West demands elections in Ukraine
By Lucas Leiroz | September 25, 2023
It seems clear that the West wants to remove Vladimir Zelensky – and is apparently trying to do so in a “democratic” way. According to media reports, Western officials are pressuring Ukrainian authorities to hold presidential elections next year, ignoring the fact that the country is under martial law. This makes it clear that there is a “rush” on the part of NATO to put in power in Kiev a more “efficient” leader than the current president.
The information was published by the Washington Post on September 24. According to the newspaper, many relevant Western politicians are involved in “negotiations” with their Ukrainian counterparts to hold elections despite the conflict. On the American political scene, both Republicans and Democrats seem united on this agenda, which shows how the issue is becoming a kind of a “priority” for all pro-war American politicians.
The main rhetoric used by those supporting the elections is the supposed “need” for Kiev to prove its “commitment to democracy”. Until now, one of the main arguments for systematically sending weapons to Ukraine has precisely been the narrative that Ukrainians are “defenders of democracy”, while Russia is a kind of “dictatorship” or “autocracy”. It is believed in the West that if Ukraine loses there could be a global “anti-democratic wave”, with countries going through de-democratization processes and becoming authoritarian regimes.
Obviously, this narrative is false, weak and increasingly unpopular. The conflict in Ukraine has nothing to do with a clash between “democracies and dictatorships”, but with Moscow’s need to protect the people of Donbass and neutralize NATO’s influence in the Russian strategic environment. Furthermore, neo-Nazi Ukraine is obviously not a democracy, and Western public opinion is gradually understanding this. With so many images, videos and reports showing authoritarian and illegal practices such as forced recruitment, murder of civilians and torture of prisoners, it already seems clear that the so-called “Ukrainian democracy” is nothing more than mere war propaganda.
So, faced with this problem, there is a “task” to be accomplished by Ukrainians: to appear democratic to Western citizens again. Only in this way will it be possible to legitimize the sending of weapons and money to Kiev, despite all the negative consequences that this military aid brings to Western taxpayers – such as economic, social crisis and inflation. For the West, the easiest way for Kiev to appear democratic is to hold elections.
Obviously, the electoral process in times of war is an extremely complicated thing to do. In practice, elections cannot really be “fair” and “democratic” – but what really matters is that they appear to be.
“Holding free and fair elections in wartime is virtually impossible and also ill-advised, according to Ukrainian officials, election experts and democracy advocates. Roughly one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory is now occupied by Russian forces. Millions of Ukrainians are displaced and many are living outside the country. Tens of thousands of soldiers are deployed to the front. The pressure to hold elections, despite such obstacles, highlights the constant demand by some in the West that Ukraine prove its commitment to democracy”, the article reads, adding that, despite risks, “Kyiv officials also cannot dismiss the idea of holding elections out of hand and risk alienating key political players in the West, who are demanding elections and are crucial for Ukraine to maintain international financial and military assistance.”
However, it would be naive to think that this Western pressure is only due to this “democratic” reason. The news must be analyzed also taking into account recent reports about Zelensky’s unpopularity and the growing rejection of the Ukrainian president among Western leaders. Zelensky is no longer seen as a “hero” or a “great leader”, but as an inconvenient, weak and inefficient public figure, who was unable to achieve any success in his so-called “counteroffensive”, despite having massive numbers of NATO-provided heavy weapons.
As revealed in recently leaked Pentagon documents, American officials believe that Zelensky is “exhausting his political capacity rapidly.” So, for Western officials, the best way to solve this problem is to hold elections and help another candidate to win – which will allow “renewing” the public image of the regime, thus legitimizing the continuation of the war efforts against Russia. This is the real reason why there is so much interest in elections.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
The Reality Behind the Long Covid causing Damage to Multiple Organs Study
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | September 23, 2023
However hard Big Pharma is pushing the new Covid jabs, investors know the truth.
Even though we are getting closer to winter, a perfect time to sell Covid jabs, Moderna’s share price is down 44%.
And Pfizer’s is down 36%.
Clearly investors in the know realise that people just aren’t taking the Covid shots anymore.
So the sales team has been brought in to try and drum up business. All over the MSM news today are reports of a new study which claims to show that Long Covid can cause long-term damage to multiple organs.
The study, published in The Lancet is titled “Multiorgan MRI findings after hospitalisation with COVID-19 in the UK (C-MORE): a prospective, multicentre, observational cohort study”.
Read any MSM coverage of this study and you will be led to believe that a third of Long Covid patients sustained damage to multiple organs five months after infection. Lung injuries were almost 14 times higher among Long Covid patients, whilst brain and kidney injuries were three and two times higher respectively.
‘Study lead Dr Betty Raman said people who had more than two organs affected were “four times more likely to report severe and very severe mental and physical impairment”’.
Scary stuff, sign me up for my booster now.
But is the study all that it is made out to be?
First of all the declarations of interests page is over 1,600 words long with reference after reference to links with Big Pharma.
Secondly, and most importantly, the study is massively flawed. It recruited 2,710 participants and whittled these down to 259 who were discharged from hospital with PCR-confirmed or clinically diagnosed COVID-19 between March 1 2020 and Nov 1 2021.
This group was then compared with 52 non-Covid-19 controls from the community. The average age of the study group was 57 and the control group was 49. As the study says, “compared with non-COVID-19 controls, patients were older, living with more obesity and had more comorbidities”. 50% of the study group were obese compared with only 37% of the control group. 40% had smoked at some point in their lives compared with only 17% of the control group. I could continue with percentages of all the pre-existing comorbidities but I think you get the picture.
(For those who will ask the question, 40% of the control group were vaccinated at follow-up compared with 44% of the study group.)
So what do you think happens when you take an unhealthy, older group of people who have been in hospital with Covid and you compare them with a younger, healthier group of people from the community. You geniuses, you guessed it. You find that the unhealthier group are unhealthier.
Give the Big Pharma sales team a genius medal for that one and a sucker medal to the MSM who did the sales pitch for them.
But don’t take it from me, here is what Professor Francois Balloux, Director of the UCL Genetics Institute in London, has to say about the study:
Thus, my point is not that the conclusions of the study are necessarily false but that the control group is inadequate. I worry the study may have been published as is because it fits a particular narrative, and not necessarily because it is sound and robust.
By choosing a control group made of elderly, frail, terminally ill patients, it might be possible to demonstrate that Covid actually repairs organ damage, which would obviously be an absurd conclusion, and which should rightly be called out. Yet, here we are …
Is the ATACMS tactical missile already in Ukraine?
Russian response remains to be seen
BY STEPHEN BRYEN | ASIA TIMES | SEPTEMBER 23, 2023
Russian defense sources say that an ATACMS tactical ballistic missile was launched from Kulbakino Air Field in Ukraine. If the Russian report is correct then the Washington debate about sending tactical ATACMS missiles to Ukraine is fake, as they already are there.
The Russian report has not been confirmed. What is clear is that the Ukrainians used missiles to attack Sevastopol on September 21st, targeting Russia’s Black Sea headquarters. The historic HQ building was hit.
Reports say that President Biden told Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky that he agreed to send a “small number” of ATACMS missiles to Ukraine. Apparently Biden acted against Pentagon recommendations. Biden had been warned that ATACMS would be a war escalation. He was also told that there were not many ATACMS in inventory.
ATACMS has a range of around 300km. It is ground launched.
Kulbakino is the home of the 299th Ukrainian Tactical Air Brigade. It is located in Mykolaiv Oblast. It supports a number of aircraft – most importantly the Su-24M fighter-bomber, which has been modified to fire the Stormshadow cruise missile.
ATACMS is typically launched from the M270 MLRS (multiple-launch rocket system). It can also be launched from a HIMARS platform.
