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New York urgently needs to confront the contradiction of trying to electrify everything while also eliminating fossil fuels

By Jane Menton and Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | September 13, 2023

In New York, politicians are selling the public a narrative that electricity is going to be the solution to climate change. We will eliminate all CO2 emissions by banning gasoline-powered cars, banning natural gas infrastructure, banning gas heat in buildings, and banning gas for cooking. All of these are to be replaced with supposedly “green,” emissions-free, alternatives – which in practice consist of only one thing, electricity. We’ve been told that this is how we are going to protect the planet for future generations.

But there is nothing emissions-free about the way electricity is currently generated in New York. About half of our electricity comes now, as it traditionally has, from burning fossil fuels. New York has announced plans to eliminate those from electricity generation by 2030, but as of now has no realistic plan to replace them. Meanwhile, it is forcing its citizens to convert essential systems like heating to electricity, with no basis to believe that the electricity will be available to prevent people from freezing in the winter only a few years from now. This is a glaring contradiction, that needs urgently to be addressed before we suffer a self-inflicted catastrophe.

At present, fossil fuels are critical to our generation of electricity. According to the most recent data from the federal government’s Energy Information Administration, in 2021 New York got some 46% of its electricity from burning natural gas and another 1% from fuel oil, and almost all of the rest from either nuclear (25%) or hydropower (23%, most of which comes from Niagara Falls). Non-hydro “renewables” (wood, wind and solar) provided only about 6% in total, and about 2% of that was from wood. After decades of hype about their wondrous future, wind and solar provided only about 4%. And in 2021, the state closed the Indian Point nuclear plant, replacing its output almost entirely with natural gas generation, meaning that the percent of our electricity supply coming from fossil fuels is now up near 50% today.

If more electricity is needed, the options are few. New nuclear plants face vociferous opposition from environmentalists, with almost no prospect that that can be overcome. A completely finished nuclear plant called Shoreham sits idle on Long Island, having never been approved for commercial operation in the face of vigorous environmental opposition. As to hydropower, we do not have another Niagara Falls. Wind and solar produce remarkably small amounts after decades of hype and massive subsidies; and what they do produce is intermittent and often unavailable when most needed on the hottest and coldest days. The last option, natural gas – the one that is available, scalable, and actually works – is the one our politicians are pledging to eliminate without anything to replace it.

In the face of this generation picture, the State and New York City are proceeding with proposed electricity mandates that will have the effect of greatly increasing demand for the power. This will either require scaling up our electric grid to match that need or else leaving people without functioning infrastructure. Policies already in place in New York City require electrification of cars, heat, and cooking, aiming for widespread conversion by 2035, and continuing thereafter. A piece in the Daily News on June 3 includes a projection from National Grid (one of our utilities) that the State will need to increase the capacity of the grid by 57% by 2035, and 100% by 2050.

In scenarios where people’s cars, heat, cooking and more are all entirely dependent on reliable electricity, ensuring that our electricity sources are adequate and reliable is critical to the functioning of everyday life. Yet, even as our government is rapidly rolling out electrification mandates, it is simultaneously closing the biggest piece of our reliable generation.

New York is Exhibit A of a current crisis-in-waiting. At the State level, Governor Hochul has committed to closing all of the State’s fossil fuel electricity plants by 2030.  Current  New York State summer installed capacity is 37,520 MW, or 37.5 GW. Of that, about 60%, or more than 22 GW, consists of natural gas facilities, which are capable of running nearly all the time and ramping up to maximum output when most needed. Based on National Grid’s projection of 57% increased demand by 2035, New York should be planning to have 37.5 GW x 1.57, or almost 59 GW of always-available capacity on hand by that year.  Yet the only significant plans for additional capacity by 2035 consist of about 9 GW of offshore wind, and another 1.25 GW to come from a transmission line to bring hydropower from Quebec.  (In recent weeks, all of the offshore wind developers have demanded major contract price increases of 50% and up, failing which they threaten to walk off the job.)

Something here does not remotely add up. If New York state succeeds by 2030 in closing its natural gas plants — the plants that account for 60% of the State’s generation capacity — that would bring our total installed capacity down from 37.5 GW to as little as 15 GW. But we need almost 60 GW to meet projected demand. And that’s 60 GW that can be called on any time as needed to meet peak usage. The 9 GW of projected offshore wind turbines wouldn’t make much of a dent even if they operated all the time and could be dispatched to meet peak demand, which they can’t.  Instead, they will operate only about a third of the time, and at their own whim. At best they will provide about 3 GW on average, when what we need for this full electrification project is more like 45 GW of dispatchable power to add to our existing hydro and nuclear.

The New York Independent System Operator, which is well aware of this gigantic contradiction, talks vaguely of something they call a “dispatchable emissions-free resource” to fill the enormous gap. Other than nuclear, which is blocked, that is something that is a pure fantasy and does not exist.

Our State’s and City’s proposed plans are putting New Yorkers on a path to catastrophe, with greatly increased dependence on electricity, but without nearly enough of the stuff to function at even the current usage level. New York City got a huge lesson on dependence on electricity from Hurricane Sandy a decade ago, when a week-long blackout left people in high-rises without elevator service and without water. Now they plan to add all heat, cooking, and transportation to the things that absolutely require electricity.  In that world, insufficient electricity becomes a humanitarian crisis.

It is high time for the politicians writing electricity mandates to demonstrate that it is even possible to build and scale an emission-free grid, one that is dispatchable (meaning it will work when we need it), reliable, and resilient. In today’s world, no demonstration of such a grid exists anywhere in the world.

If these mandates are allowed to go forward unabated, the real cost of will be the impoverishment of communities and destruction of quality of life. It’s up to us to realize we’re being sold a false narrative and to stop playing along.

September 16, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

The Biden Administration Misleads the Public on the Vast Expanses of Land Needed for ‘Net Zero’

By James Varney | RealClearInvestigations | September 12, 2023

The Biden administration is misleading the country about the amount of land that will be required to meet its ambitious renewable energy goals, RealClearInvestigations has found.

The Department of Energy’s official line – echoed by many environmental activists and academics – is that the vast array of solar panels and wind turbines required to meet Biden’s goal of “100% clean electricity” by 2035 will require “less than one-half of one percent of the contiguous U.S. land area.” This topline number translates into 15,000 of the lower 48’s roughly 3 million square miles.

However, the government report that furnished those estimates also notes that the wind farm footprint alone could require an expanse nine times as large: 134,000 square miles.

Even that figure is misleading because it does not include land for the new transmission systems that would connect the energy, created by the solar panels carpeting the ground and skyscraper-tall wind turbines filling the horizons, to American businesses and homes.

Solar Energy Industries Association

Not counted: space for new high-voltage transmission lines, key to utility-scale solar and wind projects.
Solar Energy Industries Association

“It’s hundreds of thousands of acres if not millions for transmissions alone,” said David Blackmon, an energy consultant and writer based in Texas. “The wind and solar farms will take enormous swaths of land all over the country and no one is talking about that.”

And these vast plots, along with the chains of transmission towers, do not include other aspects that would take up even more land: nationwide vehicle charging stations, mines for rare-earth minerals, maintenance space for huge propeller blades and panels, and so forth.

In addition, all projections increase substantially if the U.S. were to meet Biden’s larger goal of aligning the nation with a global plan, set by the International Energy Association and pushed by the World Economic Forum of Davos, dubbed “NetZero 2050.”

Professor Jesse Jenkins at Princeton University, whose work is often cited by renewable energy advocates, did not respond to RCI’s questions, but he detailed the scope of the challenge in the May/June issue of progressive Mother Jones magazine. He urged the U.S. to embark on a moon-shot level transformation of its energy sector, using hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars that Biden provided for the renewable sector in the spending bill that Democrats named the Inflation Reduction Act.

“We’ll have to build as much new clean generation by 2035 as the total electricity produced by all sources today, then build the same amount again by 2050,” Jenkins wrote. “This could ultimately require utility-scale solar projects that cover the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined, and wind farms that span an area equal to that of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.”

Given the ambitious goals and tight time frames Biden has committed the nation to, it seems natural to assume there would be a master plan detailing where and when this renewable infrastructure will be built and come online. Yet despite strong resistance by many communities across the country to serve as hosts for these massive projects, there has been no robust public debate about how all the necessary land will be acquired – and whether, for example, it will include the taking of private property through eminent domain or use of national park lands, an idea the government officially dismisses.

In fact, no such master plan exists. The closest thing to it, according to a spokesperson for the federal National Renewable Energy Laboratory, is a “long-term strategy” put out by Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry. The optimistic, 65-page document does not, however, address the question of land use. The White House did not respond to questions from RCI.

Experts skeptical about Biden’s goals say the land requirements are so immense and problematic that such detail would likely reveal how unworkable the entire program is.

“Of course it will never happen,” said William Smith, a professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and a member of the CO2 Coalition, a group of scientists who do not believe global warming is an apocalyptic development.

The “less than one-half of one percent” figure is fantasy, according to Smith.

“A lot more area is required.”

Instead of being the focus of vigorous debate regarding a crucial issue, the land requirements are routinely finessed or, most commonly, ignored by policymakers and environmentalists who promise that the radical transformation during the coming decades to the world of supposedly clean electricity will have minimal impact on people’s lives and the landscape. In reviewing government documents and speaking with experts, RCI found widespread disagreement and murkiness in part because the questions surrounding renewables are filled with so many dynamic variables and unknown factors.

The U.S. currently uses an estimated 126,562 square miles for energy production, a bit more than the combined land mass of Missouri and Florida, with by far the biggest chunk devoted to growing corn for heavily subsidized ethanol fuel. In 2021, the last year for which figures are available, the U.S. got 2.8% of its energy from solar sources and 9.2% from some 72,000 wind turbines, according to government figures.

In theory, one should be able to easily determine the nation’s future energy needs by working backward – estimating the nation’s total need for electricity in 2030 or 2050 and then determining how many wind turbines and solar panels would be required to meet that demand.

From Federal Agencies, the Rosiest Picture

There is little agreement, however, on how much electricity the U.S. will need in 2035 or 2050 – and, hence, the number of solar installations and wind turbines – because that depends on a variety of lifestyle decisions, such as the type of cars people will drive and the size of the homes they will live in. In addition, the power generation of those turbines and solar panels depends on where they are situated – which is also unknown – and their age.

These and other variables, in turn, can politicize an ostensibly scientific problem as the factors and assumptions one uses to ask key questions necessarily influence the answer.

The rosiest picture is presented by federal agencies, which rely on estimates from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and environmental activists.

Alex Hobson, a senior vice president at the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), a nonprofit that “represents all facets of the renewable energy marketplace,” echoed the Department of Energy when she told RCI that the U.S. would need “less than 1% of the land in the contiguous United States to fully transition to a clean energy economy.” All told, the U.S. could hit the Biden administration’s target of a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 by adding 19,000 square miles of renewables, a parcel roughly equal to Maryland and Vermont, Hobson said.

Although the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s own work includes such projections, Hobson characterized estimates putting the square mile requirements for largely carbon emissions-free energy in the hundreds of thousands as “a narrative often espoused by critics of renewable energy.”

Nevertheless, estimates by other outfits favorably disposed to Biden’s climate agenda offer larger projections. An analysis by Bloomberg News, controlled by billionaire environmental activist Michael Bloomberg, concluded that “expanding wind and solar by 10% annually until 2030 would require a chunk of land equal to the state of South Dakota.” South Dakota is roughly 77,000 square miles, or five times the “one-half of one percent” figure that federal officials like to tout.

Pushing the goal to a “NetZero” future in 2050, Bloomberg reported, would “need up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean energy to run all the electric vehicles, factories and more.”

The different dates – a reduction by 2030 and “NetZero” by 2050 – are yet another set of many variables that contribute to the fuzzy math.

Spinning Turbines

Probably the greatest area of confusion surrounds the amount of land required by wind turbines. In support of its claim that the U.S. will need only 15,000 square miles of land to meet Biden’s renewable goals by 2035, a Department of Energy spokesperson told RCI that the country will need an estimated 5,800 to 11,200 square miles for solar installations and between 1,930 and 3,100 square miles for wind turbines by 2035. But those numbers account for just the physical space required by each turbine – the stake in the ground, which is small – and not the broader area required by turbines, which must be spaced far apart from one other and require huge bases made from 2,500 tons of concrete.

Those who support renewables claim that almost all of the surrounding land can still be used for farming, ranching, or other purposes. Even here, however, the numbers do not align. The Energy Department told RCI that “95% of the land” in wind farms remains untouched by the renewable energy apparatus, meaning the turbines would occupy but 5% of the land. But the National Renewable Energy Laboratory lowers that figure further, claiming only 2% of the land is removed from circulation and, in parentheses in his Mother Jones piece, Jenkins marks it down to 1%.

Those who believe the emissions goals set for 2035 and beyond are unrealistic and unnecessary say those numbers are absurdly low, and characterize as false the notion that towering turbines – plus the construction needed to store and transmit energy that relies on fickle sources like sunshine and wind – will not eat up many thousands of additional square miles.

When factors beyond sticks on the horizon are factored in – that is, the total parameters of wind farms – the plots needed get much bigger, as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (134,000 square miles) and Jenkins (213,000 square miles) acknowledge in their studies.

Then, given that power weakens the further it must travel to the end user, a gigantic new transmission system will be needed.

Here again, RCI found widely disparate estimates. In March, a DOE study said that 47,000 new miles of high-voltage transmission wires would have to be constructed, but a National Renewable Energy Laboratory study looking at 2035 noted that the U.S. could need up to 100,000 miles of new lines during the next decade. The low end of that estimate is the distance of 10 round trips from New York to Moscow, while the high end is four times the earth’s circumference at the equator.

Again, the jumping numbers underscore how policymakers consistently highlight the lowest possible figures, which are derived using what could prove fanciful assumptions.

The renewable energy lab’s suggestion that turbines will take up only 2% of land is false, according to Smith.

“No matter how you slice it, the NREL estimate is utter rubbish, but is 100% accepted since it toes the narrative line,” he said. “It is comforting until it is proven to fall drastically short by sad experience. Ten percent of that land, at least, is useless for other purposes. No one wants to live under, near, or in the line throw from a wind turbine in northern latitudes.”

In addition, there is something disingenuous about pretending enormous windmills and high voltage transmission towers and wires are mere blips in the landscape, said Mark Mills, a senior fellow at the free-market Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

“Like all scenarios, it depends on boundary condition assumptions,” Mills said. “NREL, for example, uses the specific footprint of the concrete pad on which the wind turbine physically sits, rather than the acres of land occupied by the array of turbines. That yields a very small number of course, despite the visual scale of the array.”

Mills acknowledged wind farms do not completely rule out farming or other land uses nearby, gaps that are not available with solar panels in which “literally square miles of land are rendered useless for other purposes.”

These factors tend to be elided when enthusiasts predict smaller and smaller allotments of land being required for the transformation envisioned.

“I don’t hear any of them talk about the land footprint at all,” said H. Sterling Burnett, director of Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, a conservative think-tank opposed to massive renewable energy projects. “The whole NIMBY mindset is not unique to fossil fuels. But if you’re talking about building turbines in Kansas and shipping power to New York City, or all the power lines that will be needed – nobody talks about that.”

September 16, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism | | Leave a comment

Biden Picking Pritzker to Oversee Ukraine’s Economic Recovery ‘Not a Good Sign’

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 16.09.2023

President Joe Biden appointed Penny Pritzker – an entrepreneur and former commerce secretary – as the first-ever US special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery.
In a statement on Thursday, POTUS said that she has been appointed to the role due to her decades of experience in business and what he described as Pritzker’s “deep familial ties to Ukraine.”

Biden added that the 64-year-old will work in “lockstep with the Ukrainian government”, as well as American “allies and partners, international financial institutions, and the private sector” to drive Washington’s efforts “to help rebuild the Ukrainian economy.”

Pritzker’s appointment for the post is “not a very good sign”, Diane Sare said in an interview with Sputnik.

“She is an Obama era appointee, and apparently she was a great supporter of his campaign. And I think that administration was largely responsible for the mess we now see, including overthrowing the legitimate elected government of Ukraine and bringing in Bandera’s sympathizers,” Sare pointed out.

Pritzker, who served as Secretary of Commerce from 2013 to 2017, is known for being one of the esteemed billionaire heirs of the prestigious Pritzker dynasty. This powerful family is renowned for their vast wealth, firmly establishing them as one of the most affluent households in the US. She’s the only one to have served in the White House, and she’s also known for being a major fundraiser for both Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The 2024 candidate for the New York US Senate recalled that Pritzker’s great-grandfather came to the US from Ukraine, so she has Ukrainian roots.

“I don’t know what that means, good or bad. You can’t judge a whole people. But I think her background ties to the Obama and thereby Biden administrations doesn’t bode very well,” according to Sare.

When asked what in Pritzker’s personal and professional experience makes her qualified for this job from the Biden administration’s point of view, Sare said that she thinks “this administration doesn’t seem to care about anyone being qualified for anything.”

“There seems to be a great love of criminal paybacks and payouts and very little concern for the principle of the general welfare or the well-being of the population. Perhaps they think she’s qualified because she’s a billionaire and she’s a CEO and she was cooperative with the previous regime change policies in Ukraine,” the political organizer said.

On Pritzker’s duties as the US special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery, Sare said that she would have given her thoughts on the matter if she “could understand why they [the Zelensky regime] think they’re going to have an economic recovery without entering into peace talks.”

“I don’t really know what responsibilities she could have for organizing an economic recovery when there has not been declared an end to [NATO’s proxy] war [with Russia] or any negotiations for peace. I don’t know how you can have a recovery if it’s not in the context of a broader plan for stabilization of the region. I mean, she was very much involved in the situation in Ukraine eight years ago, and the economy has only gotten worse and worse since then. So I really don’t know what their metrics are or what they’re talking about,” Sare concluded.

The Biden administration has provided the Kiev regime with over $76 billion since the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. This generous support includes $46.6 billion in military aid and an additional $26.4 billion in financial assistance.

Republicans and Democrats have expressed their frustration with the financial aid that Washington has been providing to Ukraine. GOP lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene believes it’s high time to put an end to this financial flow, while House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is calling for stricter oversight of the money being sent.

September 16, 2023 Posted by | Corruption | , | Leave a comment

Hungary explains what might force West to want peace in Ukraine

RT | September 16, 2023

European nations might eventually forgo their support for Kiev’s military efforts in the ongoing conflict with Russia due to their own economic hardships, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told nationwide Kossuth Radio on Friday.

The conflict that has lasted for more than a year and a half is affecting the European economy, which “will not be like we want it to be” for as long as it goes on, Orban told the radio’s ‘Good Morning, Hungary!’ show. Yet, “war supporters are in the overwhelming majority” among EU governments, he pointed out.

If there is something that might force European capitals to reconsider their position on the conflict, it is the further deterioration of the economic situation on the continent, the prime minister believes. Most people in Europe already share Hungary’s position on the issue, which is anti-war, he claimed. Economic setbacks could force these people to “exert pressure” on their governments, he added.

“Deterioration of the economic situation in the West will force countries to stand up for peace,” Orban said.

According to the Hungarian prime minister, the outcome of next year’s US presidential elections might also heavily affect the West’s general position on the issue. “There are two possibilities: … the presidential candidates will either support the war or announce the end of the war,” he said.

Orban said he believes that a US president is fairly capable of “putting an end” to the conflict. That does not mean that Europe should just “wait for a fairy to end the war with a magic wand,” he added.

The prime minister criticized the European approach to the conflict so far by saying that “181 billion of European money” has been spent on supporting Kiev but “we have not come any closer to peace.” It is unclear if he referred to dollars or euros.

According to Ukraine Support Tracker data regularly published by Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the EU institutions and EU nations together pledged a total of €131.9 billion ($139.8) for Ukraine between January 2022 and July 2023.

The UK, Norway and Switzerland, which are not part of the EU, together pledged an additional €23.31 billion ($24.8 billion) over the same period, bringing the total amount of European commitments to €155.21 billion ($165.66), data provided by the Kiel Institute showed.

Viktor Orban has long maintained that the West was making a mistake by pursuing military confrontation with Russia in Ukraine. He has repeatedly stated that there could be no military solution to the conflict, adding that the US and its allies need to stop arming Kiev and seek peace with Russia instead.

September 16, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian conflict a testing ground for US

By Lucas Leiroz | September 16, 2023

Once again, it seems clear that Ukraine is just one part of America’s ambitious war plans. According to Western media, American experts are “taking notes” of the reality of combat with electronic warfare in Ukraine. The objective is to make the Ukrainian battlefield a “testing ground” for electronic warfare techniques that can serve US interests in other conflicts – such as a possible confrontation with China in the future.

The story was published in an article on the Defense News outlet. Josh Koslov, leader of the US Air Force’s 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing, reported that the US is impressed with the widespread use of means of electronic warfare during hostilities in Ukraine, with both sides showing “agility” and efficiency in carrying out operations. Koslov believes that these skills will be needed by the US in the future, if the country faces a major opponent on the battlefield.

“The agility being displayed by both parties, in the way that they’re executing operations in the spectrum, is awesome (…) Both sides are doing the cat-and-mouse game very, very well (…) In the future, for us, if we do confront a peer, being agile and being rapid is the key to success in the spectrum (…) Not having control of spectrum leads to fatalities, leads to getting killed. And we’ve seen that time and time again in that conflict”, he said.

Although both sides are using this type of technology, the Russians are evidently proving to be more efficient, as can be seen in the results of the special operation. For this reason, Western analysts are evaluating Russia’s performance on the battlefield and believe that Moscow’s electronic skills are one of the main reasons for the Ukrainian failure.

In fact, electronic warfare (also called “spectrum warfare“) is one of the most important topics in contemporary military sciences, even though it is often ignored by some specialists. In current military campaigns, it is essential that the sides involved in hostilities have control over electromagnetic technologies, both for defensive and offensive use.

Given the high use of advanced technology in equipment such as computers, cellphones, radars and radios and guidance systems, a large electromagnetic environment is formed around the battlefields. The side that is most skilled in investigating enemy data through this electromagnetic environment has a huge advantage, both in direct military operations and in intelligence gathering.

Many analysts believe that Russian victories are largely due to Moscow’s high capacity to use the electromagnetic environment to its advantage. Using electronic warfare techniques, the Russian armed forces have been efficient in neutralizing most enemy attacks (mainly diverting Ukrainian drones), in addition to achieving high precision in their strikes. Russian electronic warfare technologies are also vital in destroying the communication lines of Ukrainian troops, having proven to be much more efficient than the entire technical apparatus provided by the West to Kiev.

As head of the electronic warfare wing of the American armed forces, Koslov knows his country’s weaknesses and seeks on the Ukrainian battlefield the knowledge necessary to solve US’ problems. There is a “need” on the part of the US to accelerate the modernization of its spectrum warfare capabilities because the country currently sees the possibility of engaging in direct conflicts in the near future. In this sense, the Defense News’ article reads: “U.S. [spectrum] arsenal atrophied in the years following the Cold War, but officials are reprioritizing in preparation for a fight with Russia in Europe or China in the Indo-Pacific.”

This statement helps answer a series of questions about why the US continues to foment the conflict in Ukraine, even with Kiev on the brink of collapse. In addition to trying to “wear down” the Russians and generate destabilization in the Russian strategic environment, Washington is also observing the enemy, trying to gather data on its advanced war technologies to help overcome its own military weaknesses. In other words, the Pentagon is turning Ukraine into a “testing ground” for improving its own defense forces.

The only reason the US is doing this is because American officials see the start of a new conflict as imminent. Currently, few experts believe that NATO is willing to engage in an open war against Moscow, given the catastrophic effects this would entail. However, a conflict with China seems to be more in line with American plans, as for American strategists Beijing appears to be a “weaker” target, with a greater possibility of US victory in a direct confrontation. For this reason, the US has recently promoted intense militarization of the Asia-Pacific region, increasing local tensions.

So, in practice, the Americans are noticing on the Ukrainian battlefield what they need to improve in their own forces in order to achieve victory in a war they plan to start soon – electronic warfare being one of the main points to be improved. In other words, there is no real concern about Kiev, there is only the strategic use of the conflict to serve American interests while hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are killed on the frontlines.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

September 16, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Florida Surgeon-General Snubs FDA ‘COVID Boosters-For-All’ Guidance

“Not A Good Decision For Young People”

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | September 15, 2023

Uttering words that would have seen you excommunicated from ‘good’ society, ostracized to an island of racists, bigots, and vaccine-deniers; Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said in a statement that the vaccines “are not backed by clinical evidence, but blind faith alone with ZERO regard for widespread immunity.”

In guidance (pdf) to patients and doctors, the Florida Department of Health added:

“Based on the high rate of global immunity and currently available data, the state surgeon general recommends against the COVID-19 booster for individuals under 65. Individuals 65 and older should discuss this information with their health care provider, including potential concerns outlined in this guidance.”

This directly contradicts guidance from The White House (everyone get up to date) and the CDC and FDA (endorsing the new jabs for anyone over 6 months old):

“We continue to live in a world where the CDC and the [Food and Drug Administration], when it comes to COVID at least, are just beating their own path in a direction that’s inexplicable in terms of thinking about data and in thinking about common sense,” Ladapo said.

And three years into this flu season, Ladalpo highlights ‘herd immunity’ among most of America:

“With the amount of immunity that’s in the community – with virtually every walking human being having some degree of immunity, and with the questions we have about safety and about effectiveness, especially about safety, my judgment is that it’s not a good decision for young people and for people who are not at high risk at this point in the pandemic,” he said.

Florida Governor DeSantis agreed:

“I will not stand by and let the FDA and CDC use healthy Floridians as guinea pigs for new booster shots that have not been proven to be safe or effective,”

In March, the CDC and FDA sent a letter to Ladapo, warning that he was fueling vaccine hesitancy and harming Florida’s seniors.

Ladalpo is not alone in his scepticism.

“Pushing a new COVID vaccine without human-outcomes data makes a mockery of the scientific method and our regulatory process,” Drs. Marty Makary and Tracy Beth Hoeg said in an op-ed.

“If public-health officials don’t want a repeat disappointing turnout of Americans who get the COVID booster shot, they should require a proper clinical trial to show the American people the benefit,” they added.

Just 17 percent of Americans received one of the bivalent doses, which were made available in the fall of 2022. The new vaccines replaced the bivalents.

“The CDC is advising the children get these boosters when there’s no evidence that children receive any benefit and clear evidence that they receive harm,” Dr. Robert Malone, who helped invent the messenger RNA (mRNA) technology the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use, said on EpochTV’s “Crossroads.”

Risks include myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation that can lead to sudden death.

And cue the mainstream media ‘blood on their hands… science-denying’ headlines.

September 15, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

California Threatens to Defund 600+ Schools Over Low Vaccine Rates

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 12, 2023

The California Department of Health (CDPH) is threatening to restrict funding for the more than 600 schools being audited by the state because they reported more than 10% of their kindergarten or seventh grade students were not fully vaccinated last year or because they failed to file a vaccination report with the state, EdSource reported.

“Schools found to have improperly admitted students who have (not) met immunization requirements may be subject to loss of average daily attendance payments for those children,” the CDPH said in an email.

CDPH posted the audit list, which included 449 schools with kindergarten students, 175 schools with seventh graders, 56 schools with both grades and 39 schools that had not filed a vaccination report.

California students are considered “not fully vaccinated” if they have not provided proper immunization records to their school, if they don’t have the vaccinations required by the school system or if they have been admitted to schools conditionally while they are in the process of finishing their school-mandated vaccine series, according to the state audit guide.

If a student behind on the vaccine requirements has not received a first dose of a required vaccine within 10 days of starting school and a second dose of a required vaccine within four months of the first dose, the student must be excluded from school.

The audit guide indicates that to determine whether schools have students behind schedule, auditors check whether kindergarteners have two doses of a varicella (chickenpox) vaccine and two doses of a measles vaccine and whether seventh graders have two doses of varicella and one dose of Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis), their sixth pertussis-containing vaccine.

Oakland Unified School District, with 48 elementary schools and eight of the seventh grade schools on the list, has the highest number of schools being audited. Los Angeles Unified has 75 of its non-charter schools on the audit list, while Pomona Unified has 13, San Francisco Unified 14 and San Juan Unified in Sacramento County, eight.

The vaccination audit has been occurring in public schools only since the 2021-2022 school year, when 45 schools made the list.

Schools in violation of the state law must submit corrected attendance reports that reflect the reduction in average daily attendance cited in the audit finding, which will likely reduce their funding, according to CDPH spokesperson Scott Roark.

Sensationalizing vaccine numbers

Over the last year, legacy media organizations such as The New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post along with public health officials across the country have been sounding the alarm over decreasing rates of routine vaccination among U.S. children.

But even at its lowest point — the 2020-2021 school year — the kindergarten vaccination rate only dipped to 94% from 95%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Experts cited in these articles blame the drop on pandemic disruptions to U.S. healthcare, “vaccine hesitancy” about the COVID-19 vaccine bleeding over into other vaccines and the availability of non-medical vaccine exemptions.

EdSource reported that vaccination rates in California, which had been climbing since the state eliminated the personal belief exemption in 2015, plunged after schools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thousands of children in California were unable to start the school year in 2022 because they were behind on their vaccinations, it reported.

But EdSource also reported that the kindergarten vaccination rate was 92.8% in 2020 — down from 95% in 2018 — but went back up to 94% in 2021.

Substack writer and analyst Karl Kanthak told The Defender these numbers are being used to create the appearance of a crisis, which he says is part of a broader attack on vaccine exemptions.

Between the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which gave vaccine makers immunity for any injuries caused by vaccines, the 1994 Vaccines for Children Program that provides no-cost vaccines to low-income children and the school mandates, Big Pharma has achieved nearly full saturation of the pediatric market, Kanthak said.

But that’s not the case for the adult market, where vaccine uptake is much lower without mandates. “Eliminating school exemptions for children is a major step in making exemptions unavailable for adults,” Kanthak said.

Because the child market was already saturated, “they [pharma] couldn’t use low rates as an excuse” to argue legislators should eliminate access to exemptions, he said.

That has resulted in the misrepresentation of vaccine rates, where it is made to seem as if high numbers of children are missing required vaccines, raising the specter of disease outbreaks, said Kanthak, which is apparent in the audit and EdSource’s reporting on it and most media headlines about vaccines.

“So you get policy influenced by headline,” he said.

Audit numbers are ‘misleading’

For example, Kanthak told The Defender that many shots required for kindergarteners, including the last doses of the MMR, varicella, DTaP and polio can be administered between the ages of 4 and 6, according to the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule.

Doctors or parents planning to complete the course of vaccination may choose to do so later in that time period for any number of reasons related to the child’s development, health condition or previous vaccination.

Because children start kindergarten in that window, many children being counted as unvaccinated are on the CDC schedule, even if they are not yet “fully vaccinated,” he said.

“To count conditional admissions as unvaccinated is misleading,” he said.

“The tracking systems are not designed to track students who are simply still ‘in process’ with pediatricians who are following the medical guidelines and individualizing care to the patient,” he said.

Instead, “The schools are measuring too-young students, too early in the school year, for injections they are not overdue for until second grade.”

Kanthak said the audit numbers themselves are misleading because some of the schools listed have very few students and some of those students are missing something marginal.

“The first two schools on the list have only two seventh grade students, therefore one student missing their Tdap — sixth pertussis injection — gives those schools an only ‘50% fully vaccinated’ measurement.”

The audit lists a significant number of schools with very few students. Sixty-three elementary schools and 53 seventh grade schools have fewer than nine students. Thirty-five elementary schools and nineteen seventh grade schools have fewer than 20 students.

In those schools, having one or two students not “fully vaccinated” places them on the audit list, but it is a small number of overall students. Using a percentage in any population less than 100 is misleading, he added, because each student comprises more than 1% of the total.

Kanthak added that such reports typically exclude these small numbers to protect children’s confidentiality.

Only 61 of the kindergarten schools on the list and 46 of the seventh grade schools on the list had more than 100 students.

Overall, the total number of kindergarten students in the more than 500 schools on the audit list comprises about 5.3% of the total 471,379 kindergarten students in California.

California-based attorney Brad Hakala of the Hakala Law Group told The Defender, “In a state that has in excess of 39 million residents … it seems like statistics are consistently being skewed” to favor the position that dropping vaccine rates is a crisis.

“With that said, and in light of parental rights which more and more parents are attempting to exercise,” he added:

“There certainly seems to be a growing concern among parents … who are avoiding or delaying the vaccination of their child/children for one reason or another. …

“Some parents are not fundamentally opposed to the traditional vaccines being administered to their children, but they just want to space them out in frequency, timing, and volume, especially in light of ongoing concerns of vaccine injuries. Others want a more holistic approach and are opposed to their children having any vaccinations.

“I believe that the pandemic, the emergency use authorized (EUA) shots and the ever-increasing negative health ramifications that we are seeing arise from these untested medications that are still under EUA, are highlighting the already growing concern that parents are having with injecting their children with more and more medications.

“From the requisite number of injections and vaccines significantly increasing over the years, to the way that society has been treated by varying governmental entities since 2020, parents just want to protect their children and have the absolute right to protect their children, and I personally think that is having an overall effect on the current vaccination rates within California.”

Vaccine rights attorney Greg Glaser told The Defender he thinks the rising concerns parents have with vaccination has the potential to pose a real threat to Big Pharma, which is “calling the shots” on these audits to make sure vaccination rates don’t drop at all.

“The pharmaceutical companies fund the politicians and then the politicians put pressure on the Department of Public Health,” he said. “The first lever they’re able to control is these public health officers and public health departments.”

“Vaccine hesitancy scares Big Pharma,” he said.

He added:

“Pharma is very sensitive to trends. They can see when parents are no longer choosing vaccination and they know what a trend looks like. …

“Pharma’s clearly seeing a trend that less parents are vaccinating. So they’re using their levers of power in public health departments to audit schools to stop that trend.”

Ad hoc immunization clinics raise concerns

EdSource reports that schools and districts trying to increase vaccination rates are sending vaccination guidelines home with students and health services teams and reaching out to families to let them know where to get vaccinated.

Also, some schools or school districts are offering immunization clinics.

For example, Sacramento City Unified School District offers weekly free vaccination clinics at its district enrollment center. And Gateway Community Charters offered a clinic at its middle school.

The presence of such clinics also raises concerns, Glaser said, specially given the recent push by the U.S. federal government to rapidly expand the use of school-based health centers across the country.

This push has some critics concerned children will receive, or be pressured into receiving, unnecessary or unwanted medical interventions without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

Dr. Mary Kelly Sutton — an integrative physician whose license was revoked by the California medical board for writing eight vaccine medical exemptions the board alleges were not fully compliant with CDC regulations — told The Defender she saw the clinics as a way to pressure families and children into vaccination in ways that could violate their rights.

“Schools are not medical offices, and the records on vaccines are not complete, so some children will get vaccines they do not need,” she said.

Sutton added, “Many questions must be asked: how is permission obtained? How is the vaccination transmitted to the child’s chart in the real doctor’s office? How are adverse events handled medically and financially?”

Vaccine exemptions: ‘as California goes, so goes the nation’

California has been ground zero for struggles over vaccine mandates for over a decade.

In 2012, California passed Assembly Bill 2109 to restrict the ability of parents to have their children exempted from vaccine requirements based on personal beliefs.

Where before parents simply had to write a letter stating their personal beliefs, the new law stipulated that parents seeking exemption for their children must get the signature of an authorized healthcare provider stating that parents had received information about the risks of not being vaccinated.

In 2015, allegedly prompted by a measles outbreak at Disneyland — that the media blamed on unvaccinated children — and low vaccination rates in many California schools, Democratic State Sens. Richard Pan and Ben Allen authored a controversial bill, Senate Bill 277, that eliminated the “personal belief exemption” altogether.

Pan’s SB 277 passed in 2015 and Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law, despite significant pushback from parents, hundreds of whom protested at the legislature.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Pan also proposed legislation mandating the COVID-19 vaccine for all school children, with no personal or religious exemptions permitted — before the full approval of the vaccine for children by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The bill did not pass.

He also wrote a 2021 op-ed in The Washington Post likening “anti-vaccine extremism” to domestic terrorism.

The passage of SB 277 in 2015 made California the first state in nearly 35 years to eliminate nonmedical vaccine exemptions. Beginning in January 2016, nonmedical vaccine exemptions were no longer accepted for school entry.

After that, school vaccination rates rose. Parents who don’t want to vaccinate their children can obtain a medical exemption, have their children enrolled in special education services or homeschool them.

California has one of the highest rates of homeschooled children in the country, and those numbers are higher post-pandemic.

But California has also taken an aggressive stance against medical exemptions.

Doctors providing medical exemptions have been investigated by the California Medical Board, with many of them having their licenses revoked.

All medical exemptions for California children issued on or after Jan. 1, 2021, are subject to review by CDPH and can be revoked. All exemptions are automatically reviewed if they are submitted in a school where the immunization rate is below 95% if the school has failed to report its vaccination rates, if the physician writing the exemption has written more than five medical exemptions in a calendar year or if CDPH deems it necessary to protect public health.

As a result, Glaser said, “the number of medical exemptions in California has slowed to a trickle.” And those rules, he said, were put in place by Pan “for political reasons, not for reasons of public health.”

Glaser also said he thought these audits were happening in California because “as California goes, so goes the nation.”

He added, “When something is tried and succeeds in California, according to the metrics set by those in power, then they have a justification to roll it out across the nation.”

Hakala thinks that since 2020, “an increasing portion of the population is growing in their concern for what messages and information the government is putting forth, and the laws that are being passed that affect parental rights, especially in California.”

He added:

“I think there’s a growing distrust for the veracity of the information that is being disseminated, and on the basis of the laws that are being passed — and not just by one side of the political aisle or the other — but all information being disseminated seems to be increasingly scrutinized, as society’s skepticism continues to grow.

“This, in part, I think has a direct effect on the numbers that the audit report exemplifies.

“The public’s trust seems to be consistently evaporating, and it is my belief that a significant amount of work will need to be done to repair that trust.”

Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

September 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Court Orders Facebook To Comply With Subpoena For Data On All Users That Broke “Covid-19 Misinformation” Rules

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | September 15, 2023

The District of Columbia (DC) Court of Appeals has rejected Meta’s appeal to quash a sweeping subpoena that demanded it hand over “documents sufficient to identify all Facebook groups, pages, and accounts that have violated Facebook’s COVID-19 misinformation policy with respect to content concerning vaccines” to the DC government.

Millions of users, many of whom made truthful statements that challenged the government’s Covid narrative, are likely to be swept up in this government data grab due to the scope of Facebook’s “Covid-19 misinformation” rules and the number of users that were impacted by them.

Facebook’s Covid-19 misinformation rules prohibited many truthful statements during the pandemic. For example, at one point claiming that “vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease they are meant to protect against” was banned — an assertion that health officials have now reluctantly admitted is true.

Even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that Facebook censored truthful information.

And millions of people were impacted by these far-reaching censorship rules. In some quarters, Facebook censored over 100 million posts for violating these rules. Some of the groups Facebook took down under these rules also had hundreds of thousands of users.

Meta had challenged the subpoena on free speech and privacy grounds, arguing that it violated the First Amendment and that a warrant was required to compel disclosure of the requested data.

Specifically, Meta argued that the subpoena violated Meta’s own First Amendment rights by “prob[ing] and penaliz[ing]” its ability to exercise editorial control over content on its platform and also violated Meta users’ First Amendment rights because it would deter them from engaging in future online discussions of controversial topics.

Additionally, Meta cited the warrant requirements in the Stored Communications Act (SCA) — a law that sought to provide Fourth Amendment-like privacy protections by statute to communications held by third party service providers.

However, the DC appeals court rejected Meta’s arguments.

The court stated that Meta had not shown the subpoena will result in its free speech or associational rights being chilled. Additionally, it said Meta users’ First Amendment rights wouldn’t be chilled because “the users who made those posts have already openly associated themselves with their espoused views by publicly posting them to Facebook.”

The court also insisted that the warrant requirement in the SCA does not apply to public posts and that the subpoena “does not require Meta to ‘unmask’ any anonymous Users.”

Furthermore, the court characterized this mass request for user data as “reasonably relevant” to the DC’s investigation and said the subpoena is “narrowly tailored to the government’s asserted interest.”

We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.

Not only does the subpoena require Facebook to hand over the data of users that were banned for sharing dissenting opinions on Covid but the Covid-19 misinformation policy the subpoena centered around is starting to be rolled back by Meta.

September 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Washington threatens further sanctions on Iraq if ‘misuse of dollars’ not addressed

The Cradle | September 15, 2023

An official from the US Treasury Department has urged Iraq to “address continued risks of the misuse of dollars” by commercial banks to avoid a new round of sanctions targeting the war-torn country’s battered financial sector.

Although nearly a third of Iraq’s 72 banks are now banned from facilitating dollar transactions due to unilateral US measures, a Treasury official who spoke anonymously with Reuters on 14 September said Iraqi banks were still operating with risks “that must be remediated.”

In July, Washington blacklisted 14 commercial banks accused of facilitating US dollar transactions to Iran, a country Washington seeks to strangulate economically.

The unilateral measures led to increased demand for the greenback on the black market and damaged the exchange rate of the dinar.

With more than $100 billion in reserves held by US banks, Baghdad heavily relies on US authorities’ goodwill to ensure its economy doesn’t collapse entirely. Furthermore, since 2003, all Iraqi oil revenues have been paid into an account with the US Federal Reserve, allowing Washington to control the Iraqi economy and pressure its government.

The warning from Washington came on the heels of a visit by US Assistant Treasury Secretary Elizabeth Rosenberg to Baghdad this week, where she met with the Governor of the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI), Ali al-Alaq. The two discussed “bilateral relations and measures taken by the bank to fight money laundering and terrorist financing,” according to a statement released by the US Treasury.

Since 2022, the CBI has enforced tighter regulations under US pressure to ensure dollars do not reach Iran. Bank clients wishing to transfer dollar funds must apply through an online platform and provide detailed information on end recipients before a transfer is approved.

July’s sanctions were the latest effort by Washington to coercively intervene in Iraq’s economy, to the detriment of the country the US army illegally invaded and occupied in 2003. US efforts include blocking Iraqi payments for Iranian natural gas, which has led to power blackouts amid Iraq’s blistering hot summer.

September 15, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Opposition to Further Ukraine Aid Growing Among US House Republicans – Reports

Sputnik – 15.09.2023

WASHINGTON – Opposition to providing more US aid to Ukraine is growing among Republican members of the House of Representatives, an American news agency reported on Friday.

An increasing number of Republican lawmakers, including some so-called moderates, are opposing the addition of further aid to Ukraine as part of a government funding measure slated for a vote later this month, the report stated, citing several Republican lawmakers.

Not just the Freedom Caucus of conservative Republicans, but there are many lawmakers who are concerned with potential additional funding, the report cited US Congresswoman Lisa McClain as saying.

Congress is set to vote on a continuing resolution before the end of September to temporarily fund the US government and avoid a shutdown. The Senate is seeking to include additional aid for Ukraine in the legislation.

Meanwhile, more and more House Republicans come out against further transfers of taxpayer dollars and military equipment to Ukraine.

US Congressman Andy Biggs vowed not to support a new Ukraine aid package and expressed doubt that any such measure would reach the House floor soon, the report said. Biggs pointed out, however, that there still may be enough votes to advance additional aid to Ukraine given the presence of many “war hawks” in Congress, the report said.

US Congresswoman Nancy Mace emphasized that the US House has many other issues to address ahead of further Ukraine funding, the news agency stated.

US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has previously vowed to stop writing “blank checks” to Ukraine and is seeking to detach aid for Ukraine from the spending bill as well as hold a separate vote on it instead, media reported earlier.

In addition to working on passing a spending measure by the end of the month, McCarthy also recently announced an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

The Biden administration has repeatedly expressed confidence in lasting bipartisan support for Ukraine in Congress and in the lawmakers’ ability to pass more aid packages.

September 15, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Bosnia Still Suffering From Impact of Depleted Uranium Munition Bombings – Ambassador

Sputnik – 15.09.2023

The repercussions of the US-led bombing of the former Yugoslavia with depleted uranium munitions are still felt in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian Ambassador to Russia Zeljko Samardzija stated on Friday.

“Our stance [on shells] is absolutely clear – it has been 30 years since the bombings of Yugoslavia with [depleted] uranium and we still feel the consequences of this weapon. Our citizens continue to die today, while new citizens, children, are born with disabilities – the consequence of bombings with such munitions,” Samardzija told journalists.

Based on its own experience, Bosnia and Herzegovina “stands against the use of such shells,” the ambassador stressed.

“We are a small country and we do not get consulted a lot; nevertheless, we would like to express our opinion and it is as follows. Unfortunately, we have had a very bad experience and we got to fully experience the consequences of these shells,” Samardzija emphasized.

When asked if depleted uranium munitions are much more harmful than the usual ones, the ambassador responded: “they absolutely are,” explaining that their consequences are there to impact many generations to come.

On September 6, the US Defense Department announced a new $175 million military aid package for Ukraine that includes depleted uranium munitions for Abrams tanks, as well as air defense equipment and 155mm artillery shells.

September 15, 2023 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Blinken openly endorses Kiev regime’s attacks on Russia with US-made missiles

By Drago Bosnic | September 15, 2023

As we all know, American involvement in Ukraine is crucial. The United States initiated the war back in 2014 after decades of setting it up by financing the most radical elements of the Ukrainian society, resulting in their takeover of the unfortunate country after the Maidan coup. Since then, the US has been modernizing and training the Kiev regime forces. The culmination of this process was prevented by Russia’s counteroffensive, which forced the political West to invest enormous resources just to keep the Neo-Nazi junta afloat. Since the start of the special military operation (SMO), the political West has been doing everything in its power to keep escalating the conflict.

What started out as deliveries of various types of ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles) and MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) soon turned into full-blown support for the Kiev regime through massive shipments of modernized Warsaw Pact-era weapons (tanks, artillery, rockets, helicopters, fighter jets, etc). These were then complemented by NATO and US-made weapons and munitions, the deliveries of which keep escalating to ever more dangerous and longer-range missiles and other systems. All the while, Western officials are parroting meaningless “assurances” that they supposedly “don’t want escalation with Moscow”. Obviously, the exact opposite has been happening.

These schizophrenic tendencies are not subsiding in the slightest, as evidenced by recent comments made by Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State in the troubled Biden administration. During an interview with ABC News on September 10, Blinken stated that it was supposedly “up to Ukraine” whether or not it should target Russia proper with US-made long-range weapons. The idea that the Kiev regime could ever make such a decision on its own is beyond laughable, which means that it’s the belligerent thalassocracy itself that ordered the Neo-Nazi junta to target civilian and military targets within Russia. Blinken’s statement came only a day after ABC News reported that the US would provide the ATACMS to the Kiev regime.

The MGM-140 ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) is a US-made supersonic tactical/theater ballistic missile system with a maximum range of approximately 300 km. While its range and maximum speed of Mach 3 don’t exactly make it a revolutionary weapon (for instance, Russia’s “Iskander” has twice the range and speed), this is still enough to jeopardize Russian supply lines, as well as civilian settlements deeper within Moscow’s territory. The ATACMS can also be fired from the tracked M270 MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System), as well as the wheeled M142 HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System), both of which have been delivered to the Neo-Nazi junta forces well over a year ago.

The system comes in five variants of missiles developed since the 1990s. The basic M39 (ATACMS Block I) uses INS (inertial navigation system) and carries 950 M74 APAM (anti-personnel and anti‑materiel) bomblets. Its range is up to 165 km. Production ceased in 1997.

It was replaced by the M39A1 (ATACMS Block IA) with improved GPS guidance. In part due to its smaller warhead carrying 300 M74 APAM bomblets, the range was extended to 300 km. Production ended in 2003.

The M48 (ATACMS Quick Reaction Unitary or simply QRU) GPS-guided missile carries the WDU-18/B penetrating high explosive blast fragmentation warhead found on the “Harpoon” anti-ship missile, only repackaged into the newly designed WAU-23/B warhead section. Its range is also estimated at up to 300 km. Production ceased in 2004.

The updated M57 (ATACMS TACMS 2000) GPS-guided missile of the same range also uses the WAU-23/B, but its production ended in 2013. It sports an increased accuracy of 9 m CEP (circular error probability), but was soon complemented by the enhanced M57E1.

The M57E1 (ATACMS Modification or just MOD) is also GPS-guided and is essentially an upgraded M39/M39A1 with better propulsion, updated guidance and WAU-23/B instead of the M74 APAM bomblets. It also includes a proximity sensor for airburst detonation, which is particularly deadly against infantry and civilians. Production started in 2017.

As previously mentioned, such weapons are not exactly groundbreaking for the Russian military that possesses far more potent missiles, both ground-based and air-launched, but the real issue comes from the fact that the political West is providing the necessary ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) data. This is a significant force multiplier that can make even a relatively mediocre weapon such as the ATACMS more dangerous. Moscow is doing its best to keep the scope of the SMO localized, but NATO continues to escalate, as evidenced by the resurgent presence of its ISR platforms around Russia’s borders, particularly in the Black Sea, which puts the Eurasian giant’s naval forces deployed there in jeopardy.

The Russian military already shot down some of NATO’s ISR platforms, resulting in several months of pause in flights close to the SMO zone. However, the belligerent alliance recently restarted this highly destabilizing practice. Moscow is perfectly aware that the political West controls the Kiev regime’s targeting, even issuing orders which Russian assets are to be attacked. The sole reason why Russia hasn’t responded by shooting down all NATO ISR platforms in relative vicinity of its forces is that it wants to avoid escalating the conflict into a world-ending thermonuclear confrontation. However, the US-led political West sees this as a weakness and an opportunity to test Russian patience, which is slowly running out.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

September 15, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

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