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Destroying Ukraine with Idealism

Why Ukraine should not have the “right” to join NATO

BY GLENN DIESEN | JULY 2, 2024

Political realism is commonly and mistakenly portrayed as immoral because the principal focus is on the inescapable security competition and it thus rejects idealist efforts to transcend power politics. However, because states cannot break with security competition, morality for the realist entails acting in accordance with the balance of power logic as the foundation for stability and peace. Idealist efforts to break with power politics can then be defined as immoral by undermining the management of security competition as the foundation of peace. As Raymond Aron expressed in 1966: “The idealist, believing he has broken with power politics exaggerates its crimes”.[1]

Ukraine’s Sovereign Right to join NATO

The most appealing and dangerous idealist argument that destroyed Ukraine is that it has the right to join any military alliance it desires. It is a very attractive statement that can easily win support from the public as it affirms the freedom and sovereignty of Ukraine, and the alternative is seemingly that Russia should be allowed to dictate Ukraine’s policies.

However, arguing that Ukraine should be allowed to join any military alliance is an idealist argument as it appeals to how we would like the world to be, not how the world actually works. The principle that peace derives from expanding military alliances without taking into account the security interests of other great powers has never existed. States such as Ukraine that border a great power have every reason to express legitimate security concerns, but inviting a rival great power such as the US into its territory intensifies the security competition.

Is it moral to insist on how the world ought to be when war is the consequence of ignoring how the world actually works?

The alternative to expanding NATO is not to accept a Russian sphere of influence, which denotes a zone of exclusive influence. Peace derives from recognising a Russian sphere of interests, which is an area where Russian security interests must be recognised and incorporated rather than excluded. It did not use to be controversial to argue that Russian security interests must be taken into account when operating on its borders.

Mexico has plenty of freedoms in the international system, but it does not have the freedom to join a Chinese-led military alliance or host Chinese military bases. The idealist argument that Mexico can do as it pleases implies ignoring US security concerns, and the result would likely be the US destruction of Mexico. If Scotland secedes from the UK and then joins a Russian-led military alliance and hosts Russian missiles, would the English still champion the principle that it has no say? Idealists who sought to transcend power politics and create a more benign world would instead intensify the security competition and instigate wars.

The Morality of Opposing NATO Expansionism

To argue that NATO expansionism provoked Russia’s invasion is regularly condemned by idealists as immoral because it allegedly legitimises both power politics and the invasion. Is objective reality immoral if it contradicts the ideal world we would like to exist?

The former British ambassador to Russia, Roderic Lyne, warned in 2020 that it was a “massive mistake” to push for NATO membership for Ukraine: “If you want to start a war with Russia, that’s the best way of doing it”.[2] Angela Merkel acknowledged that Russia would interpret the possibility of Ukrainian NATO membership as a “declaration of war”.[3] CIA Director William Burns also warned against drawing Ukraine into NATO as Russia fears encirclement and will therefore be under enormous pressure to use military force: “Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face”.[4] The advisor to former French President Sarkozy argued that the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership in November 2021 “convinced Russia that they must attack or be attacked”.[5] None of the aforementioned people sought to legitimise an invasion, rather they sought to avoid a war.

When great powers do not have a soft institutional veto, they use a hard military veto. The idealists insisting that Russia should not have a veto on NATO expansion pushed for the policies that predictably resulted in the destruction of a nation, the loss of territory, and hundreds of thousands of deaths. Why do the idealists get to present themselves as moral and “pro-Ukrainian”? Why are the realists who for more than a decade warned against NATO expansion immoral and “anti-Ukrainian”? Are these labels premised on the theoretical assumption of the idealists?

NATO as a Third Party?

Suggesting that Ukraine has the sovereign right to join NATO presents the military bloc as a passive third party that merely supports the democratic aspiration of Ukrainians. This narrative neglects that NATO did not have an obligation to offer future membership to Ukraine. Indeed, the Western countries signed several agreements with Moscow after the Cold War, such as the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, to collectively construct a Europe without dividing lines and based on indivisible security. NATO broke these agreements by pushing for expansion and refusing to offer Russia security guarantees to mitigate the security competition. By offering future membership to Ukraine, the NATO-Russia conflict became a Russia-Ukraine conflict as Russia had to prevent Ukraine from joining the military bloc and hosting the US military on its territory.

NATO’s support for Ukraine’s right to choose its own foreign policy is also dishonest as Ukraine had to be pulled into the orbit of the military bloc against its will. The Western public is rarely informed that every opinion poll between 1991 and 2014 demonstrates that only a very small minority of Ukrainians ever wanted to join the alliance. NATO recognised the lack of interest by the Ukrainian government and people as a problem to be overcome in a report from 2011: “The greatest challenge for Ukrainian-NATO relations lies in the perception of NATO among the Ukrainian people. NATO membership is not widely supported in the country, with some polls suggesting that popular support of it is less than 20%”.[6]

The solution was to push for a “democratic revolution” in 2014 that toppled the democratically elected government of Ukraine in violation of its constitution and without majority support from Ukrainians. The leaked Nuland-Pyatt phone call revealed that the US was planning a regime change, including who should be in the post-coup government, who had to stay out, and how to legitimise the coup.[7] After the coup, the US openly asserted its intrusive influence over the new government it had installed in Kiev. The general prosecutor of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, complained that since 2014, “the most shocking thing is that all the [government] appointments were made in agreement with the United States” and Washington “believed that Ukraine was their fiefdom”.[8] A conflict with Russia could be manufactured that would create a demand for NATO.

What were the first decisions of the new government hand-picked by Washington? The first decree by the new Parliament was a call for repealing Russian as a regional language. The New York Times reports that on the first day following the coup, Ukraine’s new spy chief called the CIA and MI6 to establish a partnership for covert operations against Russia that eventually resulted in 12 secret CIA bases along the Russian border.[9] The conflict intensified as Russia responded by seizing Crimea and supporting a rebellion in Donbas, and NATO sabotaged the Minsk peace agreement that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians voted to have implemented. Preserving and intensifying the conflict gave Washington a dependent Ukrainian proxy that could be used against Russia. The same New York Times article mentioned above, also revealed that the covert war against Russia after the coup was a leading reason for Russia’s invasion:

“Toward the end of 2021, according to a senior European official, Mr. Putin was weighing whether to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the head of one of Russia’s main spy services, who told him that the C.I.A., together with Britain’s MI6, were controlling Ukraine and turning it into a beachhead for operations against Moscow”.[10]

The Immorality of Peace vs Morality of War?

After Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine, the idealists insist that Ukraine must become a member of NATO as soon as the war is over. It is intended as an appealing and moral statement to ensure that Ukraine will be protected and such a tragedy will not be repeated.

Yet, what does it communicate to Russia? Whatever territory Russia does not conquer will fall into the hands of NATO, which can then be used as a frontline against Russia. The threat of NATO expansion incentivises Russia to seize as much territory as possible and ensure what remains is a deeply dysfunctional rump state. The only thing that can bring peace to Ukraine and end the carnage is to restore its neutrality, yet the idealists denounce this as deeply immoral and thus unacceptable. To repeat Raymond Aron: “The idealist, believing he has broken with power politics exaggerates its crimes”.[11]

 

NATO allies divided on what happens after the Ukraine war : NPR


[1] Aron, R., 1966. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations. Doubleday, Garden City, p.584.

[2] R. Lyne, ‘The UC Interview Series: Sir Roderic Lyne by Nikita Gryazin’, Oxford University Consortium, 18 December 2020.

[3] A. Walsh, ‘Angela Merkel opens up on Ukraine, Putin and her legacy’, Deutsche Welle, 7 June 2022.

[4] W.J. Burns, ‘Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines’, Wikileaks, 1 February 2008.

[5] C. Caldwell, ‘The War in Ukraine May Be Impossible to Stop. And the U.S. Deserves Much of the Blame’, The New York Times, 31 May 2022.

[6] NATO, ‘‘Post-Orange Ukraine’: Internal dynamics and foreign policy priorities’, NATO Parliamentary Assembly, October 2011, p.11.

[7] BBC, ‘Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call’, BBC, 7 February 2014.

[8] M.M. Abrahms, ‘Does Ukraine Have Kompromat on Joe Biden?’, Newsweek, 8 August 2023.

[9] A. Entous and M. Schwirtz, 2024. ‘The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin’, The New York Times, 25 February 2024.

[10] A. Entous and M. Schwirtz, 2024. ‘The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin’, The New York Times, 25 February 2024.

[11] Aron, R., 1966. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations. Doubleday, Garden City, p.584.

July 2, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

Boeing, Boeing, Gone

By Bill Buppert | The Libertarian Institute | July 2, 2024

There is nothing new here but the corruption is deep at Boeing:

“It comes after an unnamed parts supplier uncovered small holes in the material from corrosion, The New York Slimes reported. The FAA is looking into both the long and short-term implications for the aircraft equipped with the faulty parts. It’s not clear how many planes have used components made from the fake titanium.”

Metal behaves differently at altitude and underwater.

Fake metallurgy.

No maintenance workers at the airline that received these fake airplanes verified and validated metallurgy.

The chaos avalanche of the competency crisis continues.

If it’s a Boeing product: fire the CEO for cause, ground all aircraft and require all maintenance crew to wear a body-cam.

“From 1985 through 2017, Thomas falsified the results of strength and toughness tests for about half the steel the foundry produced for the Navy. The tests were intended to show that the steel would not fail in a collision or in certain “wartime scenarios,” the Justice Department said.”

Does anyone remember a manufacturer of metals for submarines who was found to have faked testing for 32 years?

32 years.

The culprit, Elaine Marie Thomas, was sentenced to two and a half years and $50,000 in fines.

Two and a half years.

And no one checked her work. No one in quality control verified and validated her findings, even occasionally.

32 years.

This is not a serious nation.

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2022/02/14/metallurgist-gets-25-years-for-faking-steel-test-results-for-navy-subs/

Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me

July 2, 2024 Posted by | Corruption | | Leave a comment

BBC presenter calls for Trump to be assassinated

RT | July 2, 2024

BBC presenter David Aaronovitch has called for the “murder” of former US President Donald Trump in a post on X (formerly Twitter). Aaronovitch later deleted his message following a backlash, claiming it had been “satire.”

Aaronovitch, the voice behind the British state broadcaster’s Radio 4 program ‘The Briefing Room’, tweeted on Monday: “If I was Biden I’d hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s security.”

The post was accompanied by the hashtag #SCOTUS, indicating that the comment had been triggered by Monday’s confirmation from the US Supreme Court that former presidents have “absolute immunity” from prosecution for their official actions.

Aaronovitch was forced delete the post after an online backlash, and claimed in a follow-up message that he had been accused of inciting violence by “a far right pile.” The presenter insisted his tweet was “plainly a satire.”

On Monday, the highest US court ruled that under “our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts.”

In an interview with Fox News Digital, Trump touted the verdict on presidential immunity as a “big win for our Constitution and for democracy.”

President Biden attacked the Supreme Court ruling, urging citizens to “dissent” against the verdict.

US federal prosecutors have charged Trump with four criminal counts related to the 2020 presidential election, alleging that he “conspired” to overturn the results.

The Supreme Court verdict still grants lower courts the right to hold evidentiary hearings to determine whether the actions are official or unofficial. Unofficial acts by the president are not covered by immunity from prosecution.

Trump has repeatedly called his prosecution politically motivated, describing it as a “witch hunt” launched by Biden and his administration.

July 2, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Is Joe Biden’s Brain Vaccine Injured?

A Midwestern Doctor | The Forgotten Side of Medicine | June 29, 2024

Story at a Glance:

• One of the most common side effects of the COVID-19 vaccination we’ve observed is cognitive impairment. This can range from brain fog to dementia, and frequently we see a rapid acceleration of pre-existing cognitive decline into Alzheimer’s disease.

• Recently large data sets have emerged which support our observations and indicate millions of people are being affected by the adverse neurological effects of the vaccines. Those datasets are summarized here.

• After Joe Biden became president, he had a rapid decline in cognitive function, leading many to say he is not the same man who assumed the presidency four years ago. Since that decline paralleled his vaccination uptake, the pertinent medical information about his case is provided here so you can assess if the two were indeed linked.

• Many other prominent Democrats have had significant vaccination injuries, including 8% of the Democratic Senators. Each of their brain injuries (3 strokes and encephalitis) and their link to vaccination are discussed here. This article particularly focuses on Dianne Feinstein’s case, because like Biden, she had pre-existing cognitive impairment which rapidly progressed after the COVID vaccines (which she forced on America) hit the market and rather than admit it, she did everything she could to cover it up until she died.

Throughout my life, I have had the experience of being able to clearly see something, and have everyone around me, including a lot of “experts,” insist that what I’m seeing does not exist, and then a few years later have my observation become generally accepted as true. This for example describes my experience with the COVID vaccines, as within a month of them being on the market, I had seen so many significant or severe injuries (and deaths) it was clear to me the shots were much more toxic than a typical pharmaceutical. Nonetheless, regardless of what I said, most of my colleagues (except those who were injured by the vaccines) would not listen to me, and it’s only now that mainstream doctors (or left-wing individuals) are beginning to accept that the vaccines were a mistake.

Similarly, throughout Biden’s presidency, it’s been very clear to me that Biden has progressively increasing cognitive impairment, yet with most of the left-wing individuals I am close to, every piece of evidence I’ve presented to substantiate this allegation is either written off as right-wing propaganda I am being hypnotized by or met with a bizarre excuse to account for Biden’s behavior. Likewise, many of my friends have had similar experiences when discussing this issue within their circle (e.g., to family members).

Yesterday, Biden shocked the world by having a debate performance which made it clear even to ardent Democrats that he was suffering from cognitive impairment. I, in turn, watched the entire left-wing media implicitly or overtly state that Biden was cognitively impaired and that there was panic throughout the Democrat party of him running in November, as it was both clear Biden could not win and that many other Democrats would also lose because many of their voters would not want to show up to vote for Biden and hence would not vote for the rest of the ticket.

This in turn suggests two distinct possibilities:

The first is that this debate was used to swap Biden out of the nomination after the primaries were completed (so an insider the public would never vote for could be appointed to the presidency).

The second is that most of the Democratic party (and much of the mass media) genuinely believed Biden’s cognitive issues were a “right wing conspiracy” and their responses last night were that of a state of genuine shock.

In this article, I am going to focus on the second possibility as I feel it also ties into the broader issue of vaccine injuries that has swept the Democrat party.

The Vaccine Mass Formation

Whenever you observe groups, you will often observe people defaulting to mimicking the behaviors of the group so that they can fit in and be accepted. In time, this often evolves to there being a very characteristic linguistic style and set of behaviors that emerges—which in many cases seems to be prioritized over the actual substance of what the group is about (e.g., I meet many people who claim to align with “the science” who copy the same phrases and chains of logic prominent scientists like Anthony Fauci use but simultaneously don’t understand any of the scientific points they are discussing).

Many examples of this mimicry occur. For example, I know numerous men who came out of the closest and then rapidly adopted an identical lispy and flamboyant style of speech, while in the New Age field, I’ve noticed the underlying thread they all share in common is a very distinctive style of speech which emphasizes a profound jubilation over a variety of inconsequential things they encounter. What’s remarkable about this mimicry is that you can often provide non-sensical examples of it that are fully embraced by the group (e.g., I periodically send my New Age friends random nonsense created by a New Age language generator which matches the cadence of the New Age field and frequently receive accolades from my friends). Likewise, in academia, it’s been repeatedly shown that if one produces incoherent nonsense that is written in the postmodernist style, it will often make it to publication (and likewise I’ve had a lot of fun over the years with essays from a nonsensical postmodernist language generator many take as being legitimate scholarly writings).

In turn, I’ve noticed that in some groups, this repetition or desire to belong to the group will magnify, and before long reinforce itself into cult-like behaviors that seem completely insane to an outside observer—a process which is particularly likely to happen if a nefarious individual deliberately manipulates the group to create this behavior (e.g., a shrewd marketing team, a talented dictator, or a sociopathic cult leader).

Note: while modern marketing has become remarkably effective at inducing this hypnosis (especially since marketers have the ability to broadcast the hypnotic message throughout the mass media so everyone feels pressured to conform to it), the most powerful manipulation (which is still not possible to standardize) occurs from individuals who figured out how to spiritually manipulate others. In turn, since I’ve seen those people do horrible stuff throughout my lifetime, I previously wrote an article explaining how to recognize spiritual manipulation and not be susceptible to it or the dangerous spiritual practices which accompany it.

Recently, Matthias Desmet brought the world’s attention to the mass formation hypothesis, which is essentially what happens when the concept I just described (individuals wanting to belong to a group and copying its non-verbal behaviors) becomes magnified to the point that they do completely irrational things, hallucinate things at odds with reality (e.g., seeing a face on the moon), and become willing to engage in truly horrific behavior (e.g., genociding another race or sacrificing their children to the state).

Desmet’s hypothesis became popular as it provided a potential explanation for why our leaders chose to enact a series of horrific COVID-19 policies, and continued to double-down on them regardless of how much evidence emerged showing the policies were a terrible idea. Conversely, it attracted a lot of animosity as many interpreted it as removing the responsibility from those who were clearly at fault for inflicting all of these horrors upon us (which I believe to be a misinterpretation of what Desmet argued).

In turn with the COVID vaccines, like many, I noticed there was a hypnotic fixation on them which led to the believers wanting to vaccinate as many people as possible (regardless of the human rights violations that required) and no amount of evidence being sufficient to convince them the vaccines weren’t a good idea.

One of the things I believe was the strongest proof for this was the fact that as the Democrat leadership continued to promote vaccination mandates, they also repeatedly vaccinated themselves despite numerous severe vaccine injuries occurring within their party.

Note: I also observed this with many medical professionals who continued to zealously promote vaccination despite being confronted with injuries in their patients.

Senate Vaccine Injuries

Many large surveys have found that a continually increasing portion of the country believes the vaccines are causing widespread social harms (e.g., a recent poll found a third of Americans believe the vaccines are killing people) and that a large number of people were harmed by them (e.g., one poll found 7% of Americans believe they suffered a major side effect from the vaccines and 34% believe they suffered a minor one). Because of this, in theory, if a large sample of vaccinated individuals could be identified, there should have been a number of significant injuries in them.

As it so happened, the US Senate provided that sample, as we saw numerous unusual and severe diseases emerge in the Democrats there at a far higher rate than had ever happened in the past, and more importantly, those diseases were things strongly linked to the COVID vaccines. Furthermore, those injuries only occurred in Senators who had zealously promoted the vaccines.

Note: it is likely far more injuries than those I listed here occurred within the Senate as due to the political implications of acknowledging a vaccine injury, I would not expect the Senators to publicize them. Those I have listed are simply the ones which were too overt to cover up.

John Fetterman:

John Fetterman, a freshman Pennsylvania Democratic Senator (then aged 52) on May 17, 2022, less than a month after strongly endorsing the vaccine, suffered an ischemic stroke two days before the state primary for his Senate seat. Despite significant signs of cognitive impairment since his stroke, Fetterman somehow won the primary and then the general election. Since becoming elected, Fetterman has had prolonged periods of absence from the U.S. Senate due to needing specialized medical care:

Fetterman was hospitalized for syncope (lightheadedness) for two days beginning on February 10, 2023. Two days after his release he was hospitalized again, for a severe case of major depression. For about two months, Fetterman lived and worked at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. As part of his daily schedule at the hospital, his chief of staff arrived at 10 a.m. on weekdays with newspaper clips, statements for Fetterman to approve, and legislation to review. During his hospitalization, Fetterman co-sponsored a bipartisan rail safety bill, introduced after the derailment of a chemical-carrying train in East Palestine, Ohio, close to the border with Pennsylvania; the regulation aimed to strengthen freight-rail safety regulations to prevent future derailments.

On April 17, 2023, Fetterman returned to the Senate to chair the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry subcommittee on food and nutrition, specialty crops, organics and research. The Washington Post said that Fetterman’s “voice stumbled at times while reading from prepared notes” during the subcommittee hearing, but “he appeared in good spirits” and communicated a message about the importance of fighting hunger.

Since that time, Fetterman has had a variety of unusual incidents suggestive of cognitive impairment (e.g., earlier this month he was speeding and crashed into someone).

Ben Luján

Ben Ray Luján is a freshman New Mexico Democratic Senator who repeatedly promoted the COVID-19 vaccines.

On January 27, 2022, Luján (then 49) was hospitalized in Santa Fe after feeling fatigued and dizzy. He was found to have had a hemorrhagic stroke from a torn vertebral artery affecting his cerebellum and was transferred to the University of New Mexico Hospital for treatment, which included a decompressive craniectomy. A statement from his office said that “he is expected to make a full recovery”. Luján returned to work at the Senate on March 3 and stated by April 21 that he was 90% recovered.

Chris Van Hollen

Chris Van Hollen is a freshmen Maryland Democrat Senator who repeatedly promoted the COVID vaccines and tackling COVID-19 “disinformation.”

On May 15, 2022, while giving a speech, he experienced a hemorrhagic stroke in the back of his head. After a hospitalization, he returned to the Senate. At the time of this injury, he was 64.

Note: while ischemic strokes are more common, we have seen cases of major blood vessels rupturing after COVID vaccinations (e.g., one of our vaccinated colleagues almost died from a ruptured aorta). We believe this is due to the the COVID vaccine damaging the lining of the blood vessels, as on autopsies, significant damage to the blood vessels is often observed (and likewise in our colleague’s case, the tissue changes observed in his aorta during the emergency repair were highly unusual). Furthermore, this damage appears to increase with time, which likely explains the roughly one year delay between vaccination and rupture in both the Senators and our colleague.

As there are 50 Democrats in the Senate, these 3 incidents represent a 6% rate of strokes occurring within roughly a year of vaccination (as the vaccines became available in early 2021). As you can see, that is much higher than the 0.083%-0.146% rate you would expect to see for these strokes but congruent with the observed vaccine injury rate.

Conversely, the only other Senator I know of who had a stroke while in office was Republican Mark Kirk, who in 2012, at the age of 54, a year after assuming office, had a stroke which required a year of rehabilitation.

Dianne Feinstein

Dianne Feinstein was another aggressive promoter of COVID vaccination (e.g., she introduced a ridiculous bill to require vaccination or a negative COVID test to fly on domestic airlines). In March of 2023, Feinstein was diagnosed with shingles and hospitalized. While her office initially insisted she would be fine, it was later revealed her shingles had progressed to Ramsey Hunt Syndrome (paralysis of the face) and encephalitis (brain inflammation). As as a result, it took 10 weeks for her to return to the Senate, at which point she was clearly disabled, and her office was gradually forced to admit Feinstein had experienced some disability.

Once there, it was evident she was both physically and cognitively impaired, but she nonetheless refused to resign. A few months later, in July she ceded her power of attorney to her daughter, then in August she was hospitalized after falling in her home, and finally at the end of September she died of “natural causes,” making her one of the only Senators (and the first female one) to die while in office.

Note: her death was immediately followed by California governor Newsom appointing a replacement for her in the Senate.

What is noteworthy about her experience was how rare her conditions were. Specifically, Ramsay Hunt syndrome is estimated to affect 1 in 20,000 people per year (with it typically being seen in immunocompromised individuals), while shingles encephalitis is typically seen in 1 out of every 33,000-50,000 cases of shingles (with it again being more frequently seen in immunocompromised individuals).

Note: for individuals over 65, between 3.9 to 11.8 per 1000 experience shingles each year (which means around 1 in 500,000 develop shingles encephalitis), while less than 100 Americans die each year from it.

Conversely, from the start, shingles was one of the most common injuries linked to COVID vaccination and likewise, its more severe complications have been strongly linked to vaccination (due to the immunosuppressive effects of the vaccine). The following table is from the most comprehensive article I was able to find on the subject:

Note: Justin Bieber also recently attracted widespread public attention after he developed Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, a condition which was extraordinarily rare for his age (he had approximately a 27/1,000,000 chance of developing this condition).

As you might expect, in the same way the COVID vaccines continually failed to work (which is why they kept on requiring more and more boosters) these injuries had no effect on the Democrats’ zeal for the vaccines. One of the saddest cases happened when Representative Castin’s 17 year old vaccinated daughter (who aggressively promoted the COVID vaccines) died suddenly and unexpectedly in her sleep from a sudden cardiac arrhythmia on June 12, 2022.

In addition to this being a cause of death linked to the vaccines (sudden cardiac death almost never happens in children), a reader calculated that (prior to the vaccines), a US Representative would be expected to have a child under 18 die once every 200 years). However, while Casten repeatedly publicly expressed his grief over his daughter’s death, that did not shake his faith in the vaccines. For example, this is something he said a year after she died:

Cognitive Impairment

Since the vaccines hit the market, we have noticed one of the most common consequences of them has either been cognitive impairment, worsening of existing cognitive impairment, or an elderly patient with cognitive impairment rapidly progressing into dementia (which is typically labeled as Alzheimer’s disease). Additionally, when we’ve looked for it, we’ve found a variety of signs of subtle neurologic injury in a large number of vaccinated adults who do not believe they have suffered complications from the vaccination.

If we take Senator Feinstein for example, at the end of 2020, the New Yorker reported that Feinstein’s colleagues and staffers were concerned Feinstein was beginning to show signs of cognitive decline which were getting harder to cover up (although others who worked with her denied this). Two years later in 2022 (after the vaccines had come out), the New York Times also covered her cognitive decline but were more explicit in acknowledging it, presumably because it had become significantly worse:

At 88, Ms. Feinstein sometimes struggles to recall the names of colleagues, frequently has little recollection of meetings or telephone conversations, and at times walks around in a state of befuddlement — including about why she is increasingly dogged by questions about whether she is fit to serve in the Senate representing the 40 million residents of California, according to half a dozen lawmakers and aides who spoke about the situation on the condition of anonymity.

On Capitol Hill, it is widely — though always privately — acknowledged that Ms. Feinstein suffers from acute short-term memory issues that on some days are ignorable, but on others raise concern among those who interact with her.

Ms. Feinstein is often engaged during meetings and phone conversations, usually coming prepared and taking notes. But hours later, she will often have forgotten those interactions, said the people familiar with the situation, who insisted that they not be named because they did not want to be quoted disparaging a figure they respect.

Some of them said they did not expect her to serve out her term ending in 2024 under the circumstances, even though she refuses to engage in conversations about stepping down.

This cognitive decline further worsened after her hospitalization. For example, shortly after she returned, when asked about her 3 month absence, she insisted she was completely fine, seemed to believe she had been working at the Senate the whole time (e.g., voting) and became confrontational when a reported suggested otherwise. To put this in context, two months later, she ceded power of attorney to her daughter, and after another two months, died.

Sadly, I do not believe Feinstein’s case is an outlier, and for that reason, I recently attempted to compile all the evidence showing vaccine cognitive decline is a very real thing. The key points I raised in that article were:

1. Friends have complained to me about cognitive impairment following vaccination, and in a few cases, shared that impairment worsened after subsequent vaccinations. Likewise, I’ve seen many signs (others have as well) that these effects are widespread in society (e.g., drivers became worse after the vaccination campaign).

2. Numerous friends reported to me that their relatives in nursing homes developed rapidly progressing dementia after vaccination and then died shortly later—something which many readers here have since shared with me also happened to their parents or spouses.

3. Both I and colleagues have noticed a variety of neurological deficits in the vaccinated. This is best demonstrated by the fact the most common symptom Pierre Kory’s vaccine injured patients come to him for is brain fog.

4. A variety of datasets support these contentions. Those include:

• The rate of motor vehicle accidents increased after the vaccination campaign.

• The Dutch detected a 18-40% increase (averaging out to 24%) in the number of adults seeing their primary doctor for memory and concentration problems following the vaccination rollout.

• A significant increase in disability has been seen throughout the Western world since the COVID vaccines came out, some of which is cognitive in nature.

• VAERS had a massive spike in cognitive disorders being reported after vaccination which was seen after the COVID vaccines hit the market.

• An Israeli survey found that 4.5% of those who received a booster developed anxiety or depression, and 26.4% who already had either then experienced an exacerbation of their condition.

• A study of 2,027,353 Koreans published three weeks ago in Nature found that vaccination resulted in a 68% increase in depression, a 44% increase in anxiety, dissociative, stress-related, and somatoform disorders.

• A more recent study of 558,017 Koreans over 65 found vaccination increased the risk of cognitive impairment by 138% and the risk of Alzheimer’s by 23%, and that this risk increased with time.

The key point with these datasets is that those increases are massive, to the point they cannot be explained by chance.

Joe Biden

During Biden’s presidency, he has aggressively promoted the mandates, and has done a variety of things which go far outside what the president typically does. These include:

• Accusing social media companies of “killing people” because they did not make a sufficiently aggressive effort to censor vaccine misinformation (which in turn his administration used to censor free speech and violate the First Amendment).

• (Erroneously) forecasting a winter of illness and death for the unvaccinated.

• Illegally mandating the vaccines on America’s workers.

• Pressuring the FDA to rapidly approve questionable COVID vaccinations, to the point its chief (and very pro-vaccine) vaccine scientists did not feel what the White House was requesting was appropriate to do—which ultimately resulted in those scientists being forced out of the approval process and the vaccines approved.

Given how strong the evidence against the COVID vaccinations actually is, I interpreted that to mean Biden genuinely believes in the vaccines, something demonstrated by the fact he’s repeatedly publicly shown himself receiving the vaccine and reported having at least three boosters.

As best as I can tell, like his colleague Feinstein, Biden’s successive vaccination appears to be correlated with a rapid cognitive decline which he nonetheless has refused to acknowledge.

To elaborate, at the time Biden ran in 2020, many including Donald Trump accused Biden of being cognitively impaired, and cited a variety of examples suggesting he may not be fit to be president (e.g., Biden rarely campaigned publicly, whenever asked aggressively refused to take a test assessing his cognitive function, and would make odd confrontational outbursts at voters who challenged him). Likewise, doctors identified reasons why Biden was potentially at higher risk for cognitive impairment (e.g., he had history of a brain aneurysm and repair in 1988, and had atrial fibrillation).

Note: one of the most common side effects of COVID vaccination is inflammation at the site of a pre-existing injury (e.g., a brain surgery). Likewise, the vaccines commonly damaged the heart and triggered conditions like atrial fibrillation.

Nonetheless, Biden was able to perform well enough during the campaign to effectively debate Trump during the 2020 presidential debate and earn a sizable portion of the vote. In contrast, one of the most common talking points I heard when I reviewed the post debate coverage was that “Biden was a very different person there and not the man who ran in 2020.”

Likewise, during Biden’s Presidency, as time has moved forward I have noticed an increasing number of gaffes. This include him mumbling words incoherently and nonsensically (something which again has worsened as time moved forward), Biden staring into space and being frozen in place while those around him move (also seen here and here), and him needing to be guided and led away by his assistants. Most importantly, when he was interviewed by a special counsel this year, they acknowledged Biden had repeated mental lapses during the interview.

Additionally, it has been my impression that his cognitive lucidity is highly variable, something demonstrated both by the fact he is sometimes relatively coherent in his speeches, but other times he is not, and that fact that he is continuously absent-minded, particularly later in the day or at night (when these sorts of issues are well known to be worse—with the medical term for it being sundowning).

Note: earlier in the Biden presidency a White House doctor shared with a close colleague that Biden had significant cognitive impairment and displayed overt dementia at night.

As a result of this, many individuals who work with the elderly and those with cognitive impairment have recognized many of the same things they’ve seen in their patients in Biden and hence feel the fact that Biden is being continually brought before the public and forced to give speeches to equate to elder abuse.

After the debates, I in turn spoke with a gifted neurologist who has a talent for diagnosing these types of conditions with limited information (e.g., no access to an MRI). They were of the opinion that Biden’s clinical picture was consistent with vascular dementia (which Biden was at risk for due to his existing medical conditions and likewise something the COVID vaccine worsens).

One point my colleague emphasized was that Biden had a stuttering disorder which has significantly worsened during his presidency and that one of the most common types of strokes frequently damage the part of the brain responsible for speech (which in turn can create a stuttering disorder) but that a progressive loss of cerebral blood flow (e.g., that seen in vascular dementia), can also cause this, especially if there is pre-existing brain damage (e.g., Biden’s existing stuttering disorder). Furthermore, in the same way that an increasing loss of blood flow can exacerbate existing brain damage, a loss of sleep (which is extremely common in a stressful job like the presidency) can as well.

Biden’s Debate

I believe Biden’s poor performance was due to him both having had his cognitive impairment continue to progress and the fact that the nighttime schedule of the debate made it impossible for his team to chose a period of high lucidity for Biden to speak to the public.

During the debate, the following jumped out at me (and many others).

1. Biden repeated overt falsehoods with certainty.

For example, early in the debate he asserted that Trump had told people to inject bleach into themselves, when Trump had in fact discussed ultraviolet light—and most of media has now acknowledged Trump never said this. In my eyes, the most important thing about this was that Biden appeared to sincerely believe most of what he said.

2. Biden repeatedly showed his disgust for both Trump and his supporters (e.g., those present on January 6th). I found this concerning because history is rife with cognitively impaired tyrants who treated their subjects unfairly due to their own (often petty) delusions.

3. Biden rarely blinked.

4. Biden’s face appeared to be mostly frozen. This is a classic symptom of Parkinson’s and also something which can resulted from a vaccine injury where a series of microstrokes can damage the facial nerve (which was corroborated by his face being asymmetrical and his smile being extremely asymmetrical).

5. Biden often seemed to stare into space for long periods of time, and in numerous cases struggled to come up with a coherent answer when it was his turn to speak (e.g., you could see on his face he was making an effort to think, or halfway through something he said he would close his eyes and pause for a while).

6. Biden missed many important points he needed to raise for his base (e.g., when talking about abortion, rather than hit the important points, he talked about the epidemic of sister-on-sister rape).

7. He had very limited mobility in his hands (e.g., he slowly raised them to make a point and then rarely moved them while he was doing so).

8. When the debate ended, he needed to have his wife help him walk off stage.

More than anything else however, he seemed to be in pain, unhealthy and really struggling through the debate. This seemed to be the primary takeaway people from both political parties took from the debate (e.g., Democrats panicked and felt demoralized, liberal pundits were in shock, and many moderates said this debate felt like elder abuse).

My own takeaway was that prior to the debates, many pundits had relentlessly promoted the message Biden was not cognitively impaired to the point that rather than them simply lying, it seemed as though they had developed a mass formation where they genuinely believed this. Because of this, there were many instances of individuals appearing to panic as their hypnosis broke and they realized that was all hogwash. In turn, the primary reason I watched the post-debate coverage is because it’s fairly rare to see a mass red-pill like this occur and the shock which coincides with it.

Note: because of how unhealthy our culture is, it’s fairly unusual for individuals over 70, let alone 80, to have normal cognitive function. In turn, since so much responsibility is placed on our leaders for positions (which require a high degree of cognitive aptitude) many have argued for putting age or term limits on our leaders—especially since people should not be making policies that will not affect them (as they will be dead once they go into effect).

Pfizer’s Fraud

Once people become strongly committed to an idea, it is remarkably difficult to get them to admit they are wrong — especially since as time progresses, they continually build upon the mental investment within their minds to their position and create mental construct after construct which is dependent upon the position being true.

In turn, I typically see one of the following break their hypnosis:

• Clear and unambiguous evidence that they were wrong being broadcast to everyone (e.g., what happened last night with the debate).

• Them directly being harmed by the lie (e.g., a pro-vax doctor getting vaccine injured). Curiously, in many cases I’ve seen people still hold onto their lie when their children are victimized by it (e.g., in addition to Representative Casten losing his daughter, I’ve seen pro-vax doctors who had multiple members of their family suffer severe vaccine injuries but still insist the COVID vaccines are necessary for their patients).

• Them realizing they were a victim of fraud. I believe the fraud angle is persuasive because it shifts the burden from them to the fraudster and hence protects their ego. Because of this, I’ve repeatedly focused on trying to prove that Pfizer committed overt fraud, as I believe once individuals become aware of it, it will make them willing to change their position (e.g., previously I discussed how Pfizer faked the data it sent to the drug regulators which indicated their vaccine was producing the proteins it was supposed to create within the body — which was a major challenge facing this experimental gene therapy).

Recently the Kansas Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Pfizer alleging that they repeatedly and systematically committed fraud with the vaccines. The key points from it were as follows:

1. Pfizer used its confidentiality agreements with the U.S. Government and others to conceal, suppress, and omit material facts relating to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, including the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.

2. Pfizer used an extended study timeline to conceal critical data – the study was repeatedly delayed, including a delay from January 2023 to February 2024 because of a late vaccination of a single study participant (out of 44,000 participants). Likewise, Pfizer promised to make its data available to researchers but never did so.

3. The FDA did not immediately make the safety and efficacy data for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine available, claiming it would take 55 years, but a federal judge forced them to release 55,000 pages per month rather than 500.

4. Pfizer destroyed the vaccine control group once the FDA approved emergency use authorization in December 2020 (ultimately only 7% of the placebo group did not receive a vaccine).

Note: destroying the placebo group is a very common tactic used to conceal a high rate of injuries in a research trial.

5. In its press release announcing the emergency use authorization (EUA), Pfizer did not disclose that it had excluded immunocompromised individuals from its COVID-19 vaccine trials (whereas they later relentlessly pushed the vaccine on them).

6. Pfizer knew its COVID-19 vaccine was connected to serious adverse events, including myocarditis and pericarditis.

7. By March 2021, the United States military and Israel’s Ministry of Health (which was working hand in hand with Pfizer) detected a safety signal for myocarditis the public was never notified about. Nonetheless, Pfizer’s CEO denied a link existed.

8. In August 2021, after Pfizer obtained FDA approval through an EUA to provide its COVID-19 vaccine to 12 to 15-year-olds, Pfizer decided to study “how often” its vaccine may cause myocarditis or pericarditis in children by testing 5-16-year-olds for troponin I. Once a safety signal was detected, Pfizer’s CEO nonetheless denied it.

9. Pfizer also detected a safety signal relating to strokes. The FDA’s and CDC’s “surveillance system flagged a possible link between the new Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent COVID-19 vaccine and strokes in people aged 65 and over,” while an FDA study found that individuals 85 years or older who received both a flu vaccine and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine “saw a 20% increase in the risk of ischemic stroke.”

Note: one of the original names for the vaccine was the “clot shot.”

10. Pfizer did not release the data within its adverse event database—which as of February 2021 included 158,893 adverse events and 1,223 deaths. Furthermore, Pfizer was so overwhelmed with the adverse events, they had to hire hundreds (if not thousands) of staffers to process logging those adverse events (and nonetheless had a massive backlog). Despite this, Pfizer determined no causality existed between the vaccine and any of those injuries.

11. Pfizer only tested the booster shot on 12 trial participants who were in the 65- to 85-year-old age range and did not test it on any participant older than 85.

Note: Biden is 81.

12. Pfizer did not publicly release adverse event data from its database. By February 28, 2021, Pfizer’s adverse events database contained 158,893 adverse events from 42,086 case reports, including 1,223 fatalities, although Pfizer again did not make causality findings. Pfizer was receiving so many adverse events reports that it had to hire 600 additional full-time staff and expected to hire more than 1,800 additional resources by June 2021. Pfizer had such a backlog of adverse events that it might take 90 days to code “nonserious cases” that pfizer did not know the magnitude of under-reporting.

13. Pfizer announced a study on pregnant women but omitted the fact that more than one in ten women (52) who received Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine during their pregnancy reported a miscarriage, many within days of vaccination. Six women who received Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine during their pregnancy reported premature deliveries; several babies died.

14. Pfizer’s February 18th 2021, press release also did not disclose other adverse effects on the reproductive systems of women who received Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. By April 2022, Pfizer knew of tens of thousands of adverse events connected to its COVID-19 vaccine, including heavy menstrual bleeding (27,685), menstrual disorders (22,145), irregular periods (15,083), delayed periods (13,989), absence of periods (11,363) and other reproductive system effects.

15. Pfizer failed to recruit 83% of the women they had sought to study for their 4000 woman pregnancy trial, then destroyed the placebo group for the study, and still has not completed the quality control review process for it.

16. Pfizer misrepresented and concealed material facts relating to the durability of protection provided by its COVID-19 vaccine (until it was time to sell boosters).

17. Pfizer repeatedly said its COVID-19 vaccine would prevent transmission even though Pfizer knew it had never studied the effect of its vaccine on transmission. This point is important because Pfizer repeatedly gave very heavy-handed statements based on this lie (e.g., that you would kill your grandmother or endanger your community if you didn’t vaccinate) which in turn were used to justify Biden’s abhorrent mandates. Likewise, once clear evidence emerged the vaccine did not prevent transmission, Pfizer and the Biden administration continued to assert this lie to promote their product.

18. Pfizer aggressively utilized back channels to censor speech on social media that was critical of their vaccines—and likely did so in collusion with the Biden administration. The vast extent of this abhorrent conduct is contained within Alito’s dissent on the recent Supreme Court ruling relating to government censorship.

Note: the above summaries were sourced from Carl Henegahn and Kanekoa and then further modified by me.

Many learning of these points are understandably outraged. Sadly, as things like this are fairly common within the pharmaceutical industry, many of us assumed Pfizer’s talking points were lies from the start and hence are less shocked by these revelations.

Conclusion

Our country has been in an accelerating decline for decades, and I view the COVID-19 disaster as being a symptom of that decline rather than an isolated event. In turn, my hope is that as more and more shocking events happen, it can at last motivate the public and political class to begin taking things seriously and working together to fix the situation we are in rather than becoming even more polarized and simply doubling down on blaming the other side for everything that is going awry.

In the case of last night’s debate, the fact that we clearly had a cognitively impaired man struggling to lead the world’s greatest super power, beyond making waves within the United States, sends an even stronger message to the rest of the world that something is seriously wrong with America and it should no longer be treated as the sole superpower. My hope is thus that this sends a message to America’s political class that the current course we are going on is unacceptable and needs to change.

Likewise, my sincere hope is that members of the Democrat party will begin to be able to tie Biden’s “inexplicable” cognitive decline to the COVID vaccines, as many who have worked with him have noticed he is simply not the same person who assumed office four years ago, and more and more difficult to ignore signs are emerging that the Democrats made a huge mistake pushing the vaccines.

Because of this, if you have the ability to share this point within your social circle—particularly that the exact same thing happened to Dianne Feinstein (who liked Biden refused to acknowledge her impairment and instead had her staffers create a facade until she died), that would be greatly appreciated. The Democratic party is in a state of shock right now (which is when people are the most mutable), so I believe this is the best time to get that message to them.

July 1, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Zelensky Calls on World to ‘Force Putin to Make Peace’

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | July 1, 2024

In a series of posts on social media, President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded more weapons from his Western backers so Russia can be “forced” into a peace agreement. Advanced warplanes, long-range missiles, and air defenses were named on the Ukrainian leader’s wishlist.

In an X post, Zelensky acknowledged that Ukraine was struggling to combat Russian glide bombs, and Kiev needed a significant influx of arms. “Russian bombs remain Putin’s key capability to wage war. The sooner the world helps us neutralize Russia’s combat aviation launching these bombs and the sooner we can strike back with justified strikes,” he implored on Sunday. “The world possesses enough strength to force Russia to make peace.”

Zelensky has sought to impose peace on Russia that requires President Vladimir Putin to stand trial for war crimes and Moscow to withdraw to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders. Putin has offered Ukraine a deal that will require Kiev to recognize Russia’s claims to territory it has captured since 2022. Under Moscow’s proposal, Kiev would also have to agree to neutrality.

Washington and Kiev’s Western backers have firmly rejected any of Moscow’s offers for diplomacy and have pushed Ukraine to expel the invading Russian soldiers. However, as the conflict turned into a war of attrition, Russia gained the upper hand with a larger population and military-industrial base that outproduces Ukraine’s collective supporters.

In a separate post, Zelensky discussed his requests to a bipartisan group of American lawmakers. “We discussed key areas of further American assistance, including additional air defense systems. This is critically important, as the Patriot systems save lives and protect infrastructure,” he wrote.

Washington has struggled to provide Kiev with all the air defenses it has requested. Zelensky has only received a fraction of the Patriot systems he has demanded. Interceptors are in short supply with the White House recently announcing that it would give Ukraine priority for newly produced missiles.

On Monday, Zelensky made a third appeal for arms on X. “Life must prevail over the Russian war and all of Putin’s hostile ambitions. This is absolutely possible. But only if we sustain not just our courage but also the courage of our partners.” He continued, “Long-range weapons, fighter jets for Ukraine—of sufficient quality and quantity, and more air defense systems—are crucial factors affecting the entire course of this war.”

Zelensky said Ukraine needed to be able to “neutralize Russia’s combat aviation launching these bombs and… Russian military infrastructure and airfields.” While Washington and a number of other NATO countries have signed off on Kiev using their weapons to hit targets in Russia, Zelensky has asked the West to remove restrictions on where inside Russia the munitions can hit.

Additionally, Ukraine has used drones to hit Russian radar sites that are critical to Moscow’s ability to detect incoming nuclear weapons.

July 1, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Blinken Bets Big on AI to Combat “Misinformation”

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 1, 2024

The current US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, has revealed that his department is testing AI-based tools as a way to fight “misinformation.”

In conversation with the State Department’s chief data and AI officer Matthew Graviss, he cited a number of initiatives – such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and Washington’s Enterprise AI Strategy as the foundations for the ultimate goal – using AI to “advance our foreign policy.”

The second part of the push to equip the State Department with AI tools is to – “strengthen this institution.”

According to Blinken, his department is a leader within the government when it comes to testing and “harnessing” the technology. Some reports speak about this as combating whatever happens to be considered foreign disinformation.

And while on the subject of meddling, the Washington Times says AI tests are “part of an ambitious media monitoring and analysis project that spans the globe.”

As sinister as that may sound, packaging the message as the need to combat (only) “foreign disinformation” certainly makes the policy more palatable at home, where the department’s past activity features in congressional probes into government-orchestrated online censorship.

This scrutiny is presented as something hindering the Department of State’s “anti-disinformation” work – while the tools now in development are quite openly described as a possible different means “to pursue the same goals.”

Blinken’s remarks reveal how the technology is used seemingly innocuously as a (translation and summarization) tool “in multilateral organizations;” but then he praised the ability of AI-powered tools to make mass surveillance (“monitoring”) cover a much larger number of media, making its scope and scale “vast,” as the report put it.

And also – combat “disinformation” – which Blinken quite dramatically refers to as “one of the poisons in the international system today.”

“We have one program that we’re using that is able to basically ingest a million articles every day from around the world — to be able to do that in a couple hundred countries in over a hundred languages — and then immediately translate, synthesize and give you a clear picture of what’s happening in the information space immediately,” the secretary is quoted as saying.

But given the scale of the operation, and the shortcomings of the current limitations of AI – those in the know might wish Blinken good luck with the accuracy and reliability of getting that “immediate, clear picture.”

However, when the “AI weapon” is pointed at online platforms as a means of identifying and censoring “disfavored” speech, it is objectively more likely to be efficient.

And the State Department is no stranger to such – strange given its mission – activities: after all, it is the home of the investigated-by-Congress and highly controversial Global Engagement Center.

July 1, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Top Shelf

American-made M-270 Multiple Launch Rocket System

French-made SCALP-EG Cruise Missile
By William Schryver – imetatronink – July 1, 2024

I grow weary of the increasingly pervasive myth that the US/NATO has sent to Ukraine nothing but its antiquated equipment and munitions.

SOME of the equipment sent has been older generation specimens. But ALMOST EVERYTHING sent is representative of what would constitute a large proportion of any US/NATO front-line combined arms army.

– Virtually ALL the artillery tubes sent to Ukraine, whether towed or self-propelled, are the same types NATO armies could presently field.

– Virtually ALL the armored vehicles, of all types, are the same types NATO armies would field in large numbers in a war against Russia.

– ALL the precision-guided strike munitions the US/NATO have fielded in Ukraine are the best available: Javelins, NLAWS, Excalibur, GMLRS and GLSDB for HIMARS, JDAMs, Switchblade, HARMS, Storm Shadow/SCALP, ATACMS, etc.

– ALL the air-defense systems fielded in Ukraine have been top-shelf front-line stuff: IRIS-T, NASAMS, Patriot, etc.

– Most, if not all, of the electronic warfare and counter-battery radars are “best available”.

– The ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance) is not only “best available”, but it has been ubiquitous and uninterrupted.

I’m sure there must be some other examples I’m neglecting to cite.

When one examines in aggregate the implements of war the US/NATO have provided to Ukraine, the overwhelming majority consists of the very stuff every military in NATO would field in a war against Russia.

A very small proportion could be reasonably characterized as “antiquated storage-depot junk”.

It must also be recognized (as is now common knowledge) that effectively ALL the precision-guided strike munitions, air-defense systems, and theater ISR assets are being operated by “NATO-affiliated volunteers” – and, not rarely, active NATO personnel.

It is a demonstrable and incontrovertible fact that, in terms of what has been delivered to Ukraine, the US and its NATO underlings have, with very few exceptions, sent their “best stuff”.

And I challenge anyone to craft a persuasive argument built around the proposition that: “If the Americans sent their best stuff, it would dominate on the battlefield against the Russians.”

July 1, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

This Energy Transition Thing Really Is Not Happening

By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | June 25, 2024

From reading the left-wing media, you know (or think you know) that there is an energy “transition” going on. This is something that must happen as a matter of urgent necessity. Vast government subsidies are being disbursed to assure its rapid success. Fossil fuels are rapidly on the way out, while wind and solar are quickly taking over.

For example, you may well have seen the big piece last August in the New York Times, headline “The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think.”

Across the country, a profound shift is taking place . . . . The nation that burned coal, oil and gas for more than a century to become the richest economy on the planet, as well as historically the most polluting, is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels.

But if you read that piece, or any one of dozens of others from the Times or other “mainstream” sources, what you won’t find are meaningful statistics on the extent to which fossil fuel use is declining, if at all, or the extent to which renewables like wind and solar are actually replacing them.

That’s why the Manhattan Contrarian turns instead to dry statistical data to try to get the real story. Several years ago I discovered an annual book of energy data called the Statistical Review of World Energy. At the time, the Statistical Review was produced by the international oil company BP. I first covered one of these Reviews in this post from July 2019. A couple of years ago BP apparently decided to get out of this business, and turned the product over to something called the Energy Institute. EI then produced a Statistical Review in June 2023 (covering 2022), and now is just out on June 20, 2024 with a Statistical Review covering 2023.

Most of the Statistical Review consists of just spreadsheets of numbers. There are some charts, but relatively few. But the takeaways are too obvious to hide. The big one is this: there is no energy “transition” going on, at least not in the sense that “renewables” are actually supplanting fossil fuels. Yes there is some considerable amount of “renewable” wind and solar electricity generation getting built (with huge government subsidies). But it is not replacing fossil fuel generation. Rather, fossil fuel generation continues to increase, and its share of overall energy production has barely budged.

Here is EI’s June 20 Press Release, which summarizes the five “key stories” that it says emerge from the statistics. The first one is the big one — increasing energy consumption led by increased production and consumption of fossil fuels:

Record global energy consumption, with coal and oil pushing fossil fuels and their emissions to record levels. Global primary energy consumption overall was at a record absolute high, up 2% on the previous year to 620 Exajoules (EJ). Global fossil fuel consumption reached a record high, up 1.5% to 505 EJ (driven by coal up 1.6%, oil up 2% to above 100 million barrels for first time, while gas was flat). As a share of the overall mix they were at 81.5%, marginally down from 82% last year.

And of course, “emissions” continue to rise:

Emissions from energy increased by 2%, exceeding 40 gigatonnes of CO2 for the first time.

No matter how much the federal government or any state threatens to punish you for your sin of fossil fuel use, aggregate global emissions from such use are not going to go down within our lifetimes.

The second “key story” relates to the contribution, or lack thereof, of solar and wind. Here EI engages in some modest spinning to make things look less bad than they are for the solar and wind promoters; but there’s not much they can do:

Solar and wind push global renewable electricity generation to another record level. Renewable generation, excluding hydro, was up 13% to a record high of 4,748 TWh. This growth was driven almost entirely by wind and solar, and accounted for 74% of all net additional electricity generated.

4,748 TWh of renewable generation — wow, that’s a lot! Or is it? Do you notice how they suddenly switched units from Exajoules to Terawatt hours when they changed from talking about fossil fuels to solar and wind. Does anybody around here know the conversion factor? Yes — it’s 277.778 TWh per EJ. That means that the 4,748 TWh of “almost entirely” solar and wind power generated in 2023 came to all of 17.1 EJ, which is just 2.7% of the 620 EJ of world primary energy consumption. Could you have imagined that it could be so little, after decades of over-the-top promotion and trillions of dollars of subsidies?

And pay attention to that line “wind and solar . . . accounted for 74% of all net additional electricity generated.” Does that somehow sound like a transition is happening? It’s the opposite. If wind and solar were actually taking over, they would have to account for 100% of additional generation, plus large further amounts to replace fossil fuel generators. As long as wind and solar account for less than all of additional generation, then fossil fuels are continuing to increase, and there is no “transition” going on at all.

I mentioned that there were relatively few charts in the Review, but some of them are striking. Here is one of my favorites, showing global coal consumption from 1965 to 2023:

Over that period, North America and Europe have cut their consumption almost by half, from almost 40 EJ per year to around 20. But over the same period the consumption in the rest of the world has gone from about 20 EJ to around 140, multiplying by a factor of 7. And don’t be fooled by the apparent leveling off of increases in total consumption in the last several years. That reflects continuing decreases in North America and Europe, which are more than offset by larger increases in the Asia Pacific region.

Robert Bryce at his Substack has many more details from the EI Statistical Review, plus several charts that he has created from the EI data. He is much better at creating charts than I am. The title of Bryce’s article is “Numbers Don’t Lie.” Bryce also has a figure for the amount of government subsidies that have gone to wind and solar generation since 2004: $4.7 trillion. That much money to fund a supposed “transition” that isn’t occurring at all.

The story is going to be effectively the same every year until finally the promoters give up on the wind/solar scam.

June 30, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Russia Threatens US Drones in Black Sea Aiding Attacks on Crimea

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | June 30, 2024

In response to Ukrainian attacks on the Crimean Peninsula, tensions between the US and Russia have significantly escalated, with Moscow threatening US drones operating over the Black Sea. The Kremlin says the drones are part of the Ukrainian operations in the region.

On Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry said there had been an uptick in American drone operations in the Black Sea “carrying out reconnaissance” of the Crimean Peninsula. The statement explained that the Russian military was instructed to prepare an “operational response” to the flights.

The remarks followed a Ukrainian attack using US cluster munitions that caused the death of four civilians and wounded hundreds of others. Moscow argues that Washington’s support for Kiev makes the US effectively a party to the conflict. “This demonstrates the increasing involvement of the United States and NATO countries in the conflict in Ukraine on the side of the Kiev regime,” the Defense Ministry said.

As Ukrainian forces have continued to lose territory to Russia on the battlefield, its Western backers have significantly stepped up support for Kiev. The US has allowed Ukraine to use its munitions to strike Russia, signed off on the transfer of F-16s to Ukraine, and sent Abrams Tanks to Ukraine, all actions the White House previously warned could risk provoking World War Three.

The Defense Ministry noted the Western escalations, including the drone flights, “increase the risk of a direct confrontation between the alliance and Russia.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov explained the Kremlin is still working on its response to the attack on Crimea. “The tragedy that occurred in Sevastopol will certainly not remain and does not remain without our response.” He added, “I think that the idea of certain permissible scenarios is also on the minds of many in the West. They should feel the extreme risks associated with such actions.”

June 30, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Turkey resumed oil imports from Iran in March after 4 years: data shows

Press TV – June 30, 2024

Figures by the European Union’s statistics agency, Eurostat, show that Turkey resumed importing oil from Iran in March this year nearly four years after it cut shipments to zero to comply with US sanctions on Tehran.

Eurostat data cited in a Sunday report by Iran’s official IRNA news agency showed that Turkey had imported 576 metric tons (mt) of oil from Iran in March and another 485 mt in April.

Turkey’s last oil shipment from Iran had been reported in August 2020 when the country bowed to US pressure and stopped the imports.

The figures are yet another sign that more countries have stopped complying with US sanctions on Iran and are taking delivery of oil shipments from the country.

Eurostat figures showed that Bulgaria and Poland were the two EU members that had imported oil from Iran this year.

Bulgaria raised its oil imports from Iran in the quarter to March by 113% compared to the same period last year to 314 mt.

Poland’s oil imports from Iran, a first reported in the past two years, was a 19 mt shipment that took place in March.

Georgia, an EU candidate country, imported 544 mt of oil from Iran in the March quarter, down from 974 mt reported in the same quarter last year.

Reports suggest more European countries are willing to ignore US sanctions on Iran and import oil from country now that Tehran is selling record volumes of oil to Asian markets.

Iran’s oil exports reached more than 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd) in some months of this year and in 2023, up from records lows of 0.3 million bpd reported in 2019 when the US toughened its sanctions Tehran.

June 30, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Supreme Court Ruling Isn’t the End of the Online Free Speech Battle

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | June 30, 2024

The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) civil rights group is not giving up on the free speech fight it has been conducting on behalf of the respondents/plaintiffs in the Murthy v. Missouri case. The tactic is now to go for expanded discovery, aimed at demonstrating direct harm caused by government censorship.

A statement to this effect comes after the US Supreme Court voted 6-3 to lift a preliminary injunction that prevented the White House and several powerful agencies (CDC, FBI, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Surgeon General’s Office) from interacting with social media companies by “encouraging” (or coercing) them to carry out censorship of lawful and protected speech.

The ruling is seen by critics and those who brought and supported the case aimed at ending this type of collusion as yet another blow to the First Amendment, and to make things worse, shortly ahead of another US presidential election.

NCLA said that the Supreme Court decision – which overturned the injunction previously ordered by a district court and upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit – leaves its clients “without redress.”

This is despite the fact their original lawsuit had to do with blacklisting, shadow-banning, deranking, account termination, and other forms of censorship, believed to have been done because of pressure coming from the government.

This was happening during the time of the previous campaign and in the wake of the election – concerning, among others, the issues that featured prominently in that campaign, namely those around Covid controversies.

But the NCLA said that despite the Supreme Court ruling which “practically erased the First Amendment and permitted government to co-opt private entities, like social media platforms, to accomplish its censorship aims” – the battle for free speech will continue in lower courts.

NCLA litigation counsel Jenin Younes has told the Federalist Radio Hour podcast that the rights group is not giving up and it has decided to pursue the case on the merits in the district court. “We want to get more discovery,” said Younes.

In the NCLA’s press release, Younes said that the Supreme Court has “green lighted the government’s unprecedented censorship regime, which resulted in the censorship of top scientists like our clients on the areas of their expertise,” adding:

“This decision is a travesty for the First Amendment, for Americans’ rights to free speech, and for the pursuit of scientific and other knowledge.”

One of the dissenting Supreme Court justices, Samuel Alito, expressed a similar sentiment as he warned that the government’s actions were “blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so.”

June 30, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Don’t Let The Elite Get Away With Gaslighting That They Didn’t Know About Biden’s Senility

By Andrew Korybko | June 29, 2024

Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week made it impossible to deny his senility, yet the Western elite is gaslighting they were supposedly oblivious to this until now. Time Magazine published a piece titled “Inside Biden’s Debate Disaster and the Scramble to Quell Democratic Panic”, which was complemented by CNN’s about how “Foreign diplomats react with horror to Biden’s dismal debate performance”. Both make it seem like Biden’s senility is a surprise for everyone who knew him.

The reality is that they knew about this all along but covered it up by lying that any claims to this effect were “Russian propaganda” and/or a “conspiracy theory”, all because they actually approved of the Democrats installing a literal placeholder in the White House who the liberal–globalist elite could control. It was a refreshing change of pace from Trump, who was much too independent for their liking despite his occasional capitulations to their demands, and it also reassured America’s allies who disliked him too.

They both went along with the lie that Biden is in tip-top mental condition for reasons of political convenience, but now it’s impossible to keep up the charade any longer, hence why they’re all feigning surprise and shock. The elite shouldn’t be allowed to get away with their latest gaslighting and should be exposed for one of the greatest cover-ups in American history. The country is being ruled by a shadowy network of transnational and domestic elites that are united by their radical liberal-globalist ideology.

Biden was chosen as the Democrats’ candidate in 2020 precisely because he was already senile and therefore completely controllable. That party, which functions as the public face of the abovementioned elite network, wanted someone who’d do whatever they demanded on the home and foreign policy fronts. In particular, they sought to turn America into a liberal-globalist hellhole while ramping up NATO’s containment of Russia in Ukraine, but the second policy backfired after the special operation began.

Nevertheless, they’ll never have another chance to install someone like Biden since 2020 was an exceptional election year due to it being a referendum on Trump – who a significant share of the public was preconditioned to falsely believe is the new Hitler – and mail-in voting due to COVID-19. These conditions can never be replicated in the same way again no matter how hard the elite try, which is why they decided to keep Biden as their candidate instead of replace him early on.

Although there’s now a push by some for him to be replaced during the party’s upcoming national convention, Politico and NBC News among others both pointed out that this would be a difficult process, so there’s no guarantee that they’ll seriously attempt it. That said, he might also suffer some sort of emergency that incapacitates him more than he already is, so the scenario can’t be ruled out. In that case, they’ll still do everything they can to gaslight that they had no idea that he was so unhealthy.

Any acknowledgement that they were aware of this would expose their role in 2020’s de facto coup, which was the elite’s latest after the ones in 2001, 1974, and 1963. Back then, 9/11 was exploited as the pretext for taking the national security state to its next level, while Nixon’s resignation in the face of the CIA’s Watergate scandal was meant to remove a truly independent and popular visionary leader. As for Kennedy’s assassination, many believe that it was aimed to stop his planned withdrawal from Vietnam.

The elite’s latest coup was meant to turbocharge the US’ preexisting liberal-globalist trajectory after Trump partially offset it with his comparatively more conservative-nationalist policies, which necessitated provoking a proxy war with Russia in order to unify the West around this ideological cause. The damage has already been dealt and a lot of it is irreparable, but Trump’s return to power would still be better for Americans and the rest of the world, which is why the elite are dead-set against it.

Irrespective of whether the decision is made to replace Biden, which has its pros such as putting a more publicly appealing candidate on the ballot but also its cons like stoking panic about the party’s electoral prospects, the elite will do everything to cover up for their knowledge of his senility. Acknowledging that they knew about this would leave little doubt in the minds of many that the 2020 election was actually the elite’s latest coup, which his why they’re going overboard gaslighting about how they’re surprised.

June 30, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment