UK psyops bigwig pushed plan to ‘mine Sevastopol Bay’ during 2014 Crimea crisis – leaked documents
RT | December 17, 2018
In the midst of the Crimean crisis, a special adviser to the UK House of Commons Defence Committee had a suggestion for Kiev – to lay mines in Sevastopol Bay, leaked documents have revealed.
“I am trying to get this message across” to Kiev, reads a leaked document purporting to show the strategy that Christopher Donnelly, who was a Special Adviser to the UK House of Commons Defence Committee, recommends.
The documents, leaked by a group which claims to be associated with the Anonymous hackers, purport to indicate that Donnelly had drafted “military measures” that he would implement if he, personally was “in charge.” The documents are allegedly dated March 01, 2014, when the Crimean crisis was in full swing.
A print screen of the leaked document with alleged “military measures” which Christopher Donnelly wanted to communicate to Kiev. © cyberguerrilla.org
Donnelly noted that “at the moment the new ‘Government’ in Kyiv is unable to think in terms of military reality,” since it was not sure if its “orders will be obeyed or not.”
“They are like a rabbit in the car’s headlights,” he said, according to the documents.
The measures which the official would supposedly implement, include “mining of Sevastopol harbor,” setting up a “cordon sanitaire” across the Crimean Isthmus with “troops and mines,” and trying to “inspire” their own troops, endeavoring to explain to them what exactly they had to fight for.
Donnelly allegedly writes that he would have used “some seriously important weapons” Ukraine “used to have,” namely some sort of “big microwave anti-satellite weapon.”
Apart from that, the text says all the air forces in the region should have been scrambled and anti-aircraft defenses activated. If the aviation in Crimea proved to be not airworthy, it should have been destroyed “as a gesture that they are serious.”
While all the “measures” appear to be designed to incite an open armed conflict, the last one was also about making profit by the West: “They should ask the west now to start supplying oil and gas. There is plenty available due to the mild winter.”
Donnelly has a rich background that ties him to top military officials. Between 1989 and 2003, as special adviser to four NATO Secretaries General, he was closely involved with NATO. From 2003 to 2010 he ran the UK Defence Academy’s Advanced Research and Assessment Group. He has been a specialist adviser to three UK Defence Secretaries (both Labour and Conservative) and was a member of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Soviet advisory team. Since 2010 he has been the Co-director of The Institute for Statecraft – a shady think tank that provides “decision takers & policy makers with reliable, alternative solutions.”
This is the third of a number of leaks, which began on November 5. The leaks claim that the UK government-funded group “Integrity Initiative” (II), which was founded by the Institute of Statecraft, has a network of journalists, analysts and former politicians who make up a Europe-wide chain of “clusters” that help London meddle in other state’s affairs.
Commenting on the previous leak, the II neither confirmed nor denied that the documents were genuine, saying that it didn’t have time to validate them.
However, II did confirm that the organization has, indeed, been receiving funding from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) for the past two years, but insisted that private donors were its primary source of money. Meanwhile, in response to a question by Labour MP Chris Williamson last week, Minister for Defence, People and Veterans Tobias Ellwood admitted that the Institute for Statecraft had also received funding from the British Army and the Ministry of Defence. The FCO money came from the department’s ‘Conflict Fund’ which investigative journalist Mark Curtis exposed last year as a “secretive slush fund” which had backed “some of the world’s worst security forces.”
RT has reached out to Mr. Donnelly for comment over the contents of the “military measures” list, as well as over allegations that his organization targeted Jeremy Corbyn in an anti-smear campaign which are now being investigated by the Foreign Office. He declined to comment.
“Thank you very much for your enquiry but as RT is a state-sponsored propaganda organization and not a legitimate news channel, we have no comment to make,” Donnelly said in a mailed statement.
What Does Israel ‘Occupy’?
By Blake Alcott | Palestine Chronicle | December 17, 2018
In what is written and said about Israel and Palestine the word ‘occupation’ is ubiquitous. But what territory, exactly, is the ethnocratic state occupying? Is it just the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, or all of Palestine?
Everybody agrees that the territories Israel took over in 1967 are occupied. However, both pro-Palestinians and liberal Zionists routinely write of ‘the Occupation’ or ‘occupied Palestine’ to refer to these territories only. The demeaning acronym ‘OPT’ means only the West Bank and Gaza Strip only. But if those territories are ‘occupied’, then by the same token so is the 80% of historic Palestine called ‘Israel’. All of Palestine has been taken over.
