If you were lucky enough to attend America’s premier academic institution, Harvard University, you would receive most days, as I do, the Harvard Gazette. The Gazette generally cloaks its pieces in the mantle of “news”; but really its principal function is to find ways for us Harvard people to congratulate ourselves on how brilliant we are, while at the same time heaping scorn and derision on the the ignorant deplorables who are always getting in the way of our plans to perfect the world.
You only need to read a few of these things before you start to realize that what might seem like the very “smartest” people — the ones with the fanciest degrees and the fanciest professorships at the fanciest universities — are actually painfully stupid.
[T]he incoming Biden-Harris administration has moved quickly to reinstall science as a foundation for government policy after four years of a president who disdained accepted scientific wisdom on subjects from wildfires to hurricane tracks, climate change to COVID-19.
The Gazette has learned that “science is back” by their usual method, which is by interviewing the leading Harvard professor on the subject. In this case that is John Holdren. Do you remember him? Holdren’s current title is “Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and professor of environmental science and policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.” But before that he was “[A]ssistant to the [P]resident for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,” a position in which he served for the entire eight years of the Obama presidency. You may remember that Holdren was confirmed unanimously by the Senate in March 2009, after minimal scrutiny of his background.
So give us an example, John, of how a Biden administration will prove to be more “pro-science” than that deplorable Trump:
GAZETTE : What is an example of a classic, successful government policy backed by good science? . . . .
HOLDREN: I would point to the Paris Agreement, which was an immense step forward in which 195 countries all across the world committed to take constructive steps toward reducing their climate-altering emissions going forward. . . .
Now, as anyone who has read the Paris Agreement knows, the entire developing world — home to about 90% of the world’s people — made no commitments whatsoever in that document, nor did they even agree to any non-binding goals, toward “reducing their climate-altering emissions going forward.” Emissions from the developing world are rapidly increasing, and will continue to do so, Paris Agreement or no Paris Agreement, thus rendering any U.S. efforts to limit emissions completely futile. Holdren is either completely ignorant on this subject, or he is intentionally trying to mislead the readership. Or it could be some of both. You be the judge.
And by the way, might Holdren have some conflict of interest here that may be relevant? None is disclosed as such in the article. But you might happen to recognize that the funder of Holdren’s Harvard professorship, Teresa Heinz, is the wife of John Kerry. Kerry, of course, is the former Secretary of State who was in charge of negotiating the Paris Agreement, and who more recently co-chaired the panel that drafted the Biden energy program, and who undoubtedly is expecting some big position in an incoming Biden administration. But don’t worry, conflicts only apply to Republicans, so there is no need to mention any of this.
Anyway, if you think that John Holdren might be an appropriate person to weigh in on issues of the role of “science” in public policy, you may want to consider some of the man’s previous writings on the subject.
For example, in 1977 Holdren co-authored with Paul and Anne Ehrlich a textbook titled “Ecoscience.” We know that “Ecoscience” was about “science,” because it’s right there in the title; therefore we can be secure in understanding that this is a good place to look for Holdren’s views as to what using “science as a foundation for public policy” will entail. A principal theme of the book is that overpopulation is about to engulf the world (“science” has shown it!) and therefore governments are justified, and indeed required, to take the most extreme possible measures to prevent the impending disaster. In 2009, shortly after Holdren’s confirmation as Obama’s “science” advisor, a website called Zombietime collected a top-ten list of quotations from “Ecoscience.” Here are a few of my favorites:
Involuntary fertility control. . . . A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men. The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.
If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.
In today’s world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?
Toward a Planetary Regime. . . . Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. . . . The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market. The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits.
Now that I think of it, “painfully stupid” barely begins to describe the opinions of this man. Maybe we should go with “moral monster.”
Or you could try another book that Holdren co-authored with the Ehrlichs — “Human Ecology,” from 1973. In 2014 the websiteCFACT compiled a collection of choice quotes from this one. Again, I’ll give you just a few of my favorites:
There is good reason to believe that population growth increases the probability of a lethal worldwide plague and of a thermonuclear war. Either could provide a catastrophic “death-rate solution” to the population problem; each is potentially capable of destroying civilization and even of driving Homo sapiens to extinction. . . . Perhaps more likely than extinction is the possibility that man will survive only to endure an existence barely recognizable as human-malnourished, beset by chronic disease, physically and emotionally impoverished, surrounded by the devastation wrought by an industrial civilization that could not cope with the results of its own biological and social folly.
Political pressure must be applied immediately to induce the United States government to assume its responsibility to halt the growth of the American population. Once growth is halted, the government should undertake to influence the birth rate so that the population is reduced to an optimum size and maintained there.
A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation.
