Reprieve | July 17, 2015
British personnel have already conducted air strikes in Syria, despite the Government’s claim that there would be a vote in Parliament before any such action took place, new research by human rights organisation Reprieve has revealed.
A Freedom of Information request submitted by Reprieve to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) found that UK personnel embedded with US and other forces “operating in Syrian airspace” “include pilots flying… Strike missions”.
Previously, UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon had indicated that the House of Commons would have the final say before Britain expanded its programme of air strikes to Syria.
Jennifer Gibson, staff attorney at Reprieve said:
“Documents obtained by Reprieve indicate that UK personnel have already been involved in bombing missions over Syria for some time – making the current debate over whether Britain should carry out such strikes somewhat obsolete. It is alarming that Parliament and the public have been kept in the dark about this for so long.
“Yet more worrying is the fact that the UK seems to have turned over its personnel to the US wholesale, without the slightest idea as to what they are actually doing, and whether it is legal. We need an open and honest debate about UK involvement in Iraq and Syria. We can’t have that, though, until the UK comes clean about what actions its personnel are already undertaking.”
http://presstv.ir/Default/embed/420667
July 17, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, War Crimes | Iraq, Syria, UK |
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Here is a piece of pseudo-scientific idiocy that caught my attention. This Fox News/LiveScience article tries to claim that bumblebees are disappearing because of, you guessed it, global warming!
From the article:
Climate change is causing wild bumblebees to disappear from large swaths of their historical range, which could spell disaster for pollinating crops in Europe and North America, new research suggests.
As global temperatures have risen, bumblebees have disappeared from the warmest regions they occupy, but have not spread northward to take advantage of new habitat, the study finds.
“They just aren’t colonizing new areas to track rapid, human-caused climate change,” study co-author Jeremy Kerr, a biologist at the University of Ottawa, said at a news conference.”
One minor problem: the planet has not warmed since the latter part of the 1990s.
There is another problem that should be immediately evident:
Kerr and his colleagues looked at historical records of the habitat ranges for 67 bumblebee populations in Europe and North America between 1901 and 1974, when climate warming was negligible, and between 1974 and 2010, when climate change accelerated. On its southern edge, the bees’ range has shrunk 186 miles, or about 5.6 miles every year, Kerr said.
Yet despite warming in northern latitudes, bumblebees haven’t figured out a way to take advantage of the now less-frigid northern climes. The study, which was published July 9 in the journal Science, did not show any correlation between land-use practices or pesticide use and bumblebee populations.
Bees are dying out in the southern end of their range because of the rise of extreme heat waves.
“If you imagine a car that starts running out of coolant and starts blowing steam out of the front of the hood, that’s kind of like an analogy for what bumblebees do when it gets too hot,” Kerr said..”
Hmm. I suppose that Kerr doesn’t realize that the 1930s were actually a warmer decade than any subsequent one. Kerr doesn’t bother with this technicality in his study, simply assuming it was cooler in the good old days. (See the temperature map of July 2012 compared to July 1936, for instance. Why didn’t we witness this same loss of bumblebees as a result of the natural warming at that time? Frankly, I think Kerr and the other AGW alarmists are the ones blowing steam out of the front of the hood.)
So, despite a decided lack of planetary warming and a failure of bumblebees to die off in the ’30s, we are still yet to believe they are not moving into new territory as the Arctic and Antarctic allegedly warm. Why?
Could it be that those areas aren’t actually warming?
The bumblebee – genus Bumbus, also known as Bumbini – is twenty-five to forty million years old, far older than humanity. In all of that time, was the planet cooler than it is now? It certainly was not during the Eocene:
At the start of the Eocene, the continents were close to where they are now, but the average annual temperature in arctic Canada and Siberia was a balmy 18° C (65° F). The dominant plants up there were palm trees and cycads. Fossil monitor lizards (sort of like alligators) dating back to this era have been found in Svalbard, an island north of Greenland that’s now covered with ice all year. Antarctica was home to cool temperate forests, including beech trees and ferns. In particular, our Earth had no permanent polar ice caps!
The Eocene lasted from 55 to 34 million years ago – certainly within the upper estimate for the age of Bumbini. And it was still certainly warmer during the Oligocene (34 to 24 my) than it is now, although it was much cooler than the Eocene or the even hotter Paleocene. Bumblebees developed and thrived during this period. They have done quite well. Now that their number is dropping, it is immediately blamed on “global warming,” a warming that is not happening.
It should also be pointed out that the bumbles did not die out after the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age – a serious warming period. They did not die out at the end of the Little Ice Age in the 19th century.
Maybe the bees don’t want to move north – or south – because it’s getting too cold?
Antarctic sea ice has been growing for years, as indeed so too has land ice. The Alfred Wegener Institute station in Antarctica has concluded that there has been no temperature increase anywhere near where it has been measuring.
And this paper makes it quite clear that Antarctic temperatures have dropped over recent years.
However, “Although previous reports suggest slight recent continental warming,” they declare that “our spatial analysis of Antarctic meteorological data” demonstrated “a net cooling over the entire Antarctic continent between 1966 and 2000, particularly during summer and autumn,” when ice melt would be most likely to occur. A study of temperatures and ecosystem response in the McMurdo Dry Valleys indicated a cooling of 0.7°C per decade between 1986 and 2000.
Antarctic ecosystems show clear evidence of cooling, suggesting that the temperature measurements reported by Doran et al are occurring widely.”
Furthermore, ten years of Icesat data shows that Antarctic ice has been growing. Ice core data confirms this.
In fact, outside the Antarctic Peninsula – a region subject to ocean currents and weather patterns – the only Antarctic ice disappearing is in West Antarctica, and it is clear that this disappearance is caused by volcanism under the sheet.
It should be pointed out that Arctic sea ice has come back in recent years, too.
So what does it all mean? It means that the bumblebees aren’t stupid enough to immigrate to an icebox, and that this story is pure garbage, a work of fiction. That the bumbles are dying is not in dispute, but global warming clearly has little or nothing to do with it.