The M270 is a tracked, armored vehicle that supports launch tubes for missiles. It is based on the Bradley fighting vehicle chassis. It can fire one ATACMS missile and then the platform needs to be reloaded.
The M142 HIMARS is based on the Army’s MTV truck frame. Like the M270 MLRS, it can fire one ATACMS missile.
HIMARS already is in Ukraine so delivery of the missiles will not require any significant field modifications.
The US has only small stocks of HIMARS currently available. The US Marines, who operate HIMARS, need ATACMS in order to blunt any Chinese attack either on the Senkaku islands or aimed at Taiwan. The Marines have carried out joint exercises with Japan, where Japan test fired the M270 in a demonstration. However, with ATACMS in short supply, the Marines operated the vehicle but only simulated firing the missile.
Taiwan has also requested HIMARS from the United States, equipped with the accurate ATACMS system to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion. Taiwan has ordered 28 launchers and 864 missiles. These are supposed to be delivered between 2024 and 2027. However, if Ukraine gets the supplies instead, Taiwan will be forced to wait even longer.
Because of Biden’s decision the Germans will not be able to hide behind the US as an excuse not to provide the German-Swedish Taurus KEPD 350. Taurus, a joint product of MBDA Deutschland and Saab Bofors, is a long range cruise missile with a range of 500 km. It is launched by aircraft. Most likely, if Taurus cruise missiles are delivered to Ukraine, they will be operated by Ukraine’s Su-24s, although these are also in short supply. The systems on the Su-25 in Ukraine probably are not modern enough to support the Taurus.
Taurus has a range of 500km after launch. It carries a 481 kg MEPHISTO (multi-effect penetrator highly sophisticated and target optimized) warhead.
ATACMS has different types of warheads and it is not clear what will be sent to Ukraine. Originally the missiles had cluster munition warheads, but later that was changed to so-called unitary warheads.
The Russians understand that both Taurus and ATACMS are threats to Russian territory, exposing its cities, air bases, nuclear power plants and defense installations to heavy attack.
Most of what Ukraine has so far launched into Russian territory have been small drones. While drones have done some damage, many of them have been shot down. Russia does have layered air defenses, although they do not appear to be well integrated, and there are considerable coverage gaps.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, interviewed by ABC News, was asked, “Are you OK if Ukraine uses those missiles [ATACMS] to strike deep into Russia?” He replied: “Their decision, not ours.” Blinken knows very well that Ukraine needs support from US overhead intelligence for long-range strikes, something the Russians also understand very well.
The Russians have made clear that delivering these missiles to Ukraine is a significant escalation by NATO and the United States. It remains to be seen exactly how and in what ways Russia will respond.
DHS still withholding information in its efforts to censor “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation”
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | September 22, 2023
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is continuing to hold back information about its efforts to police online speech in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
The Americans For Prosperity (AFP) Foundation, a political advocacy group, has spent years attempting to get the DHS to hand over records on its efforts to censor “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.” However, the DHS has responded by heavily redacting any records it turns over to the group.
The DHS is citing FOIA Exemption 7(E), which protects “techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions,” to justify the redactions.
Kevin Schmidt, the Director of Investigations at AFP, blasted the DHS for obfuscating the contents of the documents.
“If DHS believes it has the authority to police people’s online speech, it should be open with the public about what those authorities are,” he said.
He added that the DHS’s use of FOIA Exemption 7(E) “suggests the DHS is either overstating its authorities or it’s abusing FOIA exemptions to avoid transparency.”
Despite the heavy redactions, the documents do show the DHS arguing it has the authority to target “MDM” — its acronym for misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.
Another document shows that the DHS’s Disinformation Governance Board had a “Ukraine MDM Playbook” before it was shut down.
The AFP Foundation isn’t the only entity that’s struggled to get the DHS to hand over information on its speech policing activities. It has previously stonewalled Congress’s attempts to get details on the DHS’s “anti-disinformation” practices.
Additionally, the DHS has been accused of attempting to avoid transparency by using channels such as Slack and personal cellphones to hold meetings about its misinformation efforts.
YouTube Is Wiping Safety Content on COVID-19 Vaccines
Study Finds Platform is Cleansing Side Effect Information and Promoting Unbridled Use of Experimental Products
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | September 19, 2023
YouTube is the most utilized video platform in the world. Many of my patients ask “doctor, why don’t we hear about vaccine side effects?” People feel blind-sided when they develop myocarditis, stroke, blood clots, or other common vaccine side effects but can can find no information on them with standard Google searches landing on YouTube.
Ng and colleagues performed a rigorous analysis of YouTube COVID-19 vaccine content and found that the platform is having effective content moderation. This means when you do a search, they are wiping vaccine safety information off the platform as “anti-vaccine” and replacing it with either irrelevant health information or pro-vaccine content.
Ng YMM, Hoffmann Pham K, Luengo-Oroz M Exploring YouTube’s Recommendation System in the Context of COVID-19 Vaccines: Computational and Comparative Analysis of Video Trajectories J Med Internet Res 2023;25:e49061 doi: 10.2196/49061PMID: 37713243
The authors declare this a “success” of content moderation. Others would say this is censorship of valuable health information replaced with propaganda promoting novel, experimental unsafe, ineffective, genetic vaccines. What YouTube is doing is very scary, the authors self-expressed virtuosity is even more alarming.
Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
President, McCullough Foundation
Ukrainian Buk Missile Caused DPR Market Tragedy, US Media Report Affirms
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 19.09.2023
As Volodymyr Zelensky arrives in the United States for a second time to plead for more aid, a US media report has unveiled a detailed investigation that debunks vehement assertions made by Ukraine’s President a few weeks ago.
Ukrainian President Zelensky’s visit to the US to attend the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, visit the White House, and meet with congressional leaders, comes against a sobering backdrop. Ukraine’s much-hyped counteroffensive has been stuttering, while skepticism is mounting over endlessly propping up the Kiev regime among some Republican lawmakers.
On the eve of Zelensky’s arrival, the New York Times published an investigative piece into a missile strike on a marketplace in the town of Konstantinovka, in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), that occurred earlier in the month.
The strike on September 6 had killed 15 people and left over 30 people wounded, according to Ukrainian officials. Zelensky was quick to describe it as a “Russian” attack on “a regular market and shops,” with numerous Western media outlets parroting the claim and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal vowing “fair retribution” for it. The strike occurred on the same day when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a surprise visit to Ukraine, announcing millions in new aid to Kiev.
However, evidence suggests it was a Ukrainian missile released from a Buk surface-to-air system that caused the market tragedy, as per the US report. A long hard look at eyewitness accounts, social media posts, analysis of video and weapon fragments, along with satellite imagery, “strongly suggests the catastrophic strike was the result of an errant Ukrainian air defense missile fired by a Buk launch system,” write the journalists.
Ukraine’s authorities had initially tried “to prevent journalists with the Times from accessing the missile debris and impact area in the strike’s immediate aftermath,” according to the report. However, they subsequently managed to reach the scene of the strike, talk to witnesses, and gather fragments of the projectile itself.
Ukrainian artillery fire had been reported in the area, according to a local Telegram group, minutes before the strike on the marketplace, the media report underscored. The missile strike on Konstantinovka came from the direction of Ukrainian-held territory, not from Russian lines, according to security camera footage seen by the journalists.
Furthermore, they claim that “at least four pedestrians appear to simultaneously turn their heads toward the incoming sound” – in the direction of Ukrainian-held territory – when the missile approached. A reflection of the missile itself, coming in from the northwest, is visible in the cited footage, passing over parked cars.
Further analysis shows that the crater and point of detonation are also “consistent” with a missile traveling from the northwest. According to the media outlet’s reporters who were in the nearby town of Druzhkovka at the time of the missile strike on Konstantinovka, minutes before the attack, Ukraine’s military had launched two surface-to-air missiles toward the Russian front line.