When we demand freedom ‘from the river to the sea’ what are we demanding other than an end to rule, control, and occupation by a non-indigenous Power? When Palestinians use the term ihtilal they always distinguish between the ‘1948 occupation’ and the ‘1967 occupation’. Why, then, does the international discourse in Western languages ignore the 1948 occupation, in denial of the fact that Israel in 1948 merely took over from the British-Mandate occupation of 1917-1948?
Palestine was a British colony, and all colonies by definition are occupied by the colonial Power. And indeed, when we correctly and routinely call Britain’s successor Israel a ‘settler-colony’ we are not just referring to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Especially since it is thoroughly supported by pro-Zionist forces outside of historic Palestine, all of Palestine is now a settler-colony and thus occupied from the river to the sea. And if the settler-colonialist paradigm is accurate, all non-indigenous Israelis are ‘settlers’, not just those in the West Bank. If we talk of boycotting ‘settlement goods’, that should mean all Israeli goods.
Does this matter? Yes: If it is only the West Bank and Gaza Strip that are occupied, then the rest of Palestine ‘within the Green Line’, is not occupied, and if it is not occupied, what is it then? It can then only be rightfully controlled by Israel, for if you are not ‘occupying’ a territory, it must be yours. Using the term limited to the 1967 occupation thus implies that the Europeans who colonized Palestine under British protection for thirty years are the rightful owners of the land of Palestine. The basic premise of Zionism is conceded.
That is, withholding the epithet ‘occupation’ from today’s Israel normalizes the Zionist Entity’s presence; it pulls the rug out from underneath Palestinian claims to political rights in Palestine. As Colonial Minister Churchill and High Commissioner Samuel wrote in their pathbreaking 1922 White Paper on the Palestine question, one worldwide outside ethno-religious group is in Palestine “by right and not on sufferance” and thus cannot be an Occupier.
Which Narrative?
Denying implicitly in this way that Israel occupies the lands taken over in 1948 is thus a key part of the Zionist narrative that Jews own Palestine, while the diametrically opposing Palestinian narrative claims that rightful ownership lies with the indigenous inhabitants (whatever their ethnicity or religion). It insists that this is the territorial and historical ‘self’ entitled to realize self-determination in non-partitioned Palestine. If moreover, this political ‘self’ consists of all Palestinians, they are all ‘occupied’, and the logic in calling only West Bank or Gazan land ‘stolen’ undermines the unity of all Palestinians.
We similarly identify Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state, exercising and enacting discriminatory separation not only on the Palestinians in ‘Israel proper’ and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but as well on the 6 or 7 million Palestinians residing outside of Palestine – as Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley argued in their UNESCWA report in 2017. The Green Line upon which the restricted use of the concepts ‘occupation’ and ‘apartheid’ would rely is historically, ethically and emotionally irrelevant.
A third, ‘liberal-Zionist’ narrative also contends that Israel is occupying only what it took over from the Egyptian and Jordanian occupiers in 1967. This diverges from the Jewish-Israeli mainstream in at least admitting it, but it leaves Israel intact – although, sadly, bereft of ‘Judea and Samaria’. This soft Zionism certainly takes comfort in seeing that some Palestinians and many of their supporters join them in granting that the Jewish state is not guilty of occupying the 1948 territories.
The fatal consequence of this limited use of ‘the Occupation’, in whichever camp, is the implication that once Israel quits doing its occupying of 20% of Palestine (and a part of Syria), as far as its relations with its neighbors goes it reverts to a normal, well-behaved state. The use of this central term is thus a litmus test. If limited to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel is normalized.
A common-language Definition
In common parlance, a state is ‘occupying’ territory if, first, a force or a state has come in from outside the territory in question. Second, that force has established military and political hegemony in that territory. Third, this happens against the will of the indigenous inhabitants.
The second and third conditions obtain in the entirety of Palestine. Disputed is only whether Israel was a force that moved into ‘1948’ Palestine from the outside. Or was it somehow already there? Was it by 1948 somehow also ‘indigenous’, in which case the situation should be described not as an ‘occupation’ but as a victory in a civil war – as the Israeli narrative indeed describes it? Even though the European-Jewish community was obviously vastly ‘less indigenous’ than the Palestinians in terms of length and unbrokenness of habitation, perhaps on 15 May 1948 it suddenly became legitimate.
However, left to their own devices after freed from the Ottoman occupation in 1918, the Palestinians would, by the early 1920s, certainly have constituted their state covering all of Palestine – or perhaps a single sovereign Greater Syria would have emerged covering al-sham, i.e. historic Palestine plus today’s Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. But instead, outsiders from and in Britain occupied it.
