Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

The U.S. is Being Accused of Three Coups

By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | August 28, 2024

The United States has a long legacy of coups. During the Cold War, Washington participated in no less than sixty-four covert coups. They did not end with the Cold War. Since then, the U.S. has carried out or facilitated several coups, including in Haiti, Venezuela, Brazil, Honduras, Paraguay, Bolivia, Egypt, and Ukraine.

Recently, the United States has been accused of participation in three more coups. The degree of evidence and clarity varies, and, unlike in the above cases, these cases are not yet closed.

Haiti has a horrible history of American interference and coups. The latest chapter reads like a convoluted novel. The United States, who at first seemed to be backing the enormously unpopular and increasingly authoritarian president of Haiti, Jovenal Moïse, has now been accused of involvement in his assassination.

Moïse was assassinated in 2021 in a confusing plot by men armed with high-caliber weapons who claimed to be with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a claim the U.S. State Department says is “absolutely false.”

But two of the plotters of the assassination now seem to have been revealed as DEA informants and a third as an informant for the FBI.

Floridian Walter Veintemilla, who has been accused of financing the assassination, reportedly received legal advice and an endorsement to capture Moïse from a U.S. intelligence agency informant. If that informant were allowed to testify, his testimony, according to Veintemilla’s defense, would provide evidence “that several investigative and administrative agencies of the United States Government were aware of the actions and intentions of his alleged co-conspirators in Haiti and supported those actions.”

One of Veintemilla’s co-defendants, Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, who is said to have recruited the mercenaries who assassinated Moïse, is an FBI informant. According to The Miami Herald, Ortiz “was so emboldened as an FBI informant that the Miami-area resident met with agents and promoted ‘regime change’ in Haiti ahead of the brazen presidential assassination.”

Christian Sanon, a Haitian-American, is the man the coup group allegedly planned to install as president. He has been accused of being a plotter of Moïse’s assassination. Six weeks before the assassination, Sanon sent a letter to U.S. Assistant Secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs Julie Cheng outlining his intention to lead a transition government in Haiti. In the weeks before the assassination, Sanon held a meeting in Fort Lauderdale that Veintemilla attended.

The Haitian coup is not the only one the United States is accused of being involved in. More recently, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheik Hasina resigned and fled to India after student-led protests became violent and the Bangladeshi military declined to prevent protestors from storming her official residence.

But several news outlets in India are now reporting that Hasina had planned to deliver a speech in which she would have accused the U.S. of “plotting a regime change in Bangladesh.” Hasina claims that Washington orchestrated her removal from power because she refused to give the U.S. two military facilities in Bangladesh. She accused “a white man” of conditioning her power on granting the bases to a “foreign country.” According to Jeffrey Sachs, Hasina had also delayed the signing of military agreements with the United States, including one that would have tied Bangladesh to closer military cooperation.

Relations between Bangladesh and the U.S. have been deteriorating, and Hasina has frequently accused the U.S. of working to remove her from power.

Intriguingly, Sachs points out that Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Central Asia Donald Lu had recently gone to Bangladesh for meetings. That is the same U.S. official who met with Pakistani officials just before Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan was removed from office in a non-confidence vote that he insists was a U.S.-supported coup.

Then-Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. Asad Majeed Khan met with Lu who expressed that the United States is “quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position” on the war in Ukraine. Lu then says, “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington… Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.” In case the threat was not clear enough, Lu then explained what “tough going ahead” meant: “[H]onestly I think isolation of the Prime Minister will become very strong from Europe and the United States.”

One month later, Khan was removed from office in a non-confidence vote. And all was “forgiven.”

Like Hasina, Khan claims that he was removed in part because of a refusal on basing agreements with the United States. Khan had “distanced” Pakistan’s foreign policy from the U.S., including swearing that he would “absolutely not” allow the CIA or U.S. special forces to use Pakistan as a base ever again: “There is no way we are going to allow any bases, any sort of action from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan. Absolutely not.”

And across the ocean in Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro has accused the U.S. of aiding a coup attempt after the recent Venezuelan election. At dispute is an election that Maduro claims to have won by a margin of 51.95% to 42.18%, and the opposition claims to have won by a margin of 67% to 30%.

Maduro asked the Venezuelan Supreme Court to review the voting data and validate the results. The court accepted the request and summoned all the candidates to appear before it. All the candidates appeared in the session except opposition leader Edmundo González, who did not show up. The court confirmed that the National Electoral Council delivered all the election evidence requested by the court, including detailed voting records and totals.

On August 22, Venezuela’s Supreme Court backed Maduro’s verdict and said that the voting tallies published online by the opposition to demonstrate its landslide victory were forged. González was the only candidate who refused to participate in the Supreme Court’s audit.

U.S. President Joe Biden initially said he supported new elections in Venezuela before the White House walked the president’s statement back, claiming that Biden was only “speaking to the absurdity of Maduro and his representatives not coming clean about the July 28 elections,” which it was “abundantly clear” Maduro lost. Maduro and the opposition both dismissed the idea of a new election with Maduro reminding the U.S. that “Venezuela is not an intervened country, nor do we have guardians.”

Whether or not the election was fair, and whichever side interfered in the election, the United States was a party to that interference. The U.S. has a long and consistent history of interfering in Venezuelan elections against the party of Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro. It has been a consistent financer of the Venezuelan opposition and influencer of the Venezuelan media.

But the largest influencer in the current Venezuelan election has been the threat that the stranglehold of American sanctions on the Venezuelan economy will not be relieved until the people of Venezuela yield to the U.S. and vote Maduro out of power. Mark Weisbrot, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told me that the sanctions “prevent the country from having democratic elections, because there is overwhelming evidence that the harsh collective punishment of the sanctions will continue until Venezuela gets rid of its current government.” That evaluation was echoed by the governor of the state of Anzoátegui, Luis Marcano, who told historian and political scientist Steve Ellner, “The voter is going to feel a gun pointed at their head. Vote for Maduro and the sanctions remain.”

In addition to Pakistan, these three new charges of regime change are being brought against the United States. Imran Khan’s case against the U.S. seems pretty clear with Donald Lu’s threat on the record. The three new cases—in Haiti, Bangladesh, and Venezuela—may, to varying degrees, be less clear. But they should not be dismissed. And the aged specter of American coups still pervades the world.

August 28, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jerm Warfare Interviews Denis Rancourt – 31 Millions Deaths from Covid Vaccine & Covid Policies

Etienne de la Boetie2 | August 21, 2024

Award-winning South African political cartoonist and talk show host Jeremy “Jerm” Nell interviews world-class academic Denis Rancourt (h-index 41 & i10 index of 91) on his latest paper showing an estimated 31 million dead from the Covid “vaccines” and the government’s Covid policies. We have a summary of the interview and full transcript at https://artofliberty.substack.com/p/dr-denis-rancourt-31-million-dead

August 24, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Australian Government blocks Covid inquiry ‘with teeth’

Once again, Labor characterised its foes as ‘conspiracy theorists’, ‘cranks,’ ‘kooks’ and ‘far right extremists’ rather than engaging in rational debate

By Rebekah Barnett | Dystopian Down Under | August 22, 2024

The Australian Government has voted down a bill to establish a Covid Commission of Inquiry, which would have essentially the same powers and independence as a Royal Commission.

