US Military Escort for Philippine Ships in South China Sea ‘Reasonable Option’ – Admiral
Sputnik – 27.08.2024
WASHINGTON – The US military said Tuesday that it is “an entirely reasonable option” for it to accompany Philippine vessels during resupply missions in the disputed South China Sea region, US media reported.
“Certainly within the context of consultations, every option between two sovereign nations in terms of our mutual defense — escort of one vessel to the other is an entirely reasonable option within our Mutual Defense Treaty,” Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said, as quoted by Bloomberg.
Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Romeo Brawner said his country’s armed forces would escort the ships when they could and “seek other options when we are already constrained from doing it ourselves.” He added that the Philippines also cooperated with countries other than the US.
Their comments followed a collision between Philippine and Chinese ships near the disputed Sabina Shoal on Sunday, amid recurring clashes.
The territorial affiliation of a number of islands and reefs in the South China Sea has been the subject of disputes between China, the Philippines and several other Asia-Pacific countries for decades. Significant oil and gas reserves have been discovered on the continental shelf of those islands, including the Paracel Islands, Thitu Island, Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands, with the Whitson Reef being part.
Do We Finally Have a Peace Ticket?
By Ron Paul | August 26, 2024
Just as the Harris/Walz campaign was looking for a boost from the content-free Democratic National Convention last week, real drama broke out that pulled the country’s attention back toward Republican candidate Donald Trump. Rumors had been swirling for days that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might suspend his independent run for the White House and endorse Donald Trump and on Friday he did just that.
In his powerful speech explaining the decision, RFK, Jr. made it clear that suspending his run was difficult, as was leaving a Democratic Party that has been almost synonymous with the name “Kennedy” for many decades. On both issues RFK, Jr. explained that he was guided by principles and values over party orientation and the fluff that has increasingly come to characterize American electoral politics.
It seems the more “polarized” much of American society becomes over which political party they support, the more the rest of us continue to see less and less difference between the two when it comes to actual policy. Both parties support the warfare/welfare state. Both pursue policies leading to poverty and war instead of peace and prosperity. Both are deluded into believing that the Federal Reserve can effectively manage the economy while we amass unimaginable levels of debt.
Americans are seeking authenticity and politicians who put principles above political parties and that is exactly what RFK, Jr. did last Friday. In his speech at the Trump rally, RFK served up severe criticisms of the Democrats for their embrace of endless war.
He said: “Judging by the bellicose, belligerent speech last night in Chicago, we can assume that President Harris will be an enthusiastic advocate for this and other neocon military adventures. President Trump says he will reopen negotiations with President Putin and end the war overnight as soon as he becomes President. This alone would justify my support for his campaign.”
It was a well-aimed blow at the Biden/Harris Administration, which pretends to be seeking peace while pouring gasoline on the numerous conflicts overseas.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed in her speech to the DNC that Vice President Harris is “working tirelessly” toward a ceasefire in Gaza literally as the Biden/Harris Administration announced another huge shipment of bombs to be used by the Israeli military to kill more Palestinians.
What can we hope for in RFK, Jr.’s bold move? For one, we should hope that coming out in favor of principles instead of hollow party identification can reduce the power of political parties altogether. Already in the Republican Party we are seeing a “new guard” emerge that is ready to break with the tired neocon stranglehold on the party.
So does RFK Jr.’s endorsement of Trump on principles rather than parties mean that we finally have a “peace ticket” to support? The short answer is “no,” we don’t have a peace ticket. Many of us who hoped that the first Trump presidency would be that peace ticket were disappointed to see the likes of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo litter the Administration. There is always the chance of a repeat of these mistakes. And neither Trump nor RFK seem reliably in favor of an end to the slaughter in Gaza.
So no, this is not a “peace ticket.” But at least with what we have seen this past week with RFK and Trump, we get the feeling that peace is on the menu. It’s a start.
Mark Zuckerberg confirms Biden regime pressured Facebook on censorship, admits to throttling Hunter Biden story
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 26, 2024
In a revealing letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has addressed significant controversies surrounding the platform’s content censorship practices, especially concerning actions taken during the 2020 presidential election cycle and the COVID-19 pandemic.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
Zuckerberg confirmed that senior officials from the Biden Administration exerted “pressure” on Facebook to censor specific content related to COVID-19, criticizing the administration’s approach. Despite the external pressures, Zuckerberg emphasized that the final decisions on content moderation lay with Facebook, admitting regret over some of the decisions made under this pressure.
“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration… repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire,” Zuckerberg stated, reflecting on the administration’s actions which he now believes were “wrong.” He expressed regret that Meta was not more outspoken against this pressure at the time: “Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions.”
In a separate disclosure, Zuckerberg detailed interactions with the FBI, which had warned the company of a potential Russian disinformation campaign targeting the Biden family and their association with Burisma ahead of the 2020 elections. This led to the suppression of a New York Post story involving corruption allegations against Joe Biden’s family, which was later determined not to be Russian disinformation. Zuckerberg expressed regret over this decision as well, noting significant changes in Meta’s policy to avoid such actions in the future.
“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Zuckerberg conceded, alleging a policy shift to prevent future such occurrences: “We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Additionally, Zuckerberg addressed his contributions through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to support electoral infrastructure during the pandemic, aiming to assist local election jurisdictions. He defended these contributions as non-partisan, though acknowledged public skepticism about the impartiality of such support.
“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another,” he affirmed, signaling a withdrawal from similar contributions in future electoral cycles.
Court Finds Kennedy Has Standing in Our Consolidated Case
As I predicted, our new co-plaintiff Kennedy meets even the Supreme Court’s stringent standing requirements, the injunction against the government is back in play.
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | August 26, 2024
As I explained in a previous post, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s companion lawsuit Kennedy v. Biden has been consolidated by the court into our Missouri v. Biden case. Based upon documents we obtained on discovery, the court recently found that Kennedy meets the Supreme Court’s stringent standing criteria. We only need one co-plaintiff with standing to bring the case and the petition for the injunction. So the injunction is back in play, and we will likely find ourselves at the Supreme Court again in a few months. Unless SCOTUS invents another technicality on which to temporize, they will be forced to rule on the merits of the evidence against the government, which we believe is overwhelming.
On the issue of Kennedy’s standing, U.S. District Court judge Terry Doughty last week ruled: “There is not much dispute that both Kennedy and CHD [Kennedy’s nonprofit Children’s Health Defense] were specifically targeted by the White House, the Office of Surgeon General, and CISA, and the content of Kennedy and CHD were suppressed. Therefore, Kennedy must now show a substantial risk that in the near future, at least one platform will restrict the speech of Kennedy in response to the actions of one Government Defendant.” Citing evidence we uncovered in Missouri v. Biden, Doughty explained: “The Court finds that Kennedy is likely to succeed on his claim that suppression of content posted was caused by actions of Government Defendants, and there is a substantial risk that he will suffer similar injury in the near future.”
As reported in The Kennedy Beacon Substack:
The latest ruling is not only significant for Kennedy but for the future of online speech. In June of this year, the Supreme Court ruled that the state attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana did not have standing to bring their case on government directed mass censorship. Now that Kennedy and the CHD have been found to have standing in the matter, the Supreme Court will likely have an opportunity to judge the issue on its merits rather than on a technicality as it did when making its standing ruling on an injunction in June.
If Kennedy and his co-plaintiffs are able to demonstrate to judges that the Biden administration’s intrusion into the actions of major social media companies resulted in censorship, the country will be one step closer to a major legal ruling guaranteeing freedom to speak online without the censorious interference of the federal government.
In related news, Kennedy announced Friday that he is suspending his presidential campaign. While he has deep disagreements with Trump on several issues, he is endorsing Trump’s candidacy to advance the key issues on which they have substantial agreements—including stopping government censorship and propaganda. His 48-minute speech announcing this decision was an extraordinary moment in American politics and is worth watching. In addition to discussing the issue of government censorship, which seriously hamstrung his ability to campaign, Kennedy’s remarks focus also on the root causes of the current epidemic of chronic disease in the United States.
While there is online buzz that Trump may tap Kennedy as Attorney General, I anticipate if Trump is elected he will appoint Kennedy to his cabinet as Secretary of Health and Human Services, a department which includes the CDC, FDA, and NIH. This could prove a welcome opportunity for the reform of our public health agencies. I am currently working with a team of policy analysts and health freedom advocates on concrete policy proposals for just such reforms, and will keep you posted on our progress with that project.
What Does a Fraudulent Vaccine Safety Study Look Like?
By Dr. William H. Gaunt | The Defender | August 26, 2024
New vaccines should be proven safe before they are accepted onto the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine schedule.
Here is what is actually happening: Vaccine companies are doing studies that claim to demonstrate the safety of new vaccines but are carefully designed and conducted to intentionally hide the toxicity of these vaccines.
To see how this is done, read on.
What does an honest vaccine safety study look like?
An honest safety study must have a test group that gets the vaccine and a control group that gets a harmless placebo. Injuries and deaths are compared in the two groups.
If the test group has many more adverse events than the placebo control group, the vaccine is not safe.
Most people would be shocked to learn that none of the vaccines on the CDC vaccine schedule have been safety tested in this way.
What does a fraudulent vaccine safety study look like?
Rule No. 1 for conducting a fraudulent study: Do not have a placebo control group. Here is where the fraud is happening: The “control group” is deliberately given something that is as toxic as the vaccine being tested. It can be an older vaccine or the vaccine ingredients minus the antigen.
The results will show that the injuries and deaths are similar in both groups. That is because they are both receiving toxic ingredients. The new vaccine is then illogically declared safe.
If there is no placebo control group, the toxicity of the vaccine is hidden. This is both clever and diabolical. Can you see it?
The public is unaware of this subterfuge
“Turtles All The Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth” is the most thorough and brutally honest book ever written about vaccines.
The authors tell us on page 81:
“As we have seen in this chapter, vaccine trials are designed and performed in such a way as to ensure that the true extent of adverse events is hidden from the public. There is not a single vaccine in the US routine childhood vaccination schedule whose true rate of adverse events is known.”
Two examples of how unsafe toxic vaccines got on the CDC vaccine schedule
Prevnar-13 (a pneumococcal vaccine) was given to the test group of children and the “control group” was given the older Prevnar vaccine.
Severe adverse events occurred in 8.2% (one out of every 12 children) in the test group. Severe adverse events also occurred in 7.2% (one out of every 14 children) of the control group.
What percent of a placebo control group would have had severe adverse events? Probably 0% because they would have received something harmless. We can’t know because the authors of this study chose not to have a placebo control group.
The Prevnar-13 vaccine was declared “safe” and was approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). You don’t have to be a doctor or scientist to suspect that both the Prevnar and the Prevnar-13 vaccines are unsafe. “Turtles All The Way Down” covers this fraudulent vaccine safety study on pages 60 and 61.
Here is the second example, which the authors describe on pages 77 and 78:
“In one of the DTaP vaccine trials, 1 in every 22 subjects in the trial group was admitted to the hospital. A similar hospitalization rate was also reported in the ‘control group’ (which received the older-generation DTP vaccine).”
Again, there was no placebo control group. Both vaccines appear to be decidedly unsafe yet the newer DTaP vaccine made it onto the CDC vaccine schedule. DTP and DTaP vaccines contain antigens for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.
Why is this happening?
Ultimately, the answer is greed. It is enormously profitable to get a vaccine on the CDC schedule. Vaccine companies will do whatever it takes to accomplish this. If it takes a little scientific fraud, so be it.
The vaccine companies are cheating on vaccine safety studies by omitting placebo control groups, thereby lying about the safety of vaccines. The FDA and CDC are complicit because they are doing nothing to stop this fraud.
Corporate capture or regulatory capture
The FDA and CDC are regulatory agencies. The original function of these agencies was to protect the public from dangerous drugs and vaccines.
Unfortunately, these agencies have been captured by Big Pharma. They no longer focus on protecting the public. They focus on protecting and promoting the interests of pharma companies.
Can we compare the health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children?
Theoretically, yes but not if we expect our health authorities or pharma companies to do these types of studies. Chapter 6 of the “Turtles” book is titled “The Studies That Will Never Be Done.”
On page 207 the authors tell us:
“No study that compares the health of vaccinated children to that of unvaccinated children has ever been done by the medical establishment.”
If such a study showed that vaccinated children are healthier than unvaccinated children, it would have been published and been headlined in every newspaper and been the lead story on the nightly news. That hasn’t happened. We suspect that such a study has been done internally at the CDC.
The unwanted conclusion that they won’t allow to see the light of day is that unvaccinated children are far healthier than vaccinated children. This study has likely been done and buried instead of published. Such a study is verboten because it would be a disaster for the vaccine companies.
Private studies show that unvaccinated children are healthier
Here are two privately funded studies:
- “Relative Incidence of Office Visits and Cumulative Rates of Billed Diagnoses Along the Axis of Vaccination” by Dr. Paul Thomas and James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D.
- “Analysis of health outcomes in vaccinated and unvaccinated children: Developmental delays, asthma, ear infections and gastrointestinal disorders” by Brian S. Hooker, Ph.D., and Neil Z. Miller.
Another great resource is the book “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Hooker. They report on many studies where unvaccinated children have better health outcomes compared to vaccinated children.
Science is for sale
The book “Science for Sale: How the US Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profits” by David L. Lewis, Ph.D., tells the story of how corporate profits can frequently trump true science.
This happens in many industries, not just in vaccines. It is not unusual for government agencies to take the side of the corporations. The author was fired from the EPA for revealing details of how this happens.
The health of the public is subverted by powerful corporations in these situations. Does that sound familiar? Lewis doesn’t cover vaccines in his book except in Chapter 7 where he describes how Dr. Andrew Wakefield was unjustly crushed for questioning the safety of the measles-mumps-rubella or MMR vaccine.
Are vaccines the main cause of autism?
If the answer is yes, that would be very bad for vaccine companies. The “Turtles” authors point out on page 209 how our health authorities are trying hard not to find the correct answer to this question:
“Over the past 15 years, dozens of epidemiological studies have been conducted examining the association between vaccines and autism, but not a single one compared the rate of autism in fully vaccinated and fully unvaccinated children.”
If they actually wanted to answer this question, they would do vax/unvax studies. Such studies are easy to do but our health authorities refuse to do them.
Why do health authorities favor epidemiological studies?
The “Turtles” authors provide the answer on page 198:
“Epidemiological studies are the tool of choice for health authorities and pharma companies to maintain a facade of vaccine safety science. They are cheap, relatively simple to conduct, and, above all, their results are easily manipulated.”
It is entirely possible to get an epidemiological study to conclude whatever its authors want it to conclude. These types of studies are not the gold standard.
What caused the drastic decline in infectious disease mortality?
We are supposed to believe that vaccines have been our saviors. Not true. The huge decline in infectious disease mortality was largely due to sanitation, hygiene and improved nutrition (the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables year-round).
The “Turtles” authors make this clear on page 293. They reference a report by the American Institute of Medicine, which states:
“The number of infections prevented by immunization is actually quite small compared with the total number of infections prevented by other hygienic interventions such as clean water, food, and living conditions.”
The claim that vaccines alone saved us is false and our health authorities know it is false.
Below is a simple graph that causes cognitive dissonance in those who believe that vaccines saved us from high rates of infectious disease mortality.
We can clearly see that deaths from measles were reduced to near zero by the interventions mentioned above BEFORE the measles vaccine was introduced.
Similar graphs for other infectious diseases are shown in the book “Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History” by Dr. Suzanne Humphries and Roman Bystrianyk. The mortality rate for all infectious diseases was dropping rapidly before vaccines were introduced.
Do you smell a rat?
Yes. And it has been dead for quite a while. We have been bamboozled (deceived, cheated, swindled and defrauded).
Vaccines are now doing far more harm than good by causing a huge increase in chronic diseases like autism, asthma, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, Type 1 diabetes, learning disabilities, seizures and much more.
It is way past time to use honest unbiased science to sort it out. Imagine what will happen when honest science is applied to vaccine safety studies.
Here is how the ‘Turtles’ authors sum it up
On page 518:
“Science belongs to the people. It belongs to humanity, not to corrupt government agencies and pharmaceutical giants who collude to rewrite the principles of science in order to continue the decades-long cover-up of their crimes against humanity.
“The magnitude of these crimes is enormous — these entities are in way too deep to ever be able to admit any wrongdoing. They will do whatever is necessary to protect the great vaccine hoax. For them, it is a matter of life and death — literally. And so it is for us.”
The lie that vaccines are safe and effective and that serious adverse events are exceedingly rare is still believed by many people — yet trust in pharma and our coopted regulatory agencies is now rapidly eroding. For example, only a tiny percentage of people are continuing to take the COVID-19 vaccine boosters.
Also, the percentage of parents who are choosing to obtain an exemption to vaccines for their children is increasing. This can be done in almost all states.
It is becoming obvious to a growing number of people that we are being intentionally misled regarding vaccines and vaccine safety.
Trump Is Lying about Releasing the JFK Records
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | August 26, 2024
To honor Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (after Kennedy was rebuffed by Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris), Trump announced that if Americans elect him president again, this time around he will order a release of the CIA’s long-secret JFK-assassination-related records.
What a crock. What amazes me is that Trumpsters believe anything and everything this guy says, despite his proven track record of failing to tell the truth.
Remember: Trump was president for four long years. During any of that period of time, he could have issued a simple order to the National Archives: Release the CIA’s 50-year-old Kennedy-assassination-related records to the public immediately.
Trump didn’t do that, even though he promised to do it, just as he is now promising to do it if American voters will give him another chance. After repeatedly promising to release those records when he was president, Trump buckled and granted the CIA’s demand for secrecy for several more years. When that new deadline came due, President Biden granted a new request for secrecy by the CIA and ultimately extended the secrecy into perpetuity.
There is also what has to be a lie that Trump told Judge Andrew Napolitano regarding the CIA’s secret records. According to Napolitano, in a conversation he had with Trump, he asked Trump why he had not ordered the release of the CIA’s JFK-assassination-related records. Trump responded with “Judge, if they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn’t have released them either.”
If Trump was suggesting that there was some sort of big smoking-gun matter in those records, it’s got to be a lie because there is no chance whatsoever that the CIA would have turned over such a record to the Assassination Records Review Board or the National Archives instead of simply destroying it. Moreover, ever since the CIA was established, it has been standard practice to never put anything regarding a state-sponsored assassination in writing. What are the chances that the CIA would make an exception to that rule with respect to its assassination of a U.S. president? None!
Moreover, if Trump is really going to order a release of the records if he is again elected president, as he is now promising again that he will, then why not reveal publicly what he supposedly saw that motivated him to make that statement to Napolitano? If he is going to release them anyway, why does he need to wait until he’s elected president to reveal that particular part of the records to the American people?
So, the question naturally arises: Why would Trump lie about why he broke his promise to release the CIA’s secret records when he was president for four long years? Because he can’t admit the real reason for his broken promise: The CIA would not permit him to release the records. He knows what President Biden, Harris, and everyone in Washington, D.C., knows: The CIA, along with the Pentagon and the CIA, are in charge.
Oh sure, Trump talks big again about “draining the swamp,” taking on the deep state, and making America great again, but let’s not forget that he talked the same way before he was elected president. He broke all those promises also. Immediately upon being elected president, he surrounded himself with generals and foreign interventionist John Bolton, traveled to CIA headquarters obviously to bend the knee and kiss the ring, kept U.S. troops killing and dying in Afghanistan for nothing, and refused to pardon Edward Snowden for revealing the NSA’s illegal secret surveillance scheme. If Trump did all that the first time, he’ll do it again, especially given that he has never expressed any regret or remorse for doing it the first time.
The fact is that the CIA’s JFK-assassination related records will never be released, unless the CIA authorizes a president to order their release. That’s not likely to happen, not because there is some sort of huge smoking-gun confession within the records but instead because the records undoubtedly contain small bits of incriminating circumstantial evidence that further fill out, even in very small ways, the overall mosaic establishing criminal culpability of the U.S. national-security state in Kennedy’s assassination.
Telegram comments on founder’s arrest
RT | August 25, 2024
Telegram abides by EU laws and its founder, Pavel Durov, “has nothing to hide,” the company said after Durov was arrested in Paris. Telegram said that it is “awaiting a prompt resolution” of the situation.
Durov was taken into custody at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday, immediately after arriving from Azerbaijan by private jet. According to French media, prosecutors in Paris plan to charge the 39-year-old with complicity in drug trafficking, pedophilia offenses, and fraud, arguing that Telegram’s insufficient content moderation, its strong encryption tools, and its alleged lack of cooperation with police allow criminals to flourish on the app.
Telegram dismissed these arguments on Sunday, stating that the company follows EU laws and that its content-moderation policies are “within industry standards.”
“Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe,” the statement continued, calling it “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”
“Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as means of communication and as a source of vital information,” the company concluded. “We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation.”
Telegram is headquartered in Dubai, although the company appointed a Belgian legal representative earlier this year to manage its compliance with EU law. Telegram has also complied with the bloc’s anti-Russian sanctions by blocking access to Russian news outlets, including RT.
However, Durov has consistently refused to hand over user data to law enforcement agencies, or to install so-called ‘backdoors’ so that these agencies can surveil conversations on the app. Speaking to RT on Sunday, Durov’s former spokesman suggested that French authorities could have made the arrest on behalf of the US, after Durov publicly accused American intelligence agencies of pressuring him into giving them access to Telegram user data.
The IDF Uses Palestinian Civilians As Human Shields to Inspect Gaza’s Tunnels
Richard Medhurst | August 24, 2024
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Richard Thomas Medhurst (1992) is an independent journalist, political commentator, and analyst from the United Kingdom with a focus on international affairs, US politics, and the Middle East.
Medhurst is known for his coverage of the Julian Assange extradition case in London, as one of the only journalists to report on the trial of the WikiLeaks founder from inside the court.
He has also covered the Iran nuclear deal talks on the ground in Vienna. Medhurst was born in Damascus, Syria.
His father is English and mother is Syrian. Both his parents served in United Nations Peacekeeping and Observer missions and were among the UN Peacekeepers awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988. Owing to his parents’ professional mobility, he has lived in Syria, Pakistan, Switzerland, and Austria.
He speaks four languages fluently: English, Arabic, French, and German. As an independent journalist, Medhurst regularly hosts live broadcasts and video reports on his YouTube channel.
Previous guests include the Foreign Minister of Venezuela, the Dep Foreign Minister of Iran; the Palestinian, Russian and Cuban ambassadors to the United Nations in Vienna; the former British Ambassador to Syria; and various UN officials, journalists, and more.
Medhurst’s reports and analysis on Yemen, Ukraine, Syria, Niger, Lebanon, Iran, the Israeli occupation in Palestine and its genocide in Gaza have gone viral countless times, racking up millions of views.
Richard Medhurst has a combined following of roughly one million people online, and appears regularly on international news outlets including Al Jazeera, WikiLeaks, Black Agenda Report, Al Mayadeen, The Times, LBC, and others.
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The Energy Transition Ain’t Happening: “Clean Fuels”
By Francis Menton | The Manhattan Contrarian | August 19, 2024
Come here for the latest news on how the so-called “energy transition” is grinding to a halt. No amount of government handouts can make this ridiculously uneconomic fantasy work. My last post on the subject, on July 20, reported on the collapse of a large “green hydrogen” project in Australia, with the stated loss of an investment of about $2 billion (Australian) (equivalent to about $1.3 billion U.S.).
It seems that that one was just the tip of the iceberg. Today’s Wall Street Journal has a substantial roundup of the financial status of a half-dozen or so so-called “clean fuel” projects. The headlines from the print and online versions tell you what you need to know. In the print edition (page B3) it’s “Clean-Fuel Startups Begin to Fizzle Out.” Online, it’s “Clean Fuel Startups Were Supposed to Be the Next Big Thing. Now They Are Collapsing.” As the headlines indicate, pretty much all of these “clean fuels” ventures are failing. Who could have guessed?
The Journal’s label of “clean fuels” is used to cover two different categories, one being biofuels, and the other being so-called “green hydrogen” (the stuff produced by electrolysis of water using electricity produced by wind or sun). The biofuels category appears to include such genius ideas as making fuel for airplanes or ships out of used cooking grease. Whatever you might think of that idea, these are still carbon-based fuels, and it’s not clear to me at all why they are supposedly “cleaner” than other carbon-based fuels like petroleum or natural gas.
Hydrogen, on the other hand, offers the promise of providing energy for planes, trains, ships and automobiles free of the dreaded “carbon emissions.” Just hook up some solar panels or wind turbines to big electrolyzers and watch the stuff bubble out of the water virtually for free! The badly misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” made billions upon billions of dollars of subsidies available for these kinds of projects. Surely the successes should be rolling forth one after the other by this time.
It turns out that no matter how many subsidies the government doles out, nobody can make this “green” hydrogen stuff as cheaply as natural gas can be produced by drilling into rock.
One of the big green hydrogen startups is called Plug Power. The Journal quotes its CEO, Andy Marsh:
“The excitement of the early days has not lived up to the hype,” said Andy Marsh, chief executive of Plug Power, a startup that recently opened one of the country’s first plants making green hydrogen, a potential replacement for fossil fuels in industries such as steel making and chemical production. Shares of Plug Power have tumbled more than 90% since the passage of the U.S. climate law two years ago.
Well, at least they’re not bankrupt — yet. You do have to wonder how Mr. Marsh could qualify to be a CEO of such a company and raise hundreds of millions of investor dollars without ever crunching the numbers to realize that green hydrogen could never be economical. Could it be that his business plan all along was to pay himself a big salary out of the investors’ funds and then walk away when the inevitable bankruptcy came?
Here are a couple of paragraphs from the Journal summarizing the overall state of the industry:
Many clean-fuel projects have become money pits, in part because of the great amounts of power they need. High interest rates, supply-chain disruptions and expensive power-grid upgrades have driven up electricity prices. . . . “The only way to fix it is by lowering the cost of green electricity,” said Andrew Forrest, one of the most vocal advocates of hydrogen.
Wait a minute. Andrew Forrest — where have we heard that name? Oh, he is the Australian tycoon who goes by the name “Twiggy.” He’s the head of the company Fortescue, and was the subject of my July 20 post as a result of the collapse of his big Australian green hydrogen project. The Journal goes on to some detail about “Twiggy’s” ongoing green hydrogen plans:
Forrest, the billionaire founder of Australian iron-ore giant Fortescue, said his company’s 2030 hydrogen production target now looks unrealistic. Fortescue is planning to produce its own clean power to make hydrogen in Australia and is considering doing the same in Arizona.
But somehow the Journal fails to mention the failure of Forrest’s big Australian project. Could it be that they interviewed him a month ago, before that happened?
So the odds are that nobody will ever be able to make these “clean fuels” economically. The consequence:
Without clean fuels, emissions at many companies are expected to keep climbing, threatening U.S. and global climate targets. Industries including aviation and shipping are counting on the new fuels because wind and solar power and batteries can’t meet their huge energy needs.
When are we allowed to declare that this whole charade is over?
UPDATE, August 20: Commenter Pablo Honey suggests that it might be interesting to look at the financials for one of these “clean fuels” companies. Here is the 2Q 24 earnings release for Plug Power, just out on August 8. Some key figures: revenue — $143.4 million; “earnings” — net loss of $262.3 million.
Margins: “The Georgia plant’s increased production capacity and strategic price increases across the hydrogen product portfolio have significantly improved hydrogen margins.” So they are increasing prices from levels that were already a multiple of the price of natural gas for equivalent energy content. Good for them if they can get someone to pay, but that inherently means that their market is limited to buyers who either need hydrogen for its non-energy properties (i.e., fertilizer) or ones who are willing to forego profit out of religious devotion to “decarbonization.”
Government handouts: “Plug Power became one of the first companies to leverage the PTC [Production Tax Credit] for its liquid hydrogen plant in Georgia, optimizing financial performance and enhancing shareholder value. . . . Plug Power is progressing with the DOE loan, which aims to support the expansion of its green hydrogen initiatives and infrastructure for up to six sites.” Great — it’s another Solyndra in the works.
US trampling on free speech – David Sacks on Durov’s arrest
RT | August 25, 2024
The US has violated its own constitutional freedoms by forcing its NATO ally France to arrest Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, American investor David Sacks has suggested.
Writing on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, Sacks slammed the detention of Durov at a Paris airport, reportedly on charges related to his alleged complicity in fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, and promoting terrorism.
In an apparent nod to the rumored US role in the arrest, Sacks wrote: “Using allied countries to circumvent First Amendment protections is the new Rendition.” The US Constitution expressly protects freedom of speech and makes no distinction between citizens and people from other countries.
In April, Sacks denounced a US law that would ban the video-sharing platform TikTok if its China-based developer ByteDance refused to sell it within 12 months. At the time, the investor suggested that after the crackdown on TikTok, Telegram, X and the video platform Rumble could end up in Washington’s crosshairs.
Meanwhile, the French move to arrest Durov was also criticized by Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk, who launched the hashtag #FreePavel, suggesting that the pressure on freedom of speech could worsen. “POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme,” he quipped. He also agreed with a user who wondered if X could be the next to come under fire.
In an interview with conservative American journalist Tucker Carlson which was released several months ago, Durov recalled that he had been getting “too much attention” from US law enforcement agencies while he was in the country. He said that while he was not under any legal scrutiny, he had to regularly deal with US authorities eager to get more insight into how Telegram worked.
The tech entrepreneur also claimed that law enforcement had attempted to recruit one of his employees to install a backdoor in the messenger that would allow them, or any other government, to spy on Telegram users.
Why Ukraine is being blamed for Nord Stream
The ‘official’ investigation was always a sham
By Malcom Kyeyune | Unherd | August 21, 2024
To understand the truth about the Nord Stream pipeline, one needs to master a certain form of “Kremlinology”. Everything about it is designed to obfuscate, every strand shrouded in prevarication and deceit.
From the start, the investigation was a textbook cover-up. The Swedish government rushed to secure evidence, citing their putative rights under international law, consciously boxing out any sort of independent, UN-backed inspection. Of course, after gathering all the evidence, the Swedish authorities studiously did exactly nothing, only to then belatedly admit that it actually had no legal right to monopolise the information in the first place.
The Germans, for their part, were also supremely uninterested in figuring out who pulled off the worst act of industrial sabotage in living memory against their country. In fact, over the course of a year-long non-investigation, we’ve mostly been treated to leaks and off-the-record statements indicating that nobody really wants to know who blew up the pipeline. The rationale here is bluntly obvious: it would be awfully inconvenient if Germany, and the West, learned the true answer.
Thus, the recent revelation that the true mastermind behind the ongoing deindustrialisation of Germany was none other than a Ukrainian by the name of “Volodymyr Z.” must have come as an unwelcome surprise. For not only is the idea that the authorities have suddenly cracked open the Nord Stream case not credible in the slightest, but the sloppy way in which the entire country of Ukraine is now being fingered is likely not an accident. Indeed, at the same time as the ghost of Nord Stream has risen from the grave, the German government announced its plans to halve its budget for Ukraine aid: whatever is already in the pipeline will be sent over, but no new grants of equipment are forthcoming. The German government is hunkering down for increased austerity, and so it is cutting Ukraine loose.
“The German government is hunkering down for increased austerity, and so it is cutting Ukraine loose.”
Germany, of course, is hardly alone. Even if there were enough money to go around, Europe is increasingly not just deindustrialising but demilitarising. Its stores of ammunition and vehicles are increasingly empty, and the idea of military rearmament — that is, creating entirely new military factories and supply chains — at a time when factories are closing down across the continent due to energy shortages and lack of funding is a non-starter. Neither France, the United Kingdom nor even the United States are in a position to maintain the flow of arms to Ukraine. This is a particular concern inside Washington DC, where planners are now trying to juggle the prospect of managing three theatres of war at the same time — in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Pacific — even though US military production is arguably insufficient to comfortably handle one.
And so, in an effort to save face in this impossible situation, Ukraine is now being held solely responsible for doing something it either did not do at all, or only did with the permission, knowledge, and/or support of the broader West. This speaks to the adolescent dynamic that now governs Western foreign policy in a multipolar world: when our impotence is revealed, find someone to blame.
The war in Ukraine, after all, was already supposed to be won, and Russia was supposed to be a rickety gas station incapable of matching the West either economically or militarily. Yet here we are: our own economies are deindustrialising, our military factories have proven completely incapable of handling the strain of a real conflict, and the Americans themselves are now openly admitting that the Russian military remains in a significantly stronger position. Meanwhile, Germany’s economic model is broken, and as its economy falls, it will drag many countries such as Sweden with it, given how dependent they are on exporting to German industrial firms.
10 years ago, during the 2014 Maidan protests, the realist John Mearsheimer caused a lot of controversy when he began warning that the collective West was leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and that our actions would lead to the destruction of the country. Well, here we are. At present, our only saving grace is the continuing offensive in Kursk — a bold offensive that will surely be remembered as a symptom of Ukraine’s increasing desperation.
Indeed, a far better guide of things to come can be found in the fingering of “Volodymyr Z.” as the true culprit behind the Nord Stream sabotage. Here, rather than accept responsibility for the fact that Ukraine was goaded into a war it could not win — mainly because the West vastly overestimated its own ability to fight a real war over the long haul — European geopolitical discourse will take a sharp turn towards a peculiar sort of victim-blaming. No doubt it will be “discovered” that parts of Ukraine’s military consisted of very unsavoury characters waving around Nazi Germany-style emblems, just as it will be “discovered” that journalists have been persecuted by oligarchs and criminals in Kyiv, or that money given by the West has been stolen, and that arms sent have been sold for profit to criminal cartels around the world.
All of these developments will duly be “discovered” by a Western political class that will completely refuse to accept any responsibility for them. Far easier, it seems, to calm one’s nerves with a distorting myth: it’s the Ukrainians’ fault that their country is destroyed; our choices had nothing to do with it; and besides, they were bad people who tricked us!
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From the Archives
The Crusades – colliding narratives
Ashes of Pompeii | June 13, 2026
They say history is written by the victors, but the Crusades offer an interesting historical contrast: a two-century collision that produced not one history, but two parallel, irreconcilable realities. The dates and the battles are identical in both accounts, but the moral axis is entirely flipped.
In the traditional Western narrative, the Crusades are framed as a heroic, if tragic, epic. The First Crusade is a pious pilgrimage; the knights are romanticized figures of chivalry in shining armor, bravely holding the line in a hostile, exotic land. The eventual loss of the Holy Land is mourned as the “fall of Outremer,” a tragic retreat of European civilization. In this telling, the East is often reduced to a passive backdrop, its inhabitants viewed through a lens of mystique or backwardness, mere obstacles to a divine mandate.
But cross the Mediterranean, and the exact same timeline reads like a chronicle of foreign invasion and eventual, hard-won restoration against the barbarous northerners. The dates do not change, but the adjectives do. Here is the history as it is remembered in the Levant… continue
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