Ukraine gives its view on alleged Russian military buildup near border
By Jonny Tickle | RT | November 16, 2021
Ukraine’s State Border Service has rejected claims that Russia’s military is gathering near the two countries’ shared border, after NATO’s Secretary-General said there was a “large and unusual” build-up of forces at the frontier.
Speaking to the Ukraine-24 TV channel on Monday, border service spokesman Andrey Demchenko revealed that Kiev does not have reason to believe Russian troops are accumulating nearby.
“We do not register any movement of equipment or military of our neighbouring country near the border,” he explained. “If any actions are taking place, it may be dozens or even hundreds of kilometres from the state border.”
Demchenko’s comments directly contradict a claim from NATO head Jens Stoltenberg, made earlier that day. “We see an unusual concentration of troops, and we know that Russia has been willing to use these types of military capabilities before to conduct aggressive actions against Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.
Last week, American business outlet Bloomberg reported that US officials warned their European counterparts that Moscow may be planning an invasion of Ukraine, noting that their concerns were backed by “publicly available evidence.”
The suggestion of an invasion was quickly slammed by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov groundless.
“This is not the first publication and not the first statement by the US that they are concerned about the movement of our armed forces in Russia,” he said. “We have repeatedly said that the movement of our armed forces on our own territory should be of no concern to anyone. Russia poses no threat to anyone.”
ANOTHER BOGUS RUSSIAN WAR SCARE
By Paul Robinson | IRRUSIANALITY | November 12, 2021
I have had a couple more pieces published in RT in the last two days. One concerns the probably temporary closure of the Kyiv Post and why it seems to have provoked immense outrage whereas the previous shutting down of Russian-language Ukrainian media outlets did not. The other responds to a letter of resignation sent by Russian liberal journalist Konstantin [von] Eggert [MBE] to the Chatham House think tank in protest the institute’s decision to give an award to a BLM activist. I use this an opportunity to delve into different Russian and Western conceptions of rights and freedoms. You can read these here and here.
For this post, though, I intend to tackle another topic, which follows on naturally from my last one. In that, I mocked the idea being floated around in some circles that Russia was behind the Belarus-EU migrant crisis and somehow using it as a provocation for further aggressive action, including maybe a military assault on the ‘Suwalki Gap’.
As we now know from Bloomberg, this theory is nonsense: Russia has no intention of invading Poland, it’s planning to invade Ukraine instead. Or so say ‘American officials’, and as we all know you can trust their judgement 100%.
According to Bloomberg:
“The U.S. is raising the alarm with European Union allies that Russia may be weighing a potential invasion of Ukraine as tensions flare between Moscow and the bloc over migrants and energy supplies.
With Washington closely monitoring a buildup of Russian forces near the Ukrainian border, U.S. officials have briefed EU counterparts on their concerns over a possible military operation, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
… The assessments are believed to be based on information the U.S. hasn’t yet shared with European governments, which would have to happen before any decision is made on a collective response, the people said. They’re backed up by publicly-available evidence, according to officials familiar with the administration’s thinking.
… Russia has orchestrated the migrant crisis between Belarus and Poland and the Baltic states — Lithuania and Latvia share a border with Belarus — to try to destabilize the region, two U.S. administration officials said. U.S. concerns about Russian intentions are based on accumulated evidence and trends that carry echoes of the run-up to Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, another administration official said.
… Some analysts argue that Putin may believe now is the time to halt Ukraine’s closer embrace with the West before it progresses any further.
“What seems to have changed is Russia’s assessment of where things are going,” said Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. “They seem to have concluded that unless they do something, the trend lines are heading to Russia losing Ukraine.”
According to defense-intelligence firm Janes, the recent Russian deployment has been covert, often taking place at night and carried out by elite ground units, in contrast to the fairly open buildup in the spring.
Let’s take a look at all this. We have some statements from three anonymous officials, based on “publicly available information” (none of which I have seen that points to an imminent invasion) and some sort of secret information that the US hasn’t shared with anybody and so can’t be assessed. Now call me a sceptic, but unverifiable information from anonymous sources doesn’t sound like something very solid to me.
Beyond that, if the final lines from Janes are correct, we have a deployment of “elite ground units,” but you can’t invade a foreign country just using “elite” units, let alone a country the size of Ukraine. You’d need a massive build-up of a very considerable volume of rank-and-file line units. So, the actual evidence presented doesn’t fit the scenario portrayed.
As for Mr Charap’s statement that “They seem to have concluded that unless they do something, the trend lines are heading to Russia losing Ukraine,” I have yet to see any indication of this. Quite the contrary. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s recent comment that Russia should do “nothing” about Ukraine and simply wait until the Ukrainians come to their senses, points to an entirely different conclusion. We are “patient,” said Medvedev, who is Deputy Chairman of the Security Council, and so one imagines, well versed in what is in people’s minds at the highest level. His comments hardly suggest that senior officials are thinking that radical action is urgently required.
The fact that American “officials” are briefing the press that war is possible, and that analysts from the RAND Corporation are backing them up, speaks to an awful lack of understanding of things Russian in the United States. The fact that Bloomberg then repeats these claims without serious challenge points also to a disturbing lack of critical thinking on behalf of the American press (no surprise there!), as well as reinforcing what academic studies of the media have long since noted – its worrisome dependence on official sources.
The only part of the Bloomberg article that gives readers a real sense of what’s going on comes in the following lines, which say:
Russia doesn’t intend to start a war with Ukraine now, though Moscow should show it’s ready to use force if necessary, one person close to the Kremlin said. An offensive is unlikely as Russian troops would face public resistance in Kyiv and other cities, but there is a plan to respond to provocations from Ukraine, another official said.
This strikes me as accurate. There is absolutely no reason for Russia to start a war with Ukraine. It would be enormously costly and bring no obvious benefits. Besides which, war needs careful advance preparation of public opinion. There have been absolutely no indications of the Kremlin doing anything of the sort. That said, as I have noted before, I have little doubt that if Ukraine launched a major attack on the rebel regions of Donbass, and if large numbers of civilians were killed as a result (as would be most likely), Russia would respond. And its response would likely be very tough, much tougher than it was in August 2014 when it very briefly sent a limited number of forces into Donbass to defeat the Ukrainians at Ilovaisk. If there is a Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s likely to be large-scale, to settle the issue once and for all.
All this talk of war is therefore rather dangerous. It helps to ramp up tensions on Russia’s borders, and also serves to justify a build-up by NATO forces in the region. That in turn may send the wrong messages to Ukraine and encourage it to act rashly. Fortunately, I don’t think that things will go that far, but I do think that “American officials” and the press are playing with fire. They would be well advised to stop. Unfortunately, one gets the impression that their lack of knowledge and understanding makes that impossible. Sad times indeed.
Russia denies US media reports that it plans to invade Ukraine
By Jonny Tickle | RT | November 12, 2021
The Kremlin has strongly denied suggestions that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine, after reports emerged that officials from the US had warned their counterparts in Europe that Moscow is considering a “military operation.”
Speaking to the press on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov slammed the suggestion as groundless.
“This is not the first publication and not the first statement by the US that they are concerned about the movement of our armed forces in Russia,” he said. “We have repeatedly said that the movement of our armed forces on our own territory should be of no concern to anyone. Russia poses no threat to anyone.”
Reports that Washington fears Russian aggression against Ukraine were first published by business outlet Bloomberg on Thursday. Citing unnamed sources, the news agency reported that US officials had briefed their partners in the EU over a “potential invasion,” noting that their concerns were backed by “publicly available evidence.”
“Such headlines are nothing but empty, unfounded tension build-up. Russia poses no threat to anyone,” Peskov reiterated.
The suggestion was earlier refuted by Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s first deputy ambassador to the UN, who wholly denied any plan to attack its neighbor.
“We have never planned [an invasion] and never will, unless we are provoked by Ukraine or someone else, and it is a matter of defending our national sovereignty,” he said.
Russian MP Viktor Vodolatsky also commented on the accusation, suggesting that the article is more indicative of NATO’s plan to create conflict in Ukraine.
“This is all done with only one goal: to get Ukraine involved in a war, realizing that Russia will not turn a blind eye to it,” he said. Vodolatsky is the first deputy head of the parliamentary committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration, and Relations with Compatriots.
A “Deadly Attack” on the Capitol?
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | November 10, 2021
Yesterday, I was listening to a classical-music station when NPR came on with the news. Addressing the controversy surrounding former President Trump’s efforts to keep secret his records relating to the January 6 protests at the Capitol, the NPR reporter referred to the “deadly attack” on the Capitol.
I immediately thought to myself, “Well, that’s certainly an interesting use of language.”
When I hear the word “attack,” I think of weapons, specifically guns, grenades, or missiles that are intended to kill people. For example, when the Pentagon fired a missile at that family in Afghanistan shortly before exiting its 20-year war in that country, I would term that an “attack” — and a “deadly attack” at that, especially given that many innocent people, including children, were killed by that missile.
One of the fascinating aspects of the “attack” on the Capitol is that the “attackers” didn’t have guns. In fact, as far as I know, they didn’t even have any swords. To me, that’s one unusual “attack.” In fact, I’ll bet that there haven’t been many other “attacks” in history in which the “attackers” failed to use weapons to commit their “attack.”
What about words? Yeah, the Capitol “attackers” certainly employed a lot of words during the course of their “attack.” Maybe that is what NPR means when it describes what happened as an “attack” — that the “attackers” were engaged in a “word attack” on the Capitol. Imagine how frightening that “attack” must have been — with “attackers” hitting one victim with some particular word — maybe “Tyrant!” — followed by some other word, perhaps “Thief!”
Now, I think you would agree with me that that would be one scary “attack”!
In fact, it was so scary that one Capitol police officer shot and killed one of the “attackers” because he was so afraid that the “attackers” were coming to get him. He wasn’t the only one who was afraid. Many members of Congress were equally terrified of the Word-Attackers.
Hey, don’t judge these people too harshly. You don’t know how you would react if a bunch of Word-Attackers were coming after you and flinging and hurling nasty words at you.
Another interesting aspect of the NPR news broadcast was the reporter’s reference to the “deadly” attack on the Capitol. Now, when I hear that someone has engaged in a “deadly” attack, I immediately think that the attackers have killed people in the course of their attack.
Yet, here, the “attackers” didn’t kill anyone. Instead, the only person killed was one of the “attackers.” Her name was Ashli Babbitt. She was shot dead by that Capitol policeman who was terrified that Babbitt and the “attackers” were coming to get him and members of Congress. It’s still not clear why he didn’t fire a warning shot over her head. If he had done that, she undoubtedly would have backed off, especially since she was unarmed, well, except for words in her vocabulary.
For a while, the news media was reporting that Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick was beaten to death by the “attackers.” For example, the New York Times reported that he “was overpowered and beaten by rioters from the mob at the Capitol.”
Could that be what NPR is referring to when it cites the “deadly” attack on the Capitol?
I don’t think so because as things turned out, what the Times reported about Sicknick turned out to be incorrect. An autopsy revealed that Sicknick died of natural causes, to wit: strokes.
The New York Times also reported that a woman named Rosanne Boyland, who was one of the “attackers,” “appears to have been killed in a crush of fellow rioters during their attempt to fight through a police line.”
Alas, what appeared to be true wasn’t. An autopsy revealed that she died of a drug overdose, not trampling.
Two other “attackers” — Kevin Greeson and Benjamin Phillips — died of a heart attack and a stroke.
Thus, five people died during the “deadly attack.” One “attacker “was killed by a terrified Capitol police officer. One Capitol police officer and two of the “attackers” died of natural causes. Another “attacker” died of a drug overdose.
Given the nature of those deaths, is it really proper to refer to the “deadly” attack on the Capitol? Doesn’t the use of the term “deadly” imply that the attackers deliberately shot or killed people as part of their “attack”?
Maybe NPR is saying that the words that the “attackers” were employing as weapons caused those people to have heart attacks, strokes, and drug overdoses. Maybe their words are what caused that police officer who killed Ashli Babbitt to become terrified.
Ironically, as far as I know, the Justice Department hasn’t charged any of the January 6 protestors with murder or even a massive conspiracy to initiate a “deadly attack” on the Capitol.What’s up with that? Those federal prosecutors need to start listening to NPR.
Attenborough and his climate cohorts are scaring the young into mental illness
By David Seedhouse | TCW Defending Freedom | November 10, 2021
THE BBC last week re-published yet another video article – Climate Change: The Facts – featuring David Attenborough. It shows scenes of calamity and collapse and has a single main message: ‘Act now or we are all doomed.’
Despite its title, there is no attempt whatsoever at a balanced analysis of ‘the facts’. The video includes a comment from the discredited Michael Mann, whose faulty algorithm created the famous ‘hockey stick‘ chart of supposed global warming that so exercised Al Gore and Greta Thunberg – who has no scientific credentials, or arguably any right at all to be included in a ‘fact-based’ video.
Towards the end of his presentation, Attenborough declares: ‘We now stand at a unique point in our planet’s history, one where we must all share responsibility both for our present wellbeing and for the future of life.’
Hyperbole, hubris, hysteria … but no humility. We have apparently become the gods of ancient Greece, able to control all aspects of life, including the planet.
It is unclear how we all have responsibility for ‘the future of life’, which managed very well before humans existed and, according to experts of Attenborough’s ilk, will inevitably change according to the laws of evolution in any case.
However, we surely do have responsibility towards each other, especially not to cause unwarranted alarm, and to support the mental health of our young people, which according to many reports is at a nadir.
One large survey found that nearly 60 per cent of young people approached said they felt very worried or extremely worried about the climate issue.
More than 45 per cent said such feelings affected their daily lives. Some 75 per cent thought the future was frightening, while 56 per cent think humanity is doomed.
Take a minute to digest this. The survey, led by Bath University in collaboration with five other universities, spanned ten countries. It amassed responses from 10,000 people aged between 16 and 25 and found that a staggering majority are so scared and depressed that they feel they have no future.
This devastating situation has not happened spontaneously. Nor is it a rational response to the actual evidence. Rather it is the result of years of uninhibited scaremongering by older people who prefer to be part of a lucrative alarmist club than set a decent example of balanced reasoning.
Most traditional societies revere and respect their elders, for their life experience and wisdom. And in return the elders quietly and calmly protect the young, beneficently pointing to the good things in life that may come.
This seemingly timeless human – and indeed animal – circle of life has come close to breaking with astonishing speed. Many of our prominent elders, who should be sage, measured and knowing, are behaving like reckless toddlers in a sandpit they think is all theirs.
They spent 2020 and much of 2021 locking young people away from their schools, their friends, and their elderly relatives, terrifying them with useless masks and distancing to ‘protect’ them from a virus that poses hardly any risk to them.
These thoughtless adults constantly say how much they care for the future of humanity but show, with every poorly-researched exaggeration, that they don’t give two hoots for the psychological wellbeing of the young who actually are the future.
Whether through guilt, ignorance, psychological bias or just the misplaced desire to show how powerful they are, such infantile elders display little awareness of the damage they are causing. And if they have even an inkling of how they are harming the young, they show no restraint.
Their imagined certainties do not exist. We do not know everything there is to know about viruses and we certainly do not know everything about the climate of a vast and complex planet. We cannot possibly say with any confidence what will happen to us, and we cannot control Nature. Nor should we try.
Young people do not need to be saved by anyone, not least these false prophets of doom. They need the wherewithal to live fulfilled lives – with knowledge, curiosity, social support, friendships, honesty and, above all, the modesty to accept human limitations, without self-righteous hectoring from older adults who have lived most of their own lives in circumstances where the future held promise rather than terror.
Those such as David Attenborough and the rest of the climate establishment presumably have the best of intentions. But their obsession with controlling the uncontrollable has completely blinded them to the awful damage their blinkered obsessiveness has caused our young.
They have abjectly failed to provide sensible information and an inquisitive, questioning environment. They should be setting an example of gentle wisdom, where problems are solved by open minds. Instead, they have caused a huge avoidable mental health crisis, and have barely noticed what they have done.
The first “climate change” diagnosis is here. It will not be the last.
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | November 9, 2021
Doctor Kyle Merritt, an attending physician at an emergency department in Nelson BC, added “climate change” as a contributing factor to the medical issues of one of his patients. And, in so doing, has achieved a remarkable and troubling world first.
The first-ever medical diagnosis of “climate change”.
Dr Merritt said in an interview with Glacier Media:
If we’re not looking at the underlying cause, and we’re just treating the symptoms, we’re just gonna keep falling further and further behind,” the emergency room doctor told Glacier Media. […] It’s me trying to just… process what I’m seeing.”
The entire situation raises some interesting questions.
DOES IT MAKE MEDICAL SENSE?
Of course it doesn’t.
He diagnosed her as “suffering from climate change”. You can’t do that, it is insane.
That’s like diagnosing someone who was struck by lightning as “suffering from the effects of rain” or a person having a heart attack as “suffering from the effects of Mcdonald’s”.
… actually, it’s worse than that. At least my examples have a distinct cause-and-effect relationship, and there are no scientific papers suggesting Mcdonald’s doesn’t actually exist.
The patient in question is over 70, asthmatic, diabetic and suffering from heart failure. She’s very, very sick… no matter the climate.
Even if Dr Merritt can somehow trace a decline in her health due to the weather (and there’s no evidence at all that he can), actually diagnosing it is completely bonkers.
… SO WHY DO IT?
It’s a staged PR move. A very obvious one, when you think about it.
For one thing, there’s the question of how the media ever found out it happened, since medical records and diagnoses are completely private.
Clearly Dr Merritt didn’t just diagnose his patient with “climate change”, he then immediately called up the local media to tell them he had done it.
Throw in the fact that this happened to occur during the COP26 conference in Glasgow, which only today warned of “climate-linked health risks” rising, and that the move has already spawned a new NGO, “Doctors and Nurses for Planetary Health”, and you have a textbook example of a stage-managed media rollout.
WHY NOW?
In simple terms, because Covid worked and climate didn’t.
They have been stoking up public fear of “a new ice age” and acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer and myriad other supposedly incipient climate disasters for literal decades, and never touched one-tenth of the level of hysteria created by the Covid19 “pandemic”.
Somewhere, some not especially bright public relations executive has decided that the way to push the “pivot from Covid to climate” is to try and turn the long-predicted environmental disaster into a public health issue.
It’s hamfisted, a little funny, and probably won’t work, but it does open up some troubling possibilities going forward.
LIKE WHAT?
Well, for starters, this may be the first “climate change diagnosis”, but do you honestly believe it will be the last?
Don’t be surprised if we see a huge spike in “climate diagnoses” in the next few months.
There are already widespread academic efforts to create a causal link between “climate change” and common illnesses.
A few days ago, the Independent headlined The climate crisis is not just about the environment – it’s about health too.
As I mentioned earlier, just today the COP26 panel warned that “climate-linked health risks” are going to rise.
Only last week the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology published a paper titled “Climate Change and Global Issues in Allergy and Immunology” which argues climate change is already making asthma and some allergies worse.
It’s not hard to put together a list of other common afflictions that are already being linked back to climate change.
Cancer, pneumonia, heatstroke, diabetes, heart disease and essentially all lung conditions.
There’s also all diseases spread by mosquitos or other zoonotic agents, plus every waterborne illness.
And that’s without even severely stretching logic, which Covid has shown our medical and scientific institutions have no trouble doing.
They are already discussing “climate-related” mental health issues such as stress, anxiety and depression. These could easily become further types of “climate-related diagnoses” too.
Now, allow me to speculate for a few paragraphs…
The practice of “climate-related diagnosis” is likely going to expand. When questions about the science behind this are raised by sceptics, they will naturally be accused of “climate denial”.
Opinion pieces will appear torturing reason to defend the practice of diagnosing “climate illness”. So-called journalists, or mercenary experts in made-up fields like “climate ethics”, will crochet strands of reason into positions so full of holes they barely exist.
We’ll be told that even if the practice is technically inaccurate, it’s serving a greater truth. That people might not literally be sick due to climate change, but we are all figuratively dying of it.
“Covid has shown us people only do what’s right when they’re scared: We need to make them feel climate fear.”
“Climate change diagnoses are on the rise. And that’s a good thing.”
“Healthcare workers take stand on climate with new diagnosis trend.”
“NHS workers saved us from Covid, and now want to take on climate.”
… you don’t have to read the Guardian as much as I have to feel those headlines, or ones very like them, in our future.
Then the deaths can start happening. Covid has demonstrated that you can create a “mass casualty” scare by essentially just adding an extra line on a death certificate. They can do that for climate too. The headlines will carry on…
“Physicians see spike in “climate deaths” as people suddenly feel the consequences of inaction”
When people point out the flaws in reasoning the papers will argue that, even if people aren’t really dying of climate change, symbolically putting it on death certificates is the best way to illustrate how much danger we’re in.
They’ll backhandedly admit the statistic isn’t real, but then use it as an excuse to call for action anyway:
“Weekly climate deaths are outstripping Covid – we need to address the “climate pandemic.”
… it will go on and on.
Climate change will start being listed as an “underlying cause of death” for more and more diseases. I already mentioned cancer, lung disease and heart disease. They’ll all be “climate-related”.
The press spent the last year telling us that climate change “makes pandemics more likely”, so any future “pandemic” can be linked to climate and boom, a few hundred thousand climate deaths.
Climate change is allegedly bad for unborn babies, so stillbirths and miscarriages can all be “climate deaths”.
They can do a study finding “higher levels of solar radiation” can “increase the risk of cancer”, and then start saying anyone who dies of cancer also died of climate.
They don’t even have to limit it to natural causes.
Drowned in a flash flood? That’s a climate death.
Starved due to drought? Climate death.
Committed suicide? “he was pretty upset about the climate”.
Attacked by a polar bear? Well, climate change forced it out of its natural habitat.
I’m not being funny. This is not satire, I wish it were. Believe me, they could easily actually say it, or something like it, eventually.
If the past twenty months have done nothing else, they should at least have taught you this valuable lesson: There is nothing – NOTHING – too dishonest, too cynical or even too insane for the establishment to sell.
It doesn’t matter if it’s unlikely, or self-contradictory or irrational – it doesn’t even matter if it’s literally physically impossible – they will say it, and they will expect you to believe it.
We now have our first climate “case”. The first death “with climate” probably won’t be far behind. Thousands more will likely follow.
That’s when talk of “climate lockdowns” will come back.
NHS accused of ‘lying’ about Covid stats to promote vaccination
RT | November 8, 2021
NHS chief Amanda Pritchard claimed that 14 times as many Covid-19 patients are in Britain’s hospitals as this time last year. However, even the NHS itself has admitted that Pritchard’s claim uses misleading figures.
Multiple news reports on Monday told the same story: Britain’s hospitals are seeing “14 times more coronavirus patients than this time last year,” and the country faces a “difficult winter,” as people gather indoors, where the virus is more likely to spread.
The source of the “14 times” figure is Amanda Pritchard, Chief Executive of NHS England. Pritchard used the apparently alarming surge in hospitalisations to encourage the 4.5 million Britons who still haven’t gotten vaccinated to roll up their sleeves, and those eligible to take their third shot of the vaccine.
However, NHS data shows that Pritchard’s figures are false. According to the health service, a 7-day average of 9,331 Covid-19 patients were in hospital at the beginning of November, compared to 12,654 a year earlier. Just over 1,000 people per day were being admitted to hospital at the end of October, compared to 1,500 last year.
Pritchard was swiftly accused of peddling fake news, with commentators warning that such misleading figures were straying into “resignation territory.”
Amid a growing clamour online, NHS officials told reporters shortly afterwards that Pritchard was citing figures from August 2021 compared to August 2020. Hospital admissions were indeed 14 times higher this August than in 2020, but only for several days toward the end of the month. Since then, they have trended downwards and are now comparable to last year’s rate.
However, hospitalisations persist despite the fact that nine out of 10 people over the age of 12 in the UK have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to NHS statistics. Rising cases too have called into question the long-term efficacy of the jabs, but government officials still insist on vaccination as key to defeating the virus – and studies suggest those vaccinated patients still fare better if they catch the virus.
As Pritchard called on the population to get vaccinated or go in for booster jabs, former Health Secretary Matt Hancock called on Monday for the government to mandate vaccines for healthcare workers. “There is no respectable argument left not to force health and social care workers to get jabbed,” he wrote in The Telegraph, calling the vaccine “the only reason for the safe return of our liberty.”
No, Roanoke Times, Climate Change Is Not To Blame for Virginia Beach’s Flooding
By H. Sterling Burnett | ClimateRealism | November 5, 2021
A Google news search of the term “climate change” turns up a recent story in the Roanoke Times claiming human caused climate change is causing increased incidences of flooding in Virginia Beach, Virginia. This is false. Flooding may be worsening in Virginia Beach, and human activities may be contributing to it, but research indicates a climate change induced increase in the rate of sea level rise is not to blame.
A story, titled “Virginia Beach confronts inescapable costs of rising seas,” discusses a $568 million bond issue being proposed to improve infrastructure and lessen future damage from flooding in the region. If voters don’t approve the bond, the story warns “the city could lose billions of dollars in the next half-century as recurrent flooding inundates roads, businesses and homes.”
The Roanoke Times the proceeds to incorrectly attribute the danger of recurrent future flooding in Virginia Beach to climate change induced rising seas.
“The referendum underscores the mounting costs of adapting to climate change for U.S. cities,” writes the Roanoke Times. “The need for money to protect communities against climate change is growing across the globe ….”
Data show seas are not rising at an unusual rate in the Chesapeake Bay region where Virginia Beach is located.
As discussed in a recent Climate Realism article, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has maintained a tidal gauge at Sewell’s Point in Norfolk since the 1920s. The tidal records, as shown in the NOAA graph below, show the pace of sea-level rise remains the same now as it was 100 years ago – when there was minimal human-emitted carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
NOAA has maintained three other tidal gauges in the Norfolk region, dating back to the 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s, respectively. None of the other three show any acceleration, either.
Each of these tide gauges is within 30 miles of Virginia Beach and none show unusual rates of sea level rise or an increasing rate in recent decades.
To the extent flooding has increased in the Chesapeake Bay region and Virginia Beach in particular, research shows it is due to localized land subsidence. According to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report, titled “Land Subsidence and Relative Sea-Level Rise in the Southern Chesapeake Bay Region,” states:
Land subsidence has been observed since the 1940s in the southern Chesapeake Bay region at rates of 1.1 to 4.8 millimeters per year (mm/yr), and subsidence continues today.
This land subsidence helps explain why the region has the highest rates of sea-level rise on the Atlantic Coast of the United States. Data indicate that land subsidence has been responsible for more than half the relative sea-level rise measured in the region. Land subsidence increases the risk of flooding in low-lying areas, which in turn has important economic, environmental, and human health consequences for the heavily populated and ecologically important southern Chesapeake Bay region.
The aquifer system in the region has been compacted by extensive groundwater pumping in the region at rates of 1.5- to 3.7-mm/yr; this compaction accounts for more than half of observed land subsidence in the region.
The proposed bond issue may be needed to prevent increased incidences of flooding in Virginia Beach, but it will only work to prevent flooding if the “fixes” funded by it focus on the right causes of the problem. Local water withdrawals, wetlands conversion, and land compaction are to blame for Virginia Beach’s flooding woes, not climate change. Better land and water management, not fossil fuel use restrictions, are needed to reduce the incidences of homes and businesses in Virginia Beach flooding.
America’s dramatic rise in ‘hate crimes’ has a surprisingly logical explanation
By Frank Furedi | RT | November 3, 2021
The gubernatorial election in Virginia saw another example of a ‘racism hoax’ that caused media outrage before the truth emerged. It’s little wonder these stunts are becoming more common in a country fixated on identity politics.
At a time when the mere hint of a badly worded sentence invites accusations of racism, many race entrepreneurs feel incentivised to fabricate claims of incidents that can provoke howls of outrage.
This week’s election for the post of governor of Virginia saw just how the phenomenon of a race hoax works. Supporters of the Lincoln Project – an anti-Trump advocacy group – dressed up as Neo-Nazi white supremacists and, clutching tiki torches, photographed themselves next to the campaign bus of the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin. Chanting “we’re all in for Glenn,” they sought to promote the impression that a vote for Youngkin was a vote for racial hatred.
The hoax provoked the intended reaction of outrage. “To my fellow Virginia residents,” tweeted NBC’s legal analyst, Glenn Kirschner, “please vote against this blatant display of racism, hatred and intolerance. Please vote FOR a kind, welcoming, diverse Virginia. Please vote @TerryMcAuliffe for governor. Because #JusticeMatters.” The tweet was subsequently deleted.
The Lincoln Project’s dirty trick soon got the Jewish Democratic Council of America on board. It published a tweet – also subsequently deleted – demanding that Youngkin condemn the tiki torchbearers or risk being denounced for endorsing anti-Semitism.
More broadly, Democrats were quick to exploit the performance of the Lincoln Project as an illustration that their opponents’ political base was steeped in white supremacy. America’s cultural fixation with race means that they are primed to perceive episodes of racism in the most innocuous of settings. The race hoax perpetrated by the Lincoln Project was designed to feed the American media’s voracious appetite for sensational incidents of hate crimes.
In recent times, the most widely reported alleged race hoax involved the black American actor Jussie Smollett, who claimed he was assaulted in the early hours of the morning in Chicago by two men wearing MAGA hats. He insisted that he was subjected to homophobic and racial slurs and that some unknown chemical substance was poured on him and a noose tied around his neck.
Smollett’s account of this ‘lynching’ provoked anger, and numerous well-known public figures – including the now-Vice President Kamala Harris – lined up to demonstrate their support. Once the police discovered that Smollett apparently made up the attack – he is facing a criminal case – an embarrassed media moved on to find other instances of hate crime.
As it happens, the manufacturing of a race hoax is far from a rare event. Inventing victimhood is not uncommon, particularly within higher education. For example, in September 2017, five black students at the US Air Force Academy Preparatory School discovered racial slurs written on their doors. An investigation later found that one of the students supposedly targeted was responsible for the vandalism.
