January-May 2023 were still dying at abnormally high rates with the pandemic long over. Mortality rates were 25% higher than normal among 15- to 19-year-olds and 20% higher among 45-year-olds considered in the prime of life.
Even twenty-somethings were dying at a rate nearly 15% above normal and thirty-somethings at a pace 20% higher than usual, the CDC data show.
Samantha Chow, global leader for Life, Annuity and Benefits Sector at Capgemini, a large, multinational Paris-based consulting company, told InsuranceNewsNet, “The surge in excess deaths caught carriers off guard” and the issue demands urgent attention by the industry.
The issue is, “Can the industry handle a sudden spike in claims?” She added, “The real concern for life insurers lies in preparing for an unexpected wave of death claims and the impact on their assets under management.”
“Do they have enough reserves to weather these outflows, given the excess deaths? It’s not just about death or health,” Chow said. “It is about the industry’s ability and readiness to manage this monumental outflow.”
The excess deaths and the record drag on insurance company revenue and the predictive chaos in actuarial tables they represent, alarmed the Society of Actuaries (SOA), the world’s largest professional actuarial organization.
Excess mortality is defined as excess deaths in a given population and time period above the expected number.
The SOA has conducted ongoing research since 2021 to gather “a high-level view of U.S. Group Term Life Insurance mortality results during the COVID-19 pandemic” compared to prior baseline results.
The SOA Research Institute studied more than 2.7 million claims and over $120 billion in earned premiums reported by “20 of the top 21 U.S. group term life insurers” in the U.S., representing approximately 90% of the employer-based group term life insurance industry.
In an August 2022 poll among its more than 30,000 members worldwide, the SOA found that 85% of members thought excess mortality rates would continue to 2025. In August this year, the same poll found 79% believed excess mortality rates will continue through 2026.
Life insurance executives and actuaries told InsuranceNewsNet, “The numbers are alarming and could continue to drag earnings and surge death claims for years to come.”
Society of Actuaries: no connection between historic death rates and COVID shots
Yet in its latest report issued in May, the SOA Research Institute found no connection between the historic U.S. death rates and insurance payouts starting in 2021 and COVID-19 vaccine mandates that rolled out the same year.
Chow blamed the excess deaths and claims on “the ripples of COVID-19 and its varying impacts, leading to higher rates of depression, suicide, and increased substance abuse.”
Other insurance executives told The Wall Street Journal they blamed “delays in medical care as a result of lockdowns in 2020, and then, later, people’s fears of seeking out treatment and trouble lining up appointments” for a surprising surge in non-COVID-19 death claims, especially heart and circulatory issues and neurological disorders.
But Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), who treats long COVID and vaccine-injured patients in his practice, called on insurance companies to work with media and governments and investigate the powerful evidence that countless deaths and disabilities are temporally linked to the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and read the exploding science that pinpoints mRNA technology lethality.
In an interview with The Defender, Kory cited the more than 1 million COVID-19 vaccine-linked injuries, disabilities and more than 30,000 deaths reported by doctors, nurses and others to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
VAERS, run by the CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is the government’s “early warning system” to detect vaccine harms.
Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the most highly published cardiologists in the world, pointed to a study of deaths after vaccination with detailed autopsies in Heidelberg, Germany. “Of 35 fatalities within 20 days of injection, 10 were ruled out as clearly not due to the vaccine (eg drug overdose). The remaining 25 (71%) had final diagnoses consistent with a vaccine injury syndrome including myocardial infarction, worsening heart failure, vascular aneurysm, pulmonary embolism, fatal stroke, and vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia,” McCullough wrote.
He also cited his own systematic review of “all autopsy studies that include COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis as a possible cause of death” that found that “all 28 deaths were causally linked to COVID-19 vaccination by independent adjudication.”
Kory said a large and expanding volume of scientific literature has described the pathogenicity of the artificial spike protein, unleashed by the mRNA injection into the body.
“We know from research on autopsy series that among those who died from the vaccine, spike protein was disseminated to all organs and vessels of the body,” he told The Defender.
“Spike-induced damage occurs by numerous mechanisms, including necrosis of vessel walls leading to things like aortic dissection, inflammation of important organs, including the heart and brain causing myocarditis and cognitive deficits respectively,” Kory said.
He also also cited “fibrinoid aggregates circulating in the blood causing poor perfusion in the microcirculation as well as hypercoagulability in the blood causing strokes and heart attacks, immunosuppression causing increased risk of infectious illnesses, and/or reactivation of latent viruses.”
Edward Dowd, the former BlackRock fund manager who oversaw $14 billion in assets on Wall Street for the largest asset manager in the world, exposed the excess-death crisis in insurance-industry data in his December 2022 book, “‘Cause Unknown’: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022.”
Dowd told The Defender that according to insiders at one of the biggest insurance companies in the U.S., “People in the industry know what’s going on but nobody at the top” is yet prepared to recognize it. “The CEOs and CFOs don’t believe it’s the vaccine. It’s not that these people are evil. They’re not separating facts from emotion.”
Dowd added:
“It’s not just that there’s a vast conspiracy. There was this fear that generated a destruction of critical thinking. My ethics professor at Indiana University said you can’t rationalize facts with someone whose position is based on emotion and ego.”
‘We don’t have proof’ yet — but data are ‘persuasive’
In his book, Dowd reported on insurance industry research in 2016, which found that group life policyholders, whose health insurance is covered by Fortune 500 companies and tend to be younger and well-educated, were the healthiest Americans, dying at one-third the rate of the general U.S. population. The trend of greater white-collar health continued through 2020.
But in 2021, after the COVID-19 jabs were mandated across the Fortune 500, the trend flipped. Ages 25-64 of the group life policyholders suddenly experienced 40% excess mortality, compared to 32% in the general population.
Disabilities also soared after the COVID-19 shots, from an annual U.S. baseline of 29-30 million disabled to 33.2 million.
Dowd, who continues to research excess deaths and disabilities for his Humanity Projects, told The Defender his new research, drawn from U.K. government statistics, shows deaths of schoolchildren went down in the U.K. in 2020 during the pandemic because the leading cause of death for children ages 1-14 is accidents.
With lockdowns and school closures, “Deaths went down. But then they started to go up again in 2021, and they’ve reached a new high in 2023 of 20%” above normal, he said.
Dowd told Russel Brand that such a huge jump in childhood deaths is “a six-standard deviation from the norm. A standard deviation is basically a probability from normal. It’s very unlikely.”