But were the Jewish Agency and its military arm the Haganah, together renamed ‘Israel’ in May 1948, any different from Britain in terms of coming from the outside? The overwhelming majority of Jews in Palestine as of that date was, after all, very recent European immigrants, and given near-unanimous indigenous opposition based on justified fear of political takeover, a necessary condition for their implantation was thirty years of support by colonial Power Britain. ‘British bayonets’ both fostered Jewish military strength and, especially during the years of the 1936-39 Revolt, crushed Arab military as well as political potential. Without this enablement by Britain and its fellow Powers, the self-described Jewish entity would not have had a shred of a plausible claim to statehood in any part of Palestine at the time of the decisive debates of 1947 leading to the Partition Resolution of the UN General Assembly (Resolution 181).
In other words, the most realistic picture of the forces taking over Palestine is of a British/European-Jewish amalgam functioning during three entire decades. It is one occupation, an overlapping transfer of power from protector to protected.
By the way, even the usurped 55% of Palestine recommended for the “Jewish State” by the General Assembly majority had a slight indigenous non-Jewish majority of 509,780 to 499,020 if the 105,000 Bedouins living there were counted, a fact that strengthens the notion of an outside occupier rejected by a majority.
What about the territory conquered during 1948 over and above that 55% granted by the outsiders at the UN, amounting to about half the area it granted to the “Arab State”? Certainly, by any criterion, it is ‘occupied’ – taken by force without even a pretense of legitimacy. It is thus especially egregious to exclude it from the term OPT, the more so as it included the almost-totally indigenous Galilee.
To be consistent and coherent, there is thus no way around terming the whole territory ‘within’ the 1949 armistice line ‘occupied’. As Uri Davis wrote in 1972 in the Journal of Palestine Studies, he “first had to come to grips with the fact that, essentially, the right-wing Zionist contention that there was no essential difference between the colonization of Tel Aviv and Jaffa prior to and immediately after 1948, and the colonization of Hebron in 1967, was correct.”
Examples of the Problem
The Quakers in Britain recently decided to quit supporting the “occupation… now in its 51st year”, thus dating this “illegal occupation” from 1967 only. The other 80% is thus not occupied and of necessity ‘legal’, under legitimate Israeli control. In consequence, since it is this 51-year occupation that motivates the Quakers, they will cease boycotting Israeli goods when the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is ended, whatever the fate of the other Palestinians. This results from distinguishing between a boycott of ‘settlement-complicit’ goods and the blanket boycott of Israel that would target the source of the problem and be a true successor to the blanket boycott of South Africa which brought down Apartheid.
Another example is the discourse of the large US-based organization which starting in 2001 called itself the “US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation”. It fought for most Palestinian rights, but as its name suggested most strongly against the occupation of the 1967-occupied areas. Perhaps aware that having ‘Israeli Occupation’ in its title lent implicit recognition to Israel’s permanency, in 2016 it changed its name to “US Campaign for Palestinian Rights”. However, its “common principles” and “Factsheet” still make it clear that the term “military occupation” refers only to what Israel took over in 1967, for conceptually it treats the refugees and the “Palestinian citizens of Israel” separately. Its use of “settlements” refers likewise consistently only to the West Bank.
Part and parcel of this narrative, moreover, is this US Campaign’s support for “all relevant UN resolutions”. This must include the soft-Zionist position of Security Council Resolution 242 which cements the Green Line and the Jewish state on one side of it. The group is also careful to criticize only “Israel’s policies and practices”, not its right to be in Palestine in the first place. Finally, its reference to the “illegal West Bank colonies” implies that the earlier Jewish Agency/Israeli colonization of the bulk of Palestine was legal.
A final example of an ‘occupation’ narrative leaving room for an Israel legitimately present in Palestine is an article in Haaretz on 29 November 2018 by Gideon Levy entitled “Why I am obsessed with Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians”. Said occupation is again that of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Its main victims, to be sure, are “the Palestinians”, but it also “harms” an Israel worth saving because of its “crucial impact on our daily lives and on the image of this country.”
Referring to Israel’s culture-loyalty, nation-state, nakba, citizenship, and anti-BDS laws Levy even claims that “In the absence of the occupation, all these laws would be redundant.” I interpret this to mean that for him Israel’s worst crime is its treatment of the West Bank and Gaza Strip – a view certain to disappoint the roughly three-quarters of Palestinians living in Israel or outside of Palestine.
Counter-arguments
I have challenged various speakers on their restricted use of the term. The most common answer is that one can’t apply it to all of Palestine because by that logic California – or all of North America, or Australia – would be ‘occupied’.
My first reaction was ‘So what? So be it. If it’s true, deal with it.’ But more deeply, or unconsciously, this answer takes the indigenous conquered less seriously than they deserve, for how could any Native American say anything but Yes, Europeans moved in, took over and occupied their lands? If meant as an assertion that the world’s settler-colonies are somehow legitimate, this is not post-Zionism but simply Zionism.