The bill was supported by a small coalition of senators from minor parties and the Opposition (conservative), but was rejected by the Labor Party(left-wing) in a vote today.

To date, Australia has had plenty of Covid inquiries, but none with teeth.

The siloing of inquiries to deal only with states and territory and federal governments on an individual basis has allowed for a lot of finger pointing with very limited accountability.

The scope of the federal Covid Inquiry excludes the policies of state and territory governments, which enacted vaccine mandates, lockdowns and inter-state border restrictions, leading politicians and media to call it “toothless.”

In turn, states and territories have focused on how well they implemented policies heavily influenced by the Federal Government and national advisory bodies without actually considering whether the policies were any good.

The patchwork nature of these inquiries allows the Federal Government to blame states and territories for implementing the harshest measures, and the states and territory governments pass the buck to the federal agencies and departments for influencing them to do so.

More holistic independent reviews like the Fault Lines report have resulted in talk of ‘lessons learned’ about “ill-conceived policies, politically driven health orders and excessive use of lockdowns,” but no meaningful attempts to hold anyone to account or guarantees that the lessons will inform future pandemic policy making.

Another problem with inquiries to date is that federal, state and territory governments have played hide the ball with important documentation and data required to properly assess their performance. As yet, no Australian government has released the health advice that draconian measures were based upon.

A Royal Commission or similar, taking the entire Covid response – at federal, state and territory levels – and with aggressive powers to command access to information that governments don’t want to release, would be required for real accountability.

The only ways to bring this about are for the executive to call a Royal Commission, or for the Senate to call a Commission of Inquiry.

However, despite the recommendation of the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19 in 2022 that a Royal Commission into Australia’s Covid response be established, the Labor Government has resisted calls to do so.

The Committee, led by senior Labor Party member Katy Gallagher (now Minister for Finance, for Women and for the Public Service) criticised the then Liberal Government’s lack of transparency and accountability around pandemic decision making by the National Cabinet.

Emergency law making had “challenged the Australian Parliament’s capacity to provide meaningful scrutiny of proposed laws, particularly in identifying and addressing the impact of emergency powers on the rights of individuals,” the Committee stated in its recommendations.

Leader of the Opposition at the time, Anthony Albanese, sort of promised a Covid Royal Commission. But after being elected to government in May 2022, Prime Minister Albanese has resolutely dodged the issue, throwing his support behind the limited federal inquiry instead.

Hence, a group of concerned senators tabled the COVID-19 Response Commission of Inquiry Bill 2024 in a bid to open up option B, an inquiry initiated by the Senate.

The bill, prepared by Senator Matt Canavan (Liberal), was co-sponsored by Senators Malcolm Roberts (One Nation), Alex Antic (Liberal), Gerard Rennick (Liberal), Ralph Babet (United Australia Party) and Matt O’Sullivan (Liberal), all of whom have been vocal critics of Australia’s pandemic response.

Source: Senator Alex Antic on X

During speaking time, senators who sponsored the bill argued that a Covid Commission of Inquiry is needed so that Australia can finally move on from Covid with a good plan in place for future pandemics. A proper inquiry would get to the bottom of what went wrong (and what went right) to restore trust in public health, they said.

Senator Roberts also said that in light of the fact that multiple U.S. states are now suing Pfizer for misleading about its Covid vaccine, if an inquiry found that Pfizer was indeed guilty of fraudulent behaviour, this could shift the financial burden of injuries and deaths associated with Pfizer’s product from Australian tax payers to the pharmaceutical giant.

Australian tax payers have coughed up more than $20 million on compensation for Covid vaccine injuries, but they will have to pay a lot more if a Covid vaccine injury class action is successful. The action, which was filed in the Federal Court last year, has enrolled over 1,500 injured Australians (or families of the deceased).

However, only ten senators supported the bill when it went to a vote in Parliament today. The bill was supported by the above mentioned senators (with the exception of Senator Antic, who is on leave), some members of the Coalition, One Nation, and independent Senator David Pocock.

Despite Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John stating that his party supports the establishment of a “frank” and “transparent” inquiry with the powers of a Royal Commission, the Greens abstained from the vote. Labor voted against the bill.

Source: Dynamic Red, 22 August 2024

I am told by the office of one of the senators who sponsored this bill that they have no intention of dropping the matter.

Previously, Senator Babet brought five separate motions to establish the world’s first government Excess Mortality Inquiry, which is now in progress thanks to Senator Babet’s persistence.

An inquiry into proposed terms of reference for a Covid Royal Commission has already been conducted, which will prove helpful in the event that either a Royal Commission or a Commission of Inquiry into Australia’s Covid response are eventually established.

Nonetheless, such efforts will face stiff opposition from the Albanese Government, if Labor Senator Tim Ayres’ speech in Parliament today is representative of his party’s position.

In speaking time before the vote, Senator Ayres said that the Government did not support the bill because “there’s already a public inquiry,” before launching into an astonishing diatribe of ad hominem attacks on the senators who proposed the bill.

Senator Ayres used the term ‘conspiracy theories’ or ‘conspiracy theorist’ more than twenty times, likened the efforts of senators to bring about a thorough Covid inquiry to movements motivated by “anti-semitism,” and called these same senators “cranks,” and the “nastiest, extreme, kooky elements of politics.”

Senator Ayres referred to ‘conspiracy theorists/theories’ more than 20 times in Parliament, 22 August 2024. Source: Australian Parliament House Streaming Portal, YouTube.

Senator Rennick called Senator Ayres’ speech “disgusting,” stating, “all we’re recommending today and supporting is that we have a thorough inquiry.”

In a statement after the vote, Senator Canavan said that more disheartening than Australia’s damaging pandemic response was “the response to the response.”

“Those Australians hurt during Covid deserve to have the accountability of proper public hearings, the publication of all the health advice and an open, transparent attempt to recognise mistakes as well as put in processes to prevent such things ever happening again.

“Why can’t the Government accept that if it is given immense power to lock people in their homes and force people out of work, that there should be an equal and corresponding obligation for them to be accountable to the people hurt by their decisions?”

Senator Babet took to X to express his dissatisfaction with the outcome, calling the decision of the Senate “weak.”

“Is it too much for Australians to ask for governments and the bureaucrats advising them to be held to account for the advice and actions they took during the pandemic?”

Apparently, yes.

August 24, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Categorizing The mRNA-Vaccinated… Most Can Be Forgiven, But Some Cannot

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | August 24, 2024

When discussing the mRNA COVID vaccines, we need to be careful about dividing people into the two broad groups of the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.

The truth is that many vaccinated people didn’t want to be injected and now deeply regret it.

There are 6 categories of the vaccinated, ranging from the innocent victims to the wicked, unrepentant perpetrators.

