The American empire has over 1000 overseas military bases with between a dozen and 45,000 personnel. The United States spends more to operate its overseas military bases each year than China spends on its entire military. Several of these bases have become worthless yet remain open because of bureaucratic resistance. The largest unneeded base is also the oldest overseas base, the US Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, known as Gitmo. No combat forces are based there or even combat support forces. There are no ships, no aircraft, no weapons, nor munitions based at Gitmo. The lights could be shut off at expensive Gitmo tomorrow and everyone flown home and the US Navy wouldn’t notice, except that it would free manpower and resources for a dozen more warships.
Influenza vaccination has become a mainstay in American medicine largely as measure to protect the elderly. However in recent decades the FluShot has been pushed on healthcare workers, the general adult public, and starting in 2017 the CDC ACIP Panel stated: “Routine annual influenza vaccination is recommended for all persons age 6 months and older who do not have a contraindication.” I wondered if the FluShot even did what it was supposed to do originally in the elderly — protect against hospitalization and death. I was disappointed by real world data.
Uemura and coworkers from the Department of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, University of Tokyo, Japan reported on 83,146 individuals who were aged 65 years or older at baseline and were followed up between April 1, 2014 to March 31, 2020.
Uemura K, Ono S, Michihata N, Yamana H, Yasunaga H. Duration of influenza vaccine effectiveness in the elderly in Japan: A retrospective cohort study using large-scale population-based registry data. Vaccine. 2023 May 5;41(19):3092-3098. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2023.03.066. Epub 2023 Apr 10. PMID: 37045684.
The multivariable analysis showed a lower incidence of influenza in vaccinated individuals (hazard ratio [HR], 0.47; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.43-0.51; P < 0.001), however the incidence of hospitalization for influenza did not differ significantly by vaccination status (HR, 0.79; 95% CI, 0.53-1.18; P = 0.249). Protective effectiveness against incidence waned quickly after 4 or 5 months.
These data suggest the massive effort on vaccination in the general population is a waste of time and effort. If the frail and elderly get no overall direct reduction in hospitalization and death, influenza vaccination should be individualized based on pulmonary and systemic risks.
Until recently, some in the old world hoped that the Arab world would become hopeless and mired in forever chaos so that they could forever exploit it. However, considering the recent tectonic economic and geopolitical shifts, many are now starting to view the region differently.
While the Chinese, Indians, Russians, Africans, South Asians and many others already consider Arabs as a pole, some hegemonists in the West hubristically demand that the Arabs abandon their national interests and be subordinated to foreign powers. They are out of touch with reality; their mindset is still stuck in the 19th and 20th centuries. While the Arab leaders, supported by most Arab people, want to maintain strategic autonomy, and make the Arabs a pole in the current fluid world order, some in the West want to hijack Arab sovereignty and bring back their hegemony to the region.
Over the last 20 years, they have futilely tried to force the Arabs to give up their sovereignty and subordinate their strategic objectives to those of foreign powers. They misjudge Arabs’ pride in their identity and place in world history. They underestimate the strong desire and high aspirations of the Arabs to be an important player in the new world order. When dealing with the Arabs, they still use the outdated mental models of a bygone era.
Those who are covertly trying to subvert Arab societies and working against Arab unity and regional integration are not afraid of what the Arab world is today. They are terrified by the positive prospect of what the Arab world is becoming; they are intimidated by what the Arab world can become if the Arabs continue to successfully pursue and achieve their ambitious development plans. They narrow-mindedly think that a strong Arab world is bad for them and delusionally believe they can stop Arab progress.
Just as they consider China’s development and prosperity a problem for their position in the world, they consider the Arab world’s development and prosperity a problem for their regional and global position. This is something both the Arabs and Chinese recognize. However, the Chinese are more vocal than the Arabs in expressing their opposition to this myopic worldview. This is also one reason the Arabs and Chinese empathize with each other. They see the same forces, using different tactics and strategies, trying to disrupt their legitimate development.
It is too late now to stop the Arabs from developing and fulfilling their aspirations. The covert operations of the “Arab Spring” have failed miserably to achieve the Western agenda in the region. Instead, they have caused a sharp political reawakening among the Arabs. The Arabs’ rising agency and strengthening strategic independence in the current great power rivalry is proving that it is terribly hard for external factors to prevent the Arabs from achieving their rightful goals of development and prosperity.
The Arabs have what it takes to be an important player in the new emerging world. Their natural and human resources, geography, history, and civilization enable them to be an independent pole that can confidently deal with the rest of the world based on mutual respect and interest. With a population of more than 450 million – around 60 percent of whom are under the age of 25 – and a geographic area of over 13 million square kilometers, the Arabs would be ranked the 3rd and 2nd in the world, respectively. Most Arabs share the same religion, history, culture, and language.
The Arab world’s combined nominal GDP of around $3 trillion would make the Arabs among the top eight economies in the world. When measured in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms, the combined economic output of the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt alone would make them one of the top six global economies. The Arab world is in the center of global trade routes; it is the place where the three continents of Asia, Africa and Europe intersect. The Arabs administer some strategically important maritime trade chokepoints such as Bab Al-Mandab and Suez Canal, through which around 12 percent of global trade and approximately 30 percent of global container traffic pass.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter and three other Arab countries, namely the UAE, Iraq and Kuwait, are constantly among the top oil producers in the world. The Arab region contains more than 40 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and supplies more than 31 percent of importing countries’ oil needs. It has a quarter of the world’s proven reserves of gas and generates more than 15 percent of the world’s total gas production.
The world is already in a de facto multipolar state. While most nations accept this reality and try to make it work, some in the US, supported by a tiny group of peers in the West, still have the delusion of bringing back unipolarity and hegemony. This delusion is one reason why there are conflicts in the Middle East and the world today.
If the Arabs are serious about their intention to be a pole in the new multipolar world, they should never ever allow any power to have dominance in their region. Recent regional trends bode well for the Arabs. In addition to the traditional powers of the West, re-emerging and rising powers such as China, India and Russia are becoming important players in the region. Both China and Russia have confirmed their status as serious power brokers in the Middle East for their important contribution to Saudi-Iran reconciliation and Syria’s regional renormalization, respectively. Recently, the freeze on Syria’s Arab League membership has been lifted, adding impetus to the positive momentum that has been building up across the Arab world.
The Arabs have learnt some hard lessons over the last 20 years. To be a well-established pole in the increasingly multipolar world, the first step the Arabs should take is to diversify their sources of security – never ever rely on one partner or one bloc of partners for security. Moreover, drawing on the comparative advantages of various Arab countries, the Arabs must accelerate the process of building indigenous capabilities and expedite the implementation of regional integration initiatives. The new emerging world demands that Arabs join forces and rally behind this new vision. For the world order to be truly multipolar, the Arabs must coalesce and unite as one pole in it.
The author is former adviser to the chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Office, an authority responsible for Abu Dhabi’s long-term strategies, and former head of the strategy division of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). He is a China-based strategist and Asia Global Fellow at the Asia Global Institute of the University of Hong Kong. This is the first piece of the “Quest for multipolarity” series. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
HART have been asked to submit evidence to module 3 of the Covid-19 Public Inquiry. That module is about the impacts on healthcare but we were specifically asked to include evidence around deaths in males aged 15-18 years of age and so provided an overview of the full impact these novel products have had on the healthcare system. What follows are some of the highlights. There will be three parts to this series. Here the evidence on what was known before rollout will be presented. Part two covers the evidence after rollout (excluding deaths) and part three the evidence on deaths.
It is worth remembering how cautious people were about any novel products that might claim to prevent covid. In February 2020, Chris Whitty said,
“The rate limiting steps are late clinical trials for safety & efficacy, & then manufacturing. For a disease with a low (for the sake of argument 1%) mortality a vaccine has to be very safe so the safety studies can’t be shortcut. So important for the long run.”
He was right.
The belief that vaccines were safe had led to a circular belief that vaccines required fewer safety checks than other novel therapies. Novel vaccines take a decade or more to go through safety checks. Flu vaccines don’t. These novel drugs were treated like flu vaccines for regulatory purposes.
The regulators failed us in numerous ways as set out in The Perseus Report. Examples include:
Companies were allowed to skip testing for gene and cancer toxicity and even studies showing how much spike is produced, for how long and where in the body it reaches. Pfizer said these studies were “not considered necessary.” Even while their trial info sheet said“Due to the urgent need for a vaccine against Covid-19, with agreement from the MHRA, some of the tests usually required for a newly manufactured vaccine have been modified, in order to make the vaccine available more quickly for assessment.”
They did not demand these studies were done after rushed emergency approvals either. No human studies were carried out to see what happened to the synthetic modified RNA – no-one knows how long it takes to be removed from the body. There is evidence that in some it lasts between at least 28 days and 4 months in the blood.
The regulators let the pharma companies get away with terminating the placebo arm of the study after ~3months by offering them all the novel products.This was despite us knowing that narcolepsy caused by Pandemrix vaccine took on average of 8 months to be diagnosed.
The lipid nanoparticles that deliver the modified synthetic mRNA are themselves toxic. This mechanism of delivery was shelved in 2016 for gene therapy to treat inherited genetic conditions because of the multiple doses needed. It was claimed it could still be used in vaccine technology because that only requires one dose…
The viral vector used for delivering the AstraZeneca DNA message was reported in 2007 to cause platelet activation, which can lead to blood clots.
There were many more points made including failings in investigating deaths, failing to listen to patients, problems with manufacturing processes and problems with accountability and governance all of which are in the report.
Since 2005 there have been concerns about the regulator losing “sight of the need to protect and promote public health.” The CEO of the MHRA, Dame June Raine, claims the MHRA is now an “enabler” not a “watchdog.” Even before there was political capture there were pre-existing conflicts of interest.
The spike protein is the most toxic part of the virus. It damages lungs, vessel walls and causes clots. Part of the sequence is identical to a region of a bacterial sequence that can bind directly to a particular type of white blood cells resulting in lethal cytokine storms. This part of the sequence was heavily mutated in the Omicron variant making it less lethal. However, even the most recent injections contained the original Chinese spike sequence with this dangerous sequence.
The manufacturers decided to use the WHOLE chinese spike sequence rather than parts of it, or peptides, which have been shown to be safer for vaccine design. Some manufacturers modified the spike so that it could not bind to the receptor and enter a cell. This might have reduced some harm from receptor binding but not from the action of spike within cells. The spike was delivered into cells so spike was produced INSIDE the cells in the first place. AstraZeneca did not modify the sequence. From November 2020 it was clear that parts of AZ spike could be shed outside of cells.
The Pfizer and Moderna clinical trial data shows a higher rate of serious adverse reactions from the treatment group (12.5 per 10,000) than any reduction in serious events from covid (2.3 and 6.4 per 10,000 for Pfizer and Moderna respectively). Yet the claim of 90%+ efficacy was all that was reported and all that Dame June Raine claimed she needed to see in order to approve the drugs.
AZ issued a press release claiming 100% efficacy against hospitalisation and death after only two severe covid hospitalisations and one death in the placebo arm. This claim was repeated widely and was believed.
At the time, the priority was to protect the old and vulnerable who accounted for 98% of covid deaths. There were going to be 15 million jabs to freedom:
The evidence presented is damning. The failures of the regulators to adequately test the safety and efficacy of these novel vaccines are shocking. The circular belief that vaccines required fewer safety checks than other novel therapies is a dangerous assumption that has put the lives of millions at risk. The fact that serious adverse reactions were higher in the treatment group than any reduction in serious events from covid is deeply concerning. We must demand accountability from the regulators and demand that the safety and wellbeing of the public is always the top priority, not profit or political gain. There was total regulatory failure in allowing these products to be given to anyone, which was compounded by not withdrawing them promptly once evidence these issues were clinically relevant became clear.
THE COMING CONFLICT: The sophisticated form of anthrax delivered to Tom Daschle’s office forces us to ask a simple question. What are these people trying to do? I think they’re testing the waters. They want to know how we will respond to what is still a minor biological threat, as a softener to a major biological threat in the coming weeks. They must be encouraged by the panic-mongering of the tabloids, Hollywood and hoaxsters. They must also be encouraged by the fact that some elements in the administration already seem to be saying we need to keep our coalition together rather than destroy the many-headed enemy. So the terrorists are pondering their next move. The chilling aspect of the news in the New York Times today is that the terrorists clearly have access to the kind of anthrax that could be used against large numbers of civilians. My hopes yesterday that this was a minor attack seem absurdly naïve in retrospect. So they are warning us and testing us.
At this point, it seems to me that a refusal to extend the war to Iraq is not even an option. We have to extend it to Iraq. It is by far the most likely source of this weapon; it is clearly willing to use such weapons in the future; and no war against terrorism of this kind can be won without dealing decisively with the Iraqi threat. We no longer have any choice in the matter. Slowly, incrementally, a Rubicon has been crossed. The terrorists have launched a biological weapon against the United States. They have therefore made biological warfare thinkable and thus repeatable. We once had a doctrine that such a Rubicon would be answered with a nuclear response. We backed down on that threat in the Gulf War but Saddam didn’t dare use biological weapons then. Someone has dared to use them now. Our response must be as grave as this new threat.
I know that this means that this conflict is deepening and widening beyond its initial phony stage. But what choice do we have? Inaction in the face of biological warfare is an invitation for more in a world where that is now thinkable. Appropriate response will no doubt inflame an already inflamed region, as people seek solace through the usual ideological fire. Either way the war will grow and I feel nothing but dread in my heart. But we didn’t seek this conflict. It has sought us. If we do not wage war now, we may have to wage an even bloodier war in the very near future. These are bleak choices, but what else do we have? [Italics his]
An Israeli military dog attacked 13-year-old Raja and terrified 8-year-old Nidal when Israeli forces entered their home in Al-Far’a refugee camp in the middle of the night. Raja’s leg wounds are still healing, while Nidal refuses to sleep alone.
In November 2022, Israeli forced demolished a Palestinian elementary school in the rural community of Isfay Al-Fouqa, located in the Masafer Yatta region of the southern occupied West Bank. Now, children are trying their best to learn in a tent.
Reanalysis of regulatory data finds that attempted suicides were excluded from the final journal publication, and the journal has not corrected the record.
A new analysis finds that Prozac (generic name fluoxetine) is unsafe and ineffective for treating depression in children and adolescents.
Regulatory documents show that trial participants attempted suicide after taking fluoxetine, but these events were excluded from the final journal publication.
I notified the journal of the new findings, but the editor refuses to correct the record.
Prozac approval
In 2002, Prozac (fluoxetine), manufactured by Eli Lilly, was FDA-approved for the treatment of depression in children and adolescents based on data from two clinical trials.
The two trials were published in peer-reviewed journals in 1997 (Study 1) and 2002 (Study 2).
Both publications reported a small benefit of fluoxetine over placebo in young people with depression and there appeared to be no major safety concerns.
Subsequently, fluoxetine became one of the most prescribed antidepressants for children aged 0-19 years in the US, and is in the top 5 most prescribed antidepressants in England.
Restoring old trials
An initiative called Restoring Invisible and Abandoned Trials (RIAT) has enabled researchers to “restore” old clinical trial publications by analysing documents submitted to drug regulators by the drug companies.
These analyses have revealed that serious drug harms are either underreported or excluded entirely from medical journals.
Physician Peter Gøtzsche and psychiatrist David Healy obtained regulatory documents (protocols and clinical study reports) from UK’s drug regulator (MHRA) of the two fluoxetine trials that underpinned the drug’s approval in 2002.
The discrepancies
Multiple problems were identified when Gøtzsche and Healy compared the clinical study reports of the two fluoxetine trials, with what was published in the medical journals.
Many suicidal events in people taking fluoxetine were either missing or labelled incorrectly in the published reports.
For example, in Study 1, the clinical study report described two patients who’d attempted suicide after 12 and 15 days of taking fluoxetine, but these events were excluded from the journal article.
They found problems with ‘blinding’ in both trials, meaning the trial investigators were likely aware of which patients were on the drug or the placebo.
They also found that people who were recruited into the trial, and who were already taking an antidepressant, were only given one week to “wash out” the drug from their system before commencing the randomisation process.
This caused severe withdrawal symptoms in some participants who ended up in the placebo group, making it difficult to ascertain the true level of harms in the treatment group.
Finally, when Gøtzsche and Healy looked back and analysed the data from the primary outcome – which was depression – there was no meaningful benefit from fluoxetine compared to placebo.
Journals turn a blind eye?
I wrote to both journals asking if the editors would consider correcting the discrepancies and clearly delineate the adverse events that were not reported in the published articles through an erratum.
Neither journal has done so.
The editor at Arch Gen Psychiatry (now called JAMA Psychiatry) rejected concerns about two suicide attempts that were omitted from its publication of Study 1, and has not made any corrections or clarifications.
In response, Gøtzsche said, “It’s totally unacceptable. When attempted suicides are left out of journal articles, which has happened in many such trials, it changes the safety profile of the drugs completely. This is important information that patients should know about before considering taking the pills.”
Gøtzsche drew similarities to another placebo-controlled trial in adolescents which used the drug Paxil (paroxetine).
GlaxoSmithKline’s Study 329 famously claimed that “Paroxetine is generally well tolerated and effective,” but when researchers restored the trial data using regulatory documents, the opposite became true.
“A restoration of the data from Study 329 showed that paroxetine was neither safe nor effective for treating depression in children and adolescents,” said Gøtzsche.
“Many suicidal events on paroxetine had been omitted or given an obscure name such as emotional lability. I consider this fraud,” he added.
The editor at J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry (JAACAP),which published Study 2 of fluoxetine said they would not respond to criticisms until the discrepancies documented by Gøtzsche and Healy were published in a peer-reviewed journal.
The process took over a year, but Gøtzsche and Healy’s paper has now been published in a peer-reviewed journal and sent to the JAACAP for review.
The JAACAP said in a statement:
JAACAP takes seriously its responsibility to ensure scientific integrity. As stated in the guide for authors, review of post-publication critiques will be managed according to Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. We will let you know the outcome of the review process…
Why does it matter?
The restoration of old trials has revealed to patients and physicians that much of the data in peer-reviewed journals are incomplete, biased, and often cherry-picked.
The exclusion of suicide attempts and suicides distorts the medical literature and prescribing guidelines to such an extent that they cannot be trusted. It also may reduce options for safer, more effective interventions such as psychotherapy.
“I’ve heard from many families whose children committed suicide because of antidepressants. We should not be prescribing them to young people,” said Gøtzsche.
“Our meta-analysis of ten trials showed that psychotherapy halved the occurrence of new suicide attempts in patients admitted after a suicide attempt. Psychotherapy is what they should be getting, not pills,” he added.
Ultimately, it’s the patients who pay the price, sometimes with their lives, from distorted clinical data, and from journals that refuse to correct glaring errors.
Antidepressants like fluoxetine double the risk of suicide and aggression in children and adolescents, they often lead to decreased quality of life, they cause sexual dysfunction in about 50% of users, and these harms may continue long after they try to quit.
In conclusion, there seems to be no rationale for using fluoxetine in young people for treating depression – the new analysis concludes the drug is unsafe and ineffective.
Disclosure: I received funding from the RIAT Support Center for publishing two Expression of Concerns in 2021.
Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, in an interview with Yahoo News published Friday addressed the recent string of assassinations and cross-border attacks on Russian territory.
“we’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.”
He seemed to be owning up to Ukraine being behind the assassinations. What Russia calls “terrorism, we call liberation,” he had said when asked whether Kiev was behind the attacks, which also included the April cafe bombing and death of Russian blogger Vladlen Tatarsky.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blasted the threatening remarks, calling them “truly heinous” while “vigorously” condemning them. In the Monday response, Peskov said, “What Budanov said is a direct confirmation that the Kiev regime isn’t only sponsoring terrorist activity, but is a direct organizer of this activity.”
He further emphasized that Russia’s own secret services “will be doing everything that they should be doing against the background of such statements.”
“It’s very difficult to imagine that such terrorist statements from Kiev will remain without condemnation. Therefore, today we will be waiting for these condemnations,” he followed with, in reference to the international community.
But the White House has remained mum on the emerging covert ‘dirty war’ targeting Russian officials and ‘pro-Russia’ journalists and mere activists, and may even be assisting with intelligence and planning for such operations. Moscow has leveled this charge precisely. None of those killed so far have actually been Kremlin decision-makers, but are civilians…
Over the past year, in Russia, there were the assassinations of Daria Dugina, Vladlen Tatarsky, and today—an attempt on the life of author Zachary Prilepin. All were bombings, all linked to Ukraine. None of these targets are decision-makers, but rather opinion-makers.
Russia’s Security Service (FSB) has said Tatarsky’s assassination was the work of “Ukrainian special services and their agents, including fugitive members of the Russian opposition.”
On Saturday, one of Russia’s best-known novelists, Zakhar Prilepin, was targeted in a car bombing near the city of Nizhny Novgorod. He survived the attack which took place on a highway when a device under his car detonated, but his driver was killed.
The CIA was behind the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1963 and likely involved in the murder of US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. alleged during an interview with WABC radio host John Catsimatidis on Sunday.
“There is overwhelming evidence that the CIA was involved in [JFK’s] murder,” Kennedy declared, describing it as “beyond a reasonable doubt at this point.”
“The evidence is overwhelming that the CIA was involved in the murder, and the coverup,” the candidate continued, describing efforts to discredit this theory as a “60-year coverup.” Kennedy cited the book “JFK and the Unspeakable” by James Douglas as the best compilation of evidence on the subject, though dozens if not hundreds of works have been written about the assassination and the CIA’s alleged role.
The official US government explanation, published as the Warren Commission report the following year, holds that US Marine veteran Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in shooting the president while his motorcade was passing through Dallas on November 22, 1963.
Oswald was famously murdered before he could stand trial, though he managed to tell journalists he was “just a patsy” shortly after his arrest. The alleged lone gunman was shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby (real name Jacob Rubinstein) while being transported from Dallas Police Headquarters to the county jail.
Speaking to Catsimatidis, Kennedy added that there was “very convincing but circumstantial” evidence the CIA was involved in the 1968 assassination of his father, Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, as well. He described the official story of the assassination, which was pinned on Palestinian horse groomer Sirhan Sirhan, as physically impossible, arguing Thane Eugene Cesar, a security guard at the hotel who was concurrently employed by military contractor Lockheed, had actually fired the shots that killed Kennedy.
Four years after JFK’s murder, nearly half of the American public did not believe that Oswald had acted alone. The CIA was concerned enough about this fact that it issued a directive in 1967 on how to discredit the so-called “conspiracy theorists” questioning the conclusions of the Warren Commission. Modern use of the term “conspiracy theorist” as a pejorative is often traced back to this 1967 memo.
The former head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, has expressed doubt that the US Apollo 11 mission really landed on the Moon in 1969, saying he has yet to see conclusive proof.
In a post on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Rogozin said he began his personal quest for the truth “about ten years ago” when he was still working in the Russian government, and that he grew skeptical about whether the Americans had actually set foot on the Moon when he compared how exhausted Soviet cosmonauts looked upon returning from their flights, and how seemingly unaffected the Apollo 11 crew was by contrast.
Rogozin said he sent requests for evidence to Roscosmos at the time. All he received in response was a book featuring Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov’s account of how he talked to the American astronauts and how they told him they had been on the Moon.
The former official wrote that he continued with his efforts when he was appointed head of Roscosmos in 2018. However, according to Rogozin, no evidence was presented to him. Instead, several unnamed academics angrily criticized him for undermining the “sacred cooperation with NASA,” he claimed.
The former Roscosmos chief also said he had “received an angry phone call from a top-ranking official” who supposedly accused him of complicating international relations.
Rogozin concluded by saying he still cannot believe that the US was able to pull off the feat, but is now unable to, despite the incredible progress in technology since the late 1960s.
What he claims to have found out, however, was that Washington has “its people in [the Russian] establishment.”
Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to the Moon, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin going down in history as the first humans to walk on the lunar surface.
The flight was preceded by the unmanned Soviet Luna 2 program, which blazed the trail for Moon exploration.
Last April, President Vladimir Putin pledged to resume Russia’s lunar program.
The recent doubling of known underwater volcanoes is a very significant geological discovery, but it has been largely ignored in mainstream media. It is the latest example of how the promotion of human-caused climate change has led to the downplaying of any science news that runs the risk of opening discussion about the natural forces surrounding the constantly changing climate. A group of oceanographers led by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego identified in total 19,325 new volcanoes, or seamounts, to add to the existing known total of 24,643.
Erupting volcanoes under the sea produce huge quantities of carbon dioxide and must play a part in pushing warming water and nutrients around the surrounding areas, with possible effects on currents and surrounding marine life. Some scientists believe that they play an important part in ocean mixing and have a role in determining long-term climate. The science writer Jo Nova observes that climate modellers take a different view, since they believe all unexplained warming is due to CO2. With a hint of sarcasm, she added: “The Pacific Ocean cycles are the largest driver of climate on Earth, but we ‘know’ as only high priests can, that volcanoes we’ve never studied definitely had no role in it.”
Almost all mainstream media seem to have ignored the story, bar, so far as I can tell from a Google search, The U.K. Sun and Newsweek in the U.S. Since the story broke, the BBC has led its specialist climate page with a variety of clickbait Net Zero stories, noting a recent ‘record’ single day temperature in Spain, a query as to whether climate change is “killing” Australian wine, the use of kitchen fumes to heat a restaurant, and a suggestion that life in the ocean ’twilight’ zone is at risk due to warming. Keen climate fact-check attackers Reuters and Agence France-Presse (AFP) appear quiet on the matter, as do the Guardian,Washington Post, New York Times and CNN.
Curiously, the BBC’s volcanophobia seems a recent condition. In 2015, it ran a story titled ‘Underwater volcanoes discovered off Australia’. The story said that a grand total of four extinct seamounts had been identified near Sydney. Volcano expert Richard Arculus is reported to have told AFP that, “every time we turn the spotlight on the sea floor we see things that we’ve never seen before”.
Only 20% of the ocean floor has been mapped by sonar, and these latest discoveries arise from improvements in the gravity data from satellite altimetry. These allow scientist to gain much more information about the topography of the sea floor. Scientists speculate that there could be many thousands of seamounts still to be discovered. Jo Nova reports that the second largest volcano in the solar system is not to be found on the Jupiter moon Io, but 1,000 miles east of Japan. It is the size of the British Isles. In January 2022, a massive seamount explosion 40 miles off the Tonga coast sent tsunami waves crashing around the region.
The Scripps scientists stress that “seamounts are valuable characteristics of the ocean floor since they provide insight on many of the Earth’s geological, oceanographical and ecological cycles and processes”. In addition they note that ocean floor levels have an important effect on ocean circulation, with large seafloor features such as ridges and plateaus acting as “barriers” that inhibit deep cold water to mix with the warmer waters of the ocean surface. Recent studies are said to suggest that seamounts can have an influence on ocean circulation, which can help scientists better understand the uptake of heat and carbon dioxide in the ocean. Heat transfers between ocean and atmosphere, and the movements from equatorial regions to the poles, are difficult if not impossible to fully plot, but they play a vital part in regulating short-term weather and longer term climate around the world.
The role of seamounts could cause warming or cooling, we simply don’t know. But only climate models – the ‘high priests’ – have all the answers, and they ignore all the effects of seamounts, particularly the thousands yet to be discovered. The lack of interest in the media about this latest discovery is indicative of how much geology, chemistry, physics and other scientific work is effectively off-limits under the settled climate change guidelines. It is difficult not to conclude that such protection is given, lest the unproven hypothesis of overwhelming human involvement is challenged.
The Daily Sceptic has noted on a number of occasions that over the last seven decades there has been little or no warming in Antarctica. According to a recent paper, sea ice has “modestly expanded” and warming has been “nearly non-existent” over much of the ice sheet. But there has been some warming in one spot, over on the west side of the continent. Carbon dioxide is well mixed in the atmosphere so it is a valid scientific question to ask why it only warms the surface in this one patch? An alternative explanation might note the existence of a chain of volcanoes in the area. In 2017, scientists discovered 91 volcanoes in the West Antarctica Rift System. It brought the number of volcanoes located in the area to 138. The heights ranged from 300 to 12,600 ft, with the tallest as high as Mount Fuji.
The more we learn about the geography of the planet and the science behind the chaotic processes of the oceans and atmosphere, the less we really comprehend how climate evolves. So we rely on the flawed inputs and outputs of basic climate models to convince us we are heading for climate Armageddon, and only a top-down, collectivist Net Zero solution can save us from our folly.
Chris Morrison is theDaily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
During World War I, for security reasons the Australian Government pursued a comprehensive internment policy against enemy aliens living in Australia.
Initially only those born in countries at war with Australia were classed as enemy aliens, but later this was expanded to include people of enemy nations who were naturalised British subjects, Australian-born descendants of migrants born in enemy nations and others who were thought to pose a threat to Australia’s security.
Australia interned almost 7,000 people during World War I, of whom about 4,500 were enemy aliens and British nationals of German ancestry already resident in Australia.
During World War II, Australian authorities established internment camps for three reasons – to prevent residents from assisting Australia’s enemies, to appease public opinion and to house overseas internees sent to Australia for the duration of the war.
Unlike World War I, the initial aim of internment during the later conflict was to identify and intern those who posed a particular threat to the safety or defence of the country. As the war progressed, however, this policy changed and Japanese residents were interned en masse. In the later years of the war, Germans and Italians were also interned on the basis of nationality, particularly those living in the north of Australia. In all, just over 20 per cent of all Italians resident in Australia were interned. … continue
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