The point of stories like this is to politicize everything and anything to drive an agenda. The author knows that the average person won’t look past the story itself, and perhaps not past the first paragraph or two. It is intended to leave an impression, and coupled with the other stories written in the same way, it is intended to inflate the AGW meme to critical mass: “see, all the evidence is overwhelming.” It is not intended to actually stand up to close scrutiny.
July 16, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science |
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Methuen, MA — In what can only be described as a “see, I told you so” moment for those in the police accountability sector, a police department in Massachusetts has been caught in a perfidious hiring scheme. They were giving preference to job candidates who said they wouldn’t arrest fellow cops.
In other words, the Methuen police department was only hiring cops who promised to be corrupt and cover for their fellow corrupt officers.
According to the Boston Globe,
A Civil Service Commission official wrote that he was dismayed to learn that the city gave higher points to applicants who said they wouldn’t arrest a family member or an officer they knew, while docking points from who said they would.
“The City turned the interview process upside down,” wrote Christopher C. Bowman, chairman of the Civil Service Commission, in a July 9 decision. “There is simply no valid basis to award the highest points to candidates who express a willingness to apply one set of rules to strangers and another set of rules to friends and family members.”
Ah, but there is a valid basis to award applicants who promise not arrest their fellow cop. Ever hear of the thin blue line?
In police departments across the country, cops who go against this standard and try to hold their fellow officers accountable, are often the subject of demotions, firings, and have even had their lives threatened.
Of course, the Methuen police are spinning this practice of seeking out those who would protect their fellow law-breaking officers by saying that it helps them assess the honesty of candidates.
“I’m looking for some bearing, some honesty, and how quickly the person can think on their feet,” Police Lieutenant Michael Pappalardo testified.
To Lieutenant Pappalardo, it is called ‘honesty’ when police officers look the other way as their fellow officers break the law. How valiant and noble of them!
“Some of the interview panelists actually heaped high praise on those candidates who stated that they would arrest a stranger but not arrest a friend or family member based on the same facts, citing their understanding of ‘discretion,’” Bowman wrote in his decision.
This special treatment for cops who get caught breaking the law and are not charged is called “professional courtesy.” As the Globe noted in December, it is, in fact, quite rare for cops to be charged when they are caught drinking and driving.
“Every police officer who testified before the commission testified that the routine and customary practice when a stop is made on a fellow police officer, is to show professional courtesy and not call in the stop,” the report said.
The hiring practice of Massachusetts police cherry picking cops who won’t hold their fellow cops accountable seem to have been particularly effective. Cops can rape, kill, drink and drive, steal, and commit a myriad of other crimes and the majority of the time they receive but a small slap on the wrist.
The public recognition of hiring those who will simply act as another brick in the blue wall gives us insight into how and why it is so rare and difficult for police officers to prevent corruption in their own departments.
The next time you see a cop, like Timothy Boling of the LMPD, keep his job after getting caught driving drunk in his police cruiser, or firing at SWAT officers during a standoff in which he’s the bad guy — you’ll know exactly why.
Or, the next time you see a cop, like Officer Dale Reising, keep his job after being caught stealing cars, you’ll know that it’s not the criminal’s fault, he’s just receiving what’s known in the biz as ‘professional courtesy.’
July 16, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception | United States |
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There is a madness in how the mainstream U.S. media presents the world to the American people, a delusional perspective that arguably creates an existential threat to humanity’s survival. We have seen this pattern in the biased depiction of the Ukraine crisis and now in how Official Washington is framing the debate over the Iranian nuclear agreement.
In this American land of make-believe, Iran is assailed as the chief instigator of instability in the Middle East. Yet, any sane and informed person would dispute that assessment, noting the far greater contributions made by Israel, Saudi Arabia and, indeed, the United States.
Israel’s belligerence, including frequently attacking its Arab neighbors and brutally repressing the Palestinians, has roiled the region for almost 70 years. Not to mention that Israel is a rogue nuclear state that has been hiding a sophisticated atomic-bomb arsenal.
An objective observer also would note that Saudi Arabia has been investing its oil wealth for generations to advance the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, which has inspired terrorist groups from Al Qaeda to the Islamic State. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were identified as Saudis and the U.S. government is still concealing those 28 pages of the congressional 9/11 inquiry regarding Saudi financing of Al Qaeda terrorists.
The Saudis also have participated directly and indirectly in regional wars, including encouragement of Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980, support for Al Qaeda-affiliate Nusra Front’s subversion of Syria, and the current Saudi bombardment of Yemen, killing hundreds of civilians, touching off a humanitarian crisis and helping Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate expand its territory.
U.S. Meddling
Then there’s the United States, which has been meddling in the Middle East overtly and covertly for a very long time, including one of the CIA’s first covert operations, the overthrow of Iran’s elected government in 1953, and one of U.S. foreign policy’s biggest overt blunders, President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The Iran coup engendered a deep-seated hatred and suspicion of the U.S. government among Iranians that extends to the present day. And, the Iraq invasion not only spread death and destruction across Iraq but has spilled over into Syria, where U.S. “allies” – Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel – have been seeking another “regime change” that is being spearheaded by Sunni terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and the Islamic State.
The U.S. government has further aided in the destabilization of the region by flooding U.S. “allies” with powerful military equipment, including aircraft that both Israel and Saudi Arabia have used to bomb neighboring countries.
Yet, in the fantasy land that is Official Washington, the politicians and pundits decry “Iranian aggression,” parroting the propaganda theme dictated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he spoke before an adoring audience of senators and congressmen at a joint session of Congress on March 3.
This Iranian “bad behavior” includes helping the Iraqi government withstand brutal attacks by the Islamic State and assisting the Syrian government in blocking a major victory for Islamic terrorism that would follow the fall of Damascus. Iran is also being blamed for the Houthi uprising in Yemen although most informed observers believe the Iranian influence and assistance are minimal.
In other words, the neoconservatives who dominate Official Washington’s “group think” may detest Iran’s regional activities since they are not in line with Israeli (and Saudi) desires, but less ideological analysts might conclude that – on balance – Iran is contributing to the stability of the region or at least helping to avert the worst outcomes.
A Lost Mind
The question becomes: Has Official Washington so lost its collective mind that it actually favors Al Qaeda or the Islamic State raising the black flag of Islamic terrorism over Damascus and even Baghdad? Is Iranian assistance in averting such a calamity such a terrible thing?
Apparently yes. Here’s how The Washington Post’s foreign affairs honcho David Ignatius – in a column entitled “Will Tehran Behave?” – describes the geopolitical situation following Tuesday’s signing of a deal to tightly constrain Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions:
“The problem isn’t the agreement but Iran itself. Its behavior remains defiantly belligerent, even as it signs an accord pledging to be peaceful. Its operatives subvert neighboring regimes, even as their front companies are about to be removed from the sanctions lists. The agreement welcomes Iran to the community of nations, even though its leader proclaims that Iran is a revolutionary cause.
“Obama argues that dealing with a menacing Iran will be easier if the nuclear issue is off the table for the next 10 years. He’s probably right, but the Iran problem won’t vanish with this accord. Iranian behavior in the region becomes the core issue. Having played the dealmaker, Obama must now press Iran to become a more responsible neighbor.”
By the way, I always thought that the United States proclaimed itself “a revolutionary cause.” But here is Ignatius, who is regarded as a “big thinker,” setting the parameters of the acceptable debate about the Iran nuclear deal. It’s all about Iran’s “behavior.”
Ignatius even quotes Netanyahu decrying the danger that, after 10 years, the agreement will give Iran “a sure path to nuclear weapons.” Of course, Ignatius doesn’t bother to note that Israel already has taken its own path to nuclear weapons. That context is almost never mentioned.
Nor does Ignatius admit how he and many of his fellow pundits supported Bush’s invasion of Iraq, which in a normal, parallel universe would disqualify Ignatius and his friends from lecturing anyone about how to “behave.” But in today’s Official Washington, a pre-war endorsement of the Iraq disaster is not a disqualifier but a prerequisite for being taken seriously.
Similarly, The Washington Post’s editorial page, which in 2002-03 eagerly backed Bush’s invasion and routinely asserted as flat fact that Iraq possessed hidden WMD stockpiles, now says the real risk in the Iran deal is, you guessed it, “Iranian behavior.”
The Post says the deal could unleash “a dangerous threshold nuclear state that poses a major threat to the United States and its allies.” And, the Post warns that Iran’s “leaders will probably use” the money from the sanctions relief “to finance wars and terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria, the Gaza Strip, Yemen and elsewhere.”
Step into Crazy Land
Again, to appreciate the Post’s thinking, you have to step into crazy land. In the real Iraq and the real Syria, the Iranians are supporting internationally recognized governments battling against terrorist groups, Al Qaeda’s affiliate and the Islamic State.
In Yemen, Iranian involvement is probably minor at most. Plus, the Houthis are not a terrorist group, but rather an indigenous popular movement that has been fighting Al Qaeda’s terrorist affiliate in Yemen.
While it’s not clear what the Post thinks that Iran is doing in the Gaza Strip, which is under a tight Israeli military blockade, only fully committed neocons would think that the long-suffering people of the Gaza Strip don’t deserve some outside help.
Still, the larger issue for the American people is what to do with this insane political-media system that dominates Official Washington. Either these powers-that-be are detached from reality or they are deceitful propagandists who think they can manipulate us with lies and distortions.
Yet, by creating a false reality, whether from madness or cynicism, this system guides the nation into terrible decision-making. And, given the immense military power of the United States, this long national detour into a dark psychosis of delusion must be addressed or the future of humankind will be put into serious jeopardy.
~
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
July 16, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | al-Qaeda, Benjamin Netanyahu, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, David Ignatius, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Middle East, Nusra Front, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkiye, United States, Washington Post, Yemen |
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For two decades, Western elites have spun a tale of how Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame heroically ended the 1994 genocide in that country. That narrative has persisted despite the fact that a great deal of evidence shows that Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) did much of the killing and has committed extraordinary levels of violence in neighboring Congo since invading that country not long after seizing power.
The recent BBC telecast of Rwanda: The Untold Story indicates that the truth about Kagame may finally be penetrating the mainstream. “Rwanda: The Untold Story” presents much information that contradicts the official narrative, specifically that the dramatic escalation in violence began not in April 1994 but in October 1990 when the RPF invaded from its outposts in Uganda; that RPF forces killed tens of thousands of people in the 42-month period from the invasion to April 1994; and that the RPF is responsible for the deaths of several hundred thousand more Rwandans during the three month period of bloodshed in 1994.
In contrast, the spinners of the “Kagame the Hero” tale have put the entire responsibility on the Hutu-controlled government and armed Hutu mobs. The RPF’s 1990 invasion, meanwhile, has been completely written out of history in the official narrative, as has RPF responsibility for the shooting down of a plane carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana. It was immediately after the murder of Habyarimana that what has been known since as the Rwandan Genocide began.
Another part of the official narrative that was exposed long ago by Edward Herman, Robin Philpot, and others is that the U.S. didn’t do enough to stop the killing. In fact, Kagame was an imperial operative as early as the 1980s who trained at Fort Leavenworth and the U.S. was closely allied with the RPF even before the 1990 invasion. Throughout the spring of 1994, the Clinton administration was proactive in blocking the UN from taking measures that might have prevented much of the killing. Former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, for one, has put the entire blame for what happened in Rwanda in the 1990s on the United States.
In addition, while the Rwandan government and France, its primary ally, supported international action to stop the killing, Kagame was so determined to take complete control of the country that he eschewed a ceasefire and negotiations. The inescapable conclusion is that the mounting deaths on both sides were acceptable to Kagame and, by extension, the U.S., so long as the end result was complete victory and the ascension of the RPF to power.
From the outset, both Hutu and Tutsi survivors, U.N. officials, and numerous investigators have presented an entirely different version of events. Those stories, which have been fortified by population studies and other means, reveal that both sides are each responsible for hundreds of thousands of killings. These dissident voices have been ignored and, in the case of several studies by human rights groups and the U.N., suppressed – at least until the airing of “Rwanda: The Untold Story.”
Perpetrators and supporters of empire, who have never seen a U.S. war crime they didn’t like, have attacked critics of the official narrative and obfuscated who really benefits from the ongoing warfare. It’s a neat trick practiced regularly: falsely accuse dissidents of denying atrocities and deny imperial atrocities, all the while obscuring the billions in U.S. business profits made possible by Kagame’s invasions of the Congo.
Western plunder of the region dates to the murderous rule of Belgian King Leopold II. No sooner did the Congolese independence movement succeed in 1960 than Congolese reactionaries and their Belgian and CIA helpers overthrew and eventually murdered Patrice Lumumba, the nation’s first elected prime minister. Eventually installed in Lumumba’s place was U.S. puppet Mobutu Sese Seko, who for 30 years served U.S. business interests as zealously as Kagame has. A succession of U.S. administrations have hailed Mobutu as a great man. The Clintons, Madeline Albright, George W. Bush, Samantha Power and Susan Rice all hail Kagame as “the man who ended the Rwandan Genocide.” Never mind the millions of Congolese who have been killed or died from starvation, disease and other causes traced directly to Kagame’s invasions.
The unraveling of the official Rwanda story has global implications, as the U.S. has invoked “preventing another Rwanda” to justify invasions of the former Yugoslavia, Libya and large swaths of the Middle East. With a population increasingly alarmed by endless wars of aggression, the fact that the foundation for those acts is one big lie brings us closer to the day when we can end forever imperial ambitions and war.
Andy Piascik is an award-winning author and is syndicated by PeaceVoice.
Rwanda’s Untold Story Documentary from RDI-Rwanda Rwiza on Vimeo.
July 15, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | Africa, Paul Kagame, RPF, Rwanda, Rwandan Patriotic Front, United States |
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Why did Kyiv invade the Donbass region? To that question you might respond quizzically: who did WHAT? Everyone knows it was Russia that invaded Ukraine, right?
Not only that, but Russia isn’t going to stop in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. We all know of Putin’s aggressive territorial ambitions. He wants to recreate the Soviet Union, right?
If you have no personal knowledge of these facts, you can take it from President Barack Obama. Recently he issued a warning at the June 7 summit of the G7. He admonished the world to “stay vigilant and stay focused on the importance of upholding the principles of territorial integrity” regarding Ukraine.
Obama explained that Putin is “in pursuit of a wrong-headed desire to recreate the glories of the Soviet empire.”
However, the president failed to disclose how he knows that Putin has territorial conquest on the agenda. Putin denies it. How do we know who’s right?
The rhetoric of Obama about Ukraine reminds me of the commonly-accepted version of the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia. Reportage then was replete with unsubstantiated allegations, too. Typical headlines exclaimed “Russia Invades Georgia.” Territorial expansion was in the news. President Mikheil Saakashvili was out in front bemoaning the tragedy that was inflicted upon his country.
That’s what set me comparing the ongoing Ukrainian crisis with what happened in Georgia. Despite the assertive headlines, Georgia was another case where reliable facts were hard to find. There were a lot of confident allegations, but few hard facts on the Georgian side of the story.
It came down to a question of who shot first. The Russian counter-version of the story claimed the Georgians started the conflict and that Russia was merely being reactive. The Russian argument was greeted with quite a lot of disbelief.
Later, however, a multinational EU fact-finding mission issued a report that blamed Georgia for the war. A Spiegel Online headline proclaimed, “EU Investigators Debunk Saakashvili’s Lies.” The Russia-Invades-Georgia story was a highly successful fabrication.
Now in Ukraine the question is not who shot first. It’s who invaded who. If we take Obama’s word for it, the headline would be “Russia Invades Eastern Ukraine.”
But I think there’s another side to the story. What is it? It is that maybe Kyiv invaded Donbass, the area in which thousands of Ukrainians have died in horrific battles.
You see, if you think about it, there are two Ukraines. To justify that statement let me paraphrase a Clintonism: it depends on what the meaning of the word Ukraine is. There is a “former Ukraine.” That’s the country that existed before the Maidan uprisings. It was territorially whole, constitutional, and not beset by bloody internal war.
Now there is the new Ukraine, the Ukraine created by the Maidanists. Many observers, like Obama, automatically equate the borders of the new Ukraine with those of the former Ukraine. But that equivalence does not seem to be rooted in reality.
The notion that the new Ukraine is entitled to all the territory of the former Ukraine is quite tenuous. There was no constitutional transfer from the former to the new. Instead, an armed junta took over in Kyiv by force. It chased the democratically-elected president Yanukovych out of the country under threats of death. And it nullified the democratically-instituted constitution.
A so-called interim government was put in place by the junta. It ruled from February 27, 2014 until June 7, 2014 when President Petro Poroshenko assumed office following a democratic election. In the meantime, however, two areas of former Ukraine, Donbass and Crimea, declined to become parts of the new Ukraine. The new Ukraine never had controlled those territories, and the majority of the inhabitants wanted no part of the new Ukraine.
I find it is hard for many people to wrap their minds around the foregoing explanation. The media drumbeat has constantly sounded out the Kyiv-centric version of things. Most casual observers have accepted it as gospel. Passions run high among those immersed in the news reports.
So it might be helpful to strip away the polarized positions that many have taken regarding Ukraine. To sidestep those entrenched views, let’s explore the relevant issues with a hypothetical parallel:
Just say that in Spain there is a revolution whereby people who feel antagonistically toward Catalonians take over by force in Madrid. They throw out the Spanish constitution. There is no legal continuity of government. The junta immediately advances threats that diminish the cultural and linguistic heritage and practices of Catalonians.
In response the Catalonians take charge of their own territory. That region was never under control of the junta. What in the world would broadly legitimize a junta’s claim of a right to control Catalonia?
And what just person would not condemn the junta if it invaded Catalonia, causing thousands of deaths and much economic destruction?