In another post, this one from 2009, CFACT noted that Holdren had also managed to take alarmist positions on climate change both in warning about global warming and also about global cooling — and that he had managed to take both positions simultaneously. CFACT concluded:
Holdren is a “doom peddler” who latches onto the nightmare-scenario-du-jour — overpopulation, nuclear holocaust, global cooling, global warming (all of which he’s trumpeted at various points in his career) — and then wildly exaggerates it in order to scare the public into adopting his politicized “solutions.”
Or, to put it another way, “science is back”! De-develop the United States? Forced population control? A “planetary regime” to control all “resources”? The “science” requires it! All the “smart” people from Harvard know that. You can understand why Holdren is excited about a Biden presidency. Are you?
No matter the eventual election result, President Donald Trump’s legacy is intact. He has reignited an enthusiasm for nationalism the world over, but his true impact has been obscured by ridiculous accusations of racism.
As the fate of the US presidential election hangs in the balance pending resolution of multiple voter-fraud lawsuits, President Donald Trump has already won – no matter who takes the White House.
Trump’s enduring legacy is the populist, nationalist movement he ignited in 2016. This coalition is growing by the day – both in the US and abroad – and will continue to expand, long after he leaves office.
Why? Because “nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” as French author Victor Hugo eloquently noted.
That idea is populist nationalism. The mainstream media (which is predominantly left-wing) has rabidly attacked nationalism and populism as “racist.” In reality, there is nothing racist about being proud of who you are and where you come from. This is why Trump supporters enthusiastically wave American flags at their gatherings, which are celebrations of their country.
Similarly, countless patriots in other countries support Trump because as the US president, he boldly declared that it’s OK to be proud of your nation.
Being a patriot does not mean you don’t like other countries. It means you respect the sovereignty of each nation and acknowledge that they have as much right to be proud of who they are as you do for who you are.
For decades, Western nations were taught to be ashamed of their histories, claiming they were “racist.” In contrast, such self-hatred was not espoused in the Middle East, Asia or Africa, even though those regions arguably have more blatant histories of overt racism.
President Trump was voted into office in 2016 by a movement that championed everyday Americans – not the snobby, elitist groupthink embraced by the Washington swamp and Hollywood celebrities.
Trump supporters were disgusted at America’s decades-long submission to a globalist agenda that taught that all white people are racist, all people of color are helpless victims and everyone should depend on the government to solve their problems.
This flawed, race-hustling mindset stoked widespread racial animus, leading to the rise of the militant, anti-white, anti-police Black Lives Matter movement.
The media breathlessly blamed Trump for the BLM race riots that erupted across the US this summer, as if they happened because he was president. In reality, this racial division was brewing for decades; Trump was merely the catalyst that exposed the volcanic fury bubbling below the surface.
The media have championed Black Lives Matter’s destructive riots while deriding white people as racists if they dared to question BLM’s Marxist agenda.
But numerous black commentators say the racial resentment goes both ways. Just ask attorney and political scientist Dr. Carol Swain. Swain says the nationalist movement in America started gaining momentum 15 years before Trump became president.
She predicted the rise of nationalism in her 2002 book, ‘The New White Nationalism in America’.
“The rise of the new white nationalism occurred long before the election of President Donald Trump,” Swain told Judge Jeanine Pirro.
Swain noted that “white nationalism” is different from “white supremacy,” even though the left and their media lapdogs intentionally conflate the two movements.
“I distinguish it from white supremacy because the people who were involved [in the white nationalism movement] were more intellectual,” said Swain, a graduate of Yale Law School.
She continued, “They were not espousing racial violence or using epithets, but they had grievances. They felt that white people’s rights were being trampled on and no one was speaking up or listening to their grievances.”
Swain said the white nationalism movement mushroomed, because whites were being marginalized and disenfranchised after decades of affirmative action and other government programs designed to benefit minorities.
The media and academia exacerbated the situation by constantly browbeating all white people as racist and claiming they have no right to complain about anything because they have ‘white privilege.’ But look around you: There are plenty of poor, underprivileged whites.
White nationalism is becoming heightened since whites will soon no longer be the majority race in the US. It makes you wonder: Once whites become a minority, will society allow them to constantly whine and demand preferential treatment?
But this is a narrative you’ll struggle to hear amid the cacophony of anti-Trump noise we are constantly subjected to. It’s also why these very real changes in America’s political landscape, all influenced by Trump, will be underplayed.
The media’s bias has been exposed and its credibility decimated. According to a recent Gallup poll, a whopping 94 percent of Americans do not trust the press.
Americans’ belief in the integrity of US elections has been reduced amid mounting evidence of alarming irregularities and lack of transparency in vote-counting.
The Democrat Party is splintered and a civil war is brewing. For example, Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), whose district voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, said she will not support Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House.
Bearing these in mind, it’s hard to argue that Trump truly lost – even though the election may eventually say otherwise.
