What Is Crimson Contagion?
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | December 22, 2022
The lockdowns of March 2020 shocked the American people and most public health agencies, not to mention infectious disease doctors. The idea of school shutdowns, business closures, plus mandatory remote work and other restrictions have previously seemed inconceivable. It was especially remarkable to have such an “all-of-government” response to a virus that we already knew posed a threat mainly to the elderly and infirm.
Issues like public-health precedent, American legal tradition, and medical knowledge about dealing with respiratory viruses, not to mention natural immunity and collateral damage of lockdowns, were all thrown out the window.
Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s book The Real Anthony Fauci mentions a tabletop exercise called Crimson Contagion that ran from January through August, 2019. I had not previously heard of it and I found the mention remarkable, simply because it proves that not everyone was shocked by lockdowns. They were not part of official planning documents of either the CDC or WHO but they were clearly in the plans of someone.
I’ve only followed up on this report in light of growing focus on the person who coordinated Crimson Contagion: Robert Kadlec, who served in the Trump administration as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, Preparedness and Response. It was he who also ran the Covid response between HHS and the Department of Homeland Security.
Kadec’s lifetime government service (and, yes, he is said to be CIA) extends all the way back to the G.W. Bush administration when in 2007 he took the position of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Biodefense Policy on the Homeland Security Council from 2007 to 2009. The very notion of lockdowns originated in that administration.
The 2019 tabletop exercise involved a huge number of public-sector agencies across all states plus many private-sector associations. It postulated a disease scenario in which a respiratory virus begins in China and spreads around the world by air travelers. It is first detected in Chicago. The World Health Organization declares a pandemic 47 days later. But then it was too late: 110 million Americans became sick, with 7.7 million hospitalized and 586,000 dead.
The conclusion of the exercise was that government was not well prepared for a pandemic and urged more planning and fast acting to implement what we now call lockdowns as we await a vaccine. Presumably, the vaccine then fixes everything.
The public knew nothing of this exercise until March 19, 2020, when the New York Times reported on it for the first time. This was one day following the detailed release of stay-at-home orders by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The next day, National Public Radio also ran a report on Crimson Contagion.
The Times reported:
The Crimson Contagion planning exercise run last year by the Department of Health and Human Services involved officials from 12 states and at least a dozen federal agencies. They included the Pentagon, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Security Council. Groups like the American Red Cross and American Nurses Association were invited to join, as were health insurance companies and major hospitals like the Mayo Clinic.
The war game-like exercise was overseen by Robert P. Kadlec, a former Air Force physician who has spent decades focused on biodefense issues. After stints on the Bush administration’s Homeland Security Council and the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was appointed assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for Preparedness and Response.
Also participating were former Trump administration officials Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State, 2017-2018) and John F. Kelly, who was White House chief of staff from 2017 to 2019. The NYT even ran a picture of the two of them at the event.
Here are some direct quotes from the October 2019 report of Crimson Contagion:
The exercise revealed several workforce protection challenges under conditions where medical countermeasures, such as the pandemic vaccine, antiviral medications, and personal protective equipment, are limited. To protect the public prior to vaccine distribution, public health officials issued guidance on the implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions intended to slow the spread of the virus.
In keeping with non-pharmaceutical intervention recommendations, employers – including government entities – sought to practice social distancing by having a significant portion of their employees work remotely. Employers encountered cascading impacts associated with making, communicating, and implementing such work-distancing decisions.
At multiple levels of government, officials wrestled with identifying employees who are essential and those who are nonessential in the context of an incident forecasted to span many months. In addition, officials faced challenges in determining which employees could perform their duties remotely and hierarchical organizations, such as state and federal departments and agencies, were uncertain as to the process for determining and implementing remote-workforce decisions.
Also:
During the exercise, CDC recommended that states delay school openings for six weeks, a follow-up to the initial (pre-exercise) recommendation that states delay the opening of schools for two weeks if the disease is present in the area. Many local jurisdictions and school districts have the authority to decide to close schools (or keep schools open). This distributed approach to school closure decisions caused confusion centered on discrepancies between schools that remained open and those that closed. In addition, while school delays and dismissals may be necessary over the course of the pandemic response, state participants identified any continued school delays and dismissals as having serious cascading impacts that require a concerted public messaging campaign and government coordination. Multiple states realized that dismissing schools is much more complex than they previously appreciated.