A five-standard statistical deviation is so remarkably far outside the norm it “would be the equivalent of a 7-foot giant being born, or many of them,” he said. “This is a six-standard deviation.”
Down said he believes the COVID-19 vaccines are causing widespread, otherwise inexplicable, excess deaths. “We don’t have proof. It’s our thesis,” he said. But “if you have a brain in your head,” the data are persuasive, he said. “Obviously I think it’s the vaccines.”
Mathew Crawford, a Texas-based statistician and finance specialist who spent years analyzing COVID-19 data for his Substack newsletter, told The Defender the insurance industry has been in denial over growing evidence for vaccine-induced excess deaths for more than a year.
In March 2022, he said, the CEO of German health insurance giant BKK ProVita presented evidence that the vaccines had already killed tens of thousands of Germans. He was fired the next day, as the story vanished from the news.
In June 2022, Lincoln National reported a 163% increase in death benefits paid out under its group life insurance policies in 2021.
In August 2022, Reinsurance Group of America’s (RGA’s) financial reports showed massive 2021 losses downplayed by the report authors, “plus plans for new accounting methods that we should all be worried are designed to sweep iatrogenocide under the rug,” Crawford said.
The SOA Research Institute report that claims to exonerate the COVID-19 vaccines in excess deaths actually does the opposite, Crawford said. Among other evidence, he said, it “shows group life insureds — particularly of working age — are seeing even more excess mortality than the larger U.S. population,” and “the sharp numbers during Q3 2021 coincide with vaccine mandates for working age individuals.”
The ‘worm is turning’
But Dowd said he believes “the worm is turning” on denial of vaccine harms.
He said he was optimistic that the work of Josh Stirling, founder of the Insurance Collaboration to Save Lives, a nonprofit that aims to reduce mortality by providing life insurers with tests to screen policyholders for health problems, shows a “big tent” is forming in the industry to tackle the problem.
“I think the truth is coming out,” Dowd said. “The stocks of Pfizer and Moderna continue to go lower. More and more people are getting disabled and injured over time.”
He cited the Rasmussen poll released Nov. 2 that found 24% of Americans “believe someone they know died from COVID-19 vaccine side effects, and even more say they might be willing to become plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against vaccine makers.”
The poll also found “There are almost no political differences on these questions,” said Dr. Robert Malone. “For example, 25% of Republicans say they know someone personally who died from side effects of COVID-19 vaccine, as do 24% of Democrats and those not affiliated with either major party. This is important – because this shows it is not a ‘tribal’ response. People from all walks of life are waking up.”
Kory said insurance executives need to ask themselves, What explains “the sudden, unprecedented rise in life insurance claims in the 3rd quarter of 2021 among the healthiest sector of society?”
Why were “working age, white collar Americans with group life insurance policies (i.e. largely Fortune 500 corporate employees)” suddenly dying at rates significantly higher than before?
“What happened in the white-collar workplace at that time?” he asked.
Kory said the answer is clear:
“I will give you the only possibilities that could explain such a sudden rise: a series of terrorist attacks, wartime mobilization, or the proliferation of corporate vaccine mandates. As far as I can remember, only one of those events actually took place.”
Kory and investigative reporter Mary Beth Pfeiffer in October published an op-ed in The Washington Examiner, “What’s behind the spike in deaths among younger, working people?” and another, in August, in USA Today titled, “More young Americans are dying — and it’s not COVID. Why aren’t we searching for answers?”
“Deaths among young Americans documented in employee life insurance claims should alone set off alarms,” they wrote in USA Today. “Week in, week out, this unnatural loss of life is on the scale of a war or terrorist event.”
“Life insurance data show a massive spike in excess deaths among younger, working-age people that began in 2021, even as COVID-19 deaths decreased, and continues today,” they wrote in The Examiner. “So far, good explanations are elusive. A concerted, bipartisan investigation should explore this threat to America’s economic future and recommend a course of action.
5 takeaways from mortality report
If the worm is turning, it’s not evident in major media or government policy.
Associated Press fact-checkers rated as “false” Kory’s claim that “an increase in death benefits paid out by life insurance providers in the third quarter of 2021 in the U.S. provides evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines, which became widely available in 2021, led to a spike in deaths.”
The AP said the vaccines are proven safe and effective and “insurance industry leaders say the delta variant of the coronavirus and deferred medical care during the pandemic likely contributed to the increase in deaths.”
The CDC says there is no evidence that excess deaths are linked to vaccines. “These vaccines are safe and effective and have undergone the most extensive safety monitoring in U.S. history,” a CDC public affairs specialist said.
The AP reported that death after vaccination remains extremely rare, dismissing as not causally linked to the vaccines the unprecedented toll of deaths and injuries reported to VAERS.
Kory cited five takeaways that challenge that assumption from the mortality report on excess U.S. deaths by the SOA Research Institute:
- Among working people 35-44 years old, “a stunning 34% more died than expected in the last quarter of 2022, with above-average rates in other working-age groups, too,” Kory said, quoting data from the SOA Research Institute report. “COVID-19 claims do not fully explain the increase,” the SOA report noted.
- From 2020 through 2022, there were more excess deaths proportionally among white-collar than blue-collar workers: 19% versus 14% above normal. The disparity nearly doubled in the fourth quarter of 2022, U.S. actuaries reported.
- The executive of a large Indiana life insurance company was clearly troubled by what he said was a 40% increase in the third quarter of 2021 in those ages 18-64. “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business — not just at OneAmerica,” CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference in January 2022. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”
- Excess deaths are a global phenomenon. The U.K. also saw “more excess deaths in the second half of 2022 than in the second half of any year since 2010,” according to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. In the first quarter of 2023, deaths among people 20-44 years old were akin to “the same period in 2021, the worst pandemic year for that age group, U.K. actuaries reported. In Australia, 12% more people died than expected in 2022, according to that nation’s Actuaries Institute. A third of the excess was non-COVID deaths, a figure the institute called “extraordinarily high.”
- Death rates are lower than in 2020 and 2021, but they are far from normal. In the year ending April 30, 2023 — 14 months after the last of several pandemic waves in the U.S. — at least 104,000 more Americans died than expected, according to Our World in Data. In that period, 52,427 excess deaths were reported in the U.K., 81,028 in Germany, 17,731 in France, 10,418 in the Netherlands, and 2,640 in Ireland.