Another answer is that ‘occupation’ is a specific term in international law and should not be watered down by broader use. But to the extent the term is defined at all in international law, it is not useful for a political discussion; it is only a backdrop for humanitarian rules for treating occupied people in armed conflicts between states.
And in general, terms such as ‘occupation’ which function perfectly well in common and historical language should not be co-opted for specialist purposes. In fact, routinely using the term ‘illegal’ to characterize the 1967 occupation and the ‘settlements’ there – as does even the BDS Movement – doesn’t just imply that the rest is legal, but detracts from more important ethical and political dimensions.
A third answer is that we should not use our terms in ways that regard Palestinians as one polity because this erases the Green Line. The division of Palestine gives (a limited number of) Palestinians leverage at international institutions and courts to plead within the mainstream narrative as political, if not military, equals. The danger of this ‘parity pitfall’ cannot be covered here, but it definitely belongs to the liberal-Zionist narrative that the Israeli state of the two-state solution is rightful.
Israel’s Illegitimacy
The basic, fatal effect of co-opting the Arabic term ‘occupation’ for the 1967 territories only is its implication that a non-occupying, non-Palestinian ethnic state is in legitimate, or at least acceptable, ownership of the rest. This is not compatible with Palestinian self-determination, liberation of the Land, right of return, or anti-Zionism.
In terms of the fashionable ‘rights-based approach’, it is likewise not compatible with all the rights of all the Palestinians because it normalizes the Zionist premise that, ethically, at least in part of Palestine indigenous wishes can be ignored. If this premise is rejected, on the other hand, the Zionist Entity is occupying all of Palestine.
We often advise ourselves to watch our words carefully. Israel spends millions to tailor certain words to serve its goals – ‘right to exist’, ‘return’, ‘democratic and Jewish’, and ‘anti-semitism’ being a few examples – and those in solidarity with Palestine should take a page out of that approach and ask whether the word ‘occupation’ is not worth utmost care.
Both logically and in the context of actively arguing for Palestinian self-determination, joining the Zionist narrative or even just indulging in ambiguity serve no purpose. The time is ripe to say that, if Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, it is not right that Israel occupies it.
Operation “Northern Shield” at the Israeli-Lebanese Border: Why Hassan Nasrallah Remains Silent
By Sayed Hasan | Resistance News, Unfiltered | December 16, 2018
The operation “Northern Shield” was launched with great fanfare by the Israeli occupier on December 4, allegedly aimed at “exposing and neutralizing the cross-border attack tunnels that Hezbollah dug from Lebanon to Israel”. Indeed, the Lebanese Resistance has repeatedly promised to no longer be on a defensive position in case of aggression or war, and carry the fighting inside occupied Palestine, or even to liberate Galilee. Spokesmen of the Israeli government ostensibly congratulated themselves on what they presented as thwarting the plans of the dreaded Hassan Nasrallah.
Israeli propaganda and its docile Western media relays presented the operation as a large-scale military offensive that would strike a huge blow to the Party of God, as if the Zionist entity had entered Lebanese territory (or was about to do so), whether on land or underground. A speech by the Hezbollah Secretary General was announced for the same day by the Israeli and Western media, which would have seemed to confirm the importance of the Israeli operation. And given Hezbollah’s silence, it was ultimately said that this silence was due to the shock in which the Lebanese Resistance found itself after this surprise operation that would have ruined its most secret plans.
But what is it all really about? First and foremost, it is ridiculous to equate drilling and excavation work taking place inside occupied Palestine, and not encroaching in any way on Lebanese territory, with some kind of offensive, or even a military operation. Heavy construction, earthworks and fortification work on the northern border of Israel have been conducted by the IDF since 2015, with the aim of creating a Maginot-kind line of defense against Hezbollah (to emphasize its anachronistic character, Al-Manar nicknamed it The Wall of Illusion).
