New Fakes about Russia-DPRK Military Cooperation
By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 19.09.2022
More recently, the author analyzed misinformation that North Korean special forces were about to appear in the Donbass, but the global media soon encountered another misinformation launched from the West: it turned out that North Korea was preparing to supply Russia with shells and possibly military equipment on a massive scale. Or it is already supplying, but that is not certain.
It all started on September 5 with a New York Times article quoting “declassified intelligence reports” that “Russia is buying millions of artillery shells and rockets from North Korea, … a sign that global sanctions have severely restricted its supply chains and forced Moscow to turn to pariah states for military supplies.”
However, the newspaper immediately noted that there were few details about the exact weaponry, timing or size of the shipment, and generally, “there is no way yet to independently verify the sale”, but immediately went on to theorize as to why this was the case. It turns out that the Russian Federation now allegedly has no ability to buy advanced weapons or the electronics to produce them, as international sanctions on Moscow disrupt its supply chains, stocks of shells and missiles are running out and Russia is forced to look for suppliers. This, in particular, was stated by the quoted expert with the Ukrainian-speaking surname Kagan.
A little later, AP Agency gave some details and quotes, which, however, still did not clarify the situation. Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a Pentagon Press Secretary, said “the information that we have is that Russia has specifically asked for ammunition” but had no other details, including whether money changed hands and whether any deliveries were continuing.
Asked why this information was declassified, Ryder said it was important to illustrate the state of Russia’s ongoing military campaign in Ukraine. And, the author would add, against the backdrop of Ukraine’s attempted counter-offensive.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also said there was no indication yet that the arms purchase had actually taken place or that any North Korean munitions had entered the battlefield in Ukraine. Nevertheless, the talks themselves are “just further evidence of how desperate Putin is becoming”, with US intelligence suggesting that Russia is buying millions of rounds of ammunition from the DPRK.
After that, the news spread around the world media and even reached South Korea, but discussion on the relatively objectivist website NKNews showed that assessments are directly dependent on both their bias and their distance from the Russian context.
For example, Jack Watling, Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, confidently stated that since February 2022 Moscow had been buying up stocks of 152mm and 122mm shells “in any way they can. And that includes North Korea.” All this is said to be common knowledge in intelligence circles, but the source of this information is not in the public domain, and he is personally unaware of specific deliveries from North Korea to Russia. However, Watlig’s level of knowledge is better described by another quote: “Moscow had for some time pushed for Pyongyang to support its war effort,” which, he said, was not limited to supplying ammunitions.
For his part, Joost Oliemans, a specialist focused on DPRK military capabilities, expressed more restraint – Pyongyang certainly has a huge amount of old ammunition, and can produce new weapons for export, but “if this story is really true, we could expect to see video evidence of North Korean ammunition in Ukraine in the coming months.” In other words, he is not prepared to discuss the subject without evidence.
By the very next day on September 6, both Ryder and Kirby had already given up somewhat. The former said in a press briefing that “we do have indications that Russia has approached North Korea to request ammunition”, he could not provide more details, but in any case “it is indicative of the situation that Russia finds itself in, in terms of its logistics and sustainment capabilities.” And also that Moscow is asking for help precisely from those countries that the US has defined as “rogue”.
Kirby also conceded that the US doesn’t “have any indication that the purchase has actually occurred yet so it’s difficult to say what it’s actually going to end up looking like”, much less evidence that these weapons are being used in Ukraine.
The Russian side has also spoken out. According to Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Security Council, Vasily Nebenzya, “I have not heard about it and I think it’s just another spreading fake news.”
On September 7, 2022, NKNews specifically updated its piece to clarify that “there is no evidence in the public domain of Russian efforts to procure North Korean arms since February 2022”. By this time, both Russian and unbiased Western experts had formulated a set of theses indicating that the hype news was nothing more than misinformation.
- The DPRK’s arms exports to Russia are a violation of UN Security Council resolutions, which prohibit that country from exporting or importing arms from other countries. Moreover, back in the day Vladimir Putin banned the supply of small arms and light weapons to North Korea as part of the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2270 of March 2, 2016. An overt violation of this kind undermines Russia’s status as a permanent member of the UNSC, and from the author’s perspective even the hypothetical arrival of North Korean construction workers in the DLPR (a far less overt violation) is at best discussed. Perhaps this disregard for sanctions will happen later on the backdrop of a further breakdown of the old world order, but that time has not yet come.
- It is not at all clear how sending such a volume of cargo is compatible with “emergency anti-epidemic measures” and border closures. Especially considering that there is only one railroad bridge between the Russian Federation and the DPRK, which has limited capacity. How exactly Moscow will pay is also a good question in view of the sanctions.
- A comparison of Russia’s and DPRK’s weapons production capabilities also leads to the question of whether Russia does not have its own military and industrial complex at all, and whether the start of the SMO has not affected the rate of ammunition production. And also regarding the volume of Russian military stockpiles: as even Oliemans pointed out, Moscow must have a huge amount of old Soviet ammunition, which is unlikely to run out anytime soon.
- All right, let’s say that “the Russians don’t want to go below a certain level of reserves in case they face other threats”, but the same logic is all the more applicable to the DPRK, which is constantly on alert against a superior enemy. By that logic, Pyongyang needs the shells and missiles itself.
- Most importantly, there is no idea how exactly US intelligence could have obtained such data. But misinformation fits in well with the West’s propaganda mindset that the successes of Russian SMO in Ukraine are about to come to an end. It is known that these successes are largely due to technical rather than numerical superiority, and therefore the argument “we’ll talk when the Russians run out of shells” is very popular in the pro-Ukrainian environment.
Of course, if one considers this misinformation as a kind of “mental exercise”, North Korean military equipment and ammunition might well come in handy. Russian military expert Vladimir Khrustalyov lists a whole range of DPRK military equipment capable of showing off in Donbass – the arsenal turns out to be quite impressive.
But talk of “what would have been” is beyond the scope of the article, and the author is far more interested in how the US intelligence community knew about the ominous “signs”. The author has two options and the first one is that this information is not intelligence but military-psychological. In other words, the news was simply made up for propaganda purposes to cradle the “desperate Putin is trying to find a million missiles” picture, which will leave a certain residue even after the falsity of the data comes to light.
The second option is more amusing and, alas, more realistic: the source of the sensational information could be such an anonymous and specific medium as Russian politicized Telegram channels, in which the SMO is constantly discussed. However, Telegram’s anonymity often makes it impossible to identify the channel’s real author. This means that any high-school student with a glib tongue can easily portray himself as an “expert from those very structures” involved in the “secrets of the Kremlin court”, even if the information has no real basis in fact.
For the author, the validity of such anonymous channels amounts to reports of “secret informants in the DPRK” who “know the local life” and “report the truth”, but non-core or engaged experts easily cite such sources in case they fit their point of view. In addition, even a broken clock is right twice a day. On this basis, it can be assumed that a Russian-speaking US military intelligence official subscribed to a similar channel that discussed the notion that Russia would soon run out of bombs and missiles and need to buy them somewhere, probably even from North Korea.
Perhaps the scout did not distinguish the ironic context from the dramatic one. It is even more likely that he did not realize that the alleged foreign intelligence general or presidential administration official describing the secret talks was typing on his smartphone in algebra class. But the information has gone up the chain of command and in one way or another has “come in handy”.
To conclude the conversation, it is worth noting how the propaganda image of the DPRK has changed: before the SMO, the Western media presented North Korea as a starving third-world country, but now it is a superpower providing Putin with builders, soldiers and now also ammunition. Therefore, the fake about millions of missiles is clearly not the latest fake about the “Jucheans in the Donbass”.
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Expectedly, new Bucha-like narratives spring up in Kharkov region

By Drago Bosnic | September 19, 2022
After the late March/early April withdrawal of Russian troops from the northern and northeastern areas of Ukraine, Western state and corporate-run mainstream media immediately constructed the so-called “Bucha massacre” narrative with the aim of damaging Russia’s international standing. Western governments and the media were unanimous – Russian Armed Forces were the alleged “perpetrators of the Bucha massacre”, while some even called it “genocide”. The Kiev regime claimed that the Russian military killed at least 412 people. Expectedly, the claims were unsupported by any actual official investigation by a party neutral to the conflict. The Kiev regime and the political West flatly refused to allow an international investigation, while any claims contrary to the official narrative were immediately suppressed. If anyone dared to question the narrative, they would be labeled “conspiracy theorists”, “genocide deniers” and “Putin’s propagandists”.
Taking into account the “Bucha massacre”, we can only say the new “Izyum massacre” narrative is a predictable joint propaganda stunt of the Kiev regime and the political West. The pattern is virtually the same. In only a few days, Western and Kiev regime’s alleged “investigators” found “undeniable evidence” that the “evil Russian occupiers killed hundreds of innocent civilians.” On September 15, the Kiev regime media reported: “The terrible footage of the graves of the victims of the Rashist [Kiev regime pejorative wordplay term meaning ‘Russian fascist’) occupation on the outskirts of Izyum. There are almost no names on the plates anywhere. Apparently, bodies are buried here from under the rubble of bombed houses, which have yet to be identified.”
Exactly like in the case of the Bucha narrative, the Kiev regime reports made no mention of the fact that Izyum and the surrounding areas and settlements have been under near-constant heavy shelling by the Kiev regime forces. Their artillery has been firing at the area indiscriminately for nearly half a year. Still, the very next day, on September 16, the Kiev regime started the exhumation of bodies from the alleged mass graves. According to the Kiev regime, 400 bodies were allegedly found at several mass burial sites. In addition, the Neo-Nazi junta claims that the bodies of civilians and even children supposedly “show signs of torture.”
The new Bucha-like narrative came only a day after the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen visited Ukraine and stated that she wanted to “see Russian President Vladimir Putin face the International Criminal Court” over alleged “war crimes.” The official head of the Kiev regime Volodymyr Zelensky also stated that the Neo-Nazi junta is in talks with its G7 backers to set up a “war crimes tribunal” which would “investigate and punish Russia and its top officials and military leaders for war crimes.” Again, expectedly, the idea was actively supported by the political West. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell stated that “the leadership of Russia and all those involved in this will be held accountable. The EU supports all efforts in this direction.” Earlier, Borrell has also called Russia a “fascist state”, which is quite ironic, given the openly Neo-Nazi junta in Kiev which the EU has been supporting for nearly a decade now.
Hundreds of Western reporters have already flooded Izyum and the surrounding areas. Some Kiev regime media claim that there are only civilians buried, but the photos which have been shared so far only show the bodies of men in military uniforms. This indicates that the bodies of conscripted soldiers, who have been used as cannon fodder by the Kiev regime forces, are now being used to stage another false flag with the goal of tarnishing Russia’s international reputation. After hundreds of (often forcibly) conscripted Ukrainians have been killed on the battlefield and abandoned by their military command, the Russian military buried their remains, because the Kiev regime refused to take them. As they remain unidentified, the Kiev regime accomplishes several goals – the military gets the chance to hide their real losses and also not pay money to the families of the dead, while the regime can use the soldiers’ remains to set up false flags and fake narratives which serve strategic propaganda purposes.
In addition, last week local sources reported that mercenaries and possibly the infamous Neo-Nazi units embedded with the Kiev regime forces have been deliberately targeting civilians in the Kharkov region. The head of Kharkov’s civil-military administration told TV Rossiya-24 that pro-Kiev regime forces fired on civilians during the so-called “counter-offensive” in the last few days. In addition to killings, the agents were also filming the events with the aim of spreading the videos and images on the internet claiming that the Russians were responsible. In addition, acts of torture were also taking place to make the allegations more gruesome, according to local administration.
If the false flag allegations prove to be true, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time the Kiev regime has used fakes to create a narrative that suits their interests. Back in late May and early June, Lyudmila Denisova, former Ukrainian Ombudsman for Human Rights, has been fired for spreading disturbing fake reports about perverted sex crimes against children, allegedly committed by Russian soldiers. Denisova’s reports were entirely fabricated, based on nothing but her twisted imagination and malicious desire to portray Russia as the virtual Mordor of our time. There is no reason to believe the Kiev regime and its backers from the West are doing anything different in this particular case.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Never Let A Good Crisis Go to Waste Relentless Ukraine reporting helps conceal other conflicts
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 13, 2022
It is astonishing how many observers of war in Ukraine who should know better have been inclined to take at face value the assertions of “sources” that clearly originate among the various governments that are involved in the conflict. Those leaders who are engaged in the inexorable march by the US and its allies to turn the Ukraine crisis into World War 3 surely have learned the lesson that managing the narrative of what is taking place is the greatest weapon that the war hawks have in their possession. One recalls how post-9/11 and leading up to the Iraq War the George W. Bush White House and the neocons in the Pentagon lied about nearly everything to convince the public that Saddam Hussein was a terrorist supporting megalomaniac armed with weapons of mass destruction, inevitably describing him as a man in some ways comparable to Adolf Hitler. Nevertheless, many observers of what was occurring were not fooled and there were large scale demonstrations in a number of cities prior to the invasion in March 2003, which, of course, were rarely reported in the mainstream media in order to control the message.
Iraq in some ways was a learning experience for those in government and also for those in the media who did the heavy lifting by propagating the deception to a largely unsuspecting public. What we are seeing now relating to Ukraine and Russia, however, makes the Iraq experience look like child’s play in terms of the sheer audacity of the alleged information that makes it, or does not make it, into the news. I note particularly the recent terrorist car bombing of Russian activist journalist Dalya Dugina by a Ukrainian assassin made the news for roughly forty-eight hours before disappearing, but not before the lie that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was responsible was firmly planted in a number of places in the mainstream media.
Now that Joe Biden is about to designate a two or three star general to head the Ukraine campaign and has pledged billions of dollars more in aid, Ukraine will be all the news all the time. The US involvement will also feature a catchy name. I would suggest Operation Empty Wallets, which is what Americans will soon be experiencing due to government bailouts and other profligate spending, or maybe Operation Give Me a Break. And it will also create a new dimension to the narrative-shaping in that Ukraine reporting’s domination of what comes out of the newsrooms already is effectively killing much of what else might otherwise be appearing on TV or in the newspapers. That selective management of information provides cover for neglecting stories that might prove embarrassing for those in power. It in effect means that there has been plenty of room for the usual players to engage in business as usual with hardly any scrutiny by the public over what is going on outside Ukraine in secondary theaters like the Middle East and Africa.
All of which leads one to examine what the two countries that have unilaterally declared themselves to be rules makers and enforcers have been up to. Those two countries are perhaps not surprisingly the United States and Israel. The US is, in fact, increasing its combat role in Africa featuring airstrikes in Somalia, all of which have taken place since US President Joe Biden approved the redeployment of hundreds of special forces troops to that country in May, reversing a decision by former President Donald Trump to reduce troop levels in AFRICOM. The two latest attacks killed at least twenty Somalis, all of whom were of course described as “terrorists” by the US command. Independent sources state that US forces have bombed Somalia at least 16 times under Biden, killing between 465 and 545 alleged al-Shabaab militants, including no less than 200 individuals in a single drone plus ground forces strike on March 13th.
Describing the paucity of reporting on the issue, Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a senior adviser at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, observed “If you were unaware that we were bombing Somalia, don’t feel bad, this is a completely under-the-radar news story, one that was curiously absent from the headlines in all of the major newspapers…”
And then there is Syria, where a paucity of information in the media reflects White House policy. The United States, which has possibly as many as a dozen illegal bases in Syria, has a major airbase located in the al-Omar oil field in Syria’s northeastern Deir Ezzor province. Several weeks ago, three US soldiers were reportedly slightly wounded in rocket attacks directed at the base by alleged “Iranian-backed militants.” The US responded to the claimed attacks by launching strikes from Apache helicopters against three vehicles belonging to an Afghan Shia militia, killing between six and ten “militants,” and there are reports that more tit-for-tat exchanges of fire are likely. CENTCOM afterwards claimed that President Joe Biden personally ordered the strikes in “self-defense” and justified them by citing Article II of the US Constitution. But the Constitution was never intended to cover illegal activity in a foreign land where US forces are occupying a country with which it is not at war and which has a functioning government that opposes the American presence. The US reportedly has its illegal bases mostly located in the oil producing and agricultural bread basket of the country. Both the grain and oil are routinely stolen by the US and much of the oil winds up in Israel.
So, one inevitably comes to Israel, which has used the cover provided by Ukraine not only to bomb Syria frequently but also to kill Palestinians both in Gaza and on the occupied West Bank. Recently the pace has accelerated with the Israeli Army and police killing on average several Palestinians every day, very little of which is reported in the US media, a fatality rate five times higher than that which prevailed in 2021. It is clearly a deliberate policy to step up the pressure on the Palestinians and a vital part of the process is to let it happen with minimal scrutiny by the media and public, so Israel is widely publicizing the support it is giving to Ukraine to draw attention away from what it does locally.
In short, Israel is increasing efforts to make the historic Palestine Palestinian-free by rendering life so miserable that many Arabs will decide to leave. The use of selective violence and constant harassment is all part of that effort and Palestinians have found that describing Israel as an “apartheid” state does not accurately describe the intensity of the indiscriminate punishments and killings by soldiers which have become all too common.
Israel meanwhile is also doing its best to delegitimize Palestinian national identity by labeling Arab human rights groups as “terrorists.” Israeli police recently raided the offices of seven such groups, confiscated their office equipment and communications, and ordered the premises to be shut down completely. Ironically, a CIA assessment of the groups determined that they were not in any way terrorist linked. The Joe Biden administration characteristically responded to the development by indicating that it was “concerned” but did not condemn the Israeli action.
So, if you open a newspaper or turn on the television and watch or read the international news, you will be told what to think about what is going on in Ukraine. And it will be from the Ukrainian/US government point of view. If you are interested in what the US and Israel are up to in the Middle East, you will most often be out of luck as “defending democracy” in Ukraine while also demonizing Russia is providing cover for Washington and Jerusalem to get into all kinds of mischief. It is a reality derived from how the media and government work collectively to shape policies that in no way benefit the American public. Instead, powerful interest groups with plenty of cash drive the process and are the ones who gain still more power and money through it. It is the sad reality of what has happened to our “land of the free and home of the brave.”
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Prague: 100,000 citizens protest against government’s energy policy
Free West Media | September 6, 2022
In the Czech capital of Prague up to 100,000 people demonstrated on Saturday against the government policy, which has been leading to skyrocketing energy prices and an impending energy emergency in the Czech Republic. Immediately prior to this, there had already been a motion of no confidence in the government under Prime Minister Fiala in the Czech parliament.
In Prague, as in many European capitals, the government refused to see the protests as a political warning signal, but tried to blame Russian “trolls” for the increasingly irritable mood among the population. Another indication of the development in the country is the fact that a broad alliance of conservatives, right-wingers and communists called for the large rally on Saturday.
In the Czech Republic, the very existence of industry is threatened due to the lack of Russian gas supplies. Despite this, the government fully supports the EU’s sanctions course – and, needless to say, is now feeling the consequences.
The government is pretending to see Russian machinations behind the protests: “It is clear that Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns repeatedly appear on our territory, and some simply succumb to them,” Prime Minister Fiala declared. Interior Minister Rakušan also saw “Putin” behind the protest: “Dividing society is one of the goals of the hybrid warfare we are dealing with. We can’t let him do that. That is why we are working on solutions that will reduce people’s fears about the future.”
According to the ideas of the organizers of the rally, every Czech household should be entitled to three megawatt hours of free electricity. In addition, one of the demands of the alliance was that its representatives should be authorized to conclude energy supply contracts.
“We’re taking our country back,” they said at the beginning of the three-hour rally. The call for this also included military neutrality and the loss of sovereignty to supranational structures. “The Czech Republic must free itself from direct political subordination to the EU, the WHO and the UN,” it said.
But that’s not all: “If the government doesn’t resign by September 25,” the organizers say, “in accordance with the Czech Republic’s constitution, we will declare the right to protest at a nationwide demonstration and announce measures to force the resignation. We are already negotiating with unions, companies, farmers, mayors, transport companies and other organizations to declare a strike,” they warned.
The same scenario is also possible in Germany. It was not for nothing that Federal Foreign Minister Baerbock warned of “popular uprisings” in the autumn.
In Leipzig left and right unite
The “Hot Autumn” proclaimed by the Left Party was reflected at least in the temperatures as the thermometer rose to 25 degrees on Monday evening in Leipzig’s historic city center. Both left-wing and right-wing parties and alliances have called for rallies at this historic site, based on the Monday demonstrations of 1989/90.
A total of 10,000 participants were expected, but in the end, Augustusplatz was flooded with people. The federal government had presented its new relief package on Sunday to absorb the economic consequences of the sanctions policy against Russia – and to prevent protests like this Monday evening.
The Federal Chair of the Left Party, Janine Wissler, recently expressed doubts on Deutschlandfunk that measures like these could alleviate the displeasure of the population. And the politician defended herself against accusations that her party also offered a platform to “right-wing ideologues” during the Monday demonstrations.
Leipzig’s Greens, for example, recently complained that the Left Party was “damaging Leipzig’s historical heritage” and thwarting “the commitment of Leipzig’s city society for democracy and cosmopolitanism and against right-wing marches in the heart of the city”. Wissler countered that social protests were needed against the “dramatic injustice” in the country. “We will not let the right take the high road. Not on Mondays and not on any other day either.”
Thousands of Germans in Magdeburg also opposed Olaf Scholz’s irrational policy by shouting: “Nord Stream! Nord Stream!” EU sanctions were supposed to weaken Russia’s economy, instead they are destroying Europe’s economy.
Media blackout in France regarding anti-Macron protests
“I almost fell off my chair!” said Florian Philippot, leader of the political party Les Patriotes. Philippot commented on the fact that news outlet LCI fraudulently reported that the demonstration on Saturday in Paris against Macron’s harsh energy policy “did not take place”. LCI further claimed that they were only “fake images” of the protests and “hijacking by Russian television”.
Philippot accused the outlet of lying. “It did take place. There were people there. LCI was informed and invited.”
Macron’s energy repression is the fourth threat that comes on top of the jihadist threat, the police threat (which hovers over the Yellow Vests), and the health threat, said his critics.
“The ecologists who applaud this deindustrialization do not understand that the destructive neoliberalism of the Great Reset is advancing behind a green mask. Even if it is true that overfishing is destroying the seabed and fish stocks, the climate crisis is a sham. The programmed destruction of production in Europe by Schwab and his friends leads inexorably to mass unemployment, impoverishment of the middle class and the extinction of our countries,” noted a critic of the French administration.
“The parasitic system is ready to destroy the societies that host it in order to survive.”
American and NATO Disinformation and Lies Fuel Never Ending War In Ukraine
By Boyd Cathey | My Corner | September 4, 2022
There is perhaps no better-informed military geostrategic authority on the war in Ukraine today than Swiss intelligence analyst, Jacques Baud (Colonel, Swiss Army, ret.). His long and exceptional experiences over the years in evaluating military intelligence and strategy for a variety of national and international agencies, in particular the geopolitics of Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism, have given him an enhanced and realistic insight into current events in that part of the world.
Recently, Amnesty International—of all sources!—came out with a critical report, largely ignored by the American and Western media, which documented the fact that Ukraine is actively engaged in terrorism and war crimes in its present conflict with Russia. One of the few Western media sources, Newsweek, quoted the report “that the Ukrainian military’s tactics ‘violate international humanitarian law and endanger civilians’ by operating weapons out of bases established in residential areas while civilians are present.” That is exactly what some of us have been saying and charging for some time, especially in reference to the accusation of Russian “war crimes” in Mariupol and Bucha, to mention but two prominent examples.
Now, an international agency, not known for its rightwing or pro-Russian bias, has come out and admitted the very same thing: it is the policy of the Ukrainian government to use civilians as human shields, to place potentially rich military target in the midst of unprotected civilians, many of whom become hostages to the Ukrainian military. The objective, of course, is to inflame Western and American media and political types: “See how evil and barbaric those Russians are!” goes the refrain. And that disinformation campaign has been fairly successful, if you watch most of Fox News (e.g., General Jack Keene, Brian Kilmeade, etc.) which is joined at the hip with the entirety of the hysterical (mostly leftwing) anti-Russian media, not to mention the Deep State cabal in Washington, which includes such deranged armchair warriors as Senators Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer.