Kory said the major media silence on the issue and the SOA’s “strong desire to not be drawn into any debates regarding” COVID vaccine lethality,” despite evidence unearthed by the society’s research, is why he and Pfeiffer wrote the USA Today op-ed in the first place.
“Unsurprisingly,” Kory said, “the SOA does not attempt to interpret or even specifically mention the timing, suddenness, and magnitude of the rises in death claims of young, white-collar workers.”
“I would agree that it is not their job to do this, so the rest of us will,” he said. The way forward is “simply to ask if there were any other events preceding and during those massive spikes that could explain the rises. I can find no other rational explanation than the roll-out of vaccine mandates as the cause.”
Mike Capuzzo is the managing editor of The Defender. He is a former prize-winning reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Miami Herald, a science writer, and a regional magazine founding editor and publisher who has won more than 200 journalism awards as a writer, editor and publisher.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
US, Israel to open second front in Lebanon
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | NOVEMBER 6, 2023
The announcement late Sunday night by the US Central Command [CENTCOM] headquartered in Doha about the arrival of an Ohio-class American nuclear submarine in its “area of responsibility” presages a significant escalation of the situation around the Palestine-Israel conflict.
It is very rare that the use of these submarines is publicised. CENTCOM provided no additional details but it posted an image that showed an Ohio-class submarine in Egypt’s Suez Canal. Interestingly, CENTCOM also separately shared an image of a nuclear-capable B-1 bomber operating in the Middle East.
Taken together, these US deployments, coming on top of the formidable presence of two aircraft carriers and warships hundreds of advanced jet fighters, are with an eye on “the other side of the equation,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken quaintly described Hamas, Hezbullah, and Iran during his latest visit to Tel Aviv on Friday.
In a related development, perhaps, the CIA director, William Burns arrived in Israel on Sunday for urgent consultations. The New York Times reported that the US is “looking to expand its intelligence sharing with Israel.”
Arguably, the most charitable explanation for the deployment of a US nuclear submarine, which form part of the Pentagon’s “nuclear triad”, near the war zone is that the Biden Administration is preparing for an Israeli escalation into Lebanon to draw out Hezbollah, which may in turn trigger an Iranian reaction.
In his speech on Friday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrullah seemed to anticipate precisely such a turn of events when he warned the US explicitly of consequences that couldn’t be any different from the catastrophic American involvement in Lebanon’s civil war in the early 1980s. Ironically, this is also the 40th anniversary year of the suicide bombing of the barracks housing US forces in Beirut International Airport in October 1983 in which 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers were killed forcing a US withdrawal from Lebanon.
Clearly, the locus of the US strategy in the present Middle situation may be shifting from diplomacy, which has lost traction. Blinken’s desperate attempts to address the mounting international criticism of Israel’s horrific war crimes by diverting attention to a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting has been unceremoniously shot down by Netanyahu.
The point is, after bombarding Gaza and its people with artillery and bombs, the Israeli army moved in on Friday. So far, it has reportedly advanced to the outskirts of Gaza City but not entered the Hamas stronghold. Fierce urban fighting is expected when it does.
Equally, the Biden administration’s clumsy attempt to promote a vague outline for a post-war Gaza that might include a combination of a revitalised Palestinian Authority, a peacekeeping force, etc. has been met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm at Blinken’s meeting in the weekend in Amman with the Arab foreign ministers – from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates – who instead demanded an immediate ceasefire, while Blinken said the US would not push for one.
Blinken travelled to Ramallah from Amman where the head of the Palestine Authority Mahmoud Abbas apparently gave him short shrift saying that the PA would only be ready to shoulder full responsibility for the Gaza Strip in the framework of a “comprehensive political solution” that would include the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — and, furthermore, that security and peace can only be achieved by ending the occupation of the territories of the “State of Palestine,” and by recognising East Jerusalem as its capital. The meeting lasted for less than an hour and ended without public statements.
Meanwhile, China and the UAE (by the way, Israel’s Abraham Accords partner) have since called for a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council in another attempt to seek an immediate ceasefire, which the Biden Administration will certainly oppose. Suffice to say, the Biden Administration feels boxed in and the only way out is for something to give way through the exercise of coercive means.
The US is watching with frustration as new regional equations are appearing among Muslim nations. The foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia held another phone conversation today. The OIC later announced that an extraordinary summit will be held in Riyadh on November 12 at the request of the current chairman, Saudi Arabia, to discuss Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian people.
As the death toll in Gaza crosses 10,000, feelings are indeed running high in the Muslim world. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said today that “all the evidence and indications show the direct involvement of the Americans in running the war” in Gaza. Khamenei added that as the war goes on, the reasons behind the US’s direct role would become more explicit.
The Fars News Agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, also disclosed that Khamenei held a “recent meeting in Tehran” with the Head of Hamas political bureau Ismail Haniyeh where he told the latter that Tehran’s support for the resistance groups is its “permanent policy.”
Evidently, Tehran no longer sees a problem in acknowledging its dealings with the resistance groups. This is a paradigm shift indicative of the shift in the power dynamic, which the US and Israel seem to have decided to counter through use of force where diplomacy failed to make headway to isolate Iran.
The Chief of the Israeli General Staff, Herzi Halevi, said on Sunday during a meeting in the Northern Command, “We are ready to strike in the north at any moment. We understand that it can happen… We have a clear goal of restoring a significantly better security situation at the borders [with Lebanon], not only in the Gaza Strip.”
No power on earth can stop Israel in its tracks now. Its existence is inextricably linked to this war which will ensure abiding US commitment to its security as a key template of American global strategies for the foreseeable future. Therefore, Israel’s best chance of survival lies in expanding the scope of the war in Gaza into Lebanon — and possibly even into Syria — shoulder to shoulder with the Americans.
There is no question that the location of the US nuclear submarine to the east of Suez is an attempt to intimidate Iran from intervening, as Israel, with US backing, proceed to open a second front. The Israeli authorities have announced evacuation of people from settlements located in a zone up to five kms from the border with Lebanon.
A prolonged war of indeterminate timeline is set to begin in the Middle East. The Middle East that emerged after World War II is breaking loose and drifting away into the chronicles of history. As the call of the jihad begins, there is no knowing how the 80-year old American president will respond.
No, this won’t turn into a world war. It will be fought in the Middle East itself, but its outcome will decisively impact the making of a new world order.
