The Most Revolutionary Act

Uncensored updates on world events, economics, the environment and medicine

The Most Revolutionary Act
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About stuartbramhall

Retired child and adolescent psychiatrist and American expatriate in New Zealand. In 2002, I made the difficult decision to close my 25-year Seattle practice after 15 years of covert FBI harassment. I describe the unrelenting phone harassment, illegal break-ins and six attempts on my life in my 2010 book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.

Victoria Nuland Resigns: What It Means for US Policy on Ukraine

Gilbert Doctorow

In this business of geopolitical analysis, there is no room for stubborn insistence on consistency of message or false pride.  Indeed, when the inputs change in a cardinal manner, I have no hesitation whatsoever to turn away from what I said yesterday.

The latest news is that Victoria Nuland has resigned from the State Department where her official rank was number 3 but where she was very influential in the most damaging way for formulation of U.S. policy on the country’s idée fixe of the past decade:  Russia, Russia, Russia. Let us remember that Nuland was the guiding spirit of the Maidan who distributed donuts on Independence Square in Kiev to the idealistic youths who sought the overthrow of the legitimate elected president Yanukovich.   As we know from leaked telephone conversations, in February 2014, Nuland conspired with U.S. ambassador in Kiev Geoffrey Pyatt for selection of the new government in Kiev from among Opposition leaders following the U.S. backed coup d’etat.

Though out of office during the Trump years, she stormed back following Biden’s inauguration. There is no question that as an intellectual force she was head and shoulders over her nominal boss, Antony Blinken, and that she stood behind every escalation in U.S. and Allied participation in the proxy war being fought in Ukraine. The idea of sending long-range cruise missiles to Kiev in order to strike far into the Russian heartland, now being debated both in the USA and in Germany, was something Nuland was promoting tooth and nail a year ago.

For these reasons, her departure at this very moment prompts me to revise by 180 degrees  (no, Annalena, not by 360 degrees) what I said yesterday about the possible U.S. role in the Bundeswehr plot to embarrass Scholz over his reluctance to ship Germany’s Taurus missiles to Ukraine.

In point of fact, one reader contacted me yesterday to suggest that the very same facts that I laid out as pointing to U.S. efforts to replace the cautious chancellor Scholz by the all-in Russia-hater Pistorius could just as easily point to U.S. efforts to get rid of Pistorius and his war crazy generals lest Europe and the world head straight to nuclear confrontation with Russia.

We still have to wait and see whether Scholz will fire Pistorious or at least fire the rogue generals.  But the departure of Nuland at just this minute gives us reason to hope that the Biden administration is drawing back from its reckless adventurism in Ukraine.

A touching note and possibly a straw in the wind is the last paragraph in the Associated Press article on the departure of Nuland which tells us: “Nuland will be replaced temporarily as under secretary by another career diplomat, John Bass, a former ambassador to Afghanistan, who oversaw the U.S. withdrawal from the country.”  Indeed, let us hope that Bass will also be the fellow who oversees the U.S. withdrawal from Ukraine.

[…]

Via https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/03/05/victoria-nuland-resigns-what-can-this-mean-for-u-s-policy-on-ukraine/

Illegal Israeli Settlements Land for Sale in Canada

Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba

The Canada Files became aware of planned Canadian illegal settlement events for selling land in the West Bank and Gaza through a Twitter post from Ghada Sasa, a Palestinian PhD Candidate at McMaster University.

Two illegal settlement sales events are scheduled on March 3 and March 7, 2024, in Toronto. There will be another event on March 5, 2024, in Montreal.
The event on March 3 will be hosted by the KW Realty Group, while the next two will be hosted by My (Your) Home In Israel.

The Canada Files reached out to Ghada Sasa for a discussion on the details surrounding both the settlements and a social media conversation with CBC News reporter Evan Dyer. The full interview will be available on YouTube in the coming days.

Ghada Sasa’s discovery of the Illegal Settlements’ Sale

Ghada Sasa is a PhD Candidate for McMaster University. After she exposed the illegal settlement sales events, The Canada Files reached out for an interview and got more details on how she learned of this event.