The Ukrainian missile launches were also purportedly mentioned by the residents of Druzhkovka at the specified time in a local social media group. Witnesses that reporters interviewed also confirmed they saw the missiles being fired, and traveling in the direction of Konstantinovka.
“The timing of these launches is consistent with the time frame for the missile that struck the market in Kostiantyn[o]vka, around 2:04 p.m. [local time]” say the outlet.
Missiles had been launched from fields outside Druzhkovka, another witness stated, adding that it had been used by the Ukrainian military to station air defense systems. After reporters themselves visited the site in question, they “saw indications that it had recently been used by the military, including trenches, trash pits and wide tracks consistent with a large military vehicle.” Satellite imagery showed fresh scorch marks around the trenches on the day of the missile strike, in an indication the area could have been used to launch missiles, the investigation revealed.
While the Ukrainian authorities have claimed that Russia had fired a missile from an S-300 air defense system at Konstantinovka, such a missile has a “different warhead” from the one that exploded in the market on September 6, the report pointed out. It added that the measurements of the holes in the facades of the buildings closest to the strike are “consistent in size and shape” with a 9M38 missile, fired by a Buk antiaircraft vehicle, used by Ukraine. The same conclusions were reportedly made by independent military bomb-disposal experts: damage at the missile strike site in Konstantinovka was “most consistent with an 9M38.”
The Kiev regime staged a false flag in the DPR’s Konstantinovka based on the same scheme as in Bucha, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said at a meeting of the UN Security Council on September 8. Referring to the strike on the town in the part of the DPR controlled by Ukraine’s forces, he called it a terrible tragedy, adding:
“It’s just that, we are sure you’ll soon forget and cover up this incident, as in the case of the attack on Kramatorsk in April last year.”
Western mainstream media has been eager to echo the Kiev regime’s falsehoods, such as accusing Russia of deliberately striking civilian targets. The developments in the city of Kramatorsk, and in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), are another case in point.
As for Bucha, the Ukrainian authorities and Western media had spread gruesome footage purportedly showing murdered civilians lying along a road in the suburb of Kiev, citing it as evidence of “Russian war crimes.” Moscow dismissed the footage as a false flag provocation, pointing out that the bodies appeared days after Russian troops had withdrawn.
Russia has repeatedly reiterated that its armed forces do not attack civilian facilities.
‘Of Course He Was Paying’: Former Ukrainian Business Leader Accuses Top Zelensky Adviser of Bribery
By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 19.09.2023
A top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is facing renewed corruption allegations after an exiled Ukrainian business leader claimed the man worked for him for years as a go-between handling payments to Ukrainian officials.
“Tatarov used to solve all issues with law enforcement” – that’s what Oleh Maiboroda, the former executive director of Ukrbud Development, one of Ukraine’s largest construction companies, told Western media on Tuesday about Oleh Tatarov.
Once a lawyer, Tatarov now serves as Zelensky’s top adviser on law enforcement and security agencies, a position he’s held since 2020. However, according to Maiboroda, Tatarov was running bribes for him for the five years before he took the job for Zelensky.
The lawyer’s connections across the Ukrainian legal system, from police officials to judges and prosecutors, made him the perfect man to smooth over the approval processes for Ukrbud’s many promising construction projects.
“Of course he was paying,” Maiboroda said. “He was giving them money so these arrangements were done … He knew about law enforcement and warned us to be careful about saying almost anything on the phone.”
The former Ukrainian business leader showed to Western media a list of bribes allegedly paid by Tatarov, totaling some $1.8 million.
Maiboroda has himself fled Ukraine and currently lives in Vienna, where he hopes to stay safe from corruption charges against him in Kiev.
Tatarov is no stranger to such accusations, either: a previous case, brought by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Anti-Corruption Action Center’s (AntAC), claimed he had bribed a forensic expert on behalf of Ukrbud, even going so far as to publish the WhatsApp conversation in which Tatarov agreed to the bribe. However, the case was closed in April 2022 on procedural grounds.
“The discussion on the incumbent president’s values is over,” Vitaly Shabunin, the head of AntAC’s executive board, said in 2021. “Volodymyr Zelensky shares Tatarov’s values. This means that Zelensky … doesn’t see any problems in Tatarov’s corruption-related crimes.”
Zelensky has stood by his man through the tribulations, refusing to fire or even to condemn Tatarov despite citizen petitions like the one AntAC organized, with more than 25,000 signatories.
Kiev, which hopes to join the European Union and NATO, has struggled with endemic corruption that promises to not just frustrate its admission hopes, but which endangers the flow of Western weapons and financing to Ukraine as well. To that end, Zelensky has made statements condemning corruption and pledging to crack down, and sweeping firings have “cleaned house” across bureaus such as the Defense Ministry, where the firings have reached the highest ranks.
Last month, Zelensky fired all 24 of Ukraine’s regional military recruitment offices, which are awash with accusations of corruption, including that dozens of recruitment officers have accepted bribes to exempt eligible men from being drafted into the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Earlier this month, Oleksiy Reznikov was fired as defense minister, and on Monday, Zelensky fired all six deputy defense ministers. Reznkov’s replacement, Rustem Umerov, is himself under investigation for what NABU calls “gross violation of labor laws” and that he and his deputies “took actions aimed at concealing the facts of theft of state property” while he was head of the State Property Fund (SPF).
No accusations of corruption have been brought against any of the former ministers, but the AntAC spoke of the terminations as a “positive step” toward cracking down on corruption and improving accountability.
“The ministry of defense is one of the least reformed ministries in our country, and it is not able to cope with the challenges of the war,” AntAC executive director Daria Kalenyuk told a US newspaper on Monday, adding it was timed to coincide with Zelensky’s trip to Washington, DC, where the president hopes to shore up US support for his government.
A small but growing faction of the Republican Party is openly questioning US support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. While some have demanded audits and better accountability for the tens of billions of dollars in aid flowing to Kiev, others have demanded the support halt entirely, especially in light of the disastrous Ukrainian counteroffensive this past summer.
“Many countries are sending major resources to Ukraine, and rightly so, but governments and populations will soon lose patience for that if there are not signs that the government is serious about fighting corruption,” an anonymous Western diplomat in Kiev told British media.
Emails Show Decade of Hunter Biden Spinning Journalists on Foreign Business Deals
The Hunter Biden laptop archive shows years of careful efforts to manipulate media outlets, a rare window into the DC spin cycle.
BY LEE FANG | SEPTEMBER 19, 2023
Speaker Kevin McCarthy, announcing that the House of Representatives will pursue an impeachment inquiry, suggested that the probe will hinge in part on deceiving the American public about Hunter Biden’s foreign business ventures.
“President Biden did lie to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business deals,” McCarthy said at a press conference. GOP lawmakers, he added, have “uncovered credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct.”
Such an investigation will likely force an examination of the public narrative regarding Hunter Biden’s consulting deals that go back at least a decade. During President Obama’s second term, then-Vice President Joe Biden was the administration’s point man on the nation’s policy toward Ukraine, a perch he used to urge the country to adopt sweeping ethics reforms to resist “the cancer of corruption” and enact sweeping ethics reforms.
At the time, some American journalists began to question whether the vice president’s stern message was undermined by his son Hunter Biden’s employment at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, which was owned by a notorious local oligarch.
Emails on Hunter’s laptop reveal that the inquiries sparked an internal debate within his team of consultants and public relations agents. Ultimately, they devised a series of responses about Hunter’s work with Burisma that were, at best, misleading and, at worst, outright falsehoods.
The Biden team has constructed a careful image of Hunter Biden’s business ventures, sometimes employing a sophisticated myth-making operation aided by allies in the media who rarely challenged or investigated their false claims. The laptop emails show that the team closely monitored critical reporting and pushed to shape coverage with reporters from the New York Times, Time magazine, Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press.
Their spin informed much of the ensuing coverage in the mainstream press, defusing the issue, even as President Trump and other Republicans insisted that Ukraine was a hotbed of Biden family corruption. Although he had no background in the energy field and little experience in corporate governance, Hunter Biden, who had a law degree, was appointed to the board of Burisma in May 2014.
It was revealed later that he was paid about $1 million per year – as was his business partner Devon Archer. In a press release announcing his appointment, Hunter Biden is quoted as saying, “I believe that my assistance in consulting the Company on matters of transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities will contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine.”
That same month, journalist Michael Scherer reached out with questions about the arrangement.
Several consultants employed by Burisma, including Ryan Toohey of FTI Consulting and Heather King, a partner at the law firm Boies, Schiller, & Flexner, where Hunter worked as counsel, strategized over how to respond to Scherer, a reporter then with Time magazine who has since joined the Washington Post.
For the Scherer inquiry, laptop emails show, Hunter’s business associates settled on a strategy to deflect the most direct questions and obfuscate the true intent of Burisma’s attempts to sway U.S. government officials.
One of Hunter’s associates noted that they planned to respond to Scherer’s attempts to reach David Leiter, a former aide to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, hired to work for Burisma. The plan was to use an assistant to make Leiter “unavailable to comment, as opposed to some sort of statement that made it seem like we were unwilling or refusing to engage with the reporter.” Leiter, the emails show, was in fact available, but the public relations team wanted to keep him out of reach.
Scherer wanted to know why Burisma was on a hiring spree of well-connected American lobbyists, including Leiter and others. In response, Toohey planned to tell Scherer that the hired guns were simply working on issues related to energy independence, economic growth, as well as “transparency and good governance.”
In response to other questions posed by Scherer, Toohey prepared a statement claiming that Hunter Biden will “not be engaged with the U.S. government” on anything related to Burisma.
The response belied a detailed lobbying agenda spelled out in other emails.
Burisma had made clear that the company had hired Leiter, Hunter Biden, and other political operatives as part of a focused plan to obtain Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky a U.S. visa as well as to persuade American officials to intervene with Ukrainian government officials to drop an investigation of his business interests.
In a May 2014 email, Vadim Pozharskyi, a close adviser to Zlochevsky, explained to Hunter that he needed his “advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message/signal, etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions,” a reference to an ongoing investigation of Zlochevsky by Ukrainian prosecutors.
That month, Pozharskyi again wrote to Hunter, spelling out the “working plan for both FTI and David,” reiterating that he wanted the lobbyists to intervene against the “politically motivated proceedings initiated against us in Ukraine” and to overcome the “US entry ban” for the Burisma owner.
“The immediate plan is to reach out to the Energy and Ukraine desks, respectively, at State Dept,” wrote Heather King, the attorney working closely with Hunter Biden at the time. “That will include outreach to Carlos Pascual, he is the top US energy diplomat,” she added.
Scherer printed the denials, but to his credit, reported on the odd circumstances surrounding Biden’s hiring, at a time when Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point person for Ukraine, with a special focus on energy policy in the region.
In many cases, Hunter Biden’s associates cast him as simply an auditor with a special focus on renewable energy sourced from geothermal vents. That was the strategy in response to an inquiry from Stephen Braun, a reporter for the Associated Press. “Mr. Biden will not lobby on behalf of Burisma. His role is to advise the company’s legal and compliance unit, including guidance on corporate governance standards.”
Behind the scenes, Hunter Biden’s team knew otherwise. In emails conferring over how to deal with Braun’s questions, Pozharskyi reiterated the plan to provide Braun with “minimum information.”
Like many other articles from this time, the AP story focused on the conflict of interest issues, noting the denials around any lobbying with a degree of skepticism:
A former Washington lobbyist, the vice president’s son is effectively exempt from most rules that would require him to describe publicly the legal work he does on behalf of Burisma.
Hunter Biden will not lobby for the company, said Lawrence Pacheco, an official with FTI Consulting, a Washington government affairs company recently hired by Burisma.
Pacheco did not say whether Biden might oversee or advise on any future Burisma lobbying strategy in the U.S. Pacheco said the company “does not take positions on political matters.”
Braun could not be reached for comment. Scherer declined an opportunity to comment on the Hunter Biden emails. Biden, Toohey, and King did not respond to a request for comment.
However, the emails clearly indicate that substantial resources were allocated to managing both Burisma and Hunter’s personal image. Pozharskyi pointed out that Burisma had retained American consultants to reach out to “the most reputable European and American journalists/newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs,” while assistance was required to handle Wikipedia, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other online platforms. Burisma, wrote Pozharskyi, sought a “detailed algorithm on how the Company should act in case of bad publicity.” The effort included scrubbing negative details from Hunter Biden’s Wikipedia, while bolstering the online credentials of Burisma, emails show.
A highly focused effort to monitor and shape news media coverage helped maintain the public profile. Even with relatively low visibility, independent media were closely watched. Hunter and his team monitored Vice News as well as the gadfly website ZeroHedge. In response to critical reporting from Vice, one colleague noted approvingly that the article was not being “reposted or republished” in Ukrainian media.
In July 2014, Toohey circulated an investigative piece I wrote for Salon about Hunter Biden’s hiring at Burisma, which noted that the vice president’s son had been retained amid a string of nepotistic hires likely aimed at influencing natural gas and energy policy.
In the article, I noted that Joe Biden had traveled to Ukraine to “announce a $50 million aid package that included technical support for increasing the country’s natural gas production – an investment that could bolster profits at Burisma Holdings, where his son is a director.” What was not known at the time, however, was that Hunter Biden was already working with a team of public affairs consultants to channel U.S. government technical assistance to his client.
The laptop emails show that even this relatively brief mention of Hunter Biden and a potential conflict of interest with his father raised concerns.
“All, please see below a piece that mentions Hunter’s appointment as part of a broader trend, mostly within the context of relatives of eleceds [sic] engaged to lobby for the energy industry,” wrote Toohey, attaching a copy of the text of my piece. But, he added, “This was a freelanced piece picked up in a number of web-based outlets including Salon, but nothing with significant reach.”
Pozharskyi replied that he had seen the piece earlier and “wanted to have a discussion in this regard.”
In some cases, the team celebrated media coverage that elevated its desired narrative. Politico reported Hunter’s hiring at Burisma and simply printed quotes from the company’s official statements:
“The company’s strategy is aimed at the strongest concentration of professional staff and the introduction of best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals,” Alan Apter, Burisma Holdings’ chairman of the board of directors, said in a statement, which was reported by The Moscow Times on Tuesday.
Biden, joining the board, will be in charge of the legal unit, the company said. He will also provide support for Burisma Holdings “among international organizations.”
Biden said the company will help strengthen Ukraine’s economy.
Pozharskyi circulated a link to the Politico article to Hunter and his associates, noting the “positive coverage.”
Hunter’s membership on the Burisma board received renewed attention in late 2015, as then-Vice President Biden was set to visit Ukraine where he planned to address the parliament on the need to adopt new reforms against a culture of corruption in the country. James Risen of the Times, among others, renewed inquiries directed toward Hunter and his associates about the rationale behind his appointment to the company, Burisma, and why the company appeared to be buying access to high levels of government.
In one email found on Hunter’s laptop, Risen asked, “What lobbying activities is the company engaged in the US?” among other questions to Hunter Biden. In response, a Burisma spokesperson straightforwardly claimed that “no one is lobbying on their behalf.”
The company’s lobbying efforts were not covered in the story ultimately published by the New York Times, which featured Risen’s piece on Dec. 8, 2015. The article included a statement from the Hunter Biden team, crafted by the strategy firm FTI Consulting, asserting that the company’s focus was on “corporate governance and transparency.”