Israeli Finance Minister calls for ban on Palestinians harvesting olives in occupied West Bank
MEMO | November 6, 2023
Israel’s extreme far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Galant to prohibit Palestinians in the West Bank from harvesting their olive crop. According to Smotrich, Israel needs to establish “sterile security zones” with no Palestinian presence around settlements and settler-only roads. The aim is to prevent Palestinian farmers from having access to their olive groves in the occupied territory.
The Zionist fanatic also criticised what he called, without a hint of irony, “the continued neglect of the security of the settlers in Judea and Samaria” and claimed that security has been undermined severely since the 7 October attack in the south of the occupation state.
“The concept of security must be shaken, emphasising the need to create sterile security zones around the settlements and roads and to prevent Arabs [sic] from entering them, including for harvesting,” said Smotrich. “The writing is on the wall and I am not ready to be a part of it. I will not agree to additional blood under my watch due to insistence on maintaining distorted perceptions.”
While the world’s attention has focused on the Israeli bombardment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, illegal Jewish settlers have been attacking Palestinians and their properties in the occupied West Bank. Most attacks take place while the armed settlers are protected by the Israeli army. All of Israel’s settlements and the settlers who live in them are illegal under international law.
According to the Palestinian Authority-affiliated Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, since 7 October settlers have carried out at least 280 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, utilising terrorist tactics against the indigenous population and their farms and properties.
The Israeli army has also killed 151 Palestinians in the occupied territory in the same period, and arrested 2,080 others. The death toll in Gaza has now passed the 10,000 mark. Most of those killed were children and women.
Israeli attack on south Lebanon kills three children, Hezbollah hits back
The Cradle | November 6, 2023
An Israeli drone strike on a civilian car in the village of Ainata in southern Lebanon on the evening of 5 November left four civilians dead – three of them children.
The precision munition strike was launched from a drone towards the car, reported Al-Mayadeen’s correspondent.
A woman and her three grandchildren were killed in the attack, and the mother of the children was seriously injured and is currently in critical condition.
The three girls, aged 10, 12, and 14, were killed instantly.
Earlier the same day, Israeli forces targeted two ambulances in Wadi al-Dabaa, resulting in the injury of four paramedics.
A spokesman for the Israeli army claimed in a statement that the targeted vehicle was “identified as a suspicious vehicle containing several terrorists” and that the event is currently “under review.”
In response to the targeting of civilians, Hezbollah launched grad rockets (Katyusha rockets) at the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, dealing direct damage in several areas and setting a car ablaze.
In a statement, the Lebanese resistance movement said that it “will never tolerate harm and assault on civilians, and its response will be firm and strong.”
Hezbollah lawmaker and parliament member Hassan Fadlallah clarified that “the enemy will pay for its crimes against civilians.”
According to the Kiryat Shmona spokesperson, the first wave launched from Lebanon consisted of 6 rockets, one of which caused damage to property.
The second wave also saw six rockets launched, all falling inside Kiryat Shmona. Three impacted houses, and the other three fell in the surrounding areas, also causing damage.
He added that electricity lines were also damaged.
This exchange comes two days after Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s speech addressing Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, during which he warned that if Israel targets civilians on Lebanese soil, the resistance movement will reciprocate the attacks against Israeli civilians.
Hezbollah and the Israeli army have been engaged in an ongoing exchange of fire on their shared border since 8 October – one day after the Palestinian resistance, led by Hamas, launched its offensive on the Israeli settlements of the Gaza Envelope.
These clashes have gradually increased in intensity as the Israeli army continues with its ground incursion into the Gaza Strip as well as its incessant bombing of the besieged enclave – which has killed nearly 10,000 Palestinians.
Iran FM says Tehran received new message from Washington on Gaza
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian
Press TV – November 6, 2023
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says Tehran has received a new message from Washington claiming that the US seeks a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, but they continue to support Israel’s genocide in the Palestinian territory in practice.
The minister, who was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a Monday meeting between Iranian and Iraqi heads of governments in Tehran, said, however, that the message did not correspond to what the US has done in practice in Gaza where it has supported the Israeli crimes against the civilians.
“The Americans … delivered a message to us in the past three days (claiming) that they are after ceasefire and have carried out efforts in this regard,” said Amir-Abdollahian, but “they, however, back mass killing and genocide” of people in Gaza.
“We hope that the US will soon change its policy and stop supporting the occupying party,” he said.
The US had sent similar messages to Iran, a country with influence over resistance groups in Palestine, since the Israeli aggression on Gaza started on October 7, according to statements by Amir-Abdollahian and other authorities.
Amir-Abdollahian also commented about reports suggesting that his US counterpart Antony Blinken had arrived in the Iraqi capital Baghdad earlier on Monday while wearing a bullet-proof vest out of fears that he could be targeted because of his support for the Israeli carnage in Gaza.
“This is the reality about the US role in the region,” said the diplomat.
Resistance groups in Iraq have launched attacks on US military bases in the Arab country in response to Washington’s offering of direct and open support for the Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Those groups and peers in other countries of the region have warned that such attacks on US interests could expand if Israel does not stop its brutal aggression against Gaza.
Gaza health authorities said on Monday that the number of people killed in 31 days of Israel attacks had exceeded 10,000 with children accounting for nearly half of the death toll.
What Message Does US Tomahawk-Carrying Submarine Send Amid Gaza War?
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 06.11.2023
An Ohio-class guided missile submarine arrived in the Middle East on Sunday, as per a social media post by the US Central Command.
The Ohio-class guided missile submarine (SSGN) – depicted entering the Suez Canal northeast of Cairo by the US Central Command – is one of the four US underwater craft of this type converted to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles rather than nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
Per the US press, each SSGN sub can carry 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles, which is 50% more than a US guided-missile destroyer and nearly four times what the US Navy’s newest attack submarines are equipped with.
The Tomahawk cruise missile can strike targets precisely from 1,000 miles away and has been used in combat more than 2,300 times by the US and its allies. Most recently, US Navy warships and subs fired 66 Tomahawk missiles at Syrian government facilities in 2018.
According to the US press, the heavily armed submarine sends “a message of deterrence” to Israel’s “regional adversaries, as the Biden administration “tries to avoid a broader conflict amid the Israel-Hamas war.”
The deployment of the submarine is triggering concerns, as per the DC-based think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The crux of the matter is that the US has already amassed a huge military force in the Middle East over the unfolding Gaza war.
The think tank particularly refers to:
· two aircraft carrier strike groups, with roughly 7,500 personnel on each;
· two guided-missile destroyers;
· nine air squadrons (deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea region);
· 4,000 troops dispatched to the region, with another 2,000 on standby, in addition to roughly 30,000 troops already stationed in the region.
These figures do not include “several dozen” commandos deployed to Israel in order to “actively help the Israelis to do a number of things,” as per Christopher P. Maier, an assistant secretary of defense.
On top of that there are US top military advisers on the ground in Israel to work out strategies to defeat Hamas together with the Israel Defense Forces.
“The United States is barreling toward another war in the Middle East,” Jon Hoffman, a policy analyst in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, wrote for RS on Monday. “The conflict between Israel and Hamas is rapidly escalating across the region and risks dragging the United States directly into the fray.”
Israeli Soldiers Detain German Journalists in West Bank
Sputnik – 06.11.2023
The Israeli military detained a film crew from German broadcaster ARD in the West Bank and threatened journalists with weapons, the Tagesschau broadcaster, part of the ARD media group, reported on Sunday.
The journalists were detained after they filmed violence against Palestinians by radical Jewish settlers, the report said, adding that ARD in Tel Aviv sees this as a clear attack on press freedom.
“Soldiers threatened us with guns and asked if we were Jews. Our colleague was called a traitor … Journalists who want to cover events taking place in the West Bank in the shadow of the war in the Gaza Strip are apparently not allowed to do so,” ARD correspondent Jan-Christoph Kitzler said.
The situation was resolved only an hour later, after the arrival of additional Israeli military and police forces, the report added. ARD in Tel Aviv promised to hire a lawyer to determine the legal consequences of the incident.
Christian Limpert, the head of ARD-Studios Tel Aviv, said it was the second such incident this week. “For us it is the second incident within a week. Our team has clearly identified itself as an accredited press representative and was far away from military security areas. We cannot accept the actions of the Israeli military,” he said.
I was tortured, evicted from home for my media, rights work: West Bank activist
By Syed Zafar Mehdi | Press TV | November 6, 2023
There is “an announced and official war” on the besieged Gaza Strip and “an unannounced and unofficial war” on the occupied West Bank, says a Palestinian human rights activist.
Issa Amro, a prominent human rights activist based in the occupied West Bank, in an interview with the Press TV website on Monday, said the Israeli military has laid crippling siege around the territory.
He said all checkpoints have been closed in the occupied West Bank, most of the roads have also been shut, and the majority of communities are not allowed to leave their respective areas.
The Israeli regime launched an indiscriminate aerial bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip early last month, which was followed by attacks and military raids in the occupied West Bank.
One more Palestinian man was killed by the Israeli army fire in the West Bank on Monday, taking the death toll to 154 since October 7, the Palestinian Authority-run health ministry said.
According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, at least 2,150 Palestinians have been detained in arbitrary military raids by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank in the past four weeks.
In the besieged Gaza Strip, the death toll has risen to over 9,500, most of them children and women.
Amro described the detention of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as “random and arbitrary”, saying over 2,000 people have been held under the controversial “administrative detention” policy.
The West Bank-based human rights activist who has been attacked by Israeli forces on multiple occasions said Israeli settlers dressed as soldiers have been “harassing” local Palestinians and carrying out “organized violence” towards Palestinians in different villages of the occupied region.
Israeli settlers, he maintained, have been on the rampage, warning Palestinian residents, attacking them, burning their houses, and beating them up despite any provocations.
In his village, Amro said, a strict lockdown has been imposed and local inhabitants are allowed to leave their homes only on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday “for one hour each to get food and return.”
“It is not a normal life, it’s a very very bad life, and it’s a really scary life,” he told the Press TV website, adding that he was ruthlessly beaten on October 7 “for ten hours continuously” and later evicted from his home as well.
“I returned home only yesterday (Sunday) after my lawyer intervened.”
On the relentless targeting of journalists in both the Gaza Strip and West Bank, Amro said journalists are not even allowed to film Israeli soldiers, cover their stories, or write anything on social media.
“Journalists here are afraid of their lives, about their freedom. Many journalists have been arrested in the West Bank in last month, they were beaten up and their cameras were broken.”
Amro is a prolific writer and contributes his articles to many reputed international publications.
He told the Press TV website that he is scared for his life, like other Palestinians, including journalists – “to be shot, to be arrested, to be tortured.”
“I was myself tortured (by the Israeli military) as I shot films and spoke to media on October 7. It was due to my journalism and human rights work,” he asserted.
Amro said the Israeli regime used the Hamas operation on October 7, ‘Al-Aqsa Storm’ operation’, “to announce a war, to end what they started in 1948, the Nakba, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”
“Without a real intervention of the international community and stopping the support for Israel, it will go on killing the civilians and targeting Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,” he remarked.
Thoughtcrime Arrests In Israel: “People Have Been Arrested For Saying Their Heart Was With The Children of Gaza”
It’s all following the algorithm—same as Canada, same as US—you MUST agree with your STATE
By Celia Farber | The Truth Barrier | November 5, 2023
“The police say that any slogans in favor of Gaza or against the war mean supporting terrorism… even if you say that you are, of course, against people being murdered,” Abeer Baker, a human rights lawyer representing some of the people who have been arrested, told CNN.
“The Israel Police said that as of October 25, it had arrested 110 people since the start of the war for allegedly inciting violence and terrorism, mostly on social media. Of these arrests, only 17 resulted in indictments. Most people were released without further charges, usually after a few days.
“Baker said the low number of indictments suggested that people were being arrested for making statements that are not illegal.
“People have been arrested for saying their heart was with the children in Gaza,” Baker told CNN, pointing to a widely-reported case of a comedian from northern Israel who was arrested after posting that phrase on his social media.
‘Not talking about the law’
“The Israel Police says it is acting under Israel’s Counter Terrorism Law. Article 24 of this legislation states that anyone who does anything to “empathize with a terror group” whether that’s by “publishing praises, support or encouraging, waving a flag, showing or publishing a symbol” can be arrested and jailed for up to three years.
“However, Adalah, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that advocates for Arab rights in Israel said in a statement that these arrests are arbitrary and target Palestinians only. It said that many are carried out with brutal force in the middle of the night, and without proper legal justification.
“The criteria is not whether it’s legal or not, the criteria is whether it makes people angry or whether it’s something that is against the mainstream, we are not talking about the law. We are talking about atmosphere,” Baker said, adding that discussing the context of the October 7 attacks is “forbidden.”
Article here.
Kansas Energy Freedom Now!
By Sherri Lange | Master Resource | November 3, 2023
Nixing the Mandates in Kansas: Representative Carrie Barth (R-Dist 5) and former House Energy and Environment Chair, Dennis Hedke, reach astounding consensus on Energy Resolution: 180 to 1. There will be no energy “victims” in this state.
I don’t believe I am the typical politician. I don’t care about a political career or political threats. I care about doing the right thing.
I care about people. Period! (- Rep Carrie Barth in an email, October 9 2023)
Carrie Barth (R-Kansas, District 5) and Dennis Hedke, unapologetic supporter of the U.S. Constitution, acclaimed author of The Audacity of Freedom (2011), geophysicist, and former member Kansas House of Representatives (former Chair of the House Energy Committee), have drafted a clean and accurate Resolution for the Republican Party. This passed with overwhelming support. It appears to acknowledge that wind is not a good corporate citizen.
Representative Barth in an email:
Our Constitution of the United States gives the power to the people and states, not a dictator movement to control people. The “Green Agenda” is a joke. What they call green energy of wind and solar is anything but green other than it takes a lot of money to mine, build and construct, maintenance for the units, along with remediation when blades break off and the turbines catch on fire. It takes more green money from there to then build transmission lines that take people’s green land when eminent domain is used. Then people see transmission line tariffs on their energy bills. Oh, and wait, your rates never go down even though the energy industry tells you how cost effective it is.
I would refer to wind and solar as “brown or black energy”. They are unreliable and cause brownouts and blackouts. This hurts people, it hurts businesses, and even the ground under them turns brown.
Dennis Hedke added in an email:
The United States of America, and now by default, the rest of the world, have been seriously misinformed since the SCOTUS made a very serious error in 2009, via Massachusetts v. EPA. They allowed the EPA to falsely transform the innocent, trace atmospheric gas, CO2, into a pollutant. Nothing could possibly be further from the truth. As a result, Trillions of Dollars have been wasted, people in 3rd and 4th World countries have been deprived of the most fundamentally necessary power to turn on the lights, and be released from poverty and join the rest of the civilized world.
Excerpts from the Resolution follow:
Kansas Republican Party Resolves to Support Candidates and Legislative Intent to Protect Kansans from Unreliable and Foreign-Sourced ‘Renewable’ Wind and Solar Energy
For your easy reference:
- CO2 is not a dangerous gas, nor a pollutant, to be avoided and scare mongered.
- The Kansas Republican Party Platform opposes efforts to force communities to engage in sustainable development guidance from the federal government or the United Nations, which are actively attacking our local communities in an effort to implement the Paris Climate Agreement
- Kansas is not to be victimized by lobbyists guiding KS into blackouts and profiteering from subsidies, and alliances with the UN Global Agenda
- Kansas (Republican Party) supports alternative energy, while continuing to support oil and gas reserves within the State
- Kansas will prefer reliable and affordable energy above all
- Kansas (Republican Party) will reject the “UN Agenda 2030 “Sustainable Development Goals” to guide their investments in Kansas, even rewarding executives and directors with additional bonuses and stock options for implementing the global climate plan”
- Kansas (Republican Party) will reject energy projects that are obvious land grabs, funding foreign companies with taxpayer-funded grants and tying up valuable Kansas farmland for decades with projects that no company is ultimately held responsible for decommissioning at the end of their useful lives, even violating property rights of farmers affected by the projects
- Kansas (Republican Party) opposes so called Cap and Trade schemes
The resolution concludes:
Whereas irrefutable evidence demonstrates that ill-health effects to mankind and the environment are occurring due to the side effects of industrial scale wind installations. These occurrences are widespread, wherever these installations have been constructed;
Therefore, be it resolved, the Republican Party of Kansas, in view of the preponderance of evidence, will support candidates and legislative intent regarding energy policy that will serve to provide protection to our citizens security, physical health, financial health, access to reliable energy and property rights across all Kansas counties.
Of worthy note is that the CLINTEL declaration is referenced; nearly between 1600 and 2000 professionals and scientists indicate that climate change has always been with us, and the world is NOT on fire, or drowning, or otherwise careening to imminent disaster as some would have us believe. Climate change fear has been the false driver of the wind and solar proliferation, a universal clear economic and environmental disaster.
Some note that renewables policy can be termed Energy Vandalism. We concur: See this link for more detail on the nearly universally accepted articles in Kansas.
Article XIII of the Kansas Republican Party Platform States:
Kansas leaders should not be allowed to arbitrarily deny permits to build new power and energy-producing plants. Carbon dioxide, one of the most common gases on earth, should not be declared a pollutant nor used as an excuse to deny the construction of new power plants. We oppose so-called Cap and Trade legislation. We oppose efforts to force communities to engage in sustainable development under guidance from the federal government or the United Nations.
Comment
This is the first time we have seen a legislative body, organize, and nearly 100% agree, that climate change, which it always does and has done, should not be a driver for energy policy. It is the first time we have seen in such a document, a clear rejection of industrial wind and solar profiteers, and references to the irrefutable evidence of harm to the environment, people, and a clear intention to go forward with reliable, responsible, and cost-effective energy policy, while respecting property rights.
Kudos and respect to the two co-sponsors. Game changer.
Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States: “The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured.” (Lange: It most certainly can be documented and appreciated.)
————————–
ADDENDUM ONE
Quotes from Clintel (There is no climate emergency)
ADDENDUM TWO
Additional excerpts from the Resolution
Article XIII of the Kansas Republican Party Platform States:
XIII. ENERGY
We support an energy policy which creates a strong State economy with affordable and reliable energy. Kansas residents must be considered first when developing new, potentially expensive technology.
We encourage the development of alternative energy supplies, while continuing to support the oil and gas industry within the state. Ever increasing energy prices are creating new avenues for entrepreneurs and existing companies to develop new sources of energy. New developments in wind, solar, biofuels, and geothermal energy sources show real promise for clean, inexpensive, renewable energy for future generations. Increasing energy sources will inevitably create a more market-based system which ultimately lowers utility prices for consumers.