Samantha Chang is a politics writer and financial editor based in New York City. Follow her on Twitter @Samantha_Chang
Howard Lichtman joins us today to introduce ThickRedLine.org, an effort to restore respect for law enforcement by abolishing victimless crime. ThickRedLine seeks to upend the narrative that keeps the public afraid of breaking the unlawful orders of the politicians and prevents officers from following their own conscience.
I think everybody would like 2020 to be over, and that we’d all like the US election to be over, but journalists shouldn’t stop accurately reporting just because the news is unpleasant.
“Breaking news: Plane lands safely!”
It just doesn’t work that way in life or journalism. We can’t give out participation medals and say it doesn’t really matter who won the US election.
Neither should Bidenites be calling for blacklisting both journalists and Republican public officials or successfully trying to deny Donald Trump a lawyer in Pennsylvania, but that’s another story.
A poll 227 pages long from The Economist – which will likely sink like a stone in the US Mainstream Media because it’s so very damning – reveals total US division and the devastation of its electoral integrity: 9 out of 10 Trump voters say Biden “did not legitimately win the election”, and 9 out of 10 Trump voters say, “mail ballots are being manipulated to favor Joe Biden”.
In good news, only 7 out of 10 Trump voters say that we will,” never know the real outcome of this election.” Is this the new, “Who killed JFK?” (Never getting a clear answer there surely increased political alienation among many Americans.)
Even though I relayed the findings in a manner which stresses political partisanship, this is definitely not a partisan issue: the percentages of Americans who hold the views described above are 45%, 42%, and 41%.
Take out the partisan labels (and the poll had not just Republican/Democrat but male/female, White/Black, age 18-29/65+, income level, College Grad/Non-College Grad, blah/blah, blah/blah, and blah/blah): the poll shockingly finds that 40% of Americans answered, “Enough to influence the outcome,” to the question, “How much voter fraud do you think occurred in this election?”
Again, it’s only a partisan issue to people who have been so distorted by fake-leftist identity politics that they can’t see the nation for the tribes. This Western tribalism is, of course, a fundamentally imperialist worldview, and also the view incessantly foisted on others by Westerners. But America doesn’t have something like a Supreme Leader whose primary job is to constantly remind about the good of the nation – that revolutionary Iranian institution has successfully gotten the nation through tough times, which is precisely why it is so despised and falsely slandered in places like London, Washington DC, Tel Aviv and Paris. But in the United States, there is not this governmental branch which exists almost solely to smooth out partisan issues, and the concept of putting the national good above tribal politics is only heard once every four years: in the victory speech of the winning candidate.
In case you were not convinced that this is not a Democrat/Republican issue: 84% of Americans answered, “Yes,” when asked, “Would you say that you are angry about the results of the 2020 presidential election?” That’s hard to explain, but it certainly does not indicate happiness with how the 2020 vote was conducted.
Regardless, when 40% of the country – 130 million people – say there was enough fraud to influence the outcome of the election, that’s a huge problem.
For those highly-tribal Americans who obsessively and emotionally insist on viewing this solely in a partisan manner, fine: 60 million voters who are crying electoral fraud is still a huge, huge problem. They can be drowned out by crying louder, and they can be ignored, but they simply can’t go away any more than the Vietcong had somewhere else to go.
So there’s really only one way to solve this perhaps fatal gutting of national integrity: a judicial review of the election.
It’s not true that the US already tried this in 2000 – there was not a thorough judicial review of the vote but a judicial decision by the Supreme Court to stop counting votes. That’s why it was indeed a partisan mess. So the US did not get the full judicial review to which I am referring, and which is the only solution other than drawing up an entirely new system.
PressTV seems to be one of the few English-language media which is actually reporting on the widespread election fraud allegations, rather than just dismissing the idea as nonsense and calling for blacklists. All I can say is: In 2009 the US did not respect the laws and judges of Iran’s electoral system – they meddled instantly and with total self-interest, and did seemingly all they could to fuel deadly violence. That was totally wrong, and I personally think that it is not for foreign media to do anything but to respect the will of the American people and the system they created.
They want to change their system? Please do.
But until they do how can we be faulted for respecting their electoral system, judges, and laws? And how can we not report that 60 million voters still openly cry voter fraud two weeks after the election?
But who cares about PressTV and Iran? I agree, and that’s entirely my point – this is an American issue, and we are objectively reporting what’s happening over here: claims of voter fraud are going unreported; not just CNN anchorpeople but actual elected officials are calling for blacklists; lawyers are being intimidated into not representing Donald Trump’s electoral grievances; and that Americans have apparently held a vote but seem to disagree on the system to properly process that vote.
What on earth is the point of a vote without also following the vetting system? The US seems to be taking a vote simply to take a vote? We better understand why they have such enormous abstention problems!
But the poll continues: Only 26% of Americans somewhat agree with the idea that “No matter who wins an election, things do not change very much.”
Elections do matter to Americans.
But elections which lack public confidence from nearly a majority are problematic, to put it mildly.
So where’s Trump?
Public servants follow both laws and public opinion, right?
All of this criticism of journalists who haven’t fallen at Biden’s (allegedly) president-elect’s feet has me questioning the most basic ideas, these days.
However, the path forward seems simple:
Question: Do you think Donald Trump should contest the results of the election in court?
Answer: 46% of America, “Yes”.
This poll is just a poll, sure, but it only says what every person on the ground says. Those in the MSM newsroom bubbles maybe can’t see that, but the nice thing about TV journalism is that you actually still have to report from the street – in modern internet “written” journalism, not so much anymore.
For the tribal-obsessed: Nine out of 10 of those who identify as Republicans said, “Yes”, but also 1 out of 10 Democrats. That great mass which is totally ignored by the all-strangling US duopoly – those who identify as “Independents” – reported that 53% of them also said, “Yes”.
It’s not a partisan issue, it’s a systemic issue. So where’s Trump?
Trump is doing the worst thing possible: He has not conceded, nor has he held a press conference to openly say that he will resolutely press forward to verify the vote – he has remained silent for two weeks. Slinking in the background and issuing a few tweets is by far the worst thing he could do. I can report that many Americans expect him to continue doing only that, but we can only wait.
Trump does have a right (to contest his grievance in court, as top Republican leaders reminded days ago) to take time to make up his mind. Pressing for a judicial review would get him crucified worldwide (even the Pope has prematurely declared Biden the victor, even though I thought the West was so very objectively secular?), and it would be the 1973 televised Watergate hearings times ten, but Trump undoubtedly has “democracy with American characteristics” – with its emphasis on minority/states/individualistic rights – on his side.
At 46% he very nearly has a democratic majority.
That’s really narrow? Maybe the poll was slightly miscounted? Don’t worry – I won’t ask The Economist if part of this poll was conducted via mail-in ballots.
Ramin Mazaheri is currently covering the US elections. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.
The close attention widely paid to the recent election campaign in the United States is understandable. We are talking about a change in the leadership of a country, which continues to occupy the position of one of the main pillars of the modern world order.
Leaving aside the theme of the nature of the “democratic procedure” in the United States (which caused “disappointment” for many, to put it mildly), let us note the main thing in this context: each of the other significant participants in the world political game associated some of their own expectations attached to it. In this regard, the first reaction of the three leading Asian countries (China, India and Japan) to the preliminary results of the American elections seems to be remarkable.
First, attention was drawn to the haste of expressing congratulations to Joe Biden, in which the prime ministers of India and Japan did not lag much behind their European counterparts. At the same time, no official reaction followed from Beijing to the democratic candidates declaration of “victory”. Apparently, it will not even be until the official announcement of the results of the elections held in the USA. Despite the fact that the Chinese press is actively discussing everything that is somehow connected with them.
First of all, it is noted that Donald Trump leaves American policy to his successors in a state of “degradation”. This implies an internal political situation, in the catastrophic deterioration of which Trump, however, is definitely less to blame than his opponents.
As for Washington’s course in the Chinese direction, it is to Donald Trump that US-China relations owe the extremely important ‘Phase 1 Agreement’ in the field of trade. The parties are implementing the main provisions of this document without interruption, despite understandable restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic and the aggravation of the political sphere of bilateral relations. Moreover, the latter is more likely a product of the “creativity” on the part of the US political establishment (represented in the current administration by M. Pompeo), over which Trump never managed to establish control.
It is precisely because of the extremely poor state of the political relations with the United States that the Chinese Global Times looks to the future with more than a small amount of skepticism. Believing, however, that there are resources for their improvement, which both sides should not waste.
The NEO has repeatedly noted that the highest ranking of these resources are trade and economic ties between the United States and the PRC (People’s Republic of China). In bilateral trade, the volume of which exceeds 600 billion dollars, there are serious problems, with the solution being aimed at the Agreement of the “1st Phase”. The main supporter of the further development of relations with the PRC remains American business.
China drew attention to the fact that at the third international exhibition the China International Import Expo (CIIE) (Shanghai, November 5 – 10) 197 American companies (5 more than the previous one, CIIE-2019) occupied the most extensive exhibition area. According to the Global Times, foreign exhibitors welcomed the message about J. Biden claim to victory in the recent elections.
But even if an intention to improve bilateral relations appears on the part of the new Washington administration, the “Taiwan problem” has become extremely aggravated in recent years.
In this regard, Taiwan’s reaction to the results of the American elections was remarkable. At first, it was almost mourning in nature, because just during the presidency of Donald Trump, the trend (to one degree or another always present in American politics) to provide comprehensive support to the Taiwanese leadership to acquire a full-fledged statehood for the island increased sharply. In recent months, special importance had been attached to the defense sphere of bilateral cooperation.
However, Taipei’s initial sadness was quickly replaced by official joy expressed in congratulations sent to Joe Biden by President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan. A similar metamorphosis in the camp of “Taiwanese separatists” provoked caustic comments from the same Global Times.
In the assessments of Indian experts on the results of the elections held in the United States and against the background of all sorts of speculations about the half-Indian K. Harris as vice president of the United States (which states, however, that she is a “proud American”), there is obviously a factor of a possible improvement in US-China relations.
The fact is that it was during the presidency of Donald Trump that the Indian leadership took a number of important steps towards the United States. Especially in the last six months a sharp aggravation of relations with China due to the conflict in Ladakh. In the wake of the (hypothetical) improvement in US-China relations, Delhi will be faced with a difficult question: how to proceed with Beijing?
Japan, in an absolutely obvious way, is sincerely (unlike many others) happy with Joe Biden, more for the expected departure of Trump as leader of a key ally. Which, as they say, “really got” Tokyo.
First, by regularly spoiling the mood with reminders of the US trade deficit with Japan of $ 70 billion annually. This is a good fact for Tokyo, but it is better to keep it as least noticeable as possible. In addition, the matter was not limited to talk, and the persistent D. Trump set a deadline (at the end of this year) for taking specific measures to correct the “obvious disgrace”.
Washington’s deliberate aggravation of US-China relations (and even against the background of the coronavirus pandemic) reduces the global economic situation, which negatively affects the foreign business of Japanese companies in general and in China in particular.
According to the Yomiuri Shimbunnewspaper, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is going to discuss all these and other issues with Joe Biden during his visit to the United States, which is due to take place immediately after the inauguration of the US president, scheduled for January 20, 2021.
Finally, it is not superfluous to comment (with a short excursion into recent history) on the ostentatious joy that the allies and closest partners of the United States are expressing with unprecedented speed to the (potential) new American president. Let us recall that when at one time the overseas “knight without fear and reproach” courageously fought against windmills (that is, “with communism” and all kinds of “totalitarian regimes”), his allies made a not so small profitable deal.
Four years ago, they suddenly felt like an abandoned wife, who, in anger and tears, exclaimed: “Come back, I will forgive everything”.
And now, when a ray of hope has dawned, the “abandoned” says, smiling and wiping away her tears: “Dear, let’s forget the old and start all over again?”
It will not work. In any case, on the same scale. For Donald Trump is not a one-time aberration in the political life of the United States. Expressed in a style popular at the time, four years ago America “breathed in the long-awaited air of freedom” and is unlikely to allow itself to once again throw on the yoke of obligations to cunning allies and all sorts of “independent” rogues.
Because it is not clear with whom and in the name of what to fight today. More precisely, it is already clear that there is no one with whom and for what. Moreover, the problems inside the country are “through the roof”.
However, one should not underestimate the factor of the possible return to the American administration of one of those “three witches” who at one time whispered and prophesied to the then American “Macbeth”, that is, President Barack Obama, the prospect of a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Libya.
After that, the United States was drawn into the military adventure of its European allies, the real catastrophic consequences of which the people of Libya are still unraveling.
Since the world game is shifting to Asia, a sharp strengthening of the “humanitarian” component of American foreign policy can be expected here. Moreover, the aforementioned second face of the new US administration was also marked with a “humanitarian” diagnosis. The formation of another trio of American political “witches” may complete the candidacy for the post of Secretary of Defense.
However, in connection with the situations in XUAR, Tibet, Hong Kong, the mentioned diagnosis of American policy in the Asian direction manifested itself quite clearly and “under the devil-Pompeo”. That is, with the coming to power in the United States of the new administration, one should hardly expect immediate and radical shifts in the regional political puzzle. As for the non-“immediate” and not “radical” ones, it is too early to say anything definite about them today.
Vladimir Terekhov is an expert on the issues of the Asia-Pacific region.
The brief history taught to Americans about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis is that evil Soviets conspired with evil Castro to secretly place nuclear armed ballistic missiles in Cuba to threaten the United States. The United States military uncovered this plot, so President John Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba. The commies backed down and removed the missiles. This is true but leaves out key facts: 1) The United States had installed 45 nuclear armed Jupiter ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey in 1961. 2) The Americans were unaware that nuclear armed missiles were ready to launch from Cuba during this crisis, and that Castro had ordered these missiles launched should the United States attack. 3) The captain of a Soviet submarine concluded war had begun and ordered the launch of a nuclear torpedo. 4) Millions of Americans were almost killed.
Last month, Townhall.com columnist Marina Medvin published a column about letters allegedly written by Leon Morin, a 29-year old soldier who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in 1945. In his letters, Morin made a number of eyebrow-raising claims about Dachau—claims that Medvin swallowed uncritically:
The camp contained a gas chamber disguised as a shower room.