If the Israeli and Western media refrained from any mediatization on this subject, it is because these works of engineering did not serve the propaganda of Israel, underlining on the contrary its weakness: the Zionist entity is indeed cornered to a defensive position for the first time in its existence. But Hezbollah itself has clearly boasted about this upheaval, notably by organizing a media tour in April 2017 to expose the Israeli measures to the world. The promise of February 16, 2011, in which Hassan Nasrallah announced to his fighters that they must be ready to receive, one day, the order to liberate Galilee, has indeed been taken very seriously by Israel. Even more so after the war in Syria, where Hezbollah has acquired and demonstrated its offensive capabilities by liberating vast areas of territory from the presence of ISIS, leading battles that, by their nature, extent and deployed personnel and weapons, are no longer guerrilla warfare. Hezbollah’s offensive capabilities have never been based on the existence of tunnels, as evidenced already by the cross-border capture of Israeli soldiers in July 2006, and are now more similar to operations launched by conventional armies, as Hassan Nasrallah pointed out in an interview on August 19, 2016:
When Hezbollah intervenes in the war in Syria, and fights as a very large formation, and with very different armaments, or as part of a very large formation with various armaments, and participates in major and very extensive offensive operations, when he manages to repel armed men (ISIS terrorists), who are not normal combatants, especially foreigners, fighters of such a level (of commitment, ready to die), when Hezbollah expels them from very large geographical areas, it means that Hezbollah gains an offensive experience, a vast experience of liberation of territory through continuous and direct military operations, and not through guerrilla warfare. And Hezbollah did not have such experience before the war in Syria.
This is where Israel is frightened and terrified. Because what Hezbollah does in Syria, if a war is launched against it, it will do it in Galilee. […] If Hezbollah emerged from the (2006) July war as a regional power, it will emerge from this war (in Syria) as a true military power representing a force capable to liberate (huge) territories not only through guerrilla warfare, but even in a war that looks much more like the classic wars (between national armies).
Hezbollah is not Hamas, and believing that their strategies and tactics are the same while their abilities and experiences are immeasurable is both an illusion and a hoax to which, of course, Hassan Nasrallah did not deign reply.
Why was this show-operation launched now? Netanyahu, who is altogether Prime Minister, Minister of Defense, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Health, is more discredited than ever in Israel, because of the recent military failure against Gaza –after which his Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman resigned, almost taking down his government–, and of his innumerable legal probes, which led the Israeli police to ask, at the beginning of December, his indictment as well as that of his wife in an umpteenth corruption case. The Israeli opposition, from the first days, openly expressed doubts as to the true goals of the Operation “Northern Shield”, as did Tzipi Livni, who denounced the overdramatization of this operation:
We are not now in a situation where our soldiers are behind enemy lines. We are talking about engineering activity within the sovereign territory of the state of Israel. Netanyahu is blowing the incident out of proportion. He made a defensive engineering event into a dramatic military operation. This was done for one of two reasons — either the Prime Minister is himself panicking, or he wants to sow panic to justify his actions both in delaying elections and abandoning the residents of southern Israel [against the rockets of Gaza].
But we must not rely on the Western media to bring to our knowledge this easily accessible data. For them, only the official Israeli propaganda is worthy of credit.
More weak than ever, Netanyahu wants to present himself as a strong man against Hezbollah, but the operation launched against alleged tunnels, a preposterous maneuver to divert the attention of the Israeli press and public opinion, reveals only the powerlessness of Israel against the Party of God. Hezbollah is well aware that Netanyahu will not dare to launch a war of aggression against Lebanon, and that against Hezbollah, Israel has no other recourse than Washington’s sanctions and its own appeals to international institutions –these same institutions and laws trampled on by Tel Aviv for decades– to condemn the alleged violations of Israeli sovereignty by Hezbollah –while Israel continues to violate Lebanese airspace daily– and take action against him.
In the face of such childishness –the Israeli army is more likely to find Digletts and other underground Pokemon than operational tunnels of Hezbollah–, Hassan Nasrallah was wary not to provide any fuel to Netanyahu’s show: any speech on his part would have added credibility to this hyped pseudo-operation. Hezbollah media and Lebanese civilians took care of responding, widely ridiculing the operation, mocking Israel on social media, and picnicking with family on the border to taunt Israeli soldiers on the war footing.
A clip called “We’ll meet up in Haifa”, subtitled in Hebrew, was directed by a Lebanese artist, parodying an Israeli song. Hezbollah fighters can be seen reaching Haifa by tunnel, and spying on Netanyahu in his own home.
For its part, Hezbollah’s war media published a picture of Israeli troops taken from behind, inside Israeli territory, while they were facing the Lebanese border, thus proving that even when the enemy is on high alert, its territory remains easily accessible.
Moreover, Hezbollah fighters have stolen two FN MAG machine guns under the noses of Israeli soldiers (the Israeli media have widely reported this theft), weapons that will certainly reappear in their hands at the most opportune moment to humiliate the Israeli army and its government.
And on December 12, Hezbollah released this video subtitled in Hebrew and recalling the reality of the situation: it is Israel that fears Hezbollah and takes all measures to guard against it, not the other way around.
It is unlikely that the confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah will turn into war in the near future. But psychological warfare continues to rage, and the electronic battalions of Hassan Nasrallah demonstrate day after day their superiority.
