By Lucas Leiroz | April 11, 2023
Apparently, it is increasingly difficult to hide the catastrophic situation of Kiev’s war arsenal. According to a major Western media outlet, the neo-Nazi regime will run out of most of its anti-air missiles by next month. The source of the newspaper would be an alleged leaked Pentagon’s document. The case shows once again how unfavorable the military scenario of the conflict is for the Ukrainian forces.
The subject was discussed in a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal. According to the outlet, documents leaked on the Pentagon’s official social networks would have exposed an extremely pessimistic forecast about the future of the Ukrainian armed forces, pointing to the nearly total exhaustion of Kiev’s anti-aircraft defense capacity. Anti-air missiles are expected to run out in May, which will further complicate the Ukrainian situation and boost demand for new NATO weapons packages in order to prolong the alliance’s proxy war.
The forecast is based on a calculation taking into account the recent numbers of the Ukrainian army. Currently, Kiev is expending about 69 Buk missiles and 200 S-300 missiles a month to maintain its defense positions against the Russian air attacks. With these numbers, it is most likely that the Buk missiles will run out in early April and that the stock of S-300s will expire by May 3rd, according to Pentagon’s officials in the leaked document.
Indeed, some measures to mitigate the effects of Ukrainian anti-aircraft weakness have already been taken by Western forces. Kiev received three Iris-T anti-aircraft systems from Germany, in addition to eight American NASAMS systems. However, these devices allow a limited number of launches, which do not cover as much territory as the S-300 missiles. This limited aid has made it difficult to efficiently supply new Western missiles to Ukraine, making Kiev still heavily dependent on Soviet-era launch systems.
In this sense, a new wave of broad military support would be needed to overcome the Ukrainian deficit. The US military, according to what is exposed in the revealed paper, estimate that the necessary number will reach 16 Irist-T or NASAMS batteries and up to 12 Patriot or SAMP-T batteries. It is necessary to remember that recently the American president Joe Biden had already authorized the sending of a Patriot battery, at the same time that Germany, France and Italy promised to supply a SAMP-T system to the neo-Nazi regime. However, this equipment has not yet reached Ukraine, which is why the situation of Kiev’s defense has not yet improved.
Since late 2022, requests for military aid focused on anti-aircraft defense have been constant in Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s speeches. He considers this type of equipment a “number one priority”, and his advisors have also requested, in addition to anti-missile systems, the well-known US F-16 fighter jets, which have been repeatedly banned by the US government. Some pro-Ukrainian analysts believe that these aid packages would be a kind of “game changer”, but renowned experts rule out any possibility of reversing the military scenario of the conflict, regardless of whether NATO weapons reach the battlefield.
It is important to note that the US government has not yet commented on the case, with the Pentagon being silent on the authenticity of the supposed leak. The matter comes amid a recent wave of releases of classified Pentagon’s documents. Other reports from the department were exposed on social networks, including information on sensitive topics such as China, the Middle East and terrorism. There has been strong distrust on the part of analysts about the veracity of these alleged leaks. Some commentators argue that if the releases were true there would be no room for the Western media to report their existence, with a strong censorship initiative trying to hide the incident.
Although there is not enough information to point out the veracity of these leakages, it is possible to say that at least with regard to the Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles, there is a great possibility that the numbers are real, considering the evident defeat of Kiev’s forces in the battlefield. In a more realistic perspective, it is possible to suspect that in fact there are no “leaks”, but that the Pentagon would be deliberately publishing the numbers to increase the fear of a Ukrainian defeat in public opinion, boosting support for the shipment of new weapons.
What we have seen recently is the absolute failure of the “Ukrainian victory” narrative, as Russian advances have made it clear which side militarily controls the combats. Due to this, there seems to be currently an attempt at “damage control”, with officials and mainstream media partially admitting Ukraine’s defeat. If before the justification for sending weapons was that Kiev would be winning, now it is said that Kiev is losing, but “must win”. The aim is to spread anti-Russian fear in public opinion and to convince ordinary citizens that the shipment of weapons is an urgent measure in order to save the West.
In a rational and strategic analysis, it is possible to see that at no time did Moscow show interest in expanding the limits of its military operation, therefore there is no reason for any kind of fear on the part of Western citizens. On the other hand, the exhaustion of Ukrainian forces seems to be good news, since, faced with the inability to continue fighting, the Kiev regime would be forced to surrender, which would end hostilities. This would be the best-case scenario for all sides except for NATO’s pro-war elites.
Lucas Leiroz is a journalist and researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.
April 11, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | Ukraine, United States |
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After the recent devasting tornadoes in the Midwest and South, some media outlets scrambled to try to link the weather events to climate change, when in fact there is no hard data to support this. In fact, tornado data refute claims that tornadoes are increasing in number, range, or severity. However, Salon, Axios, and the Washington Post among others ran articles suggesting climate change is expanding the length of tornado season and area over which tornadoes commonly form, as well as adding ingredients to the atmosphere to make more and bigger tornadoes.
The Salon article, “How climate change made the Mississippi tornadoes more likely,” (actually a reprint from Grist) claimed, “That added ingredient of more heat and moisture is going to be the big thing that will influence what happens and we can expect potentially worse tornado outbreaks,” said William Gallus, a professor of meteorology at Iowa State University.
Axios piled on with “What we know about how climate change affects tornado outbreaks,” which claims, “We also have expectations that the number of severe thunderstorms (hail, wind, tornado) will probably increase in the U.S.”
The Washington Post article, “Here’s what we know about how climate change is influencing tornadoes,” asserts, “Average global temperatures have risen more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s, and the impact is clear: Warmer air provides more energy for storms to develop and intensify, and holds more moisture, which can also fuel storms. Warm, moist air is a key ingredient for developing severe tornadic storms.”