Kansas leaders should not be allowed to arbitrarily deny permits to build new power and energy-producing plants. Carbon dioxide, one of the most common gases on earth, should not be declared a pollutant nor used as an excuse to deny the construction of new power plants. We oppose so-called Cap and Trade legislation. We oppose efforts to force communities to engage in sustainable development under guidance from the federal government or the United Nations.
A report on the energy declaration, indicates this is a nonpartisan issue:
…. the energy producer is already allowing ESG rhetoric and the UN Agenda 2030 “Sustainable Development Goals” to guide their investments in Kansas, even rewarding executives and directors with additional bonuses and stock options for implementing the global climate plan.
This is not only a direct violation of the Republican party platform, but an attack on all citizens in the State, as we are seeing with recent reports that the supposed “green” Panasonic plant is actually an energy hog that caused Evergy to request a rate increase on customers in order to supply power to the plant.
The “green energy” project is also responsible for stalling efforts to transition the Lawrence power plant from coal to natural gas, due to the demands of traditional energy sources necessary to power the supposed “renewable” energy plant.
This is not a partisan issue. It’s a money and land grab issue, funding foreign companies with taxpayer-funded grants and tying up valuable Kansas farmland for decades with projects that no company is ultimately held responsible for decommissioning at the end of their useful lives, even violating property rights of farmers affected by the projects.
This resolution will protect Kansas from outside special interest groups by holding all legislators accountable for reliable, affordable energy that stays in our state to benefit our citizens.
ADDENDUM THREE
A conversation with Kansas Rep Carrie Barth and Former Chair of Energy and Environment House, Dennis Hedke. We asked Barth and Hedke to further explain the resolutions’ evolution, and possible resonances.
Conversations with Rep Carrie Barth (R-Dist 5) and former House Energy and Environment Chair, Dennis Hedke, Kansas: How did the exceptional resolution re mandate sanity and “exit renewables”, evolve?
Kansas, which ranks fourth in the U.S. for wind power, (is) the biggest wind energy-producing state to mandate light mitigation.
Wind turbines haven’t just exploded in numbers, they’ve grown ever taller. Since 2016, 400 new turbines have gone up in Kansas with rotor hubs taller than the Statue of Liberty.
The state now has between 3800 and 4,000 turbines, with hubs between 210 and 400 feet high.
It is clear that the pushback against the tyranny of renewables is accruing and accelerating. In August 2023, Robert Bryce again updates his files on rejected projects in the US. Kansas appears “ready able and willing,” to grab the mandates out of energy policies, leaving the door open to more affordable and reliable power.
(Recently, in the last ten days)….”local governments in Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa have rejected or restricted wind and solar projects. Those moves bring the total number of rejections or restrictions in the Renewable Rejection Database to 574.”
Kansas legislators of the Republican Party have as noted in this blog, created an Energy Resolution of outstanding clarity. The push for reliable and affordable energy is on. No herd mentality here.
Question: Lang to Rep Carrie Barth: How did you become enlightened re climate misinformation? Was this gradual, and is there a single source that sped your learning? (See Barth’s two page submission to the Senate Local Government Committee.)
Answer: When door knocking last summer as a new candidate running for Kansas House of Representatives District 5, I met a constituent on her fourth-generation farm porch. She shared with me about what is going on in Southwest Douglas County, Kansas, that was affecting her and her neighbors with the Florida based energy company signing leases in the area for wind turbines.
Keep in mind, I live in SW Douglas County and this was the first time I was hearing about it. She shared with me concerns about her property rights, concerns about health, concerns about crops and livestock, concerns about wildlife, concerns about noise, and how she wants to keep this land for her kids and their kids. She spoke through tears as her way of life her family has worked hard for could permanently change if an industrial Commercial wind complex were approved in Douglas County.
I listened intently to her. She had done her research, she had been talking with her neighbors, and she shared with me highly unethical business practices the energy company was using where multiple individuals have completed affidavits that have already been filed with Douglas County and the Kansas Attorney General’s office. We ended the conversation with a hug and she asked me to help save our county and to do something about it. I left there knowing I had to help.
Through my education I’ve learned growing up, climate change has been around since the beginning of time regardless of the size of population as about every 100 years our climate shifts. So I started to dig in to learn more on why people decided to think differently. And I started to follow the money as the science and history is already there.
Not only is there wind trying to come into my county, we also have a 3,000 acre solar industrial complex trying to plop right in the middle of our agriculture zoned county that also bleeds into Johnson County, KS. I started reading a lot and talking with anyone that had experience in wind and solar energy. After I was elected where I beat an incumbent and took office January 2023, I started asking questions, reading our House Rules, and talking with anyone who would listen to me about the problem we have not only in Douglas County, but across our state.
I proposed a budget proviso during session that was an independent third-party study on the health and environmental effects of wind turbines, solar arrays, hydrogen hubs, and transmission lines. It would be the first study of its kind that I am aware of. It passed the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Budget Committee but failed the House Appropriations Committee with only eight votes in support of it.
When they say follow the money, it’s true! There were energy lobbyists everywhere during this time. I was told by a fellow legislator they believe 50-75 lobbyist were hired to combat my budget proviso. People from all over Kansas, Republicans and Democrats showed up at the Capitol for the Appropriation Committee Budget meeting in support of the proviso wearing red shirts filling the room to observe what was happening and hear what was said.
You might be wondering, why would the energy industry be so afraid of people finding out the results of an independent study? Doesn’t everyone want to know the truth? The energy lobbyist and their attorney, along with their hired expert, like to tell me and others that they don’t understand why we are worried about our health and environment. They say wind and solar are safe and effective and are low cost. Because of my budget proviso, I received emails and calls from people all over the state of Kansas telling me the issues they have.
Other states learned of my proviso and they reached out to me. I even connected with people from Canada and the issues are ALL THE SAME! The evidence and data is clear! This is why I believe the resolution passed by the GOP delegates 180-1 votes.
Question to Rep. Barth: “To what extent do you think this Kansas Republican decision can impact other US legislators?”
Answer: The Resolution states the GOP party will support candidates that support legislative intent aligned with this resolution. Which means our Federal Republican candidates and elected positions will be held to this same standard as our state elected officials at all levels, including county elected Republicans. I have even shared our Kansas GOP Energy Resolution with other states so that they can do the same.
Question to Dennis Hedke (Geophysicist and former House Chair of Energy and Environment)
What is your background so we can understand the evolution that led to this remarkable achievement for the Republicans in KS?
Answer: I have been studying the issues surrounding the blatant misguided policymaking related to Energy, then Climate, since the Carter presidency, just after graduating from the University of Virginia, School of Engineering & Applied Science, M.S. Diploma in Materials Science. I wrote Carter a letter, and of course got no response. I had graduated from Kansas State University with a B.S. in Geophysics before leaving for Charlottesville. I was born and raised in Manhattan, KS, and moved to Miami, FL, to take my first job out of college in the spring of 1979.
Ronald Reagan moved the needle in the Right direction for 8 years, but then we got Bill Clinton, and of course Al Gore, one of the biggest liars in world history. We have been paying for his misguided malfeasance ever since.
We moved to Texas for a job change for me, as Exploration Manager for a small independent oil and gas exploration company in 1999. I was seething while seeing the very bad things in the making regarding ‘Global Warming’. We returned to Kansas in 2003/4, where I joined another small independent, as Geophysical Manager.
Fast forward to 2009, and I found myself inside the Kansas Capitol, as an unpaid lobbyist, fighting to resist the Legislature’s temptation to foist upon Kansan’s, Renewable Energy Mandates. I (we) lost that fight, and I knew it was going to be a disaster for all kinds of reasons, policy-wise and every-otherwise. I had run for a seat on the State Board of Education in 2008, and narrowly lost because the outgoing Republican seat holder endorsed my Democrat opponent. I ran a very clean race, and people in the party noticed.
In 2010, Sam Brownback won the Governor’s race, and the District 99 Representative was called to be Brownback’s Insurance Commissioner, this creating a vacancy in the Kansas House, which I was appointed to fill on January 24th, 2011. I became the Chairman of the House Energy & Environment Committee January 2013, and held that position until I left office, after 3 terms, ostensibly June 2016.
I and many allies forged a battle against the mandates, and moved Kansas into ‘Voluntary’ discretion in creation of power delivery to Kansan’s, in April, 2015.
That’s my answer as to how some things got into motion between myself and Carrie. Six years after I left office, she was elected to her seat. She is a real Firebrand and is dedicated to helping Kansas get back on track with Energy Policy. She is a tireless worker, and I deeply appreciate what she has done already in her first year as a legislator.
She had heard about me, and she reached out to me for some advice and guidance.….which brings us to today.
Question: I think you mentioned a serious “error” that allowed the EPA to falsely label the innocent, trace atmospheric gas, CO2, into a pollutant. You are adamant that this decision resulted in the fact that:
(Hedke) Trillions of Dollars have been wasted, people in 3rd and 4th World countries have been deprived of the most fundamentally necessary power to turn on the lights and be released from poverty and join the rest of the civilized world.
Also: The Kansas Legislature, ruled by Republicans in the 2009 Session, made a serious error in forcing Power Companies to deliver Mandated Renewable Energy. This happened under the purported agreement to allow a single coal-fired power plant in Holcomb, KS to justifiably expand its deliverability of Electric Power to the Grid. Only, it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because the Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health & Environment, Rod Bremby, denied a Permit to expand the plant, due solely to politics related to ‘Global Warming’.”
The Resolution passed by the Republican Party of Kansas contains very specific language and intent to right the multitude of wrongs that Kansas Legislators conducted in 2009, and which served to spread the Mandate Mentality across America. It remains to be seen if the current body of Legislators will have the political will to hold the line, and in fact push back, where necessary and appropriate.
Question: A lot of readers will be wondering how you and Rep Barth achieved a 180-1 vote for this very clear resolution. Given that KS has a pro wind record of placing wind factories in the State, even with a Republican House and Senate, is there a catalyst for this resolution at this time and at this place? Was a lot of lobbying needed, or was this more evolutionary, organic in nature due to the fast paced media pieces on changing perspectives of “renewables and climate”?
Answer: Former Chair, Dennis Hedke:
I perceive much of the reason for the success was due to the fact that the Committee reviewing the Resolution is heavily conservative. They had to present it to the Republican Party Delegates, which are probably also more conservative leaning.
The Legislators, Carrie excluded, are a lot more squishy, caring more about holding on to their seats, than acting with resolve and principle.
There may be some renewed pressure on Legislators to resist the absolutely ridiculous reasons for being ‘green’. That remains to be seen. Many of them simply forget that “The Truth Will Set You Free”.
I forgot to answer your question about cost of electricity. My bills range from about .13/kwh to .14/kwh.
Prices have increased by about 55% since wind power has been replacing coal and natural gas, commencing around 2011.
Thank you for your interest. Dennis.
Thank you again Former Energy Chair Hedke, and Rep Carrie Barth.
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Book Review
New paperback: Butchered by “Healthcare”
Lies are Unbekoming | October 20, 2026
Butchered by “Healthcare” is Robert Yoho’s plain-spoken account of how American medicine stopped being a profession and became an industry. 341 pages. Over a thousand references. Thirty-eight chapters.
“Screening Tests Are Useless”, on tests that find diseases that would never have hurt you. “The FDA Protects the Big Drug Companies”, on an agency funded by the companies it regulates. “The Journals’ Sins Are the Editors’ Sins”, on ghostwritten studies and captured peer review. “Opioids and ‘Pain Management’”, on how a generation was prescribed its way into addiction. “Prozac and Relatives” and “Antipsychotics Are Disastrous”, on what psychiatry does to adults and children. “Surgery: Money Before Patients”. “Failed Cancer Treatments”. “Futile CPR and Overprescribing”. “Billing Scams & Specialty Warfare”. “Hospitals Are Sharks”. Each with a Patient Tips section at the end on how to survive it.
If you have ever walked out of a doctor’s office with a prescription you didn’t ask for, or watched a parent put through a treatment that made them worse, this is the book you want on your shelf before the next appointment. … Full review
Butchered by “Healthcare” is available on Lulu now.
Blog Roll
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- Christiane Amanpour exits CNN with a legacy shaped by the debate over Israel
- Israel’s war on Iran is the final move in a decades-old strategy
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- Mysterious bot accounts reportedly spread fake ‘man on the street’ videos for Michigan Senate candidate
- Israeli Defense Minister Katz Says Over 60 Lebanon Villages Have Been Destroyed
- Why Is Israel Running TV Ads in Iowa Ahead of the Midterms?
- Hind Rajab’s Alleged Killer Is in the United States. HRF Demands His Arrest.
- US Officials Face Fresh Pressure After Another American ‘Brutalized’ by Israeli Settlers in West Bank
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- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- 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