Sasa said she found an Instagram advertisement which promotes the “Anglo” neighbourhoods in Israel. West Bank settlements, in clear violation of many United Nations Resolutions, were also confirmed to be available for sale. Sasa had also noticed the beachside photos, reminiscent of the beaches of Gaza facing the Mediterranean Sea.

KW Realty, the company managing the sales event on March 3, and donating items to the IDF, is a member of the Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA). The OREA is infamous for their stranglehold on the political environment in Ontario, for participating in Premier Doug Ford’s pay-for-play schemes, and finally for comprehensively lining every major political party’s pockets. The Canadian Real Estate Association also has a significant war chest to impact politics nationwide, including in Montreal, Quebec.

Canada is infamous for voting against UNGA resolutions condemning the settlements. The real estate industry in Canada has therefore found an opportunity to capitalise on the settlements in the West Bank. The ultra-orthodox Jewish community is a major buyer in both Canada and the US, and they feel comfortable with the diplomatic support they’re getting from both countries at the UN. Due to the fact that the Real Estate Industry in Canada has many of the politicians in their back pocket, and are able to arbitrarily raise housing prices at will, the culture of impunity in the Canadian housing market has extended to ethnic cleansing in the Middle East.

When asked, Sasa declined to reveal her plans to oppose the upcoming illegal settlement sales events, but did hint that “there is going to be push back”. A post made by Sasa indicates there will be a protest against the March 3 event, being held in Thornhill, Ontario, at the time of this article’s release. The Canada Files will closely monitor the responses to further events will be when they’re announced.

The International Illegal settlement sales and their ties to NATO

Besides Canada and the United States’ blatantly obvious pro settler bias, NATO and the Five Eyes as a whole has a variety of states that take hypocritical stances against Israel at the UN. They do this, however, while continuing to arm the state of Israel, and by extension, the settlers. This is apparent when the IDF issues assault rifles to the settlers in the West Bank and the vicinity of Gaza.

As a result, Canada and the US have fostered an environment, in conspiracy with a corrupt real estate market, where illegal settlement sales can conducted in broad daylight by an ex-IDF soldier. Your Home In Israel’s chief agent, Ohad Girchish, was in the IDF reserves from 2006-2010. This was during the time that the 2007 blockade against Gaza was imposed after Hamas successfully expelled the IDF from there in 2005. Your Home In Israel, in particular, sells eight illegal buildings in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Condemning Armed Resistance to Ethnic Cleansing: A Depraved and Colonial Trait

“In pursuit of the right to self-determination, the Palestinian peoples’ use of force to resist foreign oppression and to complete the establishment of an independent state is an inalienable right well founded in international law. Various people freed themselves from colonial rule and foreign oppression to realise independent statehood after World War Two… Numerous UNGA resolutions recognize the legitimacy of struggling by all available means, including armed struggle… For instance, the UNGA Resolution 3070 of 1973: ‘reaffirms the legitimacy of the people’s struggle from colonial and foreign domination and subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle.’”

With pro-colonial intrigue on display in two of Canada’s biggest cities, the NATO ethnic cleansing plan has been unambiguously and decisively confirmed.

It was first announced when Ayatollah Khamenei received the intelligence reports, reaffirmed with a Carnegie Endowment paper outlining the preparations NATO made to realise said plan, and finally, with the NATO economies prepared to capitalise on the result.

The two-state solution, quite reasonably rejected by Hamas even until 2017, and in no uncertain terms rejected by the Popular Front for The Liberation of Palestine (14:22-15:01) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, has revealed itself to be nothing more than a diversion by the NATO controlled UN to buy time for the Final Solution against the Palestinians.

[…]

Via https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/03/04/illegal-israeli-settlements-land-for-sale-in-canada/

The Unthinkable: Celebrating George Galloway

Galloway
Paul Edwards

The phrase “once in a blue moon” describes an event that occurs despite overwhelming, near impossible odds against it.  In the gross absurdities termed democracies of The Empire and its Euro punks and whores, no person can run for office who has not sworn abject fealty to the shibboleths of the ruling duopoly.

Our party system is as rigid as the parliamentary pigpen of the Brits.  If you wish to make your fortune in government, you will jolly well mouth the mantras and frogmarch in lockstep with the Capitalist tyranny that owns the place or you will not be there.

The obscene geriatric sandbox of our hillbilly Congress and the manky club of toffs and twits that serves The City in England, are examples of the utter fraud of electoral politics in which, as any sentient being knows, the great masses are not represented at all and the whole infantile game is rigged for the Capitalist criminals who own those grifting whorehouses.  Governments that do not defend and advance the well-being of their working people have no mandate and should be overthrown and terminated.

The English Establishment’s political charade is, if possible, even more loopy and constipated than American Capitalism’s petting zoo, so it came as a complete shock that a smart, tough, fearless man has won election to it.  George Galloway ranks with the very rare men of unflinching integrity that humanity, in accelerated meltdown, can claim anywhere.  He has made a career for many decades, in spite of all that money and power could do, of fierce, unintimidated, blistering criticism of every sick, evil hustle and vicious ripoff with which the Tory and Labour duopoly have raped the English people.

The dirty cowards ran him out of Parliament some years back with their money, the way Dennis Kucinich was evicted by phony, sold-out Democrats, for being honest.  So he started a talk show, highly successful because it was fearless, that has badgered and bedeviled that asinine clown cluster to which he will now return, bringing his big guns to bear on the pimps and bawds who fear him most.

“England, to its royal chagrin, let Galloway slip in a back door and now they’ve got to deal with him.  Unlike poor Jeremy Corbyn, who was vilified and brutalized by the deceit of the Establishment, George won’t turn the other cheek and meekly kowtow…”
They set their media sluts and junkyard dogs on him already and invaded his victory celebration where he dismantled a couple of tv bottom feeders in interviews the BBC can’t cut and has to eat.  The latest sham issue among supine, whining MPs, is the terrible danger they face from regular British people, who find the hideous massacre of Gazan people by Zionist Nazi Israel to be, well, a hideous massacre, of genocidal intent.  This, while their rulers fully endorse the grisly military murder of a whole people.

He opened his victory victory speech with the words, “Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza”.  And certainly his landslide win is, in part, attributable to his open, courageous stance against Israeli military butchery, but it’s not the whole story.  Many English know Galloway comes out of, and is one of the few inheritors and defenders of, the tradition of politically doing all for the people.  It is a tradition that runs back hundreds of years, whose leaders have been responsible for every gain and advance of the well-being of the English in their history.  This kind of courageous and principled advocacy for ordinary, working men and women has been fought, tooth and nail, with unrelenting ferocity, by Feudal, and then Capitalist, malefactors of great wealth, including those now in power—the shameless pimps Rushi Sunak, Keir Starmer, and their united, on-the-take parties of plunder and larceny.

We, in The Empire, have had a very few of our own warriors for the people, though there are none now, and have not been for ages as our system, as Robinson Jeffers put it, settled “in the mode of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire”.  There was Bryan, Debs, and Norman Thomas, names unknown to ignorant Americans or long forgotten; Sinclair and La Follette, and later King, and RFK, and Wellstone.  They are gone in history, for vicious, anti-social Capitalism has so crushed the life out of the American spirit and replaced it with fear, anxiety and desperation for money as the only security, that the idea of producing a real man like George Galloway, who would, and will, give his all in the fight for reason, sanity, and human decency, is beyond fantastic.

Besides a chiseling, senile sap and War Machine whore President, and his shifty, sleazy, flashing con man opponent who will be our next Chief Embarrassment, we have a whole Congress of Sunaks and Starmers.  There is no trace of principle or integrity among either gang of closet criminals who inhabit our governing asylum.  A man or woman of actual integrity would never be considered, much less allowed, to run for office under this system of tyranny that despises and forbids the championing the people.

England, to its royal chagrin, let Galloway slip in a back door and now they’ve got to deal with him.  Unlike poor Jeremy Corbyn, who was vilified and brutalized by the deceit of the Establishment, George won’t turn the other cheek and meekly kowtow.

Corbyn, of the same breed, dedicated wholly to the people, was attacked, vilified, and smeared, with bald, vicious lies by The Capitalist Establishment.  After resuscitating moribund Labour with the English and a lifetime devoted to truth and justice, Zionist Jews who own the English government—as they do ours—mounted a despicable campaign to destroy him as an “anti-Semite”.  Crucified, he was demoted by the Labour Party whose very existence he had saved from its moral disintegration under Blair & Co.

Galloway’s different, a street fighter, a bare knuckle artist, and if you take him on, put in your mouthpiece and bar steel in your gloves.  And then you’ll lose.  It’a going to be a show.

As an American, I feel elation at his win, but also a deep and distressing melancholy.  Because I can’t forget that there was a time when an American could say he was in it for the people and mean it, and even, occasionally, be elected to try.  Never mind, children.  I know you can’t believe me.  How could you?

[…]

Via https://www.greanvillepost.com/2024/03/03/the-unthinkable/

 

French Revolution: The Young Napolean

Episode 36 The Young Napoleon

Living the French Revolution and Age of Napoleon

Dr Suzanne M Desan

Film Review

Napoleon was born into a minor, Italian speaking family in Corsica. His father was a lawyer who dabbled in business ventures and fought in the independence movement after France annexed Corsica in 1769.

When Napoleon was nine, his father sent him to a private religious school in France. After winning a scholarship to a prominent military academy, Napoleon graduated in 1785 as an officer in the French artillery corps. When the revolution started in 1789, 20-year-old Napoleon became a revolutionary and was elected lieutenant colonel in the Nation Guard. He helped bring the revolution to Corsica, supporting his older brother’s campaign for office in the revolutionary government, and bought nationalized church property.

After clashing with Corsican revolutionary Pasquale Paoli over his desire to win independence from France, Napoleon relocated to France where he became a Jacobin and Robespierre supporter. In 1793, he was in charge of the artillery in the siege of Toulon that won the southern French city back from its British occupiers. This won him promotion to brigadier general at age 24. When Robespierre was arrested an guillotined in 1794, Napoleon, along with with other Robespierre supporters spent 2 1/2 weeks in jail. A year later he was promoted to major general after leading the artillery in crushing a royalist protest.

In his spare time he hung around Parisian salons and was a prolific writer (mainly short stories and military essays). In 1796 he married an older widow (Marie-Joseph-Rose Tascher de La Pagerie – Napoleon renamed her Josephine), just before leaving Paris to lead the French Army of Italy.

By 1796, the French republic had defeated and formed an alliance with Spain and had driven the Austrians out of Belgium. After supporting a popular revolt to drive the House of Orange princes from Netherlands, the French army marched into Amsterdam and declared the Batavian (from the Roman name for Holland) Republic.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/149323/149387

Heavy losses inflict ‘dramatic manpower crisis’ on Israel

(Photo credit: AP)
The Cradle

The Israeli military is demanding an addition of at least 7,000 soldiers to its forces due to a serious manpower crisis. 

The 7,000 are needed on top of the soldiers already enlisting, the Israeli army said on 1 March. 

“The army requires standards for another 7,500 officers and noncommissioned officers, while the Treasury currently approves only 2,500. These are unprecedented numbers, which indicate the shock that befell the IDF following almost 150 days of fighting, which began with heavy losses on 7 October,” Hebrew news site Ynet reported, citing the army’s General Staff. 

“The army is compiling the data that will explain how dramatic the manpower problem is,” it added. 

Just one day ago, Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, called to end draft exemptions for members of the ultra-Orthodox community. Gallant said he would only support legislation allowing for continued exemptions if all members of the ruling coalition backed it. 

The minister asserted that “all parts of society” must “bear the burden” of service.

Gallant’s position could result in tension with ultra-Orthodox parties in the coalition, viewed as integral to the current government’s survival, according to Hebrew media. 

However, the army’s demand for a boost in manpower “has nothing to do with politics or the demand for equal burden: The situation is simply not good and does not match the threat map,” Ynet wrote. 

Israel is taking severe losses in its genocidal war in Gaza and its attempt to eradicate the Palestinian resistance. 

While Israel claims that Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah is the final Hamas stronghold, the group’s military wing, along with several other factions, continue to fiercely confront Israeli troops across the strip. 

A source from within the resistance told Al-Mayadeen on Thursday that the Israeli army has been forced out of Gaza City’s Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, where it had been operating over the past eleven days in an attempt to clear out Hamas fighters. 

The source added that the neighborhood is a “graveyard” for Merkava tanks, and the “bloodied and torn” uniforms of Israeli soldiers are spread out across the battlefield. 

Clashes between the resistance and the army continued to rage on 1 March in several areas of Gaza, including the southern city of Khan Yunis and the Jabalia area in the northern strip. 

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/heavy-losses-inflict-dramatic-manpower-crisis-on-israel

Net Zero is a war on the working class

James Woudhuysen

We are sleepwalking towards a social and economic catastrophe.

It’s official. Net Zero will make us poorer. A new report finds that the British government’s climate-change policies are likely to ‘make the poor poorer, and push struggling communities further into deprivation and exclusion’.

Our Journey to Net Zero, by the Institute for Community Studies (ICS), shows that the transition to Net Zero will cause a rise in unemployment, as carbon-intensive industries are forcibly restructured. Food will become more expensive. And the eco-friendly changes we’ll all be forced to make, such as insulating our homes or switching to electric cars, will be extremely difficult ’for low-income households’. The ICS concludes that the poorest 40 per cent of households are at risk of falling into ‘transition poverty’.

As shocking as this statistic is, the report is no rant. A team of researchers from ICS, Trinity College Dublin, and the universities of Leeds and York have thoroughly reviewed the policy changes and instruments – subsidies, taxation and so on – most likely to prove effective in reducing emissions of CO2. And they have concluded that these Net Zero measures will push down living standards for a lot of people in the UK.

Essentially, the general effect of Net Zero is similar to that of regressive taxation. Just as a tax that is the same for everyone will most hurt those who earn the least, Net Zero policies mete out more pain to those who are least well-off. This won’t just affect the very poorest though. As the ICS warns, even ‘middle-income households that were not previously experiencing financial precarity’ might struggle.

The report also highlights the other depredations brought about by Net Zero. For instance, the added cost and difficulty of car travel will reduce people’s leisure opportunities.

The report certainly pulls no punches about the downsides of Net Zero. But it does not challenge the green transition itself. It instead calls for a ‘just’ transition to ease the socio-economic pain caused – a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.

The report even complains that the disadvantages brought about by Net Zero policies are being exploited ‘by those who are against transition to Net Zero’. Mentioning populist opposition to anti-car schemes like low-emission zones and low-traffic neighbourhoods, it says that some activists are ‘provoking political flashpoints and civic revolts concerning “rights and freedoms”’. To get round such opposition, the report calls for more popular participation in Net Zero policymaking. The transition, it says, can be ‘managed more fairly with the voice and participation of the households and communities it affects’.

Yet in the context of a report exposing the terrible privations Net Zero will visit on society, this call for greater participation rings hollow. It sounds like an attempt to mobilise the poor for their own impoverishment.

[…]

Via https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/02/27/net-zero-is-a-war-on-the-working-class/

Unanimous Supreme Court: States Can’t Kick Trump Off Ballot

Peckford42

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday unanimously restored Donald Trump to 2024 presidential primary ballots, rejecting state attempts to hold the Republican former president accountable for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The justices ruled a day before the Super Tuesday primaries that states, without action from Congress first, cannot invoke a post-Civil War constitutional provision to keep presidential candidates from appearing on ballots.

Trump responded to the news quickly, posting just four words to his Truth Social account: “BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!”

[…]

Via https://peckford42.wordpress.com/2024/03/04/unanimous-supreme-court-states-cant-kick-trump-off-ballot/

US Lawmakers Urge Biden Not to Recognise New Pakistan Government

 

US lawmakers are urging President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to refrain from recognising a new government in Pakistan until allegations of election rigging are thoroughly investigated.

The lawmakers, all Democrats like President Biden, in their joint letter, expressed concerns about pre- and post-poll rigging in Pakistan’s recent parliamentary elections. They have called for a transparent and credible investigation before recognising a new Pakistani government, citing evidence of violations and disruptions on election day.

All 33 signatories are pivotal progressive Democrats essential for securing President Biden’s second term. In the recent Michigan primary, he faced a formidable “uncommitted” campaign led by activists dissatisfied with his Gaza war stance, surpassing Trump’s 2016 margin by over 10,000 votes. This development is causing considerable concern for the Biden camp, especially as influential Muslim lawmakers in Michigan have also endorsed the pro-PTI letter.

Muslim members with influence in Michigan, and who signed the letter, are Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Andre Carson.

Pramila Jayapal, the chai­r­person of the Prog­r­e­ssive Caucus and who often advocates for the Kashmir cause, has endorsed the letter. Additionally, Chair Em­­eritus Barbara Lee and Whip Greg Casar have also added their signatures. Ilhan Omar, serving as the deputy chair of the Caucus, is among the signatories as well.

In addition to urging caution in recognition, the lawmakers called for State Department officials to gather information about detained political activists and media personnel in Pakistan and advocate for their release.

They emphasised the significance of conveying to Pakistani authorities that US law mandates accountability for acts violating human rights, undermining democracy, or fostering corruption.

The lawmakers brought attention to concerns about post-poll rigging, citing delays in reporting results, video evidence of abuses, and discrepancies in vote totals. They referenced re­­ports by nonpartisan obser­vers, which highlighted the necessity of a transparent and credible audit process before acknowledging a new Pakistani government.

The dispute centers arou­­nd discrepancies between polling centre results issu­­ed to candidates and the final constituency-wide tally. The lawmakers noted that respected election monitors, human rights organisations, and Dawn, the nation’s newspaper of record, echoed these findings.

The lawmakers argued that safeguarding democracy in Pakistan and ensuring that election results genuinely reflect the interests of the people, rather than the elite and military, aligns with US interests.

They stressed the importance of a comprehensive in­­­vestigation and adheren­ce to democratic principles.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-lawmakers-urge-biden-not-recognise-new-pakistan-government/5851184

Antibiotic contamination of U.S. food supply increasing as Big Pharma pushes more drugs for animals

Antibiotic contamination of U.S. food supply increasing as Big Pharma pushes more drugs for animals

Dr Eddy Betterman

The threat of antibiotic resistance is increasing as the pharmaceutical industry continues to pump out new antibiotic drugs to replace old antibiotic drugs that no longer work.

Believe it or not, most antibiotics sold in the United States are administered to livestock used in the meat industry. And they are typically given to healthy animals for purposes other than treating sickness – this includes for prophylactic and growth promotion purposes.

As of 2020, upwards of 69 percent of the U.S. antibiotic supply is found in meat that people and other animals eat for sustenance. Since the drugs often persist in meat tissue, many people are thus consuming a steady dose of antibiotic drugs on a daily basis with every meal.

The vast majority of the country has no idea this is the case, assuming instead that their meat is “safe” since it bears approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), but this is not necessarily the case.

“When animals are given antibiotics, it causes unnatural growth by altering their gut microbiome,” warns Dr. Joseph Mercola. “In the process, some of those gut bacteria become antibiotic-resistant. Contaminated meat can then become a source of drug-resistant infections.”

(Related: More than a decade ago, we reported that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA] was allowing more than 30 million pounds of antibiotics to be given to American livestock every year.)

Natural antibiotics are better

Some may recall that in 2013 we published the above-linked article about the FDA’s antibiotic allowance in food that the same federal agency issued a guidance calling on farmers to begin phasing out the use of medically important antibiotics in livestock production. This aimed to stem the tide of antibiotic resistance, which is something the World Health Organization (WHO) likewise agreed was best in 2017 when it urged farmers to stop giving their healthy animals antibiotics just to make them grow more quickly.

Also in 2017, the U.S. government tightened its rules for antibiotic use in healthy animals, followed by California becoming the first state one year later to outlaw the use of antibiotics in food-animal production, as well as outlaw the use of antibiotics in animals without a veterinarian’s prescription.

The after-effects of these policy changes appeared beneficial at first, resulting in a 42 percent decline in antibiotic use in America between 2015 and 2017. Then, between 2017 and 2022, antibiotic use spiked by 12 percent, with 4.3 percent of that rise occurring in 2022 alone.

The way Big Pharma is getting around the new restrictions is by creating new antibiotics that are slightly different than the older ones, which allows farmers to give their animals a larger variety of antibiotics in smaller individual amounts. Think of it like a loophole that the pharmaceutical industry is exploiting, as usual for profit.

Besides the antibiotic resistance problem, there are also the health problems associated with antibiotics, many of which bear a “black box” warning from the FDA for being extremely dangerous.

[…]

In many ways, America’s food supply is among the most toxic and contaminated in the world. Find out more at FoodCollapse.com.

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2024/03/04/antibiotic-contamination-food-big-pharma-drugs-animals/

FOI Reveals 1/3 of UK Met Office Temperature Stations May Be Wrong by Up to 5°C

Chris Morrison

Nearly one in three (29.2%) U.K. Met Office temperature measuring stations have an internationally-defined margin of error of up to 5°C. Another 48.7% of the total 380 stations could produce errors up to 2°C, meaning nearly eight out of ten stations (77.9%) are producing ‘junk’ or ‘near junk’ readings of surface air temperatures. Arguably, on no scientific basis should these figures be used for the Met Office’s constant promotion of the collectivist Net Zero project. Nevertheless, the state-funded operation frequently uses them to report and often catastrophise rises in temperature of as little as 0.01°C.

Under a freedom of information request, the Daily Sceptic has obtained a full list of the Met Office’s U.K. weather stations, along with an individual class rating defined by the World Meteorological Office. These CIMO ratings range from pristine class 1 and near pristine class 2, to an ‘anything goes’ or ‘junk’ class 5. The CIMO ratings penalise sites that are near any artificial heat sources such as buildings and concrete surfaces. According to the WMO, a class 5 site is one where nearby obstacles “create an inappropriate environment  for a meteorological measurement that is intended to be representative of a wide area”. Even the Met Office refers to sites next to buildings and vegetation as “undesirable”. It seems class 5 sites can be placed anywhere, and they come with a WMO warning of “additional estimated uncertainties added by siting up to 5°C”; class 4 notes “uncertainties” up to 2°C, while class 3 states 1°C. Only 13.7%, or 52 of the Met Office’s temperature and humidity stations come with no such ‘uncertainty’ warnings attached.

The above graph shows the percentage totals of each class. Class 1 and 2, identified in green, account for just 6.3% and 7.4% of the total respectively. Class 3 identified as orange comes in at 8.4%. The graph shows the huge majorities enjoyed by the darkening shades of red showing classes 4 and 5. It is possible that the margins of error identified for classes 3, 4 and 5 could be a minus amount – if for instance the measuring device was sited in a frost hollow – but the vast majority are certain to be pushed upwards by heat corruptions.

Last year, the investigative journalist Paul Homewood sought FOI information from the Met Office about the Welsh weather station Porthmadog, which often appears in ‘hottest of the day’ listings. He was informed that the site was listed as class 4 and “this is an acceptable rating for a temperature sensor”. Hence, continued the Met Office, “we will continue to quote from this site”. In short, observes Homewood, the Met Office is happy to use a class 4 site for climatological purposes, “even though that class is next to junk status”. It is bad enough that the Met Office is using this site, but it is even worse that they know about the issues but still plan to carry on doing so, Homewood continued. “How many other weather stations are of such poor quality?” he asked.

Now we know.

Using these figures with a precision to one hundredth of a degree centigrade, the Met Office declared that 2023 was the second hottest in the U.K., coming in just 0.06°C lower than the all-time record. Cue, of course, all the Thermogeddon headlines in mainstream media. In 2022, the Met Office said that five sites in the U.K. on July 19th went past 40°C, with a record of 40.3°C at RAF Coningsby. Kew Gardens is termed a class 2 site, although it is very close to one of the largest tropical glasshouses in the world. St James’s Park and Northolt airport are class 5 sites, Heathrow is class 4, while RAF Coningsby is class 3. At the time, the Met Office declared that the records set a “milestone in U.K. climate history”. A national record was also set on July 18th at Hawarden Airport in Wales (class 4) and on July 19th at Charterhall in Scotland (class 4).

Always alive to a popular headline catastrophising the weather, the Met Office declared a warmest St. Valentine’s night English record this year of 11.5°C at class 4-rated St. Mary’s airport on the Isles of Scilly. Earlier in the year, the Met Office declared the highest January temperature in Scotland at 19.6°C at Kinlochewe, a class 4 site. Interestingly the previous, much promoted, U.K. record was set on July 31th 2019 at the Cambridge Botanic Gardens, a class 5 site. Even more interesting is that in the Homewood FOI disclosures, the Met Office stated that class 5 data “will be flagged and not quoted in national records”.

The Met Office is between a rock and a hard place with these surface temperature measurements. Many of its long-standing stations have been encroached by urbanisation and corruptions seem to have become endemic across the entire system. In the past, this didn’t matter as much since margin of error allowances could be accepted along with less accurate local and national weather forecasting. Measuring surface temperatures across countries and then the planet is always going to be difficult, but a more accurate reading would be obtained by only using data from WMO classes 1 and 2. However, national and global temperatures have become politicised by the global warming scare and the proposed Net Zero solution. Alarmists often state that climate ‘tipping’ points will be reached with very small increases in temperature measured in tenths of a degree.

Using data from just classes 1 and 2 would likely crash the claimed rises in national and global temperatures. Something similar would likely occur if the Met Office moved the majority of its stations to more suitable spots. A number of scientists have tried to measure the urban heat bias in temperature records with estimates suggesting a general problem of warming corruption around the 20-30% mark. Last October, two scientists working out of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), produced a paper noting: “The bottom line is that an estimated 22% of the U.S. warming trend, 1895 to 2023, is due to localised UHI [urban heat island] effects.”

Under our FOI request, it can now be seen that the problems with corrupted U.K. weather stations are similar to those discovered in the United States by meteorologist Anthony Watts. In work compiled over a decade, Watts found that 96% of temperature stations used by the U.S. weather service NOAA were “corrupted” by the localised effects of urbanisation.  Sites in close proximity to asphalt, machinery and other heat-producing or heat-accentuating objects, “violates NOAA’s own published standards, and strongly undermines the legitimacy and magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends in the United States”, he observed.

Both the U.K. and U.S. temperature datasets are important constituents of global totals compiled by a number of weather operations including the Met Office and NASA. The Met Office runs HadCRUT, where over the last 10 years two retrospective revisions have added about 30% extra warming to recent global temperatures. This had the effect of removing all traces of a pause around 2000-2014. Meanwhile, Professor Ole Humlum has noted that the GISS database run by NASA increased its surface air temperature between 1910 to 2000 from 0.47°C to 0.67°C, a boost of 49% over this period. “Frequent and large corrections in a database unavoidably signal a fundamental uncertainty about the correct values,” commented Humlum.

Pristine temperature data is available. In 2005, NOAA set up a 114 nationwide network of stations called the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN). It was designed to remove all urban heat distortions, aiming for “superior accuracy and continuity in places that land use will not likely impact during the next five decades”.

The graph above shows nothing more than very minor, gentle warming since 2005, slight warming that might be expected in the small and continuing natural rebound from the depths of the pre-industrial Little Ice Age. A reliable source of global data is to be found in the UAH satellite record, which shows less overall warming since 1979 than the surface datasets. Both these datasets are rarely mentioned. In fact one of the compilers of the satellite data, along with the UAH paper on urban heat, is Dr. Roy Spencer. In 2022 he was kicked off Google AdSense for publishing “unreliable and harmful claims”. The move demonetised Dr. Spencer’s widely consulted monthly satellite temperature update page by removing all Google-supplied advertising. Google is on record as stating that it will ban all sites that are sceptical of “well established scientific consensus”.

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Via https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/01/exclusive-a-third-of-u-k-met-office-temperature-stations-may-be-wrong-by-up-to-5c-foi-reveals/