Head of Norwegian Shipyard Denies Presence of Spy Equipment on Russian Trawlers
Sputnik – 21.04.2023
Greger Mannswerk, head of Norwegian shipyard Kimek located in the town of Kirkenes, which borders Russia, said on Friday that the shipyard’s employees did not find any spy equipment on board Russian trawlers, commenting on recent reports from Norwegian media.
“We have a pretty good understanding of what’s on board and we have never found anything to indicate that they [Russian seamen] are engaged in intelligence gathering. We cannot know if there are any [Russian] intelligence officers on board today, but no fisherman enters a Norwegian harbor without the [Norwegian] police and armed forces having a full idea of who is on board,” Mannswerk was quoted as saying by the broadcaster.
This week, the media published the results of an investigation, which said that up to 50 civilian Russian ships could be involved in intelligence operations against Norway.
Russia has no plan to ruin Western unity, Kremlin tells WaPo
RT | April 21, 2023
The Washington Post says it has obtained secret Russian documents detailing a plan to bring anti-establishment political parties together in Germany in an effort to sow discord in the West. The Kremlin has responded that it does not interfere in the domestic affairs of other nations.
The purported Russian documents, largely dated from July to November last year, were obtained by an unidentified European intelligence service, the US news outlet said on Friday. It did not explain how it gained access, but it also interviewed some German politicians for the story.
The article said Moscow’s plan was “part of a hidden front in Russia’s war against Ukraine” and an attempt “to undermine Western unity.” The Soviet Union harnessed anti-war sentiment in the same way, an anonymous German security official told the Post.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the alleged Russian plan “100% fake.” He told the Post : “We never interfered before and now we really don’t have time for this.”
The strategy, as described in the article, involves “marrying” Germany’s far-left Die Linke with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Sahra Wagenknecht, an MP from Die Linke, would have a chance of winning the chancellorship with such backing, the plan suggests.
The Post spoke to Wagenknecht’s former husband, Ralph Niemeyer, who assessed her electoral chances as high. He claimed that Russian officials told him that such an outcome would be in Moscow’s interest.
But Wagenknecht would never accept any support from Moscow, Niemeyer added, and the idea of a union with AfD did not sit well with her either. The politician herself told the Post that there would not be “any cooperation or alliance” between her “and elements of the AfD in any form.”
The Post claimed that the effort was led by Sergey Kirienko, the deputy head of the Russian presidential administration, along with unnamed “political strategists” tasked with executing it. The documents do not show any attempts by the Russian government to communicate the strategy to German politicians or potential allies, the report said.
The article cited instances of Die Linke and AfD holding protests against Berlin’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict and the damage caused by anti-Russian sanctions to the national economy. Members of AfD interviewed by the newspaper said being on the same side of the issue was the result of an intersection of values rather than any Russian influence campaign.
Scandinavia’s Fake News About Russia Is Meant To Distract From Sy Hersh’s Nord Stream Report
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | APRIL 19, 2023
A joint “media investigation” by the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden just claimed that Russia has been using at least 50 civilian ships to spy on the North Sea for the past decade in speculative preparation of possibly carrying out acts of sabotage sometime in the future. Kremlin spokesman Peskov denied these allegations and accused those countries of trying to distract from last September’s Nord Stream terrorist attack.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh cited unnamed US administration sources to report in early February that Biden personally authorized that attack, which most folks already figured but it was nevertheless extremely newsworthy for this to come from someone as reputable as Hersh. Around a month later, the New York Times (NYT) ran a story claiming to have uncovered the alleged culprit, which they said was a rogue group of people who weren’t connected to any government.
“The US’ Latest Disinfo Campaign About The Nord Stream Terrorist Attacks Was Preplanned”, however, since the argument can compellingly be made that the US planted the seeds of an alternative narrative to rely upon as a backup plan in the event that the truth started leaking out like it did in Hersh’s report. It’s within this context that the Scandinavian states’ “media investigation” was published, thus extending credence to similar concerns that it’s also nothing more than a distraction from that journalist’s work.
After all, those outlets claimed that Russia has supposedly been spying on the North Sea through these means for the past ten years, and it’s extremely unlikely that they suddenly stumbled upon relevant “evidence” in support of that conclusion at this particular point in time. Rather, they were almost certainly fed this information by those countries’ intelligence services, with possible input from NATO as a whole and/or its US leader.