1. Those vaccinated by force, against their will
These people were forced to get the jab against their will, and included babies and children who were unable to resist. By forced, we mean they were subjected to extreme duress through threats like job loss or being banned from performing their livelihoods. Many knew that the experimental mRNA shots were potentially dangerous, or didn’t work, and were just unnecessary, but were forced against their will to accept them. These people are victims serious human rights violations. – injured or not.

2. The harassed and coerced
These people were not convinced and many were distrustful of the shot, or even fearful of the drug’s side effects. Many understood that the novel gene-manipulative drug was untested and could be potentially dangerous. Many understood the risk,and never would have allowed themselves to be vaccinated. But they did because the harassment at work, home and in public was just too much to bear.

3. The restriction dodgers
Many were convinced the novel vaccine would work or at least wouldn’t do any harm. Many had felt they didn’t need it, but simply wanted to go back to normal living. Unfortunately these people didn’t do the necessary research to make an informed decision. They were duped into thinking they weren’t harmful. We can forgive this category because at least they didn’t run around lecturing, persecuting and excluding those who resisted taking the mRNA shots. Like in category 1 and 2 above, many deeply regret allowing the injection and promise not to ever take these shots again.

4. The dimwitted follower sheep
They were gullible beyond belief, blindly following everything they were told, and refused to listen to informed experts and hard data contradicting the bogus claims made by the vaccine makers and tyrants. Even today many continue to insist the vaccine works, some even willing to roll up their sleeves again whenever instructed. Too many of them are simply too brainwashed, hypnotized are just flat out too dimwitted to learn. For them, denying is better than confessing and admitting to having been a fool. Yet, we can forgive them to some extent, but we need not give them much sympathy if things go wrong for them.

5. The mRNA vaccine tyrants
We all know who these people are. They were in the media, institutes, governments and big corporations. They lied and hid the risks from us. These people will remain evil until they confess to their grave sins and change their malicious ways. Everyday we heard them ridicule, persecute, marginalize and coerce the unvaccinated. Many of these tyrants need to be punished, prosecuted for fraud, or forever fired from their positions. The late Dr. Vladimir Zelenko even called for the death penalty for the worst offenders. These people can be forgiven, but only through lots of repentance, remorse, apologies and making solemn pledges to redeem themselves.

6. The unrepentant mRNA tyrants
Those who don’t repent must know we will never forget and will not ever relent hauling you in to face legal justice. Your numbers are shrinking and your protection is crumbling. But it’s (still) not too late for you to redeem yourselves.

August 24, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Mpox ‘Not the New COVID’ — But Vaccines Still The Answer, WHO Claims

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 21, 2024

Mpox is “not the new Covid” — but vaccines are needed to stop the spread, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, emphasized in an Aug. 20 media briefing that, unlike COVID-19, mpox primarily spreads through close skin-to-skin contact with mpox lesions.

Referring to mpox as a “test for global equity,” Kluge urged European countries to “act in solidarity” with African countries by taking measures — such as vaccination, surveillance and administering antiviral drugs — to control the disease.

“We can, and must, tackle mpox together — across regions and continents,” he said.

Dr. David Bell, a public health physician and biotech consultant, told The Defender the WHO’s response to the recent mpox outbreak is more about producing profits than addressing global health disparities. “This is about selling more stuff, not health equity,” he said.

The number of deaths caused by mpox is minuscule compared to the number of deaths caused by other diseases common to Africa, such as tuberculosis and malaria.

“Although the actual numbers are unclear,” Bell said, “WHO claims about 500 deaths from Mpox this year in DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo]. That is about how many people die of tuberculosis every 4 hours.”

The DRC, which is about the size of Western Europe and is home to roughly 110 million people, is regarded by the World Bank as one of the world’s poorest countries.

By overly focusing on mpox, Bell explained, the WHO is diverting funding from addressing these other diseases and “very basic” issues affecting DRC residents’ health, such as sanitation and nutrition.

Journalist James Roguski pointed out that the South Africa Vaccine Injury Medico-Legal Study-Group doesn’t support the emergency rollout of a mpox vaccine.

Roguski told The Defender, “Clearly, there are far more serious health issues in the DRC than the 500+ deaths attributed to mpox.”

Roguski said the WHO’s method of counting cases of mpox is “blatantly fraudulent.”

“The WHO defines a ‘confirmed case’ of mpox as anyone with a positive result on a PCR ‘test,’” he said. “The PCR process is NOT capable of diagnosing disease. It is also NOT capable of identifying an intact virion that might be transmissible or contagious.”

Nonetheless, South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa — who leads pandemic preparedness activities for the African Union — on Aug. 17 called on countries in the region to allocate more domestic funds to fight mpox, according to the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Mpox vaccine makers rev up production 

The African CDC announced it is enacting a “clear plan” to get 10 million doses of vaccine for the continent after the WHO’s Aug. 14 declaration of mpox as a global public health emergency, reported the BBC.

Vaccine maker Emergent BioSolutions on Aug. 19 responded to the WHO’s declaration by pledging to donate 50,000 doses of its smallpox vaccine to African countries. The company in 2023 submitted its smallpox vaccine, ACAM2000, to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval for immunization against mpox.

Joe Papa, Emergent’s president and CEO, said the company for years has supplied the vaccine to the U.S. and “allied governments in support of preparedness and stockpiling initiatives.”

“Currently,” Papa said, “we have additional product already in inventory, with the ability to increase supply by approximately 40 million doses, if and potentially when needed.”

The U.S. and Japan also recently pledged to donate vaccines to DRC, Reuters reported.

Bavarian Nordic — manufacturer of the Jynneos vaccine — said in an Aug. 17 statement that it is working closely with stakeholders to provide “equitable access” to its mpox vaccine in Europe and beyond.

“We are also working with the WHO on a regulatory path to ensure access to all countries,” said Bavarian Nordic CEO Paul Chaplin.

Jynneos vaccine can cause heart problems 

On Aug. 16, Bavarian Nordic said it plans to seek European regulatory approval for its Jynneos vaccine for children ages 12-17. The FDA granted the vaccine an “emergency use authorization” for adolescents during the 2022 global mpox outbreak.

Roguski pointed out the Jynneos vaccine was shown by the FDA to cause severe cardiac adverse events in 1.3% of recipients. He said it was “absolutely unacceptable” that the vaccine be recommended for use in adults or teens.

Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst — who has called out the WHO for its “powergrab” in Europe via its revised International Health Regulations — told The Defender the WHO’s actions in Europe and Africa need to be “critically followed.”

“It is important that medicine does not transform into medical tyranny,” Terhorst said.

Bell — who formerly served as a medical officer and scientist at the WHO — said the WHO in past years wasn’t so intensely focused on applying pharmaceutical solutions to global health problems.

“What we are witnessing,” Bell said, “is an acceleration of the pivot of international public health from major health burdens and basic improvement of metabolic and health resilience, such as sanitation, nutrition and living conditions — the major influences on longevity in wealthy countries over the past 150 years — to dramatization of anything that can be heavily commoditized.”

Although pharmaceutical products may sometimes play a role in improving health equity, the improvement in basic living standards, in supply lines for basic health essentials and in strengthening economics are “overwhelmingly the most important.”

“Most people working in international public health are fully aware of this, but we have now built an industry where all the incentives are to please funders linked to the pharmaceutical industry — whilst the role of the pharmaceutical industry’s leaders is to maximize profits for themselves and their shareholders,” Bell said.

The people in central Africa will, unfortunately, come out worst off, he said. “Before blaming Pharma, we should blame ourselves for allowing such an industry to be built.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

August 24, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

How Taiwan Became an Issue

By Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute | August 22, 2024

Given that official Washington seems increasingly determined to fight Beijing over Taiwan, concerned Americans are right to wonder: how did the question of Taiwan come to be of such purported importance to these global powers?

While several closer islands, such as the Penghu (or the Pescadores as they are now known), were incorporated into the Chinese polity during the period of Ming blue water exploration in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Formosa (or Taiwan as it came to be known) never was.

After shuttering its large scale naval activities in the mid-fifteenth century, the Ming were thereafter largely content to let the rival trading companies of the Portuguese and Dutch quarrel for influence on Formosa, where trade revolved around tea and camphor.

In an odd bit of history repeating itself, the island first became a central focus of a ruling mainland Chinese regime as a result of a civil war that needed concluding: displaced by the invading Manchurian forces (the eventual Qing), in 1661 what remained of the Han, Ming ruling clique retreated to Formosa. It was following their ultimate defeat in 1683 that Formosa started to become ethically and administratively integrated into China (a process completed around a century later).

Despite its import as a trading hub in the centuries thereafter, when the Japanese took possession of Formosa at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), per the terms of the Treaty Shimonoseki (1885), the island’s new rulers found a society, economy, and polity virtually untouched by modernity.

And while initially brutal, putting down an anti-Japanese insurgency of emigre Han Chinese and native Taiwanese, the Japanese colonial administration of the island, which lasted until the end of World War II, would see the island transformed into an educated, urbanized, and rationalized society with living standards far higher than on the mainland.

Despite the increasing gap, most Taiwanese, whose cultural links with the mainland were still strong, were open to rejoining mainland China when the war finally ended—although it is worth noting that this willingness proved short-lived, the Kuomintang (KMT) regime needing to viciously suppress a mass uprising against its terrible misrule in 1947.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at whose feet a great deal of blame for a whole host of problems may be laid, also laid the foundation stone for misadventure in dealing with China, including Taiwan.

Indeed, while there was a reasonable possibility that Taiwan could have been its own independent country at the end of the Second World War, it was FDR and his successor, Harry Truman, who ensured this would not happen.

Ignoring the wisdom of multiple of his predecessors, who had refused to get involved either in internal Chinese squabbles or its feuds with neighboring Japan, FDR began supporting the KMT regime of Chiang Kai-Shek.

Mao had, at least on one occasion, expressed ambivalence, stating for the record in 1936 that he did not consider Taiwan to be a “lost territory.”

However, at a meeting in Cairo (1943) FDR acquiesced to Chiang Kai-Shek’s insistence that Taiwan be returned to China. Once that had happened, and once Harry Truman safeguarded his retreat in Taiwan, the calculation from Beijing’s perspective changed.

As in the seventeenth century case of the Ming and Qing, no government claiming to be the legitimate government of China could brook the continued existence of a rival claimant to the title occupying a large island fortress less than one hundred miles from the mainland shore.

Virtually all the primary and secondary sources are in agreement: the outbreak of mass war in Korea led to the fate of Taiwan being drawn into the Cold War paradigm. From official histories to revisionist and post revisionist accounts, whatever the particular nuances of the account in question, including libertarian realists who point to the domestic political incentive structures that principally drove foreign policy decision-making, the decision to fight the Cold War made certain Taiwan would be an American protectorate following Chiang and the KMT’s flight to the island following their loss of the Chinese Civil War to Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

To be sure, there were many voices in the State Department who had championed abandoning the incompetent, corrupt, and brutal Chiang and simply making the best of things with the communist government they saw as inevitably on their way to winning the resumed Chinese Civil War—these would mostly be purged or resign during the (second) red scare, however, and the constraining Cold War atmosphere that followed meant that possible openings to China were unable to be grasped.

That this logical move, to exploit the growing divisions between Moscow and Beijing, was unable to be grasped by eager Cold Warriors was largely due to the efforts of the “China Lobby,” the supporters of “free China,” or the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Some, like New York businessman Alfred Kohlberg, had financial interests at stake; others, like the former U.S. Ambassador to China Patrick J. Hurley, had personal and ideological commitments; still others, like Senators Barry Goldwater and William Knowland, combined these factors; while media magnate Henry Luce, owner of Time and Life, ensured high profile oppositional platforms. They combined to resist moves to normalize relations with Beijing and abandon Taiwan, despite the desire of several White House administrations to do precisely that.

As authoritative, mainstream historians, such as Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, readily admit, it was these forces that made the clean break with the authoritarian and provocative Taipei regime, desired by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, impossible.

When Ronald Reagan, a rabid Taiwan champion, won the White House it cemented the unhealthy status quo.

Taiwan continues to enjoy a strong lobbying presence on Capital Hill, abetted now by the complex of think tanks aligned with military industrial and foreign governmental interests. None of them are ever going to say something so obvious as the truth: the fate of Taiwan has literally nothing to do with the well-being of the American people or even the American state in general.

It is about power—Washington’s power, specifically.

As Dave DeCamp reported back in 2021, a fundamental change came over official Washington during the Donald Trump years: no longer was Taiwan viewed as a “problem” in Sino-American relations. Rather, it was viewed as an “opportunity” to advance Washington’s anti-Beijing, containment agenda.

Americans should be made aware of this fact; the only thing China “threatens” is Washington’s attempted domination of the region through its network of clients.

Taiwan is increasingly front and center in this battle.

For its part, Taiwan has remained since the 1950s a primary objective of Beijing and this is unlikely to ever change.

August 23, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

CDC Stands by Water Fluoridation After Report Linking Fluoride to Lower IQs in Kids Finally Published

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 22, 2024

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) on Wednesday published a controversial report linking fluoride exposure to neurotoxic effects in children, after public health officials tried for years to block its publication and water down its conclusions.

The report, which analyzed published studies on fluoride’s neurotoxicity, concluded with “moderate confidence” that higher levels of fluoride exposure in drinking water are consistently linked to lower IQs in kids.

It’s the first government publication to concede what fluoride researchers have long reported: that the chemical added to the drinking water of hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. and celebrated as one of the 10 greatest health achievements of the 20th century carries a serious risk of neurological damage, particularly for pregnant women and young children.

“The NTP monograph provides more than sufficient evidence against the deliberate exposure of humans to fluoride through intentional fluoridation of drinking water,” said risk analysis scientist Kathleen Thiessen, Ph.D., who was not involved with the study but co-authored the 2006 National Resource Council study on fluoride toxicity.

