Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis plans to introduce legislation that will, among other things, stop Florida from being a “biomedical security state.” The legislation will ban all vaccine passport mandates.
DeSantis said the purpose of the legislation is to “prescribe freedom.”
“When the world lost its mind, Florida was a refuge of sanity, serving strongly as freedom’s linchpin,” the Republican governor said on Tuesday. “These measures will ensure Florida remains this way and will provide landmark protections for free speech for medical practitioners.”
“It required us over the past few years to stand against major institutions in our society: The bureaucracy, the medical establishment, legacy media, and even the President of the United States who, together, were working to impose a biomedical security state on society,” he added.
DeSantis’ surgeon general Dr. Joseph Ladapo said he supports the bill because it would protect the free exchange of ideas between medical professionals.
“As a health sciences researcher and physician, I have personally witnessed accomplished scientists receive threats due to their unorthodox positions,” Ladapo said. “However, many of these positions have proven to be correct, as we’ve all seen over the past few years. All medical professionals should be encouraged to engage in scientific discourse without fearing for their livelihoods or their careers.”
The legislation would protect medical professionals’ freedom of speech by protecting their religious views and their right to disagree with the preferred narrative. The bill would also protect medical freedom of choice by banning discrimination based on vaccination status, testing, and mask-wearing.
Related:
California’s chilling medical misinformation law is an affront to the US constitution
January 20, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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Samizdat – 20.01.2023
French President Emmanuel Macron revealed his plans to dramatically increase military and intelligence spending on Friday, saying French forces need to “reform and transform” amid the conflict in Ukraine, where NATO forces are supporting the Ukrainians. The announcement comes as 1 million people march against de facto budget cuts.
Macron’s proposed new defense budget size for the 2024-2030 period, €413 billion, is 40% larger than the previous 2019-2025 period budget of €295 billion.
“The law on military programming (LPM) for 2024-2030 reflects the efforts made by the state to strengthen its army. They are proportionate to current dangers, which are significant. In 2024-2030, the government will allocate €400 billion to the defense ministry,” Macron said in an address to the army at the Mont-de-Marsan airbase in southwestern France.
“France has and will have armies ready for the challenges of the century,” he added.
He explained that part of the spending will go toward doubling the power of French air defense systems, and that the French intelligence budget would increase by 60% by 2030.
He added that Paris would continue to modernize its nuclear forces, spending €5.6 billion on that effort in 2023 alone.
The French leader said the changes were necessary because of the conflict in Ukraine, which is nearly 11 months old. The NATO nations have backed Kiev, which seeks to join the alliance, funneling them vast amounts of money and military equipment to support their fight against Russian forces.
“It is necessary to pay special attention to the speed of response and build up the power of our army, because we do not choose the conflicts in which we might have to participate,” Macron said.
Indeed, Macron’s words came just hours after US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin urged American allies to “dig even deeper” and put up more funding for Ukraine.
Paris has thrown much of its weight behind supporting Kiev’s war effort, including sending rockets, AMX-10 infantry fighting vehicles, and other weapons. In October, Macron unveiled a special €200 million fund from which Kiev would be able to buy military equipment from French defense contractors.
Most recently, Paris has publicly weighed sending Leclerc main battle tanks to Ukraine as other NATO allies make similar considerations.
Russia began its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022 in response to a dramatic escalation of violence in the Donbass region, where since 2014, Russian-speaking minorities have resisted attacks by neo-Nazi groups integrated into the Ukrainian military. Its goals include promises Ukraine will never join NATO or allow NATO to position military equipment on Russia’s borders.
Budget Hikes Amid Budget Cuts
Macron’s announcement comes amid a new wave of mass demonstrations in France, where 1 million marched on strike on Friday against a proposed plan to increase the retirement age to 64.
According to French media, eight of the country’s largest unions took part in the strike, which included 40% of primary school teachers and one-third of high school teachers. Transportation networks also shut down as workers walked out on strike.
Macron has said the de facto budget cut is necessary because of a deficit in the pension fund. However, in October, his government used a special mechanism to shut down debate and ram a new budget through parliament, blocking attempts by opposition parties to add new taxes targeting corporations profiting massively off rising inflation and energy costs.
A former banker, Macron has been in office since 2017, and most of his tenure has been wracked by mass protests against his neoliberal budget plans, including the massive “Yellow Vest” demonstrations by working-class French people.
January 20, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism | France, Human rights, NATO |
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By Lucas Leiroz | January 20, 2023
The Russian Orthodox Church went to the UN to denounce Ukrainian crimes. At a meeting of the Security Council on January 17, invited by the Russian diplomatic representation at the UN, an Orthodox bishop linked to the Moscow Patriarchate commented on the situation of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine in the face of the persecutions imposed by Kiev’s neo-Nazi regime. This was the first time that a representative of the Orthodox clergy has addressed the UNSC.
The bishop chosen for the interaction was Chairman of the Department of External Relations of the Church of the Patriarchate of Moscow, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk, Anthony. He made it clear to all diplomats of the UNSC that the Orthodox Church is currently experiencing serious political and religious oppression under the Ukrainian government. Metropolitan Anthony said that the Russians are “extremely concerned about the blatant violations of the universal and constitutional rights of Orthodox believers in Ukraine”.
The bishop exposed some shocking data about the Ukrainian reality. Due to the ban on Orthodoxy recently imposed by the Zelensky regime, thirteen Ukrainian bishops were actually deprived of their own Ukrainian citizenship. With this measure, the neo-Nazis intend to coerce the clergy to stop disobeying the dictatorial norms aimed at banning the Church. Currently, Ukrainian clerics are trying to resist the regime’s impositions, continuing to offer liturgical services and protecting local traditions.
However, if bishops continue to lose their nationality, they will certainly be forced into exile, which will further complicate the situation for Orthodox believers in Ukraine. The bishop also highlighted that these revocations of citizenship are decreed irregularly, without any legal procedure that legitimizes them, thus violating the country’s constitution.
Another data informed by him concerns the process of expropriation of the Russian Church. Metropolitan Anthony reported in his speech that last year alone 129 churches belonging to the Patriarchate of Moscow were captured by the Ukrainian regime’s agents. Part of these expropriated churches are then used for non-religious purposes, while others are given to the ultranationalist and non-canonical sect called “Patriarchate of Kiev”, which is widely supported by the Maidan Junta, as it adopts the anti-Russian neo-Nazi ideology of the Ukrainian state. It is important to remember that the Ukrainian Orthodox believers are canonically linked to the Patriarchate of Moscow, therefore these acts of the Kiev regime are an attack against the religion of the Ukrainian people itself.
The head of foreign affairs of the Russian Church also emphasized the importance of understanding the current situation of the Church as a kind of mass political repression. He told the UNSC delegates that since last year the SBU (Ukrainian intelligence agency) agents constantly carry out violent operations in Orthodox churches, during which the clergy are publicly humiliated, and the temples desecrated. He compared the oppression suffered today with that of the early years of the Soviet Union.
These recent attacks have taken place officially, as the Ukrainian state has started a banning campaign against all institutions linked to Russia. However, illegally, since 2014 there has been strong persecution against the Orthodox Church in regions with an ethnic Russian majority. Neo-Nazi militias destroyed temples and killed clergy and believers in Donbass during hostilities against resistance forces. There are several photos and videos circulating on the internet showing the oppression to which the Orthodox Church has been subjected in Ukraine.
According to Metropolitan Anthony, since the Orthodox Church is the majority faith of both Russians and Ukrainians, it can serve as a basis for peaceful dialogue towards the end of hostilities. The recent Russian initiative, rejected by Kiev, to establish a temporary ceasefire during the Orthodox Christmas is an example of this. However, from the moment that one of the sides begins to deliberately oppress the Church, the possibility of dialogue ceases. Therefore, the international society must pay attention to the situation of the Church in Ukraine and demand changes in Kiev’s position.
Furthermore, the reports made by the bishop should also generate discussions in the western world, since it is unacceptable that the regime which promotes ethnic and religious persecution continues to receive money and weapons from the West. Although NATO has already made it clear several times that it has no humanitarian concern and that it is willing to do anything to “defeat” Russia, it is important that the costs of this war are known by Western public opinion.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.
January 20, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Ukraine |
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I’ve gone through the “Conceptual Zero Draft” of the proposed pandemic treaty, line by line, trying to figure out what it means. It wasn’t that much fun. But it sure had my eyes out on stalks more than once. Like the bit where WHO can decide what is a fact. And what is a “falsified” treatment. And appropriate money from member States and use it to foist vaccines on people in developing countries. And set aside protections in other treaties if they are inconvenient. And dictate what “social measures” are required in addition to “public health measures”.
My summary of the proposed pandemic treaty is set out below. Notice how broad the scope is. How comprehensively the WHO will be in control of everyone, everything, everywhere, all in the name of health, equity and global “solidarity”.
It’s urgent to oppose this before it rolls over us like a steamroller. The World Health Organisation is working hard on the next draft, for consideration by the “Intergovernmental Negotiating Body” in February, and the World Health Assembly in May 2023 (see timeline below)
(Is the treaty a furphy? A decoy to take our eye off the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations, which are being negotiated in parallel with the treaty? Maybe, but there’s no way I want to take that risk and assume we can ignore it…)
MUST DO BEFORE FEBRUARY:
- Have a read of this amazing summary of everything the WHO is up to. There is also my summary of the treaty below. If you’re keen also read this plain English translation of the treaty.
- Pick out your 3 favourite horror-story highlights. Which 3 things are the most egregious, in your view?
- Tell your friends and your politicians we need to pull out of the WHO, before it’s too late.
Summary of the proposed pandemic treaty
The WHO is to control everyone and everything, everywhere, in the name of health, equity and global solidarity
Because of climate change and the likely increase in diseases crossing over from animals to humans, and increasing resistance to antibiotics, we are likely to have more pandemics in the future.
If we centralise decision-making about pandemics right across the globe, and if everyone falls into line, everyone can be healthier. Vaccines and other new medical products are the solution to pandemics and the proposed treaty.
The proposed treaty will make sure everyone can access vaccines and other new pandemic products. The WHO is the right body to control everything centrally, because it is the directing and coordinating authority for:
- international health work;
- convening and generating scientific evidence; and
- fostering international cooperation in global health governance.
Everything can impact health, so WHO has to be in charge of everything.
The world needs WHO to control and oversee:
- a global system for production and distribution of medical products
- stockpiling of medical products
- fast-tracking of research and development, and licensing of new products
- sharing of pathogen samples, genetic sequences, and benefits arising from those things being shared
- increased surveillance of diseases
- implementation of digital health
- a system of peer reviews and table-top exercises
- public health and social measures necessary for dealing with pandemics and situations that might give rise to pandemics
- censorship
- All must cooperate with the WHO in relation to all of the above measures.
- Wealthy nations must provide funding for the WHO and for developing countries
- Nations maintain their sovereignty – except where that means other nations are at risk
- Communities must be primed to accept public health measures and social measures
Tho WHO reckons this treaty is urgent and important, so:
- Start date is fast-tracked
- Once in, you can’t get out for 3 years
- The treaty can be amended by majority vote and amendments will apply to everyone.
- No adjudication by a court of law if parties are in dispute.
A “Consensus draft” draft will be considered at the May 2023 World Health Assembly. In other words: by May 2023, the content of the treaty already have been agreed in the backrooms.
January 19, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Human rights |
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Former United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for global organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Economic Forum (WEF) to push national governments to introduce “digital infrastructure” that monitors who has been vaccinated and who hasn’t.
Blair pushed for this government-controlled digital vaccine database during an appearance at the World Economic Forum’s 2023 annual meeting — a yearly event where powerful business leaders, politicians, and other influential figures meet in Davos, Switzerland to discuss the agendas they want to advance.
The former Prime Minister emphasized the importance of “technology and digital infrastructure” and data collection for surveilling the status of the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
“You need the data,” Blair said. “You need to know who’s been vaccinated and who hasn’t been. Some of the vaccines that will come on down the line will be multiple, there’ll be multiple shots. So you’ve got to have, the reasons to do with the healthcare more generally, but certainly, for a pandemic or for…vaccines, you’ve got to have a proper digital infrastructure, and many countries don’t have that. In fact, most countries don’t have that.”
Blair continued by suggesting that his digital vaccination status surveillance dragnet should be pushed through by the WTO (an intergovernmental organization that regulates international trade), the WEF (an unelected global organization that seeks to “shape global, regional and industry agendas”), and intergovernmental forums such as the Group of Twenty (G20) and the Group of Seven (G7).
“Who are the people that can make this happen?” Blair said. “How do you get the right partnerships in place?…That should happen in the G20 particularly, I think, which is… G7 is an important forum, but the G20 is the broader forum… You’ve got to work out what is it that you want to achieve in order to make sure that any future pandemic is properly handled and what are the partnerships that you’re going to create in order to ensure that the answers you get are the right answers. And then you’re going to have the mechanisms of implementation. And those mechanisms will be partly through the formal institutions that you have, like the WTO, and they’ll also be through organizations like yours [the WEF] which… I think… have many advantages because they don’t get landed with the same bureaucracy and frankly small pea politics around them.”
Blair’s call is the latest of several that he and his nonprofit, The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, have made for an expansion of mandatory digital surveillance infrastructure.
His institute has called for digital IDs and said increased surveillance is a “price worth paying.” Blair himself has also called for mandatory vaccine passports.
And two of the global groups that Blair wants to help push through this digital surveillance system, the WTO and the WEF, are also huge advocates of digital surveillance systems.
The WEF and the WTO have previously pushed “global digital identity of persons and objects.” And the WEF regularly advocates for digital ID programs around the world. This year’s WEF 2023 annual meeting subjected journalists to some of the surveillance technologies it advocates for including digital IDs and biometric scanning.
Not only do these surveillance systems reduce individual privacy but vaccine passports discriminate against citizens and restrict their access to businesses and services.
And the WEF wants to expand this surveillance and discrimination via digital ID. It has proposed a system that monitors online behavior, biometrics, purchases, and more to determine access to a wide range of services.
Related:
How Big Government and Big Tech used COVID to accelerate the adoption of digital ID
January 19, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, WEF, WTO |
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New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern resigned last night after months of rumours. Ardern, whose popularity has plummeted during the last six months, told us she ‘had nothing left in the tank’.
The backstory to this resignation is a tale of woe. Ardern said she wants to be remembered as someone who tried to be kind. The subtext is: the country is in an unprecedented mess but don’t blame me. School attendance is running at just 67 per cent on any given day. Machete-wielding teenagers are ram-raiding liquor, tobacco and luxury stores daily in an unprecedented crime wave. The health system is overwhelmed. Ardern’s government promised to build 100,000 new homes over three years. It has delivered 1,500.
Our tourist, farming and hospitality industries have never recovered from lockdowns and border closures. It takes months to get a visa to visit NZ and the government says it only wants rich people to come. Ardern insisted on universal Covid vaccination mandates. There is a suspicion that our 90 per cent vaccination rate has left most people in a lethargic fog. Excess all-cause deaths are still running 15 per cent above the long-term trends, and it is not Covid.
History will judge Ardern harshly, but don’t blame her alone. This was a Parliament who woke up on all sides of the house to the weakness of our constitutional arrangements (there are none). The Bill of Rights was tossed aside and no one in Parliament cared.
The leader of the National opposition Chris Luxon said if he was in power, he would withdraw benefits from unvaccinated single mothers. David Seymour, leader of the ACT party, said those losing their jobs through vaccine mandates only had themselves to blame. Labour’s coalition partner, the Greens, led by example. They encouraged mothers in labour to ride to hospital on a bicycle.
Revelations this week (here and here) that Ardern personally overruled her scientific advisers who were expressing doubts about the safety of Covid vaccines for young people and the wisdom of mandates have circulated very widely and no doubt this further undermined confidence in the government.
Political insider and right-wing commentator Cameron Slater published an article ten days ago saying that out of all the politicians he has known (and he has known most since Muldoon in the 70s) Ardern is the only one he rates as truly evil.
Ardern introduced ‘rule by regulation’. Adopting the enabling model favoured by fascists in the 1930s, her government has empowered authorities to tell us all what to do, when to stay at home, and where not to go. The courts, the Human Rights Commission and the broadcast regulators have all followed the government line meticulously which has had a devastating effect on business, families, communities and professions. To cement her policies, Ardern introduced massive government funding of our media and broadcasters.
Ardern’s government, in an absurd overreach, funded a nationwide effort to discredit critics of policy, labelling them terrorists. This has divided a formerly egalitarian society, instituting a Stasi-like snitch culture that encourages us to report a neighbour. Government Disinformation Project employees appeared on funded films aired on television labelling knitting, blond hair, braids, vaccine hesitancy, love of natural foods, yoga and motherhood as signs of terrorism that should be reported to the intelligence services (view it here if you can stand watching this nasty piece of propaganda and hate).
Why did Ardern suddenly change overnight in August 2021 from being a kindly figure saying she would never mandate vaccines, to being one of the world’s most draconian proponents? We can only speculate. NZ is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence network. Given the Pentagon’s recently revealed massive involvement in US Covid policy and gain of function research funding, was she fed information that a bioweapon was in play?
For a couple of weeks now government announcements and advertisements encouraging vaccination and boosters have been conspicuously absent. Has the penny finally dropped? We doubt it. It will take an honest, intelligent politician (are there any?) to roll back Ardern’s dictatorial powers and kickstart New Zealand. Why would any aspiring newby give up that much power? The prospect will be too intoxicating.
Ardern was a protege of Tony Blair and Klaus Schwab of WEF. They must bear some blame too. What fantasies of global power did they offer to a young person who was given to idealistic dreaming that segued into fanaticism?
Our final verdict: It is not Ardern but the whole NZ Parliament elected in 2020 that will be judged as the worst in our short history as an independent island nation, formerly famous for championing the underdog and offering opportunity to all. Ardern’s resignation has lit the bonfire of modern democracy.
January 19, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, New Zealand |
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What is Davos? The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting happens each year in the alpine Swiss ski resort town. Each year global leaders, elected and unelected, gather to collude on policy initiatives and hot button topics concerning humanity overwhelmingly without the consent of the people.
Intel coming out of this year’s meeting has had a more pressing, alarmist nature from the self-proclaimed global elite minders. Don’t worry, the meeting was still filled with the annual hypocrisy we are used to. Squadrons of ‘unsustainable,’ carbon-emitting private jets still flew in at will. Fleets of non-electric cars openly chauffeured the climate alarmist around while they preached about the end of gas vehicles and individual car ownership… for the planet of course. But lets turn to moves by the medical–industrial complex.
Coming off the back of a rushed Covid shot that failed to stop transmission and whose harms and shortcomings are still unraveling in the public conversation, the ‘global leaders’ of Davos used the forum to do what they always do in the uncomfortable spotlight – double down on agendas.
After some of the biggest, concerted global protests in a century against lockdowns and the digital Covid vaccine passports used by governments to enforce them, a call was made to expand such tools of restriction.
Former UK PM Tony Blair of Iraq war criminal fame apparently received his new marching orders speaking passionately at Davos for the implementation of a ‘national digital infrastructure.’
For ‘the vaccines coming down the line [that] will be multiple shots,’ for ‘vaccines [in general]’ and for ‘a pandemic’ Blair stated you need a proper digital infrastructure to know ‘who’s been vaccinated and who hasn’t.’
Founded in Davos by the Gates Foundation, the UK-based Wellcome Trust, the WEF and other governments, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations or CEPI was a central player in global Covid vaccine development efforts.
They now have a new ‘100 day goal’ which has been embraced by the G7 and G20 nations according to a Davos speech attended by Pfizer’s CEO Bourla, Blair and others.
To ‘accelerate vaccine development over and above what was achieved in 2020’ and to be able to deliver vaccines for new threats within 100 days.
So the idea again would be to sidestep proper safety testing to put massive mutation pressure on a new circulating virus or pathogen by vaccinating in a middle of an ongoing pandemic – something Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche has continually warned against.
CEPI’s goal to take Covid’s fast tracking vaccine development precedent and fast track it further has been aided, intentionally or unintentionally, by the newly enacted FDA Modernization Act 2.0 which allows drug and vaccine developers to rely upon computer modeling and testing with virtual patients in their safety assessments of new products to convince regulators they’ve been ‘de-risked.’
While the Davos crowd, along with many others in the public, like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, still believe the official narrative that the rushed Covid shot was a wild, safe and effective success, a growing critical mass continues to expose the truth.
Meanwhile, the FDA still doesn’t have ‘robust’ data from Pfizer or Moderna on their mRNA Covid shot product’s ability to cause potentially deadly heart inflammation.
A 2021 letter by the FDA to Pfizer gave the company until October 2025 to turn in their study looking at that piece which public health leaders and agencies will take, at face value, as the final word on the subject. Despite the foot-dragging by regulators, members of the public and medical community have filled the vacuum with actual data and warnings.
Top UK cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra made history becoming one of the BBC’s most watched segments of the last two years [27.1M view on Twitter] warning about the myocarditis risk live on-air along with its role in the soaring number of excess deaths – the highest in 50 years according to the BBC.
Will the public accept digital restrictions on their life again in the form of vaccine passports?
Will the public accept new, multi-dose vaccines unpinned by even less safety testing and transparency than the mRNA Covid shots?
January 19, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, WEF |
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An Israeli court has approved a decision by Israeli authorities to demolish a school in Al-Ain Al-Baida in Masafer Yatta, based south of Hebron in the Occupied West Bank, reported Wafa news agency.
Head of the Masafer Yatta Village Council, Nidal Younis, told Wafa that an Israeli court revoked a previous injunction issued against the demolition of the school and gave the Israeli Occupation army 10 days to destroy it.
He noted that the school was built last year with funding from the European Union, which 50 students from local Bedouin communities attend.
On 4 May 2022, the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled that there were no legal barriers to the planned expulsion of Palestinian residents from Masafer Yatta to make way for military training.
The UN OCHA said then that this ruling “effectively placed the residents at imminent risk of forced evictions, arbitrary displacement and forcible transfer.”
According to the UN OCHA, in the 1980s, the Israeli Occupation designated part of Masafer Yatta as ‘Firing Zone 918’ and declared it a closed military zone.
Since this declaration, indigenous Palestinian residents have been at risk of forced eviction, demolition and forcible transfer. The two villages of Khirbet Sarura and Kharoubeh no longer exist after their homes were demolished.
“Approximately 20 per cent of the West Bank has been designated as ‘Firing Zones’, affecting over 5,000 Palestinians from 38 communities,” the UN OCHA said.
It added: “Currently, Masafer Yatta is home to 215 Palestinian households, including about 1,150 people, of which 569 are children.”
In an effort to force Palestinians out of the area, the Israeli Occupation has deprived residents of access to basic amenities, including drainage and permission to construct to meet the needs of the growing population.
January 19, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Suppose that Scotland’s CO2 emissions fell tomorrow to zero, i.e., that, at midnight, the country ceased to exist. Then according to the “Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change” (MAGICC), based on the latest IPCC climate models, the reduction in the Earth’s temperature in 2100 would be…undetectable.
Motivated by the moral necessity and urgency of this goal, the Scottish Government is proposing a novel energy policy – its “Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan”.
This article reviews its major themes and their implications, and considers briefly the probability of success of the Scottish Government implementing it.
In 2022, due to an insufficient quantity of wind and sun, Scotland’s current collection of wind and solar energy-scavenging devices failed to generate about 70% of their nameplate capacity. Recent exhaustive statistical and econometric analysis of wind generation in Scotland by Edinburgh University shows that it is uneconomic and destined for taxpayer bailout. Under the Scottish Government’s novel energy strategy, wind and solar energy-scavenging devices are to be greatly expanded.
Hydrogen, an energy carrier that squanders in waste-heat a gigawatt of power generation for every gigawatt it carries, is elevated in the Scottish Government’s understanding of energy to the category of a fuel, and also greatly expanded.
Hydrocarbon and nuclear – actual fuels – provide the energy to manufacture and endlessly replace wind turbines and solar panels. They also, in Scotland, provide the power sources that run under all conditions to ensure continuity of energy supply during Scotland’s frequent sunless and windless conditions. These are to be discontinued.
Like all advanced economies, Scotland cannot tolerate even a small measure of power supply fluctuation. Without firm dispatchable thermal standby generation capacity to smooth supply fluctuation, the eventual daily around 40GW amplitude power fluctuation resulting from the proposed expansion of weather-dependent electrical generation must be adapted for use in some other way. This will be provided by some form of 180-plus day, grid-scale electricity storage – a technical challenge for which no precedent exists, and therefore no cost estimate is available.