Russia may participate in construction of Trans-African railway
RT | December 15, 2018
Moscow is ready to take part in the ambitious project of constructing a cross-continental railway line which will connect East and West Africa. That’s according to the Russia-Sudan intergovernmental commission.
“The Sudanese side expressed interest in participation of the Russian companies in constructing of the Trans-African railway over Dakar – Port Sudan – Cape Town,” said the commission in a document seen by TASS.
It added that “The Russian side confirmed readiness to work out the opportunity for participation… but asked for [the] provision of all the financial and legal characteristics of this project.”
The Trans-African railway line is part of the African Union’s plans to connect the port of Dakar in West Africa to the port of Djibouti in East Africa. It will run through 10 different countries (many of them landlocked) and is expected to boost trade on the continent.
Map of Trans-African Highways © Wikipedia
The route will be the expansion of the existing Trans-African Highway 5 (TAH5). The first phase of the project will be an estimated $2.2 billion upgrade to 1,228 kilometers of existing rail between Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and Bamako, the capital of neighboring Mali.
The project has already attracted Chinese investment in African infrastructure through Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Lessons from the failure of the climate change crusade
By Larry Kummer | Fabius Maximus | December 10, 2018
Summary: Despite thirty years of efforts by most of the elite institutions of America, US governments have done little to fight climate change. While a bout of awful weather might panic America into enacting activists’ wish list, as of today this is one of the great political failures of modern American history. It is rich with lessons for when scientists warn of the next disaster. The 21st century will give us more such challenges. Let’s try to do better.
The puzzle of the climate change crusade
Since James Hansen brought global warming to the headlines in his 1989 Senate testimony, scientists working for aggressive public policy action have had almost every advantage. They have PR agencies (e.g., the expensive propaganda video by 10:10). They have most of America’s elite institutions supporting them, including government agencies, the news media, academia, foundations, even funding from the energy companies. The majority of scientists in all fields support the program.
The other side, “skeptics”, have some funding from energy companies and conservative groups, with the heavy lifting being done by a small number of scientists and meteorologists, plus volunteer amateurs.
What the Soviet military called the correlation of forces overwhelmingly favored those wanting action. Public policy in America and the West should have gone green many years ago. But America’s governments have done little. Climate change ranks at the bottom of most surveys of what Americans’ see as our greatest challenges? (CEOs, too.) In November, Washington voters decisively defeated an ambitious proposal to fight climate change.
And not just in the USA. Climate change policy toppled Australia’s government. The Yellow Vest protests in France are the death knell for large-scale action in France. What went wrong?
The narrative gives answers
The usual answers use the information deficit model, in which the public’s skepticism about the need for radical action results from a lack of information. Thirty years of providing information at increasing volume and intensity has accomplished nothing. Pouring more water on a rock does not make it wetter.
“Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.”
— Ancient adage of Alcoholics Anonymous. More about that here.
Others give more complex explanations, such as “Between conflation and denial – the politics of climate expertise in Australia” by Peter Tangney in the Australian Journal of Political Science.
“This paper describes an ongoing tension between alternative uses of expert knowledge that unwittingly combines facts with values in ways that inflame polarised climate change debate. Climate politics indicates a need for experts to disentangle disputed facts from identity-defining group commitments.” {See Curry’s article for more about this paper.}
There are simpler and more powerful explanations for the campaign’s failure. Lessons giving us useful lessons for dealing with future threats.
Lesson #1: Standards are high for those sounding the alarm
“Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.”
— A harsh but operationally accurate Roman proverb.
We have seen this played out many times in books and films since the publication of When Worlds Collide in 1932. A group of scientists see a threat. They go to America’s (or the world’s) leaders and state their case, presenting the data for others to examine and answering questions. There are two levels to this process.
First, the basis for the warnings must be evaluated by an interdisciplinary team of experts outside the community sounding the alarm. Climate models are the core of the warning about climate change. They have never been so examined. Perhaps we can end the climate policy wars by a test of the models. Whatever the costs of such reviews and tests, they would be trivial compared to the need to establish public confidence in these models.
Second, questions from the public must be answered. Of course, such warnings are greeted with skepticism. That is natural given the extraordinary nature of the threat and vast commitment of resources needed to fight it. Of course, many of the questions will be foolish or ignorant. Nevertheless, they all must be answered, with the supporting data made publicly available. Whatever the cost of doing so, it is trivial compared to the need.
Scientists seeking to save the world should never say things like this…
“In response to a request for supporting data, Philip Jones, a prominent researcher {U of East Anglia} said ‘We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?’”
– From the testimony of Stephen McIntyre before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce (the July 2006 hearings which produced the Wegman Report). Jones has not publicly denied this.