Thiessen told The Defender, “A conclusion of ‘moderate confidence’ of neurotoxic effects, especially on unborn and newborn children, ought to mean an immediate elimination of water fluoridation and minimization of fluoride exposure to the population.”

The report reviewed existing studies that assessed the relationship between fluoride exposure and neurodevelopmental effects in children and adults from across the world, including places where fluoride occurs naturally in groundwater and places like the U.S., Canada and Mexico, where it is intentionally added to drinking water or food.

The authors concluded that exposure to drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams per liter (mg/L) is consistently associated with lower IQ in children. That’s only twice the amount the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends be added to drinking water in the U.S. to prevent tooth decay.

Most environmental toxins regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are more strictly controlled. Typically, human exposure is banned at 30 times the level of their known toxic effects. None of the chemicals regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act are permitted at a margin of less than 10.

The researchers found that almost all of the high-quality studies identified — 18 out of 19 — found a link between fluoride exposure and lower IQ in children. And 8 of 9 high-quality studies that looked at neurodevelopmental links other than IQ also found a link.

They said they were less confident that there was a consistent link between low levels of fluoride exposure in water and neurodevelopmental issues, and that more research is needed in that area. However, they also noted that water is not the only source of fluoride exposure.

“Additional exposures to fluoride from other sources would increase total fluoride exposure,” the report stated. “The moderate confidence conclusions may also be relevant to people living in optimally fluoridated areas of the United States depending on the extent of their additional exposures to fluoride from sources other than drinking water.”

Thiessen said pregnant women are often exposed to higher levels of fluoride because they drink much more water than others. And formula-fed infants are also at particularly high risk.

“While fluoridation of drinking water is the main source of fluoride intake for millions of people in the U.S., and probably the easiest to eliminate, it is not the only source of fluoride exposure, with toothpaste and tea probably being next in importance,” she said.

Fluoride advocates like the American Dental Association (ADA), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the CDC argue that adding fluoride to water is an important public health practice because it prevents tooth decay by exposing teeth to low levels of fluoride throughout the day and strengthening teeth.

Federal health officials have been recommending water fluoridation for more than five decades. However, in the last several years as the NTP report has moved closer to publication, support for the practice has appeared to wane among some public health officials.

The U.S. surgeon general in 2015 officially lowered the recommended dosage for water fluoridation from 0.7-1.2 mg/L to 0.7 mg/L after considering adverse health effects. And in 2020, out of concern for the forthcoming findings in the NTP report, the U.S. surgeon general’s office declined to make a public statement endorsing the practice.

A spokesperson for the CDC told The Defender in a statement that the agency continues to support water fluoridation at current recommended levels.

“These recommendations are based on current scientific evidence and prioritize the safety, security, and health of all individuals,” the agency said. “Continued research is needed to better understand the health risks and benefits associated with low fluoride exposures.”

The spokesperson also said, “While concerns have been raised about potential risks associated with high fluoride exposure, it is important to note that these concerns are primarily based on studies conducted in countries with higher fluoride exposure than in the United States.”

However, some of the highest quality studies to date have been done in Canada and Mexico, where exposure levels were the same as exposure levels in parts of the U.S. And a paper published in JAMA Network Open in May found that children born to women exposed during pregnancy to fluoridated drinking water in Los Angeles were more likely to have neurobehavioural problems.

The ADA, AAP and EPA did not respond to The Defender’s request for comment.

The long road to publication

For more than two decades, researchers have drawn a link between fluoride exposure and neurodevelopmental issues. In 2006, the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science released a report on fluoride toxicity that identified serious health issues associated with fluoride exposure and called for further research.

The NTP, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responsible for producing scientific research meant to inform policymaking, in 2016 began working on its review of fluoride’s neurotoxicity in humans.

After six years and multiple rounds of peer review, the NTP finalized its report in May 2022 — but public health officials within multiple agencies across HHS blocked its publication, according to emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request.

The NTP was compelled to send the report out for another round of peer review. Each round of peer review compelled the NTP to walk back some of its conclusions in what critics called an attempt to “delay it, to water it down.”

Former NTP director Dr. Brian Berridge told The Defender the report received unprecedented scrutiny because of challenges to the report by biased stakeholders. He said he believed it was an outcome of public health agencies’ desires to protect the practices they already have in place.

A draft version of the report was made public in March of 2023 under court order.

The order came as part of a lawsuit filed in 2017 by Food & Water Watch, Fluoride Action Network, Moms Against Fluoridation and other advocacy groups and individuals suing the EPA in a bid to force the agency to prohibit water fluoridation in the U.S. due to fluoride’s toxic effects on children’s developing brains.

After initial hearings in June 2020, presiding Judge Edward Chen placed the trial on hold pending the release of the report. After plaintiffs introduced evidence of agency attempts to suppress the report, Judge Chen ordered its release in draft form and the trial continued in January and February of this year.

The report, along with four major fluoride studies using birth cohorts — where researchers collect epidemiological data during pregnancy and then from children over their lifetimes to study a variety of health outcomes tied to environmental exposures — was key evidence in the trial.

The trial concluded on Feb. 13, and Judge Chen has not yet issued a decision.

The report finalized yesterday consists of one part of the NTP’s research. The other part, a meta-analysis, is forthcoming in a peer-reviewed journal.

NTP Director Rick Woychik said in a statement to The Defender that the delay in the report’s publication was due to an attempt to “get the science right” because “fluoride is such an important topic to the public and to public health officials.”

Woychik emphasized that water fluoridation “has been a successful public health initiative.”

Michael Connett, attorney for the plaintiffs in the case against the EPA, said the final version of the report, “confirms and actually further strengthens the NTP’s prior conclusions,” because the finalized version includes a supplemental review of more recent literature published between 2020 and 2023, which also finds a consistent link between fluoride exposure and adverse neurodevelopmental effects.

Connett added:

“Here you have an expert body of the US government confirming that fluoride is a neurotoxicant. That by itself is a very significant conclusion and should really prompt the question among policymakers and the public as to whether we really want to be adding a neurotoxicant to our water supply while questions remain about the precise doses that caused this effect.”

‘We didn’t sign up to add a neurotoxicant to our water’

The number of scientists and health professionals opposed to fluoridation has increased over the last several decades. Thiessen said the final publication of the monograph — and the forthcoming meta-analysis — provides important evidence for their position and might signal a change in the status quo public health position on fluoride.

“One hopes that it will help convince many more professionals that one of the 20th century’s top 10 public health achievements has in fact been terribly misguided from the beginning.”

The lawsuit brought public attention to the debate over water fluoridation ongoing among scientists working in public health for years, with many mainstream outlets addressing an issue that had often been disregarded as a conspiracy theory.

Connett said the government report ought to raise public concern and get more people asking questions about fluoridation. He said:

“This isn’t what people signed up for when we started adding fluoride to the water. We didn’t sign up to add a neurotoxicant to our water. We signed up for something that could help our teeth. Now that we know that it can affect their brain, we really need to go back to square one.”

Fluoride Action Network board member Rick North told The Defender that awareness about issues with water fluoridation has been growing for years.

“Fluoridation is a house of cards and it’s going to fall. It’s only a matter of when. The NTP report just made it sooner.” He said he hopes the final release of the report means a decision in the case against the EPA will come soon.

“For more than four years, Judge Edward Chen has waited for the final NTP report. Now he’s got it — even more scientific backing that fluoridation is an unreasonable risk to human health,” he said.

Stuart Cooper, Fluoride Action Network executive director, said the publication of the report was historic. “This report, along with the large body of published science, makes it abundantly clear that the question isn’t whether fluoridation is safe, but instead how many children have been needlessly harmed,” he said.

The report sometimes makes contradictory statements, Kim Blokker, a board member of Moms Against Fluoridation, told The Defender, showing the influence of the public health agencies on the reporting. “Do not be fooled by this attempt to muddy the waters of this otherwise definitive report, which contains more than enough evidence to prove the shockingly detrimental effects of fluoride exposure in young children.”

Kristie Lavelle, another board member of Moms Against Fluoridation, told The Defender they were happy to see the report finally published. “The time has come for fluoride to lose its status as a protected pollutant and to be treated the same as other recognized toxins such as lead and arsenic.”

With the publication of the report, she said, “We are one step closer to creating a world where clean water, air and food, and consequently vibrant health are the norm for our children and grandchildren.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

August 22, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

World Mosque Day: Gaza mosques bear testimony of Zionist regime’s barbarism

By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | August 21, 2024

Images of displaced Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip assembling amid the ruins to hold congregational prayers have been circulating on social media in recent months.

The Israeli regime has not even spared places of worship in the coastal territory, indiscriminately and aimlessly bombing them, most recently last week in Gaza City.

At least 100 people were killed, many of them unrecognizable, after the Israeli regime bombed a mosque at the al-Tabin School in the Daraj district during the pre-dawn prayers last Saturday.

As the world marks ‘World Mosque Day’, a total of 610 mosques have been completely destroyed in the Israeli genocidal bombings in Gaza in the past 320 days, according to the Gaza Media Office.

The World Mosque Day was instituted in honor of the Al-Aqsa Mosque after it was set ablaze in a deeply provocative act by an Australian Zionist named Michael Dennis Rohan on August 21, 1969.

The day has over the years transformed into a symbol of unity and a reminder of the importance and sacredness of the places of worship, particularly the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

The fire damaged nearly 1,500 square meters of the mosque, including the medieval minbar (pulpit), the mihrab (prayer niche) of Prophet Zachariah, and various arches and pillars, causing the roof to collapse.

Following a proposal by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the international observance of this day, also known as the International Mosque Day, was approved by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

The sacred mosque, however, has continued to be a flashpoint in the long-running struggle for Palestinian freedom from the Zionist occupation with the regime often ordering attacks on the mosque.

Destruction of mosques in Gaza

Since October 7, 2024, the Israeli regime has bombed every inch of the territory in Gaza, including mosques. According to the Gaza Media office, a total of 824 mosques have been completely or partially damaged in the past 11 months, including 610 mosques that have been damaged completely.

According to Palestinian official data from 2019, the Gaza Strip had 1,117 mosques, meaning that 55 percent of all mosques have been destroyed so far, with an additional 19 percent damaged.

Beyond their religious significance to Gaza’s majority Muslim population, many of these mosques are of great cultural and historical importance, as their history dates back to several centuries.

Over the past 11 months, mosques have been deliberately targeted with displaced people inside them, such as the Ahmed Yassin Mosque in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza, the Salim Abu Muslim Mosque in Beit Lahia, and the Khalid bin Al-Walid Mosque in Khan Yunis city.

Numerous direct airstrikes, like the one on the Khalid bin al-Walid Mosque in southern Gaza, have been video-documented, and all evidence demonstrates that they had no military function, debunking false claims of the Zionist regime.

In a report in May, the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs in Gaza reported that Israeli troops have also desecrated at least 60 cemeteries during their ground invasion of Gaza, using bulldozers to dig up graves and steal the bodies of more than 1,000 people.

Furthermore, over 100 Muslim preachers and 91 ministry employees have been killed in the genocidal war, representing only a fraction of the 40,000 victims so far.

These actions by the Israeli regime flagrantly violate international laws and conventions that strictly prohibit targeting places of worship during war, according to experts.

In addition to mosques, historic churches have also been destroyed, along with numerous other civilian buildings such as schools, hospitals, and residential structures.

Destroyed historical mosques

The Great Mosque of Gaza, also known as the Great Omari Mosque, was the largest and oldest mosque in the Gaza Strip and one of the oldest in the world before its destruction by Israeli regime forces.

Built by early Muslims in the 7th century, the mosque had been damaged multiple times throughout history by earthquakes, crusaders, Mongols, and British aviation, yet it was always rebuilt.

The mosque was used as a place of worship by the local Muslim community and served as a focal point for gatherings and cultural activities for centuries.

This sandstone building could accommodate up to 5,000 worshipers, but today, only its ruined Mamluk-era minaret remains.

On December 7, 2023, it was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, leaving most of the structure collapsed and the minaret bent and broken.

The destroyed Great Mosque of Gaza, the largest and oldest mosque in the Gaza Strip

The Ibn Uthman Mosque, the second largest in Gaza after the Great Mosque, was also reduced to rubble last month after Israeli warplanes fired several missiles at it.

Built in the Mamluk style, the mosque covered 2,000 square meters, with 400 square meters dedicated to its main courtyard. It had two gates overlooking the Shuja’iyya market.

The mosque had been subjected to attacks and demolition during previous wars on the Gaza Strip and was a center of confrontations with Israeli occupation forces during the First Intifada in 1987.

The Ibn Uthman Mosque, destroyed in July

Sayed al-Hashim Mosque, one of the largest and oldest mosques in Gaza, built at the site where Prophet Muhammad’s great-grandfather, Hashim bin Abd Manaf, is believed to have been buried, was also razed to the ground.

Legend says that he was a merchant traveling back to Mecca from Syria when he became ill, died, and was buried in what is now Gaza’s Daraj neighborhood.

The mosque, built from limestone in the 12th century and renovated several times, stood until it was hit by an Israeli bomb in October last year.

In Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, the Othman bin Qashqar Mosque, built during the same period as the Sayed al-Hashim Mosque, was badly damaged in an Israeli airstrike on December 7.

The destroyed Al Amin Muhammad Mosque in Khan Yunis

Among other notable destroyed mosques is the Al Amin Muhammad Mosque in Khan Yunis, destroyed in the early days of the genocidal war.

Its fallen dome, with a hole on top, has become a symbol of Israeli savagery.

The Al-Rahma Mosque, located in the Al-Amal neighborhood of the same city and once used by thousands of worshipers, was also completely destroyed.

After its destruction, thousands of Palestinians prayed next to its ruins during the last Eid al-Adha.

The Al Noor Mosque, on the seashore in Deir al-Balah Camp in the central Gaza Strip, was targeted by Israeli warships, resulting in large portions of it being destroyed.

Other mosques were bombed by warplanes while worshipers were inside, such as the White Mosque in Gaza. Some were bulldozed or blown up with dynamite.

August 21, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

A new leader for the next phase of Palestinian resistance

Yahya Sinwar, head of the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas ,in Gaza City on 14 April 2023 [Yousef Masoud/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]
By Sayid Marcos Tenório | MEMO | August 20, 2024

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, announced on 6 August the election of Yahya Sinwar as the new head of the movement’s Political Bureau, succeeding Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in an Israeli terrorist attack in Tehran. Haniyeh was in the Iranian capital to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Sinwar is one of the most prominent figures in the Hamas political sphere, known for his heavy hand and for making big changes. His unanimous election is a strong message that Hamas has become stronger and more resilient despite the severe blow it received from the political murder of Haniyeh. The movement expressed its confidence in Sinwar, known as Abu Ibrahim, to lead this new delicate phase in a complex local, regional and international context.

Known for his steadfast leadership style and his resistance-focused approach to the occupation state, Sinwar has played a crucial role in shaping the resistance movement’s strategies and managing Gaza’s complex political and social relations.

Hamas wanted a replacement for Haniyeh who would send strong messages to the enemies of the Palestinian people.

Sinwar was elected head of the Hamas Political Bureau in Gaza in February 2017, also succeeding Ismail Haniyeh. He was re-elected for a second term in 2021. He led the Great March of Return in 2018, a peaceful attempt to break the siege of Gaza, as well as the Sword of Al-Quds campaign in 2021. He has also played a prominent role in strengthening relations with the axis of resistance.

The new political bureau head was the mastermind and commander of the epic Al-Aqsa Flood, which has lasted more than 300 days. In a speech at the commemoration in Gaza on 14 December 2022 of the 35th anniversary of the creation of Hamas, he foreshadowed the events of 7 October when he declared: “We will come to you [Israel], God willing, in a thunderous flood. We will go against you with endless rockets, we will go against you in an endless onslaught of combatants, we will go against you with millions of our own, like an endless tide.”

The other Palestinian factions and leaders of the axis of resistance expressed their support for Sinwar’s election, demonstrating confidence in his ability to overcome the loss of Haniyeh and to continue his legacy and that of all the martyred leaders, especially those who fell during Al-Aqsa Storm.

Yahya Sinwar was born in 1962 in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip after his family was ethnically cleansed from the city of Majdal Asqualan (“Ashkelon”) by the Zionists in the 1948 Nakba. He completed his secondary education at Khan Younis Boys Secondary School. He then earned a bachelor’s degree in Arabic from the Islamic University of Gaza, where he was one of the leaders of the Student Council for five years, serving as Secretary of the Artistic Committee, then of the Sports Committee, Vice-President, President of the Council, and then Vice-President again from 1982 to 1987.

He began his political activity in his youth, leading numerous popular clashes against the Zionist occupation state between 1982 and 1988. His participation was instrumental in the founding of Majd, the Hamas internal security apparatus tasked with exposing Israeli spies. Along with Salah Shehada, he was one of the founders of the Hamas military wing, the Izz Ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, in 1991.

Arrested by Israel in 1982, Sinwar spent six months in Fara’a Prison for his resistance activities. In 1988, he was arrested again and given four life sentences, serving 23 consecutive years in the enemy’s prisons.

He spent four years being held in solitary confinement.

In prison, he repeatedly assumed leadership of the Hamas prisoners’ High Command, leading a series of hunger strikes, with significant examples in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. He learnt and still speaks fluent Hebrew and has numerous writings and translations related to political and security issues.

He translated the books Shabak Among the Remains and Israeli Parties in 1992, for example, and authored Hamas: Experience and Mistakes and Al-Mayd, which documents the work of the occupation state’s Shin Bet internal security agency. He is also the author of a novel, Thorns and Carnations, which covers the experience of the Palestinian struggle from the 1967 Naksa to the First Intifada (1987-1993).

After his release in 2011 under the prisoner exchange deal which saw 1,027 Palestinian prisoners freed in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, he was elected to the Hamas political office in Gaza and assumed responsibility for the security cabinet in 2012. He was later elected to the general political office and assumed responsibility for the military cabinet in 2013.

Now, the legitimate resistance for the liberation of the historic land of Palestine from occupation, with Jerusalem as its capital, continues under the leadership of Yahya Sinwar, a selfless anti-colonial, anti-occupation fighter.

August 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Calley & Casey Means: The Truth About Ozempic, the Pill, and How Big Pharma Keeps You Sick

TCN | August 17, 2024

August 18, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Dear Elon, 1,000ppm of carbon dioxide is safe, we breathe it every day

Elon is scratching for a reason to keep worrying about CO2

By Jo Nova | August 16, 2024

In the interview with Donald Trump, Elon Musk tried to argue that we ought be limiting carbon dioxide because we are too close to 1,000ppm where people get headaches. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we breath out air at 40,000 ppm fifteen times a minute for our entire lives. If 1,000 ppm gave us a headache or made us nauseous, we’d have to hold our breath every time we kissed someone.

@ElonMusk:  The point I was making is that, even if CO2 did not cause global warming, it is uncomfortable to breathe air with >1000 ppm of CO2. Given that the outdoor ppm away from cities is now ~420 (lol), it is already getting close to 1000 ppm indoors in cities at times. You can buy a cheap CO2 monitor and measure this for yourself.

As the global base level of CO2 keeps increasing, it will cause air quality in cities to feel stuffy and unpleasant, resulting in drowsiness, poor concentration and eventually headaches and nausea. That would not be a good future.

And then he quotes CO2meter.com which, ahem, sells CO2 meters, and has an incentive to wildly overstate the problems with CO2, which they do.

CO2 is not the problem, the stale air and other pollutants cause headaches and sleepiness.

The point of CO2 meters is not so much to warn us about excessive CO2 levels, but to indicate how well the room is ventilated.  CO2 levels are just an indicator for air quality. Air with higher CO2 levels usually also has higher levels of organic compounds, humidity, body odour, mold, chemicals from furniture and paint (like formaldehyde) and potentially viruses too. When people report headaches and nausea, the high CO2 levels are not the issue, it’s the bioeffluence that causes problems. When researchers do cognitive tests with pure CO2 added to clean air, performances don’t suffer.  The stale air is the problem, not the CO2. (See Zhang, and Misra where they compared the cognitive effects from badly ventilated air and clean air with high CO2 levels up to 3,000ppm. Problems disappear when they use fresh air plus higher CO2.) Well ventilated rooms may also be cooler rooms, which might explain why results so often contradict each other.

Classrooms are at 1,000ppm “typically”

While outdoor air is 420ppm, indoor levels of CO2 are commonly 1,000ppm in classrooms every day, and can rise as high as 3,000ppm if all the windows are shut. The recognized occupational health and safety levels for long term working exposure are 5,000 ppm for 8 hours straight, five days a week. It’s no big deal.

The National Collaborative Centre for Environmental Health (Canada) measured school and buildings and advises that “Typically, in an occupied classroom situation, the recommended level of ventilation would correspond to a CO2 level of approximately 1000-1100 ppm“. Furthermore, they said the “lowest level at which a human health effect (i.e. acidosis) has been observed in humans is 7,000 ppm, and that only after several weeks of continuous exposure in a submarine environment”.

The occupational limits for CO2recommended by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) are 5000 ppm (TLV-TWA) and 30,000 ppm (TLV-STEL), based on the direct effects on acidification of the blood.  — via Marc Morano and Climate Depot

Station views of Russian Modules during VKD-51 spacewalk

At NASA The Office of the Chief Health and Medicial Officer reports that a typical spacecraft works at around 3,000-7,000 ppm (or o.3-0.7% CO2). The recommended exposure is 5,000, and the permissible exposure limit is 10,000 ppm. Although the flight surgeons found levels of nearly 7,000 were safe and “didn’t affect performance”. On Apollo 13, CO2 levels rose to 20,000ppm. Sweating and shortness of breath became a problem above 30,000 ppm.

Submariners typically live with CO2 levels of 2,000- 5,000 ppm, and when a small sample of sailors was tested at 600, 2500 or 15,000 ppm, the researchers couldn’t find any difference in results from an 80 minute test on decision making. (Rodeheffer at al) Likewise another study at the Johnson Space Centre, people did cognition tests at 600, 1,200, 2,500 and 5,000ppm and there was no dose response effect. Results look rather random.

Lowther et al looked at 51 studies in 2021, and found nothing conclusive in terms of harms from CO2 below 5,000ppm. Most studies were confounded, results were conflicting. Teams of researchers are hunting to find another problem “due to CO2”. If there was a strong negative effect of CO2 it would have shown up by now. Instead CO2 is only associated with occasional headaches and nausea — probably because it is high in crowded rooms with little ventilation.

One large review in 2019 was described as showing CO2 affected people at levels as low as 1,000ppm, but the paper itself  points at the confounding data and uses the words “possible” and “potential effects” and concludes “we need more studies.”

UPDATE: Commenters Alan Klein and Mr Farnham points out the safety limits for Australian coal miners (NSW) is 1.25% CO2 which is 12,500ppm, and that is for 8 hour shifts. Brief excursions up to 3% (30,000ppm) are acceptable. See comment #17 for more details.

REFERENCES

Lowther, Scott D., Sani Dimitroulopoulou, Kerry Foxall, Clive Shrubsole, Emily Cheek, Britta Gadeberg, and Ovnair Sepai. 2021. “Low Level Carbon Dioxide Indoors—A Pollution Indicator or a Pollutant? A Health-Based Perspective” Environments 8, no. 11: 125. https://doi.org/10.3390/environments8110125

Mishra AK, Schiavon S, Wargocki P, Tham KW. Respiratory performance of humans exposed to moderate levels of carbon dioxide. Indoor Air. 2021 Sep;31(5):1540-1552. doi: 10.1111/ina.12823. Epub 2021 May 15. PMID: 33991134.

Rodeheffer CD, Chabal S, Clarke JM, Fothergill DM. Acute Exposure to Low-to-Moderate Carbon Dioxide Levels and Submariner Decision Making. Aerosp

Zhang X, Wargocki P, Lian Z, Thyregod C. Effects of exposure to carbon dioxide and bioeffluents on perceived air quality, self-assessed acute health symptoms, and cognitive performance. Indoor Air. 2017 Jan;27(1):47-64. doi: 10.1111/ina.12284. Epub 2016 Mar 7. PMID: 26825447.

h/t to Willie Soon, Marc Morano and Climate Depot.

August 18, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Blair, UK Government Warned Over NATO War Crimes in Belgrade

© Aaron Chown
By John Miles – Sputnik – 16.08.2024

As NATO aggression in the former Yugoslavia fully unmasked the alliance as a tool of Western imperialism, newly-released documents reveal controversial former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned of the possible legal consequences of the bombing of a state-owned broadcaster in Belgrade.

“Twenty five years ago, NATO bombed the main studio of Yugoslavia’s state-owned broadcasting company, Radio-Television Serbia (RTS),” writes the independent outlet Declassified UK. “The attack at 2am on 23 April 1999 came amid Bill Clinton and Tony Blair’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Kosovo.”

“16 media workers were killed and 19 injured in the strike on RTS, which remains the single most controversial event in NATO’s 78-day military campaign,” notes journalist John McEvoy.

The UK and allied NATO forces claimed to be acting in the interest of protecting ethnic Albanians as ethnic violence broke out on all sides during the breakup of the former socialist Yugoslav republic. But President Slobodan Milošević remained a conspicuous holdout as newly-independent states deregulated their economies in line with neoliberal economic policy advocated by Western governments.

The United States would back numerous “color revolutions” after the fall of the Eastern Bloc, with wealthy donors like George Soros encouraging and standing to benefit from economic liberalization enforced by Western-led institutions like the International Monetary Fund.

The case of Milošević demonstrates a scenario during which the United States was willing to employ substantial military force to seek regime change, paving the way for NATO aggression in countries like Libya and Afghanistan.

Blair claimed the destruction of the RTS headquarters and other civilian targets was justified in the name of dismantling the “dictatorship” of Milošević. Sixteen media workers were killed during the bombing, which Amnesty International labeled a “war crime.”

“Killing journalists does not stop censorship, it only brings more repression,” claimed the International Federation of Journalists in a statement.

“We do not see how the suppression of news sources can serve any useful purpose,” said European Broadcasting Union president Albert Scharf. “Over and beyond the deaths involved, the EBU is concerned about any attempts to limit the rights of audiences to full news services.”

Declassified files now reveal that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned against the depraved attack at the time by British attorney general John Morris, who questioned how the destruction of the broadcast headquarters was related to NATO’s purported cause in ensuring “relief of humanitarian need in Kosovo.”

The UK and the United States launched the illegal act of aggression in Belgrade without a required UN Security Council resolution, demonstrating the lengths NATO was willing to go to to ensure Western hegemony after the end of the Cold War.

“We are moving towards a situation where our aim will become removing Milosevic,” admitted Blair in a note at the time, revealing that regime change was the ultimate motive of the assault. “Plainly Milosevic will threaten the stability of the region as long as he remains.”

NATO forces would go on to strike a number of other civilian targets including Belgrade’s Hotel Jugoslavija and Montenegro’s main airport, with little apparent concern for the climbing death toll. Thousands were killed or wounded by the end of the campaign while elevated rates of cancer and birth defects are still observed due to NATO’s highly controversial use of depleted uranium.

The UK would become the first of multiple Western countries to recognize the disputed breakaway territory of Kosovo in 2008. Future leader of the territory Hashim Thaci, who played a key role during the NATO aggression via his leadership of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, is currently on trial on war crimes charges at The Hague.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, under intense pressure from the United States, would controversially decide against investigating the bombing of the RTS as a war crime.

August 16, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »