US House Speaker Johnson Proposes Funding Government Without Aid to Ukraine and Israel
Sputnik – 12.11.2023
The speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (R-LA), has introduced a bill to temporarily fund the federal government. His proposal does not to include aid to Ukraine or Israel but does include funds for the defense of the US southern border.
According to the bill, part of the government programmes also related to transport, energy and military construction will be financed by 19 January, which would be the funding deadline for those programs and agencies which are covered under regular appropriations bills pertaining to agriculture, rural development, and Food and Drug Administration.
Funds for energy and water development, military construction and Veterans Affairs together with Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development will also be ceased.
The allocation of money for the rest of the government sectors will be calculated until 2 February.
Johnson expects some Republicans to vote against his bill, but in that case he expects Democrats to support it, Politico reports. However, even if approved in the House, the bill may not pass in the Senate.
“This two-step continuing resolution is a necessary bill to place House Republicans in the best position to fight for conservative victories… Separating out the CR from the supplemental funding debates places our conference in the best position to fight for fiscal responsibility, oversight over Ukraine aid, and meaningful policy changes at our Southern border,” Johnson said in a statement on Saturday.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre called the proposal “a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns”, claiming that Republicans were “wasting precious time with an unserious proposal that has been panned by members of both parties”. The statement urged Republicans to “work in a bipartisan way to prevent a shutdown”.
“My opposition to the clean CR just announced by the Speaker … cannot be overstated. Funding Pelosi level spending & policies for 75 days — for future ‘promises,'” House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote on X, opposing the legislation.
Earlier this year, US President Joe Biden’s request to Congress for $24bln in aid to Ukraine almost caused a government shutdown after Republican congressmen refused to approve a budget that included those funds. As a result, a temporary budget was adopted without a clause on support for Ukraine.
Biden has already said that he would not sign the bill on allocating aid to Israel without Ukraine if it is approved by Congress.
Bulgaria enforces punitive transit fees on all natural gas unless it’s proven not to come from Russia
REMIX NEWS | November 8, 2023
Bulgaria is enforcing a punitive transit fee, known as its “energy contribution fee,” on all natural gas transfers from Russia in a move likely to hit Central and Eastern European countries the hardest, Hungarian business newspaper Világgazdaság reported on Tuesday.
Sofia has begun collecting the charge of 20 leva (€10) for every megawatt-hour of Russian natural gas passing through its territory. The extra charge is a quarter of the price of the gas itself and hits Hungary hard: most of the gas from Russia enters Hungary via Bulgaria.
In the case of gas destined for the Hungarian market, the extra bill is paid by Gazprom because the Russian company bears the costs until the gas reaches Kiskundorozsma.
Bulgaria considers all gas Russian until proven otherwise
In addition, although only gas of Russian origin (including liquefied) is covered by the law, which was adopted by the Bulgarian parliament on Sept. 28 and entered into force on Oct. 13, traders who transit non-Russian gas have also received a notice to pay the higher amount.
If they do not pay, the Bulgarian system operator will still take the money it says it is entitled to after a grace period of 10 days under what it calls a traders’ bank guarantee.
Bulgartransgaz, the natural gas transmission and storage system operator of Bulgaria, recently sent a notice to users of its gas network asking them to prove the origin of their gas, namely whether it is Russian or not.
According to market sources asked by Világgazdaság, users were unlikely to comply, as Bulgartransgaz knew who was supplying what to whom anyway. However, the company replied to traders’ complaints by saying that any gas they did not declare was considered Russian by default.
Transit from Greece is affected as well
Under the law, the logical thing would have been for the 20 leva to apply only to Russian gas entering Bulgaria from Serbia, i.e., from the Turkish Stream. However, according to market sources, Bulgastransgaz penalizes all transit. This includes, for example, transport coming into its network from Greece and going to Serbia, although the Greek-Bulgarian border point will be excluded from the measure.
It will also only waive the extra penalty for such transit if it has received a “non-Russian” certificate.
Hungarian diplomatic channels have already contacted the Bulgarian authorities on the matter, but no further information has been reported.
Umm al-Rashrash ‘Eilat’, an Unprepared City Under Threat
Al-Manar | November 7, 2023
Umm al-Rashrash, or what is called ‘Eliat’, a city located on the coast of the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea, has found itself in a dire situation after becoming the destination for survivors and fleeing illegal settlers from the Gaza Strip and northern Palestine settlements. With over 60,000 settlers seeking refuge since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood began, the city has faced unexpected challenges.
No Defensive Systems above The City
Previously relying on the Iron Dome system for protection, which is only equipped to handle short-range missiles and artillery shells, ‘Eilat’ quickly realized its vulnerability when facing drones, winged missiles, and ballistic missiles.
The city had not anticipated being a direct target for right-wing and Iraqi resistance groups. It was assumed that American warships would provide ample protection. However, the arrival of the first batch of drones and missiles shattered that belief, leaving the city exposed and in need of additional air defense systems.
The lack of defensive measures and fortified rooms further compounds the threat facing illegal settlers in Eilat. With no shelters to protect them, every missile or intrusion poses a significant danger to their lives. The city’s vulnerability is heightened by the ease of infiltration through its beaches. The situation is exacerbated by the transformation of a large part of the military base, located on the coastal road’s southern entrance, into entertainment centers. This decision, made in 2021, diminished the city’s ability to defend against potential attacks.
To address these pressing concerns, the Zionist entity has deployed military boats in the Red Sea and positioned SAR-class corvettes to conduct patrols near Eilat’s port. Efforts are underway to bring in multiple defense systems, but the frequency of attacks leaves the city in a perpetual state of danger.
From a City of Displacement to a Front Line
With the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, the Zionist entity worked to develop an emergency plan to evacuate its settlements, which is in two stages: The first, called “a safe distance,” is designated for the settlements adjacent to the fence, whether in the Gaza Strip (up to 4 km from the fence) or in the north on the border with Lebanon. (Up to 2 km from the fence). As for the second plan, it is called “Naseem,” and it is designated for settlements located between 4 and 7 km from the fence.
In the context of precautionary preparations for an increase in the number of residents who will evacuate from their homes, it was reported in the Zionist entity that the National Emergency Authority (Rahal) and the ‘Eilat’ Municipality are seeking to establish a tent city in the ‘Eilat’ industrial zone, which has an area of about 150 dunums.
However, after the transformation of ‘Eilat’ from a tourist city that received the displaced into a front line and into a targeted city, it can be said that everything that the entity worked on regarding the displaced must be reconsidered and it must search for new ways, a new city and a new place to shelter those fleeing from its settlements, with the losses it costs.
According to Zionist media reports there is new economic and popular pressure due to the deteriorating conditions of the displaced and the lack of good care for them.
Insurance Industry Execs ‘Alarmed’ by Surge in Deaths Among Young People — But Stop Short of Blaming COVID Shots
By Mike Capuzzo | The Defender | November 6, 2023
Executives at the largest insurance companies in the United States are alarmed that teenagers, young and white-collar Americans in the prime of life are inexplicably dying at a record pace, causing a “monumental outflow” of death claims and drag on profits that is shaking the industry and causing some to take a fresh look at the problem.
According to an Oct. 26 report in InsuranceNewsNet, U.S. insurance companies expected higher-than-normal payouts from excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Insurers saw death benefits rise 15.4% in 2020, the biggest one-year increase since the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, followed by a record $100.28 billion — nearly double the historic norm — in total death benefits paid out by the industry in 2021.
“The numbers were naturally forecasted to climb during the pandemic, but some industry and health authorities are concerned the rates haven’t greatly diminished as COVID infection rates have declined,” InsuranceNewsNet reported.
According to InsuranceNewsNet, insurers are especially concerned by data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that show “mortality rates alarmingly rising for different categories,” including younger adult mortality rates that are up more than 20% above historic norms in 2023.
The CDC numbers reported in August show the death rate for Americans ages 15-45 rose 20-24% above normal in 2020, and soared in 2021, to a nearly 30% death increase for 15-year-olds and a more than 45% increase for 45-year-olds.
Surge in excess deaths ‘caught carriers off guard’
Most troubling to insurers, CDC data reported in August showed that Americans in the period January-May 2023 were still dying at abnormally high rates with the pandemic long over. Mortality rates were 25% higher than normal among 15- to 19-year-olds and 20% higher among 45-year-olds considered in the prime of life.
Even twenty-somethings were dying at a rate nearly 15% above normal and thirty-somethings at a pace 20% higher than usual, the CDC data show.
Samantha Chow, global leader for Life, Annuity and Benefits Sector at Capgemini, a large, multinational Paris-based consulting company, told InsuranceNewsNet, “The surge in excess deaths caught carriers off guard” and the issue demands urgent attention by the industry.
The issue is, “Can the industry handle a sudden spike in claims?” She added, “The real concern for life insurers lies in preparing for an unexpected wave of death claims and the impact on their assets under management.”
“Do they have enough reserves to weather these outflows, given the excess deaths? It’s not just about death or health,” Chow said. “It is about the industry’s ability and readiness to manage this monumental outflow.”
The excess deaths and the record drag on insurance company revenue and the predictive chaos in actuarial tables they represent, alarmed the Society of Actuaries (SOA), the world’s largest professional actuarial organization.
Excess mortality is defined as excess deaths in a given population and time period above the expected number.
The SOA has conducted ongoing research since 2021 to gather “a high-level view of U.S. Group Term Life Insurance mortality results during the COVID-19 pandemic” compared to prior baseline results.
The SOA Research Institute studied more than 2.7 million claims and over $120 billion in earned premiums reported by “20 of the top 21 U.S. group term life insurers” in the U.S., representing approximately 90% of the employer-based group term life insurance industry.
In an August 2022 poll among its more than 30,000 members worldwide, the SOA found that 85% of members thought excess mortality rates would continue to 2025. In August this year, the same poll found 79% believed excess mortality rates will continue through 2026.
Life insurance executives and actuaries told InsuranceNewsNet, “The numbers are alarming and could continue to drag earnings and surge death claims for years to come.”
Society of Actuaries: no connection between historic death rates and COVID shots
Yet in its latest report issued in May, the SOA Research Institute found no connection between the historic U.S. death rates and insurance payouts starting in 2021 and COVID-19 vaccine mandates that rolled out the same year.
Chow blamed the excess deaths and claims on “the ripples of COVID-19 and its varying impacts, leading to higher rates of depression, suicide, and increased substance abuse.”
Other insurance executives told The Wall Street Journal they blamed “delays in medical care as a result of lockdowns in 2020, and then, later, people’s fears of seeking out treatment and trouble lining up appointments” for a surprising surge in non-COVID-19 death claims, especially heart and circulatory issues and neurological disorders.
But Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), who treats long COVID and vaccine-injured patients in his practice, called on insurance companies to work with media and governments and investigate the powerful evidence that countless deaths and disabilities are temporally linked to the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and read the exploding science that pinpoints mRNA technology lethality.
In an interview with The Defender, Kory cited the more than 1 million COVID-19 vaccine-linked injuries, disabilities and more than 30,000 deaths reported by doctors, nurses and others to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
VAERS, run by the CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is the government’s “early warning system” to detect vaccine harms.
Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the most highly published cardiologists in the world, pointed to a study of deaths after vaccination with detailed autopsies in Heidelberg, Germany. “Of 35 fatalities within 20 days of injection, 10 were ruled out as clearly not due to the vaccine (eg drug overdose). The remaining 25 (71%) had final diagnoses consistent with a vaccine injury syndrome including myocardial infarction, worsening heart failure, vascular aneurysm, pulmonary embolism, fatal stroke, and vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia,” McCullough wrote.
He also cited his own systematic review of “all autopsy studies that include COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis as a possible cause of death” that found that “all 28 deaths were causally linked to COVID-19 vaccination by independent adjudication.”
Kory said a large and expanding volume of scientific literature has described the pathogenicity of the artificial spike protein, unleashed by the mRNA injection into the body.
“We know from research on autopsy series that among those who died from the vaccine, spike protein was disseminated to all organs and vessels of the body,” he told The Defender.
“Spike-induced damage occurs by numerous mechanisms, including necrosis of vessel walls leading to things like aortic dissection, inflammation of important organs, including the heart and brain causing myocarditis and cognitive deficits respectively,” Kory said.
He also also cited “fibrinoid aggregates circulating in the blood causing poor perfusion in the microcirculation as well as hypercoagulability in the blood causing strokes and heart attacks, immunosuppression causing increased risk of infectious illnesses, and/or reactivation of latent viruses.”
Edward Dowd, the former BlackRock fund manager who oversaw $14 billion in assets on Wall Street for the largest asset manager in the world, exposed the excess-death crisis in insurance-industry data in his December 2022 book, “‘Cause Unknown’: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022.”
Dowd told The Defender that according to insiders at one of the biggest insurance companies in the U.S., “People in the industry know what’s going on but nobody at the top” is yet prepared to recognize it. “The CEOs and CFOs don’t believe it’s the vaccine. It’s not that these people are evil. They’re not separating facts from emotion.”
Dowd added:
“It’s not just that there’s a vast conspiracy. There was this fear that generated a destruction of critical thinking. My ethics professor at Indiana University said you can’t rationalize facts with someone whose position is based on emotion and ego.”
‘We don’t have proof’ yet — but data are ‘persuasive’
In his book, Dowd reported on insurance industry research in 2016, which found that group life policyholders, whose health insurance is covered by Fortune 500 companies and tend to be younger and well-educated, were the healthiest Americans, dying at one-third the rate of the general U.S. population. The trend of greater white-collar health continued through 2020.
But in 2021, after the COVID-19 jabs were mandated across the Fortune 500, the trend flipped. Ages 25-64 of the group life policyholders suddenly experienced 40% excess mortality, compared to 32% in the general population.
Disabilities also soared after the COVID-19 shots, from an annual U.S. baseline of 29-30 million disabled to 33.2 million.
Dowd, who continues to research excess deaths and disabilities for his Humanity Projects, told The Defender his new research, drawn from U.K. government statistics, shows deaths of schoolchildren went down in the U.K. in 2020 during the pandemic because the leading cause of death for children ages 1-14 is accidents.
With lockdowns and school closures, “Deaths went down. But then they started to go up again in 2021, and they’ve reached a new high in 2023 of 20%” above normal, he said.
Dowd told Russel Brand that such a huge jump in childhood deaths is “a six-standard deviation from the norm. A standard deviation is basically a probability from normal. It’s very unlikely.”
A five-standard statistical deviation is so remarkably far outside the norm it “would be the equivalent of a 7-foot giant being born, or many of them,” he said. “This is a six-standard deviation.”
Down said he believes the COVID-19 vaccines are causing widespread, otherwise inexplicable, excess deaths. “We don’t have proof. It’s our thesis,” he said. But “if you have a brain in your head,” the data are persuasive, he said. “Obviously I think it’s the vaccines.”
Mathew Crawford, a Texas-based statistician and finance specialist who spent years analyzing COVID-19 data for his Substack newsletter, told The Defender the insurance industry has been in denial over growing evidence for vaccine-induced excess deaths for more than a year.
In March 2022, he said, the CEO of German health insurance giant BKK ProVita presented evidence that the vaccines had already killed tens of thousands of Germans. He was fired the next day, as the story vanished from the news.
In June 2022, Lincoln National reported a 163% increase in death benefits paid out under its group life insurance policies in 2021.
In August 2022, Reinsurance Group of America’s (RGA’s) financial reports showed massive 2021 losses downplayed by the report authors, “plus plans for new accounting methods that we should all be worried are designed to sweep iatrogenocide under the rug,” Crawford said.
The SOA Research Institute report that claims to exonerate the COVID-19 vaccines in excess deaths actually does the opposite, Crawford said. Among other evidence, he said, it “shows group life insureds — particularly of working age — are seeing even more excess mortality than the larger U.S. population,” and “the sharp numbers during Q3 2021 coincide with vaccine mandates for working age individuals.”
The ‘worm is turning’
But Dowd said he believes “the worm is turning” on denial of vaccine harms.
He said he was optimistic that the work of Josh Stirling, founder of the Insurance Collaboration to Save Lives, a nonprofit that aims to reduce mortality by providing life insurers with tests to screen policyholders for health problems, shows a “big tent” is forming in the industry to tackle the problem.
“I think the truth is coming out,” Dowd said. “The stocks of Pfizer and Moderna continue to go lower. More and more people are getting disabled and injured over time.”
He cited the Rasmussen poll released Nov. 2 that found 24% of Americans “believe someone they know died from COVID-19 vaccine side effects, and even more say they might be willing to become plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against vaccine makers.”
The poll also found “There are almost no political differences on these questions,” said Dr. Robert Malone. “For example, 25% of Republicans say they know someone personally who died from side effects of COVID-19 vaccine, as do 24% of Democrats and those not affiliated with either major party. This is important – because this shows it is not a ‘tribal’ response. People from all walks of life are waking up.”
Kory said insurance executives need to ask themselves, What explains “the sudden, unprecedented rise in life insurance claims in the 3rd quarter of 2021 among the healthiest sector of society?”
Why were “working age, white collar Americans with group life insurance policies (i.e. largely Fortune 500 corporate employees)” suddenly dying at rates significantly higher than before?
“What happened in the white-collar workplace at that time?” he asked.
Kory said the answer is clear:
“I will give you the only possibilities that could explain such a sudden rise: a series of terrorist attacks, wartime mobilization, or the proliferation of corporate vaccine mandates. As far as I can remember, only one of those events actually took place.”
Kory and investigative reporter Mary Beth Pfeiffer in October published an op-ed in The Washington Examiner, “What’s behind the spike in deaths among younger, working people?” and another, in August, in USA Today titled, “More young Americans are dying — and it’s not COVID. Why aren’t we searching for answers?”
“Deaths among young Americans documented in employee life insurance claims should alone set off alarms,” they wrote in USA Today. “Week in, week out, this unnatural loss of life is on the scale of a war or terrorist event.”
“Life insurance data show a massive spike in excess deaths among younger, working-age people that began in 2021, even as COVID-19 deaths decreased, and continues today,” they wrote in The Examiner. “So far, good explanations are elusive. A concerted, bipartisan investigation should explore this threat to America’s economic future and recommend a course of action.
5 takeaways from mortality report
If the worm is turning, it’s not evident in major media or government policy.
Associated Press fact-checkers rated as “false” Kory’s claim that “an increase in death benefits paid out by life insurance providers in the third quarter of 2021 in the U.S. provides evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines, which became widely available in 2021, led to a spike in deaths.”
The AP said the vaccines are proven safe and effective and “insurance industry leaders say the delta variant of the coronavirus and deferred medical care during the pandemic likely contributed to the increase in deaths.”
The CDC says there is no evidence that excess deaths are linked to vaccines. “These vaccines are safe and effective and have undergone the most extensive safety monitoring in U.S. history,” a CDC public affairs specialist said.
The AP reported that death after vaccination remains extremely rare, dismissing as not causally linked to the vaccines the unprecedented toll of deaths and injuries reported to VAERS.
Kory cited five takeaways that challenge that assumption from the mortality report on excess U.S. deaths by the SOA Research Institute:
- Among working people 35-44 years old, “a stunning 34% more died than expected in the last quarter of 2022, with above-average rates in other working-age groups, too,” Kory said, quoting data from the SOA Research Institute report. “COVID-19 claims do not fully explain the increase,” the SOA report noted.
- From 2020 through 2022, there were more excess deaths proportionally among white-collar than blue-collar workers: 19% versus 14% above normal. The disparity nearly doubled in the fourth quarter of 2022, U.S. actuaries reported.
- The executive of a large Indiana life insurance company was clearly troubled by what he said was a 40% increase in the third quarter of 2021 in those ages 18-64. “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business — not just at OneAmerica,” CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference in January 2022. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”
- Excess deaths are a global phenomenon. The U.K. also saw “more excess deaths in the second half of 2022 than in the second half of any year since 2010,” according to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. In the first quarter of 2023, deaths among people 20-44 years old were akin to “the same period in 2021, the worst pandemic year for that age group, U.K. actuaries reported. In Australia, 12% more people died than expected in 2022, according to that nation’s Actuaries Institute. A third of the excess was non-COVID deaths, a figure the institute called “extraordinarily high.”
- Death rates are lower than in 2020 and 2021, but they are far from normal. In the year ending April 30, 2023 — 14 months after the last of several pandemic waves in the U.S. — at least 104,000 more Americans died than expected, according to Our World in Data. In that period, 52,427 excess deaths were reported in the U.K., 81,028 in Germany, 17,731 in France, 10,418 in the Netherlands, and 2,640 in Ireland.
Kory said the major media silence on the issue and the SOA’s “strong desire to not be drawn into any debates regarding” COVID vaccine lethality,” despite evidence unearthed by the society’s research, is why he and Pfeiffer wrote the USA Today op-ed in the first place.
“Unsurprisingly,” Kory said, “the SOA does not attempt to interpret or even specifically mention the timing, suddenness, and magnitude of the rises in death claims of young, white-collar workers.”
“I would agree that it is not their job to do this, so the rest of us will,” he said. The way forward is “simply to ask if there were any other events preceding and during those massive spikes that could explain the rises. I can find no other rational explanation than the roll-out of vaccine mandates as the cause.”
Mike Capuzzo is the managing editor of The Defender. He is a former prize-winning reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Miami Herald, a science writer, and a regional magazine founding editor and publisher who has won more than 200 journalism awards as a writer, editor and publisher.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Kansas Energy Freedom Now!
By Sherri Lange | Master Resource | November 3, 2023
Nixing the Mandates in Kansas: Representative Carrie Barth (R-Dist 5) and former House Energy and Environment Chair, Dennis Hedke, reach astounding consensus on Energy Resolution: 180 to 1. There will be no energy “victims” in this state.
I don’t believe I am the typical politician. I don’t care about a political career or political threats. I care about doing the right thing.
I care about people. Period! (- Rep Carrie Barth in an email, October 9 2023)
Carrie Barth (R-Kansas, District 5) and Dennis Hedke, unapologetic supporter of the U.S. Constitution, acclaimed author of The Audacity of Freedom (2011), geophysicist, and former member Kansas House of Representatives (former Chair of the House Energy Committee), have drafted a clean and accurate Resolution for the Republican Party. This passed with overwhelming support. It appears to acknowledge that wind is not a good corporate citizen.
Representative Barth in an email:
Our Constitution of the United States gives the power to the people and states, not a dictator movement to control people. The “Green Agenda” is a joke. What they call green energy of wind and solar is anything but green other than it takes a lot of money to mine, build and construct, maintenance for the units, along with remediation when blades break off and the turbines catch on fire. It takes more green money from there to then build transmission lines that take people’s green land when eminent domain is used. Then people see transmission line tariffs on their energy bills. Oh, and wait, your rates never go down even though the energy industry tells you how cost effective it is.
I would refer to wind and solar as “brown or black energy”. They are unreliable and cause brownouts and blackouts. This hurts people, it hurts businesses, and even the ground under them turns brown.
Dennis Hedke added in an email:
The United States of America, and now by default, the rest of the world, have been seriously misinformed since the SCOTUS made a very serious error in 2009, via Massachusetts v. EPA. They allowed the EPA to falsely transform the innocent, trace atmospheric gas, CO2, into a pollutant. Nothing could possibly be further from the truth. As a result, Trillions of Dollars have been wasted, people in 3rd and 4th World countries have been deprived of the most fundamentally necessary power to turn on the lights, and be released from poverty and join the rest of the civilized world.
Excerpts from the Resolution follow:
Kansas Republican Party Resolves to Support Candidates and Legislative Intent to Protect Kansans from Unreliable and Foreign-Sourced ‘Renewable’ Wind and Solar Energy
For your easy reference:
- CO2 is not a dangerous gas, nor a pollutant, to be avoided and scare mongered.
- The Kansas Republican Party Platform opposes efforts to force communities to engage in sustainable development guidance from the federal government or the United Nations, which are actively attacking our local communities in an effort to implement the Paris Climate Agreement
- Kansas is not to be victimized by lobbyists guiding KS into blackouts and profiteering from subsidies, and alliances with the UN Global Agenda
- Kansas (Republican Party) supports alternative energy, while continuing to support oil and gas reserves within the State
- Kansas will prefer reliable and affordable energy above all
- Kansas (Republican Party) will reject the “UN Agenda 2030 “Sustainable Development Goals” to guide their investments in Kansas, even rewarding executives and directors with additional bonuses and stock options for implementing the global climate plan”
- Kansas (Republican Party) will reject energy projects that are obvious land grabs, funding foreign companies with taxpayer-funded grants and tying up valuable Kansas farmland for decades with projects that no company is ultimately held responsible for decommissioning at the end of their useful lives, even violating property rights of farmers affected by the projects
- Kansas (Republican Party) opposes so called Cap and Trade schemes
The resolution concludes:
Whereas irrefutable evidence demonstrates that ill-health effects to mankind and the environment are occurring due to the side effects of industrial scale wind installations. These occurrences are widespread, wherever these installations have been constructed;
Therefore, be it resolved, the Republican Party of Kansas, in view of the preponderance of evidence, will support candidates and legislative intent regarding energy policy that will serve to provide protection to our citizens security, physical health, financial health, access to reliable energy and property rights across all Kansas counties.
Of worthy note is that the CLINTEL declaration is referenced; nearly between 1600 and 2000 professionals and scientists indicate that climate change has always been with us, and the world is NOT on fire, or drowning, or otherwise careening to imminent disaster as some would have us believe. Climate change fear has been the false driver of the wind and solar proliferation, a universal clear economic and environmental disaster.
Some note that renewables policy can be termed Energy Vandalism. We concur: See this link for more detail on the nearly universally accepted articles in Kansas.
Article XIII of the Kansas Republican Party Platform States:
Kansas leaders should not be allowed to arbitrarily deny permits to build new power and energy-producing plants. Carbon dioxide, one of the most common gases on earth, should not be declared a pollutant nor used as an excuse to deny the construction of new power plants. We oppose so-called Cap and Trade legislation. We oppose efforts to force communities to engage in sustainable development under guidance from the federal government or the United Nations.
Comment
This is the first time we have seen a legislative body, organize, and nearly 100% agree, that climate change, which it always does and has done, should not be a driver for energy policy. It is the first time we have seen in such a document, a clear rejection of industrial wind and solar profiteers, and references to the irrefutable evidence of harm to the environment, people, and a clear intention to go forward with reliable, responsible, and cost-effective energy policy, while respecting property rights.
Kudos and respect to the two co-sponsors. Game changer.
Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States: “The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured.” (Lange: It most certainly can be documented and appreciated.)
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ADDENDUM ONE
Quotes from Clintel (There is no climate emergency)
ADDENDUM TWO
Additional excerpts from the Resolution
Article XIII of the Kansas Republican Party Platform States:
XIII. ENERGY
We support an energy policy which creates a strong State economy with affordable and reliable energy. Kansas residents must be considered first when developing new, potentially expensive technology.
We encourage the development of alternative energy supplies, while continuing to support the oil and gas industry within the state. Ever increasing energy prices are creating new avenues for entrepreneurs and existing companies to develop new sources of energy. New developments in wind, solar, biofuels, and geothermal energy sources show real promise for clean, inexpensive, renewable energy for future generations. Increasing energy sources will inevitably create a more market-based system which ultimately lowers utility prices for consumers.
Kansas leaders should not be allowed to arbitrarily deny permits to build new power and energy-producing plants. Carbon dioxide, one of the most common gases on earth, should not be declared a pollutant nor used as an excuse to deny the construction of new power plants. We oppose so-called Cap and Trade legislation. We oppose efforts to force communities to engage in sustainable development under guidance from the federal government or the United Nations.
A report on the energy declaration, indicates this is a nonpartisan issue:
…. the energy producer is already allowing ESG rhetoric and the UN Agenda 2030 “Sustainable Development Goals” to guide their investments in Kansas, even rewarding executives and directors with additional bonuses and stock options for implementing the global climate plan.
This is not only a direct violation of the Republican party platform, but an attack on all citizens in the State, as we are seeing with recent reports that the supposed “green” Panasonic plant is actually an energy hog that caused Evergy to request a rate increase on customers in order to supply power to the plant.
The “green energy” project is also responsible for stalling efforts to transition the Lawrence power plant from coal to natural gas, due to the demands of traditional energy sources necessary to power the supposed “renewable” energy plant.
This is not a partisan issue. It’s a money and land grab issue, funding foreign companies with taxpayer-funded grants and tying up valuable Kansas farmland for decades with projects that no company is ultimately held responsible for decommissioning at the end of their useful lives, even violating property rights of farmers affected by the projects.
This resolution will protect Kansas from outside special interest groups by holding all legislators accountable for reliable, affordable energy that stays in our state to benefit our citizens.
ADDENDUM THREE
A conversation with Kansas Rep Carrie Barth and Former Chair of Energy and Environment House, Dennis Hedke. We asked Barth and Hedke to further explain the resolutions’ evolution, and possible resonances.
Conversations with Rep Carrie Barth (R-Dist 5) and former House Energy and Environment Chair, Dennis Hedke, Kansas: How did the exceptional resolution re mandate sanity and “exit renewables”, evolve?
Kansas, which ranks fourth in the U.S. for wind power, (is) the biggest wind energy-producing state to mandate light mitigation.
Wind turbines haven’t just exploded in numbers, they’ve grown ever taller. Since 2016, 400 new turbines have gone up in Kansas with rotor hubs taller than the Statue of Liberty.
The state now has between 3800 and 4,000 turbines, with hubs between 210 and 400 feet high.
It is clear that the pushback against the tyranny of renewables is accruing and accelerating. In August 2023, Robert Bryce again updates his files on rejected projects in the US. Kansas appears “ready able and willing,” to grab the mandates out of energy policies, leaving the door open to more affordable and reliable power.
(Recently, in the last ten days)….”local governments in Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa have rejected or restricted wind and solar projects. Those moves bring the total number of rejections or restrictions in the Renewable Rejection Database to 574.”
Kansas legislators of the Republican Party have as noted in this blog, created an Energy Resolution of outstanding clarity. The push for reliable and affordable energy is on. No herd mentality here.
Question: Lang to Rep Carrie Barth: How did you become enlightened re climate misinformation? Was this gradual, and is there a single source that sped your learning? (See Barth’s two page submission to the Senate Local Government Committee.)
Answer: When door knocking last summer as a new candidate running for Kansas House of Representatives District 5, I met a constituent on her fourth-generation farm porch. She shared with me about what is going on in Southwest Douglas County, Kansas, that was affecting her and her neighbors with the Florida based energy company signing leases in the area for wind turbines.
Keep in mind, I live in SW Douglas County and this was the first time I was hearing about it. She shared with me concerns about her property rights, concerns about health, concerns about crops and livestock, concerns about wildlife, concerns about noise, and how she wants to keep this land for her kids and their kids. She spoke through tears as her way of life her family has worked hard for could permanently change if an industrial Commercial wind complex were approved in Douglas County.
I listened intently to her. She had done her research, she had been talking with her neighbors, and she shared with me highly unethical business practices the energy company was using where multiple individuals have completed affidavits that have already been filed with Douglas County and the Kansas Attorney General’s office. We ended the conversation with a hug and she asked me to help save our county and to do something about it. I left there knowing I had to help.
Through my education I’ve learned growing up, climate change has been around since the beginning of time regardless of the size of population as about every 100 years our climate shifts. So I started to dig in to learn more on why people decided to think differently. And I started to follow the money as the science and history is already there.
Not only is there wind trying to come into my county, we also have a 3,000 acre solar industrial complex trying to plop right in the middle of our agriculture zoned county that also bleeds into Johnson County, KS. I started reading a lot and talking with anyone that had experience in wind and solar energy. After I was elected where I beat an incumbent and took office January 2023, I started asking questions, reading our House Rules, and talking with anyone who would listen to me about the problem we have not only in Douglas County, but across our state.
I proposed a budget proviso during session that was an independent third-party study on the health and environmental effects of wind turbines, solar arrays, hydrogen hubs, and transmission lines. It would be the first study of its kind that I am aware of. It passed the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Budget Committee but failed the House Appropriations Committee with only eight votes in support of it.
When they say follow the money, it’s true! There were energy lobbyists everywhere during this time. I was told by a fellow legislator they believe 50-75 lobbyist were hired to combat my budget proviso. People from all over Kansas, Republicans and Democrats showed up at the Capitol for the Appropriation Committee Budget meeting in support of the proviso wearing red shirts filling the room to observe what was happening and hear what was said.
You might be wondering, why would the energy industry be so afraid of people finding out the results of an independent study? Doesn’t everyone want to know the truth? The energy lobbyist and their attorney, along with their hired expert, like to tell me and others that they don’t understand why we are worried about our health and environment. They say wind and solar are safe and effective and are low cost. Because of my budget proviso, I received emails and calls from people all over the state of Kansas telling me the issues they have.
Other states learned of my proviso and they reached out to me. I even connected with people from Canada and the issues are ALL THE SAME! The evidence and data is clear! This is why I believe the resolution passed by the GOP delegates 180-1 votes.
Question to Rep. Barth: “To what extent do you think this Kansas Republican decision can impact other US legislators?”
Answer: The Resolution states the GOP party will support candidates that support legislative intent aligned with this resolution. Which means our Federal Republican candidates and elected positions will be held to this same standard as our state elected officials at all levels, including county elected Republicans. I have even shared our Kansas GOP Energy Resolution with other states so that they can do the same.
Question to Dennis Hedke (Geophysicist and former House Chair of Energy and Environment)
What is your background so we can understand the evolution that led to this remarkable achievement for the Republicans in KS?
Answer: I have been studying the issues surrounding the blatant misguided policymaking related to Energy, then Climate, since the Carter presidency, just after graduating from the University of Virginia, School of Engineering & Applied Science, M.S. Diploma in Materials Science. I wrote Carter a letter, and of course got no response. I had graduated from Kansas State University with a B.S. in Geophysics before leaving for Charlottesville. I was born and raised in Manhattan, KS, and moved to Miami, FL, to take my first job out of college in the spring of 1979.
Ronald Reagan moved the needle in the Right direction for 8 years, but then we got Bill Clinton, and of course Al Gore, one of the biggest liars in world history. We have been paying for his misguided malfeasance ever since.
We moved to Texas for a job change for me, as Exploration Manager for a small independent oil and gas exploration company in 1999. I was seething while seeing the very bad things in the making regarding ‘Global Warming’. We returned to Kansas in 2003/4, where I joined another small independent, as Geophysical Manager.
Fast forward to 2009, and I found myself inside the Kansas Capitol, as an unpaid lobbyist, fighting to resist the Legislature’s temptation to foist upon Kansan’s, Renewable Energy Mandates. I (we) lost that fight, and I knew it was going to be a disaster for all kinds of reasons, policy-wise and every-otherwise. I had run for a seat on the State Board of Education in 2008, and narrowly lost because the outgoing Republican seat holder endorsed my Democrat opponent. I ran a very clean race, and people in the party noticed.
In 2010, Sam Brownback won the Governor’s race, and the District 99 Representative was called to be Brownback’s Insurance Commissioner, this creating a vacancy in the Kansas House, which I was appointed to fill on January 24th, 2011. I became the Chairman of the House Energy & Environment Committee January 2013, and held that position until I left office, after 3 terms, ostensibly June 2016.
I and many allies forged a battle against the mandates, and moved Kansas into ‘Voluntary’ discretion in creation of power delivery to Kansan’s, in April, 2015.
That’s my answer as to how some things got into motion between myself and Carrie. Six years after I left office, she was elected to her seat. She is a real Firebrand and is dedicated to helping Kansas get back on track with Energy Policy. She is a tireless worker, and I deeply appreciate what she has done already in her first year as a legislator.
She had heard about me, and she reached out to me for some advice and guidance.….which brings us to today.
Question: I think you mentioned a serious “error” that allowed the EPA to falsely label the innocent, trace atmospheric gas, CO2, into a pollutant. You are adamant that this decision resulted in the fact that:
(Hedke) Trillions of Dollars have been wasted, people in 3rd and 4th World countries have been deprived of the most fundamentally necessary power to turn on the lights and be released from poverty and join the rest of the civilized world.
Also: The Kansas Legislature, ruled by Republicans in the 2009 Session, made a serious error in forcing Power Companies to deliver Mandated Renewable Energy. This happened under the purported agreement to allow a single coal-fired power plant in Holcomb, KS to justifiably expand its deliverability of Electric Power to the Grid. Only, it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because the Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health & Environment, Rod Bremby, denied a Permit to expand the plant, due solely to politics related to ‘Global Warming’.”
The Resolution passed by the Republican Party of Kansas contains very specific language and intent to right the multitude of wrongs that Kansas Legislators conducted in 2009, and which served to spread the Mandate Mentality across America. It remains to be seen if the current body of Legislators will have the political will to hold the line, and in fact push back, where necessary and appropriate.
Question: A lot of readers will be wondering how you and Rep Barth achieved a 180-1 vote for this very clear resolution. Given that KS has a pro wind record of placing wind factories in the State, even with a Republican House and Senate, is there a catalyst for this resolution at this time and at this place? Was a lot of lobbying needed, or was this more evolutionary, organic in nature due to the fast paced media pieces on changing perspectives of “renewables and climate”?
Answer: Former Chair, Dennis Hedke:
I perceive much of the reason for the success was due to the fact that the Committee reviewing the Resolution is heavily conservative. They had to present it to the Republican Party Delegates, which are probably also more conservative leaning.
The Legislators, Carrie excluded, are a lot more squishy, caring more about holding on to their seats, than acting with resolve and principle.
There may be some renewed pressure on Legislators to resist the absolutely ridiculous reasons for being ‘green’. That remains to be seen. Many of them simply forget that “The Truth Will Set You Free”.
I forgot to answer your question about cost of electricity. My bills range from about .13/kwh to .14/kwh.
Prices have increased by about 55% since wind power has been replacing coal and natural gas, commencing around 2011.
Thank you for your interest. Dennis.
Thank you again Former Energy Chair Hedke, and Rep Carrie Barth.
Hertz backpedals on rush into EV rentals: CEO says repair costs can run “twice as high”
By Jo Nova | November 2, 2023
Hertz was aiming to make 25% of its fleet electric by 2024, but is finding 11% is too much. Given there are whole nations pushing for 100% EV by 2035 there seems to be a message here…
Let’s thank Hertz for doing that experiment for us. It turns out EV’s didn’t work well in the high mileage Uber-type system because the drivers “drove them into the ground” and repair costs were much higher than expected. So Hertz moved some EV’s to the leisure hire department, but then the revenue per day in the leisure sector fell. Presumably people didn’t want to hire them.
It’s not that this is Bad News week for EVs — it’s quarterly reporting week, so companies have to tell investors things they’d rather not.
Great nations don’t force citizens to buy heavier cars with shorter ranges and bigger repair bills in order to stop bad weather one hundred years from now.
Hertz is slowing down the roll out of EVs onto its fleets as the CEO cites higher than expected repair costs and price cuts.
The rental car company reported lower than expected margins in the third quarter of this year, citing EV repairs as one of the challenges.
“Collision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle,” said Mr Scherr.
It all started out so well:
Andrew J Hawkins, The Verge
Rental car company Hertz once envisioned itself as the ultimate EV broker, doling out battery-powered vehicles to business travelers, ridehail drivers, and tech newbies in an ambitious plan to grease the wheels for the EV revolution. The company inked agreements with Tesla and Polestar to buy nearly 200,000 EVs. Tesla’s valuation topped $1 trillion on the news.
Part of the problem is linked to Hertz’s plans to rent EVs to ridehail drivers. Of the 100,000 Tesla acquired by Hertz, half were to be allocated to Uber drivers as part of a deal with the ridehail company. And drivers said they loved the Teslas! But Uber drivers also tend to drive their vehicles into the ground. This higher rate of utilization can lead to a lot of damage — certainly more than Hertz was anticipating.
Musk frequently says that electric cars require less maintenance than counterparts with internal combustion engines (including plug-in hybrid electrics). …
But electric vehicle owners can face unique maintenance needs, as well. Nikhil Naikal, CEO of Kinetic, a startup that is not affiliated with Hertz or Tesla but provides repairs for electric and autonomous vehicles, told CNBC on Thursday:
“The reality of electric vehicles is that they can be 1,000 pounds heavier or more than gas vehicles, and they move faster, with higher torque. Since they’re extremely zippy and heavier, it’s just physics — the ability to overcome inertia so quickly is going to effect their suspension systems, the brakes and steering columns. It’s counter-intuitive, but even with fewer moving parts they are susceptible to requiring more maintenance. They especially require tire-swapping, because the tires wear out more quickly from that high torque and weight.”
Next few years will determine future world order – Biden
Joe Biden speaks about his Bidenomics agenda on November 1, 2023. © ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP
RT | November 3, 2023
The world is at a crossroads and the next few years will determine its fate for several generations to come, US President Joe Biden has claimed. His prediction comes amid Washington’s standoff with Russia over Ukraine and his country’s increasingly strained relations with China.
Speaking ahead of a meeting with Chilean President Gabriel Boric on Thursday, Biden stated that “there comes a time, maybe every six to eight generations, where the world changes in a very short time.”
The US leader further claimed that “what happens in the next two, three years are going to determine what the world looks like for the next five or six decades.”
According to a White House readout of Biden’s meeting with Boric, the pair discussed issues of shared concern, including efforts to combat climate change.
Biden also spoke last month about the need for a “new world order,” suggesting that while the post-World War II system has functioned for decades, it has “sort of run out of steam.”
However, if Americans “are bold enough and have enough confidence in ourselves, [they will have an opportunity] to unite the world in ways that it never has been,” he insisted.
Commenting on Biden’s remarks at the time, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov described it as a rare moment when Moscow was in complete agreement with Washington. “The world indeed needs a new order, based on absolutely new principles,” he noted.
However, Peskov suggested that Biden meant building “a world [order] revolving around the US,” insisting that “this will not be anymore.” Russia has consistently called for a multilateral world order, with President Vladimir Putin accusing the West of “a colonial approach” and bending international rules to its will.
Last month, the Russian leader also stressed that “nobody has the right to control the world at the expense of others or in their name.”
Relations between Washington and Moscow have sunk to unprecedented lows due to the Ukraine conflict, with the US sending billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Kiev and imposing tough sanctions on Russia.
Elsewhere, relations are tense between the US and China, most notably over Washington’s support for Taiwan. The two nations are also engaged in an intense economic rivalry. China has been promoting its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which seeks to develop international transport infrastructure and has been supported by more than 140 countries.
Biden has signaled that the US is working with G7 members to compete with China economically, claiming that the BRI has ended up being “a noose for most of the people who have signed on.”
Al-Aqsa Flood gives Israeli economy ‘COVID-19 like symptoms’
The Cradle | October 30, 2023
The historic Al-Aqsa Flood operation has not only battered Israeli settlements and the security forces, but the war has also taken flight against the Israeli market.
Economists are looking at the operation that hit the $520 Billion economy with memories of the COVID-19 effects, saying that orders for schools, offices, and building sites to close or only open for a few hours are like the days of the pandemic.
Adding to the affected workforce, the Israeli government amassed 350,000 reservists for its much-awaited ground invasion, draining about eight percent of the Israeli workforce.
Mizrahi-Tefahot, a top Israeli bank, says that the mass mobilization order and partial economic freezes are costing the government the equivalent of $2.5 billion per month. The Israeli central bank has said that the economic state will only worsen as the war goes on.
Israeli stocks are the world’s worst performing since the beginning of the war. The Shekel is at its weakest level since 2012, despite the $45 billion emergency package or the selling off of $30 Billion in foreign reserves to try and save the currency from sinking further.
Markets won’t fair well with a long war, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned of a “long war” as he prepares for a ground invasion.
JPMorgan Chase & Co., the US multinational financial services firm, has said that they believe the Israeli economy is shrinking 11 percent on an annualized basis, saying that their initial projections about the economic impact were “too optimistic.”
The financial firm’s projections are among Wall Street’s most cynical, but investors have been selling off Israeli assets heavily.
“Gauging the impact of the war on Israel’s economy remains difficult both due to still very high uncertainty about the scale and duration of the conflict and the lack of high-frequency data at hand,” JPMorgan analysts said.
Having one of the strongest economies in the world, Israel hasn’t seen an economic hit this bad since the 2006 war between them and Hezbollah, the physical damage cost of which has already been topped by the Palestinian factions.
The Israeli business press has said the nation has entered a recession. Israeli daily The Market has previously written that “Israel has entered the war, and it is in a recession, and trade is currently zero.”
My Golden Retriever Confronts the Medical Juggernaut
By Clayton J. Baker, MD | Brownstone Institute | October 27, 2023
Recently, our golden retriever, Bailey, got kennel cough. She hasn’t been in a kennel in years, but that’s what they called it: kennel cough.
Please forgive my ignorance in the matter. You see, I’m just a people-doctor. I’m not a veterinarian like, say, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. I can’t claim to be an expert on kennel cough.
But as far as I can tell, “kennel cough” appears to be vet-speak for a nonspecific respiratory tract infection in dogs. It seems to be a term veterinarians use much as I would “bronchitis.”
Do you know what a golden retriever with kennel cough sounds like? After all, people-doctors have historically described kids diagnosed with croup as having a “barking” cough.
Well, based on my limited experience, a golden retriever with kennel cough sounds like a Canada goose. Bailey was repeatedly emitting a medium-pitched grunt/honk, lower in register than a duck’s quack but higher than one of those old-fashioned ah-oo-ga automobile horns.
It’s kind of a Honk! Honk! Honk! with the H’s partially dropped. It’s actually quite alarming. Trust me, you don’t want to hear your golden retriever sounding like something it retrieved.
Now, Bailey is a good girl, and I love her dearly. But my wife loves that dog more than life itself. Sometimes I wonder if she’d donate her own liver if it were necessary to save her.
So my wife calls Bailey’s veterinarian, and she tells them about her symptoms.
I should mention that my wife is a doctor, too. Just a people-doctor like me, mind you, not an expert on kennel cough like Albert Bourla. But a medical case presentation is a medical case presentation, and she knows how to present a case.
So what did Bailey’s Primary Care Provider tell my wife after hearing the medical history from a fellow medical professional? Well, they told her that it sounds like kennel cough, and that they can see Bailey in 2 or 3 weeks.
Incidentally, this veterinary practice – I am not making this up – had recently been bought out by some kind of veterinary investment firm which, over the past couple of years, also bought multiple other practices in the area, including the only veterinary emergency room in town. Soon after those acquisitions, they closed down the emergency room.
My wife says to them, “2 or 3 weeks? Bailey will either be fully recovered or dead by then.”
“Well, we’ve been chronically short-staffed,” they replied. “We’re blocked up for urgent appointments…etc., etc.”
A brief, polite back-and-forth ensued, but ultimately Bailey’s “provider” didn’t offer an urgent appointment.
In their defense, this veterinary group knows what really is important. A couple of months earlier, at Bailey’s routine checkup, her doctor noted concerning “plaque buildup” on her teeth.
Do you know what Bailey’s doctor recommended? Doggie dental cleaning. Under general anesthesia. Seven hundred dollars, cash on the barrelhead.
They also have never delayed care when it comes to Bailey’s vaccines.
You see, according to the American Animal Hospital Association Guidelines (generously supported by Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health, Elanco Animal Health, Merck Animal Health and Zoetis Petcare), all dogs should be vaccinated for:
- Distemper
- Adenovirus
- Parvovirus
- Parainfluenza
- Rabies
while many or most dogs, depending on “lifestyle and risk”, should be vaccinated for
- Leptospirosis
- Lyme disease
- Bordetella
- Canine influenza
and some should even be inoculated with Rattlesnake Toxoid.
I will add, these vaccines are not one-and-done shots. Most of them are recommended to be boosted annually, or at minimum every 3 years.
But again, the experts know what is really important. For example, while Bailey has fortunately avoided any major orthopedic problems to date, we know at least one golden retriever who has had both ACLs reconstructed, and other dogs who have had total hip replacements. Advanced orthopedic surgeries, while admittedly costly, are an essential component of the golden retriever’s healthcare armamentarium.
(This probably sounds selfish, but I just hope and pray Bailey doesn’t develop gender dysphoria. I don’t think we can afford to take her down to Cornell to have them surgically construct a neophallus for her.)
Whew. Let’s step back and review. As I said, I’m no expert on these matters, like Albert Bourla. I want to make sure I’ve got all this correct.
Our golden retriever must navigate a healthcare system that cares so much for her health and well-being that it’s willing to intubate and anesthetize her for a tooth cleaning. Cha-ching!
In the name of vaccination, it will repeatedly inject her with numerous inoculations, up to and potentially including rattlesnake toxoid. Cha-ching!
It offers any number of extensive and expensive Orthopedic surgeries – as long as Bailey’s owner pays. Cha-ching!
And yet, when she gets sick with an acute respiratory infection, it tells her to stay home and wait, offers no treatment, and refuses to see her. Even though, should she become severely ill, her emergency health care system has been decimated by corporate profiteers.
Do I paint an accurate picture, or do I exaggerate?
Fortunately, Bailey’s story has a happy ending.
As so many other concerned patients and family members do, we consulted Dr. Internet. I know, I know, patients are supposed to trust the experts, and refrain from doing their own research – but you’ll have to forgive us. After all, it’s the family dog we’re talking about here. And we did discover some interesting information.
According to our research, the most common first-line treatment for kennel cough is doxycycline, an inexpensive, generic, people-antibiotic that’s been around since the 1960’s. The primary purpose of prescribing it here is to treat against Bordetella, the most common bacterial cause of the disease.
Incidentally, Bailey is up to date on all her recommended vaccines, so the fact that she got kennel cough in the first place raises its own set of questions. I won’t head down that rabbit hole here, except to ask:
If a disease doesn’t merit the patient being seen, assessed, and treated when they contract it, why is obsessive vaccination against it so necessary?
My wife called back, and in her very polite but insistent way, explained that if they weren’t going to see Bailey, we were ‘requesting’ a prescription, which in the end they wrote. I half expected them to say, “Doxycycline, but that’s human paste!” To their credit, they didn’t.
You’ll be glad to hear that after commencing empirical, early treatment with a cheap, decades-old, repurposed drug, Bailey improved almost immediately. Whether this was due to the doxycycline, her own immune system (God gave her one too, we must not forget), or both, we cannot be certain. Anyway, the goose honk is gone, her appetite is back, and she’s got the frequent zoomies again.
But the whole episode left me with a lingering, uneasy, even unhealthy feeling. It’s not exactly déjà vu, but rather the sensation that I’d been through something very similar – and similarly unpleasant – before.
Whatever could that be?
C.J. Baker, M.D. is an internal medicine physician with a quarter century in clinical practice. He has held numerous academic medical appointments, and his work has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. From 2012 to 2018 he was Clinical Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester.
The Gods Are Going Against the Chosen People – Mammon Against Israel, Mars Against the Pentagon
By John Helmer | Dances with Bears | October 27, 2023
The Palestinian strategy against Israel is aimed at destroying Israel’s capacity to survive in its present state in a long war.
This means attacking the invincibility of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and their so-called Iron Dome defence; this began with the cross-border offensive on October 7, and continues with daily drone and artillery attacks on targets inside Israel, as well as resistance to IDF incursions in Gaza.
The plan also means exposing the weakness of the state’s infrastructure and economy; extending the battlefield across all of Israel’s territory – the ports, power plants and electricity grid, communications, and financial markets — making the cost of occupation of the Arab territories unendurable. In a long war, two of Israel’s leading exports earning more than 40% of the state’s trade — diamonds and tourism — face ruin.*
“The Israelis cannot withstand one year of fighting in a war,” Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein told his general staff in 1983 during a discussion of planning for a regional war of the Arabs against Israel.** In the forty years since then, the evolution of military technology and tactics has expanded the power of small national liberation armies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, of proxy principals like Iran, and of the strategic balancing role of Russia and China. Their combination now has shortened the Zionist state’s endurance in a long war, and that of its proxy principal, the US.
The Israelis and the Jewish diaspora comprehend this reluctantly. For them, the short war must be correspondingly shorter. This means the genocide of at least a million Palestinians in lives and displacement.
The war to do that has now become an international war – and this is a war the US cannot sustain. As a Pentagon insider said publicly this week, “because there are so many draws on the logistics and support infrastructure of the Pentagon, we’re not prepared to go in in a concerted way. What we are seeing right now is death by a thousand cuts. Our adversaries know we are stretched so they are going to make us stretch even more, so we can respond even less.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Maria Zakharova, acknowledged the point in Moscow on Thursday: US naval, air force, and marine reinforcements deployed around Israel and Gaza are “American tactics to strengthen their own security (this is how it should be interpreted) at someone else’s expense.” They are backfiring on Washington’s capacity to defend US forces in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and in land bases in Syria, Iraq and Jordan. “On the contrary,” Zakharova added, the US military deployment “will further rock the situation in the Middle East, create additional tension that can spill out beyond the region.”
Zakharova’s warning came in the Moscow afternoon. By then Russian Foreign Ministry officials had held meetings with a Hamas delegation, and officials from Iran, Egypt, and Kuwait. Across the city at the same time, President Vladimir Putin held telephone talks with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Kremlin communiqué reported: “Russia and Turkiye have practically overlapping positions.”
Israeli and US-led media censorship and propaganda are concealing the breadth of impact of the Palestine warfighting plan, and the deepening military and economic weaknesses of the Israeli state.
The longer the war continues, the plainer the evidence is on the battlefield that the single-state scheme of Israel and the US is no longer possible. Whether Israel and the US can be compelled to withdraw to the 1967 borders and a new Palestinian state created with partition, demilitarisation, and international security guarantees – the basis of the Russian position announced again on Thursday in Moscow — remains to be fought over.
In this long war, the gods do not favour the Chosen People.
Following with precision the battlefield action is impossible in the Israeli and Anglo-American press. Reporting of operations, and of Israeli and US casualties, is being suppressed entirely or delayed for days, if not weeks.
According to this NBC television report, broadcast on October 24, there were at least 24 US combat casualties following drone attacks on or about October 18 at the Al-Tanf base in Syria and the Al-Asad base in Iraq. Reporting of naval action in the Red Sea, when the USS Carney reportedly engaged Houthi missiles over several hours, has been changing since the initial news flashes of October 19. Read more here. In a new report of October 24, Israeli and US casualties in a joint raid inside Gaza were revealed: “in the last 24 hours or so, some of our Special Ops forces and Israeli Special Ops forces went into Gaza to reconnoiter, to plan for where they might want to go to free hostages and make an impact, and they were shot to pieces and took heavy losses, as I understand it. I think that is where we are headed and I don’t see that as a win for Israel in any way, shape, or form. And I certainly think it is very dangerous for us”. In current reporting by Al Mayadeen, daily strikes against US bases in Iraq and northeastern Syria are documented.
Tracking the electric war and infrastructure strikes by Hamas and Hezbollah is also difficult. They commenced with cyber attacks on Israel’s electricity generation plants and power grids; these have been followed by missile and drone strikes. “The ground has been laid for attacks on the Israeli grid,” a US military source claims. “I believe drones will come first, then missiles. We may even see commando raids.”
Israel’s seaports are also under constant attack. Ashkelon, which is closest in range to Gaza, has been closed. Eilat may have been the target of the Houthi missile strike which was engaged last week by the USS Carney. Ashdod, which accounts for about 40% of incoming and outgoing Israeli seaborne trade, and Tel Aviv port have been targeted. The result is a tenfold surge in war risk insurance for vessels and cargoes, and the curtailment of international vessel movement in and out of the Israeli ports; there are reports that shipping is down 30% in Ashdod compared to the pre-war volume. Evergreen, the Taiwanese container shipping company, declared force majeure for Ashdod on October 17, diverted one vessel to Haifa, and halted future shipping into both ports. “We advise evaluating each port visit in Israel on a case by case basis and implementing appropriate precautions in ship contingency plans,” recommends a maritime industry alert bulletin.
Chevron’s offshore Tamar gas field has been shut down. The source produces 70% of the gas required to fuel Israel’s electricity generation needs. Not a single Anglo-American media source has noticed that Israel is at risk of losing its principal energy source to drone or missile attack. “After what the Americans and Germans did to blow up the Nordstream pipelines,” comments a Moscow industry source, “what is holding Hamas back from hitting Tamar, or Hezbollah from the other Israeli gas fields?”
Left: Chevron’s Tamar gas production platform is located at sea 24 kilometres west of Ashkelon. Right: click to enlarge map of Israel’s offshore gas sources.
A Moscow source comments that “in Israel, the US and the UK will be able to bring in supplies without a very big risk of US ships being attacked. The risk is to the ports and bases, not to supplies from the Med[iterranean]. The Greek and Cyprus bases will come in very useful. Israel will not face severe logistical issues as long as it is on the offensive. If its settlements start getting cut off, encircled or penetrated then it is a different matter.”
The indirect economic impacts of the war have also not been calculated or discussed in the mainstream media or international business newspapers. The leading export revenue earners are diamonds at above $9 billion per annum, and tourism which had been peaking at $8.5 billion in 2019. Counted together, diamonds and tourism amount to more than 40% of the state’s export earnings.
The Covid-19 pandemic and worldwide travel restrictions cut Israel’s tourism revenue fourfold, and this had been recovering over 2022 and the tourist season this year. This has now stopped, although for the time being Hamas rocket launches on Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv have been intercepted.
October 12, 2023 — source: https://www.youtube.com/.
ISRAEL TOURISM REVENUE TRAJECTORY, 1999-2022
Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/
Israel’s high-tech machine exports and pharmaceuticals may also be affected if electricity supply, internet networks, and transportation are damaged.
The cumulative effect will be the outcome which the international ratings agencies have been warning the international banks and financial markets to prepare for. “In our view,” Fitch reported to clients on October 17, “the combination of Israel’s dynamic, high-value added economy, the record of resilience to regional conflict, [and] preparedness for military confrontations… make it unlikely a relatively short conflict largely confined to Gaza will affect Israel’s rating…. the risk that other actors hostile to Israel, such as Iran and Hezbollah, could join the conflict at scale has risen significantly… a major escalation could result in negative rating action. This could take the form of a wider and longer conflict, resulting in a sustained fiscal drain, both from higher spending and lower tax collection, as well as loss of human and material capital and severe economic disruption.”
How short, and also how long, Israel’s warfighting plan will take depends on American and international acceptance, not only of the genocide intended for the Palestinians of Gaza, but of the Novichok-type chemical warfare planned by the IDF and the Pentagon for the Hamas tunnel system in Gaza City. After several years in which the US and UK have fabricated claims that Syria and Russia were using prohibited gas warfare weapons, the Israelis have reportedly persuaded the US to participate in the tunnel attack operation. The Pentagon is denying the reports.
Source: https://www.middleeasteye.net
Russian and US military sources are already confirming the logistical supply problems facing Israeli and US forces at present, when the war is just three weeks long. Greek sources are reporting the Souda Bay, Crete, base has already reached its capacity for incoming US navy and air force supply and support operations; the spillover is facing growing Greek protest at the Elefsina air base near Athens.
A Cyprus source says the movement of US and British aircraft into and out of the Dekhelia and Akrotiri airbases is accelerating, and there is an air and seaborne shuttle between the Cypriot ports of Larnaca and Limassol and the USS Gerald Ford carrier group at sea to the southwest of the island.
The lengthening of the supply lines required to support the USS Eisenhower carrier group in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf and the shore bases needed to support it are politically sensitive already; and the risks of Houthi and other attacks, along with domestic Arab crowd protests, will intensify for these bases in the Arab sheikhdoms the longer the war against Israel reveals Arab and Iranian warfighting skill and resistance.
Converting these gains into a negotiating framework for Israeli-American retreat is the task Russian officials are attempting in silent coordination with the Chinese, and in semi-open negotiations in Moscow this week. In its first move outside the region since the war began, Hamas has visited Moscow for negotiations, led by US-educated Moussa Mohammed Abu Marzouq.
Left: Moussa Mohammed Abu Marzouq; centre: Husam Badran; right, Ali Bagheri Kyani.
Zakharova confirmed the start of the talks with Hamas on Thursday. She said: “I can also say and confirm that representatives of the relevant Palestinian movement are in Moscow. As for contacts, we will inform you additionally.” She has also disclosed that since the war began, nine thousand Russian passport holders have returned to Russia from Israel; and that at least fifteen Russian passport holders among the Hamas hostages have been killed in the IDF airstrikes.
At the same time as Marzouq’s meetings, Husam Badran issued a statement to the Russian state news medium, Sputnik. “Russia,” Badran said, “is able to play an important role in ending the war between Israel and the Gaza Strip, and delivering aid to the Palestinian exclave. Hamas values Russia’s role on the international stage, especially use of veto in the UN Security Council against the United States. But Russia can play a greater role in ending the aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip and applying international pressure to deliver urgent aid to our people in the Gaza Strip.”
What Hamas means by “greater role” for Russia has not been disclosed publicly yet. It is known that Hamas is willing to negotiate the release of “non-military” hostages, including Israelis holding Russian passports, through Iran. This is conditional on the IDF lifting its siege on Gaza and allowing sufficient supplies into all parts of the territory.
The “military hostages” are being held in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. There are more than 6,000 of the latter; there may be fewer than 200 hostages in Gaza, as up to 50 have been killed by Israeli bombing.
The Russian Foreign Ministry statement on the talks with Hamas is less revealing. According to the Sputnik release, “Russia has discussed release of hostages and evacuation of Russians from the Gaza Strip during a meeting with a delegation of Hamas in Moscow on Thursday.” A member of the political office of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, Abu Marzouq, is in Moscow. Contacts took place with him in continuation of the Russian line for the immediate release of foreign hostages located in the Gaza Strip, and issues related to ensuring the evacuation of Russian and other foreign citizens from the territory of the Palestinian enclave were also discussed.”
At the same time on Thursday – unnoticed and unreported by the western media – Russian officials held several negotiating sessions with an Iranian emissary, Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kyani. In three separate Foreign Ministry releases, meeting communiqués were issued for Kyani’s meetings with deputy ministers Mikhail Bogdanov, Sergei Ryabkov, and Mikhail Galuzin. “The need for the cessation of hostilities in and around the Gaza Strip and the prompt provision of humanitarian assistance to the affected Palestinian population was confirmed,” Bogdanov’s communiqué said. “It was stated that Moscow and Tehran are determined to continue close coordination of efforts in the interests of stabilizing the situation in the Middle East.”
It is unclear if the talks also included the Hamas officials in a three-party format. During the day there were also Foreign Ministry negotiations in Moscow with Kuwaiti and Egyptian officials.
At the Kremlin it has been announced that President Putin spoke with Turkish President Erdogan to discuss the war. According to the Kremlin release, “the presidents reviewed the active efforts undertaken by Russia at the UN Security Council, as well as the corresponding political and diplomatic steps taken by Turkiye to stop the bloodshed and ensure the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid to those in need. It was emphasised that Russia and Turkiye have practically overlapping positions, focused on implementing the well-known two-state solution, which provides for the creation of an independent Palestine coexisting with Israel in peace and security.”
In her briefing for the press, Zakharova dismissed the US moves so far. “We do not consider the US presence in the Middle East as contributing to the stability of the situation in the region. Exactly the opposite. Washington’s earlier attempts to monopolise the Middle East settlement process, ignoring the true causes of the protracted conflict, have largely led to the current catastrophic consequences… This situation has an absolutely clear and understandable road, a ‘road map’ for settlement. It is not simple, but complex, painful, but leading to the solution of the issue, not its aggravation.”
“Of course, no air defence systems, arms supplies, materiel injections into some ‘security complexes’ will help resolve this situation. Today’s lesson must be learned. How many Americans have deployed there (their bases, experts, satellites), nothing has worked to prevent a bloody scenario, of which both Palestinians and Israelis are victims.”
[*] With support from Israel and influential Jewish diamantaires in New York and Tel Aviv, a scheme of sanctions is being prepared by the US Government to stop Russian raw diamonds, produced by Alrosa, from being sold into the Belgian, Israeli, and US markets. The Russian goods are to be tagged “blood diamonds” because of the war in the Ukraine. However, now that Israel is destroying the Palestinian population of Gaza, the “blood” tag can be applied to the Israeli diamond cutting industry and to the Jewish diamond trade abroad. Support for the anti-Russian sanction, and also for the IDF operations against the Palestinians can be found in Rapaport.com news reports. “Rapaport stands with Israel”, the publication and its owner Martin Rapaport declared on October 26, “and has undertaken all the necessary effort and costs for the October Single Stone Auction to help the Israeli market continue to conduct business as best as possible during this difficult time. Rapaport believes that continuing to do business in Israel during the war is a victory over the brutal Hamas terrorists, and will help Israel win the war.” In another editorial for the diamond trade, Rapaport proposes “to boycott Iran and all other supporters of the Hamas terrorist organization.” Rapaport also cites religious authority for liquidation. “In the words of G-d (Exodus 17:14): ‘I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.’May the words of G-d be done, here and now.” Quietly, Russia’s state diamond interests dictate a strategy for protecting against this double-edged Israeli policy.
[**] Saddam Hussein is quoted in the chapter on US plots against him in Iraq – see The Jackals’ Wedding: American Power, Arab Revolt, Ch. 6.
Slovakia Says Europe Should Not Supply Arms to Ukraine
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | October 26, 2023
The new government of Slovakia has followed through with its campaign pledge to terminate arms transfers and is calling on the rest of Europe to adopt Bratislava’s policy. Slovakia’s new leader, Robert Fico, has called for the European Union to take on a peacekeeper role in the Ukraine war, and Bratislava will not support further sanctions on Moscow.
Fico told members of Slovakia’s legislature on Thursday that Bratislava was abandoning the West’s proxy war against Russia. “I will support zero military aid to Ukraine… An immediate halt to military operations is the best solution we have for Ukraine. The EU should change from an arms supplier to a peacemaker,” he said. Adding, Slovakia will “no longer supply weapons to Ukraine.”
As well as terminating support for Kiev’s war effort, Fico explained Slovakia will no longer support Washington’s economic war on Moscow. “I will not vote for any sanctions against Russia unless we see analyses of their impact on Slovakia.” He continued, “If there are to be such sanctions that will harm us, like most sanctions have, I can see no reason to support them.”
Additionally, Fico said, “the people in Slovakia have bigger problems than (dealing with) Ukraine” and “further killing [in Ukraine] will not help anyone.”
Fico’s left-wing Smer-SD won Slovakia’s election early this month on a platform that highlighted ending arms transfers to Ukraine.
While President Joe Biden insists that Washington will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” several Eastern European countries have started to terminate support for Kiev. Poland announced it would end weapons transfers after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky slammed Warsaw during his UN address.
Keeping You Up To Date On New York’s Progress Toward Green Energy Utopia
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | October 15, 2023
Consider Manhattan Contrarian as your go-to source for the latest on New York’s progress toward green energy utopia.
Can you remember all the way back to December 19, 2022? That’s the day that New York’s Climate Action Council officially adopted its “Scoping Plan,” telling us all how we are going to achieve, among other goals, 70% of statewide electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030 and a zero-emissions electricity system by 2040. The biggest part of the grand plan consists of some 9,000 MW (nameplate capacity) of offshore wind turbines to be built by 2035. As of the time of the Scoping Plan, the state claimed that some 4,300 MW out of the 9,000 MW of upcoming offshore wind projects were under “active development.”
On the very day that the Scoping Plan got finalized, I had a post titled “On To The Great Future Of Offshore Wind Power.” That post noted that even of the 4.300 MW of offshore wind supposedly under “active development,” not one turbine was operating, or even under construction. Several developers had made bids that had been accepted by the state, and some of those developers were getting kind of close to applying for permits. My prediction was: “Expect long delays and demands for lots more money before anything gets built.” Boy, can I call these things.
Shall we check back in for the latest information?
Just ten days ago, on October 5, I had an update on offshore wind developments throughout the Mid-Atlantic and New England. For New York, the news was that in September essentially all the developers of the New York projects in “active development” had demanded massive price increases, ranging from about 30% at the low end to almost 65% at the high end. The new prices being demanded by the developers would now be between $140-190 per MWh, which would be at least double to more than triple the prices charged by new natural gas plants.
So how did that go over? To its credit, the state Public Service Commission wasted no time in rejecting the price hike demands of the developers. On October 12 the Commission issued its decision on the Petitions of the developers for price relief. Excerpt from the press release:
The New York State Public Service Commission (Commission) today denied petitions filed by a group of offshore wind developers and a state renewable energy trade association seeking billions of dollars in additional funding from consumers for four proposed offshore wind projects and 86 land-based renewable projects. In denying financial relief, the Commission opted to preserve the robust competitive bidding process that provides critically needed renewable energy resources to New York in the fairest and most cost-effective manner that protects consumers.
OK then, what happens next? The New York Times has a write-up on October 12. The Times quotes the Chair of the PSC, one Rory Christian, as standing up for the sanctity of the public bidding process:
Rory Christian, the chairman of the Public Service Commission, the state’s utility regulator, said that providing relief to the winning bidders would set an untenable precedent. “Taking exception today almost guarantees that we will be asked to do this again in the future,” he said. Mr. Christian added that the state’s ratepayers, who would have borne the cost, could not serve as an “unlimited piggy bank” for companies to tap. “We have a deal,” he said to the developers, calling on them to stand by the terms they agreed to.
Well, Rory, I’ve got news for you: the developers aren’t going to honor the deal. You’re going to have to hold a new auction. And the prices that will be bid will be as high or higher than those just demanded by these developers.
Oh, and then don’t expect any new round of accepted bids to stick either. The developers will come back again and again for new rounds of price increases. What’s to stop them? After all, they have you over a barrel. You have a “Climate Act” and a “Scoping Plan” that basically require you to build out a grid powered by “renewables,” whether that is feasible or not, and then limit your options to mostly offshore wind.
And meanwhile, until the next round of bids is held, we’re back to square one. We have a statutory requirement of 70% of our electricity from “renewables” by 2030, and a “Scoping Plan” that sees that goal being achieved largely through offshore wind turbines. And we have not one single operating offshore wind turbine, nor any under construction, nor, after the recent contract repudiations, any actively moving through the permitting process. At least for now, the whole thing is dead in the water.
The Times quotes a guy named Fred Zalcman, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance:
[T]he commission’s decision “puts these projects in serious jeopardy and deals a potentially fatal blow to the progress these projects have made. . . .”
By the way, the prices recently demanded by the offshore wind developers, in the range of $140-190/MWh, do not include anything for the transmission upgrades needed to deliver this power into the grid, nor anything for the storage or back-up needed to transform intermittent wind power into a useful 24/7 resource. The sooner we pull the plug on this whole endeavor, the better. But we are now only in the first phases of the collapse.
UPDATE, October 16, 2023: Meanwhile, I should have mentioned that New York City apartment buildings remain under a mandate from “Local Law 97” to convert to electric heat by 2030 or face large fines. The electricity is supposed to come from the offshore wind farms that, for the time being, are completely suspended. Go to the link in the sidebar to listen to Jane’s podcast on this subject.
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Book Review
Palantir CEO Calls for Draft to Fight the Empire’s Wars
Involuntary servitude is good for business
By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | April 20, 2026
In 2025, Alex Karp, the CEO of government and military tech contractor Palantir, published The New York Times best-seller, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. The Wall Street Journal praised the book as a cri de coeur, a passionate appeal “that takes aim at the tech industry for abandoning its history of helping America and its allies,” while Wired praised the book as a “readable polemic that skewers Silicon Valley for insufficient patriotism.”
On April 18, 2026, Palantir posted twenty-two points to social media summarizing the book. In addition to taking Silicon Valley to task for insufficient patriotism, advocating a role for AI in forever war, and denouncing the “psychologization of modern politics,” the Palantir post on X declares: “National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.”
National conscription, a form of involuntary servitude, and the wars it portends, is good for business, especially for corporations within the orbit of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the national security state. Palantir fits comfortably within this amalgamation. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Israeli army blows up school in southern Lebanon in violation of ceasefire
- The desalination front: Water as Israel’s Achilles heel
- Washington cuts flow of US dollars to Iraqi central bank until ‘acceptable’ government formed
- China blames US for diplomatic impasse with Iran, urges it to show ‘sincerity’ in talks
- Iran announces new Hormuz restrictions after US ceasefire violations
- After Islamabad: How the Global South Is Reshaping Eurasian Geopolitics
- Is Trump Going for Armageddon?
- Palantir CEO Calls for Draft to Fight the Empire’s Wars
- Iran War fallout: Russia and China quietly take over natural gas markets in Asia, with Qatar gone
- Hamas dismisses US-backed disarmament plan as ‘collective suicide’
- If Americans Knew
- 5 times Israelis desecrated Christian sites in the past two years
- US running out of weaponry for Israel’s war; Iran has plenty – Daily Update
- Israel is (still) killing aid workers in Gaza
- Catholics finally splitting with Trump over Iran war and Israel
- Israel’s “Black Wednesday” Massacre Leaves Lebanese Families Giving DNA To ID Loved One’s Remains
- ‘I Felt I Was a Monster’: IDF Soldiers Talk About the ‘Moral Injury’ – and the Silence
- ‘I thought I might die’: A Palestinian mother’s account of Israeli detention
- Mom whose daughter was killed by Israeli bulldozer 23 years ago pleaded with Congress to finally stop funding
- Israeli soldier takes sledgehammer to Jesus statue in Lebanon – Daily Update
- Israel employs ‘Gaza tactics’ in Lebanon, destroying 1,000 homes per day – Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
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