Of course the situation in Ukraine is much more complicated due to the Soviet background, differing World War II related sentiments and legends, and a long-running and well-crafted demonization of Putin in the press. But the principle seems the same to me. The hypothetical Catalonian scenario is the reality of Ukraine today. All of it. Donbass is the real Catalonia.
What this adds up to is that Kyiv indeed invaded Donbass.
All the flap about Russia sending troops and weapons into Eastern Ukraine has things backwards. What’s being called Eastern Ukraine in the press is in reality Donbass. Russia actively denies that it has supported Donbass with military personnel and equipment. I don’t know whether it has or not.
But isn’t whatever Russia might be doing really a moot point? The real issue is that Kyiv invaded Donbass. That’s the source of all the death and destruction. Once again, Russia didn’t shoot first. It was just made the villain by a skillful campaign based on fabrications.
Unfortunately, world attention has been diverted from Kyiv’s transgressions and the horror they have wreaked. It’s been redirected to the reported Russian aggression. I’ve documented in my book Ukraine in the Crosshairs how those allegations are not fact based.
I think it is very important to question why the press, the US, NATO, and the EU have so contorted their depiction of the Ukrainian crisis. Their actions have worked to the detriment of the Ukrainian people.
Ostensibly, the Maidanists claimed from the start to be seeking greater democracy and closer ties to Europe. The junta argued that a proposed EU association agreement was the key. Not everyone agreed. And that divisive issue spawned the internal conflict that precipitated the great Ukrainian crisis.
Look at what’s happened in the junta’s wake:
–Before the escalation of the Maidan protests, there was no threat of a Russian invasion, there were no fighting “separatists,” there was no war in Donbass. Ukraine was whole.
–Sanctions were not causing ruinous economic damage to many countries. Relations between the US and Russia were not in dangerous disarray.
–There were no war-torn Donbass cities, towns, and villages. Thousands of now deceased Ukrainians were still alive.
–And the opportunity for replacing the unpopular leader Yanukovych through a democratic election was on the immediate horizon. Change was in the offing without any need for war.
Take a good look at what’s transpired and tell me what tangible benefit has accrued to the Ukrainian people. The Maidanists set out to improve the population’s lot. But things have gotten worse. Much worse.
It is difficult to imagine why anyone would believe that association with the EU will undo all the damage that conflict has caused. Claims it will help seem illusory. In the end, the horrors inflicted upon Ukrainians by the junta were totally unnecessary, ineffectual, and counterproductive.
What on earth are the motives of the people and governments that promoted and supported all this needless death and destruction?
William Dunkerley is author of Ukraine in the Crosshairs. He is a media business analyst, principal of William Dunkerley Publishing Consultants, and a Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow.
July 15, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | European Union, Obama, Russia, Ukraine |
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NATO’s desire to build up its missile defenses despite Monday’s breakthrough deal with Iran means that the entire idea of the US missile shield in Europe is based on lies, Alexei Pushkov, the head of the State Duma’s foreign affairs committee, said on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Iran and six leading world powers signed a comprehensive plan for ending international sanctions against Iran in exchange for putting restrictions on its nuclear program.
Commenting on the breakthrough agreement clinched in the Austrian capital, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that during a 2009 speech in Prague US President Barack Obama said that if such an agreement were signed the proposed US missile shield in Europe would lose its relevance.
Still, an unnamed NATO representative told the media on Tuesday that despite the agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program the missile threat to NATO remained, adding that the alliance’s missile defense program had in mind “all types of threats from outside the Euro-Atlantic region.”
“The entire strategy of the proposed US missile shield in Europe is based on lies,” Alexei Pushkov said in comments aired by Rossiya-24 TV on Tuesday.
“First, they talked about the missile threat from Iran, even though Tehran had neither missiles nor reasons for such an attack. Then they talked about the imaginary threat posed by North Korea, which is on the other side of the globe. And now they are talking about some 30 countries which are allegedly threatening to fire missiles on Europe. When asked to name at least a dozen such states, they tell us that this is classified information,” Pushkov added.
“NATO officials come out here as plain hypocrites and liars, because their proposed missile shield is actually aimed against Russia’s nuclear deterrence. Hating to admit this, they resort to outright lies,” Alexei Pushkov said in conclusion.
On Tuesday, following months of talks, Iran and the P5+1 group, comprising Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and China, reached a final agreement aimed at guaranteeing the peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) acknowledges Iran’s right for peaceful nuclear development on par with any other signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
July 15, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism | NATO, Russia |
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In a rare rebuke to his bullying, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to stop the United States and five other world powers from reaching an agreement to constrain but not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. Yet, Netanyahu still is dominating how the U.S. public and congressional debate is being framed, with Iran accused of regional “aggression” in four countries.
On Tuesday, a recurring theme on U.S. news broadcasts, such as Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC program, was that any lifting of economic sanctions against Iran will give it more money to engage in trouble-making in the Middle East with references to four nations – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen – a central theme in Netanyahu’s speech on March 3 to a joint session of the U.S. Congress.
To repeated standing ovations from U.S. senators and congressmen, Netanyahu declared: “In the Middle East, Iran now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran’s aggression is left unchecked, more will surely follow. So, at a time when many hope that Iran will join the community of nations, Iran is busy gobbling up the nations. We must all stand together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror.”
Netanyahu’s reference to “Iran’s aggression,” which is now becoming a conventional-wisdom talking point in Official Washington, was curious since Iran has not invaded another country for centuries. In 1980, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – at the urging of Saudi Arabia – invaded Iran. But Iran has not invaded any of the four countries that Netanyahu cited.
One of Netanyahu’s citations of Arab cities supposedly conquered by Iran was particularly strange: Baghdad, which is the capital of Iraq where the U.S. military invaded in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-dominated government, on Netanyahu’s recommendation. In other words, Iraq was conquered not by Iranian “aggression” but by U.S. aggression with the support of Israel.