Of course, Ukraine has attempted to push back against the report, employing it minions in the West and in the American media. But numerous analyses have surfaced, and, although ignored by our media, they confirm Amnesty International’s study.
In his most recent analysis, Colonel Baud examines the issue of terrorism as employed as a military tactic, and largely on the part of the Ukrainian military and its violent militia groups, in the current conflict with Russia. In an interview with the journal, The Postil, he explores in detail that question, as well as other critical issues—issues about which most Americans (and Western Europeans) have little reliable information.
There is a zealously pro-Ukrainian historical blackout framing Western media. It is openly admitted by Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (since they visited Kiev back in late April, 2022) that the American strategy (and thus that of our NATO satraps) in Ukraine is “to bleed Russia dry, if it takes the death of every Ukrainian to do it.” In other words, Ukraine is a kind of “piege de mort,” a death trap for the Russians to facilitate a radical change in Kremlin leadership, to install by whatever means possible a pliant government which will essentially take orders from the globalist cabal which seeks to implement “the Great Reset.”
Colonel Baud’s interview is detailed, providing accurate and detailed information that most Westerners and Americans don’t see or hear in our controlled media. His wide-ranging interview is fairly long—9,000 words—but well worth reading and pondering. The goal of our elites in Eastern Europe has nothing at all to do with “protecting democracy”—Ukraine is the least democratic nation in all of Europe. It has everything to do with cementing globalist control, a unitary world where agencies like an empowered World Economic Forum (which Volodymyr Zelensky now pays homage to), the European Union, and a reconfigured and aggressive NATO, abroad, and an FBI and CIA, which have become our equivalents of the East German Stasi of Communist KGB secret police, domestically.
I pass on Colonel Baud’s interview below:
https://www.thepostil.com/our-latest-interview-with-jacques-baud/
The Completely Fraudulent “Levelized Cost Of Electricity”
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | August 18, 2022
My last post on Tuesday reported on the Soho Forum climate change debate that had taken place the previous day. Debater Andrew Dessler, arguing in favor of rapid reductions in human greenhouse gas emissions by the method of vastly increasing electricity production from wind and solar generators, had heavily relied on the assertion that wind and solar are now the cheapest ways to generate electricity. An important slide in his presentation showed comparative costs of generation from various sources, with wind and solar clearly shown as least expensive. At the bottom of the slide, the acronym “LCOE” was legible.
LCOE stands for Levelized Cost of Electricity. I first encountered this term a couple of years ago, and thought that I should get on top of it to understand its significance. It took me about a half hour to figure out that this metric was completely inapplicable and invalid for purposes of comparing the costs of using dispatchable versus non-dispatchable generators as the predominant sources to power an electrical grid that works. The reasons are not complicated, but do take some minutes of thought if the matter has not previously been explained to you. In Tuesday’s post, I asked as to Dessler’s reliance on this LCOE metric:
[I]s he aware of this [inapplicability of LCOE] and therefore intentionally trying to deceive the audience? Or, alternatively, is he innumerate, and does not understand how this works quantitatively?
Some commenters on the post were quite harsh in their judgments of Dessler. They argued for the inference of intentional deception, on the basis that no one claiming expertise in this field could really be so obtuse as to think LCOE was a valid metric for the purpose for which Dessler was using it.
So today I thought to look at how others go about comparing the costs of generation of electricity from wind and solar versus dispatchable sources like fossil fuels or nuclear. I can’t say that I was surprised to learn that LCOE is everywhere as the metric of choice for the comparison. Moreover, it is almost impossible to find any discussion of why LCOE is completely misleading when comparing the cost of a grid powered predominantly by dispatchable sources to the cost of a grid powered predominantly by intermittent wind and solar sources backed up by storage.
Consider, for example, the International Renewable Energy Agency, going by the acronym IRENA. IRENA is a UN offshoot, launched in 2009 and based in Abu Dhabi, that currently has 168 member countries including all the big ones. IRENA’s mission is to advocate for and promote “renewables” as the way to go for the world’s energy system. Surely, with all the big countries (and most of the small ones) backing its efforts, IRENA’s utterances can be relied upon as definitive.
IRENA puts out annual reports on the costs of renewable power generation. The latest one, titled “Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2021,” just came out in July. Here is the press release, dated July 13, 2022. Excerpt from the press release:
New IRENA report shows almost two-thirds of renewable power added in 2021 had lower costs than the cheapest coal-fired options in G20 countries. . . . IRENA’s new report confirms the critical role that cost-competitive renewables play in addressing today’s energy and climate emergencies by accelerating the transition in line with the 1.5°C warming limit and the Paris Agreement goals. . . . “Renewables are by far the cheapest form of power today,” Francesco La Camera, Director-General of IRENA said. “2022 is a stark example of just how economically viable new renewable power generation has become.”
Amid the excited claims that renewables are “by far the cheapest” sources of power, the term LCOE does not appear anywhere in the press release. To find that that is the metric being used to make these “by far the cheapest” claims, you need to go to the main Report. Excerpt:
The global weighted average levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of new utility-scale solar PV projects commissioned in 2021 fell by 13% year-on-year, from USD 0.055/kWh to USD 0.048/kWh. . . . The global weighted average LCOE of new onshore wind projects added in 2021 fell by 15%, year-on-year, from USD 0.039/kilowatt hour (kWh) in 2020 to USD 0.033/kWh.
Here is the featured chart, showing that costs of power from solar PV cells have now fallen well below the costs of power from natural gas:

You can see right there that here in 2022 power from natural gas is at least three times as expensive as power from solar PV cells. But the title of the chart gives away that the metric for comparison is LCOE.
Look around for others making cost comparisons of ways to produce electricity, and you will find more and more of same. From Bloomberg, June 30, 2022, “Renewable Power Costs Rise, Just Not as Much as Fossil Fuels”:
The costs for renewable plants plunged for a decade as production of solar and wind equipment surged and technologies improved, but the supply-chain chaos triggered by the pandemic ended those steady declines last year, according to BNEF’s biannual survey of the levelized cost of energy. . . . New onshore wind now costs about $46 per megawatt-hour, while large-scale solar plants cost $45 per megawatt-hour. In comparison, new coal-fired plants cost $74 per MWh, while gas plants are $81 per MWh.
From the Guardian, June 23, 2021 (citing last year’s report from IRENA — also based on LCOE):
Almost two-thirds of wind and solar projects built globally last year will be able to generate cheaper electricity than even the world’s cheapest new coal plants, according to a report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena). . . . Francesco La Camera, Irena’s director general, said . . . “ “Today renewables are the cheapest source of power.”
So it’s not just Dessler. Some big international agency of “experts” adopts LCOE for making these cost comparisons, and everybody just nods along without ever putting in the 30 or so minutes of critical thinking that would be needed to figure out that this is completely wrong.
To reiterate points previously made, the LCOE metric assumes that wind and solar generators are essentially the same kind of thing as dispatchable fossil fuel-powered generation plants. Just build about the same amount of nameplate capacity, and everything will work out just fine. But in fact a predominantly wind/solar system requires vastly more infrastructure to make a fully-functioning reliable grid: some combination of a 4x or 5x overbuild of generators, vastly more transmission lines, and 20 or 30 days of battery storage. These elements could easily multiply the cost of electricity to the consumer by a factor of 5 or 10 or more. Nobody knows, because there is no functioning demonstration project from which reasonably precise costs can be extrapolated. And frankly, there never will be such a demonstration project, because the costs are so enormous that it can never be done. Meanwhile, everyone just nods along as if LCOE comparisons are meaningful.
Dr. Robert Malone sues The Washington Post who accused him of spreading “misinformation” online
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | August 22, 2022
Dr. Robert Malone, an expert in mRNA technology and a vocal Covid vaccines critic who has been consistently censored by Big Tech, is suing the Washington Post for defamation. The lawsuit alleges that the news outlet made defamatory statements against him in an article published on January 24.
The article claimed that Dr. Malone spread “misinformation” in a speech where he said the vaccines “are not working” against the Omicron variant. As evidence the statement was false, the Post cited a paper by the CDC that found that booster shots were protecting people against severe disease.
The Post omitted the part where Dr. Malone said that vaccines, “do not prevent Omicron infection, viral replication, or spread to others.”
Speaking to The Epoch Times, Dr. Malone said: “I said nothing about disease and death at that point in time.” He went on to accuse the Post of selective misquoting and using the CDC study to counter a claim he never made.
The Epoch Times obtained an interview between the article’s writer, Timothy Bella and Dr. Malone, before the article was written. Bella told Dr. Malone, “I have respect for you and your body of work,” and that he was hoping to shadow the doctor during his stay in DC where he gave a speech at a protest against Covid mandates.
Malone initially sent a notice to the Post threatening legal action if the article was not removed or the defamatory statements retracted. When the outlet refused, he filed a lawsuit at a federal court in Virginia.
According to the lawsuit, the article made 10 defamatory statements against Dr. Malone, including that he has been “discredited,” his claims are “not only wrong, but also dangerous,” and that he “repeated falsehoods that have garnered him legions of followers.”
We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.
“The qualities WaPo disparaged—Dr. Malone’s honesty, veracity, integrity, competence, judgment, morals, and ethics as a licensed medical doctor and scientist—are peculiarly valuable to Dr. Malone and are absolutely necessary in the practice and profession of any medical doctor and scientist. WaPo ascribes to Dr. Malone conduct, characteristics, and conditions, including fraud, disinformation, misinformation, deception, and dishonesty, that would adversely affect his fitness to be a medical professional and to conduct the business of a medical doctor,” the suit states.
“Dr. Malone’s statements concerning COVID-19 and the purported ‘vaccines’ were 100% factually accurate. He has never committed fraud on [sic] engaged in any medical disinformation or misinformation. Further, the so-called ‘vaccines’ do not work, as is abundantly clear from both the scientific and anecdotal evidence to date,” it also says.
Dr. Malone is also currently involved in a lawsuit against Twitter over its censorship.
Is That True Or Did You Hear It On The BBC?
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | August 19, 2022
I have just bought this book, which includes some good stuff on the BBC’s climate lies and misinformation.
I have only read the first couple of chapters, but I would thoroughly recommend it.
This is the Amazon summary:
… not only does the BBC diligently protect power from scrutiny, it attacks and attempts to discredit those who dare to challenge the status quo.
Formed in 1922 by the British establishment, the BBC has always been a reliable ally of ultra-wealthy and powerful interests. Indeed, the broadcaster occupies a pivotal position within an international corporate-political alliance which promotes only those narratives which consolidate the ‘global order.’
Using multiple examples of BBC reporting, the author argues that the tax-payer funded broadcaster is a proxy which acts on behalf of a tiny, but very powerful clique – a role which compels it to pump out disinformation on an industrial scale, misleading all those who consume its content.
The book includes sections on:
- Climate Change
- Brexit
- COVID
- Trump
- NHS
Sedgwick’s premise is an interesting one that the BBC has always protected the establishment. One implication from this is that this same establishment has morphed over the years, from a reactionary one of the past to the left wing, big government, global world order one of today.
NYT Smears Dr. Mercola Again With Classic Orwellian Doublespeak
Video link
By Dr. Mercola | August 18, 2022
In July 2021, The New York Times (NYT) published the hit piece,1 “The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online,” in which they made several blatantly false claims about me. Now, the NYT is upping the ante with an entire documentary dedicated to yours truly, titled “Superspreader.”
Ever since my book “The Truth About COVID-19” came out, the global cabal seems to have lost their collective minds. The New York Times has printed demonstrably false information about me on multiple occasions, CNN reporters have invaded my office and pursued me on my bicycle with unmarked vehicles, the president of the United States has utilized his federal agencies to target me — and my personal and business bank accounts were closed.
Twitter has banned anyone from sharing any link to my website, YouTube banned my account with over 15 years of content, while Facebook and Google have done everything possible to make me disappear. It certainly would be much easier to cave under the pressure, but if we don’t stand up for our rights and freedom now — when will it be too late? I will continue ‘superspreading’ truth and health until my last days.
NYT Hit Parade Continues With ‘Superspreader’
In an August 5, 2022, TV review, Alex Reif writes:2
“News can spread like a virus. In our fast-paced world, it doesn’t take long for either to spread around, which is why it’s so important to get your information from a good source.
In the latest installment of the FX series The New York Times Presents, viewers will get a perfect example of this with ‘Superspreader,’ which takes a look at one doctor with a massive following, who is credited as being the top spreader of misinformation regarding the COVID-19 and vaccine in the wellness industry …
One of the pre-credit notes at the end of the documentary states that FDA Commissioner Robert Califf considers misinformation to be the leading cause of death in the country and because of this …
[A]nother highlight of the film is an interview with Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Encountering Digital Hate who ranked Mercola at the top of ‘The Disinformation Dozen,’ a numbers-based list of the twelve most influential people leading the COVID-19 anti-vaccination effort.
We also see how Mercola was de-platformed by several social media companies and how that hasn’t done all that much to stop the spread of misinformation.
At face value, The New York Times Presents ‘Superspreader’ is about Dr. Joseph Mercola, the empire he built, and the people who believe everything he says without question. But what viewers ultimately walk away with is a reminder that if something seems too good to be true, it most surely is.”
The NYT documentary premieres Friday, August 19, 2022, at 10 p.m. Eastern and 10 p.m. Pacific time, on FX and Hulu.
Truth Tellers Are Being Vindicated Every Day
In the NYT’s July 2021 hit piece, the author, Sheera Frenkel, cited an article I’d published in which she says I questioned “the legal definition of vaccines” and declared the COVID shots were “a medical fraud,” for the simple reason that they don’t prevent infections, they don’t provide immunity and don’t stop transmission of the infection.
According to Frenkel, that was misinformation. According to the U.S. government and its “experts,” the COVID jabs worked like any other vaccine. Check out the short video for a sampling of what Bill Gates, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mainstream media, Dr. Anthony Fauci and President Biden were saying about the shots in early 2021.
The clear message — the promise — was that if you got the shots, you would not get COVID and you would not transmit it to others. Getting the population “vaccinated” would end the pandemic, for sure. Fast-forward to today, and the reality of the situation is beyond self-evident.
Biden, fully vaxxed and boosted has had COVID twice. Ditto for Fauci and a long list of government officials around the world. Outbreaks have repeatedly occurred at events where every single person present was fully vaxxed. So, the reality is that, back in February 2021, I warned that a medical fraud was being committed, and today, evidence from around the world show I was correct.
The shots do not prevent you from being infected, and they don’t prevent you from spreading it to others. As such, the COVID shots do not function as a vaccine at all, and mass vaccination cannot end the pandemic because you’re just as infectious if you get the shot and contract COVID as you would be if you were unjabbed.
Yet, despite the fact that time has vindicated me, the NYT has decided to double down and put out an entire documentary to cement the “superspreader of misinformation” label to my name when it really should be permanently attached to their own. It probably is important to note that they started their efforts on this video last year, in 2021.
‘Easily Disprovable’ Assertions Are in Fact True
In her 2021 hit piece, Frenkel also highlighted my comments about the COVID shots’ ability to “alter your genetic coding, essentially turning you into a bioweapon spike protein factory that has no off-switch.” According to Frenkel, these assertions “were easily disprovable.”
But did she disprove them? No. Here’s the reality: mRNA vaccines are by definition a genetic instruction set. That’s what messenger RNA (mRNA) is. And the mRNA created by Pfizer or Moderna are synthetic instructions that have never before existed in humans.
This is true for a variety of reasons, but the primary one is the substitution of pseudouridine for uridine to prevent the mRNA from being degraded. Natural mRNA is normally rapidly destroyed and this is by design as your body is very precise about producing proteins and does not produce them willy-nilly.
So is there an off switch? Absolutely not. There’s no off-switch programmed into these jabs. They are relying on your body’s normal degradation systems. The biotech industry has even referred to this reprogramming of your body as turning you into a “human bioreactor.”3
If an off-switch existed, the manufacturers would have assured us of that fact by now. In fact, they probably would have used the existence of a timed off-switch as the justification for boosters, but that has never come up. We know for sure that the mRNA jabs last at least 60 days and that is all we have for hard data. They more than likely last for six months and in some cases could last for years.
Asking Pointed, Nuanced Questions Is Bad?
Next, Frenkel went on to state that:4
“When the coronavirus hit last year, Dr. Mercola jumped on the news, with posts questioning the origins of the disease. In December, he used a study that examined mask-wearing by doctors to argue that masks did not stop the spread of the virus …
[R]ather than directly stating online that vaccines don’t work, Dr. Mercola’s posts often ask pointed questions about their safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted. Facebook and Twitter have allowed some of his posts to remain up with caution labels, and the companies have struggled to create rules to pull down posts that have nuance …”
So, I not only committed the “sin” of correctly warning people about the vaccine fraud committed, and had the audacity to follow science and reference published research, but I was also guilty of the “crime” of asking pointed, nuanced questions?
When merely asking questions is deemed a dangerous, if not criminal, act, you know you’re living under an authoritarian regime. It’s certainly far outside the accepted norms of “democracy” and “freedom” that the United States has been a beacon of since its inception.
Ineptitude at Its Finest
Further on in her hit piece, Frenkel makes a truly crucial error that no respectable journalist would ever dare make:
“In an email, Dr. Mercola said it was ‘quite peculiar to me that I am named as the #1 superspreader of misinformation.’ Some of his Facebook posts were only liked by hundreds of people, he said, so he didn’t understand ‘how the relatively small number of shares could possibly cause such calamity to Biden’s multibillion dollar vaccination campaign.’
The efforts against him are political, Dr. Mercola added, and he accused the White House of ‘illegal censorship by colluding with social media companies.’ He did not address whether his coronavirus claims were factual.
‘I am the lead author of a peer reviewed publication regarding vitamin D and the risk of COVID-19 and I have every right to inform the public by sharing my medical research,’ he said. He did not identify the publication, and The Times was unable to verify his claim.”
The problem with Frenkel’s assertion is that I did identify the publication. In fact, I emailed her the direct link. So, she lied. Secondly, my paper is beyond easy to locate. Just put my name into PubMed and you’ll find it. Believe it or not, you can even find it using the most biased search engine on earth, Google.
Daniel Engber, senior editor at the typically highly progressive mainstream media outlet, The Atlantic, commented on Frenkel’s clear ineptitude or malicious prevarication in a tweet:5
“A truly bizarre moment in the NYT piece on Joseph Mercola … you can literally verify the existence of this peer-reviewed publication in one second via googling. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33142828/“
Legal Notice Sent to NYT
July 26, 2021, my attorneys sent the following legal notice to Frenkel at the NYT, demanding a retraction of her false statements:6
“Dear Ms. Frenkel,
The undersigned law firm represents Dr. Joseph Mercola in connection with the attached article that was widely published on July 24, 2021. We are providing notice that you have made several false and defamatory statements in this article:
1.You identified that you could not validate that Dr. Mercola published a peer reviewed study on Vitamin D in the severity of COVID-19. Dr. Mercola provided the direct link in response to you (attached) and any journalist or fact checker would simply find the study by searching “Mercola” in PubMed.
2.Your article falsely states Dr. Mercola has been fined “millions” by the FDA. This is completely fabricated, Dr. Mercola has never been fined by the FDA.
… On behalf of Dr. Mercola, we hereby demand you immediately retract the article. We also request that you preserve all communications and documents that relate to Dr. Mercola.”
Where’s the Proof That I Am the ‘No. 1’ Misinformant?
To this day, the NYT insists I’m the No.1 spreader of misinformation online, based on the fabrications of a group called Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — a “foreign dark money group,” to quote Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley,7 which sprang out of nowhere to create lists of people to be censored into oblivion.
The CCDH’s data gathering is so questionable, even ultra-biased Facebook ended up publicly criticizing it. In an August 18, 2021, Facebook report, Monika Bickert, vice president of Facebook content policy, set the record straight:8
“In recent weeks, there has been a debate about whether the global problem of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation can be solved simply by removing 12 people from social media platforms. People who have advanced this narrative contend that these 12 people are responsible for 73% of online vaccine misinformation on Facebook. There isn’t any evidence to support this claim …
In fact, these 12 people are responsible for about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook. This includes all vaccine-related posts they’ve shared, whether true or false, as well as URLs associated with these people.”
At the time that Frenkel made her accusations, a Crowdtangle search for Facebook posts about the COVID jabs, from mid-June to mid-July 2021, also confirmed that my online reach was negligible. Topping the list of top performing Facebook posts expressing negative views about the COVID jabs was Candace Owens, followed by the mainstream news outlet ABC World News Tonight.9

The befuddling reality here is that most of the people identified as “top spreaders of misinformation” actually have negligible reach — at least compared to the people on this Crowdtangle list. None of the CCDH’s “top vaccine misinformants” are on the list above, and our reach certainly has not improved or expanded since then.
If You’re Targeted, You’re On-Target
This naturally raises the question, why were we targeted in the first place? Is it because we have high credibility from being one of the first natural health sites on the web with the most followers? Is it because we’ve spent a quarter of a century gaining people’s trust by mostly being correct about the health care system and criminal Big Pharma behavior?
Is it because we, more than others, have well-established credibility and are directly over the target? Is it because we have the experience and know-how to make accurate predictions? Is it because we see and explain the bigger picture?
Or is it some other reason entirely? It’s a mystery, really, but what is clear is that we’ve been deemed a threat to the official propaganda narrative, and I, for whatever reason, am at the very top of that threat identification list. Well, I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: I’m beyond truly honored to have been widely disparaged by one of the arms of the U.S. military and intelligence operations.
Being targeted in this fashion — tedious as it may be — is in fact a badge of honor. It tells me I’m doing the right thing, and that I’ve not misinterpreted the intentions behind the COVID machinations. More so than any intuition, it tells me I’m on target.
In the bright light of undeniable reality — as it is, a year later — it’s clear that Frenkel’s hit piece has not aged well. I doubt the NYT’s “Superspreader” documentary will fare much better. In the final analysis, if you want any hope of controlling your health, and that of your family, you’d be wise to understand legacy media speaks in Orwellian Doublespeak and reality is the opposite of virtually everything they are telling you.
Sources and References
A Drought In Germany Gets The Media Overexcited
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | August 14, 2022
There is a drought in Germany, and naturally the media has gone into hyperdrive to link it to global warming:
Drought hits Germany’s Rhine River: ‘We have 30cm of water left’
This report is all over the media, and all with virtually the same wording, suggesting a carefully coordinated, manufactured story, almost certainly from one of the well funded, climate misinformation organisations.
The BBC headline is grossly misleading, as the 30cm is the water under the boat; As Captain Kempl comments, the river depth is actually 1.5m.
The river gauge measurement of 42cm at Kaub is also widely reported, but is equally misleading, as this measurement is taken near the river bank, rather than at the deepest part of the stream.
In none of the dozens of reports I have read is there any actual historical data to compare against this event, whether rainfall or water level data. We are told this is the lowest water level since 2018, as if this means anything at all. There is no evidence presented to show that this drought is in any way unprecedented, or that droughts are becoming more extreme; merely this claim that appears in most of the articles:
“HGK and other shipping companies are preparing for a “new normal” in which low water levels become more common as global warming makes droughts more severe, sapping water along the length of the Rhine from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea.
“There’s no denying climate change and the industry is adjusting to it,”
However, annual rainfall trends at Mainz, which is just upstream of Kalb, show that while recent years have been drier than the 1980s and 90s, they are no drier than the 1950s. We also see exactly the same trends with April to September rainfall:
And finally, WUWT offers an insight to some of the megadroughts in Germany in the past, notably in 1540.
There is therefore nothing to suggest that this is not just another weather event.


According to her claims to the police and her testimony at the Grand Jury hearing, and according to the New York Times, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, the Wall Street Journal and many others:



