Of course, we all hope that nuclear weapons are never used, but what if they are?
In the 536 comments to an article in the Daily Mail about how to build a shelter for £72, almost all said they wanted to die immediately.
In Prague, people are prepared to live. The photograph at this link shows the blast doors in a Prague metro station. This is part of Prague’s Metro Protection System (Ochranny System Metra, or OSM), built in 1974, a network of hardened shelters designed to safeguard people during a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack, and to isolate sections of the metro in the event of a major flood.
The system could shelter 320,00 people for 72 hours. Tests are done every night to assure readiness. Calls to decommission the system because of cost have fallen silent since the onset of hostilities in Ukraine.
As the Daily Mail article shows, civil defense in the U.S. and UK is do it yourself. The information provided on expedient shelter building is accurate and tested. Even a couple of elderly women were able to construct a shelter, as videotaped in Oregon.
Commenters did make some valid points: Many city dwellers will not have enough land even for a small shelter, or the government might punish them for digging a hole without an unobtainable permit. Also, these shelters are not permanent.
However, they evidently believe many myths, e.g., that everyone will die of radiation sickness if not instantly vaporized.
Most people will NOT be close enough to Ground Zero to be instantly killed. Getting under a desk, or just lying down, will not help you if you are—but it can save you from being killed or seriously injured by the blast wave even if your only warning is a blinding flash, if you are outside the zone of complete destruction. Fallout is easily visible and rapidly decays. Putting mass (e.g., brick walls, sandbags, water) and distance between yourself and the fallout for a few days would likely be adequate. We are taught to panic over tiny radiation doses that might even be beneficial. This would prevent necessary immediate work.
The aftermath of war is terrible. Americans might end up with living conditions as bad as much of the world now endures. They would have to work very hard. They might end up picking up rubble with their bare hands as German women did after WW II. And what about Hiroshima? It is now a thriving modern metropolis.
For governments to engage in “nuclear chicken” is evil and insane. But we all have duties to our posterity and our community and must not abandon them.
Typical radiation doses (SIRAD RADTriage™ cards are sold out, but safe/not safe “Oh Shucks! Meters” using that technology are still available at www.ki4u.com)
Civil Defense Perspectives November 2024 (vol. 39 #6)
The current paradigm in the nuclear age is deterrence based on the idea that a nuclear attack by one superpower would be met with an overwhelming nuclear counterattack such that both the attacker and the defender would be annihilated: MAD—Mutual Assured Destruction. The term was coined by an opponent of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s goal of maintaining destructive parity as a guide to U.S. defense decisions, according to Britannica (https://tinyurl.com/2u42ctk3).
The Dr. Strangelove idea that “pushing the button” means the end of human civilization or life is the assumption of many popular books and movies. A motive for nuclear proliferation seems to be that having a few bombs is insurance against invasion, as well as an existential threat to adversaries. Hence, Israel’s focus on stopping the Iranian nuclear program. (One must ask whether nuclear-armed Israel could save itself from destruction by Iran’s conventional arms—the “Samson option” is self-destruction—short of massive U.S. intervention.)
But what if the Old Paradigm, even if it still rules, has lost its ability to sustain belief, asks Ianto Watt, author of The Barbarian Bible: The True History of Man Since the Fall of Troy, in an essay posted by William Briggs (https://tinyurl.com/msz4axt6).
When scheduled for a gunfight, you need three things, Watts states: a gun (preferably loaded), a quick draw, and a true aim.
Does the West have these? How about Russia?
Watts writes that we are “witnessing two poker players engaged in a very high-stakes game of winner-take-all. At least one of them is, by definition, bluffing. And as the cards are shown, the bluffer jumps up, and claims his opponent is cheating…. Will the bluffer challenge the winner to a gunfight?”
In the escalating game of nuclear chicken in Ukraine, Russia has calmly matched every raise. Biden’s latest raise was permission for Ukraine to use longer-range Western missiles to throw onto actual Russian turf—which can theoretically reach Moscow and can carry a nuclear warhead. Which you cannot discern until they land. Biden is out of ammo for his gun, except for the “Big Red Round.” He wants to provoke the Bear into doing something to justify firing it before Trump (who might fold) comes to power. He seems to think that the Bear won’t retaliate massively.
But what if, as Watts thinks, the Bear has a new weapon for a New Paradigm, and that the West can no longer rule the world by fear? A weapon that is faster, more accurate, and can deliver equal or greater devastation without radioactive results? What would become of the rule of the Military Industrial Complex oligarchy?
The Physics of Energy
It appears that the new weapons system called “the Grove,” as shown in the Russian test of Oreshnik (the hazelnut tree) can not only deter but disarm. This was reportedly demonstrated by the strike at the Yuzhmash Complex in Ukraine, the former production center of most of the USSR’s nuclear weapons production, and the site where the last of the Ukrainian war production facilities currently are (were?) located.
As Watts explained, the Old Paradigm is ruled by E = mc2. The New Paradigm uses kinetic energy, E = mass/2 × velocity2.
The Grove utilizes an intermediate range missile that can reportedly carry up to 36 sub-munition warheads, each independently targetable. These kinetic kill-vehicles, traveling at hypersonic speed, are claimed to be able to penetrate even to the deepest bunkers (as Yuzhmash was) and destroy them by the shock wave, Watts states. Putin stated that the temperature of the striking elements reaches 4,000 °C., vs. 5,500–6,000 °C at the surface of the sun (https://tinyurl.com/3b9cnmsb). Reuters provides a YouTube description while downplaying its significance (https://tinyurl.com/27pm72ue).
Ronald Reagan, with Brilliant Pebbles kinetic kill-vehicles targeting intercontinental ballistic missiles in their boost phase from space, hoped to make nuclear weapons obsolete. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was ridiculed and died, but the nuclear hegemony may yet end.
Western hegemony also depended on the presumption that the Empire’s strategic (nuclear) might was matched at the tactical (conventional) level of war. This was sustained by never going head to head against an adversary that could challenge U.S. air superiority. But now NATO faces an adversary with formidable air defenses. Against swarms of increasingly sophisticated, cheap drones, might our awesome manned fighter jets be obsolete? Has the West been surpassed in electronic warfare? Could an adversary such as the Houthis overwhelm the defenses of a carrier strike group, so that aircraft carriers must stay out of range?
Why Escalate?
As explained in the November 2024 DDP Newsletter, powerful officials would be willing to provoke war. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) elaborates: “This war’s about money…The richest country in all of Europe for rare earth minerals is Ukraine, two to seven trillion dollars worth… It’s in our interest to make sure Russia doesn’t take over the place” (tinyurl.com/3vu7t928).
According to former British diplomat Alistair Crooke, the escalation has been led by the UK. UK foreign secretary and former prime minister David Cameron said he thought British policy on Ukraine was “fixed”: to press the Americans to keep sending their money to Ukraine, and…to compel the Americans to escalate the war between Ukraine and Russia” (https://tinyurl.com/492r3tcs).
Why should the British lead? Frank Wright suggests that along with NATO itself and the other liberal-global governments in Europe, the UK is heavily invested in the war in Ukraine. It has propagandized its people to accept higher costs and lower living standards to maintain its support. When the war stops, the real problems for the liberal globalists begin. A Russian victory will shed daylight upon the murky financial dealings under the Zelensky regime in Ukraine. A true cost analysis of this war would destroy many political careers and governments.
The New York Times described the brinkmanship as a series of “tit for tat” strikes, saying only that Russia responded with a “test-fired intermediate-range missile.” Crooke, however, said the new Russian system had “checkmated” the Western escalation, of which the last step is nuclear (https://tinyurl.com/2ps6s9r5).
Stephen Jones, R.I.P.
Our intrepid civil defense warrior and advocate Stephen Jones died after a valiant struggle against cancer. Until the very end, he was mailing sample “Oh Shucks! Meters” to fire departments, offering to donate these expedient safe/not safe radiation detectors to first responders. Few requested them. The OSM uses the same chemical detector as the RADTriage™ card.
Steve predicted that we would soon be at the brink of nuclear war, and when Americans awakened to the danger, suitable instruments would be sold out. He made Herculean efforts to produce enough OSMs to equip first responders. They are now offered for $25 each at ki4u.com/products1.php—discounted for quantities > 100. On Nov 30, the site had registered more than 6,000 visitors from all continents except Antarctica.
Steve’s presentation on “Surviving World War III” at the 2023 meeting of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJld5ljRyys&t=791s) included a demo of a transport bicycle among much invaluable information.
Steve’s unparalleled experience with the home-makeable Kearny Fallout Meter (he and his children made thousands) is included in a 2006 interview (https://tinyurl.com/y42ke8ah). The KFM, which is very accurate if properly made, is likely to be the only detector the average American could get.
In 2008, Stephen Jones, Kevin McDonald, and Logan Connor made the Arizona Nuclear War Survival Skills tour. They drove 5,000 miles, visited about 145 fire stations, photographed more than 400 firefighters with NWSS, sent press releases to 50 newspapers, and did personal interviews with 20 reporters (https://tinyurl.com/4f8e3bfn). Videos are found at https://www.youtube.com/user/roadman911. The training sessions for firefighters are especially valuable.
Fire stations along Steve’s cross-continental bicycle ride, promoting civil defense from Martha’s Vineyard to California, also received information. Steve on his “dragoncycle” visited Tucson briefly (https://tinyurl.com/64chnwxh).
If a nuclear device is detonated, many thousands may be saved because of Steve’s work.
Empty Quiver
In December 2023, Will Schryver wrote: “one of the most strategically significant battlefield humiliations inflicted upon NATO over the course of the Ukraine War [is] the progressively comprehensive defeat of their precision-guided strike missile inventory.” This includes ATACMS and Storm Shadow.
“The Russians have demonstrated that they can routinely shoot down ANY species of strike missile the US/NATO can field against them—not all of them all of the time, but most of them most of the time” (https://tinyurl.com/yyrhexpw).
He writes that the U.S. is at least a decade away from developing comparable capability, and that this fact “alters the war-fighting calculus that has been assumed for many decades.”
The U.S. also lags Russia by decades in hypersonic (velocity > Mach 5) technology. In June 2023 Putin claimed that about half of all Russian strategic missile divisions have been rearmed with hypersonic warheads (https://tinyurl.com/4nmbxc3j).
According to the NY Times, “From Rockets to Ball Bearings, Pentagon Struggles to Feed War Machine.” To replace the weapons sent to Ukraine would take 5–13 years with current industrial capacity (https://tinyurl.com/3sepd2cz).
Russian Civilian War Preparedness
Russia has begun producing mobile bomb shelters that can protect against shock waves, nuclear radiation, falling debris, dangerous chemicals, and fires. They resemble reinforced shipping containers and can easily be transported by truck (https://tinyurl.com/57czyukn).
In February 2023, the Kremlin ordered local authorities to upgrade crumbling Soviet-era bunkers, reinforced cellars, and other safe hideouts. Local authorities appear to be spending hundreds of millions of rubles to again make them fit for habitation. The authorities in Kazan, on the Volga River, said that about 30% of the city’s bomb shelters were not in a fit state to house people. Instead, officials said they would determine whether the city’s metro system could serve as a bomb shelter.