The gas chamber exterminated inmates using chlorine gas.
There were at least 20 camps just like Dachau on German soil.
Today, no historian—mainstream or revisionist, Jewish or gentile—would agree with these claims. According to the official Dachau website, “Killing people on a mass scale through poison gas never took place in the Dachau concentration camp.” According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Germans operated only five extermination camps: Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. All were located in Poland, not Germany. Neither mainstream historians nor revisionists believe that chlorine gassings occurred at any of the camps.
In his letter, Morin claimed that Dachau’s prison guards gassed thousands of inmates in a three-hour period just before U.S. troops arrived, of which “more than half” were “half cremated.” The point, we are led to believe, was to kill as many Jews as possible immediately before the camp was liberated and to conceal the dead bodies from the U.S. soldiers. If the point was to conceal evidence of gassings, we are left to wonder why the Germans would go to the trouble of half cremating bodies rather than fully cremating them. It is also curious that the guards waited until the very last minute to administer these alleged executions when there would have been ample opportunity to do so earlier.
According to Morin, the gas chamber had a capacity of 250. To gas 2,000 inmates thus would require eight separate gassings. It takes time to load 250 people into a small room. It takes time for a gassing to kill a group of people. And it takes time to drag 25,000+ pounds of human flesh out of that room. To administer 8 or more gassings in three hours the German guards and their staff would have had to average one gassing every 22.5 minutes.
Even more remarkable was the pace at which the gassed bodies were allegedly cremated. According to Morin, there were six crematories at Dachau—two that “can hold three bodies and four more who can hold six apiece.” This appears to be false: there were apparently only two crematoria ever built at Dachau and it is not clear that both were functional when Dachau was liberated. The official Dachau website shows only one crematorium building, referred to as “barrack X.”. Morin presumably meant to say that there were six ovens in this one crematorium and is claiming—improbably—that multiple bodies could be shoved into each oven. For the sake of argument, let’s accept this questionable claim and do the math. To simplify the analysis, we will make the following assumptions: It takes one hour to fully cremate bodies in an oven, no matter how many bodies are crammed inside; it takes half an hour to half cremate a body; time spent moving bodies to the crematorium from the gas chamber and loading them into the ovens is zero; time spent unloading half-cremated bodies from the ovens is zero; time spent moving half-cremated bodies out of the crematorium is zero. So, that gives us:
2 ovens that can hold three bodies each = 6 bodies fully cremated per hour
4 ovens that can hold six bodies each = 24 bodies fully cremated per hour
= Total of 30 bodies fully cremated per hour
= 60 bodies half cremated per hour
= 180 bodies half cremated in three hours
Under more realistic assumptions, the numbers might look something like this:
6 ovens that can hold 1-2 bodies body each = 6-12 bodies cremated per hour
= 18-24 bodies fully cremated in three hours
= 36-48 bodies half-cremated in three hours
Of course, if we take into account time spent dragging corpses from the gas chamber to the crematorium, loading them into the ovens, removing half-cremated bodies from the ovens, and hauling half-cremated bodies out of the crematorium, the number would be even lower. It is also reasonable to assume that some time would be required to cool the oven before removing half-cremated bodies. Even under the most generous assumptions, Morin’s claim—more than a thousand half-cremations in just three hours, or one half-cremation every 10 seconds or so—obviously is impossible.
Some of Medvin’s readers attempted to rebut Morin’s false allegations, but it appears that their comments have been deleted by Townhall staff. (So much for the idea that conservatives support free speech.)
In a follow-up column, Medvin highlighted Morin’s claim that camp guards used bloodhounds to torture Dachau inmates. She states that this claim is backed by “historic photos” which “show Dachau prisoners fighting the ravenous dogs with clubs to survive.” The only photo she linked to, however, shows no such fight—only a pair of inmates sitting near a dead dog. For all we know, the dog may have died of starvation or old age. Curiously, Medvin has not written about similar allegations directed at Israel (see here, here, here, and here).
If it is real, Morin’s letter is historically significant. It is not evidence that there were gas chambers at Dachau (as Medvin believes), but does illustrate a post-war propaganda campaign designed to vilify Nazi Germany—a propaganda campaign that continues to this day.
I’ve read comments from several folks claiming that despite the COVID lockdowns reducing emissions, there’s been no corresponding decrease in the airborne CO2. Here’s a typical claim, complete with graphic, saying that this proves that human emissions aren’t the reason for the gradual increase in airborne CO2.
The COVID shutdown reduced man’s emissions of CO2 by about 20%. Yet the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere then was almost EXACTLY what it was during preceding years.
What didn’t change was natural emissions. So much for Willis’s [saying] “it’s man made”, and settled science.