Risen’s article did not address whether Hunter’s business career demonstrated such expertise or his lack of experience in the energy field. Although Risen identified Hunter as “a former Washington lobbyist,” he accepted the denial that no lobbying was involved.
In reality, just a month prior to the email exchange with the Times, Burisma, following Hunter Biden’s advice, had hired Blue Star Strategies, a Democratic lobbying firm, to influence the Obama administration. A copy of the agreement, belatedly filed with the Justice Department, reveals that the firm, which aided in lobbying State Department officials on Ukrainian energy policy, received a monthly retainer of $30,000.
Blue Star Strategies was even copied on the emails with the Hunter Biden team on its response plan to Risen.
Risen also allowed a Burisma spokesman to decline to state Hunter’s compensation while claiming it was “not out of the ordinary” for such board positions. It was later disclosed that he was paid about $1 million per year, which is far higher than the typical compensation. As a point of comparison, median annual compensation of board members at Fortune 500 companies is around $110,000.
Risen, now with The Intercept, did not respond to a request for comment.
Political operatives of all ideological backgrounds frequently manipulate public perception – often employing specialized “crisis communication” firms to suppress negative coverage and shape desired narratives. What is remarkable about the Hunter Biden episode is how successful it was, and how uncritically most media organizations treated this unorthodox relationship between a president’s son and a controversial foreign corporation.
In response to the Wall Street Journal, Toohey worked closely with Blue Star Strategies’ Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano to craft a message defusing questions around a conflicting message between Hunter and his father. They settled on a strategy of presenting the Ukrainian gig as perfectly “aligned” with an anti-corruption agenda, laptop emails show. The lobbyists suggested that they release a statement to the Journal claiming that Hunter’s work for the Ukrainian energy giant, to supposedly strengthen corporate governance, are “also goals the United States.”
The Journal printed the statement, attributing it to a spokesperson.
Such coverage – which suggested Hunter Biden had engaged in questionable but ultimately harmless behavior that did not involve, much less implicate, his father – set the narrative for most coverage in mainstream outlets. When President Trump told Ukraine’s president in 2018 that “there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son” and asked him to look into Joe Biden’s demand that the prosecutor looking into Burisma be fired, Democrats moved to impeach him.
The Biden spin continued even after the New York Post published the first articles based on material from Hunter’s laptop in October 2020. The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, sought to discredit the New York Post’s reporting that Hunter Biden had arranged a dinner meeting between his Ukrainian associates at Burisma and his father when he served as vice president. At the time, the Biden presidential campaign claimed that it “reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time, and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.” Kessler reiterated this denial as though it were an established fact.
It turned out to be false. The July testimony by former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer confirmed that Hunter Biden had arranged a secret dinner with his Ukrainian business partner and his father, as the New York Post had originally reported. The ongoing saga over the Washington Post’s role in covering up the Biden revelations was detailed last month by RealClearInvestigation’s Paul Sperry.
Last month, Kessler “updated” his article to acknowledge this.
Also last month, Washington Post columnist Philip Bump, who has dismissed any hint of scandal regarding Biden business dealings, appeared on Live at the Table, a podcast hosted by Noam Dworman, the owner of New York City’s Comedy Cellar. The show went viral as Dworman challenged Bump’s claims that there was “no evidence” of wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
In a heated exchange, Bump conceded that Hunter Biden’s text messages that claim, “unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary,” was one form of “evidence.” Moments later, Bump ended the interview and walked off the set.
The interaction provided a rare moment of visible accountability for the establishment press, which has largely followed the Biden spin for an entire decade on this issue.
Yet the White House is still hoping it can still instruct journalists on how to cover the story. Shortly after McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry announcement, President Biden’s White House staff circulated a memo, instructing media outlets on how to cover the news. In bold type, the memo claimed that the entire Hunter Biden conflict of interest scandal had been “refuted” and “debunked” – language that was adopted in media reports about the inquiry in Vox, NBC News and CNN.
Net-zero: the annals of absurdity
By Richard North | Turbulent Times | September 17, 2023
Most readers will recall the excited chatter of some commentators, speculating on the result of the summer’s Uxbridge by-election – which was attributed to a backlash over Khan’s ULEZ plans.
After vague noises from No.10 about being “pragmatic”, there was a widespread feeling that Sunak might capitalise on what some took to be an “anti-green” rebellion, and row back on the implementation of net-zero.
Whatever hopes there might have been, though, it must now be crystal clear that, short of any trivial, cosmetic concessions, Sunak has absolutely no intention of slowing down to destroy the British economy in the name of the Great God climate change.
If any further evidence was needed, it comes in an article in The Times yesterday, which tells us that the prime minister has rejected any idea of a reprieve for petrol and diesel cars. The 2030 electric vehicle targets, we are told, will stay.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, we are also warned to expect punitive measures aimed at incentivising the few remaining car manufacturers in the UK to increase their sales of EVs.
The plan is that next year, 22 percent of new cars sold will have to be electric, rising to more than 50 percent in 2028. It is left to the Independent, though, to tell us that manufacturers who fail to meet the targets will face fines of up to £15,000 per car.
A similar stratagem is being used to push the sales of heat pumps, with gas and oil-fired boiler manufacturers being required in the financial year 2024-2025 to ensure that heat pumps make up 4 percent of their sales.
An alternative is to buy “credits” from manufacturers who are over-quota, failing which the manufacturers will have to pay an eye-watering fine of £5,000 for every heat pump short of the quota. As with EVs, the quota will increase each year.
This has led some manufacturers to warn that they will have to increase the unit prices of boilers by £300 – a sum which also might have to increase each year as sales quotas increase.
This way of doing things is particularly devious as it distances the government from the consumer and puts the responsibility on manufacturers to implement net-zero policy, which must then take the blame for the increased prices when people turn their backs on “green” products.
As such, one might expect that manufacturers would be up in arms at this cynical attempt to make them take the fall, except in the case of car-makers, the sales quota system favours those which have committed only to produce EVs – apparently an intended consequence of the plan.
This has emerged after talks between the government an BMW, when it was announced that the car-maker would receive a subsidy of £600 million for its Cowley plant in Oxford – a bribe to dissuade the company from moving its whole operation to China.
But part of the package, it seems, was an “understanding” that the net-zero timescale would not be relaxed, giving the company “certainty” about the rules, and thereby protecting their investment in EVs. In order to protect the developing market, car-makers are said to be keen to see the 2030 ICE new car sales ban go ahead.
This also applies to the emerging charging industry. Ian Johnston, chairman of the industry body ChargeUK, is quoted as saying: “To go further our sector needs certainty in the form of a firm commitment to a strong zero emissions vehicle mandate”. He is said to have cautioned that scaling it down would mean “billions of pounds of investment” being put at risk.
We thus have an interesting, if not disturbing situation where the market in cars is to be heavily distorted, so that consumer preferences will no longer be the primary driver of production plans. A nexus of government, investors and car manufacturers is conspiring to create a producer-led industry.
As for the minor detail of a lack of charging points – which is one of the factors inhibiting sales – officials argue that tough annual targets will give confidence to investors to start building thousands of charge points.
That alone, however, is unlikely to be sufficient to incentivise private buyers, who have proved extremely reluctant to convert to electric. Although the government “fines” may narrow the price differential, EVs will still be substantially more expensive than their ICE counterparts and the lack of chargers continues to put off buyers.
Even then, car-makers are not yet out of the woods as there is the vexed question of battery production to resolve. Faced with subsidies pouring out of the coffers of EU and US governments, Alan Hollis, chief executive of AMTE Power – head of one of Britain’s few surviving homegrown battery manufacturers – is holding out the begging bowl, threatening to build its planned new factory overseas unless the UK closes the subsidy gap. So far, though, the UK’s experiences with building battery plants have not been happy.