RT.com has not recently reported on the Russian shelter program, but does carry articles on NATO countries. German citizens are expected to build their own—there are only 579 functional bomb shelters in Germany (https://tinyurl.com/ybduvfyp). Polish officials ran an exercise to test the reliability of emergency water and power supplies in Warsaw’s shelters. With a population of around 1.8 million, the city could accommodate 3 million people in the subway system, underground parking garages, and other designated shelter spaces, although work is needed to bring all of them up to standard. Emergency drills in Warsaw came less than two days after President Andrzej Duda called for “decolonizing Russia by breaking it up into many smaller countries.” Duda has also proposed that Poland should host U.S. nuclear weapons (https://tinyurl.com/37j8ebua).
Maybe Just a Bluff?
Scott Ritter states that the physics surrounding the effects of the Oreshnik payload remain confusing even to experts. Russian experts have spoken about advances in material sciences associated with the performance of materials at hypersonic speed, which may alter the physics in question. Putin claims that “everything that is in the epicenter of the explosion is divided into fractions, into elementary particles, everything turns essentially into dust.” But how much of an area does the “epicenter of the explosion” encompass? Ukraine has been surprisingly reticent about documenting its claims that the Oreshnik caused “minimal damage.” The mindset that Oreshnik is “all bark, but little or no bite” has resulted in Ukraine, “with the blessing and assistance of its US and UK masters, continuing to strike targets in the Kursk region using ATACMS missiles” (tinyurl.com/yu8cvvef).
Russian Economy Surpasses Germany
Despite heavy U.S. sanctions, the Russian economy, based on purchasing power parity (PPP), has surpassed both Germany and Japan, according to the International Monetary fund (IMF) (https://tinyurl.com/34py4pnh). This makes it the world’s fourth largest economy, after China, U.S., and India. The Russian economy is now 15% larger than Germany’s, and while Russia is experiencing a boom, Germany’s economy is in free fall. Volkswagen is thinking of closing plants for the first time in its 87-year history (https://tinyurl.com/u5rbcmuf). Steep energy prices, rundown infrastructure, a heavy bureaucratic burden, and competition from China are cited as reasons for the manufacturing sector’s “formidable crash” (tinyurl.com/32j253b2).
I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving—without a nuclear attack.
The high threat level is not mentioned by Google News, but Germany is drawing up plans to use Metro stations as air-raid shelters, NATO has warned businesses to enter “wartime scenario,” and Sweden and Finland are distributing pamphlets on expedient shelter and the need to stockpile emergency supplies.
As the graph below shows, the Russians are making steady advances in Ukraine. In response, NATO/Ukraine is attacking targets inside Russia.
The Biden Administration has authorized the use of long-range ATACMs, which cannot be launched by Ukraine without substantial U.S. assistance. British Storm Shadow missiles have also struck Russia. In retaliation, Russia attacked the Dnipro Yuzhmash aerospace manufacturing facility with a newly developed hypersonic Oreshnik intermediate range ballistic missile. Witness accounts say the underground working part of the facility was turned into dust. This suggests that the Oreshnik submunitions crashed at hypersonic speed into the workshops and simply pulverized them. There was no particular need for high explosives to do the job. NATO has no means to stop such a missile.
Four years after COVID-19, the “excess” death rate seems to be higher than the pre-2019 baseline, and the rate of strokes, unusual and aggressive cancers, infertility, and heart disease also appears to be higher. Drawing conclusions is complicated by confounders, especially the aging of the population. However, people are starting to wonder.
Could it be “air pollution” from PM2.5s, even though air quality has improved greatly? Long COVID? Climate change? Gas stoves? It could be anything except the forbidden “V” word, but two features of industrial society are gaining attention.
Plastics are derived from evil “fossil carbon,” and production is increasing exponentially. Annual output has grown from less than 2 million tons in 1950 to about 400 million tons today, and is expected to double by 2040 and triple by 2060.