Hmmm … y’all who know me know that I’m a data guy. So I thought I’d take a look at the situation. I reasoned that a “year-over-year” comparison would be much more valuable than the more general graph above. A year-over-year comparison is a graph showing, for each month in the record, how much the CO2 level increased over the same month in the previous year. If we want to understand changes in CO2, we need to look at changes in CO2, not the absolute values the commenter used above. Airborne CO2 has been growing at about 2.5 ppmv per year or so. Figure 1 shows recent data detailing the year-over-year growth in airborne CO2.
Figure 1. “Year-over-year” analysis of airborne CO2. Each data point shows how much the airborne CO2 increased over the same month a year previous. Units are parts per million by volume (ppmv). Photo is of Mauna Loa in Hawaii, location of the CO2 measuring station.
Hmmm … didn’t really expect that the variation would be quite that large. The big peak in the middle is from the El Nino/La Nina of 2015-2016. The peak and drop at the start if from the Nino/Nina of 2009-2010. What causes the other variations is far from clear. What is clear is that the values vary from smallest to largest by no less than four hundred percent, from an annual increase of less than one part per million by volume (ppmv) to an increase of over four ppmv … a large natural variation.
Next, we have to ask the question the commenter who I quoted above didn’t ask—just how much would we expect the CO2 to change due to the lockdowns?
Now, the author of the comment above says there’s been a 20% decrease in 2020 emissions … but that makes my Bad Number Detector start ringing. In general, carbon emissions for the globe, as well as the resulting changes in global atmospheric CO2 levels, are a linear function of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The GDP is the sum of all of the goods and services produced during the year.
And as you’d expect, if we increase the amount of stuff we make, we increase the CO2 emissions correspondingly. (For the math inclined, global annual carbon emissions ≈ 6.3 Gtonnes + .4 * global GDP (trillions of constant 2010 $).
Looking around the web, I see estimates for the lockdown-caused drop in 2020 GDP of from 4.5% up to 5.3%. And since emissions and the resulting atmospheric levels are a linear function of GDP, that would mean that the year-over-year CO2 increase should be smaller by something on the order of five percent.
This lets us calculate what the increase in CO2 would have been if there were no lockdowns. Over 2020 you’d expect CO2 emissions, and thus the resulting annual airborne CO2 increase, to have been 5% greater if there had been no lockdowns.
So to be very conservative in our estimate, let’s say the lockdowns actually decreased emissions by twice that, or 10%. If we use ten percent as our figure, our results will be solid.
So … what would the Figure 1 graph above look like without that 10% drop in 2020 emissions? Figure 2 shows that result. Just for interest’s sake, I’ve also added what a 20% difference in emissions would look like. That’s four times the actual ~ 5% change expected from the drop in GDP.
Of course, up to 2020 there is no change …
Figure 2. As in Figure 1, but with lines added showing a 10% (yellow) and a 20% (orange) increase in CO2 no-lockdown emissions would look like.
Again … hmmm. Gotta say, in a system that variable, a 10% or even a 20% difference is not distinguishable from the background. I mean, any one of those three lines is totally believable.
Conclusions
My main conclusion is that despite the huge, almost incalculable human cost of the lockdowns, the change in the rate of increase of CO2 is lost in the noise … which certainly doesn’t prove anything either way about whether the increase is human-caused.
My other conclusion is that this should give great pause to those who are blithely recommending totally restructuring the global economy to replace fossil fuels … look at the real-world costs of the lockdowns all around you, and look at the meaningless CO2 benefits in the graph above. Not worth doing on any planet.
In 2016, a media firestorm erupted when Tribeca Film Festival abruptly censored its documentary selection, VAXXED: FROM COVER-UP TO CATASTROPHE, amid pressure from pro-pharmaceutical interests.
In response to media silence on CDC whistleblower, Dr. William Thompson, who admitted to fraud on a pivotal vaccine safety study, VAXXED catapulted to notoriety and became a worldwide trending topic, opening to sold-out theater audiences nationwide.
Stunned by the immense volume of parents lining up outside the theaters with vaccine injury stories to share, VAXXED producer Polly Tommey began to Livestream worldwide reaching millions, and a community that had once been silenced were empowered to rise up.
In VAXXED II: THE PEOPLE’S TRUTH, Polly and the team travel over 50,000 miles in the USA and around the world. Interviews of parents and doctors with nothing to gain and everything to lose exposed the vaccine injury epidemic and asked the question on every parent’s mind, “Are vaccines really as safe and effective as we’ve been told?”
The Covid-19 virus had been active in Italy months before it was first officially detected, new research has found, raising further questions about the true origins, extent and actual duration of the ongoing pandemic.
The new groundbreaking study, conducted by scientists with Milan Institute of Cancer and the University of Siena, was published this week by the Tumori Journal. The research is based on the analysis of blood samples from 959 people, collected during lung cancer screening tests conducted between September 2019 and March 2020.
More than 11 percent of the tested – 111 people – turned out to have had coronavirus-specific antibodies. All the tested people were asymptomatic and were not showing any signs of the disease. Some 23 of the positive results date back to September 2019, suggesting that the virus was actually present in the country as early as during last summer – some six months before the pandemic ‘began’ and ‘reached’ Italy.
The new research is poking new holes in the already well-battered belief that the novel coronavirus emerged from the Chinese city of Wuhan around December 2019 and that it turned into pandemic in January 2020. The data from Italian researchers is particularly valuable, as it’s based on actual blood samples, as compared to the earlier, less conclusive findings that also suggested that the established pandemic timeline could be wrong.
The study’s conclusions appear to be consistent with the reports of severe respiratory symptoms and “atypical flu” rampant among Italy’s elderly late in 2019. Another study, published by Italian scientists back in June, showed that traces of the coronavirus were found in sewage water analyzed as early as last December.
Similar findings have been made by scientists from other countries as well. Spanish researchers have claimed they’ve traced coronavirus in sewage samples taken as early as March 2019.
Analysis of hospital records from late 2019 in the US has also suggested the unusual amount of ‘flu’ patients, many of whom experienced heavy “coughing” and other severe respiratory symptoms.
Globally, the number of registered Covid-19 cases has gone past the 54-million mark, while more than 1.3 million people have perished, the latest figures by the Johns Hopkins University show. With the mounting evidence that the outbreak began well before its ‘official’ start, it’s becoming more likely the true extent of the pandemic will one day be revised.
Susan Rice is another one of the recycled Clinton people, and in fact the Democratic Party had her going back even before that.
Her mother has been around. She helped design Pell Grants. She had been with Brookings since ‘92 which is about when Susan graduated into the Clinton administration (in 1993) and went directly to the National Security Council.
She was with Bill Clinton for his administration. Obama had her – first at the UN, and then as his National Security Adviser (I think). She’s about as inside as it gets. She has blood on her hands in Africa, Rwanda.
The people’s understanding of the Rwandan genocide in the United States is exactly upside down. There was a genocide there, but it was the side that the US-backed, not surprisingly, and that was Susan Rice’s project. She was a member of the National Security Council to do international affairs and that was one big act of the Clinton administration – that move to pivot to Africa, around Rwanda.
It was also the enabling of their so-called humanitarian interventions, and in any way that’s her child.
At the United Nations, she helped bring us the destruction of Libya, enabled the situation in Syria to the extent that she could, and tried to sell authority for the US to bomb the hell out of Syria as well.
It’s going to be more war, really.
Let me remind people when Trump took office in January of 2017 the foreign policy that Susan Rice and Barack Obama and the Clintons, and John Kerry had set in motion had us where we were having war games at Russia and China’s borders from the Baltics to the Korean peninsula, on a constant basis, with a number of international incidents – including NATO members shooting down Russian pilots over Syria – any of which could have escalated, and really turning on a dime into a global thermonuclear war.
Trump for all the things he has done does not leave us – if he’s leaving – in that situation. But what they’re doing is installing the very people who created that condition to start from day one to bring us right back to the brink with Russia and China.
I think it’s very scary that Susan Rice is being considered for this. I don’t think it’s a surprise at all. Anyone who knows who Joe Biden is not surprised.
Don DeBar is an American journalist and political commentator based in New York.
Trump claims Iran’s military is routed just as IRGC launches missile strikes American bases
RT | June 10, 2026
The Iranian military has been “completely defeated,” US President Donald Trump has claimed, warning Tehran it will “pay the price” for delaying a deal with Washington.
The warnings came after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced missile and drone strikes on American military facilities in several Arab countries in retaliation for recent US attacks. US Central Command said the operations inside Iran were carried out after an AH-64 Apache helicopter was lost near the Strait of Hormuz, an incident it blamed on Tehran.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday that Iran “is all talk and no action,” adding that “The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!!” … Full article
HEAT exposure could drive a dramatic rise in cardiovascular disease (CVD) burden across the USA over the next 25 years, with researchers warning that climate change and population ageing may combine to reverse decades of progress in heart health.
Heat Exposure Threatens Future Heart Health A new modelling study estimated that heat-attributable CVD burden could more than triple by 2050 under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, disproportionately affecting older adults and economically disadvantaged communities. … Full article
… Climate change and land use conversion have the potential to increase the frequency of encounters between snakes and humans. This situation arises due to changes in temperature and rainfall, the loss of natural habitats, and shifts in food sources, which drive snakes to move into areas closer to human activity.
Prof Mirza Dikari Kusrini, a lecturer in the Department of Forest Resource Conservation and Ecotourism, Faculty of Forestry and Environment (Fahutan) at IPB University, explained that climate change affects snakes’ behavior, distribution, and movement patterns. … Full article
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