It’s unclear whether there’s any truth to their report, but it wouldn’t be surprising if there’s at least a kernel thereof since it’s a clever way to spy on the NATO-controlled North Sea. That, however, doesn’t mean that this was being done in speculative preparation of possibly carrying out acts of sabotage there sometime in the future. This part of their report was probably included purely to revive the completely ridiculous narrative that Russia was the one responsible for the Nord Stream terrorist attack.
Whatever the purpose of Russia’s alleged spying in those waters may have been, it’s highly unlikely to have concerned sabotage except as an absolute last resort in the event of a conventional war with NATO. The reason behind this assessment is that only a state-level actor or a false flag “non-state” one connected to a state actor is capable of carrying out such acts, especially in waters that are completely controlled by and under the total surveillance of that US-led bloc, and doing so would be an act of war.
It’s with this in mind that Peskov’s denial should be taken seriously since it’s unrealistic to imagine that Russia is plotting impending acts of sabotage there that it would definitely be caught committing red-handed in the fringe scenario that this is attempted. This doesn’t mean that Moscow wasn’t possibly spying on NATO’s naval activities in the North Sea, but just that this wasn’t done for the purpose of plotting sabotage except as an absolute last if it ever formally went to war with that bloc.
Considering this, Scandinavia’s fake news about Russia was released at this particular point in time and specifically included the claim that Moscow is considering acts of sabotage in NATO-controlled waters so as to distract from Hersh’s report and revive the false story that the Kremlin blew up Nord Stream. Just like the NYT’s report from last month, this latest one from a collection of Northern European media outlets is therefore also nothing more than an information warfare provocation.
Washington Post’s disinformation on Egypt causes confusion over Pentagon document leaks
By Ahmed Adel |April 13, 2023
The Washington Post, citing leaked US intelligence documents, created a frenzy in the media by suggesting that Egypt was planning to secretly send up to 40,000 missiles to Russia. This claim could be separate from the other leaked US intelligence documents as the report was not only denied by Cairo and Moscow, but White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also said he had no information about this.
Russian Presidential Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that what appeared to be an Egyptian plan to “secretly” supply thousands of missiles to Russia were like other fake news related to the state of the Russian military and the war in Ukraine.
In fact, the claims are ridiculous considering that Russia does not need missile supplies, whether from Egypt or any other country, because as far as Russia’s own military-technological development is concerned, it does not need assistance and help. Rather, the disinformation spread by the Washington Post is a clear example of demagogy to try and cause greater problems.
The broadcasting of such news aims to drag Egypt into global conflicts and incite hostility without reason. This could be because Cairo has announced its intentions to join BRICS, something which deeply concerns Washington. In this way, the Washington Post is conjuring disinformation in a vain attempt to deter Cairo from deepening its ties with Moscow.
For their part, a senior Egyptian official denied supplying Russia with 40,000 rockets for use against Ukraine and described the Washington Post report as “informational tampering that has no basis in truth.” He added that Egypt follows a balanced foreign policy determined by peace, stability, and development.
Kirby told reporters on April 11 that Washington has “seen no indication that Egypt is providing lethal weaponry capabilities to Russia”, adding that the Arab counrty is a “significant security partner” and that the relationship between the two goes back decades.
With official denials from Cairo and Moscow, with Washington indicating that it has no information, it appears that this is likely a fake news story by the Washington Post, perhaps in an attempt to create doubts over the authenticity of the leak reports. The supposed document that discusses Egypt is being reported as part of a trove of leaked Pentagon reports. However, there is no evidence for this.
The batch of recently leaked documents have been circulating on social media channels for weeks, possibly months, even if it was only exposed days ago. Many of the leaked documents included secret information on the war in Ukraine, such as scepticism on the success of the expected Ukrainian spring offensive, while other documents appear to show sensitive analyses of US allies, including Israel and South Korea.
Pentagon spokesman Chris Meagher said on April 10 that the documents could pose “a very serious risk to national security” and lead to the spread of disinformation. It appears that the spread of disinformation already began with the claim that Cairo is supplying 40,000 missiles to Russia.
The Washington Post reported that, according to leaked US intelligence documents, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi approved of the production but ordered officials to keep it a secret “to avoid problems with the West”. Yet, no other media agency or social media account has seen the documents, and thus all this information comes from this single dubious source.
Although Egypt has avoided taking sides in the war, Cairo and Moscow have a long and fruitful relationship expanding many decades, including in economy, energy, and security.
In one example, Egypt became the world’s largest importer of wheat in 2021 after imports reached $4.53 billion, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity. Egypt mostly imported its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, but since the war, Cairo is also turning to India to secure alternative supplies. None-the-less, Russia is still one of its most important suppliers.
It is recalled that Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on January 31 that wheat imports are a cornerstone in Cairo-Moscow relations, adding that trade between the two countries hit $6 billion in 2022.
More importantly, the Russian Central Bank added the Egyptian pound to its official exchange rate list in January. According to Cairo-based economist Hanan Ramses: “Using the ruble for settlement away from US currency will help ease pressure on demand for the greenback in Egypt. This is better for Egypt’s international trade.” She added that “Egypt may become Russia’s gateway to African markets in the long run.”
Given that Egypt is an African entry point for Russia, in addition to Russia being an important source of wheat for Egypt, it is very evident that the Washington Post is attempting to disrupt this relationship. What is surprising though is that Kirby expressed his lack of knowledge on the claim, suggesting that even this disinformation campaign is one step too far for the State Department as they attempt to woo Egypt away from Russia.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Musk calls out BBC reporter over ‘lies’
RT | April 12, 2023
Elon Musk has accused a BBC reporter of lying about hate speech on Twitter. An audio excerpt from a Twitter Spaces discussion showed US-based tech journalist James Clayton struggling to justify his own questions on the alleged rise of offensive content on the social media platform.
At one point in the interview, Clayton asked Musk to respond to claims that hate speech had become more prevalent on Twitter, and that there was not enough moderation staff after Musk admitted to laying off over 80% of the company’s workforce since his takeover last October.
After Musk asked the reporter to clarify the allegations, Clayton claimed that he had personally seen more “hateful content” in his ‘For You’ feed since the billionaire took over the company.
The Twitter CEO then asked the journalist to define what he meant by “hateful content” and to provide at least one example of an offensive post he had seen.
Clayton replied that he views “hateful content” as “slightly racist” and “slightly sexist,” but struggled to provide any examples, admitting that hadn’t actually used the feed for several weeks.
“Then, I say, sir, that you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Musk interjected.
“You can’t provide a single example of hateful content, not even one Tweet. And yet, you claimed that hateful content was high. That is false. You just lied.”
The BBC reporter insisted that there are “many organizations” that have noted a rise in offensive content on the platform. Musk dismissed that notion, stating that “people say all sorts of nonsense,” which prompted Clayton to move on to the next topic.
The journalist then asked Musk about Twitter changing its Covid misinformation rules. The billionaire replied that “Covid is no longer an issue” and argued that the BBC itself could be accused of spreading misinformation about the virus and failing to report on the side-effects of vaccinations.
“And what about the fact that the BBC was put under pressure by the British government to change their editorial policy?” Musk asked.
Clayton deflected by saying the interview “wasn’t about the BBC.”
The British broadcaster later aired parts of the interview and simply ran with the headline: ‘Elon Musk speaks to the BBC’.
Despite his criticism of the broadcaster, Musk said during the interview that Twitter will change the BBC’s recently added “government-funded organization” label on the social media platform to say that it is “publicly-funded” instead.
US has “profound concerns” over success of Ukraine’s offensive, says document leak
By Ahmed Adel | April 12, 2023
The Ukrainian military is planning a new spring offensive, which will reportedly begin between Orthodox Easter on April 16 and Labour Day on May 9. This expected offensive has received much international media attention, particularly because of the bold and bombastic claims made by Ukrainian officials, such as the fallacy that Ukrainian troops will reach Crimea within seven months. However, a leaked US intelligence document found that a shortage of troops, ammunition and equipment could cause the Ukrainian military to fall “well short” of their goals.
It is recalled that Ukraine unveiled on April 2 a 12-point plan on how to integrate Crimea into the country after conquering the peninsula from Russia. However, Washington is sceptical that it can be achieved, meaning that this planned offensive is just a method to secure more weapons, funding and interest from the West.
The leaked document, labelled “top secret,” gave a bleak assessment from early February and warned of significant “force generation and sustainment shortfalls.” More alarmingly for Kiev is that such an offensive will result in only “modest territorial gains.” This leak obviously provides a more realistic assessment of the war in Ukraine, which is why Washington is scrambling and threatening journalists to not publish the contents of the leaks as it obviously contradicts previous claims made by the State Department and their controlled media apparatus.
Most importantly perhaps is that many of the documents are dated to February and March, meaning most of the information is current and relates to the awaited Ukrainian spring offensive.
According to the Washington Post, the leaked document predicts that the Ukrainian military will only achieve “modest success” despite Kiev’s strategy revolving around capturing areas already liberated by Russia in Donbass, while at the same time pushing south to cut the land bridge between Russia proper and Crimea.
The near impossibility of the offensive, according to the document, is because of the potency of entrenched Russian defences, as well as “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies” which will probably “strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the offensive.”
The Washington Post said that the leaks “reveal profound concerns about Ukraine’s readiness to withstand a Russian offensive” while “beyond the leaked document, US officials said the prospects for a modest outcome in the spring offensive also were reinforced in a classified assessment by the National Intelligence Council” which “found that Ukraine was unlikely to recapture as much territory as Kyiv did last fall.”
Although a senior Ukrainian official did not dispute the contents of the leak, another senior official said the revelations were unlikely to compromise the planned spring offensive, saying: “It’s been obvious to everyone since November that the next counteroffensive will be focused on the south, first Melitopol and then Berdyansk. But the exact place — we can change that the week before.”
Perhaps the most interesting changes since the leaks were published is a begrudging acknowledgement in Western mainstream media that the situation is not desperate for Russia, as people have been led to believe since the conflict began, and rather it is the Ukrainian military suffering from significant shortages.
Considering the Washington Post’s propensity to disseminate Ukrainian disinformation and fake news, the newspaper surprisingly acknowledged that “the difficult fight against Russia has exhausted Ukraine’s troops and hardware, making every day the war drags on an advantage to the larger Russian military.”
This is a point that has been argued for well over a year by military experts: Russia has all the time in the world to fight this war on its own terms; Ukraine does not have time as its military is exhausting, Ukrainian civilians are war weary, and European citizens are suffering from a self-inflicted economic and cost-of-living crisis.
As the newspaper noted, “the prospect of pouring billions of dollars into a military stalemate with only incremental gains in one direction or another could weaken the resolve” of those who are backing the Kiev regime, particularly Europe and the US, who could possibly sharpen “calls for negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow.”
This too will prove difficult though as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has endlessly promised a total victory, including the conquest of Crimea. This is obviously a delusional belief that will never come to pass, and rather it is a fantasy that Zelensky must maintain to continue receiving Western funds and weapons.
None-the-less, as the latest Washington Post article exposes, prospects for success, even with the arrival of thousands of Western-trained Ukrainian soldiers, are very low. This suggests that there could be a catalyst for a narrative shift in Western media, especially if the expected offensive fizzles out to nothingness after making some initial gains.
Yet, as already said, none of these revelations should be considered shocking or surprising if one objectively looks at events in Ukraine.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Samidoun statement on smear campaign in Germany
A statement by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network:
On Saturday, 8 April, nearly 1,000 people marched through the streets of Berlin in solidarity with Palestine. The reality of this demonstration was that it was strong and organized, an expression of outrage and internationalism against the war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed against the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupation regime.
Despite the presence of an excessively large number of police as well as Arabic translators specifically brought by the police to surveil the crowd, there were no incidents reported by anyone while the demonstration took place. Instead, images of the demonstration spread around the world, a sign that Palestinians, Arabs, and internationalists in Germany have not forgotten the ongoing injustice in Palestine.
As always, when there is a large demonstration for Palestine, and particularly when the Palestinian and Arab community in Berlin speaks out for justice and against racism and repression, the attacks and attempts to criminalize the demonstration soon follow. We have seen this same rhetoric play out time and time again, and every time a new pretext is used to incite the suppression of the Palestinian voice in Berlin — as well as the suppression of all voices for justice.
This time, the pretext is a sensationalized video that is widely circulated by German media. The video in question contains deliberate translation errors, open demonization of Palestinians in general and Samidoun Network in particular, and openly vilifies political prisoners on hunger strike fighting blatantly political charges as civilians before occupation military courts, elderly political prisoners being murdered in Israeli prisons due to medical neglect, and child prisoners. The video attempts to highlight a single voice allegedly shouting an anti-Semitic slogan during the demonstration. The individual that allegedly shouted this statement is never shown in the video, they were not joined by any other person, the chant did not come from the front of the demonstration nor over the microphone, and this individual voice in a mass demonstration of a thousand people just happened to be close enough to these “journalists” for them to pick up his chant and use it to launch an extensive smear campaign against organizing for Palestine in Germany.
The identity of this person is entirely unclear, as is their reason for shouting this or even whether they were a participant in the demonstration at all. One thing is clear: they had nothing to do with the organization, direction, leadership or political framework of the mobilization and this statement does not reflect our clear anti-racist, anti-colonial vision for a liberated Palestine. Every single Palestinian demonstration in Germany is routinely and falsely targeted and smeared as anti-Jewish, when it is in fact anti-racist and pro-liberation. This is also being used to try to criminalize Samidoun, our member organizations and our initiatives in other countries thousands of kilometers away, which shows the true intentions of this campaign.
This smear tactic aims at putting in question our clear stance against anti-Semitism and all forms of racism, and by extent, our natural stance against the statement allegedly shouted by a single individual in the vicinity of the demonstration. Principled organization for Palestine is by definition anti-Zionist, against this racist and colonial system that oppresses and attempts at eliminating the Palestinian people. And we are joined in this struggle with our anti-zionist Jewish comrades, because our struggle is not in the context of a religious conflict, but is a liberation movement against colonialism, occupation, and oppression.
Two very important points about the weaponization of such incidents that are impossible to account for in a mass demonstration:
- We view such statements as a tool in the hands of reactionary and repressive forces, including pro-apartheid organizations that seek to criminalize support for Palestine.
- Zionism and its ongoing drive to designate this fascist ideology as “Jewish” has long played a nefarious role in confusing Zionism, a racist political ideology, with Judaism and Jewishness. The same is true of Western powers that repeatedly refer to the Israeli occupation as the “Jewish state”, attempting to tar all Jews with the brush of Zionist crimes. It is the Palestinian liberation movement that rejects the equation of Jews with Zionists and the Zionist movement that seeks to institutionalize that same equation.
Further, we are also clear that these coordinated attacks do not reflect any desire to act against racism, including anti-Semitism, in Berlin or in Germany. Instead, they exist to achieve three main objectives:
- Attempt to manufacture a pretext to prohibit organizations working for justice and liberation in Palestine, like the Samidoun Network, or to ban demonstrations, like the upcoming marches to commemorate the 75th anniversary of al-Nakba, the catastrophic occupation of Palestine, as we experienced in May 2022.
- Attempt to manufacture anti-Palestinian racism and repression on the streets of Berlin and to intimidate our community from participating in actions and demonstrations.
- Attempt to draw attention away from the topic of the demonstration itself — that is, the ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine, justified by the German government and its political parties, up to and including the extreme settler movement that marched through the West Bank of occupied Palestine today, the calls to occupy all of Jordan as well as all of Palestine by Israeli Minister Bezalel Smotrich and the attacks on Palestinians at prayer in Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan.
We will not be silenced or suppressed, and we will not stand by as our community is targeted for repression and criminalization. We urge all to join us on Sunday, 16 April for the March to Free Palestinian Prisoners. With our collective clarity and voice, we once again affirm, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Kiev to run out of its anti-air missiles
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.
Tornadoes, Climate Change, and the Media
By Anthony Watts | American Thinker | April 7, 2023
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.
‘Awfully Convenient’: Leaked NATO Plans for Ukraine Should Be Taken ‘With Grain of Salt’
Sputnik | April 8, 2023
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.
BBC Goes into Antarctica Climate Meltdown – But Ignores Data Showing No Loss of Ice
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 5, 2023
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.
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Not Ready for the Big Leagues
Patriot Missile Launcher
By William Schryver | imetatronink | January 20, 2024
… In an attempt to cover just three large airbases against a series of salvos of 100+ missiles of various types, the entire US stockpile of PAC-3 interceptors could very conceivably be exhausted in little more than a week or two. … continue
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