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Everything you need to know about Covid’s “Eris” Variant

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | August 7, 2023

The big news the last couple of days is that “Covid” is back… again. This time it’s the “Eris” variant, named after the Greek goddess of strife and discord, it supposedly is causing a spike in cases for the first time in… who cares how long.

The bulk of reporting on it is detailing how it’s supposedly related to Omicron or Arcturus or all the other names they flash in the headlines.

That, or the symptoms.

They are a runny nose and a sore throat and…well, you know. The only noteworthy thing to mention here is that the “loss of taste of smell” – so long sold as Covid’s calling card – is no longer considered a common symptom.

Yahoo even reported – without a shred of irony – that the alleged up-tick in “cases” was due to people spending more time indoors:

Bad weather encouraging people to spend more time indoors and waning immunity have been blamed for the rise

… a peculiar position to take, considering lockdown is meant to have helped, last time.

Anyway, without further ado, here is everything you really need to know about the Eris variant:

It’s bullshit.

Just like all the others.

Nothing else really needs to be said, does it?

Sure the media are setting up softballs for us to hammer over the fence, talking about the “symptoms” and “infection” rate again as if the past three years haven’t rendered all those words meaningless. But we are – or should be – well past that point of arguing against the mainstream.

We know everything we need to know about the symptoms – they are “generally mild” and “flu-like”, because Covid is nothing but re-branded endemic respiratory diseases. We know the death statistics are made up and the tests don’t work except to manufacture cases.

We know all this, even this repeating of it is unnecessary, to be honest.

The only aspect of Eris worth discussing is why it’s in the papers, and even that answer is briefer than usual.

Eris exists because the “Cerberus” heatwave is over, and July was unseasonably cold and damp in the UK. Because Autumn will be setting in soon enough and there are no more major sporting events for Just Stop Oil to disrupt for a while.

In short, Eris is what happens when people refuse to panic about climate change.

In fact, we can probably expect headlines linking Eris to the climate in the next few days.

The trouble with that is, just like climate change, people can only be scared by words for so long. The media repeated “global warming” so much the words lost their meaning, and filled the papers with so many apocalyptic predictions that never came to pass that people got numbed to it, they filter it out now even if they don’t realise they do.

The same will happen with covid; the more they bring it back for a jump scare, the less people will jump.

That’s probably why they’re laying the groundwork “the next pandemic” of “disease X”.

August 7, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

A Round-Up of the BBC’s Climate Howlers of the Past 12 Months

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 6, 2023

The annual Paul Homewood review of the BBC’s climate howlers is always an enjoyable read, even for those keen students who follow his investigative work during the year. But with the consensus starting to crumble for the insane Net Zero collectivist project, this latest instalment of Tall Climate Tales from the BBC seems to have attracted a wider audience. Talk TV and the Daily Express have both given extensive coverage to the latest set of BBC bloopers.

How we laughed when Julia Hartley-Brewer read from the list on her TalkTV morning show. Such as the report from the Norfolk village of Happisburgh where “extreme weather linked to climate change” has eroded the soft sand cliff rock. No mention of the finding of the British Geological Society that it is likely the Norfolk cliffs have been “eroding at the present rate for about the last 5,000 years”.

Or the report that the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season was the third most active on record. Nothing of the sort, of course, with Homewood observing that since 1851 there have been 32 years with a higher count of hurricanes. There was also an evidence-free claim in September 2022 on the BBC Verify that hurricanes were getting more powerful. The U.S. weather service NOAA states in its latest review that “there is not strong evidence for an increase since the late 1800s in hurricanes, major hurricanes, or the proportion of hurricanes that reach major hurricane intensity”.

Your own correspondent’s personal favourite made the list with news that bee-eaters had turned up in Norfolk to the delight of local twitchers. But the BBC was worried, reporting that rare ‘rainbow birds’ trying to breed in the UK was a worrying sign of how our climate is changing. It was an “unmissable sign”, no less, that the climate emergency had reached our shores. As any half-knowledgeable bird watcher could have told the BBC, bee-eaters have frequently visited England in the past. One archive alone lists 80 sightings between 1793 and 1957. Then there’s a story about trees in British cities that a study said were at risk of drought due to climate change. There is no evidence that the areas were getting drier, nor is there any evidence they will. “Once again, the BBC is uncritically presenting a controversial study as factual,” commented Homewood.

It is the common practice of the BBC to reproduce the most extreme climate claims without challenge, without providing supporting data, and without reporting on the views of scientists who disagree, writes Homewood. In fact, the practice continues almost daily. In March, the BBC said that Antarctica ocean currents were heading for collapse – “a new report warns”. The article proceeded to go into full Day After Tomorrow mode with “previous research” suggesting a slowdown in the North Atlantic current causing Europe to become colder.

Modern climate science/activism is awash with clickbait predictions looking for a suitable home in useful idiot mainstream media. As recent research from the Clintel Foundation revealed, about 42% of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate impact statements are based on a computer model that assumes temperatures will climb by 5°C in less than 80 years. Even the IPCC itself admits this is of “low likelihood”. About half the published climate papers are thought to use this 5°C input, leading to a festival of misinformation for gainfully employed journalists content to append “scientists say” to fanciful copy. The latest giant of modern science to rain on this parade is last year’s joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics Dr John Clauser, who calls the climate emergency narrative a “dangerous corruption” of science that threatens the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has “metastasised into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience”, he observes.

The state broadcaster has followed this path of eco-extremism for over 20 years, providing covering fire for politicians to promote a Net Zero project. As audiences continue to decline, the BBC increasingly operates as a club of eco-fanatics intent on signally their virtue to fellow members of the cult. It fails to cover the scientific process at almost every level, discounting the views of any scientists that don’t adhere to the party political line. As with Covid, there seems to be an irrational belief in the output of computer models. Such belief leads to a preposterous acceptance that ‘attribution‘ models can link individual weather events to supposed human involvement.

As we have noted, large areas of science are now closed for debate for fear that any competing views will cast doubt on the unproven but ‘settled’ hypothesis that humans cause all or most climate change. Natural variation in the climate is largely ignored, while stories of once fanatical interest suddenly disappear from the carefully constructed catastrophe playlist. These include polar bears – more than you can shake a stick at these days – the recovery in Arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet, and spectacular coral growth on the Great Barrier Reef.

In Homewood’s view, the BBC’s coverage of climate change and related policy issues such as energy “has long been of serious and widespread concern”. In his latest review, Homewood notes that all of the BBC’s factual errors could easily have been avoided with a bit of basic research. And he asks, who is editing all this “fake reporting”? Where are the highly paid executives who let all this continue? “It is apparent that nothing has changed in the last 12 months,” he says.

One more for the road – another personal favourite of mine. It was dry in February this year, despite an average amount of rainfall over the winter. Banging the drum for drought, the BBC produced a picture of an empty reservoir labelled “water levels in rivers, reservoirs and groundwater levels were abnormally low in February”. Alas, the picture showed trees in full leaf, which wasn’t surprising since it was taken in September 2021, a time when reservoirs can be seasonably low. “There’s nothing like a fake image to fool the public,” comments Homewood.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Stop Press: Paul Homewood has produced a summary of his latest report about the BBC’s climate howlers for the Express.

August 6, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Is the Era of ‘Global Boiling’ Really Upon Us? The Climate Fear-Mongers are Becoming a Laughing Stock

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 2, 2023

Increasing numbers of commentators are starting to call peak Net Zero and this process is being helped by the crumbling of the decades-long suffocating stranglehold exerted on ‘settled’ climate science by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The latest body-blow to its credibility has come from last year’s joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, Dr John Clauser. He has warned the Nobel Foundation not to model a proposed new body to police ‘misinformation’ on the IPCC, adding: “In my opinion the IPCC is one of the worst sources of dangerous misinformation.” It would seem unhelpful that at a time when Clauser voiced his criticism, the UN’s Secretary General headed for a public stage and upgraded global warming to “global boiling”.

Of course, by ramping up the fear to ‘boiling’ point, the unhinged Antonio Guterres has fallen into the ‘worse than Hitler’ trap. Where can you go after you call someone a Nazi, or tell a world audience that the Earth is bubbling beneath its feet?

Details have recently been made public about the short speech Clauser gave to young scientists in South Korea. He implored them to follow the scientific method based on good observations and experiments. Good observations always overrule purely speculative theory, he told them. Referring to climate science, he noted the current world was “literally awash, saturated, with pseudoscience, with bad science, with scientific misinformation and disinformation”.

Referring often to climate science, he told his audience that if they are doing good science they must beware since it may take them on paths that lead them into “political incorrect” areas. “If you’re a good scientist, you will follow them… I can confidently say that there is no real climate crisis and that climate change does not cause extreme events,” he said.

Easier said than done of course since most scientists are funded in one form or another by governments. In the area of climate, politicians require scientific backing for their collectivist plans to re-order society around Net Zero. Huge amounts of public money are flowing into untested, unproductive new technologies, few of which would be viable in a free capital market. Green subsidy hunters are making serious fortunes with little risk involved. The climate narrative is absurd, says MIT Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen, but trillions of dollars says it is not absurd.

There are a number of fault lines that run through the IPCC science narrative. It maintains that all changes in the climate since 1900 are caused by humans burning fossil fuel. This is plainly odd since it asks us to ignore almost all natural variation, having accepted that natural causes were responsible for climate change in the past. It also suggests that the current period in the Earth’s history is the hottest for 125,000 years, ignoring copious evidence that temperatures were much higher in the Holocene Thermal Maximum about 9,700 – 5,700 years ago. The IPCC would have us believe that higher levels of carbon dioxide cause the temperature to inevitably rise, despite observational evidence throughout the paleo record that contradicts that simple hypothesis. After 50 years of trying, not a single credible paper has yet been published providing conclusive proof for the anthropogenic global warming boiling hypothesis.

Earlier this year, a group of scientists operating through the Clintel Foundation examined the latest work of the IPCC. The authors were damning about its most recent report, finding it emphasised worst-case scenarios, rewrote climate history and had a huge bias against good news. Its standout revelation was that 42% of the IPCC’s claims were based on climate models fed with the implausible assumption that global temperatures would rise by around 5°C in less than 80 years. Deep in the main body of its work, even the IPCC admits this is of “low likelihood”. Even worse, Clintel noted, was that about half the extreme climate model forecasts found across the entire body of scientific literature are based on this 5°C boost. It is a fair bet that almost 100% of the clickbait scare stories that dominate mainstream media are taken from these sources.

The former IPCC author and economics professor Roger Pielke Jr. thinks that the continuing reliance on these implausible assumptions by the IPCC is “one of the most significant failures of scientific integrity in the 21st Century”.

The tide could well be turning as the voices of previously cancelled giants of science are heard. In the UK, there is increasing media interest in the retrospective uplifts to temperature datasets enabling previous inconvenient pauses to be removed, and ‘records’ to be declared at regular intervals. Not before time, the Met Office’s habit of declaring heat highs amidst the jet exhaust at British airports is becoming something of a national joke.

One of those science giants, atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen, recently told a U.S. government body that climate science “is awash with manipulated data, which provides no reliable scientific evidence”. In his view, the IPCC only issues “government-dictated findings”, noting that the important, and much quoted, “Summary for Policymakers” must be approved for publication by all governments. He further noted that, “misrepresentation, exaggeration, cherry-picking or outright lying pretty much covers all the so-called global warming caused by fossil fuel and CO2”.

Dr Clauser signed off his inspiring talk to young scientists in South Korea by telling them to observe nature directly so they could determine real truth. “Use the information gained from carefully performed experiments and research to stop the spread of scientific misinformation, disinformation,” he said.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

August 6, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

NATO Instructors Trained Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion Soldiers in 2021

Sputnik – 06.08.2023

NATO military instructors from Denmark and the United Kingdom trained Ukrainian soldiers at a base of the nationalist Azov battalion, despite Azov’s exclusion from US military funding due to its radicalism, according to documents from the Danish embassy in Kiev seen by Sputnik on Sunday.

A note from the Danish embassy dated May 21, 2021, informed the Ukrainian Defense Ministry of the arrival of six instructors for the 56-th Ukrainian army brigade in Berdyansk and Urzuf, where Azov’s main base was located.

“These sites were previously investigated by Russian law enforcement officers, and the materials found there directly point to intensive training of mobilized Ukrainian citizens by Western officers, using criminal methods of warfare, which the Azovs were fluent in,” a law enforcement officer told Sputnik.

The instructors of the UK’s OP ORBITAL training team had already been present in Ukraine before, the document showed.

“Operation ORBITAL is the code name of a UK program to train Ukrainian army servicepeople from the mobilization reserve. I note that these officers, as stated in the text of the document, have access to classified information, which indicates that Ukraine has provided access to information constituting state secrets, including mobilization planning documents,” the officer said.

Despite the fact that the Azov battalion has been recognized by the United States as a neo-Nazi organization, NATO forces were directly involved in training of nationalist armed formations, they noted.

“This is evidence of Kiev’s intensive preparations for active combat operations under NATO’s supervision,” the law enforcement officer concluded.

In August 2022, the Russian Supreme Court designated Azov as a terrorist organization. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said that Azov militants use prohibited means and methods of warfare and are complicit in the torture of civilians and the killing of children.

August 6, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

The “War on Climate Change” is coming… again

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | August 3, 2023

Last week, a senior member of Parliament for the UK’s Labour Party went on television demanding the UK – maybe even the entire world – be on a “war-like footing” to combat climate change.

Speaking on the BBC’s flagship political magazine Newsnight, Barry Gardiner MP argued for unity of purpose against climate change’s “existential threat”:

“… if this were a war we wouldn’t be arguing about whether the Labour strategy or the Tory strategy were better, we would be working together to try and win […] Well, it is a war. It is a war for survival and climate change threatens everything […] So actually instead of playing party political games about who is up, who is down, what we need to be doing is saying let’s get together, let’s mobilise on a war footing and that is what is needed…”

Two days later, the exact same thoughts were expressed in a Financial Times column by Camilla Cavendish, former head of David Cameron’s Downing Street policy unit and Kennedy School of Government alumnus:

The answer is surely to invoke a wartime spirit, and make the fight against climate change a joint endeavour against a common enemy. If the public and political will is there, human ingenuity can prevail, with remarkable speed. In the second world war, America transformed its manufacturing base to produce tanks and ammunition. The Covid pandemic resulted in the discovery and development of vaccines at scale, saving millions of lives.

It’s interesting to note the comparison to Covid, but we’ll come back that.

The campaign isn’t isolated to the UK, in fact it kicked off on the other side of the Atlantic, with the Inquirer running an article headlined “President Biden should address the nation and declare war…on climate change” on July 16th, which argued:

Biden and his aides need to grab that metaphorical bullhorn and call the TV networks to announce a prime-time address from the Oval Office that will declare a national emergency — in essence, a state of war — to fight climate change.

Joe Biden himself called climate change an “existential threat” on July 27th.

The invocation of metaphorical war is of course nothing new.

“War” is a very important word in the world of politics and propaganda. It has – or is assumed to have –  an immediate effect on the collective public mind; an instant connection to generations of shared memories, that promotes feelings of conformity and solidarity.

Some psychological study or focus group clearly figured this out decades ago, and as such the word “war” is frequently used to control narratives.

In Western “democracies” the deployment of the W word is code for bi-partisan agreement, attempting to breed faux solidarity between the same people they encourage to hate each other 90% of the time, whilst branding any dissenters as outsiders who are a threat to the safety of the group.

More pragmatically, being “at war” creates an “emergency” which justifies “temporary” suppression of human rights and freedoms and permits increases in the powers assumed by the state.

OffG – and others – have discussed this ad infinitum, past a certain point any authoritarian government needs to exist in a state of war in order to avoid collapse, and so enemies are created that, by their nature, can remain forever never undefeated.

See: “The War on Drugs”, “The War on Terror”, “The War on Covid”

… and, now, the war on climate change.

Or, more properly, “the war on climate change… again”.

Because neither Barry Gardiner nor Camilla Cavendish are the first person to express this thought. Not even close.

Then-Prince now-King Charles expressed the exact same sentiment in the exact same words in a speech to the COP26 in November 2021, contemporary opinion pieces in the Guardian agreed with him.

They were, in fact, echoing a University College London report from May 2021.

CNN warned we were “losing the war on climate change” in April 2019, plagiarizing the exact same headline in The Economist from a year earlier in August 2018.

Bill McKibben wrote “We’re under attack from climate change—and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII” for the New Republic in August 2016.

Venkatesh Rao wrote “Why Solving Climate Change Will Be Like Mobilizing for War” for the Atlantic in October 2015, repeating the same arguments from a CNN article four months earlier.

Hell, all the way back in 2003 the New York Times was running editorials “After Iraq: Declare war on global warming”

(Ah, remember when Climate Change hadn’t yet received it’s unfalsifiability makeover and was still just known as “global warming”?)

Essentially, every few months they trot out this idea of “declaring war on climate change”, get almost no engagement from the public, and then go back to spouting alarmism and fear porn for a while before trying again.

They have been doing this for years. So far it has not worked.

… but this time might be a little different.

Why? Because we now live in a post-Covid society.

Consider, with the exception of the vaccines, everything brought on by Covid – the lockdowns, the financial collapse, all of the “Great Reset” – was originally meant to be a “response” to climate change.

They had a package of “solutions” ready and waiting for a public “reaction” that never came. People were simply never scared enough at the idea the world might get a bit warmer.

It could be argued that global warming’s repeated failure to spark a global panic is the very reason they resorted to “Covid” in the first place, but whatever the cause-and-effect relationship the fact of the matter is that Covid has laid a foundation for the “war on climate change” that never existed before.

  • “anti-Covid measures” provide precedent both for the use of extreme ‘responses’ and their apparent “effectiveness”
  • Covid created enough fear that they can increase climate hysteria by linking environmentalism to future potential “pandemics”
  • Covid (allegedly) “inspired global cooperation” and “demonstrated what we can achieve when we all work together”
  • Covid lockdowns (allegedly) “showed how the world can heal” by cutting emissions.
  • And, most vitally, the roll out of the Covid narrative demonstrated that once people have invested their virtue or personality in a story you can tell them almost anything relating to that story and they’ll be incentivised to believe you – NO MATTER HOW ABSURD IT MIGHT BE.

We noted earlier that several recent articles “declaring war on climate change” reference Covid, almost always as a global success story.

It is now commonplace to talk about avoiding climate disaster through the medium of Covid. The United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations and International Monetary Fund have all run articles in the last couple of years with near-identical titles eg:

What the Coronavirus Pandemic Teaches Us About Fighting Climate Change

Perhaps the most blatant example of using Covid imagery to sell climate change and globalism is the call to create a “Global Climate Organization”, from Dr David King in the Independent a few days ago (our emphasis):

“In terms of a health crisis, such as the Covid crisis, we have a World Health Organisation and it’s based in Geneva and is part of the United Nations. We don’t have a world climate crisis organisation. That’s what we need, so that all countries of the world could come together through a body of this kind, as we do when there’s a health crisis, we all contribute to the cost of the WHO. We need a global system that pulls us all together to battle with this external threat to our manageable future.”

We know what this is, this is the “pivot from Covid to climate” they literally told us was coming.

The “Great Reset” has made a good start, but they still have a raft of fun policies they want to introduce (eg. rationing food). In a post Covid world, they are hoping to finally make “climate change” frightening enough that people will beg them to completely reshape the world as they see fit.

The amusing part is that it still doesn’t feel like it’s landing, to be honest.

Outside of the media echo-chamber and the virtue-signalers, all the “terrifying” temperature maps, the experts warning that “millions will die instantly” if they turn their air conditioning off, the new buzzphrase of “global boiling” is being met with a bit of a “meh”.

Unfortunate for them, because they’ve set themselves a deadline. Every year that passes without catastrophic climate breakdown, every summer the ice caps don’t disappear, every unseasonably cold or wet July is another nail in the coffin of their narrative, a few more normies disengaging from the story.

Which is probably why the coverage of “heatwave cerberus” and “global boiling” is fervid verging on feverish. There is an element of sweaty-palmed desperation seeping into every tweet, every headline.

They are running out of time.

The dark corollary of that is that someday soon they may well give up trying to persuade people, and start trying to force them.

August 3, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Military bloat and empire as a way of life

Recalling William Appleman Williams final work

By Patrick Mazza | The Raven | June 3, 2023

Bar chart showing the military getting an increase and non-military getting cut in FY 2024 budget deal

Source: CBO’s Estimate of the Budgetary Effects of H.R. 3746, the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023

Starve the poor – Feed the Pentagon

Once again, while other needs are squeezed, a federal budget deal will literally starve the poor to feed the military. While new work requirements are placed on SNAP recipients that will drive some from the food support program, the military budget (never call it defense) remains untouched. The recent debt ceiling deal leaves Joe Biden’s $886 billion 2024 Pentagon budget request intact while domestic programs are slashed. The above graph from the National Priorities Project tells the story.

In real terms it is the largest military budget in U.S. history, the only exceptions being World War II and the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that came after 9-11. Larger by far than during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, or the Reagan military buildup. Again, from the National Priorities Project:

Line graph showing US military spending at a historical high level

The real military budget is even higher. Adding in nuclear weapons, foreign military aid and “intelligence,” the project puts the current 2023 budget at $920 billion. That is still an undercount. William Hartung, an expert on military spending, calculates that even in fiscal year 2020 the total military expenditure was $1.25 trillion, adding in other costs such as support for veterans and debt service. It’s easily pushing $1.5 trillion by now.

The U.S. by far is the biggest military spender on Earth, with 39% of the total, exceeding the next 10 nations combined, as this chart shows:

Most warlike nation

So why is the military budget so unassailable? Why, no matter how often bloated military spending is denounced, does the budget climb toward ever greater heights? Even after Dwight Eisenhower made the famous warning in his farewell address:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Ike would have known, being one of the progenitors of that complex as the general leading U.S. forces that invaded Europe during D-Day and as the president during the nuclear buildup of much of the early Cold War. One clue as to why his warning went unheeded is in the fact he originally wanted to call it the military-industrial-congressional complex, the “iron triangle” that keeps pumping up military expenditures. As Hartung writes, Congress is bought by the weapons industry. It is a kind of money laundering scheme where increased military spending comes back as campaign donations, a perfect example of the legalized bribery that is the real governing system of the U.S.

But there are deeper reasons, explaining why that “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” for which Ike called has never appeared, at least to the level able to tie back the power of the complex. War and militarism are rooted deep in the U.S. of American experience. As former President Jimmy Carter said, “If you go around the world and ask people which is the most warlike country on Earth, which one do you think they would respond? The United States. Since we left the Second World War, and even before, the United States has constantly been at war in some part of the world. We’ve been in about 30 combats with other countries since the Second World War . . .  So I would say that the military-industrial complex, the manufacturers of all kinds of weapons, are very influential in the country and the Congress as well.”

Carter noted that the U.S. hasn’t been at war with someone only 16 years of its 242-year history. (Even that is doubtful since even during Carter’s so-called peaceful years the U.S. was stirring up trouble in Afghanistan in a successful effort to give the Soviets “their own Vietnam,” as his National Security Adviser, Zbignew Brzezinski, has confessed.) The list is extensive. If the U.S. was not fighting with some European or Asian power, it was warring on some native nation or another on the frontier.  War has worked for the United States, historian Geoffrey Perrett noted in his 1989 history of major U.S. conflicts, Country Made by War.

“Since 1775 no nation on Earth has had as much experience of war as the United States: nine major wars in nine generations. And in between the wars have come other armed conflicts such as the Philippine insurgency and clashes in the Persian Gulf. America’s wars have been like the rungs on a ladder by which it rose to greatness. No other nation has triumphed so long, so consistently, or on such as vast scale, through force of arms.”

Although conflicts since World War II have not been so successful, nonetheless they failed to dislodge the fundamental U.S triumph in that war, which left it overwhelmingly dominant over all other powers, each of which had been ravaged in the war. As historian Alfred McCoy noted in his recent work, To Govern the Globe, it left the U.S. in the unprecedented position of holding sway on both European and Asian ends of Eurasia. If this hegemony is eroding with the rise of China and other powers, the U.S. still remains in a powerful position.

“Born and bred of empire”

To all this one must ask the more fundamental question. Why has the U.S. been the most warlike, most continually at war? For the answer we can look to historian William Appleman Williams and the title of his final book which summarized his substantial life work, published in 1980, Empire as a Way of Life. Williams was the dean of what came to be known as the revisionist school of U.S. history that penetrated the myth of American exceptionalism with the facts of history, that the U.S. was an empire from its colonial roots, and behaved much as any other empire.

First let Williams define his terms. “. . . a way of life is the combination of patterns of thought and action that, as it becomes habitual and institutionalized, defines the thrust and character of a culture and society.” Then, empire, a system in which, “The will, and power, of one element asserts its superiority.” In some cases empire “concerns the forcible subjugation of formerly independent people by a wholly external power.” Such as native peoples or those who lived in the former northern half of Mexico.

Williams does not let the mass of U.S. of Americans off. We are enmeshed in the ways of empire.

“Empire became so intrinsically our American way of life that we rationalized and suppressed the nature of our means in the euphoria of the enjoyment of the ends . . . It is perhaps a bit too extreme, but only by a whisker, to say that imperialism has been the opiate of the American people.”

The U.S. was “born and bred” of another empire, the British. “The 19th– and 20th-century empire known as the United States of America began as a gleam in the eyes of various 16th century critics of, and advisers to, Elizabeth I,” Williams explains. At that time, “England was then a backward and underdeveloped small island” outclassed by other powers emerging in the Atlantic fringe, Portugal, Spain, France and The Netherlands, who were already commencing the age of European world conquest.

England concluded that “domestic welfare and social peace required vigorous imperial expansion,” and began first by consolidating the internal empire on the British Isles in Scotland and Ireland, and then in the 1600s expanding to the North American coast.  “. . . the most significant aspect of the empire was the success in transforming the American colonies from tiny, insecure outposts into dynamic societies generating their own progress . . . It produced another culture based on the proposition that expansion was the key to freedom, prosperity, and social peace.”

Inevitably, tensions rose between the ruling class of the home isles and the rising elites of the colonies. Benjamin Franklin believed the weight of development would eventually move the center of the British Empire to North America (which it finally did in 1945, but that comes later in the story), and until nearly the time of the split recommended that course. “But the British feared that such a policy would lead to the loss of control and profits, and Americans increasingly asserted their own claims to their own empire,” Williams writes.

That culminated in the Revolutionary War and the successful creation of the United States. But a weak central government seemed unable to fully press forward what George Washington would call “a rising empire” – the founders were not shy about using that kind of language. It appeared the union would fray into two or more nations, while uprisings such as Shay’s Rebellion threatened to shatter social peace. So the new national elites came together to create a framework to ensure continued expansion under a strong central government, the Constitution. Writes Williams, “. . . the Constitution was an instrument of imperial government at home and abroad.”

“Extend the sphere”

The Constitution was founded on a clever turnaround of a fundamental political understanding architected by one of its key authors, James Madison. The general belief to that point had been exposited by French political philosopher Montesquieu “that liberty could only exist in a small state. Madison boldly argued the opposite: that empire was essential for freedom.” Madison needed to make that argument because many citizens of the new nation, burned by their experience with Britain, wanted nothing to do with a strong central government.

Madison made his case in a letter to Thomas Jefferson. “This form of government, in order to effect its purpose, must operate not within a small but extensive sphere . . . Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all to feel it . . . to act in unison with each other.”

Williams writes, “He was arguing that surplus social space and surplus resources were necessary to maintain economic welfare, social stability, freedom and representative government.” A strong central government would be needed to expand land for agriculture, to expand and protect exports, and to promote manufacturing.

With the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis & Clark Expedition to the Pacific, Jefferson fully embraced Madison’s understanding. “I am persuaded that no constitution was ever before as well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government,” he said as he left the presidency. “Jeffersonian Democracy, as it came to be called, was a creature of imperial expansion,” Williams writes. “He, perhaps even more than Madison, established it as a way of life, and most Americans embraced it because it gave them personal and social rewards.”

So much for the “alert and knowledgeable citizenry.”

“. . . once people begin to acquire and enjoy and take for granted and waste surplus resources and space as a routine part of their lives,” Williams writes, “and to view them as a sign of God’s favor, then it requires a genius to make a career – let alone a culture – on the basis of agreeing upon limits. Especially when several continents lie largely naked off your shores.”

The myth of empty continents and the racism it embodies has always been part of the story. “Racism . . . began and survived as a psychologically justifying and economically profitable fairy tale. It provided the gloss for the harsh truth that empire . . . is the child of an inability or unwillingness to live within one’s own means. Empire as a way of life is predicated upon having more than one needs.”

Next: Coming installments will review how imperial expansionism is rooted in a misguided sense of mission and compulsive drive for security, and how empire as a way of life continued to unfold after the era of the founders.

August 3, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

British Arms Industry Giant Reaps Huge Windfall, Amid West’s Tensions with Russia and China

By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | August 2, 2023

Amid the surge in NATO members’ military spending as a result of the war in Ukraine, BAE Systems announced that – during the first half of this year – its net profits soared with a 57 percent increase. The British arms industry giant reported its huge windfall on Wednesday.

BAE Systems stated its revenue swelled to 11 billion pounds, an increase of 13 percent, while profits after taxes increased to 965 million pounds ($1.2 billion) during the first six months of 2023. This is compared with 615 million pounds in the same period last year.

Chief Executive Charles Woodburn declared “Our global footprint… and leading technologies enable us to effectively support the national security requirements and multi-domain ambitions of our government customers in an increasingly uncertain world.”

In a separate video that accompanies the company’s earnings statement, he acknowledges the profits are directly related to global destabilization and Western foreign policies, particularly those of London and Washington, aimed at Russia and China. Woodburn says “I’m particularly proud of our support to Ukraine… We’ve delivered an excellent set of results.”

In November, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said that Ukrainian forces had already suffered over 100,000 casualties, killed or wounded, so far in the proxy war with Russia, along with thousands more civilians killed.

Woodburn’s euphoria regarding the “excellent results” notwithstanding, Ukraine has lost approximately 20 percent of its territory since the Russian invasion began last February. Moreover, Kiev’s long awaited counteroffensive has seen massive losses in military equipment and armor, as well as personnel no doubt, while no significant gains have been made.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported “When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew [Kiev] didn’t have all the training or weapons — from shells to warplanes — that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day. They haven’t. Deep and deadly minefields, extensive fortifications and Russian air power have combined to largely block significant advances by Ukrainian troops. Instead, the campaign risks descending into a stalemate with the potential to burn through lives and equipment.”

The video continues with Woodburn boasting of further profits which will be reaped as a result of BAE’s role in the major military buildup in the Asia-Pacific targeting Beijing. “We’ve secured significant orders for combat vehicles… and the selection of the UK’s design for AUKUS.”

AUKUS is a trilateral military pact formed in 2021 between Washington, London, and Canberra which will see Canberra acquiring nuclear-powered attack submarines which will be used to patrol waters near China’s shores. The three countries are currently carrying out the largest iteration of the US-Australia Talisman Sabre war games, again eyeing Beijing. AUKUS will seriously undermine the Non-Proliferation Treaty as these submarines run on 90 percent or more enriched uranium, weapons-grade levels.

The most profitable policies for the arms industry are often the most destructive for civilians, such was the case in Saudia Arabia’s genocidal war against the Yemeni people, strongly supported by Washington and London. According to the UN, at least 377,000 people have been killed in this war, including mostly children and infants, as a result of the full blockade imposed by Riyadh on northern Yemen and its devastating bombing campaign against civilian infrastructure.

In 2020, The Guardian reported “Britain’s leading arms manufacturer BAE Systems sold £15bn worth of arms and services to the Saudi military during the last five years, the period covered by Riyadh’s involvement in the deadly bombing campaign in the war in Yemen.” By the following year, BAE’s sales to Riyadh, since the Gulf kingdom launched its invasion, had increased by 2.5 billion pounds.

According to The Defense Post, subsequent to the company’s announcement on Wednesday, shares in BAE rallied 4.5 percent in early London trading. Andy Chambers, a director at the research group Edison, affirmed “Leading [defense] contractor BAE Systems posted a very strong set of results… benefiting from a general rearmament among NATO countries as the war in Ukraine grinds on.”

In January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists admonished that the risk of nuclear annihilation has never been higher.

Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest.

August 2, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

New data shows deaths and disabilities continue to skyrocket

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | July 27, 2023

Returning guest and former BlackRock Equity Portfolio Manager, Edward Dowd, has been tracking the rising rate of non-COVID illness and excess deaths in the US and the UK since 2021, and has new alarming data on the skyrocketing rate of cardiovascular and hematological deaths. Hear the expert analysis on how these numbers may lead to a global economic crisis.

August 2, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

One Pfizer jab, 20 months of battling to keep hope alive

By Brian Howard | TCW Defending Freedom | January 23, 2023

It has been a very long 20 months since my one and only Pfizer vaccine. I was hesitant but seeing friends and family seemingly OK I decided to ‘do the right thing’ as we were told. The regret still lives on, of course, although over time you do begin to forgive yourself and recognise the huge pressures we were all under.

Within ten days it started. Pins and needles in the hands at night. Then numbness down the whole right side of my body. Then the constant muscle twitches all over the legs. Within a month the tremors started. By this stage I’d already been fobbed off by my GP and a private neurologist. They didn’t want to know or simply didn’t have a clue how to help. I’ll never forget another neurologist suggesting I even take the second jab. Trust in the system had gone at that point. The symptoms continued. Random jolty movements of the body, intense dizziness, headaches and head pressure, brain-shaking sensations, adrenaline rushes, some elevated heart rate episodes. By the six-month point I was rapidly losing hope. You try to stay positive but it really can be a battle. I was fortunate enough to be self-employed and able to work from home but I had to let jobs go as it became far too much, and the money spent on finding alternative therapies and supplements to fix the problem wiped out any savings I had left.

Eventually I started to see some glimmers of improvement, finding certain things that seemed to at least provide relief. It was slow but bit by bit I could sense some progress. At the 20-month point many of the symptoms are still there and I still have a daily battle with them but generally they are at a far more manageable level. The relapses send you backwards, but you get used to them. It feels odd sometimes to say I’ve got used to any of this. I was perfectly healthy before. Never had any prior issues but when this happens you are forced to adapt pretty quickly. You start to forget what it felt like before all of this.

Beyond the physical, all of us have experienced the gaslighting from the medical profession, the online hatred of the vaccine-injured, the censorship by Big Tech. Whether you like it or not it forces you to see the world very differently.

There are positives. For me that comes from the amazing communities of vaccine-injured who have united to help each other, to listen to each other with an openness and compassion that gives me a great deal of hope for the future. To see what a group of people from all over the country and all over the world can do when they simply come together is quite something. The connections you make and communities you become a part of are like a beacon of light.

That’s why we must keep talking. We know there are more of us out there and they need to know that they are not alone.

Brian is a member of UK CV Family, a vaccine injured support group, that can be contacted here. https://www.ukcvfamily.org

August 1, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

UK businesses ignoring anti-Russia sanctions

RT | July 31, 2023

British manufacturers have been supplying Russia with key industrial equipment despite Western sanctions, The Times reported on Monday, citing statistics from investigative group Data Desk.

The outlet’s analysis of trade data showed that despite the British government’s claims to have implemented the “most severe economic sanctions ever imposed on a major economy,” UK companies have still been permitted to export equipment important for Russia’s fuel and mining industries.

Export data showed that a subsidiary of construction company Hill & Smith continues to supply pipes that are installed on gas pipelines in Russia. Hill & Smith said last year it had “no direct customers or suppliers” in Russia, the report noted.

Many other companies based in the UK are also allowed to supply Russia with equipment for key areas of the mineral extraction industry, The Times wrote.

Following the start of the conflict in Ukraine, the UK stepped up sanctions against Russia, banning new investment in the country and restricting imports of Russian oil, coal, and gold, and exports of key industrial goods, among other measures. London has also frozen £26 billion ($33.4 billion) in assets and reserves belonging to the Russian state since the beginning of the conflict, according to the Bank of Russia.

July 31, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

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