Grid scale battery storage technology doesn’t exist. The Scottish Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan imagines that it will be developed.
Converting surplus energy to hydrogen for storage and use at grid scale is unprecedented, and fraught with risk.
Fifty per cent of the proposed new intermittent generation capacity, installed at a capital cost of around £26 billion, is to be wasted in the conversion process.
Hydrogen embrittles pipework, renders conventional valves ineffective and, unlike domestic gas, self-ignites under catastrophic decompression. Quantifying the risks of transporting it in bulk on Scottish roads and deploying it as a substitute for domestic gas in Scotland’s densely populated housing estates might be an exciting 10-year research project at the U.K. Government’s Spadeadam industrial hazard testing facility (“the remoteness of the area is key to their operations” – Wikipedia).
But, informed by what the Scottish Government claims is the need for “the fastest possible” transition, it prefers to bypass thorough safety testing, and to impose live hydrogen trials on Scotland’s citizens. Hydrocarbon gas is to be phased out of Scottish homes from 2030.
Energy densities in energy storage sites located next to Scotland’s towns and cities required by the Scottish Government’s reckless abandonment of thermal standby generation capacity will be measured in millions of tonnes of TNT – a risk for which 12-foot thick reinforced concrete containment domes are installed around nuclear facilities to manage. These risks are entirely unrecognised by Scotland’s current planning processes (or citizens).
The cost of adaptive storage, the cost of the new transmission and distribution infrastructure required by dramatically increased electrification of Scotland’s relatively sparsely populated areas, and the cost of Carbon Capture, are not factored into current estimates of Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE). These are vast. Grid-scale battery storage, for example, has an implied cost measured in trillions of pounds, and drives LCOE from £50/MWh to over £600/MWh.
Apparently unaware of the role of nuclear and gas in maintaining continuity of supply, and the prohibitive cost of electricity storage as a substitute, the Scottish Government confidently demands that the U.K. Government “break the link between the price of electricity and the cost of gas to help realise the benefits of the low costs [sic] of renewable electricity”.
The policy proposal cites a number of other benefits that it thinks will accrue in addition to the negligible reduction in the Earth’s temperature.
Electric vehicles can’t plough snow or fields, harvest corn, empty buckets, excavate ore, raise wind-turbine masts, or perform any other economic task for which ‘grunt’ is required. Notwithstanding, from 2030, diesel and petrol engines will be prohibited. Car kilometers are to be “reduced” – possibly by fining us if we travel from our home more than a permitted distance.
A child in the Democratic Republic of Congo mining the cobalt needed for the Scottish Government’s Just Transition to ‘clean energy’
The Scottish Government will impose catastrophic environmental damage on the non-OECD countries where millions of tonnes of toxic water and ores are processed to manufacture the EV batteries it is mandating. It will overlook the human rights violations endemic to China’s ‘clean energy industry’. These will have the benefit of promoting what it calls “A Just Transition” – supposedly, a socialist framework for ensuring “a fairer, greener future for all”.
Our security of supply is to be further enhanced by transferring energy generation from domestically produced oil and gas to mechanically unreliable, weather-dependent energy-scavenging devices containing millions of points of failure that are contingent on the supply of rare resources controlled by China – which the U.S. states it will declare war on if it invades Taiwan.
These weather-dependent energy-scavenging devices require oil for, amongst many other things, the manufacture of their exotic advanced materials. A leading energy consultancy records the collapse in 2020 to an 80-year low of replacement oil discovery volumes, and estimates that Western oil firms now have around 15 years of remaining economic oil reserves. It is under these circumstances that the Scottish Government is further enhancing the security of Scotland’s energy supply by discontinuing onshore and offshore conventional and unconventional oil and gas exploration.
To reinforce this enhancement, noting “the damage done by the deindustrialisation of central belt communities in the 1980s”, the Scottish Government is irreversibly disbanding the North East’s oil and gas industry communities and, with them, their 50 years of institutional knowledge of oil and gas operations.
These will be replaced with communities based on livelihoods sustained by a “clean energy industry”. The growth of this imaginary industry has been funded with the imaginary capital (a.k.a. “quantitative easing”) excreted in the response – ironically – to the energy contraction that triggered the ongoing 2008 Great Financial Crash. During this time, U.K. national debt has risen from 60% to over 100% of Gross Domestic Product, exceeded only by the public sector pension deficit (a proxy for the replacement of real industries in the global economy by imaginary ones), which has risen to more than £2 trillion.
As evidence of the sustainability of the policy of funding imaginary industries through the indefinite expansion of imaginary capital (for which, like much of this policy, no precedent exists in human history), the Scottish Government informs us that it has already allocated £5 billion of its record budget deficit to what it refers to as “the Net Zero Economy”.
Winter excess death in the UK’s cold Northern European climate is already around 25,000 a year. Any prolonged interruption of winter energy supply created by the failure of this policy, or further escalation of cost, will plausibly result in the deaths of thousands more of our most vulnerable fellow citizens. The magnitude and uncertainty of the implied costs, coupled to the scale of the energy contraction that this policy deliberately seeks to accelerate, could trigger the collapse of our financial system.
Irreversible impairment of either our energy or financial systems would have a catastrophic impact on the welfare of Scotland’s citizens. Yet few have expressed any desire, much less informed consent, for risk on the scale proposed for such little benefit.
Yet the project, representing a scope of unprecedented scale, cost, pace and technical uncertainty, will be overseen by a Government that is currently struggling to procure two relatively modest ferries for less than the cost that other governments can procure 34 ferries – again, ironically due in large part to cost overruns associated with the attempt to employ novel technologies to reduce CO2 emissions. As evidence of the extent to which the Scottish Government and its advisers have become unmoored from physical reality by the climate catastrophe hypothesis, it’s a document that is fascinating to read, and alarming to contemplate.
After reflecting on it, you may care to offer your feedback, either to the department that compiled it, or your political representative, or on social media.
Richard Lyon is a former senior oil and gas operations manager with 35 years of international experience and academic qualifications in electrical engineering and power systems, petroleum engineering, and energy economics. He maintains the Substack newsletter the State of Britain and can be contacted via LinkedIn.
January 18, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, UK |
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From population bomb to false prophet, Ehrlich, and his protege John Holdren’s, book Ecoscience has a concerning passage about a bioweapon as a “solution” to overpopulation. Meanwhile, history shows Holdren lifted the moratorium on gain-of-function research less than two weeks before Trump’s inauguration in 2017. Another data point to a troubling, ongoing investigation.
When it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine, world-renowned doctors and scientists are jumping ship. Many of those same experts, however, are pivoting sharply, insisting the same skepticism should not be applied to ‘safe and effective’ childhood vaccines. The HighWire host, Del Bigtree, whose 7-year investigation into Vaccine Safety and Policy in America inspired the launch of ICAN (icandecide.org) and The HighWire, explains why ‘it ain’t Just the Covid Vax’ that you should be worried about.
January 18, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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There are some absolute pearlers buried in the Pandemic treaty:
- Gain of function research is on for young and old – we must not be inhibited by red tape, just get on with it.
- Global sharing of patient data, specimens and pathogens is also the order of the day. Feel free to pick and choose which bits of existing international law to observe.
- We must have a singular focus on vaccines as the answer to everything. We will target the vulnerable in the name of equity, especially in developing nations, with fast tracked, under-tested new drugs – and only give them biased information in favour of taking the treatment.
Oh, and remember these key points:
- The WHO is central to everything.
- The WHO owns the science.
- The WHO controls raw materials, production, allocation, distribution and financing of pandemic products.
- The WHO will decide what restrictions to impose on you to address climate change because climate change might affect your health.
- The WHO decides what medical treatments are allowed, and which are banned.
- The WHO decides what is allowed to be spoken, and stamps out voices of dissent.
I hope you don’t believe me. No sane person would. Read for yourself the ‘Conceptual Zero Draft” of the proposed pandemic treaty. There’s a plain English guide here:
Pandemic Treaty Plain English Guide 17jan2023
727KB ∙ PDF File
Download
Please read it, then tell at least one person about this stupid treaty every day, until it goes away.
January 17, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Human rights |
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