Along with heartbreaking death and destruction, Hurricane Helene is bringing a deluge of sensational, fantastical accusations. The usual climate-change alarmists assert that tiny increases in atmospheric CO2 are increasing (or will increase) the number and force of hurricanes. And reputedly right-wing influencers contend that malefactors created or just diverted Helene to western North Carolina in order to kill likely Trump voters, or make it impossible for them to vote. Or even worse, to wipe out opposition to lithium mining in the area and even seize property to be used for mining (https://tinyurl.com/vzp8krbh).
Here are some historical facts:
Records on Hurricanes: Hurricanes are not increasing in number, strength, or size (tinyurl.com/34zydc8d). There is no significant trend in wind speed in hurricanes striking Florida from 1900–2024 (https://tinyurl.com/5cfzdchs).
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website details many of the worst storms (https://tinyurl.com/378rdnh3). The deadliest weather disaster in U.S. history was the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Two major hurricanes, Carol and Edna, hit New England within 11 days of each other in 1954. Category 4 Hazel in 1954 with a similar pressure as Helene hit 400 miles from where Helene hit (https://tinyurl.com/ycypj72e). Carla in 1961 covered 75% of the Gulf; Milton and Helene were much smaller (tinyurl.com/mr48mm26).
Nature Steers Hurricanes. The path of a hurricane is determined by many natural forces. It is an art to forecast it, and impossible to control it. The father of the idea that humans can control the weather, writes Joe Bastardi, was Fidel Castro, who accused the U.S. of blocking Hurricane Flora over Cuba in 1963. It’s a Marxist idea. The best we might do is mitigate things by cloud seeding or possibly disrupting the wall of a hurricane.
NC Flooding Is Not Unprecedented. Asheville, NC, flooded in 1940 and 1916. The latter was larger and caused even more damage than Helene (https://tinyurl.com/ybmp5yer).
Lithium Mining
Kings Mountain in western NC was one of the largest lithium producers from 1938 to 1988 when it shuttered after cheaper sources were found in South America. The Department of Defense (DoD) has committed $90 million to revive the mine, and Albemarle Corporation plans to begin operations by 2030. The mine, one of the few known hard rock lithium deposits in the U.S., may contain 5 million tons of lithium, which could last up to 30 years and support manufacturing approximately 1.2 million electric vehicles annually.
Lithium mining has a huge destructive environmental impact. The extraction process uses more than 500,000 liters of water per ton of lithium. Over a year, producing 60,000 tons of lithium requires moving up to 30 million tons of earth, more than the annual amount dug up to produce all coal output of all but seven or eight U.S. states (tinyurl.com/2x9evufr). Topsoil erosion could have increased mudslides precipitated by Helene’s downpours (tinyurl.com/594tc3zw). Local opposition could derail permitting (https://tinyurl.com/zd8bzm5w).
Human-Caused Climate Change
Meteorology student Chris Martz discusses theories about humans controlling the weather, dating back to witch trials (also see 2005 DDP lecture by Sallie Baliunas, https://tinyurl.com/y9tawpzz). The Left cites greenhouse gas emissions. Right-wing influencers assert that the government spawns hurricanes and steers them with cloud seeding or lasers. Martz addresses the former and explains contrails from airplane exhaust, and HAARP. The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program is a University of Alaska Fairbanks program, which researches the ionosphere. To believe that the government has the technological ability to steer a hurricane, he states, you have to believe that it can overpower a hurricane that produces (5.2)(1019) joules of energy per day, which is more than 10,000 nuclear bombs worth of energy (https://tinyurl.com/mryjz2h8).
The study of weather modification has a long history. Project Cirrus attempted to weaken a hurricane by dumping dry ice into the clouds. Bernard Vonnegut (Kurt Vonnegut’s brother) wrote about it in 1947. It didn’t work, and the hurricane’s sudden turn toward land, even if not caused by the experiment, dampened enthusiasm (https://tinyurl.com/2hyx5kb3).
Cloud seeding has been used in various areas for decades, for example, in the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Other geoengineering strategies include attempts to increase the earth’s albedo (reflectivity) to “combat climate change.” There are legal and ethical concerns about unintended consequences. What may benefit one area may harm another (tinyurl.com/5b59f8s7).
Hurricanes vs. Anthropogenic Global Warming
While the popular narrative ascribes bad weather to human-caused global warming or “climate change” from human use of hydrocarbon fuels, hurricane expert Joe Bastardi writes that “global hurricane activity can rebut climate exaggeration.”
“It’s the total picture that is the so-called control knob of climate,” he writes—not atmospheric CO2. “The oceans are a great reservoir of energy, and air-sea interaction is the vital link.”
He calls attention to increases in undersea volcanic activity, bringing up heat from the crust of the earth in the very years the global temperature has increased.
“The fact is that temperatures are a poor metric for climate. Water vapor quantified and explained is the best. But since that would explain temperature and open up the argument to the oceans and the natural cause for their warming, agenda-driven people do not want to see that.”
At the 2009 DDP meeting, William Gray explained how “Climate Change Is Driven by the Ocean—Not Humans” (https://tinyurl.com/56nbdv46).
What to Do
On MSNBC, Bill Nye (“the Science Guy”) said that the way to stop hurricanes was to VOTE—for Kamala Harris (https://tinyurl.com/3rbw77z5). [Her husband Doug Emhoff would profit greatly from NC lithium (tinyurl.com/2sdw6bhj).]
The winds of an average hurricane can produce 1.5 trillion watts of power, which is about half of the world’s electrical power generating capacity in a year.
The energy released from the formation of clouds and rain in an average hurricane is the equivalent of 200 times the world’s electrical generating capacity. The majority of a hurricane’s energy is released when water vapor is converted into droplets [AI-generated overview provided by Willie Soon].
Flood Control Blocked
The lesson from Hurricane Helene is not the effect of climate change, but what happens to settlements in Tennessee Valley tributaries under “natural” flooding (i.e., where flood control dams have been rejected), writes Stephen McIntyre.
“In 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority was given the mandate for flood control in the valley of the Tennessee River and its tributaries…. Whereas floods in the Tennessee were once catastrophic, younger people are mostly unaware of them. The French Broad River (Asheville) is an upstream tributary where flood control dams weren’t constructed due to local opposition.”
In its first 40 years, the TVA built 49 flood control dams, of which 29 were power generating. In the subsequent 50 years, TVA built 0 flood control dams. In the 1980s, it established the Carbon Dioxide Information Centre (CDIAC), which sponsored much influential climate research, including the CRU temperature data (Phil Jones) and Michael Mann’s fellowship (https://tinyurl.com/2daex935).
Developments in Asheville exacerbated flooding. Land fills and buildings in the flood plain and the many bridges across the streams have seriously reduced flood flow capacity. NC lawmakers rejected limits on construction on steep slopes, among other protective rules (https://tinyurl.com/38ecvkkr).
Engineering the Sky
“Global warming is so rampant that some scientists say we should begin altering the stratosphere to block incoming sunlight, even if it jeopardizes rain and crops,” writes Douglas Fox, Scientific American 10/1/23, https://tinyurl.com/yk5uwfb8).
Solar geoengineering, or solar radiation management (SRM)
involves injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to block sunlight. A special airplane can heft 15.7 tons of aerosol to a height of 20 kilometers every flight. Climate researcher Wake Smith envisions 90 to 900 planes flying missions every day by 2100. SRM might, however, cause nightmarish unintended consequences.
Hunga Tonga Eruption
In one of the most remarkable climate events in modern history, underwater volcano Hunga Tonga injected 150,000 tonnes (40 trillion gallons) of superheated water into the atmosphere on Jan 15, 2022. It increased stratospheric water mass by 13%, and the effect will persist for years. Water vapor is the most effective greenhouse gas. It also increased the stratospheric aerosol load 5-fold—a factor of six smaller than from the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. Corporate media has largely ignored the event, and scientists report being “baffled” by ocean warming. Could it be that the earth’s molten core—rather than the atmosphere—is warming the water? Dramatically higher water temperatures are found at abyssal depths, where air temperature has little or no effect. Lately, scientists have been discovering hydrothermal vents with temperatures hot enough to melt lead.
“Hysterical corporate media articles about global warming ignore all these facts,” writes Joel Childers. “‘Science’ has only the barest notion of what heats and cools the Earth, and they even refuse to grapple with the evidence they do have. The climate has been changing ever since God created the World. It is the pinnacle of human hubris to believe that we know what the optimal global climate is, or to think we can somehow freeze that optimal climate into place without breaking everything else” (https://tinyurl.com/53×37869).
Our knowledge of the atmosphere is very limited, but Joe Bastardi writes that “our knowledge of the oceans is laughably small compared to the air.”
Climate Change and Mental Health
According to JAMA Insights, the chronic effects of climate change, such as higher temperatures, increased or decreased precipitation, and claimed sea level rise, can impair mental health, with disparate impact on disadvantaged communities. Clinicians might incorporate the Climate Change Anxiety Scale into their practices (JAMA 5/28/24). The article has no comment on climate-doom-saturated media messages.
The New Yorker asks: “If the goal is to insure that the planet remains habitable, what is the right degree of panic, and how do you bear it?” It discusses “What to Do with Climate Emotions,” and notes that the Climate Psychiatry Alliance lists more than 300 climate-aware therapists (https://tinyurl.com/27wresx8).
Today, “only” 75% of young persons (age 16-25) in 10 countries report finding the future frightening because of climate change (The Energy Advocate, March 2024).
Climate Litigation Soars
More than 3,240 climate cases have been filed since 1986 in 51 countries, two-thirds since the 2015 Paris climate agreement. In its 2022 report (go.nature.com/3szixnv), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledged that litigation causes an “increase in a country’s overall ambition to tackle climate change” (Nature 4/25/24).
A pivotal case was brought against the Dutch government in 2013 by Urgenda Foundation. The court ordered the government to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% compared to 1990 by 2020. The government met that target and passed a law in 2021 phasing out all coal-fired electricity by 2030. After Greenpeace won a case in Germany, the government moved its goal to reach “climate neutrality” to 2045 (ibid.).
Dutch farmer have pushed back against measures that would shut down their farms and slaughter 30% of their livestock (https://tinyurl.com/3zzdfnkr).
♦ ♦ ♦
“Nobody’s honest. Scientists are not honest. And people usually believe that they are. That makes it worse. By honest I don’t mean that you only tell what’s true. But you make clear the entire situation. You make clear all the information that is required for somebody else who is intelligent to make up their mind.”
Richard Feynman, “The Unscientific Age” in The Meaning of It All.
Many commentators refer to the “American Empire,” and the state of America is frequently compared with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. The U.S. has no formal colonial administrations like the British did, and nations have no formal colonial status. Yet the U.S. could surely be considered a hegemon, as it has some 600 off-shore military bases, dominant economic power, and strong political influence. “Regime change” occurs often in countries that oppose American policy. “Imperialism” has a strong negative connotation, suggesting exploitation and treatment of vassal states as inferiors.
Victor Davis Hanson explores various empires, noting that a common feature is leaders believing that their policies were motivated by the desire to do good and not merely by self interest.
The Athenian Empire required conquered city-states to become democracies. A good objective? It threatened to destroy any who opposed it, and sent a force of 40,000 troops to Syracuse to conquer the largest democracy in the Greek world. This Sicilian Expedition ended the Athenian Empire itself. Astonishingly, in the war between Athens and the oligarchy Sparta, most Greeks wanted Sparta to win (http://tinyurl.com/mry28cnk).
Civil Defense Perspectives January 2024 (vol. 39 #1)
The finding of DNA fragments in COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, by standard laboratory methods by professional researchers, has created a great stir. It is actual affirmative evidence of potential danger—but only a first step (tinyurl.com/3af6xf3t). The scientists, principally Kevin McKernan and Phillip Buckhaults, Ph.D., carefully divulged the limitations of their work, including the small number of vaccine samples and lack of a chain of custody, and emphasized the need for further research.
The reports do not come from the Ivy League or from eminent scientists or from NEJM. Dr. Buckhaults has not yet published his findings, but provided oral testimony before the South Carolina Senate. McKernan, who has an undergraduate degree in biology, is the founder of Medicinal Genomics, a company that markets test kits and genomics-related services to the cannabis, hemp, and mushroom industries (tinyurl.com/3ns3ywny). Dr. Buckhaults is a professor in the College of Pharmacy at the University of South Carolina.
The work is under attack, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) deny that the “small” quantities of DNA fragments are a problem. The FDA sets a regulatory threshold for residual DNA, and the tested samples reportedly exceeded this. An EMA spokesperson said the agency was not “aware of scientific evidence showing that the…residual DNA that may be present in vaccine batches could integrate into the DNA of vaccinated individuals” (ibid.). And “there isn’t evidence to date that the vaccines cause cancer or have led to an increase in cancer” (ibid.).
As of Jan 2, 2024, the lead entry on the website of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) is still “COVID-19 Vaccines.” It states: “COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and free. Everyone 6 months and older can get an updated COVID-19 vaccine.” It adds that “Children aged 6 months–4 years need multiple doses of COVID-19 vaccines to be up to date, including at least 1 dose of updated COVID-19 vaccine.”
Other nations are banning the use of these vaccines in persons under age 30. Social media, especially since Elon Musk bought Twitter, is full of reports of sudden deaths and other catastrophes linked to receipt of these vaccines. Coincidences? Various authorities, of varying credibility, announce detailed theories and “smoking guns” that trend explosively for a time. Click bait for fund-raising campaigns? The theories, such as the hydras, the snake venom, and the self-organizing nanobots, fade away, and the funds disappear. So, what can we conclude about safety?
A series of guest editorials in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (www.jpands.org) considers the negative evidence for many of the possible adverse events.
Do you stand with Israel, or Ukraine, or both? Or for peace?
When 60 Minutes asked President Biden “Are the wars in Israel and Ukraine more than the United States can take on at the same time?”, he said: “We’re the United States of America, for God’s sake. The most powerful nation in the history of the world. The history of the world. We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense. We have the capacity to do this, and we have the obligation to do this. We are an essential nation, to paraphrase the former secretary of state. If we don’t, who does?”
Where the dollars are to come from is not the only question: Where do they go? And what comes next?
And how are our supplies of ammunition and weapons we might need to defend ourselves here? And is our industrial capacity capable of replacing what we sent to Ukraine?
The U.S. has sent two aircraft carrier groups to the Middle East. Why? To help turn Gaza into a crater, or is war with Iran, and Syria, and ultimately Russia the intention (or just a possible result)?
More is going on here than meets the eye, writes attorney Jeff Childers.
Some say the danger of nuclear war is growing rapidly as tensions and provocations increase, and China will soon reach parity with the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Are you prepared for the consequences of escalation of hostilities—including terrorist attacks from sleeper cells here and/or an economic meltdown?
During his invasion of Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush popularized the idea of the New World Order. Today, American diplomats frequently invoke the “rules-based international order,” to which all nations are supposed to submit. The underlying assumption seems to be that the rule maker will be the World’s Only Superpower, the center of a unipolar world. The recognized physical capital might be Washington, D.C., but the ruling elite would be globalists, who might be in Davos, Switzerland, or anywhere else.
The key concept of the globalists’ World Economic Forum (WEF) is that “you will own nothing.” As with communism, private property would be abolished, and “the people” or a few megacorporations would own everything and allow you, if you are sufficiently compliant, to use your fair share for the “common good” and the good of the Planet.