These claims of increased storms due to more heat and moisture are misleading at best and demonstrate a clear lack of understanding of how weather fronts collide to form tornadoes. As Climate at a Glance: Tornadoes points out: “Tornadoes typically form when very cold, dry air clashes with warm, humid air. Climate change warms the Arctic more than the tropics and subtropics, resulting in less of a clash between cold Arctic air masses and warm Gulf of Mexico air masses. As a result, fewer and less violent tornadoes are occurring today than in previous periods, despite media claims that tornadoes are getting more frequent, stronger, or both.”
Plus, all of these articles miss one very important and immutable fact: decades of hard data on tornado activity don’t support these claims.
Despite modest warming of the climate over the past 50 years, data show no trend in increasing tornadoes linked to climate change. Indeed, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its most recent report, “There is low confidence in observed trends in small spatial-scale phenomena such as tornadoes.”
These articles all focused on the recent severe storms that caused many deaths and widespread destruction. Yet, looking at the actual data for the trend in strong to violent tornadoes suggest no cause for alarm. Violent tornadoes, those rated EF3 to EF5 on the enhanced Fujita tornado scale, have declined in recent decades, based on actual data supplied by the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center.
The hard data on tornado numbers and intensity refute any assertions that tornadoes are worsening due to climate change. The number of strong to violent tornadoes, F3 or higher, has dramatically declined for nearly half a century. Additional evidence shows attempts to tie tornadoes to climate change falls flat. For instance, 2018 was a record-low year for tornadoes in the United States. Even the Washington Post wrote that 2018 was the first year with no violent tornadoes in the United States.
Also flying in the face of climate change attribution during the so-called “hottest decade in recorded history” from 2010 to 2019, two record-low years for tornado strikes in the United States occurred, in 2014 and 2018.
Finally, it is important to note that severe tornado outbreaks are not a global (as in global warming) phenomenon, but mostly limited to the United States with its unique topography and weather patterns.
All of these omissions lead one to ask if the media are aware of hard data and previous articles on the topics of tornados and climate change, or did these outlets simply not wish to consider what those articles and data implied, because they presented inconvenient truths that are counter to their attempts to link climate change and tornado behavior?
Even the scientist quoted in the Post article would not commit to the narrative that climate change was changing tornado behavior.
Per the Post, “That suggests more tornadoes may be likely, too. But scientists aren’t ready to declare that yet.”
Also, according to the Post, “There is nothing concrete to say, ‘Yes, we’re going to see more tornadoes,’ Allen said,” as Dance reported.
The willful choice to ignore these facts is indicative of the shoddy state of what passes for journalism today. The Washington Post’s banner reads, “democracy dies in darkness.” Evidently, science dies in darkness, too.
April 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | United States |
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While the sudden leak of numerous classified US documents related to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine reportedly prompted the Pentagon to launch an investigation into the matter, the way the “revelation” was covered by the media makes it look somewhat suspect.
Classified documents that purportedly outline US and NATO plans for the Ukrainian military were leaked to the public this week, and if US media is to be believed, the Pentagon has already rushed to investigate this apparent breach of security.
During an interview with Sputnik, international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda pointed out that the story was broken by the New York Times. According to him, given that US officials are now claiming that part of the story is true and part of it is not, it begets the question: “why was it leaked and what did they want us to believe?”
The leak, Sleboda suggested, likely comes “from the American side or someone within the American side,” with the analyst noting that some of the leaked papers “confirm information that we really already knew,” such as the data about the newly-formed Ukrainian brigades. He suggests taking the leaked information “with a grain of salt.”
Regarding the rationale behind the sharing of the leaked information on social media, Sleboda argued that “a lot of it maybe [was] buttressing the public knowledge of US support for the offensive that is about to be launched.”
“We know that NATO considers it their last-ditch effort, they do not have the ability to continue to sustain the Kiev regime in terms of ammunition, artillery shells, other gear, and for them this is all or nothing,” he mused. “So they’re expecting success out of this and they do not appear to have a plan B in that regard. Plan B might default the Plan D, which is NATO troops enter Western Ukraine or some NATO member-states enter West Ukraine, say Poland and the US, possibly Romania.”
He also observed that the leaked information does not include any specific battle plans, “which seems awfully convenient.”
For more in-depth analysis, check out the latest episode of Sputnik’s podcast Fault Lines.
April 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | NATO, New York Times, Ukraine, United States |
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The BBC recently ran a story claiming that the Antarctic ocean currents were heading for collapse, and to drive home the scare there was even a reference to the 2004 climate disaster film, The Day After Tomorrow. Rapidly melting Antarctic ice was reported to be causing a dramatic slowdown in deep ocean currents, “and could have a disastrous effect on the climate”. Like most of these fanciful scare stories, “could” is doing a lot of the heavy lifting work. But alas, missing from this Net Zero-promoting, model-inventing Armageddon tall tale was a note that the Antarctica ice cap appears to be in balance, and is not actually melting.
According to a paper written by NASA satellite ice-mapping scientists in 2021, Antarctica is “close to balance” in the period 2012-16 at -12 +/- 64 Gt a-1. Gt are gigatonnes and the formula is a scientific way of saying that as near as damn it, well within a margin of error, the Antarctica ice sheet loss is, more or less, zero. Back to 1992, the scientists found large total gains for the sheet.
According to the story in the BBC, reported faithfully in numerous media, as fresh water from the ice cap melts, sea water becomes less salty and dense and a downwards movement of water towards the sea bottom is interrupted. This in turn can affect world oceanic currents. The activist science blog the Conversation reported that “torrents of Antarctic meltwater are slowing the currents that drive our vital ocean ‘overturning’ – and threaten its collapse”. The BBC noted that a similar collapse in the North Atlantic was depicted in The Day After Tomorrow.
As regular readers will recall, the Daily Sceptic has observed that Antarctica is a difficult neighbourhood for activists to get a good scare story going. Over the last seven decades, there has been little or no warming over large parts of the continent. According to a recent paper, (Singh and Polvani), the Antarctica sea ice has “modestly expanded”, and warming has been “nearly non-existent” over much of the ice sheet. According to NASA figures, the ice loss is 0.0005% per year.
The latest scare arises from a paper published in Nature. It is the product of climate models – the BBC noting that the scientists spent 35 million computer hours over two years collecting their results. However, this story is also of considerable interest since it shows that the BBC and most mainstream media are seemingly incapable of questioning any statement that promotes human-caused climate change and the proposed command-and-control Net Zero political solution. This endemic lack of curiosity means that vast areas of science, including atmospheric physics and chemistry, together with weather, geology and geography, are simply off limits in case any doubt should be cast on the suggestion that humans control the CO2 climate thermostat.
The study lead author, Professor Matthew England from Sydney’s University of New South Wales, is able to state, without any inquiring question or contradiction, that “our modelling shows that if global carbon emissions continue at the current rate, then the Antarctica overturning will slow by more than 40% in the next 30 years”. The BBC repeats emissions continuing at the current rate, but England’s paper states that his model has been loaded with a “high emissions” scenario. The paper is behind a paywall, but the abstract in which this admission occurs is freely available.
These “high emission” scenarios are almost certainly RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5 that forecast global rises in temperatures of 4-5°C within less than 80 years. As Dr. Judith Curry has recently pointed out, these have been dropped in many science circles on the grounds they are recognised as implausible. Global warming of barely 0.1°C over the last 20 years is almost certainly a factor in this reassessment. Nevertheless, Curry notes that many of the extreme events based on the scenarios are still quoted in IPCC documents. “Rejecting these extreme scenarios has rendered obsolete much of the climate literature and assessments of the last decade,” she states.
Not at the BBC, of course. Settled science – the Science – cannot move on because it suffers from the anti-science proposition that it is somehow settled. Model results suggest deep water circulation in the Antarctic could slow at twice the rate of decline in the North Atlantic, reports the BBC. “It’s stunning to see that happen so quickly,” said climatologist Alan Mix from Oregon State University, a co-author of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment. “It appears to be kicking into gear right now. That’s headline news,” he told Reuters. No, Dr. Mix, it’s a model based on assumptions that are regularly contradicted by the data. Some climatologists it appears have trouble distinguishing fact from their own fevered predictions.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
April 6, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | BBC |
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In this Grayzone exclusive, reporter Jeremy Loffredo visits the Donbas Express, a musical instruction camp for youth from the war torn regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, and reveals the reality of a program described by State Department-funded researchers who inspired the ICC arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin as a “re-education” camp.
Find more reporting at https://thegrayzone.com
By Wyatt Reed – Sputnik – 02.04.2023
There’s radio silence from legacy media as a new exposé completely undermines “the allegation by the ICC… that Russia is running a network of camps that are holding children as hostages and committing a war crime by illegally deporting Ukrainian children.”
A stunning new report has debunked the narrative that camps in Russia for children from the Donbass constitute ‘crimes against humanity,’ completely undermining the allegations that serve as the basis for the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladmir Putin.
In late March, the Prosecutor General for the ICC claimed that President Putin had personally committed a “war crime,” citing what it insisted was the “unlawful deportation” and “unlawful transfer” of children from the regions of the Donbass that the Kiev regime claims as its own.
The ICC prosecutor “appeared to have based his arrest warrant on research produced by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL),” a State Department-funded entity whose executive director, Nathaniel Raymond, recently claimed on CNN that “thousands of children are in a hostage situation,” per The Grayzone, an independent American investigative outlet.
State Department spokesman Ned Price seized on that report, which his employer funded, to condemn what he called “Russia’s system of forced relocation, re-education and adoption of Ukraine’s children,” an allegation which was later echoed by the ICC.
But “according to the Yale Lab,” Grayzone journalist Jeremy Loffredo explained in a new video report, the outrageous allegations of war crimes on the part of the Russian President were based on simple Google searches, involved “zero interviews with actual victims… [and] the researchers didn’t even attempt to see any of the camps in person.”
Now the Grayzone has unveiled never-before-seen footage, captured by Jeremy Loffredo in Russia last year, showing the alleged “re-education” camps – and they’re nothing like what the State Department claims.
Although the Yale researchers and the International Criminal Court “are probably under the impression that no Western journalist has been to these so-called ‘re-education camps,’” Loffredo explains in a new video report, “that assumption would be wrong.” Indeed, the journalist says, “I visited one of these camps four months ago – unaware that it would be so important to future war propaganda.”
Rather than a re-education camp, Loffredo explains with his co-author, Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, he found “a hotel full of happy campers receiving free classical music lessons in their native Russian language from first-class instructors.”
Loffredo interviewed one of the camp’s instructors, violin teacher Peter Lundstrom, who said that many of the 80 children from the Donetsk and Lugansk region who came to the music camp had first-hand experience with the war that’s been raging in the backyard for over nine years: “Some of them lost their relatives and friends,” he notes. “In the conflict zone, they cannot continue their professional music studies.”
In a subsequent interview with the Grayzone, HRL’s executive director admitted the camps were actually less Third Reich and more “teddy bear.” In other words, the lead author of the report used to justify an ICC arrest warrant for the Russian president seemed to acknowledge that the kids aren’t being stolen, but are merely being given respite from the trauma of life in a conflict zone.