Scientists seeking to save the world should not destroy key records, which are required to be kept and made public. They should not force people to file Freedom of Information requests to get key information. And the response to FOIs should never be like this…
“The {climategate} emails reveal repeated and systematic attempts by him and his colleagues to block FOI requests from climate sceptics who wanted access to emails, documents and data. These moves were not only contrary to the spirit of scientific openness, but according to the government body that administers the FOI act were ‘not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation.’” {The Guardian.}
Steve McIntyre has documented the defensive and self-defeating efforts of climate scientists to keep vital information secret, often violating the disclosure policies of journals, universities, and government funding agencies. To many laypeople these actions by scientists scream “something wrong”.
Yet these were common behaviors by climate scientists to requests for information by both scientists and amateurs. This kind of behavior, more than anything else, provoked skepticism. Rightly or not, this lack of transparency suggested that the scientists sounding the alarm were hiding something.
The burden of proof rests on those warning the world about a danger requiring trillions of dollars to mitigate, and perhaps drastic revisions to – or even abandoning – capitalism (as in Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate and “In Fiery Speeches, {Pope} Francis Excoriates Global Capitalism“).
Lesson #2: don’t get tied to activists
Activists latch onto threats for their own purposes. They exaggerate threats, attack those asking questions, and poison the debate. Scientists who treat them as allies must remember the ancient rule that “silence means assent.” Failure to speak when activists misrepresent the science discredits both groups.
For a sad example, look at “the pause.” Starting in 2006 climate scientists noticed a slowing in the rate of atmospheric warming. By 2009 there were peer-reviewed papers about it (e.g., in GRL), and it was an active focus of research (see links to these 29 papers). In 2013 the UK Met Office published a series of papers about the pause, which shifted the frontier of climate science from discussion about the existence of the “pause” to its causes (see links to these 38 papers). Some scientists gave forecasts of its duration (see links to 17 forecasts) – since a pause is, by definition, temporary.
During this period activists wrote scores, or hundreds, of articles not only denying that there was a pause in warming – but mocking as “deniers” people citing the literature about it. For example, see Phil Plait’s articles at Slate here and here. The leaders of climate science remained silent. Even those writing papers about the pause remained silent while activists ignored their work.
While an impressive display of climate scientists’ message discipline, it blasted away their credibility for those who saw the science behind the curtain of propaganda.
Conclusions
“The time for debate has ended”
— Marcia McNutt (then editor-in-Chief of Science and now President of the NAS) in “The beyond-two-degree inferno“, an editorial in Science, 3 July 2015.
I agree with McNutt: the public policy debate has ended. A critical mass of the US public has lost confidence in climate science as an institution (i.e., rejecting its warnings). As a result, the US probably will take no substantial steps to prepare for possible future climate change, not even preparing for re-occurrence of past extreme weather. The weather will determine how policy evolves, and eventually prove which side was right.
All that remains is to discuss the lessons we can learn from this debacle so that we can do better in the future. More challenges lie ahead in which we will need scientists to evaluate risks and find the best responses. Let’s hope we do better next time.
For More Information
For more information about this vital issue see the keys to understanding climate change and these posts about ways to end the climate wars…
- Important: climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.
- Thomas Kuhn tells us what we need to know about climate science.
- Daniel Davies’ insights about predictions can unlock the climate change debate.
- Karl Popper explains how to open the deadlocked climate policy debate.
- Paul Krugman talks about economics. Climate scientists can learn from his insights.
- Milton Friedman’s advice about restarting the climate policy debate.
- A candid climate scientist explains how to fix the debate.
- Roger Pielke Jr.: climate science is a grab for power.
The War Against Globalism
By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 13.12.2018
We are the Little Folk—we!
Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone and you’ll see
How we can drag down the State!A Pict Song, Rudyard Kipling
Belgium has joined the list of countries that are rebelling against their elected leadership. Over the weekend the Belgian government fell over Prime Minister Charles Michel’s trip to Morocco to sign the United Nations Migration Agreement. The agreement made no distinction between legal and illegal migrants and regarded immigration as a positive phenomenon. The Belgian people apparently did not agree. Facebook registered 1,200 Belgians agreeing that the Prime Minister was a traitor. Some users expressed concern for their children’s futures, noting that Belgian democracy is dead. Others said they would get yellow vests and join the protests.
The unrest witnessed in a number of places is focused on some specific demands but it represents much broader anger. The French yellow vests initially protested against proposed increases in fuel taxes that would have affected working people dependent on transportation disproportionately. But when that demand was met by the government of President Emmanuel Macron, the demonstrations continued and even grew, suggesting that the grievances with the government were far more extensive than the issue of a single new tax. Perhaps not surprisingly, the French government is seeking for a scapegoat and is investigating “Russian interference.” The US State Department inevitably agrees, claiming that Kremlin directed websites and social media are “amplifying the conflict.”