After the Iraq invasion, President George W. Bush installed a Shiite-dominated government which then developed friendly ties to Iran’s Shiite government. So, whatever influence Iran has in Baghdad is the result of a U.S. invasion that Netanyahu personally encouraged.
More recently, Iran has helped the embattled Iraqi government in its struggle against the murderous Islamic State militants who seized large swaths of Iraqi territory last summer. Indeed, Iraqi officials have credited Iran with playing a crucial role in blunting the Islamic State, the terrorists whom President Barack Obama has identified as one of the top security threats facing the United States.
So, in the current Iraqi fight against the head-chopping Islamic State, Iran and the United States are on the same side. Yet, Netanyahu calls Iran’s help “aggression” – and American talking heads repeat that refrain.
Netanyahu also cited Damascus, where Iran has aided the Syrian government in its struggle against the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front. That means that Iran is assisting the internationally recognized government of Syria hold off two major terrorist organizations. By contrast, Israel and Saudi Arabia have provided direct and indirect help at least to Nusra. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Did Money Seal Israel-Saudi Alliance?”]
The Israeli prime minister also mentioned Beirut, Lebanon, and Sanaa, Yemen, but those were rather bizarre references, too, since Lebanon is governed by a multi-ethnic arrangement that includes a number of religious and political factions. Hezbollah is one and it has close ties to Iran, but it is stretching the truth to say that Iran “dominates” Beirut or Lebanon.
Similarly, in Sanaa, the Houthis, a Shiite-related sect, have taken control of Yemen’s capital and have reportedly received some help from Iran, but the Houthis deny those reports and are clearly far from under Iranian control. The Houthis also have vowed to work with the Americans to carry on the fight against Yemen’s Al-Qaeda affiliate, which has benefitted from a brutal Saudi bombing campaign against Houthi targets, an act of real aggression that has killed hundreds of civilians and provoked a humanitarian crisis.
Indeed, Iran and these various Shiite-linked movements have been among the most effective in battling Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, while Israel’s Saudi friends have been repeatedly linked to funding and supporting these Sunni terrorist organizations.
So, there is little truth and much exaggeration to Netanyahu’s depiction of what is going on in the Middle East. Yet, the U.S. mainstream media mindlessly reprises Netanyahu’s falsehood about Iran “gobbling up” nations.
~
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
July 14, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | al-Qaeda, Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran, Israel, Nusra Front |
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Who shot down MH-17? Somebody knows
Once upon a time CIA Stations overseas received what was referred to as an “Operating Directive” which prioritized intelligence targets for the upcoming year based on their importance vis-à-vis national security. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, penetrating Moscow and preventing the KGB’s repaying the favor in kind loomed large as Russia and its allies represented the only genuine threat that could in fact destroy much of the United States. Today’s Russia retains much of that military capability but somehow the perception that you have to deal with what is important first has been lost on our policymakers, possibly due to a false impression inside the beltway that Moscow no longer matters.
A working relationship with Moscow that seeks to mitigate potential areas of conflict is not just important, it is essential. Russian willingness to cooperate with the west in key areas to include the Middle East is highly desirable in and of itself but the bottom line continues to be Moscow’s capability to go nuclear against Washington if it is backed into a corner. Unfortunately, U.S. administrations since Bill Clinton have done their best to do just that, placing Russia on the defensive by encroaching on its legitimate sphere of influence through the expansion of NATO. Washington’s meddling has also led to interfering in Russia’s domestic politics as part of a misguided policy of “democracy building” as well as second guessing its judiciary and imposing sanctions through the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012. The damage to relations has been aggravated by the ill-advised commentary from American politicians on the make, including Senator John McCain’s dismissal of Russia as “a gas station masquerading as a country.”
One should legitimately be concerned over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inflicting damage on his country’s fledgling democracy through fraud, corruption, media clampdowns and exploitation of a malleable legal system. One might also object to exactly how Russia asserted its interests using force against neighboring states Georgia and Ukraine. But that does not change the bottom line, which continues to be that functional relations between Moscow and Washington are a sine qua non. Russia’s domestic politics are none of our business and the alleged grievances of Georgia and Ukraine are undeniably a lot less purely attributable to Russian actions than the White House and Congress would have us believe, with U.S. interference in both countries clearly a major contributing factor to the resulting instability.
Assuming that one accepts that lessening bilateral tension over the Ukraine is a desirable objective, the White House might soon have a good opportunity to demonstrate that it is willing to deal fairly with the Russian leadership in Moscow. The Dutch Government’s Safety Board will in October make public its long awaited report detailing its assessment of last year’s downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 over Ukraine. The investigation was conducted with the cooperation of the Ukrainian and Malaysian authorities, but did not include a thorough survey of the crash site, which was and still is considered too dangerous. According to leaks of its conclusions, the report will admit that there is no conclusive evidence regarding who is responsible for the shoot down but it will nevertheless make a circumstantial case that the pro-Russian separatists are the most likely suspects in spite of the fact that there is no hard technical or intelligence related evidence supporting that judgment. Blaming the separatists will, by implication, also blame Moscow.
At this point, the United States, which together with other interested parties has been reviewing a copy of the report in draft, does not intend to present its own findings but will instead go along with the Dutch conclusions. Among former intelligence, military and Foreign Service officers there has been considerable discussion of the significance of Washington’s standing on the sidelines regarding the findings. To be sure, there are a number of rumors and allegations circulating relating to what is actually known or not know about the shoot down.
According to some sources, the U.S. intelligence community disagrees over the likelihood of the alleged Russian role and has suggested as much privately to the Dutch. Some analysts who have looked at all the considerable body of information that has been collected relating to the downing actually believe that the most likely candidate might well be the then governor of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Ihor Kolomoisky, an oligarch billionaire who is an Israeli-Ukrainian dual national. Kolomoisky is known to employ Israeli mercenaries as advisers and has personally organized and paid for militias fighting the Russian separatists. He would have been strongly motivated to create an incident that could plausibly be blamed on the Russians or their surrogates and he had the means to do so. The government in Kiev acting independently also had the resources and motive to shoot down the plane and blame it on Moscow.