Detailing his findings in comments given to Sputnik News, Blumenthal says their report “completely demolishes the entire case” against the Russian President and “exposes it as a public relations stunt that is driven by a hyper-politicized [ICC] prosecutor captured by the US and a State Department-funded report.”
Between Loffredo’s trip to one of the camps in question, the original text of the report at the center of the allegations, and the Grayzone’s interview with the director of the group which authored it, Blumenthal says the “three layers of journalistic inquiry” totally debunk “the allegation by the ICC… that Russia is running a network of camps that are holding children as hostages and committing a war crime by illegally deporting Ukrainian children.”
But despite the groundbreaking nature of their findings, Blumenthal says not a single mainstream media has reached out to him in the 24 hours since publishing the report: “Western media is doing all it can to ignore this devastating debunking of the Yale HRL report that inspired the ICC arrest warrant,” he noted.
But this shouldn’t as a surprise, the award-winning journalist says, because mainstreams outlets are seeking to “prevent the populations of countries whose governments are sponsoring this proxy war from learning the truth – which is that this is a politicized warrant driven by a bogus investigation that relied on no field research, whose own report debunks itself.”
Ironically, concludes Blumenthal, it’s clear the ICC warrant and the US government-sponsored report it’s based on were both “designed to obstruct diplomacy with the Russian government in order to prolong the war, and therefore to increase the level of human rights abuses that have been taking place.”
April 2, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | Russia, United States |
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The Information Age, for all its wonders in the vast and instant access to any topic imaginable, is really quite a paradox. Accessible information should ideally lead to greater knowledge and understanding. Yet, information is not always true or accurate, causing confusion and misleading recipients. Journalists and news organizations, therefore, bear a duty to their readers to investigate and verify information before publishing.
Vetting information should be relatively easy in some cases. So why do today’s media authors insist on being parrot-like mouthpieces instead of ethical, investigative journalists? Why do they not dig anymore? Why not question and confirm or correct information before publishing articles that get viewed by the masses, creating perceptions with a reckless disregard for the truth?
Forbes, TravelPulse, Sky Sports, and Express Daily among other outlets reported on Thursday that the United States has voted to end its restrictions against unvaccinated foreign travelers. Some of these articles quote Geoff Freeman, CEO of the US Travel Association, following a statement published on the organization’s website that appears to have since been deleted. In the quotes, Freeman praised the Senate’s passage of H.J.Res. 7, a bill terminating the national covid emergency declaration in the US, suggesting that this bill removed the travel vaccine mandate for visitors to the US.
Had any of these authors or their editors read the text of the bill, they would have at least questioned the accuracy of US Travel’s official commentary that the bill has any effect on the international travel ban. Instead, each news outlet in rapid succession published similar, misleading articles. Quintessential irresponsible journalism–erroneous reporting compounded with a “whisper down the lane” effect that because information has been reported, and then reported by multiple sources, it is now true albeit a gross misrepresentation of the facts.
The truth is the US has not lifted the travel ban. It is still in place without expiration, and will only be terminated by President Biden upon recommendation by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Hope in that respect is grim for both citizens and noncitizens harmed and kept apart from loved ones by the restriction.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra testified before the House of Representatives on March 28th that “the actions that our Administration is taking with regard to American citizens is to protect them as best possible against covid. The actions we take with regard to those trying to enter the country are somewhat similar, but there are some differences because these are folks who are asking for permission to come into the U.S.” Representative Claudia Tenney (R-NY) asked if the decision to not lift vaccine mandates was political, to which Secretary Becerra responded that the mandates, including the travel restrictions, are “based on science and the evidence.”
While testifying, Becerra–a lawyer–is oblivious to statements made by his own CDC Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky. Walensky told the public in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “vaccines are no longer effective at preventing disease.”
The CDC also updated its guidance to “no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur…” as of August 19, 2022. However, the CDC has not yet removed the Amended Order banning unvaccinated travelers. In their official comment regarding the travel restrictions, the CDC responded that the order is simply an implementation of President Biden’s Proclamation 10294, and the agency defers status updates to the White House.
Given Becerra’s recent testimony, it is apparent that he is also unaware that the global scientists in the World Health Organization have recommended since July of 2021 that governments not require international travelers to be vaccinated against covid for entry.
He further testified that he does not have the authority to issue “waivers” of the vaccine requirement for foreign travelers, which begs the question: Does Becerra know that he is responsible for advising President Biden to terminate the travel restriction? If he followed the science and the evidence, as he testified his Department does, then he should have advised President Biden to end Proclamation 10294 in the summer of 2022.
Alas, the only measures before Congress that would legislate an end to the covid travel restrictions have been stalled in the Senate. As of Thursday, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) has twice asked his colleagues to unanimously consent to pass HR 185, a bill offered by Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) that passed the House in February to terminate the CDC Amended Order requiring the covid vaccine for air passengers. Both calls for consent were quashed by objections.
Senator Peter Welch (D-VT) objected, believing Congress should not set precedent by ending any programs of President Biden’s public health emergency before the Administration was ready. At Lee’s second request for unanimous consent, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) stood and objected for then-absent Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT).
Although not all of the reasons for Sanders’ objections were read into the record, the “most compelling” objection, per Booker, was that covid originated outside of the US and “many health professionals” believe keeping unvaccinated noncitizens out will curb the spread of the disease and future variants.
Now that the objections have stalled any legislative action on HR 185, the Senate may need to hold a roll call vote to pass the bill and send it to President Biden, who has not promised to veto. Such a vote is not expected prior to April 17th, as Senators will be out of DC for state work.
Certain media outlets have also mistakenly published that the covid travel restrictions are due to end on April 10th. No doubt, their assumption comes from the TSA Security Directive, which orders airlines to comply with Proclamation 10294. Unfortunately, the agency renews this directive so long as Proclamation 10294 remains in place.
It cannot be said enough that Proclamation 10294 and the CDC Amended Order implementing President Biden’s policy have no expiration date. Indeed, the White House only promised the restriction would “be reviewed” prior to the anticipated May 11th end to the covid public health emergency–there is no offered end date.
Further, the Proclamation is based on the National Immigration Act. Although the national covid emergency spawned the development of this now-defunct policy, the legal authority rationalizing it will remain well beyond the termination of any emergency, allowing the policy itself to be enforced until removed.
An official from the White House advised that ending the national covid emergency does not end the travel restrictions, and those restrictions remain in effect at this time under Proclamation 10294 and the CDC’s Amended Order. The official did not provide an anticipated end date when asked.
To make this abundantly clear for the public: Presidential Proclamation 10294 requiring non-citizen non-immigrants be vaccinated to enter the US will only end if President Biden rescinds it, Congress repeals it, or the Judiciary strikes it down. To date, no lawsuits have been filed challenging the ban on foreign visitors.
March 31, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Joe Biden, United States |
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PFM-1 anti-personnel land mine found in a field, near the town of Artyomovsk, Donetsk People’s Republic © Viktor Antonyuk / Sputnik
Since Ukraine dropped hundreds of mines on the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in July, 104 people have fallen victim to the internationally-banned PFM-1 ‘petal’ (otherwise known as ‘butterfly’) devices. Nine of them are children. Of which three died.
Among the most recent civilians to be injured, on March 19, were two 60-year-old men. On February 26, a woman in her sixties was wounded in her neighborhood. On February 14, a teenager stepped on a petal mine near a school. These are just a few documented examples from recent weeks.
The first wave of over 40 victims came within the first few weeks after Ukrainian forces deployed the mines over Donetsk en masse in July 2022, and the number has more than doubled since. Since then I, along with other reporters on the ground, have documented their lingering presence and the civilian victims.
NGO reports… selectively
After signing the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty in 1999, Kiev was obligated to destroy its stockpile of 6 million PFM-1s. It denies using them, but abundant evidence incriminates Kiev in this particular war crime. While the West has yet to turn its attention to the victims of the petal mines in the Donbass, reports of Ukraine using them elsewhere have emerged.
In its January 2023 report on banned landmines, the Human Rights Watch NGO notes, “In 2021, Ukraine reported to the UN secretary-general that 3.3 million stockpiled PFM mines still need to be destroyed.” HRW then advised Ukraine to investigate itself for its use of the prohibited mines.
The report is titled “Ukraine: Banned Landmines Harm Civilians. Ukraine Should Investigate Forces’ Apparent Use; Russian Use Continues,” implying that not only is Russia also deploying the petal mines, but that Russia’s use of them is beyond question, while Kiev’s use is open to debate.
Yet, much like in 2020, when the UN accused Russia of war crimes in Syria based on “we say so” and unnamed sources, you won’t find proof of Russia’s use of petal mines in the HRW report. In fact, buried there is a HRW admission that it “has not verified claims of Russian forces using PFM mines in the armed conflict.” This is a standard media tactic: boldly state one thing in a headline and quietly clarify the opposite in the body of the article, which most people won’t bother reading.
On the other hand, HRW claims it interviewed over 100 people, “including witnesses to landmine use, victims of landmines, first responders, doctors, and Ukrainian de-miners,” regarding Ukraine’s use of the objects in Izium (a city in the Kharkov region, north of Donetsk) while it was briefly under Moscow’s control. The HRW team entered the city after Russian forces withdrew in September. Everyone interviewed, the report noted, “said they had seen mines on the ground, knew someone who was injured by one, or had been warned about their presence during Russia’s occupation of Izium.”
The testimony records that the areas were all, “close to where Russian military forces were positioned at the time, suggesting they were the target,” and that residents in Izium said that rocket attacks, “happened frequently during the Russian occupation.”
The report cited 11 civilian mine-casualties, and noted that HRW had seen “physical evidence of PFM antipersonnel mine use,” including, “unexploded mines, remnants of mines, and the metal cassettes that carry the mines in rockets.”
It has to be noted that HRW has been banned in Russia since April 2022, making it impossible for the organization to gather evidence on the ground in areas controlled by Russian forces. However, lack of access to evidence has not stopped it from using its report to carry accusations against Russia, citing Ukraine’s former prosecutor general Irina Venediktova’s claim that “Russian forces used PFM mines in the Kharkivska region as early as February 26”. In contrast, the numerous credible reports of Kiev’s use of petal mines in Donetsk, available through open sources, are absent from the report.
HRW’s history of targeted condemnations
Human Rights Watch is one of many Western-funded NGOs with a history of whitewashing NATO and its allies’ crimes while pretending to be a neutral observer. Over the years, I’ve pointed out the hypocrisy of Ken Roth, who was the George Soros-funded NGO’s executive director from 1993-2022. In March 2021 he pushed Washington’s propaganda about Russia starving Syria. More glaringly, in 2015, Roth used footage from an eastern Gaza neighbourhood (Shuja’iyya) that had been flattened by Israel, to claim the footage depicted Syria’s Aleppo. He went on to likewise push the 2013 Ghouta “chemical” narrative, which had long been widely-discredited by journalists and by the so-called “rebels” themselves.
If dubious claims from HRW or its representatives aren’t indication enough of their allegiances to Western narratives, then their links to the US government should be. The vice chair of its board of directors, Susan Manilow, according to this 2014 article, describes herself as “a longtime friend to Bill Clinton,” who helped manage his campaign finances. Bruce Rabb, also on the board, lists in his biography that he “served as staff assistant to President Richard Nixon” from 1969-70 – the period in which his administration secretly and illegally carpet-bombed Cambodia and Laos.
The article further notes that the advisory committee for HRW’s Americas Division has even boasted the presence of a former Central Intelligence Agency official, Miguel Díaz. According to his State Department biography, Díaz served as a CIA analyst and also provided “oversight of US intelligence activities in Latin America” for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
So, when HRW recently decided to finally discuss Ukraine’s deployment of the insidious petal mines (tens of thousands of which have been fired into the Donbass by Ukraine over the course of the past year), it is not because the body has suddenly become neutral and impartial, but it is rather a grasp at credibility: reporting what is widely known – that, in violation of international law, Ukraine has been deploying Petal mines – but avoid providing the whole story.
By downplaying and ignoring Kiev’s widespread use of petal mines throughout the DPR, HRW is deliberately downplaying war crimes, much like the entirety of Western corporate media.
Kiev’s Western supporters may even have to deal with its use of the petal mines at their own expense down the line – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has recently announced his country would invest $2.2 million into de-mining Ukraine. Of course, no mention was made of the Ottawa Treaty-banned munitions which will have to be cleared.
Kiev’s deadly delivery
In one incident I witnessed first hand, an attack took place just after 9 pm on July 30, 2022. Ukraine fired rockets, each packed with over 300 mines, onto Donetsk, its suburbs, and other cities, including Yasinovataya, Makeevka and Gorlovka. The rockets exploded in the air to ensure greater distribution of devices on the ground. The attack mirrored previous ‘deliveries’ to the hard-hit Donetsk districts of Kievskiy, Kirovsky and Kuibyshevkiy.
The morning after, I walked the central Donetsk streets extremely carefully, wary of every leaf or piece of cardboard which could be obscuring or covering a Petal mine, so difficult are they to pick out from their surroundings. They cannot seriously damage military vehicles, which means that scattering them over Donetsk only has one purpose – to target and maim civilians. Some models of the petal mines have a self-destruct timer. Others, including those used by Kiev, can stay on the ground for years.
The innocent victims of Donbass
Since reporting the initial bombardment in late July, I have been following up on the methodical destruction of these mines by Russian sappers, as well as on civilians harmed by the illegal munitions. One of the more recent victims was 14 year old Nikita. His foot was blown off when in early November, 2022, he stepped on a mine in a playground while on his way to visit his grandmother.
RT journalist Roman Kosarev recently spoke with another recent teenage victim, who stepped on a petal mine when getting into a car.
Kosarev also spoke to the Director of the Donetsk Republic’s Trauma Center, Andrey Boryak, who said: “The injury from such a mine is very severe, and immediately leads to a handicap. It’s almost impossible to save the foot and the lower part of the leg.”
HRW has had over 6 months to investigate Ukraine littering the DPR with Petal/PFM-1 mines… but it has not, and will not. It’s once again the case that the lives of Donbass civilians don’t matter when it comes not only to Western media reporting but also to supposedly-neutral human rights bodies. Even worse still is the knowledge that in spite of the valiant efforts of sappers in the DPR, the mines will inevitably claim more innocent civilians as their victims.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
March 28, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | HRW, Ukraine |
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There is no animal or plant in the natural world that cannot be used to promote climate Armageddon and its collectivist Net Zero political solution. On Sunday, the WWF, also known as the World Wildlife Fund, started running a series of Wild Isles co-produced propaganda films narrated by Sir David Attenborough on the BBC. These include finely-crafted messages of improbable extinctions culled from computer models.
From the absurd to the ridiculous, we had National Margarita Day recently hijacked by CNN running a story about the ‘climate crisis’ affecting tequila production – a story easily debunked by the news that since 1995, tequila production had increased six-fold, and in four years it had doubled. Now the increasingly unhinged Guardian is giving us its ‘Net Zero, or else the coffee gets it’ story.
According to the newspaper, new research suggests that climate conditions that reduce coffee yields have become more frequent over the past four decades, with rising temperatures from “global heating” likely to lead to ongoing systemic shocks to coffee production globally.
Note the use of the phrase “climate conditions” for what in effect is weather, and the suggestion that it reduces coffee yields. These climate conditions are said to have become more frequent over the last four decades. But one can only read the Guardian for so long. Let us look at actual coffee yields over the last four decades.
Far from declining due to all this weather, yields have shown dramatic improvement since at least 1960. Over this period, particularly between 1980-98, temperatures have risen, but there is no sign of “ongoing systemic shocks” to coffee production globally.
Global coffee yields have been a great agricultural success story, along with actual bean production. Like yields, tonnes produced have soared in the last 40 years.
The key Guardian get-out phrase of course is “new research suggests”. The Guardian story was taken from an academic study led by Dr. Doug Richardson, published in PLOS Climate. He told the newspaper that a shift from cool and wet to hot and dry conditions “we’re pretty confident is a result of climate change”.
In fact if the Richardson paper is read, a more nuanced view on coffee and weather over the last 40 years is discovered.
Our results suggest that ENSO [El Niño Southern Oscillation] is the primary mode in explaining annual compound event variability, both globally and regionally. El Niño-like sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean are associated with decreased precipitation and increased temperatures in most coffee regions, and with spatially compounding warm and dry events. This relationship is reversed for La Niña-like signatures.
As it happens, the last 40 years saw three very powerful El Niños occurring in 1982, 1998 and 2016. These pushed temperatures up around the planet, a natural weather oscillation that had nothing to do with any human-caused increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. The current eight-year pause in the satellite temperature record is partly explained by three recent La Niña events.
The vast majority of the world’s coffee is grown with just two species – Arabica and Robusta. Arabica is more sensitive to growing conditions, and requires temperatures around 18-22°C. In the tropics, these are more common in higher elevations. Robusta is less highly prized, has a wider geographical spread and grows between 22°C and 28°C. Richardson claims that human-caused climate change is “expected” to alter the geographical suitability for growing coffee. The area of land suitable for coffee cultivation “may” be reduced by up to 50%.
This is unlikely. For a start, it assumes temperatures will rise significantly, but with global warming running out of steam over the last two decades, this seems unlikely. This is particularly so in the tropics. Historical records show that during periods of global warming, the tropics warm less and temperatures are more stable. In addition, coffee is a versatile crop, and selective breeding has produced varieties that can adapt to lowland conditions with temperatures outside normal growing ranges. If climate should change in any significant way, new coffee farming could switch to more propitious areas.
But where is the fun in explaining all that when Net Zero propagandising is afoot. MIT Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen is fond of noting that the current climate narrative is absurd, but trillions of dollars paid to many, including “grant-dependent” academics, says it is not absurd. This money pays for a constant drip, drip, nudge, nudge wave of climate scaremongering eagerly promoted by controlling elites seeking to take away personal and economic freedoms under cover of saving the planet.
March 26, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | BBC, CNN, The Guardian |
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President Xi’s trip to Moscow to solidify the Sino-Russo Entente was the trigger event for prompting preplanned propaganda attacks aimed at driving a wedge between these two multipolar Great Powers. The latest one was carried out by Asia Times’ Jeff Pao in his article about how “China eyes Russia’s Far East resources, ‘patriots’ want more”, which reported on ultra-fringe commentary in Chinese online media agitating for their country to retake parts of Russia’s Far East.
The only reason why he and his outlet would amplify those views at this particular point in time is to mislead their targeted audience about China’s grand strategic intentions vis-à-vis Russia after President Xi’s trip to Moscow. By extending false credence to the unrealistic scenario of China retaking parts of Russia’s Far East, Pao is also implying that President Putin is irresponsibly ignoring a latent national security threat of the highest proportions. Neither of his narratives, however, have any factual basis.
Online commentary isn’t a reliable indicator for predicting any country’s future foreign policy, and Pao himself acknowledges in his agitprop piece that “In 1994, then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin and then-Russian president Boris Yeltsin signed an agreement to settle the sovereignty disputes.” Nevertheless, he still hinted that China’s recent directive referring to its former regions in that part of Russia by their traditional names suggests that it might eventually turn this into a territorial issue.
Pao is maliciously misinterpreting that development for information warfare purposes since he’s deliberately ignoring that all countries have the sovereign right to refer to anything however they want, especially if it’s a return to traditional names. While it’s true that in some contexts such a move could precede official claims to foreign territory, that’s not the case in Russian-Chinese relations, which remain rock-solid and have further strengthened as a result of President Xi’s trip to Moscow.
This information warfare agent even mentioned in his article that Russia is encouraging China to scale up its investments in the Far East, even going as far as to set up special economic regions there to facilitate that. He deserves credit for reporting on that fact, but it goes to show that he has ulterior motives in amplifying ultra-fringe commentary demanding that China retake parts of that region. There’s no reason for it to do so either since China already has access to whatever resources it wants there.
Those who speculate that it might countenance this scenario for “living space” are ignoring China’s declining birth rate and the “Heihe–Tengchong Line”, which shows that around 96% of its population resides in the 36% of the country’s eastern territory. Considering that there’s more than enough “living space” already within its own borders, its birth rate is declining, and it has access to whatever resources it wants from Russia, there’s no reason for China to think about retaking parts of the Far East.
These objectively existing and easily verifiable facts expose Pao as the propagandist that he is, who either produced his agitprop under orders from Asia Times’ editors or did so on his own initiative, but in either case he’s someone whose pieces about Russian-Chinese relations can’t be trusted. His agenda is to mislead to people into thinking that China is about to stab Russia in the back while President Putin remains oblivious to this treachery, which isn’t true at all and shouldn’t be taken seriously by anyone.
March 25, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | China, Russia |
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On September 26, 2022, a massive explosion ripped through the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines on the Baltic seabed, severing a major natural gas connection and releasing colossal amounts of methane. The US had long objected to the line, which runs from Russia to Germany, urging Europe to buy more expensive US gas instead.
A new report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh lays blame at the feet of US and German intelligence for a New York Times article claiming it was Ukrainian terrorists, not US Navy divers, who bombed the Nord Stream pipeline last September. Hersh said it was part of a coordinated “blackout” of his expose of Washington’s role in the attack.
“There is no evidence that any reporter assigned there has yet to ask the White House press secretary whether Biden had done what any serious leader would do: formally “task” the American intelligence community to conduct a deep investigation, with all of its assets, and find out just who had done the deed in the Baltic Sea,” Hersh wrote on Wednesday.
“According to a source within the intelligence community, the president has not done so, nor will he,” the journalist asserted. “Why not? Because he knows the answer.”
Hersh pointed to a curious meeting in Washington earlier this month between Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in which both media and aides were almost totally absent.
“There have been no statements or written understandings made public since then by either government, but I was told by someone with access to diplomatic intelligence that there was a discussion of the pipeline exposé and, as a result, certain elements in the Central Intelligence Agency were asked to prepare a cover story in collaboration with German intelligence that would provide the American and German press with an alternative version for the destruction of Nord Stream 2,” Hersh wrote.
“In the words of the intelligence community, the agency was ‘to pulse the system’ in an effort to discount the claim that Biden had ordered the pipelines’ destruction,” he explained.
Indeed, The New York Times, which was one of two newspapers that ran the story, has admitted in the past to letting the CIA proofread certain stories before publishing them.
Along with the NYT, which published an article on March 7 claiming “a pro-Ukrainian group” might have been behind the pipeline explosion, the German weekly Der Zeit published a companion piece that same day claiming German investigative officials had found a luxury yacht chartered by a group of Ukrainians under false pretenses in the area of the explosions just a few weeks before they occurred.
Screengrab of video by Swedish media showing underwater drone footage of damaged Nord Stream pipeline. – Sputnik International, 1920, 17.03.2023
Both reports were largely absent on precise facts, heavy on anonymous sourcing, and admitted that, as the Times put it, “there was much they did not know.” Hersh’s February expose on the pipeline bombing was derided by critics for using anonymous sources, who claimed it undermined the integrity of Hersh’s audacious claims.
In fact, the Der Zeit story even noted the belief among some “in international security services” that the yacht story “was a false flag operation.”
“Indeed it was,” Hersh wrote in reply.
He quoted a source within the American intelligence community as telling him: “It was a total fabrication by American intelligence that was passed along to the Germans, and aimed at discrediting your story.”
To further make his point about just how little the journalists behind the two papers’ exposes really knew about their supposed bombshell reports, Hersh quoted a NYT podcast interview with story co-author Julian Barnes from a few days after its publication in which Barnes admits their primary method for establishing the facts of the article was “asking exactly the right questions” of US intelligence officials.
“All those states that we just went through, did Russia do it? Did the Ukraine state do it? And that was just hitting dead end after dead end. We weren’t finding officials who were telling us that there was credible evidence pointing at a government,” Barnes told the podcast. “So my colleagues Adam Entous, Adam Goldman, and I started asking a different question. Could this have been done by non-state actors?”
“Well, we started asking, who might these saboteurs be? Or if we couldn’t answer that, who might they be aligned with? Could they be pro-Russian saboteurs? Could they be other saboteurs? And the more we talk to officials who had access to intelligence, the more we saw this theory gaining traction.”
Hersh finished his article by faulting the NYT journalists for using their trade to protect Biden from the ugly ramifications of the sabotage order he personally signed.
Hersh has been a journalist for more than 50 years, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for his work in exposing the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by US troops and its subsequent coverup. He later exposed the US’ secret bombing campaign in Cambodia in the 1970s, US torture of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and the false attribution of a chemical weapons attack in Ghouta, Syria, to the Syrian government instead of to a group of US-backed Islamist rebels.
March 22, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | New York Times, United States |
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The United States government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), within the Department of Homeland Security, is raising the alarm about the threat of “foreign influence” that is “leveraging misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.” CISA defines “malinformation” as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” In 2021, CISA, along with the White House and private sector partners, successfully persuaded Facebook and Twitter to censor accurate information about the origins of the SARS-2 coronavirus and covid vaccines.
And yet CISA is failing to do its job when censoring malinformation, misinformation, and disinformation about climate change, including by “threat actors,” often funded or employed by foreign governments. A Google survey of over 2,300 people conducted last year by the nonpartisan research organization Environmental Progress, which I founded and lead, found that 53% of people surveyed in the U.S. agree with the false statement, “Climate change is making hurricanes more frequent,” while 46% agree with the false statement, “Climate change threatens human extinction.”
I strongly oppose efforts by the U.S. government to censor American citizens by ordering social media platforms to remove content, sometimes while threatening to end Section 230, the federal law that makes companies like Facebook and Twitter possible. Such censorship is a violation of the First Amendment. The journalist Matt Taibbi, former State Department official Mike Benz, and I have all pointed to the emergence since 2016 of a censorship-industrial complex operated and funded by the U.S. government. It should be defunded.
But it’s notable that the censorship-industrial complex has shown no interest in censoring climate misinformation that has led people to believe that climate change is making hurricanes more frequent and threatening human extinction. “An example of malinformation is editing a video to remove important context to harm or mislead,” writes CISA. And yet that is precisely what foreign disinformation threat actors like Greta Thunberg, her allies at the German government-funded Potsdam Institute, and even the U.N.’s own Secretary-General Antonio Guterres routinely do when they share videos of people in poor countries suffering from flooding, which is a direct result of lack of flood management infrastructure, not slightly more precipitation from climate change.
Moreover, the censorship-industrial complex has sought to censor accurate information about climate change and energy. Last June, former Biden Administration Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy demanded censorship of those who criticized the failure of weather-dependent renewables during the blackouts in Texas in February 2021, even though such criticisms were factual. “The tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation,” said McCarthy.
In her interview, she went on to falsely claim that critics of renewables are funded by “dark money” fossil fuel companies — the same false claim that Democrats made of the world’s most influential scientist studying hurricanes and climate change, Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado. As such, McCarthy spread disinformation in order to undermine the legitimacy of her opponents.
The U.N. continues to wage its disinformation campaign against the people of the world, as today’s headlines about its new report show. “‘The climate time-bomb is ticking,’” reads the CNN headline. “Scientists release ‘survival guide’ to avert climate disaster,” says BBC. “Earth to hit critical warming threshold by early 2030s, climate panel says.” The U.N. most journalists are implying that scientists have determined that a temperature increase beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels would be catastrophic.
The U.N. report is malinformation. The supposed 1.5-degree “threshold” is political, not scientific, as Pielke and others have shown. Global warming causes incrementally greater risk. Temperatures are expected to rise less than most thought as recently as 10 years ago, thanks to abundant natural gas. And humankind’s physical security is assured, given our success at adapting to more extreme weather and producing more food on less land.
All of this raises a question. Why, if the U.N. and U.S. governments are so committed to censoring disinformation, are they themselves spreading it? Why, in other words, do U.N. officials perfectly fit their own definition of “disinformation threat actors,” and often foreign ones at that?
March 20, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science | United Nations |
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