Bank of England used false data and discredited scenarios to exaggerate climate costs
Net Zero Watch | May 26, 2022
Net Zero Watch has called on the Bank of England to withdraw it latest climate stress test report as critics expose the bank’s use of false data and discredited scenarios.
Experts have criticised the Bank of England’s (BOE) climate stress test for adopting discredited projections of a global temperature change of 3.3C by 2050. This BOE projection far exceeds the IPCC’s SSP5-8.5 scenario – an extreme scenario which in itself is generally regarded to be extremely unlikely.
By using the most extreme and most unlikely scenario the Bank of England has grossly distorted the cost estimates for climate impacts in the next 30 years.
The BOE cites a study by Knutson et al. 2020 in its projections for tropical cyclones, but mispresents its findings: The BOE erroneously claims that the “global frequency of very intense tropical cyclones (category 4–5 storms) that tend to drive property damage is also projected to increase.”
As Prof Roger Pielke Jr. has pointed out, the study the BOE uses in its projections for tropical cyclones (Knutson et al. 2020) comes to the very different conclusion: “In summary, author opinion was divided on whether the global frequency of very intense (e.g., category 4–5) TCs will increase or not.”
The BOE claims that up to 7% of insured UK houses may be uninsurable by 2050 because of increased flood risk. But there is absolutely no evidence for this dramatic rise in uninsurable houses, merely what participants from the insurance industry think might happen. In reality, the number of homes damaged by flooding each year is numbered in the thousands, even in a bad year.
The BOE also claims that general insurers will suffer higher claims for wind-related damage. However this runs counter to UK Met Office data which shows that storms in the UK have been declining in strength since the 1990s.
Net Zero Watch director Benny Peiser said:
According to empirical data published by MunichRe and the World Bank losses from climate and weather-related events have been falling significantly as a percentage of GDP in the last 30 years, despite a rise in global temperatures.
The Bank of England’s climate stress test is fatally flawed. Unless it is withdrawn the bank’s reputation and credibility will be severely damaged.”
Ukraine: The Disinformation War
By Declan Hayes | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 4, 2022
Ukraine: The Disinformation War was the title of the latest piece of disinformation the state funded British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) showcased to support Britain’s Ukrainian war and to suppress dissent on its home front.
Radio 4’s hit piece was a personalized attack on a number of British-based academics, who had been recently named and shamed in the British House of Commons for not being sufficiently Russophobic; the House of Commons is the lower house of the British Parliament; it is where Wee Joe Devlin, a member for Belfast, was beaten within an inch of his life by his fellow MPs for denouncing British war crimes in Ireland as more of his fellow MPs called for him to be summarily murdered. As several MPs have recently been convicted of child sex rape charges and more are facing trial for sexually assaulting their fellow MPs, its pronouncements should be discounted accordingly.
As, of course should those of the BBC for reasons adumbrated below and for others which Justin Schlosberg, Piers Robinson and Tim Hayward outlined in their tweets following this further attack on them by the BBC and its dark allies.
In its pretenses to impartiality, the BBC claim that these academics are so “driven by a conviction that Western governments are responsible for many of the world’s ills” that they “have shared misinformation in their attempts to raise questions about the official narrative of the war” leading “their detractors [to] say they are useful to Vladimir Putin” and for the academics to counter claim “there’s a McCarthyist witch hunt against them”.
Within that pre-cut British imperialist box, a few carefully edited soundbites from Schlosberg and their other targets, as well as a deluge of disinformation from their targets’ students and critics comprise this BBC kangaroo court by radio.
J’accuse
Hayward’s primary crime seems to be he mentioned a contentious 2018 chemical gas attack in Syria to opine that there are at least two versions to what actually happened. For the record and for reasons I address below, I believe all such attacks were orchestrated by the Syrian rebels, aided and abetted by the BBC and MI5. Hayward, importantly, is not that forthright. He believes, on the evidence in front of his nose, and as one who writes academic articles on disinformation, that further inquiries are needed to fully unmask the real culprits, whoever they may be, of the 2018 Douma and 2022 Bucha attacks. Hayward is, in essence, agnostic as, perhaps, academics and the BBC should be.
With regards to the Bucha atrocities, which I addressed in an earlier article, and which the BBC is using to attack Hayward et al, though a full investigation is likewise needed into unmasking those culprits, the British regime have vetoed such a call in the UN. But, as such an investigation must be impartial to be worthwhile, that would, of course, exclude the BBC and those they use to fatten out hit pieces like this.
Round Up the Usual Suspects
In their efforts to discredit Hayward et al, the BBC interviews James Roscoe, Britain’s UN Ambassador, who dutifully trots out the British government’s line on Bucha.
Nader Hashemi, an American itinerant academic with no Syrian connections, is wheeled out to say how horrified he is that Hayward can mention the Douma attack, “a border line genocide”, in passing and how concerned he is that Hayward’s fleeting mention of the Douma war crime might be putting young minds at risk.
Kvitka Perehinets, one of Hayward’s Ukrainian students, is wheeled out to tell the BBC’s worldwide audience, as she has already told Hayward’s academic bosses, that Hayward should be silenced. Although Perehinets’ family are currently fighting Russian speakers in Ukraine’s East, Perehinets does not make it clear if Hayward should be dispatched with a bullet to his head or simply disgraced by being strapped to a lamp post as he undoubtedly would be in government held Ukraine.
Pride of place in the written version of the BBC’s hit piece went to Hayward critic Mariangela Alejandro, a young, purple haired Mexican student with a nose ring, a baby’s dummy around her neck and a cute purple amethyst ring on her marriage finger. Mariangela informs us that she had heard Hayward was a good lecturer but that, shortly into his course. things started to get “weird” as “he goes from talking about global financial markets [and] poverty, into this realm of conspiracy theories about [Syrian President Bashar al] Assad and Russia.”
Although one of my earlier articles debunked the conspiracy theory canard specifically for instances like this, the very short clip the Radio 4’s hit piece played suggests mentioning it may have been germane to Hayward’s lecture. If, as Mariangela alleges, Hayward’s lectures were the disjointed ramblings of a conspiracy theorist (sic), then that would have been picked up by the student evaluation forms and conveyed to the university’s top brass through the students’ class rep and the Students’ Union. Even if, as I doubt, Mariangela was the class rep, it was not her place to broadcast her criticisms to the BBC and thence to the world.
Send In the Clowns
Hayward is a member of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media, whose affiliates include a number of mercenary fringe thinkers, as well as the afore mentioned Piers Robinson, who has now gone on to greater things. I mention Robinson here as the BBC made no effort to discover what has become of him, even though a 60 second Internet trawl would have solved that conundrum, to Robinson’s credit.
Because there is war is afoot, all sides will have their mercenaries and their idiots, useful or otherwise. That NATO, in President Putin’s own words, is infinitely better resourced than is Russia, it stands to reason that NATO has more brown envelopes to push the BBC’s way than do opposing or neutral outlets. That is not to say that every NATO journalist or blogger is a media whore. Far from it.
Justin Schlosberg, one of those the BBC hatcheted, was attacked for citing Patrick Lancaster, an American citizen journalist embedded on the Russian side of Ukraine’s lines. But, as Schlosberg’s tweets as well as my earlier article on citizen journalists, which explicitly mentioned Lancaster, make plain, Lancaster’s work only helps us to ascertain if there is anything to be seen that warrants further investigation if, in those immortal words, anyone had been raped and speaks English. Beyond that, Lancaster is irrelevant.
Though Lancaster is not the hill academics like Schlosberg should be crucified on, it is crucial to note that the BBC and other NATO outlets repeatedly used the work of the White Helmets and related terror groups in Syria. Because the BBC, as Robert Stuart’s sterling work clearly shows, not only used their footage but were deeply embedded with the White Helmets, ISIS and other terrorists, they are in no position to cast vitriol at Lancaster or at Schlosberg for mentioning Lancaster, almost in passing.
NATO, in any case, has its own cast of clowns, amongst the most elevated of whom is Scott Lucas, who was an American professor of American Studies at Birmingham University in England, with ties to the Toran Research Center, which has major links with Turkish Intelligence and with supposedly demobbed Syrian terrorists. Lucas regularly appears on the mainstream media, holding forth on Syria and other issues he has no expertise on.
Prominent journalist Peter Hitchens noted that, when he phoned up Lucas to discuss Lucas’ uninformed comments on the White Helmets’ murder gang, Lucas hung up on him. Though Lucas is a NATO lightweight, Hitchens is noteworthy as the BBC were forced to apologize to him over their coverage of NATO’s 2018 Douma chemical gas attack and to confess that Chloe Hadjimatheou, who ran that piece and who also did the Hayward/Schlosberg hit piece we are now discussing “failed to meet the Corporation’s editorial standards for accuracy by reporting false claims”. Hadjimatheou, in other words, has long been guilty of the same misinformation offenses she tries to concoct against Hayward et al. This, remember, is the same NATO media that swore black and blue that Tom Mac Master, a bearded American academic in Scotland, was a Syrian lesbian being oppressed by “Assad” in Damascus where, like Lucas and Hashemi, MacMaster had never been in his life.
Then we have bottom feeder Eliot “Suck my Bellingcat Balls” Higgins, whom the Atlantic Council, the BBC and affiliated NATO front groups built into a citizen expert on all things military to justify their predetermined anti Syrian and anti Russian NATO narratives. Given that Eliot Higgins, Bellingcat’s founder, could not even hack the easiest course at Britain’s easiest university, the only explanation as to why MI6 and allied media outlets and intelligence agencies push Bellingcat, Bana and others to prominence is to dumb down debate to the level of babbling infants so that no one worth their salt would bother getting involved in trying to stop NATO’s war crimes. The BBC hit piece on Hayward et al is a part of that process.
This link fillets Higgins’ foolish pronouncements on the Ghouta false flag chemical attack. Dr Neal Krawetz has slammed Higgins’ et al’s use of his image identifying software, and he has called them idiots not worth spending time on. But Profs Postol and Krawetz are, like Hayward et al, forced to waste their very valuable time clinically ticking off these useless idiots, who have no relevant experience or knowledge to promote or defend the White Helmets terror gang, but who are widely cited in the BBC and similar pro-war Western mainstream media to do just that.
Nader Hashemi, the American itinerant academic, who speaks about a Syrian “border line genocide” falls into the same useful NATO idiot camp. And so too does the odious Oliver Kamm, who took a day off from running his years-long clandestine vendetta against Neil Clark and getting Philip Cross to edit Wikipedia pages he disapproves of to weigh in on this latest BBC smear piece.
Muslim Brotherhood Royalty
Tim Hayward could do worse than to get his students to survey Robert Stuart’s sterling work, which is a damning indictment of the BBC’s misinformation. Central to Stuart’s work is Dr Rola Hallam who, as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s al Kurdi family ,was the BBC’s fixer in ISIS controlled Syria.
Dr Rola Hallam is the daughter of Mousa al Kurdi, one of the head honchos in the supposedly moderate wing of Syria’s Murder Inc who was finding evidence of chemical gas attacks wherever this clown chanced to look. During BBC Panorama’s farcical show, Rola, her BBC crew and her Hand in Hand for Syria stooges (who threatened to sue me and much more) sailed unimpeded through ISIS checkpoints. Hallam/Kurdi landed the lead role in that state controlled BBC farce. The BBC’s collusion with ISIS, as evidenced by their ability to sail through ISIS checkpoints and to work in ISIS strongholds, may be a further indication that the moderate and less moderate wings of Syria’s Murder Inc, just like the moderate and Nazi contingents of Zelensky’s junta, are in bed together and that the BBC should not pretend otherwise. Something there for Hayward and his purple haired students to chew over.
Ukraine to UK Universities
Although the attacks on Hayward et al could be viewed as a BBC storm in an academic tea cup, it is part of a much wider MI5 orchestrated campaign to kill the Western mind. Olexsandra Koval, the director of the Ukrainian Book Institute has declared that 100 million books, including all Russian classics, must be removed from circulation. These would come from “various genres, including children’s books, and love novels, and detective stories”. Although Mariangela Alejandro, the young, purple haired Mexican student with the nose ring, the baby’s dummy around her neck and the cute purple amethyst ring would perchance call me a conspiracy theorist (sic) for my past defense of Masha and Mishka, there is much to learn in those lovely tales, just as there was in Soviet film, at least according to Hollywood’s own Martin Scorcese, who acknowledged Hollywood’s debt to Soviet director, montage inventor and pioneer film theorist Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, who is best known for his seminal 1925 silent film, Battleship Potemkin.
But Zelensky’s Nazis will have none of that and nor apparently will their compromized BBC apologists, whose warped minds think that there is something unclean about Masha and Mishka for no other reason than they are the creations of Russian geniuses. If Mariangela Alejandro, the young, purple haired Mexican student with the nose ring, the baby’s dummy around her neck and the cute purple amethyst ring wishes to understand what drives war crimes in Chiapas, as much as in Douma or Donbas, she might begin by looking at how everything Syrian and Russian is being marginalized, just as Mexico’s elite marginalized and murdered the Tzeltals, Tzotzils, Ch’ols, Tojolabals, Zoques, Lacandons, Mochós and Mams of Chapas.
As for Kvitka Perehinets, the young Ukrainian student, whose family are fighting Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine, as she is at a university, she might like to read some of the 100 million books Olexsandra Koval wants to torch. She could, of course, try talking to a Russian student but Russian students now, being Russian, are haram. As for the rest of us, though we must continue to call hate groups like NATO and their BBC mouthpieces to account for the sake not only of academics like Hayward who try to call them to account but even more so for the sake of young minds like those of Alejandro and Perehinets they warp and even much more so because of those unsung youngsters who die in Douma, Damascus and Donbas as a result of the BBC’s misinformation toxins.
Backdoor Vaccine Mandates
No Vaccine, No Interview
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | June 3, 2022
Many countries around the world introduced vaccine mandates over the past year. Fortunately, in the UK, there was a big enough backlash to make politicians think twice. Personally, I think it was the global change in narrative, from Covid to Ukraine, that provided the final nail in the coffin but hopefully the mandate resistance got the ball rolling.
Unfortunately, for many in the care home sector, this backlash against vaccine mandates came too late, with many employees either losing their jobs, forced to leave or redeployed to the metaphorical basement.
Frontline health and social care workers (including anybody who would have contact with patients, such as receptionists) were the next target for mandates. This is when things really started to change and the government made a massive last minute U-turn. Since then, the news has barely mentioned Covid, with the focus being on Ukraine instead.
Great, so vaccine mandates in the UK have gone for good? Not so fast. Certain jobs on the government website clearly haven’t got the memo.
The paragraph above comes from a job posting for a ‘Relief Support Worker’ role posted a few days ago.
Don’t worry, they would love to hear from you even if you are part of the filthy, unvaccinated population. But they won’t even consider interviewing you unless you have had your first jab. Come on guys, this is perfectly reasonably, you are unclean, we might catch something from you in the interview.
So, you have decided not to be vaccinated for a year and a half now, managed not to die, even though Joe Biden said you probably would do over the Winter but now you have to get vaccinated even though you may not even get the job.
If you are lucky enough to get the job, then you need the second jab before you start.
Just before the vaccination paragraph is this one.
Sounds like a good company to work for. They are passionate and inclusive but only passionate and inclusive if you aren’t one of those smelly, unvaccinated types. Get your jab, you savage, and then we’ll be really passionate and include you.
Vaccine mandates via the backdoor.
UK students urged to report ‘propaganda’
Samizdat | June 3, 2022
The University of Edinburgh in Scotland has urged its students to report “misinformation” after one of its teachers was accused of spreading false Russian narratives.
According to The Times and the BBC, while stating that it was committed to freedom of expression and creating a “safe space for staff and students to discuss controversial topics,” the university noted that it has a “strong view against the spread of misinformation” and asked students to report concerns they might have about teachers.
The academic in question – Tim Hayward, a professor of environmental political theory at the University of Edinburgh – had retweeted a statement made by a Russian representative to the UN, who claimed that the alleged Russian bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine was a false flag operation.
In March, Hayward also shared a link to an article questioning the reported Russian attack on a theater in Mariupol, and asked “what do we know of the reality?” The article suggested that the assault may have also been a false-flag operation carried out by Ukrainians in an attempt to generate public outrage and provoke a military intervention from the West.
Kvitka Perehinets, a Ukrainian student at the university, who says she has family members fighting now, told the BBC that she was deeply concerned over the professor’s social media activity, stating that: “The moment we start to equate the two sides in the story is the moment we lose our humanity. The oppressor — in this case Russia — should not be given the same kind of platform as those who are being oppressed.”
Perehinets told the outlet that she alerted the university to Professor Hayward’s tweets.
Another student, Mariangela Alejandro, expressed concern over Hayward’s statements on the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria, and his critical view of the White Helmets organization, which he shared with students during a lecture.
According to a lecture obtained by the BBC, Hayward told his students that there were two prevailing narratives surrounding the alleged attack in Douma, Syria in 2018: “One narrative says the White Helmets helped rescue victims, provided evidence and gave witness statements about the chemical attack on Douma on 7 April 2018. The critics say the White Helmets were responsible for staging a false flag event to spur the West to attack the Syrian government.”
“In fact, dispute about this case is still current,” he noted.
The BBC wrote that Alejandro said she came away from Hayward’s lecture “thinking ‘it could be true’ that the attack was faked, until she spoke to a Syrian friend.” The article, however, did not specify what her friend said.
Hayward has defended his teaching by stating that his course simply asks whether a claim should be accepted solely on the basis of someone’s authority, adding that the concept extends to his own words as well.
He hit out against the BBC for what he considers to be attacks on him and other academics who are challenging the prevailing narrative. Following the BBC’s article, Hayward wrote on Twitter: “Academia should support open discussion of propaganda, not be constrained to tow an official line in an information war.”
BBC joins crusade against dissenting academics via propaganda documentaries
Press TV – June 1, 2022
It seems the nefarious Inquisition in Europe, which brutally sought to rid the world of heresy and political rivalry for centuries, has reignited as its new protagonists in the British national broadcaster BBC strive to silence and delegitimize any dissenting viewpoints held by academics.
In a new documentary on BBC Radio 4’s Facts on File, and also in a report based on the documentary by the BBC News, two academics, namely Tim Hayward and Justin Schlosberg, have been falsely accused of supporting and spreading “Russian propaganda” and “misinformation” about Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine that began on February 24, either through their lectures or on Twitter.
Hayward, a professor of environmental political theory at the University of Edinburgh, had re-tweeted a representative of Russia to the United Nations, who stated that the Russian attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol on March 9 was “fake news.”
“As long as we’re still able to hear two sides of the story we should continue striving to do so,” Hayward said.
While the West condemned Russia for targeting the hospital several times with airstrikes, the Russian foreign ministry strongly rejected the allegation, branding it as “information terrorism” against Moscow.
A few days later and in the House of Commons, legislator Robert Halfon from the Conservative Party denounced Hayward and also Dr. Tara McCormack, a lecturer in international politics at the University of Leicester, who had spoken about “ludicrous disinformation” of both Kiev and Moscow.
Halfon also urged the parliament to “contact these universities directly to stop them acting as useful idiots for” Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi at the same session of the House of Commons described the said academics and the like as people who are “buying” Moscow’s “false narrative” about the war in Ukraine.
“It is a false and dangerous narrative and we will crack down on it hard,” Zahawi said.
The BBC quotes 21-year-old history and politics student Mariangela Alejandro as saying that things in Hayward’s class got “weird” when the professor stepped in the “realm of conspiracy theories about [Syrian President Bashar al] Assad and Russia.”
The British broadcaster even criticized, though implicitly, Hayward for a lecture in which he outlined an argument that the West-backed White Helmets group might have helped fake a chemical attack in Syria years ago. Russia and the Syrian government have stressed that the attack was “staged.”
The White Helmets group, which claims to be a humanitarian NGO, is known for its coordination with terror outfits in Syria to carry out staged chemical attacks in order to falsely incriminate Syrian government forces and fabricate pretexts for military strikes by a US-led military coalition present in Syria since 2014.
On April 14, 2018, the US, Britain, and France carried out a string of airstrikes against Syria over a suspected chemical weapons attack on the city of Douma, located about 10 kilometers northeast of the capital Damascus.
That alleged attack was reported by the White Helmets group, which published videos showing them purportedly treating survivors. Washington and its allies blamed Damascus for the Douma attack, an allegation strongly rejected by the Syrian government.
Hayward used an argument put forward by members of a collective of academics and bloggers he is a member of, known as the Working Group on Syria Propaganda and the Media (WGSPM).
“One narrative says the White Helmets helped rescue victims, provided evidence and gave witness statements about the chemical attack on Douma on 7 April 2018,” Hayward said during the lecture.
However, he added that “the critics say the White Helmets were responsible for staging a false flag event to spur the West to attack the Syrian government. In fact, dispute about this case is still current.”
Hayward told the BBC that he does not teach about Syria, but simply used an example in his class that he was familiar with.
The BBC, however, seems to be eager to lash out at Hayward when it quoted Dr Nader Hashemi, director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver and a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, as describing Hayward’s argument about the White Helmets and the staged chemical attack as “a deeply distorted set of teachings.”
Regarding Hayward’s stance on the purported Russian airstrikes against a maternity hospital in Mariupol that says “we should strive to hear both sides”, the BBC drew in Kvitka Perehinets, a Ukrainian student at the University of Edinburgh, who said “there are no two sides” to the conflict and that “The oppressor – in this case, Russia – should not be given the same kind of platform as those who are being oppressed.”
Although the University of Edinburgh claims that its programs are approved by a board of studies, emphasizing its commitment to “academic freedom”, it also stresses that it takes “a strong view… against the spread of misinformation” and encourages students to report concerns.
The university should be notified that one of the primary jobs of “academic freedom” is paving the way for academic research to distinguish true information from “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
However, the UK’s Department for Education (DfE), which is responsible for education in England, inquisitively controls the flow of research in universities, saying it expected “universities’ due diligence processes to consider the reputational, ethical and security risks of false and dangerous narratives, and ensure that students are not misled by views that are clearly false.”
When the academics’ tweets were raised in the Commons, Zahawi said the minister for Higher and Further Education, Michelle Donelan, was “contacting those universities”, a means of pressure on Hayward and the like who think differently from the mainstream in the West.
Another academic pressured by the BBC and the Education system in the UK is professor Schlosberg, who specializes in media and journalism at Birkbeck, University of London.
He has been lambasted for re-tweeting Russian state media questioning what occurred in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, 37 kilometers northwest of the capital Kiev.
Back on April 2, the mayor of Bucha in a video message claimed that 300 people had been killed by the Russian army with some appearing to have been bound by their hands and feet before being shot.
He also presented footage and photographs showing the dead bodies of those allegedly killed or executed by Russian troops, claiming that 280 bodies had been buried in mass graves while nearly 10 others were either unburied or only partially covered by earth. Later on, Kiev claimed a death toll of more than 1000 in the city.
A day later, the Ukrainian government urged major Western powers, including the United States, to impose crippling fresh sanctions on Moscow over what it called a “massacre” in Bucha, a newly liberated town at the time.
The Kremlin strongly rejected any involvement of Russian troops in the so-called massacre, with Russian President Sergei Lavrov stressing that the killings did not occur while Russian soldiers were in the city.
He added that the so-called dead bodies in footage circulating the internet were “staged” and the images of them plus Ukraine’s false version of events had been spread on social media by Kiev and Western countries.
On April 4, Schlosberg tweeted that “Russian troops left on 30th March. No mention of any ‘massacre’ or bodies lining the streets for 4 days.” He also re-tweeted a video of Bucha’s mayor speaking without mentioning a massacre.
The BBC, however, hurriedly stressed in its report that Russian media has been using the video to bolster the idea that the bodies appeared after the Russians had left the city.
It quoted the academic as saying that he had “no idea” regarding what really happened there.
“My only understanding is that I think no-one else really knows what happened. I think there is a very strong likelihood that there were very serious atrocities, almost certainly the vast majority of which were committed by Russia,” Schlosberg further told the BBC.
However, in a string of tweets on Wednesday, he denounced the broadcaster’s “grossly defamatory allegation.”
“Rather than engage with the actual meaning of my tweets, the BBC chose to uncritically endorse obvious manipulation by people who have been actively trying to silence and delegitimize any dissenting viewpoints since the start of” the current operation by Russia in Ukraine, Schlosberg said.
“The manner in which the program achieved this was so cynical and unguarded it beggars belief, even for those of us increasingly skeptical about the BBC’s commitment to basic journalistic standards, let alone its own lofty public service values,” he stressed.
UK “hate crime” plans could criminalize comedy, rights group says
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | May 31, 2022
The Home Office is working on a new hate crimes strategy to encourage more people to report hate crimes. Campaigners have warned that the new strategy might result in criminalizing comedians like Ricky Gervais, who question the trans ideology in comedy routines.
The strategy is being drawn up despite a court ruling last year that banned police from recording “gender-critical” comments as non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs).
“These plans suggest either that the Government is not paying attention, or that they have contempt for the Court of Appeal,” said a lawyer from campaign group Fair Cop.
“Either way, it is astonishing that legislators are planning to expand the discredited and unlawful practice of recording non-crime hate incidents [NCHIs]. Following Fair Cop’s win in the Court of Appeal in December, the College of Policing promised to publish revised hate crime guidance by the end of May this year. We’re still waiting. Police forces that record complaints against comedians – or any other lawful speech – as NCHIs will be piling illegality upon illegality.
“They will then find themselves in court with no legitimate defense. This quixotic strategy oozes arrogance, as if the law does not apply if you’re fighting for ‘the right side of history.’
“But how can you be on the right side of history if you’re repeatedly on the wrong side of the law?”
This news comes comedian Ricky Gervais faced a censorship mob from his recently aired Netflix Special SuperNature, where he covered the topics of cancel culture, transgender ideology, Hitler, and AIDS.
At some point he says: “The worst thing you can say today is, ‘Women don’t have penises,’ right?”
He was accused of “hate crimes” by some trans campaign campaigners, and would have probably been recorded for NCHIs if the new plans were already in place.
Four UK primary schools to feed youngsters insects
Free West Media | June 1, 2022
Insects are supposed to be nutritious and have a lower carbon footprint than regular meat, scientists have claimed. Young children will soon be eating insects to encourage a new generation to switch from meat to insects – and to convince their parents to follow their lead.
Pupils at four primary schools in Wales will be fed “alternative proteins” such as crickets, grasshoppers, silkworms, grasshoppers and mealworms. The project to change people’s diets starts this week.
The researchers hope their findings will provide information on how to make British children – and by extension, their parents – believe in the environmental and nutritional benefits of edible insects.
Surveys, workshops, interviews and focus groups will give feed-back on the experiences of alternative proteins. Researchers have teamed up with teachers in the hope to convince five- to 11-year-old participants to give up meat and dairy.
“We want children to think about alternative proteins as real things for now and not just foods for the future, so sampling some of these foods is a key part of the research,” said Christopher Bear of Cardiff University.
“Although edible insects are not – yet – sold on a large scale in the UK, they are part of the diet of around 2 billion people worldwide. A large proportion of these live in parts of the world where they are part of a long-standing culinary tradition. And they’re becoming popular elsewhere, too,” he added.
A 2020 study estimated that around 9 million European consumers ate insects in 2019 and predicted a rise to 390 million by 2030, according to the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF), an insect producer.
Carl Evans, Head of School at Roch Community Primary School in Pembrokeshire, which is participating in the project, said that this was an “important link” to “wider global issues around sustainable development” even if it is “often confusing for them”.
Verity Jones of the University of the West of England in Bristol, said young children could “play a big role in family dietary changes”. According to Jones, most of us are already unwittingly eating insects: “Everyone eats insects every day – there are more than 30 parts of bugs in 100g of chocolate… Bread, fruit juices, hops… whatever you eat, you eat insects.”
Jones has tried to reassure children in this way that they would not get sick from eating insects because “all research, both in adults and children, showed that the notion of whole insects were unpleasant, “but crushed insects in food are very acceptable”.
“My research has found that, as with adults, boys are more willing to try new foods first,” she said.
The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) is expected to allow insects to be temporarily sold in supermarkets and other retailers, with full approval expected next year.
But insects can compromise the nutritional value of many foods, especially those made from plants (like rice or flour). Some common anti-nutrients contained in them are phytic acid, tannins, and lectins. The exoskeleton, or “chitin,” of an insect has been found to contain these anti-nutrients.
Insects could have the same capacity to trigger allergic reactions as do crustaceans (like shrimp and lobster). Also, many insects feed on decaying matter: rotting food, animal corpses, human waste which are full of bacteria and is a common danger associated with wild insects. They can carry parasites which are harmful, or even deadly.
Notably vegans were significantly more determined than meat eaters that they would not eat foods of insect origin, even if they were nutritious, safe, affordable, and convenient. Insects are technically animals (they belong to largest phylum of the animal kingdom, arthropods) and are therefore not considered as a food source by vegans.
Britons warned of winter blackouts
Samizdat | May 30, 2022
As many as six million British households could be subjected to power cuts this winter if Russian gas supplies to Europe stop, The Times reported Sunday, citing a Whitehall document.
It said that imports of natural gas from Norway could halve next winter amid surging EU demand. Britain buys around half of its total supplies from the Nordic country.
Shipments of liquified natural gas from major producers such as the United States and Qatar could also halve this winter, the UK government warned, pointing to fierce global competition for supplies of the fuel.
Meanwhile, interconnectors from the Netherlands and Belgium could also be cut off in winter, as the two countries struggle meeting their own demand.
The UK, which has vowed to end the importation of Russian oil by the end of the year, is now seeking to bolster electricity supply by extending the life of its coal and aging nuclear power stations.
Thus, the lifespan of Somerset nuclear power plant Hinkley Point B could be extended by 18 months, despite plans to decommission the 50-year-old facility this summer.
According to the report, heavy industrial facilities could be told to stop using gas, while UK gas-fired power plants could be closed in order to preserve limited supplies.
That could reportedly result in shortages of electricity, with British households subjected to blackouts during peak times on weekday mornings and evenings.
If Russia cuts supplies of natural gas to the EU entirely, blackouts could last for three months, starting in December, and occur on both weekdays and weekends, the report said.
The World Bank’s Impractical Electric Car Clap-Trap
Net Zero Watch | May 26, 2022
At a World Bank event in April, former chief economist Lord Nicholas Stern called for a global ban on the manufacture and sale of combustion engine vehicles. At COP26, a coalition of multilateral development banks signed a joint statement announcing their intentions to ‘increase the level of private capital mobilised’ to fight climate change. Activists were infuriated that it omitted divestments from funding fossil fuels. Both the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank have faced industry pressure to stop investing in internal combustion engine vehicles by 2025. Sixty-eight percent of transport investment by the World Bank involves combustion engines. But perhaps the World Bank has not floored the accelerator on EVs yet because they recognise roadblocks keep the wheel out of reach for working families.
The UK Government insists that combustion engine vehicles will be banned from production, importing, and sale by 2030. But a global semiconductor shortage has produced a projected nine percent slump in electric vehicle sales in the UK. Motorists are modelled to save £700 on fuel for making the switch to EVs. However, road pricing and tolls have been proposed to replace Treasury revenue once fuel duty becomes obsolete. Therefore, the gap between petrol and electric car running costs may close. Electricity costs could even eclipse fuel prices, should the renewables generating electricity fail.
There are also infrastructure impediments to overcome. The ban would require 400,000 charging points to be installed across the UK by 2030, up from the only 35,000 that were in place as of last year. Many rural areas remain ‘charging blackspots’, inaccessible for EVs on long journeys. Annual installation must increase ten-fold to meet the Department for Transport’s promise that ‘drivers will never be further than thirty miles from a rapid charging station’.
Even if charger targets are met, streets could be lined with cars charging for up to twelve hours at a time. This issue will be exacerbated in cities. ‘Generation Rent’ faces housing price rises of 14.3 percent; the fastest for seventeen years. Their reliance on being packed and stacked into high-rise apartments means a third and rising of the population have no access to private off-street parking. 24.6 percent of vehicles are parked on streets overnight. A report published by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) modelled electric car ownership will increase traffic congestion eleven percent by 2050. Combined with charging station scarcity, congestion could become chronic — with motorists jousting for parking and charging spaces, and charging stoppages slowing delivery times for various courier services. This constitutes quite the regression from the convenient five-minute-stop at your local petrol garage.
All of this is presuming that the cars themselves can be manufactured to meet demand. Making electric cars requires six times the minerals as combustion engine vehicles: needing thirty times as the lithium, nickel, and other metals currently in circulation. The UK must expand battery production capacity by ninety times the present amount to keep pace. But absent abundant domestic resources, Britain remains heavily dependent on our geostrategic rivals for the raw materials used in EV and battery manufacture.
Britain imports over 2200 tonnes of lithium every year. Recent sanctions on Russia affected Britain’s top import: $12 billion of annual metal imports. Nickel prices saw a short-squeeze, with prices increasing 250 percent to over $100,000 a tonne. Both metals are instrumental in EV battery manufacturing.
Meanwhile, China controls eighty percent of global annual battery production capacity, sixty percent of global graphite production, sixty five percent of nickel refining, and eighty percent of cobalt refining. This is because China’s Belt & Road Initiative has annexed more than a third of global precious metals deposits: including forty rare ore deposits in Zimbabwe, the ‘white goldrush’ of lithium under Argentinian salt-flats, and $1 trillion in lithium reserves in Afghanistan.
There is mounting evidence that the only way out of our rare metals shortage is to mine asteroids in outer space. Elon Musk’s rocket-measuring contest against Jeff Bezos and Richard Branston may be an interstellar gold rush to become Earth’s first trillionaire. But until these mad scientists invent safe passage to the stars, the rest of us will keep driving petrol cars.
But instead of abandoning infeasible commitments to the abolition of transport emissions within the next eight years eco-authoritarians use these shortages as an excuse to restrict energy consumption and abolish car ownership.
In addition to the usual anti-motorist platitudes by the cycling lobby, some have taken to advocating ride-share apps as a reason to ‘give up owning a vehicle’. These rent-only alternatives have the downside of making your means of mobility contingent on the kindness of strangers. Ride-sharing is a convenient addition to the transport economy. However, if car ownership were displaced wholesale by public transport and hire-cars, there are dire concerns for civil liberties. Say the wrong thing about the environment, and governments, or the increasing number of companies adopting environmental credit scores, can deplatform from anything except walking. Consumer choice must be a core principle of free societies — and that includes your right to buy and drive a petrol car.
EVs also render homeowners vulnerable to arbitrary power outages. Green Party Baroness Natalie Bennett has suggested that electric cars can be used as driveway backup generators, should renewables fail to meet consumer demand. The National Grid and Octopus Energy are piloting a policy which drains EV batteries of energy during generation droughts. Even if all of Britain’s cars became electric overnight, and full storage capacity could be returned to the grid without losses, it would still fall short of the deepest energy deficit by eighty-seven percent. This precedent is not only impractical: it means that the state can drain your EV’s battery flat, and enforce a travel lockdown anytime it pleases. If they can’t confiscate your car, the government can remotely deactivate your home charging point anytime they like.
Electric cars are, incontrovertibly, a great idea in theory. But those wanting everyone to drive electric won’t get anywhere fast by banning the combustion engine — all they will achieve is pricing all but a privileged few out of car ownership entirely. That would be politically suicidal; my apolitical plumber recently told me, ‘I’ve never been to a protest, but if they try to take my car, you’ll see me in the streets.’ If the World Bank and British government follow through on their plan to ban the combustion engine, they may well have riots on their hands. They must abandon the planned petrol car ban, or risk terrible consequences.
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The Geopolitics behind the War in Yemen (I)
By Mahdi Darius NAZEMROAYA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 30.03.2015
The United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia became very uneasy when the Yemenese or Yemenite movement of the Houthi or Ansarallah (meaning the supporters of God in Arabic) gained control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa/Sana, in September 2014. The US-supported Yemenite President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi was humiliatingly forced to share power with the Houthis and the coalition of northern Yemenese tribes that had helped them enter Sana. Al-Hadi declared that negotiations for a Yemeni national unity government would take place and his allies the US and Saudi Arabia tried to use a new national dialogue and mediated talks to co-opt and pacify the Houthis.
The truth has been turned on its head about the war in Yemen. The war and ousting of President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi in Yemen are not the results of «Houthi coup» in Yemen. It is the opposite. Al-Hadi was ousted, because with Saudi and US support he tried to backtrack on the power sharing agreements he had made and return Yemen to authoritarian rule. The ousting of President Al-Hadi by the Houthis and their political allies was an unexpected reaction to the takeover Al-Hadi was planning with Washington and the House of Saudi. … continue
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