Canadian company is selling junk food made from crickets
By Keean Bexte | The Counter Signal | July 22, 2022
Entomo Farms, a company based in Canada, is selling junk food made from crickets in stores across the country under their “Actually Foods” brand.
“Actually Foods is on a mission to renew Canadians’ relationship with “healthy” food,” copy on the company’s website reads.
“We’ve ditched so-called “natural” ingredients that are actually not as clean as they claim. Instead, we’re making something you can feel good about, using unexpected ingredients that, although surprising, actually boast the health benefits you’re looking for: like high-protein cricket powders, fava beans, and more.”
Included in Actually Foods’ Cheddar Jalapeno Puffs are the following ingredients: Puff (Organic Corn Meal Flour, Lentil Flour, Fava Bean Flour, Rice Flour, Organic Cricket Flour), Seasoning (Buttermilk Powder, Modified Milk Ingredients, Salt, Dehydrated Vegetables (Jalapeno, Onion, Garlic, Green Bell Pepper), Yeast Extract, Natural Cheddar Cheese Flavoured Powder, Herbs, Spices, Citric Acid), Sunflower Oil.
The food itself appears indistinguishable from other junk foods, and one would have to check the labels and ingredients even to be aware that they were about to eat crickets [indeed, many processed foods contain disgusting ingredients, such as human hair sweepings, disguised with indecipherable names].
“Powered by crickets, 10g protein,” inconspicuous labelling on the package reads.
Moreover, given that the cricket powder has been mixed in with so many other ingredients commonly found in junk food, it’s likely the buggy flavour is entirely masked — though this journalist won’t be picking up a bag for a taste test any time soon.
According to the copyright on the page, the brand is owned by Entomo Farms, which is located in Norwood, Ontario, and claims that it’s “The Future of Food.”
“Through product excellence and education, to make cricket-based foods the first choice for individuals interested in high-quality, sustainable protein,” Entomo Farms’ mission statement reads.
The company’s website also includes several recipes, including their “Top 3 Cricket Powder Smoothie Recipes,” “Salsa with Cricket Powder,” and “Mexican Chopped Salad with Chili Lime Crickets.” Yum.
According to an article on the website, Entomo Farms raised its Series A Funding from Maple Leaf Foods to expand its operation in 2018.
The company was founded in 2014 by brothers Jarrod, Darren, and Ryan Goldin and had grown to 60,000 square feet of production space in just four years, making it “North America’s largest human-grade edible insect farm.”
In 2021, the company closed another round of fundraising, walking off with $3.7 million — primarily from North America and Asia — to grow the company’s operational capacity even further.
“We are thrilled to continue our growth trajectory in the alternative protein and sustainable foods space. We are expanding our facilities to support the exciting growth of our customers and we look forward to launching a new consumer brand later this year,” said Entomo Farms CEO Lauren Keegan. “With this investment, and a planned capital raise in late 2021, we will keep paving the way for crickets as an important food ingredient for people and pets.”
They want you to feel climate change is a “personal threat”. Here’s why.
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | July 21, 2022
“The climate crisis is a public health crisis”, that is a tweet by Hillary Clinton’s official twitter account yesterday afternoon.
The tweet included a link to a news story claiming that Spain and Portugal had seen over a thousand people had die in the past week, due to the heatwave (they’ve since amended that number to over 2000).
I don’t want to get into the maths of it, but across two countries totalling around 58 million people, 2000 in a week is not very many at all.
And, as I have pointed out, in a post-Covid world we can’t really be sure what “died due to the heat” even means.
Case in point – we’re already seeing drownings termed “heatwave deaths”… because they wouldn’t have been swimming if it wasn’t so hot.
But we’re not here to fact-check yet more figures or definitions. The point of this article is to highlight the message behind the tweet, and it’s not a new one. It’s all about taking the powers the states have acquired through “covid”, and then applying them to “climate change”
Maybe that means “climate lockdowns”, or “climate passports”, or rationing fuel or banning travel… but whatever terms or phrases they eventually use, it’s definitely some authoritarian fantasy made flesh.
That’s the target, and it has been from the beginning.
Since the earliest days of the “pandemic” there have been consistent (and ludicrous) attempts to try and associate “Covid” and “climate” in the public mind.
They started by directly linking the two, and to this day try and make out that climate change will cause more zoonotic pandemics. But that never really hit home.
The more consistent and pervasive messaging has been an effort to rebrand “climate change”, not as an environmental problem but as a “public health” problem.
This messaging first appeared in March 2020, when the pandemic was less than three months old the British Medical Journal published a paper titled “The WHO should declare climate change a public health emergency”, which argued that global warming was far more dangerous than a simple virus, and should be treated just as seriously.
Nobody really listened. In the two years since they’ve tried to bring it back over and over again, but it never lands.
Just weeks into lockdown we were already being told that lockdowns were healing the planet, and journalists were asking “if we can do this for covid, why not climate?”
By September of 2020 they were talking about “avoiding a climate lockdown”.
March of 2021 saw reports springing up claiming we needed a “covid lockdown every two years” to meet out climate goals.
In summer of 2021 the latest IPCC report prompted talk of “hinging from covid to climate” that never really took off.
This past March the think tank Public Policy Project repeated the demand that the WHO recognise climate change as a “public health emergency”.
And just yesterday, the BMJ was back at it, publishing two articles on the same topic. One warning about “The inconvenient truths of health and climate crises that can’t just be ignored” and another titled Groundhog day: the signs of a climate emergency are with us again
There’s a new push in the works, and the thinking behind it is clear.
After decades of propaganda that saw “global warming” become “climate change” become “global heating” and eventually “climate emergency”, people simply are not scared of it.
Maybe it’s subconscious knowledge that it’s a propaganda campaign, maybe it’s the literal 60 years of failed prophecies, but whichever it is people are not scared, not like they were of Covid anyway.
The powers-that-be have pretty much admitted this themselves, there’s a revealing Sky News article about it from just a couple of days ago, headlined:
Why is it so hard to get people to care about climate change?”
We saw, during Covid, the UK government’s Behavioural Insights Team published a memo which said people were not scared enough of Covid, and the messaging needed to change in order to scare people into compliance:
The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.
That same thinking holds with climate change. They want it to be the new covid, but to get there they need people to feel “an increased level of personal threat”.
That means hitting the dangers of climate change hard. It means fudging death numbers and manufacturing alarming statistics. And it means peppering those headlines with influential figures – like Hillary Clinton – calling climate change a “public health crisis”
That’s why the heatwave is being talked about in such absurd terms. That’s why the UK declared its first ever “heatwave” national emergency, and why Biden is considering declaring a “climate emergency” (whatever that means).
It’s why we’re seeing warnings of “thousands dying”, and suddenly getting “wildfires” (that turn out to be arson).
It’s why doctors have started literally diagnosing “climate change”, as if it were a disease.
They want – and need – to change the climate conversation. It’s not going to be about the environment anymore, it’s going to be about “public health”.
Climate change is being rebranded – it will no longer be a threat to the planet, from now on it is a threat to you.
And as soon as they that message has a grip on people, they will turnaournd and say “so, about those climate lockdowns.
Kremlin Says Western Restrictions to Blame for Technical Problems With Russian Gas Deliveries
By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat – 21.07.2022
Russian gas deliveries via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline were resumed on Thursday morning following scheduled maintenance work. Last month, Gazprom was forced to cut supplies sent through the network to about 40 percent of capacity due a refusal by Canada to send a Siemens turbine used by Nord Stream 1 to Russia due to sanctions.
All technical problems related to the delivery of Russian gas to Europe are the result of various restrictions Western countries themselves have placed on Russian energy exports, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has indicated.
“I suggest that you carefully reread the statement made by the [Russian] president in Tehran. He explained in great detail how many compressor stations there are, what kinds of problems have been recorded by Siemens – and in connection with this, what type of situation is occurring where it is impossible to build pressure up to 100 percent. These are technical reasons connected to the impossibility of proper technical maintenance,” Peskov said, speaking to reporters on Thursday.
“Any technical difficulties associated with this stem from the restrictions that European states and the European Union themselves have introduced… It is these restrictions which do not allow for the repair of equipment, including turbines operating at compressor stations. And it is these restrictions which lead to the fact that some units cannot currently receive the necessary maintenance,” he stressed.
Peskov indicated that Gazprom remains committed to fulfilling its obligations in full, and rejected recent statements made by Western officials and media about alleged Russian attempts to “pressure or blackmail” Europe in the energy sector. “These are absolutely false statements and we categorically deny them,” he said.
Asked to comment on Wednesday’s remarks by State Department spokesman Ned Price that the resumption of Nord Stream 1’s operation would be “an important element” in ensuring Europe’s security, Peskov said Moscow was “no longer surprised” by anything Washington says. “As for the energy security factor, yes, we agree – we constantly say that Russia, as a supplier of energy resources, is very important and integral factor for European energy security. This is true,” he said.
Nord Stream 1, which has become Gazprom’s central gas supply route to Europe amid machinations by Poland and Ukraine, resumed operations on Thursday morning following scheduled summer maintenance work, and is now expected to resume operations at about 40 percent of its capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Gazprom was forced to reduce shipments via the network in mid-June over delays in the repair of a Siemens-built high-pressure gas pumping turbine in Canada. Ottawa deliberately delayed the return of the turbine, which had undergone maintenance work, back to Europe, citing anti-Russian sanctions. Last week, amid pressure from Germany, Ottawa relented, with the turbine now thought to be on route back to Europe for installation at Gazprom’s Portovaya Compression Station on the Russian Baltic Sea coast. Ukrainian authorities blasted Canada over the move, vowing that Kiev would “never accept” Ottawa’s decision.
President Putin commented on the European energy crisis in remarks to reporters at the conclusion of his working visit to Iran on Tuesday, indicating that the EU and its allies in Kiev are wholly responsible for current situation regarding gas deliveries from Russia.
“Until recently, we supplied… around 30 billion cubic meters [of gas] a year to Turkey, and 170 billion to Europe, 55 billion of that via Nord Stream 1, and, if memory serves, 33 billion via Yamal-Europe, through two strings running through Ukraine. And about 12 billion to Europe through Turkey via Turkstream,” Putin said.
“Ukraine suddenly announced that it was going to close one of the two routes on its territory, allegedly because the gas pumping station is not under its control but on the territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic. It found itself under the control of the LPR several months earlier, but they closed it just recently without any grounds,” he said.
After that, Putin said, Poland imposed sanctions on the Soviet-era Yamal-Europe network, first shutting it down and then turning it back on in reverse mode to send about 32 million cubic meters of gas per day from Germany eastward.
“Where is the gas from Germany coming from? It is our Russian gas. Why from Germany? Because it turned out to be cheaper for the Poles. They used to get it from us at a very high price, closer to the market price, whereas Germany gets it from us 3-4 times cheaper than the market price under long-term contracts,” he explained.
“So, first one of the routes in Ukraine was shut down, then Yamal-Europe was shut down; now Nord Stream 1, which is one of the main routes – we pump 55 billion cubic meters a year through it,” Putin said.
The Russian president noted that there are five Siemens-built gas compressor turbines used by Nord Stream 1, plus one more on standby. One turbine was sent out for repairs to a Siemens plant in Canada, but was slapped with sanctions by Ottawa. On top of that, another turbine at Portovaya is out of order due to technical problems, leaving two operational units currently pumping 60 million cubic meters of gas per day.
“So, if one more is delivered, fine, we will have two in operation. But if it is not, only one will be left, and it will pump only 30 million cubic meters per day. You can imagine how much time it will take to pump the rest. How is this Gazprom’s responsibility? What does Gazprom even have to do with this? [The West] cut off one route, then another, and sanctioned this gas pumping equipment. Gazprom is ready to pump as much gas as necessary. But they have shut everything down,” Putin stressed.
The Russian president added that the new Nord Stream 2 pipeline network, which could double the Nord Stream network’s capacity to 110 billion cubic meters of gas per year over the long term, remains ready for launch, but has been frozen by Germany.
European economies are bracing for a cold winter and rushing to fill up underground gas storage facilities amid the largely self-inflicted energy crisis brought on by sanctions and Brussels’ push to “phase out” or restrict purchases of Russian oil, gas and coal to “punish” Moscow over its military operation in Ukraine. This week, the International Monetary Fund predicted that some countries’ economic output could fall up to 6 percent in the event of a total shutoff of Russian gas. Business leaders in Germany, the EU’s main industrial powerhouse, have warned that the country could face its gravest economic crisis since the Second World War amid the tensions over Russian gas deliveries.
Climate Change Dictates Are Self Destructive – But Also Part Of A Bigger Agenda
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | July 19, 2022
For many years we have been anticipating the implementation of far reaching and transformative restrictions on industry and agriculture in the name of “climate change” initiatives, and now it would seem the time has come for the fight to commence. The first major battleground is clearly Europe, as individual nations follow the emissions dictates if the centralized EU government, crushing their own economies while in the midst of a self induced energy crisis. It seems like madness, but there’s a bigger agenda at play here.
Today, a farmer’s rebellion is rising across Europe as the actual producers of the food that keeps the public alive are being demonized for refusing to work under conditions that would essentially bankrupt them. European emissions rules are not just about carbon, though that is a big focus. Rather, the rules include other natural gases including methane and nitrogen which are a byproduct of large farming operations. The nitrogen restrictions alone are set to destroy most farming operations in the Netherlands, which is one of the largest agricultural nations in the EU. Germany is set to follow the Netherlands with its own emissions rules in the near term.
First, it’s important to ask “why now?” There are a host of reasons. First and foremost, the EU climate agenda closely aligns with the UN climate protocols for the year 2030 and requires a 55% reduction of emissions in less than a decade (and net zero by 2050). If you think these decisions are being made by individual governments then you are mistaken; the 2030 plan was formulated by globalist institutions like the UN and the Club of Rome – Member states are simply following orders. The time-frame for drastic environmental rules was likely set back in 1992 during the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro (also known as Agenda 21).
Why the year 2030? It’s hard to say. There is no scientific basis for the timeline. There is no evidence to support the notion that climate change will make any noticeable environmental impact by 2030. They just really want carbon controls and other measures in place by 2030, and they won’t give a concrete reason for it.
Climate doomsday predictions have been presented by establishment paid scientists and activist hysterics for decades, and not a single one of these predictions has ever come true. For example, in the 1970’s climate scientists predicted a “new ice age” by the year 2000 and this nonsense scenario was spread widely by the media. Then they claimed that “acid rain” would kill off life in freshwater lakes in the 1980s; but that never happened. After that, the climate cult switched over to the global warming narrative, predicting that the ice caps would melt and rising seas would “obliterate nations” by the year 2000. Obviously, this never happened.
In the year 2000, scientists at the Climate Research Unit in Britain stated that snowfall was a “thing of the past” and that the next generation would not know what snow was. In 2008 NASA scientists argued that the Arctic would be “ice free” by the year 2018. The list goes on and on, and it would be hilarious if the people that made all these faulty predictions were not still influencing government policies, but they are.
The following quote from the Club of Rome, a group directly connected to the UN, should illustrate why the public has been constantly bombarded with climate doom mongering for the past few decades. The quote comes from a book titled ‘The First Global Revolution’ published in 1992. In that document they specifically recommend using global warming as a vehicle:
‘In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.’
The statement comes from Chapter 5 – The Vacuum, which covers their position on the need for global government. The quote is clear; a common enemy must be conjured in order to trick humanity into uniting under a single banner, and the elites see environmental catastrophe, caused by mankind itself, as the best possible motivator.
Except, there is no environmental catastrophe, at least not within the narrative the establishment presents. It simply doesn’t exist. There is no evidence to support the theory of man-made climate change. None. Global temperatures have risen only 1 degree Celsius in the past century, and there is no concrete proof that this single degree of temperature was caused by human activity.
The primary argument of climate scientists is one of exclusion: They say that all other potential causes (including the sun) have been proven not to be the cause, therefore, the cause “must” be human industry and emissions. But this is a lie.
Interestingly, the increase in temperatures cited by the NOAA and NASA coincide directly with an increase in solar activity over the course of the past 100 years according to a study released in 2006. Furthermore, scientists have discovered that solar activity in 2022 is OUTPACING previous predictions. Overall solar activity has been increasing at the same time as the earth has been warming – Imagine that.
Climate scientists continue to discount the sun as a cause because they say there’s not enough data to support the idea. Of course, there’s not enough data because all the money goes to scientists that support the man-made theory; there’s no funding to be had for scientists that present alternative theories.
Since the official temperature record used by climate scientists only goes back to the 1880s, there is no way of knowing for sure how often these warming patterns actually occur and how many times the earth has warmed by 1 degree Celsius over the millennia. But it doesn’t matter, because climate science is not about saving the Earth, it’s about creating an excuse to micromanage every aspect of human production and thus human society.
For emissions targets to be met by 2030, drastic society-changing events will have to take place within the next eight years. The very fabric of our current trade system and the global supply chain will have to be torn to shreds and replaced with an exceedingly limited production model. Not only that, but the human population would have to be reduced by billions. This model will be artificially contained within arbitrary climate guidelines set by unelected governing bodies in the name of stopping environmental changes that have not been proven to be caused by human beings at all. What it accomplishes is the formation of an authoritarian framework, one that the globalists will say is “environmentally justified.”
EU to soften Russia sanctions – Reuters
Samizdat | July 19, 2022
The European Union is planning to amend its sanctions on Moscow to facilitate trade in food and fertilizers, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
The changes will allow EU nations to unfreeze the funds of top Russian banks, which may be required to ease bottlenecks in the global trade of food and fertilizers, Reuters explained, citing a draft document it has seen.
The document said the funds could be released “after having determined that such funds or economic resources are necessary for the purchase, import or transport of agricultural and food products, including wheat and fertilizers,” the agency said.
The revised sanctions will also help facilitate exports of food from Russian ports, which traders had stopped servicing despite food exports being explicitly exempted from the sanctions, Reuters added, quoting an official.
The amendments are expected to be adopted on Wednesday, and will reportedly concern Russian lenders such as VTB, Sovcombank, Otkritie FC Bank, Promsvyazbank, and others.
Russia is the world’s largest exporter of fertilizers and wheat. According to Reuters, the changes follow criticism from African leaders about the negative impact the sanctions have had on the trade of critical commodities. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine and broad restrictions on Russia have led to food-supply shortages, rising grain and fertilizer prices, and have triggered fears of a global food crisis.
Venezuelan ruling party leader accuses US of gas pipeline ‘sabotage’
Samizdat | July 19, 2022
CARACAS – The vice president of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, accused the United States of “sabotage” at state-run Venezuelan oil facilities.
On Sunday, Venezuelan Petroleum Minister Tareck El Aissami said that a Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) gas pipeline in the northern state of Monagas was attacked, which triggered a fire at one of its sites. In June, the country’s authorities said that there was an attempted sabotage at the El Palito refinery in the northern state of Carabobo, which could have caused “catastrophic damage” to these facilities. Additionally, a massive fire broke out at the Cardon refinery in the northern state of Falcon in May.
“This is part of the US imperialism policy: attacking oil facilities, sending mercenaries here, some of whom were detained, while others were convicted of coup attempt and murder in our country. These are US government envoys,” Cabello said at a press conference in Caracas on Monday.
The recent “sabotage” at the PDVSA pipeline shows that the US government does not stop in its goal to destabilize the situation in Venezuela, according to Cabello.
“Such events should teach us that imperialism does not rest, they would like to see us torn apart and begging for mercy. It will not happen because our nation is not used to it, our nation does not give up,” Cabello said, adding that the security authorities will take responsibility for any act of aggression in Venezuela.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro had previously implicated Colombian President Ivan Duque in attacks on oil and electricity infrastructure of Venezuela.
Lack of Air Conditioning, Not Climate Change, Is the Real Summer Heat Wave Threat
By Ben Lieberman | CEI | July 11, 2022
Climate change policies often pose a greater risk than climate change itself, and that is especially true during summer heat waves. Each new heat wave invariably brings media coverage drawing overstated links to climate change, but the bigger threat to public health comes from climate activists’ war on affordable air conditioning.
It has always been the case that summer heat can be deadly, especially during heat waves, and the evidence points away from any appreciable increase attributable to anthropogenic climate change. In fact, the data show much worse heat waves in 1930s than today, though there has been a smaller uptick since the 1960s.
Far more important is access to air conditioning, which greatly reduces heat-related deaths where available. Studies show that widespread air conditioning use in the United States has considerably negated the health impact of high temperatures and prevented an estimated 18,000 heat-related deaths annually. The benefits would be even greater if and when the rest of the world acquires air conditioning, especially the nearly 3 billion people who live in tropical nations where residential air conditioning is still relatively uncommon.
That is where the cure-worse-than-the-disease part comes in. Climate activists have targeted air conditioning in numerous ways, all of them compromising affordability.
Congress passed production quotas on refrigerants called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) on the grounds that they contribute to climate change. Most residential systems use one such HFC for which the price has skyrocketed to the point that replacing refrigerant lost from a leak costs several hundred dollars more than it did last year. New systems designed to use one of the supposedly environmentally friendly alternative refrigerants will also carry a hefty premium, which is why their producers, including Honeywell and Chemours, joined environmentalists in lobbying Congress to push the cheaper HFCs out of their way. Thus, both repairs of existing systems or purchases of new ones have been adversely impacted.
The Kigali Amendment, a United Nations climate treaty, imposes overlapping global restrictions on these affordable HFCs. The Senate may soon decide whether or not to ratify the Kigali Amendment, adding yet more environmental red tape to air conditioning.
Operating costs have also shot up thanks to climate policy. The war on coal and natural gas has contributed to electric rate increases—up 12 percent in the last year alone. Thus, low-income (and even some not so low-income) households now need to be careful about how much they run their air conditioners.
Overall, both owning and running an air conditioning system has gotten costlier in 2022, and that trend will very likely continue for as long as the climate agenda does.
Thanks to climate change, a future that is slightly warmer than today is quite possible. But thanks to climate change policy, a future with less air conditioning to counter the effects of summer heat is more likely.
Eighty Times More Excess Deaths Associated With Cold Each Year than Heat
BY TOBY YOUNG | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JULY 17, 2022
Amid all the hysteria about next week’s extreme temperatures – which could climb to 41°, according to the Met Office – it’s worth bearing in mind that many, many more excess deaths in England and Wales are associated with cold each year than with heat. According to a recent study in the Lancet Planetary Health, between 2000 and 2019, there were an average of 65,000 excess deaths per year in England and Wales associated with cold, but fewer than 800 a year associated with heat. In other words, roughly 80 times more deaths per year are associated with cold than heat.
Needless to say, the report’s authors blame these excess deaths on ‘climate change’ in general and have nothing to say about the likelihood of the 65,000 figure increasing next winter as a result of rising energy bills.
The researchers analysed 10.7 million deaths that occurred in England and Wales between 2000 and 2019 across over 37,473 small areas that include around 1,600 residents, also known as lower super output areas (LSOAs). They then linked these data with high-resolution gridded temperature maps and potential drivers of vulnerability to heat and cold, including demographic and socio-economic factors, health and disability, housing and neighbourhood, landscape, and climatological characteristics. This allowed the researchers to characterise differences across small areas and map variation in temperature-related mortality risks across the two countries.
Dr Pierre Masselot, Research Fellow in in Environmental Epidemiology and Statistics at LSHTM and co-author of the study, said: “The results come at a critical time as countries and communities face increasing health impacts due to climate change and need to find effective ways to adapt to changing temperatures. The analytical framework also provides a flexible tool that can be adapted for future studies which aim to model temperature-related risks and impacts at small-area level under different climate change scenarios.”
The authors emphasised that, while the research showed that excess mortality attributed to cold was significantly higher than that attributed to heat, these results should be interpreted with caution as more cold than hot days were recorded throughout the year. Despite this, they highlighted that cold-related mortality is evidently a considerable health burden, particularly in deprived areas, and should be addressed with targeted public health interventions.
Nevertheless, any un-biased person reading this report cannot help but conclude that the rising cost of utility bills caused, in part, by the Government’s pursuit of ‘net zero’ will result in far more deaths than next week’s heat wave.
If you really care about reducing deaths due to extreme temperatures, shouldn’t you focus your energies on getting the Government to scrap its ‘net zero’ target, lift the ban on Fracking and start investing billions in nuclear[?], instead of disrupting traffic and sporting events?
You can read the Lancet Planetary Health study here.
The West’s Duplicity in the Food Crisis Caused by the Shortage of Grain
By Vladimir Danilov – New Eastern Outlook – 17.07.2022
Governments of many countries have recently been talking more and more about a possible food crisis in the near future, actively involving representatives from the UN and other international organizations, and numerous media platforms in this information campaign.
Yet, in addition to drawing everyone’s attention to the issue of combating hunger, which is especially threatening to the world’s poorest countries, the US and its Western allies are actively trying to use this situation to fuel their latest Russophobic campaign. Such provocative actions very quickly become understandable when, amidst the so-called “threats” of the global food crisis, the West places the blame on Russia alone because of its special operation against the neo-fascist regime in Kiev, sponsored by the USA and its allies. In doing so, the West is making unfounded accusations of Russia allegedly preventing the export of grain from Ukraine by sea, while keeping suspiciously silent about it not being Russia, but the regime in Kiev who has mined not only all Ukrainian ports, but even the distant shores of the Black Sea, and these mines have already left their anchors, which requires Ukraine to clear the mines from sea transport lanes and routes.
Today it has become clear to everyone that, in terms of the energy crisis and global economic collapse, and even more so in food problems, the United States itself and its Western allies are primarily to blame. It is their treacherous sanctions policy that has destroyed the international order and brought chaos to logistics and transport chains. Accusations by the West against Russia over the food crisis can only be considered as evidence of American efforts to redistribute the global agro-industrial market, which implies ousting Russia from the field of food trade, according to the Telegram channel of the Russian diplomatic mission in Washington.
The recent statements by member countries of the G7 about the shortage of wheat and the food crisis allegedly caused by Russia being a political provocation is pointed out by Hu Bingchuan, a researcher at the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in an article for the Chinese newspaper Huanqiu Shibao. As follows from his explanations, based on an objective assessment of the processes on the world food market, the absence of wheat from Ukraine will quickly be ironed out due to offers from other countries that supply grain growing – this is primarily Russia, Canada, and several European countries. It is already known that this year the total volume of grain production in the Russian Federation could reach 130 million tons, of which 87 million tons will be wheat, which is an absolute record. Wheat exports in 2022-2023 from Canada will also increase by 8.5 million tons, and by five million tons from the EU. The purpose of Western statements about Russia’s alleged “wheat war” is to create new restrictions against Moscow. The expert emphasizes that such statements have a clear political Russophobic orientation, and the current rise in wheat prices is not provoked by the lack of grain, but “its inconsistent global distribution among those who want it.”
Due to the recent policy pursued by Western countries, food prices in European nations and a number of other countries have already risen sharply, with many goods being sold in limited quantities. At the same time, if for rich countries the current situation simply portends a looming crisis, then for poor nations it threatens a real famine, which, in turn, could provoke an even greater crisis in the world, as it will lead to uprisings, revolutions, and wars.
Against the backdrop of the food crisis, the demand for Russian agricultural products around the world (which was quite high before), has increased several times. According to results from last year, Russian agro-industrial and fishery complex products were sent abroad to the tune of more than $37 billion. Under these conditions, and in order to avoid anti-Russian sanctions and the influence of Western food speculators regarding price, the Russian authorities will now only sell domestic grain and other agricultural products on the National Commodity Exchange and only for rubles.
As for the story artificially inflated by the United States about the amount of Ukrainian grain ready for export, it’s no secret to anyone that this is simply informational hype provoked by Washington to denigrate Russia. And this confirms the complete inconsistency with the truth of the story about 20 million tons of Ukrainian grain allegedly being blocked by Russia, previously disclosed by US President Biden. Even with a superficial analysis by experts, it turns out that at best there are 5 million tons of grain today in Ukraine. But it is constantly being exported in the direction of the states of the EU, immediately being poured into their storage facilities, and not sent somewhere south to those African countries suffering from hunger, which European politicians and experts constantly talk about. The German Ministry of Agriculture stated that in May alone Europe received 1.7 million tons of grain from Ukraine. Additionally, don’t forget that Ukraine’s share of world grain production is only 1.5%.
Russia has repeatedly stated its readiness to facilitate the export of even this remaining amount of grain from Ukraine, guaranteeing the unimpeded passage of ships with grain through the Black Sea. This is confirmed by the recent meeting in Istanbul of delegations from Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, and the UN to discuss the grain issue.
Meanwhile, what the West deliberately remains silent about, thereby demonstrating its frank duplicity, is all the obstacles created by the regime in Kiev over the “grain issue.” Per an official statement by the deputy head of the military-civilian administration of the Kherson Region, Kirill Stremousov, Ukraine is deliberately setting fire to wheat fields on the border of the Kherson Region. “Helicopters flew and set fire to wheat fields on the demarcation line. This is a Nazi regime and they don’t care,” Stremousov said.
The attempts to set fire to wheat fields in the Kherson Region by Ukrainian helicopters will be suppressed by air defense systems, said the head of the regional administration Volodymyr Saldo. He also stressed that “they stoop so low so as to destroy the labor of rural workers who have put their heart and soul into it.” The head of the administration called the Ukrainian military’s actions malicious and inhumane, describing them as an attempt to scare the local population.
Yet, no reports on this issue in the Western media, and even more so the censure of the authorities in Kiev for such crimes, can be expected from the West…
Scotland to scan vehicle license plates to enforce “low emission” zones
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | July 13, 2022
In the cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, and Aberdeen, in Scotland, Low Emission Zones (LEZs) have been launched – however enforcement will not begin until June 1, 2024 for Aberdeen and Edinburgh, June 1 2023 for Glasgow, and May 30 2024 for Dundee.
Transport Scotland said the grace period will allow ample time for compliance. Enforcement of the LEZs will be facilitated by automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems.
Vehicles entering the LEZs will be required to meet the Euro VI standards. Those that do not meet the standards are not allowed in the LEZs.
Penalties for non-compliance will be cumulative. The first incident of non-compliance would result in a £60 fine. Subsequent violations will result in a fine double the previous one up to a maximum of £960. The fine is reduced by half if paid within two weeks. The starting fine is reset if there are no subsequent violations within a 90-day period.
There has been a low emission zone in Glasgow that applies to buses since 2018.
Saudi Arabia outlines what it will do for oil output
Samizdat | July 16, 2022
Saudi Arabia is ready to increase oil production to its maximum of 13 million barrels per day but does not have the capacity to pump out more, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said during his address at the US-Arab summit in Jeddah on Saturday.
“The kingdom has announced an increase in its production capacity level to 13 million barrels per day, after which the kingdom will not have any additional capacity to increase production,” he was quoted as saying by UAE’s newspaper The National.
The crown prince also said that the global community should join forces to support the global economy, but noted that unrealistic policies regarding energy sources would only worsen the situation.
“Adopting unrealistic policies to reduce emissions by excluding main sources of energy will lead in coming years to unprecedented inflation and an increase in energy prices and rising unemployment, and a worsening of serious social and security problems,” he stated.
Mohammed bin Salman’s words come a day after his talks with Joe Biden, who was in Saudi Arabia on his first visit as US president, and urged the kingdom to increase oil production in order to reduce global reliance on supplies from Russia.
Commenting on his trip to the kingdom, Biden said Saudi Arabia’s “energy resources are vital for mitigating the impact on global supplies of Russia’s war in Ukraine.”
Saudi Arabia, one of the globe’s largest oil exporters and the leading producer within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), currently pumps out more than 12 million barrels of oil per day. The kingdom previously said it plans to reach production capacity of 13 million barrels per day by 2027. The Crown Prince did not reveal whether the timeframe for the boost in capacity has changed.
Following the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the US and other Western nations have stepped up sanctions on Moscow, calling, among other things, for a boycott on Russian energy supplies. The US stopped importing Russian oil earlier this year, and the EU placed a partial embargo on Russian fuel last month.
Washington is now planning to set a price cap on the Russian commodity, and the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is currently in Asia attempting to garner support for the scheme. The US is especially eager to secure the participation of China and India in the price cap mechanism, as both countries have not only refused to sanction Russia over the Ukraine conflict, but have recently stepped up purchases of Russian oil.
Featured Video
Israeli Military Medics Are Training On Dead Americans
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
On ‘conflict’, ‘peace’ and ‘genocide’: Time for new language on Palestine
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | June 12, 2021
On 25 May, famous US actor Mark Ruffalo tweeted an apology for suggesting that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza.
“I have reflected and wanted to apologise for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing ‘genocide’,” Ruffalo wrote, adding: “It’s not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful and is being used to justify anti-Semitism, here and abroad. Now is the time to avoid hyperbole.”
But were Ruffalo’s earlier assessments, indeed, “not accurate, inflammatory and disrespectful”? And does equating Israel’s war on besieged, impoverished Gaza with genocide fit into the classification of “hyperbole”? … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Intelligence Agency Investigating CIA Whistleblower Allegations, Official Confirms
- AIPAC Favorite Ed Gallrein Wants to Bring Back the Draft
- A decade of lies: The US-funded biolab denial saga
- Mainstream US media complicit in selling Gaza genocide, sweeping new analysis finds
- US Overseas Biolabs Probe Aims to Rein in ‘Deep State’ Bureaucracy
- ‘Death to Arabs’: Settler mobs storm Jerusalem’s Muslim, Christian quarters for ‘Flag March’
- China’s position on Iran, Hormuz remains unchanged
- Israeli Military Medics Are Training On Dead Americans
- SCOTT RITTER: Russia Retaliation on Europe No Longer In Doubt
- Guatemala Admits U.S. Pressure Over Cuban Doctors
- If Americans Knew
- 43,000 people in Gaza suffered life-changing injuries since October 2023: WHO
- Israel’s 7 October narrative under fresh scrutiny after army accused of deleting footage
- Ex-CENTCOM chief headlines lavish Israeli-American Council gala
- Israel’s 7 October rape hoax gets a 300-page reboot
- Chants of ‘death to Arabs,’ calls for destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque in racist Jerusalem Day march
- What Fuels My Revolutionary Optimism This Nakba Day
- Gaza elders who survived the Nakba reflect on being displaced by Israel again, 78 years later
- Israel (with US assistance) perpetuates the Nakba; Palestinians remain resilient – Daily Update
- Microsoft fires head of Israeli subsidiary and other managers over surveillance of Palestinians
- The world no longer loves Israel (or, coincidentally, the US) – Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- German Expert: “No Climate Crisis” …”Warming Generally Better For Humanity”
- New Paleo Research: Modern ‘Climate Change’ Has Had No Apparent Impact On Precipitation Patterns
- 90% Subsidized… Bielefeld Germany’s €7 Million Hydrogen Garbage Truck Fleet Sits Idle
- New Study: Declining Trends In 1980-2023 Tropical Cyclone Frequency, Accumulated Energy
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
Aletho News 