Nevertheless, last May, the government offered the owners of Jaguar Land Rover £500 million in subsidies in an effort to persuade the carmaker to build a new electric battery plant in the UK.
The Indian conglomerate Tata, the parent company of JLR, was in the process of deciding whether to build the new electric battery production facility in the UK or Spain and, in July, announced that it was to build a 40GW battery cell gigafactory in the UK – although this may have Chinese backing as well.
BMW has not yet decided on the manufacturing location for its Mini batteries – with mainland Europe or the UK remaining options – but it is germane to note that the company is also producing the Mini marque in China, with exports from that country due to start in 2024.
Therein lies another tale, as Chinese EV and battery production has been heavily subsidised since the inception of the industry. State subsidies for electric and hybrid vehicles were reported at $57 billion from 2016-2022, helping China become the world’s biggest EV producer and to pass Japan as the largest auto exporter in the first quarter of this year.
However, China is not only delivering the volume, but its cars are also typically 20 percent below the prices of European-built models. This has moved the Commission to consider imposing punitive tariffs under anti-dumping laws. It is possible that the UK will follow suit although to do so would present the government with something of a conundrum.
As it stands, the import of cheaper Chinese vehicles is the only sure-fire way of eroding the price differential between ICE and electric cars, and thus the best way of achieving the government’s net-zero targets – notwithstanding that Chinese industry is largely powered by fossil fuels.
Thus, despite its Faustian deal with its own car manufacturers, the government’s best option is to open the doors to Chinese imports, at the risk of wiping out British car manufacturing.
When the BMW deal was done, Sunak was full of himself, declaring that the “investment” was “another shining example” of how the UK was the best place to build cars of the future, claiming that his government was “securing thousands of jobs and growing our economy right across the country”.
But, from current moves, it appears that Sunak is far more interested in the deindustrialisation of Britain through net-zero, in which case he should be looking to ditching the car industry as soon as possible – which is no doubt already in his mind.
After all, except for a few small-scale specialists, most of the industry is already in foreign hands, so handing it over to the coal-fired Chinese shouldn’t make too much difference. In the pursuit of net-zero targets, nothing is too much or too absurd for our government to countenance.
The Biden Administration Misleads the Public on the Vast Expanses of Land Needed for ‘Net Zero’
By James Varney | RealClearInvestigations | September 12, 2023
The Biden administration is misleading the country about the amount of land that will be required to meet its ambitious renewable energy goals, RealClearInvestigations has found.
The Department of Energy’s official line – echoed by many environmental activists and academics – is that the vast array of solar panels and wind turbines required to meet Biden’s goal of “100% clean electricity” by 2035 will require “less than one-half of one percent of the contiguous U.S. land area.” This topline number translates into 15,000 of the lower 48’s roughly 3 million square miles.
However, the government report that furnished those estimates also notes that the wind farm footprint alone could require an expanse nine times as large: 134,000 square miles.
Even that figure is misleading because it does not include land for the new transmission systems that would connect the energy, created by the solar panels carpeting the ground and skyscraper-tall wind turbines filling the horizons, to American businesses and homes.
Not counted: space for new high-voltage transmission lines, key to utility-scale solar and wind projects.
Solar Energy Industries Association
“It’s hundreds of thousands of acres if not millions for transmissions alone,” said David Blackmon, an energy consultant and writer based in Texas. “The wind and solar farms will take enormous swaths of land all over the country and no one is talking about that.”
And these vast plots, along with the chains of transmission towers, do not include other aspects that would take up even more land: nationwide vehicle charging stations, mines for rare-earth minerals, maintenance space for huge propeller blades and panels, and so forth.
In addition, all projections increase substantially if the U.S. were to meet Biden’s larger goal of aligning the nation with a global plan, set by the International Energy Association and pushed by the World Economic Forum of Davos, dubbed “NetZero 2050.”
Professor Jesse Jenkins at Princeton University, whose work is often cited by renewable energy advocates, did not respond to RCI’s questions, but he detailed the scope of the challenge in the May/June issue of progressive Mother Jones magazine. He urged the U.S. to embark on a moon-shot level transformation of its energy sector, using hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars that Biden provided for the renewable sector in the spending bill that Democrats named the Inflation Reduction Act.
“We’ll have to build as much new clean generation by 2035 as the total electricity produced by all sources today, then build the same amount again by 2050,” Jenkins wrote. “This could ultimately require utility-scale solar projects that cover the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined, and wind farms that span an area equal to that of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.”
Given the ambitious goals and tight time frames Biden has committed the nation to, it seems natural to assume there would be a master plan detailing where and when this renewable infrastructure will be built and come online. Yet despite strong resistance by many communities across the country to serve as hosts for these massive projects, there has been no robust public debate about how all the necessary land will be acquired – and whether, for example, it will include the taking of private property through eminent domain or use of national park lands, an idea the government officially dismisses.
In fact, no such master plan exists. The closest thing to it, according to a spokesperson for the federal National Renewable Energy Laboratory, is a “long-term strategy” put out by Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry. The optimistic, 65-page document does not, however, address the question of land use. The White House did not respond to questions from RCI.
Experts skeptical about Biden’s goals say the land requirements are so immense and problematic that such detail would likely reveal how unworkable the entire program is.
“Of course it will never happen,” said William Smith, a professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and a member of the CO2 Coalition, a group of scientists who do not believe global warming is an apocalyptic development.
The “less than one-half of one percent” figure is fantasy, according to Smith.
“A lot more area is required.”
Instead of being the focus of vigorous debate regarding a crucial issue, the land requirements are routinely finessed or, most commonly, ignored by policymakers and environmentalists who promise that the radical transformation during the coming decades to the world of supposedly clean electricity will have minimal impact on people’s lives and the landscape. In reviewing government documents and speaking with experts, RCI found widespread disagreement and murkiness in part because the questions surrounding renewables are filled with so many dynamic variables and unknown factors.
The U.S. currently uses an estimated 126,562 square miles for energy production, a bit more than the combined land mass of Missouri and Florida, with by far the biggest chunk devoted to growing corn for heavily subsidized ethanol fuel. In 2021, the last year for which figures are available, the U.S. got 2.8% of its energy from solar sources and 9.2% from some 72,000 wind turbines, according to government figures.
In theory, one should be able to easily determine the nation’s future energy needs by working backward – estimating the nation’s total need for electricity in 2030 or 2050 and then determining how many wind turbines and solar panels would be required to meet that demand.
From Federal Agencies, the Rosiest Picture
There is little agreement, however, on how much electricity the U.S. will need in 2035 or 2050 – and, hence, the number of solar installations and wind turbines – because that depends on a variety of lifestyle decisions, such as the type of cars people will drive and the size of the homes they will live in. In addition, the power generation of those turbines and solar panels depends on where they are situated – which is also unknown – and their age.
These and other variables, in turn, can politicize an ostensibly scientific problem as the factors and assumptions one uses to ask key questions necessarily influence the answer.
The rosiest picture is presented by federal agencies, which rely on estimates from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and environmental activists.
Alex Hobson, a senior vice president at the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), a nonprofit that “represents all facets of the renewable energy marketplace,” echoed the Department of Energy when she told RCI that the U.S. would need “less than 1% of the land in the contiguous United States to fully transition to a clean energy economy.” All told, the U.S. could hit the Biden administration’s target of a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 by adding 19,000 square miles of renewables, a parcel roughly equal to Maryland and Vermont, Hobson said.
Although the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s own work includes such projections, Hobson characterized estimates putting the square mile requirements for largely carbon emissions-free energy in the hundreds of thousands as “a narrative often espoused by critics of renewable energy.”
Nevertheless, estimates by other outfits favorably disposed to Biden’s climate agenda offer larger projections. An analysis by Bloomberg News, controlled by billionaire environmental activist Michael Bloomberg, concluded that “expanding wind and solar by 10% annually until 2030 would require a chunk of land equal to the state of South Dakota.” South Dakota is roughly 77,000 square miles, or five times the “one-half of one percent” figure that federal officials like to tout.
Pushing the goal to a “NetZero” future in 2050, Bloomberg reported, would “need up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean energy to run all the electric vehicles, factories and more.”
The different dates – a reduction by 2030 and “NetZero” by 2050 – are yet another set of many variables that contribute to the fuzzy math.
Spinning Turbines
Probably the greatest area of confusion surrounds the amount of land required by wind turbines. In support of its claim that the U.S. will need only 15,000 square miles of land to meet Biden’s renewable goals by 2035, a Department of Energy spokesperson told RCI that the country will need an estimated 5,800 to 11,200 square miles for solar installations and between 1,930 and 3,100 square miles for wind turbines by 2035. But those numbers account for just the physical space required by each turbine – the stake in the ground, which is small – and not the broader area required by turbines, which must be spaced far apart from one other and require huge bases made from 2,500 tons of concrete.
Those who support renewables claim that almost all of the surrounding land can still be used for farming, ranching, or other purposes. Even here, however, the numbers do not align. The Energy Department told RCI that “95% of the land” in wind farms remains untouched by the renewable energy apparatus, meaning the turbines would occupy but 5% of the land. But the National Renewable Energy Laboratory lowers that figure further, claiming only 2% of the land is removed from circulation and, in parentheses in his Mother Jones piece, Jenkins marks it down to 1%.
Those who believe the emissions goals set for 2035 and beyond are unrealistic and unnecessary say those numbers are absurdly low, and characterize as false the notion that towering turbines – plus the construction needed to store and transmit energy that relies on fickle sources like sunshine and wind – will not eat up many thousands of additional square miles.
When factors beyond sticks on the horizon are factored in – that is, the total parameters of wind farms – the plots needed get much bigger, as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (134,000 square miles) and Jenkins (213,000 square miles) acknowledge in their studies.
Then, given that power weakens the further it must travel to the end user, a gigantic new transmission system will be needed.
Here again, RCI found widely disparate estimates. In March, a DOE study said that 47,000 new miles of high-voltage transmission wires would have to be constructed, but a National Renewable Energy Laboratory study looking at 2035 noted that the U.S. could need up to 100,000 miles of new lines during the next decade. The low end of that estimate is the distance of 10 round trips from New York to Moscow, while the high end is four times the earth’s circumference at the equator.
Again, the jumping numbers underscore how policymakers consistently highlight the lowest possible figures, which are derived using what could prove fanciful assumptions.
The renewable energy lab’s suggestion that turbines will take up only 2% of land is false, according to Smith.
“No matter how you slice it, the NREL estimate is utter rubbish, but is 100% accepted since it toes the narrative line,” he said. “It is comforting until it is proven to fall drastically short by sad experience. Ten percent of that land, at least, is useless for other purposes. No one wants to live under, near, or in the line throw from a wind turbine in northern latitudes.”
In addition, there is something disingenuous about pretending enormous windmills and high voltage transmission towers and wires are mere blips in the landscape, said Mark Mills, a senior fellow at the free-market Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
“Like all scenarios, it depends on boundary condition assumptions,” Mills said. “NREL, for example, uses the specific footprint of the concrete pad on which the wind turbine physically sits, rather than the acres of land occupied by the array of turbines. That yields a very small number of course, despite the visual scale of the array.”
Mills acknowledged wind farms do not completely rule out farming or other land uses nearby, gaps that are not available with solar panels in which “literally square miles of land are rendered useless for other purposes.”
These factors tend to be elided when enthusiasts predict smaller and smaller allotments of land being required for the transformation envisioned.
“I don’t hear any of them talk about the land footprint at all,” said H. Sterling Burnett, director of Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, a conservative think-tank opposed to massive renewable energy projects. “The whole NIMBY mindset is not unique to fossil fuels. But if you’re talking about building turbines in Kansas and shipping power to New York City, or all the power lines that will be needed – nobody talks about that.”
The UN’s New Political Declaration on Pandemics
By David Bell | Brownstone Institute | September 15, 2023
On September 20th our representatives meeting at the United Nations (UN) will sign off on a ‘Declaration’ titled: “Political Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response.”
This was announced as a ‘silence procedure,’ meaning that States not responding will be deemed supporters of the text. The document expresses a new policy pathway for managing populations when the World Health Organization (WHO), the health arm of the UN, declares a future viral variant to be a ‘public health emergency of international concern.’
The WHO noted in 2019 that pandemics are rare, and insignificant in terms of overall mortality over the last century. Since then, it decided that the 2019 old-normal population were simply oblivious to impending annihilation. The WHO and the entire UN system now consider pandemics an existential and imminent threat. This matters, because:
- They are asking for far more money than is spent on any other international health program (your money),
- This will deliver great wealth to some people who now work closely with the WHO and the UN,
- The powers being sought from your government will reimpose the very responses that have just caused the largest growth in poverty and disease in our lifetimes, and
- Logically, pandemics will only become more frequent if someone intends to make them so (so we should wonder what is going on).
Staff who drafted this Declaration did so because it is their job. They were paid to write a text that is clearly contradictory, sometimes fallacious, and often quite meaningless. They are part of a rapidly growing industry, and the Declaration is intended to justify this growth and the centralization of power that goes with it. The document will almost certainly be agreed by your governments because, frankly, this is where the momentum and money are.
Whilst the Declaration’s thirteen pages are all over the place in terms of reality and farce, they are not atypical of recent UN output. People are trained to use trigger words, slogans, and propaganda themes (e.g., “equity,” “empowerment of all women and girls,” “access to education,” “technology transfer hubs”) that no one could oppose without risking being labeled a denier, far-right, or colonialist.
The Declaration should be read in the context of what these institutions, and their staff, have just done. It is difficult to summarize such a compendium of right-speak intended to veil reality, but it is hoped this short summary will prompt some thought. Wickedness is not a mistake but an intended deception, so we need to distinguish these clearly.
Doing Darkness Behind a Veil of Light
Put together, the following two extracts summarize the internal contradiction of the Declaration’s agenda and its staggering shamelessness and lack of empathy:
“In this regard, we:
PP3: Recognize also the need to tackle health inequities and inequalities, within and among countries, …
PP5: “Recognize that the illness, death, socio-economic disruption and devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, …”
‘Recognition’ of devastation is important. SARS-COV-2 was associated with mortality predominantly within wealthy countries, where the median age of Covid-associated death was between 75 and 85 years. Nearly all of these people had significant comorbidities such as obesity and diabetes, meaning their life expectancy was already restricted. People contributing significantly to economic health were at very low risk, a profile known in early 2020.
These three years of socio-economic devastation must, therefore, be overwhelmingly due to the response. The virus did not starve people, as the Declaration’s writers would like us to believe. Deteriorating disease control was predicted by the WHO and others in early 2020, increasing malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition. Economic disruption in low-income countries specifically results in more infant and child deaths.
In Western countries, adult mortality has risen as expected when screening for cancer and heart disease are reduced and poverty and stress increase. Knowing this, the WHO advised in late 2019 to ”not under any circumstances” impose the lockdown-like measures for pandemic influenza. In early 2020, under the influence of their sponsors, they advocated for them for Covid-19. The Declaration, however, carries no note of contrition or repentance.
Undeterred by incongruity, the Declaration goes on to describe Covid-19 as “one of the greatest challenges” in UN history (PP6), noting that somehow this outbreak resulted in “exacerbation of poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty…”. In fact, it acknowledges that this caused:
“… (a) negative impact on equity, human and economic development across all spheres of society, as well as on global humanitarian needs, gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, the enjoyment of human rights, livelihoods, food security and nutrition, education, its disruption to economies, supply chains, trade, societies and the environment, within and among countries, which is reversing hard-won development gains and hampering progress…” (PP6)
To restate the obvious, this does not happen due to a virus targeting sick elderly people. It occurs when children and productive adults are barred from school, work, healthcare, and participation in markets for goods and services. Economic, social, and health catastrophe inevitably results, disproportionately harming poorer people and low-income countries, conveniently far indeed from the halls of Geneva and New York.
No, we were not all in this together.
Not all were negatively impacted by this catastrophe. People and corporations who sponsor much of the WHO’s health emergency work, and that of its sister organizations such as CEPI, Gavi, and Unitaid, did very well from the policies they advocated so strongly for. Software and Pharma companies made unprecedently high profits, while this mass impoverishment played out. The international agencies have also gained; construction and recruitment are strong in Geneva. Philanthro-capitalism is good for some.
The main aim of the Declaration is to back the proposed WHO international health regulation (IHR) amendments and treaty (PP26), key to ensuring that viral outbreaks that have such a small impact can remain highly profitable. An additional $10 billion per year in new financing is requested to support this (PP29). There is a reason why most countries have laws against scams. The UN and its agencies, fortunately for its staff, are outside of any national jurisdiction.
Based on their sponsors’ assessments, the staff of these agencies are doing their job well. For the rest of humanity, their work is an unmitigated disaster. In 2019 they said never lock down, then spent 2020 defending top-down lockdowns and mandates. For three years, they theatrically pretended that decades of knowledge on immunity, disease burden, and the association of poverty with mortality did not exist.
Now they write this UN Declaration to fund their industry further through taxpayers they so recently impoverished. Once tasked to serve the world’s vast populations, particularly the poor and vulnerable, the UN vision has been consumed by public-private partnerships, the allure of Davos, and a fascination with high-net-worth individuals.
When Words are Used to Obscure Actions
While the Declaration underlines the importance of educating children during pandemics (PP23), these same organizations backed school closures for hundreds of millions of children at minimal risk from Covid-19. Among them, several million more girls are now being farmed off to nightly rape as child brides, others in child labor. Women and girls were disproportionately removed from education and from employment. They weren’t asked if they supported these policies!
The girls are being raped because the people paid to implement these policies did so. They know the contradiction, and the harm. But this is a job like many others. The only unusual aspects, from a business standpoint, are the sheer amorality and lack of empathy that must be engaged to excel in it.
To justify wrecking African children’s lives, the UN claims that the continent has “over 100 major public health emergencies annually” (OP4). Africa has a rising burden of endemic diseases that dwarfs mortality from such outbreaks – over half a million children die every year from malaria (increased through the Covid-19 lockdowns) and similar burdens from tuberculosis and HIV. By contrast, total Covid-19 deaths recorded in Africa over the past 3 years are just 256,000. The 2015 West African Ebola outbreak, the largest such recent emergency pre-Covid, killed 11,300 people. MERS and SARS1 killed less than 1,000 each globally. However, induced poverty does cause famine, raises child mortality, and wrecks health systems – is this the health emergency that the UN is referring to? Or are they simply making things up?
Through the IHR amendments, these agencies will coordinate the locking down, border closures, mandated medical examinations, and vaccination of you and your family. Their Pharma sponsors reasonably expect to make several hundred billion more dollars from these actions, so we can be confident that emergencies will be declared. By claiming 100 such events annually in Africa alone, they are signaling how these new powers will be used. We are to believe the world is such that only the abandonment of our rights and sovereignty, for the enrichment of others, can save us.
The UN and the WHO do recognize that some will question this illogic. In PP35, they characterize such skepticism as:
“health-related misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatization.”
The WHO recently publicly characterized people who discuss adverse effects of Covid vaccines and question WHO policies as “far-right,” “anti-science aggressors,” and “a killing force.” This is unhinged. It is the denigration and hate speech that fascist regimes use. The reader must decide whether such an organization should control their freedom of expression and decide what constitutes truth.
It is not helpful here to give details of all 13 pages of right-speak, contradiction, and fallacy. You will find similar rhetoric in other UN and WHO documents, particularly on pandemic preparedness. Straight talk is contrary to business requirements. However, the first paragraph in the Declaration’s ‘Call to Action’ sets the tone:
“We therefore commit to scale up our efforts to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response and further implement the following actions and express our strong resolve to:
OP1. Strengthen regional and international cooperation, multilateralism, global solidarity, coordination and governance at the highest political levels and across all relevant sectors, with the determination to overcome inequities and ensure the sustainable, affordable, fair, equitable, effective, efficient and timely access to medical countermeasures including vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics and other health products to ensure high-level attention through a multisectoral approach to prevent, prepare for and respond to pandemics and other health emergencies, particularly in developing countries;”
There are 48 more. You paid taxes so that someone could write that!
Those millions of girls suffering at night, the hundreds of millions of children who had their futures stolen, the mothers of those malaria-killed children, and all suffering under the increasing burden of poverty and inequality unleashed by this farce are watching. The Declaration, like the WHO IHR and treaty it supports, awaits the signatures of the governments that purport to represent us.
David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. He is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA.
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Book Review
Palantir CEO Calls for Draft to Fight the Empire’s Wars
Involuntary servitude is good for business
By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | April 20, 2026
In 2025, Alex Karp, the CEO of government and military tech contractor Palantir, published The New York Times best-seller, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. The Wall Street Journal praised the book as a cri de coeur, a passionate appeal “that takes aim at the tech industry for abandoning its history of helping America and its allies,” while Wired praised the book as a “readable polemic that skewers Silicon Valley for insufficient patriotism.”
On April 18, 2026, Palantir posted twenty-two points to social media summarizing the book. In addition to taking Silicon Valley to task for insufficient patriotism, advocating a role for AI in forever war, and denouncing the “psychologization of modern politics,” the Palantir post on X declares: “National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.”
National conscription, a form of involuntary servitude, and the wars it portends, is good for business, especially for corporations within the orbit of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the national security state. Palantir fits comfortably within this amalgamation. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- After Islamabad: How the Global South Is Reshaping Eurasian Geopolitics
- Is Trump Going for Armageddon?
- Palantir CEO Calls for Draft to Fight the Empire’s Wars
- Iran War fallout: Russia and China quietly take over natural gas markets in Asia, with Qatar gone
- Hamas dismisses US-backed disarmament plan as ‘collective suicide’
- Israel’s war obsession and the urgency of Palestinian leverage
- Supply chains breaking: The hidden bottlenecks threatening to bring the global economy to a standstill
- Israel’s Expansion Means An Unraveling of Middle East Stability
- Why has Israel’s Security Doctrine begun targeting Turkey?
- US strikes vessel in Caribbean killing three, death toll reaches 180
- If Americans Knew
- Israel is (still) killing aid workers in Gaza
- Catholics finally splitting with Trump over Iran war and Israel
- Israel’s “Black Wednesday” Massacre Leaves Lebanese Families Giving DNA To ID Loved One’s Remains
- ‘I Felt I Was a Monster’: IDF Soldiers Talk About the ‘Moral Injury’ – and the Silence
- ‘I thought I might die’: A Palestinian mother’s account of Israeli detention
- Mom whose daughter was killed by Israeli bulldozer 23 years ago pleaded with Congress to finally stop funding
- Israeli soldier takes sledgehammer to Jesus statue in Lebanon – Daily Update
- Israel employs ‘Gaza tactics’ in Lebanon, destroying 1,000 homes per day – Daily Update
- Israel relegates another population to life in tents – Daily Update
- Senate again fails to block weapons to Israel
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
Aletho News 