The dominant narrative that is still circulating widely suggests that either a direct or enabling Russian role is a given based on the claimed origin of the Buk missile, technical analysis of the plume and trajectory, and the military units that were known to be in place or moving at the time. And there was also the apparent separatist bragging on communications intercepts about shooting down a transport plane. This was the explanation that surfaced shortly after the downing, that was heavily promoted by the Ukrainian government and the media and that has been much favored by the international punditry ever since.
The third option of how to explain the shoot down is, of course, the Dutch approach: we think it was the Russians but we can’t prove it. That is an easy choice to make as it really says nothing, which is possibly why it is being favored by the White House.
But if it is actually true that there has been considerable dissent on the findings, the tacit acceptance of a possibly unreliable and essentially unsustainable report by the White House will have significant impact on relations with Russia. It constitutes a disturbing rejection of possibly accurate intelligence analysis in favor of a politically safe alternative explanation. It recalls the politicization of intelligence that included Robert Gates’ Soviet assessments of the 1980s, John McLaughlin’s tergiversation regarding Iraq, and, most recently, Michael Morell’s over the top hyping of the threat posed by political Islam. It is a return to a Manichean view of the world as “them” and “us” with the implication that intelligence professionals are willing to restrain their dissent on an important issue if it serves to advance the current war of words with Russia.
To be sure, deep sixing intelligence assessments that contradict policies that the White House is intent on pursuing anyway buys congenial access to the President and his advisers but it comes at the cost of diminishing the ability of the intelligence community to provide objective and reliable information in a timely fashion, which is at least in theory why it exists at all. Producing honest intelligence will, on the contrary, strengthen both the reputations and credibility of all involved.
If Russia is indeed to blame for the airplane shoot down it should be held accountable, but it is up to the U.S. government to put its cards on the table and be clear about what it does and does not know. The original claims that Russia was involved were based on snap judgments based on bits of information that had been obtained immediately after the event, little of which has been subsequently corroborated through either satellite imagery or electronic and signal intercepts. Since that time the German BND intelligence service has expressed its doubts that the missile used in the shoot down could have been supplied by Russia and has also claimed that photos provided by the Ukrainian government as part of the investigation had been “doctored.” There have also been reports regarding a Ukrainian fighter plane being in the area of the airliner as well as the nearby presence of Ukrainian ground to air missile units. Reported conversations among separatist claiming credit were eventually determined to be composite fakes produced by the Ukrainian intelligence services. Presumably U.S. intelligence has also taken a long and hard look at all the evidence or lack thereof but it is being quiet regarding what it has determined.
It is important to get this right because the potential damage goes far beyond the role of intelligence or even who might have been responsible for the downing of an airliner one year ago. As the relationship with Russia is of critical importance and should be regarded as the number one national security issue for the United States, it is essential that the Dutch conclusions be aggressively challenged if there is even the slightest possibility that Russia is blameless.
One does not have to be a fan of Vladimir Putin to appreciate that the nearly continuous efforts being promoted within mostly neoconservative circles to both delegitimize and confront him and his regime do not serve any conceivable American national interest. In an Independence Day phone call to President Obama, President Putin called for a working relationship with the United States based on “equality and respect,” which should, under the circumstances, be a given. Americans have been lied into intervention and war more than once over the past fifteen years and it should be clear to all that any contrived crisis based on an erroneous conclusion regarding a shot down airliner that develops into an armed conflict with Russia will have unimaginable consequences. A skeptical American public and international community must demand that any MH-17 report should reflect a full assessment, to include any dissent from its conclusions registered by the United States intelligence community. Any information at variance with the conventional view, particularly anything that suggests that there might be other interested parties who had both the means and compelling interest to shoot down a civilian airliner, must become a part of the discussion.
July 14, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Kolomoisky, NATO, Obama, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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An alarming recent report revealed not only that prominent psychologists colluded with the Department of Defense and CIA to create a framework of justification for appalling and inexcusable torture, but the person heading that partnership was none other than Stephen Behnke, the Ethics Director of the American Psychological Association.
“The APA’s collusion with the national security apparatus is one of the greatest scandals in U.S. medical history,” declared a statement by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) following the report’s release. That statement called for a full investigation by the Department of Justice over the APA’s actions—and inactions—that gave the Bush administration the greenlight for cruel and inhumane torture of the highest order.
“The corruption of a health professional organization at this level is an extraordinary betrayal of both ethics and the law and demands an investigation and appropriate prosecutions,” implored PHR’s executive director, Donna McKay. “Rather than uphold the principle of ‘do no harm,’ APA leadership subverted its own ethics policies and sabotaged all efforts at enforcement.”
Acting in concert with DoD officials, the APA became the de facto “PR strategy” [read: propaganda campaign] that sanitized gross human rights abuses in order to “curry favor” with the DoD. Sleep deprivation, waterboarding, stress positions, and other forms of torture were both spuriously justified and allowed to continue through the creative editing and generalization of the very ethics standards that should have prevented any torture from taking place. According to the report:
“[K]ey APA officials were operating in close, confidential coordination with key Defense Department officials to set up a task force and produce an outcome that would please DoD, and to produce ethical guidelines that were the same as, or not more restrictive than, the DoD guidelines for interrogation activities.”
The 542-page report, first obtained by the New York Times, resulted from seven months of investigation by a team headed by David Hoffman of the law firm Sidley Austin, at the request of the APA’s board.
Physicians for Human Rights summarized the “overwhelming evidence of criminal activity by APA staff and officials”—whose involvement is evidenced in the report by the following four key conclusions:
- “Colluding with the U.S. Department of Defense, the CIA, and other elements of the Bush administration to enable psychologists to design, implement, and defend the post-9/11 torture program”
- “Allowing military and intelligence personnel to write APA ethics policies regulating their own conduct to ensure they were ‘covered’ in their roles for the torture program”
- “Engaging in a coordinated campaign to cover up the collusion and blocking attempts to oppose these policies within the APA” and
- “Obstructing and manipulating ethics investigations into psychologists involved in the torture program”
Hoffman’s report posits several motives—all with “organizational conflict[s] of interest”—that the APA had for its rather astonishing partnership:
“[The] DoD is one of the largest employers of psychologists and provides many millions of dollars in grants or contracts for psychologists around the country. The history of the DoD providing critical assistance to the advancement and growth of psychology as a profession is well documented . . .”
Further, the group of DoD and APA officials who crafted the laughable ethics policy actively dodged international law of the Geneva Convention, where its strictures were tighter than U.S. law. “[I] cannot take a stand opposed to the U.S. government,” said one. Even the APA’s president-elect called it “a ‘distraction’ to draw international law into APA’s ethics guidance.” This falls in line with President Bush’s outright rejection of the conventions following 9/11 as a deplorably whimsical way to land al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees in a “legal black hole,” as human rights groups and U.S. allies described it.
In a press release, former APA president Dr. Nadine Kaslow stated, “The actions, policies, and lack of independence from government influence described in the Hoffman report represented a failure to live up to our core values. We profoundly regret, and apologize for, the behavior and consequences that ensued.” Listing adopted and proposed strategies to prevent the possibility of a recurrence of such abhorrent ethics violations, Kaslow also admitted, “This bleak chapter in our history occurred over a period of years and will not be resolved in a matter of months.”
Resolved? For whom, exactly? PHR has called for the APA to change its policies for a full decade now—and has pleaded for a federal investigation for at least as long.
Despite the execrable abuses in the CIA torture report—the entirety of which hasn’t even been fully disclosed—one simple, and utterly indefensible, fact overshadows every new revelation.
Something that appears to be a minutiae from the torture report is, in actuality, a glaringly tragic prediction. One interrogator told a detainee that he would never go to court because, he explained, “we can never let the world know what I have done to you.”
But we do know. The entire planet knows.
And all those who suffered or died, enduring unspeakably heinous crimes at the behest of the U.S. government—know.
Yet no one—not a single person—has ever even been charged for their crimes.
July 13, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | American Psychological Association, APA, Human rights, Stephen Behnke, United States |
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The corporate media in both the UK and US are attempting to portray the Iranian desire to have the arms embargo lifted, as a new and extraneous demand that could torpedo the nuclear deal. This is an entirely false portrayal.
The issue has been included in the talks since, quite literally, the very first Iranian position document. And there is a reason for that. It is absolutely part and parcel of the issue and in no way extraneous to it. If there were any real journalists employed by the corporate media, that is obvious right on the face of UN Security Council Resolution 1747 of 2007 which imposed the arms embargo. The sole and exclusive reason given for the arms embargo is Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme. And it specifically states that, once the nuclear proliferation issue is resolved, the embargo will be lifted.
Paragraph 13 reads:
(b) that it shall terminate the measures specified in paragraphs 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
and 12 of resolution 1737 (2006) as well as in paragraphs 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7 above as
soon as it determines, following receipt of the report referred to in paragraph 12
above, that Iran has fully complied with its obligations under the relevant
resolutions of the Security Council and met the requirements of the IAEA Board of
Governors, as confirmed by the IAEA Board;
It is the United States, not Iran, which is introducing extraneous factors, banging on about Yemen, Iran and Hezbollah, which are nowhere mentioned in the Security Council Resolutions.
The way this is being reported in the media is the exact opposite of the truth. The United States is attempting to welch on a deal which was not only open, but forms the very text of the security council resolution. None of the BBC’s highly paid analysts, reporters, or guest commenters is capable of noting this basic fact.
July 13, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | BBC, Sanctions against Iran, UK, United States |
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Germany’s DWD National Weather Service has developed a nasty habit of putting out warmed up press releases for announcing monthly mean data, and then later very quietly revising the data downwards.
Result: the public believes that warming is happening when in fact there really isn’t any.
German skeptic site wobleibtdieglobaleerwaermung (whereistheglobalwarming) writes a post titled: “What’s wrong with the DWD? Once again a downward correction. June 2015 was 0.2° Celsius colder than reported in the press releases”.
It describes how the June 2015 mean temperature for Germany was overstated by 0.2°C in its press release. It adds:
Also in the two earlier months of May and April, and the entire spring of 2015, the press releases reported a mean temperature that was elevated 0.2°C. DWD correction: May and spring 2015 were 0.2°C less ‘warm’ than announced in the press releases – spring 2015 now 1.4°C colder than a year earlier.
The overly hasty DWD press release announcing the June 2015 data states:
”… The first month of the summer with a nationwide mean temperature of 16.0 °C was 0.6°C above the international valid reference period of 1961 to 1990. Using the 1981 to 2010 reference period the deviation was still 0.3°C…”
Here the wobleibtdieerderwaermung site also points out yet another sloppy error made by the DWD: the difference between the two reference periods for June is in fact 0.4°C, and not 0.3°C, citing a 2014 DWD press release here.
So, did the DWD issue a correction to inform the public of the true June 2015 result, that it was in fact cooler then they had claimed earlier? The wobleibtdieerderwaermung writes:
At the DWD homepage http://www.dwd.de/ one finds at a well hidden location, after a total of seven (7) clicks, the value of 15.8 °C for June in Germany – all the way down, to the right.”
In other words, the DWD made sure to bury the real results, to keep them as much out of sight from the public as they could.
wobleibtdieerderwaermung suggests that the DWD ought to issue a new press release with the following content so that the public can be properly informed:
… The first month of the summer with a nationwide mean temperature of 15.8 °C was 0.4°C above the international vaild reference period of 1961 to 1990. Using the 1981 to 2010 reference period the deviation was only 0.0°C, and thus was exactly the mean for the WMO reference period… a climate warming in Germany’s June 2015 is thus not detectable over the last 35 years.”
So what’s compelling the DWD to engage in the habitual deceptive behavior? wobleibtdieerderwaermung speculates that all this probably has nothing to do with error and has more to do with “political intentions”.
Yet another government institution that we can no longer believe. Little wonder trust in government is near an all-time low.
July 13, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Germany |
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