The participating private sector organizations and businesses:
- Aetna
- Allegheny Health Network
- Amador Health Center
- American Hospital Association
- American Red Cross
- Association of Public Health Laboratories
- Association of State and Territorial Health Officials Carestream Health
- Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists
- Ephraim McDowell/James B. Haggin Hospital
- Giant Eagle Pharmacy
- Grand Strand Health/HCA
- Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Council Healthcare Ready
- International Safety Equipment Association
- Juvare
- Kidney Community Emergency Response Program
- Mayo Clinic
- Moldex-Metric Inc.
- National Alliance of State Pharmacy Associations National Association of County and City Health Officials
- National Community Pharmacists Association
- National Indian Health Board
- North Shore University Health System Patients’ Hospital
- RBC Limited
- San Mateo County Health – EMS Agency Seqirus Inc., USA
- Spectrum Health
- TriStar Skyline Medical Center
- University of Minnesota
This exercise took place entirely out of the public eye but had strangely prescient foretelling of events only 5 months later. Kadlec, who had organized the entire tabletop exercise, was also later the author of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions report: An Analysis of the Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which came out earlier this year.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., reports: “second only to his longtime crony and comrade in arms Anthony Fauci, Robert Kadlec played a historic leadership role in fomenting the contagious logic that infectious disease posed a national security threat requiring a militarized response.”
He is the signer of the report to HHS, in a letter dated December 9, 2019:
By the time of this letter, US intelligence already knew of the Wuhan virus. Four months later, US lockdowns began, starting with the March 8th cancellation of South-by-Southwest by the Austin, Texas mayor, and extending to the March 12th imposition of travel restrictions, the March 13 takeover by FEMA, and the March 16th press conference by Trump, Fauci, and Deborah Birx, which announced nationwide lockdowns.
The same day, Politico ran an article about another pandemic exercise from 2017 in which some incoming Trump officials participated, including Kelly and Tillerson. The article claims that such exercises are required by law. By the time of Covid lockdowns, they had both been pushed out, only to reemerge as key participants in Crimson Contagion along with most national-security and health-related agencies of the federal government.
The lockdowns – to which Trump agreed only reluctantly and were extended far past the point in which he believed they would control the virus – were the most ruinous of the administration. Trump’s pollsters for 2020 all agreed that these lockdowns created the conditions that drove him from office.
What does it all mean? Perhaps it is all just a series of coincidental data points, that what is called the worst pandemic in 100 years came only a few months after an elaborate multi-agency trial run of the same in which former high officials of the Trump administration participated. And perhaps the best person to run the Covid response also happened to be the very person who organized and managed the trial run in the previous season.
Many people will surely say there is nothing to see here. There is so much not to see these days.
Hungary wants European Parliament dissolved
RT | December 22, 2022
The recent corruption scandal in the European Parliament (EP) is a sign that the EU institution should be abolished in its current form, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Wednesday. He added that the EP already had an abysmal reputation.
Orban’s remarks came after Eva Kaili, a Greek politician who served as one of the European Parliament’s vice presidents, was arrested and charged this month with corruption for receiving bribes from Qatar.
“The Hungarians would like for the European Parliament to be dissolved in its current form,” he said at a press conference in Budapest.
Orban argued that the scandal “draws attention to the fact that national parliaments have a stronger control system in place,” adding that legislators from the parliaments of member states should be delegated to the European Parliament, as opposed to being elected separately.
“And they obviously know our political position: the swamp must be drained,” the prime minister said.
Budapest has repeatedly clashed with the European Parliament and other EU institutions over a number of issues, including migration and LGBTQ rights. Brussels, in turn, accused Orban’s conservative government of eroding the rule of law at home.
Hungary, whose economy heavily depends on Russian energy imports, has also criticized the EU sanctions imposed on Moscow in response to the military operation in Ukraine, which was launched in late February. Unlike many of the bloc’s member states, Orban has refused to send weapons to Kiev.
“If it were up to us, there would not be a sanctions policy,” Orban said on Wednesday. “It is not in our interest to permanently divide the European and Russian economies into two, so we are trying to save what can be saved from our economic cooperation with the Russians.”
Selling a war: How German media stirs up militancy in society and works to prevent negotiations with Russia
By Felix Livshitz | RT | December 22, 2022
Last week, the University of Mainz published a study of German news coverage of events in Ukraine, and Berlin’s official response to the crisis. The conclusions confirm that since February 24, the media has played a major role in keeping the conflict going, and making a negotiated settlement less likely, due to almost universally biased, pro-war, anti-Russia content being published at all stages.
