Russia Falsely Accused of Hacking USAID
By Stephen Lendman | May 29, 2021
Virtually all accusations by Washington and its complicit partners against Russia and other nations free from US control lack evidence supporting them because none exists.
Yet they surface time and again, supported by Western press agent media.
On Friday, the Russophobic NYT was at it again, falsely accusing Moscow of hacking USAID.
In response to an earlier phony US accusation of Russian hacking last year, its US embassy said the following:
“We paid attention to another unfounded attempt of the US media to blame Russia for hacker attacks on US governmental bodies.”
“We declare responsibly: malicious activities in the information space contradicts the principles of the Russian foreign policy, national interests and our understanding of interstate relations.”
“Russia does not conduct offensive operations in the cyber domain.”
“What is more, the Russian Federation actively promotes bilateral and multilateral cyber security agreements.”
“In this regard, we would like to remind (the US regime) of the initiative put forward by President Vladimir Putin on September 25 on a comprehensive program of measures to restore Russian-US cooperation in the field of international information security.”
“We have received no reply from Washington.”
“Many our other suggestions to start constructive and equal dialogue with the US remain unanswered.”
Hacking and countless other crimes are how the US-dominated West and Israel operate.
In sharp contrast, Russia fully complies with its international obligations, according to the rule of law.
Yet once again, NYT fake news falsely claimed the following:
“Hackers linked to Russia’s main intelligence agency surreptitiously seized an email system used by (USAID) to burrow into the computer networks of human rights groups and other organizations of the sort that have been critical of President Vladimir V. Putin, Microsoft Corporation disclosed on Thursday (sic).”
When accusations are unsupported by independently verified evidence, they’re baseless.
None exists to support accusations against Russia under Vladimir Putin.
Will the latest phony one be used as a pretext to cancel a scheduled mid-June summit between Putin and Biden’s impersonator — because he can only recite lines scripted for him.
If held, the summit will be farcical — a know-nothing imposter engaging with a world leader of Putin’s stature.
Perhaps the latest phony accusation against Russia will be used to cancel it — to avoid US embarrassment if they meet face-to-face.
No Russian hack of USAID occurred, no evidence suggesting it.
What the Times indicated as the aim of the phony claim fell flat like earlier baseless accusations against Russia.
An invented scenario by the Times reads like a rejected grade B Hollywood script.
Corporate predator Microsoft is complicit with wars by hot and/or other means on invented US enemies.
So are the Times and other establishment media — operating as mouthpieces for US imperial interests on all things geopolitical, notably against Russia, China, and nations victimized by US aggression.
No phony NYT claim of Russian “malicious activity (or) appetite for disruption” against the US or other countries exists, no evidence suggesting it.
An unnamed DHS official falsely claimed that the agency was “aware of the potential compromise” at USAID (sic) and is “working with the FBI and (the State Department’s agency) to better understand the extent of the compromise (sic) and assist potential victims (sic).”
No Russian SolarWinds hack occurred earlier or other hacking it was falsely accused of earlier.
Yet Microsoft and the Times falsely claimed a Nobelium group in Russia hacked SolarWinds and USAID despite no verifiable evidence because there is none.
Time and again, Times reports don’t pass the smell test.
Its daily editions feature managed news misinformation, disinformation and fake news on major domestic and geopolitical issues — far removed from all the news it claims to be fit to print.
A Final Comment
Undemocratic Dem war goddess Samantha Power heads USAID.
Like other interventionist extremists, she never met a nation free from US control she didn’t want smashed.
She once called US foreign policy “a tool box” with a range of options to advance the nation’s hegemonic aims.
Civil rights lawyer Chase Madar earlier called her hellish agenda “a richly instructive example of the weaponization of human rights.”
Like other US hostile to the rule of law officials, she falsely blames others for its high crimes of war and against humanity.
Chances are she was behind the latest false accusation of Russian hacking, enlisting Microsoft to make the phony claim.
Her maliciously destructive worldview is polar opposite values just societies cherish.
Media outlets try to deflect from lab leak theory and censorship
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | May 29, 2021
Mainstream media, now embarrassingly forced to follow President Biden’s policy and abruptly reverse course on the Wuhan lab leak theory – after branding and ridiculing it as a conspiracy theory for months – are working to downplay the importance of censorship around the topic that was enforced until just a few days ago.
One would think it would be hard to find a single person who has been through more than a year of lockdowns and myriads of restrictions who would not be interested to learn what the virus is and where it came from – but apparently, such people exist, in media outlets like The Verge.
An article that could easily be described as a distraction in its own right from the topic of why the lab leak theory was suppressed and censored so vigorously, now claims that the origin of coronavirus doesn’t really matter and suggests that it should be swept under the rug as a distraction from truly important topics.
While briefly paying lip service to the importance of discovering the origin of the virus, the article’s real goal is to convince its readers to change the topic. Forced to eat their own words, this class of media are no longer calling the Wuhan theory a fringe conspiracy, but “an extraordinary claim” that is “technically possible.”
But discussing the topic is discouraged as no less than “a distraction from the rest of the urgent work governments and health agencies around the world need to do in order to end this pandemic and prepare for the next one” – while at the same time calling for vaccination efforts to be doubled.
And as scientists who have tried to study the origin of coronavirus, including the possibility that it was artificially created, are finally getting a chance to speak after being censored and ostracized for a long time – mainstream media are scrambling to adjust to the new reality around the topic.
The New York Times has already done its U-turn, reporting on Friday that US intelligence agencies have a large amount of evidence concerning the Wuhan lab – but one of its reporters, Apoorva Mandavilli, didn’t get the memo immediately.

On the same day President Biden announced an investigation, Mandavilli tweeted, “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here” – only to quickly delete the post after receiving backlash for making the claim that it was “racist” to consider the possibility that the virus was engineered by humans.
Widespread distribution of ivermectin proves effective in Mexico against COVID-19
By Juan Quintero | TrialSiteNews | May 28, 2021
One country that has had remarkable success in the war against the COVID pandemic, but has received little to no global media coverage, is Mexico. Like the rest of the world, COVID cases in Mexico exploded in April 2020, the first hot spots flaring up along the northern border with the United States, in Mexico City and Quintana Roo, a popular tourist destination in the Caribbean. At the beginning of the pandemic, Mexico took recommendations and followed protocol set forth by the World Health Organization (WHO) and watched the virus spread from state to state, engulfing the entire country.

First COVID Outbreak in Mexico
On June 10, the Spanish-speaking media began reporting on the success that Peru was having in controlling the virus using ivermectin as a treatment. Mexico was in the middle of its worst peak of cases and deaths with records breaking daily, and interest in the drug – as well as sales – rose dramatically.
On June 20, the pan-American WHO (OPS/OMS) issued a statement strongly opposing the use of ivermectin. Additionally, other media sources started publishing anti-ivermectin articles all over Mexico. And as the number of deaths slowly decreased, interest in ivermectin subsequently died down.

In October 2020, cases in Mexico began spiking again; the outbreak this time started in Chihuahua, the state on the border of Texas. Texas was also experiencing an outbreak at this time, so it’s likely that the cases in Mexico were sparked in the US. From Chihuahua, cases spread south and into Mexico City igniting the worst outbreak yet. Mexico City was an inferno of COVID cases and death, and health workers rushed to the capital city from all over the country to help.

Determined to stop the spread at any cost, Mexico City officials held a meeting at the end of December, 2020, and invited the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) among other groups of doctors. Together, they decided to begin distribution of ivermectin kits in Mexico City and Mexico State to anyone who tested positive for COVID and wanted to take the drug, and to closely monitor hospitalizations to keep tabs on ivermectin’s efficacy. The kits distributed included ivermectin, aspirin and paracetamol. Between the end of November 2020 and the end of January 2021, more than 200,000 people tested positive for COVID, and of these, nearly 80,000 used the ivermectin kits. Results showed up to 76% reduction in hospitalization in the group that was taking ivermectin.


https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/r93g4/
On January 22, 2021, the mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Scheinbaum, held a live televised press conference where she talked about the positive results from the ivermectin distribution from December. Following the press release, the kits were made available for everyone in the whole of Mexico, and nation-wide results of ivermectin use were monitored. Amazingly, after mass distribution of ivermectin, every single COVID indicator in Mexico improved. Over the course of 18 weeks, COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continuously dropped, and on May 14, the mayor held another televised press conference sharing the positive results of the months’-long campaign.
What is astonishing, however, is that the media outlets in Mexico have not reported on this astounding result. They continued to report on the number of excess deaths from before the ivermectin intervention – and not one has covered the current situation of declining cases and deaths due to wide-spread ivermectin intervention.


Global heating: Study shows impact of ‘climate racism’ in US – BBC
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | May 26, 2021
The clown Matt McGrath is at it again:
A new study says that black people living in most US cities are subject to double the level of heat stress as their white counterparts.
The researchers say the differences were not explained by poverty but by historic racism and segregation.
As a result, people of colour more generally, live in areas with fewer green spaces and more buildings and roads.
These exacerbate the impacts of rising temperatures and a changing climate.
Cities are well known magnifiers of a warmer climate.
The surface urban heat island effect is the technical term for the impact that the buildings, roads and infrastructure of cities have on temperatures.
All that concrete and asphalt attracts and stores more heat, ensuring that both days and nights in big urban areas are much warmer than the surrounding locations.
But, within cities, there are often large differences in this heat island impact, with areas rich in trees and green spaces noticeably cooler than those that are dense with housing and industry.
A previous study in the US found a correlation between warmer neighbourhoods in big cities with racist housing practices dating back to the 1930s.
Back then, areas with large African-American or immigrant populations were “redlined” in documents by federal officials, and deemed too hazardous for home loans and investment.
This led to a concentration of poverty and low home ownership rates in some parts of big cities.
This new study takes a broader look at these warmer neighbourhoods and the people who are affected by them.
Using satellite temperature data combined with demographic information from the US Census, the authors found that the average person of colour lives in an area with far higher summer daytime temperatures than non-Hispanic white people.
The actual paper, which is here, does not mention “racism” at all. So why does McGrath introduce it as a concept, never mind inventing the term “climate racism”?
Quite what the “racist” housing policies of the 1930s have to do with 21st century America is beyond me. There has been nothing to stop people moving out of those areas since, as millions have. (This is known as “black flight”, with first the black middle class, followed by the working class, moving out to the suburbs, as the whites did before them. What is left tends to be the “underclass”. See here for more details.)
It is well known that poor people, particularly in inner cities, all around the world suffer worse outcomes in all sorts of ways, for instance healthcare, education and job prospects. And, as McGrath now seems to have realised, the urban heat island effect is far more significant than the tiny amount of climate warming seen in the last century.
Maybe instead of wasting trillions on fighting climate change, we should spend a fraction of it on improving inner cities.
The Myth of the ‘Asymptomatic Spreader’ Dealt Another Blow This Week

21st Century Wire | May 24, 2021
Since the pandemic crisis began in early 2020, government and public health officials have been adamant that any difficult measures taken were all being done in order to ‘control the spread of the virus’ or ‘stop the disease.’ Thus, a litany of so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions, and also pharmaceutical interventions – were deemed by the consensus to be essential measures in fighting the spread of what was being characterized as an asymptomatic disease.
Over a year later, a few industrious ‘public health’ mavens have summoned the courage to actually test this fundamental assumption. Recently in the UK, officials have staged and monitored nine large-scale events, including an FA Cup final football match, and the Brit Awards – both of which were exempt from the usual COVID rules. The results of this test should be hailed as good news, but for those heavily invested in the narrative, it’s nothing short of a meltdown: little to no coronavirus “cases” turned up.
Officials managed to scrape together just 15 alleged “cases” or “infections” (deemed as such merely from a single ‘positive test’) out of some 60,000 total attendees.
The result of this experiment has dealt a crushing blow to the central myth upon which the entire COVID-19 ‘global pandemic’ crisis has been built – namely the myth of the asymptomatic spread, and the much-maligned notorious “super-spreader” events.
Sky News UK reports…
Nine large-scale events were staged as part of the government’s plan to allow for the return of big crowds this summer. Those who attended were exempt from certain coronavirus rules, such as the rule-of-six.
The government confirmed to Sky News that 15 COVID cases had been recorded out of nearly 60,000 people who attended the events, which “is in line with the broader population”.
Latest figures show the rate of people testing positive for COVID in the UK is 22 infections per 100,000 people.
The pilot events included three football matches at Wembley Stadium – the FA Cup final which was attended by 21,000 supporters, an FA Cup semi-final and the Carabao Cup final.

IMAGE: Animated graphic from NPR’s debunked April 2020 propaganda article entitled, “What We Know About The Silent Spreaders Of COVID-19.”
Combine this latest UK admission with the recent backtracking by Dr. Anthony Fauci and the US Center for Disease Control CDC on masks and asymptomatic transmissions, and it’s clear that officials will have no choice now but to back-off supporting the nonscience-based myth of the asymptomatic spreader or “silent spreaders,” and it’s not difficult to see how problematic this widely held assumption is now becoming, with many media doctors and public health officials now facing challenges over what can only be described as a collective propaganda effort deployed by government, media and medical industry over the last 14 months.
The peer-reviewed literature is also clear, with large-scale studies conducted, including at the supposed epicenter of the pandemic in Wuhan, China – all of which showed no evidence of alleged asymptomatic spreading of the ‘novel’ coronavirus. See their results here, here, and here.
Of course, none of this should surprise any honest doctor or real scientist. We’ve always known that any disease requires symptoms first. But somehow, common sense has been completely abandoned during the Covid crisis.
Of all the widely-held assumptions and hysteria surrounding the COVID crisis, none has been more pivotal than the myth of the ‘asymptomatic spread’ in ballasting every single unprecedented ‘health intervention’ policy including:
- Social Distancing
- Mass Testing
- Reliance on non-diagnostic PCR and Lateral Flow tests
- Track and Trace bio surveillance
- Lockdowns
- Quarantining the healthy
- Masks
- Border Closures
- Business Closures
- School Closures
- Mass Vaccinations
- Vaccine Passports
It’s astonishing to consider that every single one of these emergency measures have been predicated on the widely-held, nonscientific myth of the asymptomatic spread.
Perhaps more shocking is the fact that no one in government, media or the legions of newly-crowned ‘public health experts’ – have bothered to challenge this key assumption, perhaps out of fear, or more likely because it was politically and economically expedient for stakeholders of the current crisis narrative.
It is not uncommon the see the bevy of experts and media anchors, all repeating ad nauseum presumptive statements like:
“A third of people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus have no symptoms but are just as infectious as those with COVID-19.”
Unraveling the murky ontology of the myth of the asymptomatic spreader, we can point to an informative piece published recently in Lockdown Skeptics entitled, “How Did a Disease With no Symptoms Take Over the World?” A fair question, and indeed a necessary one too.
The article answers this question quite simply – it’s so obvious and still profound if one pauses to consider just how many of the so-called experts and health ministers have routinely avoided applying any real epistemology or scientific method to the wild ‘pandemic’ claims which have become so commonplace over the last 14 months:
“Given that this is all so blindingly obvious to anyone who has ever been near a biology textbook, the only reasonable conclusion we can draw about the creation of an asymptomatic disease is that it wasn’t done by a biologist but instead by individuals (probably on the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)) whose agenda is not to convey accurate information to the public but something different: fear and uncertainty.”
It’s been 14 months, and the world has been turned upside-down, and the billionaire class have reached new heights in wealth and consolidation of power and influence, while everyone else has slid downwards.
Let there be a reckoning. It’s time to talk about the real science – which does not even remotely support the inflated ‘global pandemic’ narrative.
CNN anchor flies into rage after Pakistani FM says Israelis control media

This photo shows CNN anchor Brianna Golodryga’s twitter page, accusing Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi of anti-Semitism.
Press TV – May 22, 2021
A CNN news anchor has accused Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi of anti-Semitism after he said the Israeli regime has lost the media war in the latest aggression against Palestinians.
During a live interview with CNN on the latest Israeli war, Qureshi was accused of “invoking an anti-Semitic slur” after he simply said Israelis “control the media,” and have influential “connections”.
“Israel is losing out. They’re losing the media war despite their connections. The tide is turning,” the Pakistani foreign minister told CNN anchor Bianna Golodryga.
An apparently outraged Golodryga, who is Jewish herself, put aside her supposed journalistic impartiality, pouncing on the remarks to accuse Qureshi of anti-Semitism.
The journalist followed the statement asking for clarification on what their connections were. “Deep pockets,” he replied, adding later, “they are very influential people. They control media.”
Golodryga went on to accuse the FM of making an anti-Semitic remark, to which he responded, “Well, you see, the point is, they have a lot of influence. They get a lot of coverage. Now, what balances that is the citizen journalist who has been reporting, sharing video clips, and that has jolted people, and woken up people, and people who were sitting on the fence are today speaking up.”
Golodryga then took her inquisition to the next level, asking if the FM would condemn the anti-Jewish sentiment that is allegedly taking hold due to the Israeli violence in Palestine.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 248 Palestinians were killed in the new Israeli offensive, including 66 children and 39 women, and at least 1,910 were injured.
Golodryga repeated her accusation later as she tweeted a clip of the interview, saying, “I had planned to speak with Pakistan’s foreign minister about paths towards a peaceful resolution between Israel and Hamas. Instead, he began the interview by invoking an anti-semitic slur.”
The interview prompted a chorus of support for the Pakistani foreign minister, while pro-Israeli voices cast scorn at his remarks.
Journalist and talk show host Fereeha Idrees defended Qureshi.
“He didn’t even utter the word ‘Jew’ or even made a feeble reference to it. All he said was media is controlled by Israel,” Idrees wrote on Twitter.
Idrees pointed out that during the recent aggression, Israeli jets had leveled a high-rise building in Gaza that housed the offices of several media outlets, including the Associated Press and Al Jazeera.