Some commentators looking somewhat more deeply at the riots in France have even suggested that the real issue just might be regime change, that the Macron government had become so disconnected with many of the voters through both its policies and the rhetoric justifying them that it had lost its legitimacy and there was no possibility of redemption. Any change would have to be an improvement, particularly as a new regime would be particularly sensitive to the sentiments of those being governed, at least initially. One might suggest that the prevailing sentiment that a radical change in government is needed, come what may, to shake up the system might well be called the “Trump phenomenon” as that is more-or-less what happened in the United States.
The idea that republican or democratic government will eventually deteriorate into some form of tyranny is not exactly new. Thomas Jefferson advocated a new revolution every generation to keep the spirit of government accountable to the people alive.
Call it what you will – neoliberalism, neoconservatism or globalism – the new world order, as recently deceased President George H.W. Bush once labeled it, characteristically embraces a world community in which there is free trade, free movement of workers and democracy. They all sound like good things but they are authoritarian in nature, destructive of existing communities and social systems while at the same time enriching those who promote the changes. They have also been the root cause of most of the wars fought since the Second World War, wars to “liberate” people who never asked to be invaded or bombed as part of the process.
And there are, of course, major differences between neoliberals and neoconservatives in terms of how one brings about the universal nirvana, with the liberals embracing some kind of process whereby the transformation takes place because it represents what they see, perhaps cynically, as the moral high ground and is recognized as being the right thing to do. The neocons, however, seek to enforce what they define as international standards because the United States has the power to do so in a process that makes it and its allies impossible to challenge. The latter view is promoted under the phony slogan that “Democracies do not fight other democracies.”
The fact that globalists of every type consider nationalism a threat to their broader ambitions has meant that parochial or domestic interests are often disregarded or even rejected. With that in mind, and focusing on two issues – wholesale unwelcome immigration and corrupt government run by oligarchs – one might reasonably argue that large numbers of ordinary citizens now believe themselves to be both effectively disenfranchised and demonstrably poorer as rewarding work becomes harder to find and communities are destroyed through waves of both legal and illegal immigration.
In the United States, for example, most citizens now believe that the political system does not work at all while almost none think that even when it does work it operates for the well-being of all the citizens. For the first time since the Great Depression, Americans no longer think of upward mobility. Projections by sociologists and economists suggest that the current generation growing up in the United States will likely be materially poorer than their parents. That angst and the desire to “do something” to make government more responsive to voters’ interests is why Donald Trump was elected president.
What has been occurring in Belgium, France, with Brexit in Britain, in the recent election in Italy, and also in the warnings coming from Eastern Europe about immigration and European Union community economic policies are driven by the same concerns that operated in America. Government itself is becoming the enemy. And let us not forget the countries that have already felt the lash and been subjected to the social engineering of Angela Merkel – Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece. All are weaker economies crushed by the one size fits all of the EURO, which eliminated the ability of some governments to manage their own economies. They and all their citizens are poorer for it.
There have been windows in history when the people have had enough abuse and so rise up in revolt. The American and French revolutions come to mind as does 1848. Perhaps we are experiencing something like that at the present time, a revolt against the pressure to conform to globalist values that have been embraced to their benefit by the elites and the establishment in much of the world. It could well become a hard fought and sometimes bloody conflict but its outcome will shape the next century. Will the people really have power in the increasingly globalized world or will it be the 1% with its government and media backing that emerges triumphant?
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Aaron Siri’s Book: Vaccines, Amen
By Maryanne DemasiMaryanne Demasi | Brownstone Institute | June 15, 2026
For decades, vaccines have been treated as the sacred cow of modern medicine. I was taught that they were the holy grail. To question them was heresy. To raise concerns about safety was to risk professional exile.
Aaron Siri makes it clear in Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines that the story we’ve been told about vaccine science rests far more on belief than proof.
“No child should be sacrificed on the altar of the religion of vaccines,” Siri writes, as he turns his focus to America’s overcrowded childhood immunisation schedule.
I assumed little in this book would surprise me. I’ve spent years reporting on drug safety, regulatory capture, and the corruption of science. But Siri showed me how wrong I was.
Siri is not a doctor or a scientist. He is an attorney, and this, he says, is his advantage. In court, rhetoric won’t save you. Evidence does. As he puts it, he doesn’t get to say “trust me” the way many doctors do. “I need to prove claims with real data.”
And he does. … continue
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