Researchers at the university analyzed German-language reporting on the Ukraine conflict between February 24 and May 31, assessing the content of around 4,300 separate articles published by the country’s eight leading newspapers and TV stations: FAZ, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Bild, Spiegel, Zeit, ARD Tagesschau, ZDF Today, and RTL Aktuell.
During this time, Ukraine was portrayed positively in 64% of all coverage, and President Vladimir Zelensky in 67%. By contrast, Russia was portrayed “almost exclusively negatively” 88% of the time, and President Vladimir Putin in 96% of cases. Almost all reports – 93% in total – attributed sole blame for the war to Putin and/or Russia. The West was named as “jointly responsible” in only 4% of instances, Ukraine even less so at 2%.
The perspectives of Russia on the conflict were only considered or mentioned in 10% of news reports, less than the viewpoint of any other country, including Moscow’s neighbors. Alternative for Germany and the Left Party, which both oppose arming Ukraine and prolonging the fighting, “had practically no media presence in reporting on the war.”
Government messaging and statements from ministers were completely dominant, being the focus in 80% of news coverage, more than four times above the figure for opposition parties.
In media discussions of “measures most likely to end the war,” economic sanctions against Russia were “by far the most frequently reported,” and approved of in 66% of cases. Diplomatic measures were mentioned “much less frequently,” while “humanitarian measures” were even less regularly featured.
In all, 74% of the reports surveyed portrayed military support to Ukraine “extremely positively.” Delivery of heavy weapons was endorsed “a little less clearly, but still considered to be largely sensible,” with 66% “overwhelmingly in favor.” Less than half – 43% – gave the impression that diplomatic negotiations would be useful, and this was largely due to Der Spiegel’s reporting that clearly marked diplomacy as the most sensible option for Berlin “by far.”
“Der Spiegel was the only media examined to rate diplomatic negotiations more positively than the delivery of heavy weapons,” the academics conclude.
The report did identify one area where media coverage was “certainly not pro-government.” On certain rare occasions, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his coalition were strongly criticized “for hesitating to flood Ukraine with heavy weapons” by all outlets apart from Der Spiegel.
The report adds that “not all members of the government were equally affected by the criticism.” While those who escaped censure aren’t listed, it’s a fair bet they are representatives of government coalition parties such as the Greens, who have been demanding that Berlin flood Kiev with arms from day one.
Overall, though, the study offers a disturbing view into how Germany’s entire media lined up behind the cause of war and a dangerous escalation against Russia. Meanwhile, consideration of alternative policies, such as supporting a diplomatic settlement or urging Ukraine to engage in productive negotiations to end the fighting as early as possible was almost completely absent – or indeed completely withheld – from any news reporting or analysis.
It also shows how journalists are among the most aggressive and effective lobbyists for war. Germany is just one country, and a similar investigation of media coverage of the conflict in any Western state would inevitably reach similar conclusions. In many cases, the findings could possibly be even more drastic, in terms of the one-sided, pro-war picture presented to average citizens by the press, and the lack of opposing, pro-diplomacy viewpoints.
This would surely be the case in the UK and US, the two countries most eagerly pushing proxy war with Russia. It has been confirmed that Kiev and Moscow reached a negotiated interim settlement in early April, whereby Russia would withdraw to its pre-February 24 position, and Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership in return for security guarantees from a number of countries.
However, at the very last minute, then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly flew to Kiev and demanded that Zelensky step away from talks. This shocking fact has barely been mentioned in English-language news, but this should not surprise us.
These organizations and the journalists who work for them seem to have a forever war to sell. For that to happen, the Western public apparently cannot be allowed to know it’s possible to achieve peace by alternative means to death and destruction. It is also necessary, it appears, to mislead Europeans about the consequences of the conflict for their own economies and personal lives, as the University of Mainz study proves.
Between February 24 and May 31, the proportion of reports that mentioned or were about the “influence of the war on Germany,” such as energy shortages and price inflation, never rose above 15% in total per week. It is only lately the country’s media has begun to recognize this damage, and explored what it means for the average citizen. A majority of the public may not see the huge recession coming, or have any idea that it is self-inflicted.
“Silent Majority” of Car Industry is Concerned About Electric Vehicles
BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | DECEMBER 20, 2022
A “silent majority” of car companies is concerned that electric vehicles will not alone be able to end reliance on fossil fuels, according to a senior Toyota executive. The Telegraph has more.
Akio Toyoda, the company’s president and grandson of its founder Kiichiro Toyoda, said that many concerned senior figures are reluctant to say what they really think because of the pressure to go green.
It comes as the industry struggles to ditch petrol and diesel, in the face of materials shortages and complex processes that have kept the cost of building electric cars high.
In comments on a visit to Thailand first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Mr Toyoda said: “People involved in the auto industry are largely a silent majority.
“That silent majority is wondering whether EVs [electric vehicles] are really OK to have as a single option. But they think it’s the trend so they can’t speak out loudly.”
Meanwhile, MPs on the parliamentary Science and Technology Committee have warned that plans to require that all new boilers are able to run on hydrogen within a few years are unrealistic and the gas is likely to play a limited role in the future energy system, given the practical challenges of producing and handling it cleanly at large scale. From the Telegraph:
They argue huge questions still need to be answered about the potential deployment of the gas, and highlight “conflicting views” on the role it could play in domestic heating, given the merits of electric heat pumps instead.
Hydrogen is currently a niche product used in chemical production and oil refining, but politicians around the world hope it can replace fossil fuels in uses ranging from heating to transport, as it does not produce emissions when burned.
However, the committee argued that in practice this was likely to be limited to uses where other options are unsuitable, or in areas which are close to hydrogen production hubs.
“It seems likely that any future use of hydrogen will be limited rather than universal,” they said. “This limited – rather than universal – use of hydrogen should inform Government decisions. For example, we disagree with the Climate Change Committee’s recommendation that the Government should mandate new domestic boilers to be hydrogen-ready from 2025.”
Russian carmaker to launch production at former Nissan plant
RT | December 21, 2022
Russia’s biggest automaker, Avtovaz, will start producing cars at a plant in St. Petersburg previously owned by the Japanese car manufacturer Nissan, the company’s CEO Maxim Sokolov told reporters on Wednesday.
Sokolov noted that the cars will be produced under the Lada brand and that preparations for the launch of production are in the final stages.
“We will not reveal all the details now, they are kept under wraps by the automakers till the last moment, but I can say that these cars will be modern, of high quality and with the highest safety standards… As soon as the memorandums [with our partners] are signed, we will immediately present them to the public,” the company official said.
Earlier reports stated that Avtovaz was planning to restart production at the plant in the second half of 2023.
The Nissan plant in St. Petersburg, which was launched in 2009, has a production capacity of up to 100,000 cars per year. Last year, roughly 43,000 cars came off of its assembly line. The plant mostly produced SUV models such as the Qashqai and X-trail.
The Japanese carmaker suspended operations at the plant in March, citing supply-chain interruptions due to Ukraine-related sanctions imposed on Moscow. Last month, the company decided to sell all of its Russian assets to the state-owned research and development firm NAMI, according to the Russian Trade Ministry. Under the deal, which was concluded for a token sum of €1, Russian carmaker Avtovaz is to carry out maintenance services for Nissan vehicles and supply spare parts for them.
Hungarian Parliament Speaker: West’s Push to Turn Ukraine Into Anti-Russian Bridgehead is a ‘Strategic Mistake’
Samizdat – 21.12.2022
Budapest has stood alone among NATO’s Eastern European flank in rejecting the transfer of weapons to Ukraine via its territory. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has essentially labeled the Ukrainian conflict a Russia-US proxy war, citing the need for peace talks between Russia and the US, rather than Moscow and Kiev, for the conflict to stop.
Hungarian Parliament speaker Laszlo Kover has lashed out against Western governments’ “hypocritical” behavior in Ukraine, and warned that the West’s attempts to pry Kiev out of Russia’s orbit and turn it into an armed base against Russia has proven to be a “strategic mistake.”
“I think the Western world made a strategic mistake when it tried to not only take Ukraine out of Moscow’s sphere of interest, but also turn it into a large military base against Russia,” Kover said in a broad ranging interview with a Hungarian radio station on Tuesday.
Asked whether he sees any prospects for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis, Kover said that if he “wanted to be cynical,” he would point out that Western countries have already found a workaround, by “proclaiming the protection of European values and international law and accusing Russia of all kinds of crimes, with basis or without basis. In the meantime, they have tried to stock up on Russian oil and gas, so their trade volume with Russia actually jumped radically after sanctions were announced.”
The politician, who is a member of Prime Minister Orban’s Fidesz party, accused Hungary’s European allies of engaging in a “hypocritical show” in Ukraine and behaving in a “terribly hypocritical and irrational” way, destroying their own economies, even as the United States “has embarked on the path of an openly protectionist economic policy,” by setting up trade barriers to European automobiles, for example, making American cars 25-30 percent cheaper than their European-made counterparts.
“This is clearly offensive. It violates all kinds of free trade rules and agreements, and of course violates the legitimate interests of European car manufacturers. Now, compared to this [the crisis with Russia, ed.] the leaders of the EU member states and the European Council are watching events with drooling glee, and we haven’t seen even a harsh outburst or verbal reaction, lest they take some kind of countermeasure, some kind of defensive step,” Kover complained.
The parliament speaker suggested that from the “first moment” of the Russia-West proxy conflict in Ukraine, the goal was to try to “destroy Russia economically, politically, in every sense” and to separate Moscow from the European Union, “to create a new Iron Curtain,” no matter the cost to Europe.
“This means in practice that the space of continuous economic and political cooperation based on mutual, fair consideration of interests, which could have been created in a unified Eurasia stretching to Portugal to say, Southeast Asia, seems to be falling apart at this moment, and I think that the damage caused by this conflict will stay with us for the rest of our lives,” Kover said.
Kover stressed that Hungary’s position has been and remains to defend its elementary economic interests by withdrawing from some EU-level sanctions against Russia “to prevent decisions that harm us more than Russia.” The official added that “the whole sanctions regime has hurt Europe much more than Russia, and I think we should fight here in Central Europe so that this scenario, where we become the eastern periphery of a North Atlantic empire, does not come true.”
Kover reiterated that measures were necessary “to try to end this armed conflict as quickly as possible,” even if it takes “years before this can take the form of some kind of peace treaty.” In the meantime, “we should try to create a new Central European or pan-European peace system in which each [country’s] security needs are taken into account by the other side,” the official said.
As for NATO’s role in the Ukraine crisis, Kover urged the Western alliance to stick to preparing to defend the sovereignty and security of alliance members, and not allow the bloc to drift into a hot war with Russia. “It’s very close to it anyway, because while no NATO members are involved in the war de jure… when a country supplies weapons to another that is at war or when a country or political community tries to destabilize the economic life of another country via various sanctions, blockades or the freezing of assets, this can be considered a kind of warfare.”
Relations between Hungary and Ukraine have been strained since the 2014 Euromaidan coup, which brought nationalist forces to power in Kiev which gradually moved to deprive the 150,000-strong community of ethnic Hungarian Ukrainians living in western Ukraine of their rights, including the right to receive an education in their native tongue.
Amid the escalation of the crisis, Hungarian and Ukrainian officials have gotten into a series of vicious verbal spats, with Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry asking Kover to produce a note from a psychiatrist on his mental state after the speaker suggested that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was suffering from a “mental problem.”
Japan’s $320 billion militarization plan wastes precious resources amid rapid societal decline
By Drago Bosnic | December 20, 2022
In the aftermath of the Second World War, Japan went through a process of thorough demilitarization. The country’s militaristic ideology, the effects of which were disastrous for the entire Asia Pacific region during WWII, was also dismantled by American occupation forces. The changes were codified in the new Japanese constitution which effectively banned the country from possessing a fully fledged military.
This changed to a certain degree during the zenith of the (First) Cold War when the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) essentially became the country’s military, although its role was limited to effectively being a footnote within the larger context of US-led “Free World” security policies. This approach lasted up until recently, when Tokyo decided to start a massive rearmament program aimed at turning Japan into a major military power.
On December 16, the Japanese government announced a $320 billion program that would make it possible for the JSDF to launch standoff strikes against China and other regional adversaries (presumably North Korea). Reportedly, the plan also involves the expansion of Japanese military power to include the ability to maintain a sustained front against advanced opponents. Speculation about the program started in late November when Tokyo hinted it could soon equip its submarines with long range missiles. According to a report by the Naval News, the Japanese Defense Ministry announced it was in the process of extending the range of its Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles deployed by the Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) from the current 200 km to a maximum of 1,200 km.
A Reuters report claims the new military plan would take approximately five years to complete and would also make Japan the world’s third largest military spender, right after the United States and China. The program would also focus on logistics as it would include the stockpiling of spare parts and various types of munitions, expanding transport capacity, as well as the development of cyber warfare capabilities.
The deal is also set to benefit the Japanese military industry, as companies such as the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are expected to be at the helm of the development efforts for long-range missiles that are set to constitute the backbone of the country’s new military power projection in the Asia-Pacific region. The company is currently involved in a project to develop Japan’s next generation fighter jet. The effort, which also includes corporate giants such as the BAE Systems and Leonardo SPA, is a joint venture between Japan, the UK and Italy. So far, the project received at least $5.6 billion in funding.
Foreign companies, particularly those from the US, are also expected to benefit from Japan’s (re)militarization efforts.
Additionally, Tokyo says it plans to arm its ships with the latest iteration of the “Tomahawk” cruise missile (most likely referring to the new Block V) made by the Raytheon Technologies. According to Reuters, other weapons set to be acquired as part of the new five year program will very likely include interceptor missiles for ballistic targets (apparently including the troubled ship-borne “Aegis” and its land-based “Aegis Ashore” version), attack and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) drones, satellite communications equipment, F-35 fighter jets, helicopters, submarines, warships and heavy-lift transport jets.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently stated that “Japan is at a turning point in history,” adding that “the ramp-up in its military was my answer to the various security challenges that we face.” According to Reuters, Kishida’s government is allegedly concerned that “Russia has set a precedent that will encourage China to attack Taiwan, threatening nearby Japanese islands, disrupting supplies of advanced semiconductors and putting a potential stranglehold on sea lanes that supply Middle East oil.” Needless to say, the claim that Russia set a precedent is quite bemusing, especially when considering the countless examples of the massive scope of US aggression against the world.
Expectedly, the program will be closely coordinated with the US, as shown in a separate national security document in which Tokyo pledged to maintain close security ties with Washington DC and its other vassals. The US itself was quick to show public support for the program. US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel stated that “the Prime Minister is making a clear, unambiguous strategic statement about Japan’s role as a security provider in the Indo-Pacific.”
In addition, the cooperation is apparently also set to include China’s breakaway island province of Taiwan. During a meeting with Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association Chairman Mitsuo Ohashi on Friday, the incumbent head of the government in Taipei Tsai Ing-wen stated she expected greater defence cooperation with Japan. “We look forward to Taiwan and Japan continuing to create new cooperation achievements in various fields such as national defence and security, the economy, trade, and industrial transformation,” Reuters claims the presidential office cited Tsai as saying.
The plan is expected to double Japan’s military expenditures to around 2% of the country’s GDP over a period of five years. The previous 1% limit was self-imposed in 1976, nearly 50 years ago. This is also set to increase the share of military expenditures to around 10% of all public spending. To secure funding for the program, the current Japanese government announced tax hikes, which can only further exacerbate the country’s woes, including the disastrous demographic situation which is set to get even worse in the coming years.
With nearly 1,400,000 deaths and approximately 840,000 births per year, Japan is highly unlikely to get out of its current demographic “black hole”. And yet, instead of focusing on preventing further societal decline, the Japanese government is still blindly following the suicidal US diktat by investing precious remaining resources into a military project which is bound to fail from the start, as China’s unrelenting rise will dwarf anything its opponents could hope to accomplish.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Elevated Living Standards Contradict Climate Doomsayers
By Vijay Jayaraj | RealClear Energy | December 14, 2022
Climate protestors destroying artworks and gluing themselves to roads without offering a shred of evidence for their alarm exhibit a malicious stupidity that is blind to the actual state of the world.
Why do these activists not hold up placards with graphs, histograms, and Venn diagrams? Because actual data show that life today is much better than at any time in human history. Ignored is the fact that the change in climate has made Earth better and helped to advance humanity.
Much of the progress in the last three centuries hinged on one important event in the 17th century: the waning of the Little Ice Age, which finally ended in the 1800s. Contrary to popular media and the politically correct, climate change has aided in the unprecedented growth of human civilization.
The Little Ice Age disrupted global plant growth and fostered periods of famine, disease and mass depopulation. However, since the advent of modern warming there has been an overall greening of the planet, more bountiful crop harvests and an eight-fold increase in humanity’s numbers. Contributing to the bounty has been the fertilization effect of carbon dioxide, whose atmospheric concentration has increased in recent decades.
Global maize (corn) production was approximately 205 million tons in 1961. Today the world produces five times more maize, — 1.16 billion tons. There have been similar increases for all major food crops, including rice, wheat, soybeans, cereals, nuts and vegetables.
Captures of marine fish during 1961–2018 increased from 34 million tons to 84 million tons. During the period, aquaculture production increased from two million tons to 82 million tons.
Meanwhile, malnourishment in developing countries reduced drastically from 34 percent in 1970 to 13 percent in 2015, despite a rapidly growing population.
Improved nutrition and technological advancements have combined to make life not only better but also longer. In Oman, for example, the mortality rate for children under 5 dropped from 38 deaths per 100 births in 1950 to less than one. Similar progress has been registered across the world.
Transportation has become more affordable to the general population. Nominal prices for roundtrip airfare almost halved in the 2010s compared to 1980.
Electricity has become more available to households and businesses. In China alone, power generation increased by 18 times between 1950 and 2015, enabling 1.3 billion people to have greater access to electricity and experience remarkable economic growth.
People are better protected against nature’s fury than ever before. The annual death rate from natural disasters has plummeted globally since the 1920s and 1930s. This is because greater prosperity supported by cheap, abundant energy resources has provided sturdier infrastructure to withstand weather extremes and modern reporting systems to warn of dangers. Media reports of a world ransacked to an unprecedented extent by storms and floods are as false as the predictions of an overheated globe.
Species that were hunted to near extinction have been making a comeback, including the Arctic’s polar bears and India’s Bengal tigers. The number of humpback whales in the western South Atlantic doubled between 2006 and 2022. In Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, gray wolves increased from 1,100 in 1975 to 3,600 in 2018.
In all of the U.S., there were merely 487 bald eagle pairs in 1963. By 2006, there were approximately 10,000. Today, wind turbines remain the only major threat to bald eagles, with the government dismayingly allocating “bald eagle-killing quotas” for each machine.
So, notions of a climate emergency and a planet in terminal decline are fallacious. The numbers do not lie no matter how much art is despoiled or how many commuters are delayed by the misguided.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, UK and resides in India.
Will nuclear fusion power save us?
By Dr David Whitehouse | Net Zero Watch | December 14, 2022
“Nuclear fusion breakthrough,” are the world’s headlines today. Eventually we will have free, pollution-free energy. No CO2 emissions, we will be saved. I have lived with the promise of nuclear fusion all my life and it has always been decades away. It’s become something of a bad joke amongst the science community that fusion is always decades away.
Nuclear fusion liberates energy by combining light atoms – isotopes of hydrogen – rather than by using the radioactive decay of large atoms such as uranium and plutonium – nuclear fission. It could have many advantages; the reaction can be switched off (not possible with fission), it uses water as a fuel and produces very little waste. The question is how do you fuse atoms?
Obviously it isn’t easy. Every star in the Universe generates its energy this way but stars are big and places of great pressure and temperature, unlike the Earth. One way is to generate a hot gas of hydrogen isotopes – 100 million degrees or so – and confine it so that the hydrogen nuclei (for it will be ionised) fuse. The heating is done by microwaves and the confinement by a magnetic field, for anything physical would melt. The problem is that the plasma is unstable and so far the reactions are fleeting.
This is the basis of the major multi-national project to develop fusion, the $22 billion International Thermal Experimental Reactor (ITER)project (China, India, Japan, Korea, Europe, US) which is under construction in France and hopes to start tests in 2035 as part of developing the expertise to build a commercial fusion reactor presumably in the unspecified following decades.
Flash and Burn
Yesterday’s announcement involves a different technique. The US National Ignition Facility focuses a burst from a multitude of high-powered lasers on a grain-sized target that compresses to initiate fusion. The announcement by US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was hailed by the world’s media as a great breakthrough in the developing technique of fusing atoms together, limitless, cheap, green were the adjectives used.
The announcement itself is a puzzle and had the feeling of being some much needed good news to announce. In reality although the experiments referred to took place a few months ago the “breakthrough” results were reported a year ago with the major advance being published in the Journal Nature in 2014. By one analysis 2.05 MJ of energy pumped into the pellet produced 3.15 MJ of energy. This does not include the 322 MJ needed to run the 192 lasers. So the story wasn’t a real breakthrough, just an advance. In any commercial development of this laser technique millions of fuel pellets would be needed for each reactor a year. At present they are tailor-made and cost almost $1 million each.
So why did the story lead some news bulletins? Given the announcement by Granholm it was clearly a story and in the main its coverage was good though some specialist correspondents clearly didn’t know the background and one science editor’s analysis of the event was puerile. I’ll leave it for an exercise for the reader to decide who I refer to.
Green Energy
But should nuclear fusion be part of the green energy debate? It is certainly not going to rescue us anytime soon. But I suppose linking fusion to green energy and the climate debate will help funds flowing.
Some would disagree with me and point to the many small, private companies that want to develop smaller-scale fusion reactors much sooner. They have acquired significant investment, some 30 firms have raised a total of $2.4 billion and General Fusion of Canada says it hopes for a viable reactor in the 2030s. CEOs of such companies see a payoff within a decade but to me it sounds like a sales pitch to attract further investment. Experts will privately say this is very wishful thinking.
In the mid-1990s I gave an after-dinner speech to a society of nuclear fusion scientists. I wondered out loud if the arrival of the first commercial fusion power would be as far in the future as the first hits of the Beatles were in the past. It took 50 years from the steam engine to trains and the same time between the internal combustion engine and cars. Nuclear fusion is a lot more difficult than such simple thermodynamic engines. Perhaps the desire for this energy coupled with advances in artificial intelligence analysis and control systems will speed up its development and the equations of history will be superseded.
A modern society needs high energy density power production systems. Without energy storage renewables are limited. We need fusion energy which has been promised for so long but I think humans will have walked on Mars long before we get commercial fusion power.
Commenter Rick Will says:
They spent $3.5 billion to produce the heating power of 10 grams of coal
They have spent USD3.5bn on the reactor to get a gain of 0.4MJ. Enough to vaporise 100 grams of water. Or equivalent to 10 grams of coal. Baby steps comes to mind. Power was impressive though. It appears the laser is rated at 1PW. Civilisation’s entire electrical generation averages 0.003PW. So the laser would not need to fire often to get a decent power output. But then it only produced a gain [of] 20%. So it would need 5 times the internal generation to that sent out.
I guess they say that these reactions can make big gains once the conditions are right but USD3.5bn to produce what you get out of half a cents worth of coal suggests it is still a big mountain to climb. Maybe within 30 years. Just as the last of the die-hard CO2 demonisers shuffle off.
French energy crisis deepens – Bloomberg
RT | December 19, 2022
France faces a greater risk of running short on electricity this winter after the nation’s grid operator, Electricite de France (EDF), extended maintenance halts for several nuclear reactors, Bloomberg has reported.
The utility announced on Monday that the restart of its Penly-2 unit has been delayed from January 29 until June 11, while the reopening of the Golfech-1 unit has been pushed back to June 11 from February 18, according to the outlet.
The halt of the Chattenom-3 reactor has reportedly been prolonged by one month until March 26, and the restart of Civaux-2 has been postponed by more than a month until February 19.
On Friday, EDF announced it would delay the startup of a new nuclear reactor in western France by several months into 2024 due to construction work having been extended. That project is already more than a decade late, according to Bloomberg.
France produces roughly 70% of its electricity from 56 nuclear reactors, of which over 20 are currently shut down, causing a sharp drop in power generation.
EDF warned earlier that longer than planned maintenance halts and repairs on almost half of the nation’s nuclear plants may turn France, which has traditionally been a power exporter, into an importer. The grid operator has also warned of a potential electricity shortfall in the colder months as heating demand rises while the utility grapples with reactor repairs.
This will also add to rising concerns over power supplies to neighboring countries, as France has long been Europe’s largest producer of nuclear energy.
Russia’s parallel imports soar – customs data
RT | December 19, 2022
The volume of goods supplied to Russia via the parallel imports mechanism has exceeded $20 billion so far this year, according to the head of the Federal Customs Service, Vladimir Bulavin.
Parallel imports, sometimes called ‘gray imports’, refer to the practice in which a non-counterfeit product is imported without the permission of the intellectual property owner via alternative supply channels.
Bulavin told Russia 24 TV on Monday that 2.4 million tons of goods, mainly cars, machine tools, and equipment, as well as light industry goods, have been imported since May. This has helped to stabilize prices in the Russian market, he noted.
In March, the Russian government authorized retailers to import products from abroad without the trademark owner’s permission. The decision came after many global brands halted sales or stopped exports to Russia due to pressure from their governments to comply with sanctions. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin stated that parallel imports were needed to ensure that certain goods could continue to be shipped to Russia.
According to Bulavin, the legalization of parallel imports did not lead to an increase in counterfeit goods.
“We [customs service] have fought and will continue to fight against counterfeit goods,” he said, adding that over 7 million units of counterfeit products have been seized this year.
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Book Review
The Greatest Threat to World Peace? A Review of Daniele Ganser’s ‘USA: The Ruthless Empire’
Review by Marilyn Langlois | November 10, 2023
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book. … continue
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