As US regime-change agency NED admits interference in Belarus, leaked documents also implicate UK Foreign Office
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | May 21, 2021
The full extent of Western meddling in Belarus prior to the country’s contested August 2020 election may never be known. Yet the outlines of a wide-ranging foreign effort to destabilize the government are becoming ever clearer.
As RT reported earlier this week, a pair of Russian pranksters posing as Belarusian opposition figures have duped high-ranking representatives of US regime-change arm the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) into exposing the extent of Washington’s clandestine involvement in the unrest that erupted across the country throughout 2020.
Among other bombshell disclosures, Nina Ognianova, who oversees the NED’s work with local groups in the country, suggested “a lot of the people” who were “trained” and “educated” via the organization’s various endeavors there were pivotal to “the events, or the build-up to the events, of last summer.”
Long-time NED chief Carl Gershman – who in September 2013, less than six months prior to the coup that shifted Kiev’s political orientation, dubbed Ukraine “the biggest prize” for Washington – added that his organization was working with controversial opposition figure Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and her team “very, very closely.” In all, the agency bankrolled at least 159 civil society initiatives in Belarus, costing $7,690,689, from 2016 to 2020 alone.
The team’s unguarded comments represent a rare public admission of the insidious, destabilizing role played by the NED – in 1991, its then-president acknowledged, “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” However, leaked UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) files indicate that the US is far from the only foreign power attempting to undermine the country’s government.
In 2017, then-Prime Minister Theresa May unveiled a £100 million kitty, ostensibly for battling Kremlin disinformation. In practice, internal FCDO files leaked by hacktivist collective Anonymous made clear the effort was primarily concerned with “weakening the Russian state’s influence,” particularly in its “near abroad.” As a close neighbor and arguably most important ally of Moscow, Belarus was unsurprisingly very much in the FCDO’s crosshairs.
In January of that year, Whitehall commissioned an extensive analysis of Belarusian citizens’ perceptions, motivations, and habits, in order to “identify opportunities” to “appropriately communicate” with them. In particular, London was interested in “existing or potential grievances against their national government” that could be exploited, and “channels and messages” by which the UK government could “appropriately engage with different sub-groups.”
The analysis was conducted by shadowy FCDO contractor Albany Associates, which has, in recent years, also conducted numerous information warfare operations in the Baltic states, in order to “develop greater affinity” among the region’s Russian-speaking minority for the UK, European Union and NATO. While carrying out another Whitehall-funded project targeted at Moscow, the firm closely collaborated with NED-connected French NGO IREX Europe.
An accompanying bio notes IREX has been working in Belarus since 2006 “with print, online and radio outlets,” to “improve the quality of their coverage,” and “increase their understanding of the EU and EU member states.” As part of its youth audience offering in the country, the organization was said to have founded the Warsaw-based Euroradio, along with online outlet 34mag.
Footage produced by Euroradio of violent crackdowns on protesters in Minsk was regularly aired by the Western media, including the BBC, during the strife. The outlet even specifically amplified calls from the British state broadcaster for activists to submit pictures and videos for use in news coverage. Franak Viacorka – an Atlantic Council senior fellow, and now senior advisor to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya – prominently hailed its “fearless” reporting of the upheaval.
Euroradio also repeatedly crops up in documents related to the Open Information Partnership (OIP), which is the “flagship” strand within Whitehall’s multi-pronged propaganda assault on Russia. Bankrolled by the FCDO to the tune of £10 million, the organization maintains a network of 44 partners across Central and Eastern Europe, including “journalists, charities, think tanks, academics, NGOs, activists, and factcheckers.” One of the collective’s primary, covert objectives is influencing “elections taking place in countries of particular interest” to the FCDO.
The classified files make clear the OIP has engaged in numerous astroturfing initiatives throughout the region, helping organizations and individuals produce slick propaganda masquerading as independent citizen journalism, which is then amplified globally via its network.
For instance, in Ukraine, the OIP worked with a 12-strong group of online ‘influencers’ “to counter Kremlin-backed messaging through innovative editorial strategies, audience segmentation, and production models that reflected the complex and sensitive political environment,” in the process allowing them to “reach wider audiences with compelling content that received over four million views.”
In Russia and Central Asia, the OIP established a covert network of YouTubers, helping them create videos “promoting media integrity and democratic values.” Participants were also taught how to “make and receive international payments without being registered as external sources of funding” and “develop editorial strategies to deliver key messages,” while the consortium minimized their “risk of prosecution” and managed “project communications” to ensure the existence of the network, and indeed the OIP’s role, were kept “confidential.”
It would be entirely unsurprising if similar efforts were being undertaken in Belarus. After all, the country – along with Moldova and Ukraine – is referred to in the leaked documents as “the most vital space in the entire network,” and a “high-impact priority” for London, suggesting its 2020 election was very much “of interest” to Whitehall. If so, it would likewise be entirely unsurprising if many of the alleged so-called citizen journalists and media outlets covering the unrest in Minsk received funding and training from the OIP.
All along, too, MEMO 98, an OIP member coincidentally also funded by NED, kept a close eye on the incendiary proceedings, publishing several analyses of media coverage and social media activity related to the protests. It drew particular attention to the output of Belsat TV, a Warsaw-based channel – founded in December 2007 by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it seeks to influence political change in Belarus. MEMO 98 praised the station’s “extensive coverage of protests and related intimidation of activists.”
Strikingly, the leaked FCDO files indicate that Belsat TV received intensive, Whitehall-financed support from the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the newswire’s international “charitable” wing, including 150 days’ consultancy in improving “TV output quality and audience reach.”
While the protests have largely fizzled out in recent months, and Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s calls for Western leaders to recognise her as the legitimate president of Belarus continue to fall on deaf ears, there are clear signs many other media platforms in Belarus receive life-giving sponsorship from London to this day.
In March 2021, the FCDO published an update on the progress of its global ‘Media Freedom Campaign’, which revealed that, over the past year, Whitehall had allocated £950,000 in financing to Belarusian news outlets, enabling them to “remain open and maintain a functional level of equipment.”
“Without this support, they would otherwise have been forced to close by government measures,” the document stated. “The funding has saved jobs and ensured that independent media can still hold the government to account during a period of increasingly violent action by the security forces.”
Evidently, even during a global pandemic, the regime-change show must go on – and the UK government is committed to ensuring people the world over continue to receive a steady deluge of slanted agitprop from the streets of Minsk, in order to turn public opinion against the government not only of Belarus, but of Russia too.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
Add The Wall Street Journal To The People Who Can’t Do Basic Arithmetic
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | May 17, 2021
Let’s face it, lots of people aren’t very good at math, even rather basic math. On the other hand, some people are quite good at it. If you aren’t very good at math, there are plenty of other things for you to do in life. My own field of law practice mostly does not require much skill at math, and there are plenty of math-challenged people who are nevertheless very good lawyers.
But some big societal decisions require a certain level of math competence. Some of these decisions can involve multi-hundreds of billions of dollars, or even multi-trillions of dollars. For example, consider the question of whether proposed electricity generation system X has the capability to deliver the amount of electricity a state or region needs, and at the times it is needed. Answering this question is just a matter of applied basic arithmetic. Given the dollars involved, you would think that when a question like this is being addressed, it would be time to call in some people who could do the arithmetic, or who at least would be willing to try.
Yet when the issue is replacing generation of electricity by fossil fuels with generation by “renewables,” it seems that the need to believe that the renewables will work and be cost effective is so powerful that all efforts to do the arithmetic get banished. I last considered this issue in a post last week titled “California’s Zero Carbon Plans: Can Anybody Here Do Basic Arithmetic?” The answer for the California government electricity planners was a resounding “NO.” Today, the Wall Street Journal joins the math-challenged club with a front page story headlined “Batteries Challenge Natural Gas As America’s No. 1 Power Source.” (probably behind pay wall)
The theme of the story is that “renewable” energy sources, such as solar, paired with batteries to balance periods of low production, are rapidly becoming so cheap that they are likely to “disrupt” natural gas plants that have only recently been constructed:
[T]he combination of batteries and renewable energy is threatening to upend billions of dollars in natural-gas investments, raising concerns about whether power plants built in the past 10 years—financed with the expectation that they would run for decades—will become “stranded assets,” facilities that retire before they pay for themselves. . . . But renewables have become increasingly cost-competitive without subsidies in recent years, spurring more companies to voluntarily cut carbon emissions by investing in wind and solar power at the expense of that generated from fossil fuels.
To bolster the theme, we are introduced to industry executives who are shifting their investment strategies away from natural gas to catch the new renewables-plus-batteries wave. For example:
Vistra Corp. owns 36 natural-gas power plants, one of America’s largest fleets. It doesn’t plan to buy or build any more. Instead, Vistra intends to invest more than $1 billion in solar farms and battery storage units in Texas and California as it tries to transform its business to survive in an electricity industry being reshaped by new technology. “I’m hellbent on not becoming the next Blockbuster Video, ” said Vistra Chief Executive Curt Morgan.
But how does one of these solar-plus-battery systems work? Or for that matter, how does a wind-plus-battery system work? Can anybody do the arithmetic here to demonstrate how much battery capacity (in both MW and MWH) it will take to balance out a given set of solar cells at some particular location so that no fossil fuel backup is needed? You will not find that in this article.
Here’s something that ought to be obvious: solar panels at any location in the northern hemisphere will produce less power in the winter than in the summer. The days are shorter, and the sun is lower in the sky and consequently weaker. Therefore, any system consisting solely of solar panels plus batteries, where the batteries are seeking to balance the system over the course of a year, will see the batteries drawn down continuously from September to March, and then recharged from March to September. Do batteries that can deal with such an annual cycle of seasons even exist? From the Journal piece:
And while batteries can provide stored power when other sources are down, most current batteries can deliver power only for several hours before needing to recharge. That makes them nearly useless during extended outages. . . . Most current storage batteries can discharge for four hours at most before needing to recharge.
OK, then, so if solar-plus-battery systems are about to displace natural gas plants, what’s the plan for winter? They won’t say. The fact is, the only possible plans are either fossil fuel backup or trillions upon trillions of dollars worth of batteries. But the author never mentions any of that. How much fossil fuel backup? That’s an arithmetic calculation that is not difficult to make. But the process of making the calculation forces you to actually propose the characteristics of your solar-plus-battery system, which then makes the costs obvious. How much excess capacity of solar panels and batteries do you plan to build to minimize the down periods? Do you need solar panel capacity of four times peak usage, or ten times? Do you need battery capacity of one week’s average usage (in GWH) or two weeks or a full month?
The simple fact is that wind/solar plus battery systems would not need any government subsidies if they were cost effective. The Biden Administration is proposing to hand out many, many tens of billions of dollars to subsidize building these systems. They are clearly not cost-effective, and not even close. But no one in a position to know will make the relatively simple calculations to let us know how much this is going to cost. Even the Wall Street Journal can’t seem to grasp the math involved. And President Biden? It’s embarrassing even to ask the question.
British Geological Survey Warns Of Climate-Related Subsidence
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | May 19, 2021
It is sad to see what used to be a serious, scientific body prostitute itself to global warming scaremongering:
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New maps launched by the British Geological Survey (BGS) reveal how climate change is likely to drive an increase in subsidence-related issues for British homes and properties over the next 50 years.
Experts at the BGS, the UK’s geoscientific advisor which helps to advance our knowledge about changes in the environment, warns that the number of properties in Great Britain facing subsidence issues and damage to property from shrink-swell is on the rise, with figures of just 3 per cent in 1990 likely to reach 10 per cent by 2070. … Full article
Note that there is no evidence offered that any of this has actually gotten any worse in recent years. Instead, the report is all based around UKCP18, the Met Office’s modelled projections for what might happen if global temperatures rise significantly. We are of course familiar with previous Met Office projections, which have proved wide of the mark.
London has always been a hot spot for subsidence, as London Clay is one of the most shrinkable of soil types of all. However there is no evidence that the London region is getting wetter or drier. In particular, summers were frequently drier in the past than recently, which totally undermines the BGS’ conclusions.
https://www.ecad.eu/utils/showindices.php?1662iki81ikm3moq520ei7ipdp
Opinion polls show that very few people are seriously concerned about climate change, which is no doubt the reason why the BGS has decided to publish this farcical study.
Never have so many become so blinded to the truth
By Nicholas Orlando | Conservative Woman | May 19, 2021
THERE was a time in the not-too-distant past when our freedoms were predicated on the vulnerable being vaccinated. This was the limiter which justified the continuation of draconian measures into winter after Christmas was stolen. Christmas was stolen to save January. November was stolen to save Christmas. They told us in October that if we didn’t lock down then we would face 4,000 deaths a day. A number they knew at the time to be a gross overestimate. They used it anyway.
We now know unequivocally that we are victims of this government’s unethical psychological campaign of coercion. We know many loved ones believe their relatives’ deaths were falsely certified as Covid deaths on presumption and not evidence. And that a quarter of recently attributed deaths were not caused by the virus. I am still incredulous at the statement ‘deaths of any cause within 28 days of a positive Covid test’ as the caveat to daily reported figures.
We have simply lost our minds.
Of course no one wants to get Covid. Like any seasonal flu it has the potential to be nasty. But it remains a relatively insignificant virus for the vast majority of the population. Despite an average death age for the disease (82) higher than population life expectancy (81), we have been forced to endure an endless campaign of mendacious claims and impositions justified with empty promises.
Now the end of the long and ‘irreversible’ roadmap (which has for several months been at odds with the once solid claim of ‘data not dates’) is being re-framed before our eyes with Sage claiming the possibility of 10,000 hospital admissions per day in July and restrictions continuing beyond June 21.
The justification for this new round of official caution, the ‘Indian variant’, has been promulgated with several weeks of distressing media imagery. Just a few weeks before a similar stream of distress was being transmitted from Brazil.
For those who want to balance the BBC’s scenes of mass graves in Brazil and funeral pyres across India, it may be worth researching these countries’ Covid deaths per million to gain some proportion.
For many of us the past six months has been psychological torture. Endless days of winter isolation leading to a half-life in spring. A persistent sense of atrophy has remained with the dull ache of forced containment. Small businesses placed into induced comas. The nation’s cultural treasures kept under lock and key. Human connection severed. Life’s potential suppressed.
If you are buying into the official narrative you are rewarded with a sense of moral vindication. Your sacrifice is for a greater national good. It’s bad manners to question the motives and morality of what has taken place. Or to entertain the idea that taking an unlicensed medical treatment may not be okay.
If, like me, you are uncertain about the jab for perfectly sensible and personal reasons, you may be preparing for the extraordinary reality that access to your ‘normal’ life, including the things you love, be it cultural, social or leisure, may soon be off limits. You may be wondering if your job is going to be at risk. And whether you will again be allowed to travel abroad.
The Covzealots are now rounding on those of us they label with ‘vaccine hesitancy’. We are determined to be a risk, so it seems fair game to consider people like me to be selfish, idiotic, anti-vaxxer-conspiracy-nuts. The ramping up against us has the signs of becoming a persecutory campaign.
For what it’s worth, I’ve spent eight years of my life in various volunteering roles. Supporting the elderly, the mentally ill and young people. I’m as fallible as the next man. But I’m not going to take lectures on morality because I won’t be bullied or coerced into compliance by the state.
If you are observing the official narrative, you have seen the pattern. You were well prepared for the approaching about-turn on restriction easing. You were prepared for the forthcoming drive to vaccinate children (I was shocked when they announced the recommendation for pregnant women) with a medical device which remains in its trial phase.
The propaganda bomb, created with sophisticated psychological techniques, deployed throughout the media and driven forwards by state activists in the press, has been designed to rattle even the hardiest among us. For many, the commonplace week or two of coughs, aches and sneezes has become the existential terror of ‘is this really it?’
Whilst I understand the power of fear, I cannot grasp how so many fellow citizens have become so blinded. There seem to be two branches of the same pro-Covid narrative playing out within the mainstream: willingness to excuse ‘Boris’ and therefore lend sympathy for his government’s vaccine nationalism, or anger at his incompetence, that enough wasn’t done at the outset, so the endless spiral of restrictions is necessary (according to the ‘experts’). Either way they work together to support compliance.
Before the Iraq war, I was shouted down for questioning an agenda where so many things did not add up. The dodgy dossier latterly proved doubters like me to be correct. The same people are shouting at me again. Many supposedly astute individuals seem to want to lend good faith to another state operation being supported by Tony Blair.
I wonder if those amongst us going along with a monumental attack on truth, freedom and individual liberty would see through the shoddy claims of the government Covid salesmen were they lent the autonomy to be the ‘rational actors’ Sage planners had originally determined the population should be treated as? We will never know.
Politifact backtracks on the origin of SARS-Cov-2, yet smears remain uncorrected
By Meryl Nass, MD | May 18, 2021
Here is Politifact quoting me from the film Plandemic, which Politifact then disputed by citing a March 17, 2020 Nature Medicine article, which I had mentioned in the film as being bogus:
“I feel quite convinced that this was a laboratory designed organism.” — Dr. Meryl Nass, internal medicine specialist
POLITIFACT August 18, 2020: Research shows that the virus could not have been created in a lab. An article published March 17 says the genetic makeup of the coronavirus, documented by researchers from several public health organizations, does not indicate it was altered.
Now, it seems, many have awakened, after being spoon-fed an analysis of the facts by Nicholas Wade, and realized the Nature Medicine paper makes absolutely no sense.
Here is what Politifact says now, May 17, 2021:
Some scientists have argued that the lab-leak hypothesis deserves to be taken much more seriously than it was earlier in the pandemic, and that dismissals of it as conspiracy theory were premature. Claims of complete certainty on either side remain unfounded.
No mention, of course, of Politifact’s previous smear of me and the movie. All the fact-checkers piled on me last August, as I described in a blog post, for saying the origin of Covid was a lab. Where are the rest of them now? Do the rest of the fact-checkers correct their facts?
Do the social media platforms that banned the movie resurrect it?