In his book, ‘Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War’, published in 2019, Wilfred Reilly examined over 100 high-profile incidents of so-called hate crimes that never actually occurred. He pointed out that he was “able to rather easily assemble a data set of 409 hate hoax cases,” concentrated heavily in the previous five years. According to Reilly, his data set has since swelled to become a list of 608 unique hate hoax case studies, containing more than 800 individual incidents of hoaxes.
The fake reporting of hate crimes is encouraged by the singular focus of criminal justice agencies on this issue. In effect, hate crime has turned into a political weapon used to promote the dogma of systemic racism. The eagerness with which claims of hate crime are publicised to prove a point has created an incentive to present oneself as its victim. The proliferation of the phenomenon of race hoax is the inexorable consequence of cultural attitudes that perceive the world through the prism of racism.
The constant obsession with white privilege, whiteness, and systemic racism has created a cultural terrain that is hospitable to the flourishing of race hoaxes.
So, next time you hear that racism is on the rise and society is facing an epidemic of hate crime, take a reality check – because it may turn out that what is at issue is an epidemic of fake news.
Frank Furedi is an author and social commentator. He is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Author of How Fear Works: The Culture of Fear in the 21st Century.
Pharma-Controlled CDC Fake News on Breakthrough Infections
By Stephen Lendmann | October 30, 2021
Nothing reported by the Pharma-Controlled CDC, FDA and other US anti-public health agencies can be taken at face value.
The same goes for their MSM press agents.
The vast majority of flu/covid outbreaks occur in jabbed individuals.
Based on CDC fake news, the NYT falsely reported that fully-jabbed Americans “had a much lower chance of testing positive for flu/covid or dying from it” than their unjabbed counterparts (sic).
Reality is the other way around.
Except for natural immunity that protects best against infection, staying unjabbed is significantly safer from contracting the viral illness than if jabbed.
The Times quoted Pharma-connected epidemiologist David Dowdy’s Big Lie claim that jabs are “working (sic)” — ignoring indisputable evidence of the serious harm they cause.
The above fake news is all about pushing refuseniks to get theirs, along with urging double-jabbed individuals to get a third dose of health-destroying toxins from booster-jabs.
The more gotten, the greater the damage to health — at some point leading to premature death.
If hospitalized in the US for flu/covid, individuals aged-50 and older are willfully and maliciously mistreated with intent to eliminate them in cold blood.
For bloodcurdling more on what’s going on, see my article titled Healthcare Redefined: Hospitals Transformed into Prisons — for extermination of unwanted older Americans.
More Times-repeated CDC Big Lies followed, saying:
“(F)ederal data (show) that all three brands of (jabs) administered in the US substantially reduced rates of cases and deaths (sic).”
According to peer-reviewed truth-telling science, it’s the other way around.
Toxins in jabs destroy health and shorten lifespans. Jab-free individuals live longer in better health than their jabbed counterparts.
According to UK data, deaths of children in the country increased by 62% since mass-jabbing began — based on the average percent of fatalities of the group over the previous five years.
Kaiser Family Foundation data show that 72% of unjabbed US workers vow to quit if ordered to roll up their sleeve for doses of toxins designed to destroy their health.
Many thousands of US healthcare professionals and staff refuse to agree to destroying their health from jabs as a condition of employment.
According to one nurse likely speaking for countless others:
As “an intelligent, healthy, and empowered healthcare professional that takes excellent care of herself, it is an insult to expect that I would accept an injection of unknown substance and efficacy and provide an example to the great people that I serve that they too should submit their power over to pharmaceutical companies — convicted felons — in an effort to put a band-aid on the gaping wound of reality.”
“It is unconscionable to mandate injections without exemption, especially when the injection is a brand new medical product still undergoing its first year of study.”
“Breakthrough cases are not properly reported on.”
“We know (these jabs are) ‘leaky.’ ”
“The(ir) safety and effectiveness has not been proven.”
“There are other safe and alternative treatments.”
“It is impossible to give fully informed consent without longterm, unbiased data.”
“Threatening our jobs is blatant coercion.”
“Our God-given right to bodily integrity and personal autonomy has been stripped with these mandates and we will not stand for it.”
Another nurse made similar comments, saying:
“I did not take the (jab), even though I will be terminated.”
“Why would I need a (jab) for something with a 99% survival rate?”
“Health care workers are not taking it because they know that the side effects are real.”
“In urgent care, I have seen myocarditis, cellulitis, (and) unusual neurological symptoms, among a variety of other side effects.”
“I have seen people very ill post-(jabbing), and then go on to test positive.”
“The positivity rate for contracting (flu/covid) on the (jabbed) is very high per recent studies and what I am seeing in my clinic.”
Flu/covid jabs are “not working.”
“I will never take risk (harm) on myself.”
The above remarks are a snapshot of widespread opposition to jabs from healthcare professionals.
They’ve seen what damage they’ve done to countless numbers of people.
September survey data from the Trafalgar Group and Convention of States Action showed that over 70% of respondents oppose mandated jabs.
Growing numbers in the US reject and oppose the steady drumbeat of pro-jabbing propaganda by Biden regime officials and their MSM press agents.
According to head of Convention of States Action Mark Meckler:
“Americans have never taken kindly to being told what to do, and they are not going to start now.”
“After being told ‘my body, my choice’ for nearly five decades by the same crowd now hypocritically pushing mandates, is it any wonder the public isn’t on board?”
If enough Americans and others reject mass-jabbing madness, refusing more doses by those already inoculated and none by others entirely free from their harm, the ugly scheme will collapse under the weight of Big Lies, mass deception and false promises.
NYT Threatens Senator Manchin With Witchcraft If He Obstructs Democrat “Climate” Agenda
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | October 19, 2021
It’s always been just a little odd that the guy the Democrats most need to get on board to get their big transformational plans enacted is Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, while at the same time the centerpiece of those plans is to put the most important industry of West Virginia, coal mining, completely out of business. That sounds like it’s going to be a tough sell. Is there any argument that might convince this guy to get with the program?
In one of the funniest articles I have read anywhere recently, the New York Times thinks that it has come up with the argument that will carry the day: threaten Manchin with witchcraft! The article, covering about half of the front page of yesterday’s print edition, tells Manchin that if he continues to “block” the Democrats’ plans to destroy the coal industry, a spell will be cast over his state and it will be inundated with floods. The headline is “Blocking Climate Plan With Hometown at Risk.”
The Times characterizes Mr. Manchin’s stance thusly:
Mr. Manchin, a Democrat whose vote is crucial to passing his party’s climate legislation, is opposed to its most important provision that would compel utilities to stop burning oil, coal and gas and instead use solar, wind and nuclear energy, which do not emit the carbon dioxide that is heating the planet. Last week, the senator made his opposition clear to the Biden administration, which is now scrambling to come up with alternatives he would accept. Mr. Manchin has rejected any plan to move the country away from fossil fuels because he said it would harm West Virginia, a top producer of coal and gas.
Seems reasonable. Better threaten the guy:
Others say that by blocking efforts to reduce coal and gas use, Mr. Manchin risks hurting his state.
And how exactly would that work? Simple: if Manchin remains intransigent, West Virginia will be destroyed by epic floods.
First Street [Foundation] calculated the portion of all kinds of infrastructure at risk of becoming inoperable because of a so-called 100-year flood — a flood that statistically has a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year. The group compared the results for every state except Alaska and Hawaii. In many cases, West Virginia topped the list. Sixty-one percent of West Virginia’s power stations are at risk, the highest nationwide and more than twice the average. West Virginia also leads in the share of its roads at risk of inundation, at 46 percent. The state also ranks highest for the share of fire stations (57 percent) and police stations (50 percent) exposed to a 100-year flood. And West Virginia ties with Louisiana for the greatest share of schools (38 percent) and commercial properties (37 percent) at risk.
But what, if anything, does any of this have to do with Mr. Manchin’s opposition to the destruction of West Virginia’s coal industry? The Times article does not say, other than repeatedly invoking the phrase “climate change,” as if that has something to do with flood risk from rivers in West Virginia. The article makes no attempt to demonstrate any relationship between climate change and river flood risk.
Perhaps we should look to see what we can find about trends in flooding and/or extreme wet conditions in the United States over the last century or so. That is the period when human “greenhouse gas” emissions have supposedly been warming the atmosphere. Here is, for example, this NOAA chart of what they call “very wet/dry” conditions in the U.S. from 1895 through September 2021:
Can you detect the trend of increasing “extreme wet conditions” in that chart as the atmosphere has warmed (by maybe 1 deg C) over the time in question? Neither can I. How about U.S. flood damage as a percentage of GDP? Here is a chart presented to Congress by Roger Pielke, Jr. in testimony in 2015:
That trend looks to be significantly down rather than up. Mr. Pielke’s comment:
The good news is U.S. flood damage is sharply down over 70 years.
How about the IPCC. Surely they can come up with something to scare us? Here is a 2018 IPCC document with the title “Changes in Climate Extremes and their Impacts on the Natural Physical Environment.” On the subject of floods, from page 175:
The AR4 and the IPCC Technical Paper VI based on the AR4 concluded that no gauge-based evidence had been found for a climate-driven globally widespread change in the magnitude/frequency of floods during the last decades (Rosenzweig et al., 2007; Bates et al., 2008).
In short, the evidence to date gives no reason to believe that there is any reason that floods have increased, or are about to increase, due to “climate change.” In other words, the threat against Mr. Manchin to destroy West Virginia with floods can’t really be based on that. It must be witchcraft!
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‘Conspiracy Theory’ Now Fact: Greater Israel Has Arrived
By Kit Klarenberg | Mint Press News | January 28, 2025
Ever since Tel Aviv’s 1948 creation, much has been said and written about ‘Greater Israel’ – the notion Zionism’s ultimate end goal is the forcible annexation and ethnic cleansing of vast swaths of Arab and Muslim lands for Jewish settlement, based on Biblical claims this territory was promised to Jews by God. The mainstream media typically dismisses this concept as antisemitic conspiracy theory, or at most the fringe fantasy of a minuscule handful of extremist Israelis.
In reality … continue
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