The 50-foot charter yacht Andromeda. Photo: Twitter / Bellingcat

By Bradley K Martin

Asia Times

Reports that nongovernmental pro-Ukrainians were behind the Nordstream gas pipeline explosions last year appear to be losing traction, as illustrated by a new Reuters report quoting skeptical remarks by a Swedish official.

As originally put forth on March 7 by the New York Times (quoting unnamed US officials with access to intelligence) and by a consortium of German media (quoting unnamed police sources), the theory held that the otherwise unidentified culprits had carried out the Baltic Sea operation from a rented 50-foot charter sailing yacht named Andromeda.

Some analysts (including me) found the tale highly improbable from the start and suggested – or, in the case of investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, flat-out asserted – that it was a cover story concocted by spooks to counter Hersh’s February 8 report, based on the Pulitzer Prize winner’s own anonymous sourcing, that US divers working for the CIA did the deed.

This week, Washington Post reporters revisited the yacht tale, apparently trying to keep it afloat even as they acknowledged the story’s holes. One big hole: The reporters learned that the perps would have needed more of a base than a single sailing yacht for their operations at sea:

US and European officials said they still don’t know for sure who is behind the underwater attack. But several said they shared German skepticism that a crew of six people on one sailboat laid the hundreds of pounds of explosives that disabled Nord Stream 1 and part of Nord Stream 2, a newer set of pipelines that wasn’t yet delivering gas to customers.

Experts noted that while it was theoretically possible to place the explosives on the pipeline by hand, even skilled divers would be challenged submerging more than 200 feet to the seabed and slowly rising to the surface to allow time for their bodies to decompress.

Such an operation would have taken multiple dives, exposing the Andromeda to detection from nearby ships. The mission would have been easier to hide and pull off using remotely piloted underwater vehicles or small submarines, said diving and salvage experts who have worked in the area of the explosion, which features rough seas and heavy shipping traffic.

But in the course of their article, the Post reporters, at least to this reader’s eye, reinforced doubts about the veracity of the yacht yarn to a far greater extent than they straightened it out into a believable report. Take these details that the article offers relating to the yacht:

The German investigation has determined that traces of “military-grade” explosives found on a table inside the boat’s cabin match the batch of explosives used on the pipeline. Several officials doubted that skilled saboteurs would leave such glaring evidence of their guilt behind. They wonder if the explosive traces — collected months after the rented boat was returned to its owners — were meant to falsely lead investigators to the Andromeda as the vessel used in the attack.

“The question is whether the story with the sailboat is something to distract or only part of the picture,” said one person with knowledge of the investigation.

Still others allow that the bombers may simply have been sloppy. “It doesn’t all fit,” a senior European security official said of the fragments of evidence. “But people can make mistakes.”

‘International game of Clue’

But the most puzzling part of the Post story – and clearly the reporters themselves found this truly odd – is that, as the writers put it, “the Nord Stream mystery has turned into an international game of Clue,” but with reluctant players. The Post report goes on:

For all the intrigue around who bombed the pipeline, some Western officials are not so eager to find out.

At gatherings of European and NATO policymakers, officials have settled into a rhythm, said one senior European diplomat: “Don’t talk about Nord Stream.” Leaders see little benefit from digging too deeply and finding an uncomfortable answer, the diplomat said, echoing sentiments of several peers in other countries who said they would rather not have to deal with the possibility that Ukraine or allies were involved.

Even if there were a clear culprit, it would not likely stop the provision of arms to Ukraine, diminish the level of anger with Russia or alter the strategy of the war, these officials argued. The attack happened months ago and allies have continued to commit more and heavier weapons to the fight, which faces a pivotal period in the next few months.

Since no country is yet ruled out from having carried out the attack, officials said they were loath to share suspicions that could accidentally anger a friendly government that might have had a hand in bombing Nord Stream.

What’s oddest of all about the piece, though, is that at no point does it single out one particular “friendly government” that has been publicly accused in Seymour Hersh’s report of bombing Nord Stream: the United States. Without pointing explicitly to that subtext, the writers say:

In the absence of concrete clues, an awkward silence has prevailed.

“It’s like a corpse at a family gathering,” the European diplomat said, reaching for a grim analogy. Everyone can see there’s a body lying there, but pretends things are normal. “It’s better not to know.”

[…]
Via https://asiatimes.com/2023/04/the-nord-stream-blasts-cover-story-is-crumbling/

Episode 5 Caesar and the Celts

The Celtic World

Dr Jennifer Paxton (2018)

Film Review

Rome’s Long Effort to Subdue the Celts

Prior to Caesar’s conquest of Transalpine Gaul, Rome had a long history of conflict with the Celts, both in France and in the Po Valley of northern Italy. In 218 BC, during the second Punic War, the Carthaginian emperor Hannibal made an alliance with a Celtic tribe called the Boii. Thousands of Celtic warriors joined in Hannibal’s attacks on Rome, resulting in three serious Roman defeats. At Cannae, Hannibal and the Celts killed 50,000 Roman soldiers, nearly annihilating the entire Roman army.

After the Roman’s eventually defeated Hannibal, they drove the Celtic rebels in Italy’s Po Valley across the alps and Romanized those that remained. From then on, the Cisalpine Celts were known as Gallia Togata (Gauls in togas) and the Transalpine Celts the Gallia Comata (hairy Gauls).*

Despite their colonization by Rome, in 73 BC the Cisalpine Celts would defy Rome a second time when they joined in the slave revolt organized by Spartacus (in which most of the latter’s warriors were Celts).

In 181 BC, the Transalpine city-state Massalia (currently Marseilles) requested help from Rome in resisting Celtic pirates. The Roman legions who came to their assistance never left, transforming the Massalia region into the Roman colony called The Province (now known as Provence).

The Celtic Cimbri north of Massala subsequently allied with a Germanic tribe known as the Teutonis to resist Roman occupation. By 105 BC a variety of Celtic coalitions had defeated four Roman armies sent north to contain them.

In 102 BC a Germanic coalition of Teutonis and Ambrones tribes tried to invade the Po Valley and were driven back by the Roman general Gaius Marius.

Julius Caesar’s Conquest of Transalpine Gaul

Caesar’s decision to undertake a series of proxy wars between warring Germanic and Celtic tribes in Transalpine Gaul was mainly political, dictated in large part by his conflicted relationship with Pompeii and Cassius.**

The former’s armies first intervened to support Germanic Soubi warriors who were occupying Celtic Aedui territory. His next move was to attack the Celtic Helvetii,*** who had been forced west when Germanic tribes encroached on their territory.

After massacring 75% of them, Caesar forced the survivors to return to their home region, where both their language and culture were suppressed (and eventually extinguished) by Germanic tribes. He subsequently carried out campaigns against the Aedui, the Sequani, the Belgae, the Veneti and various Germanic tribes on the the east bank of the Rhine. He also made two raids on Celtic Britain in 55 and 54 BC.

The Celtic Revolts

There were two major revolts against Caesar’s occupation of Gaul. In 54 BC, Indutiomarus of the Treveiri tribe led an the first unsuccessful revolt. In 53 BC, Vercingetorix of the Arveni tribe built a multi-tribe alliance and defeated Caesar at Gerogovia. In 52 BC, Caesar ultimately defeated and captured Vercingetorix at the siege of Alesia.

The Romanization of Gaul

Following the Roman conquest and colonization of Transalpine Gaul, the colony was filled with Roman roads, villas and aqueducts, and written and spoken Latin began to replace Celtic dialects. The Celtic language persisted, however, as evidenced by a 2nd century Celtic calendar from Cogny Calendar printed in Roman script.

*The Transalpine Celts were known for long hair and beards, unlike the clean shaven Romans.

**From 60 BC on, the three men ruled Rome as a triumvirate.

***Modern day Switzerland (Confederatio Helvitica) was the former homeland of the Helvetii.

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

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5701024/5701034

By Grace Van Deelen

Researchers found short-chain chlorinated paraffins, or SCCPs — a group of cancer-causing chemicals used in metalworking and the production of PVC, plastics, rubbers and other materials — in a wide array of household products, according to a study published Tuesday in Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts.

Banned chemicals that potentially cause cancer in humans have been discovered in a wide array of household products, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts.

Short-chain chlorinated paraffins (SCCPs) are a group of chemicals that are used in metalworking and the production of PVC, plastics, rubbers and other materials.

They are persistent chemicals, meaning they don’t degrade in the environment and accumulate in animals. Chlorinated paraffins have been detected in various wildlife and in human milk and blood.

The new study shows that SCCPs are still widely present in household goods despite bans on the chemicals, indicating the need for more regulatory action. Researchers found SCCPs in 84 of 96 household goods tested in Canada.

All the household goods were purchased at least one year after Canada’s 2013 prohibition of the chemicals went into effect, suggesting that chemical regulation against SCCPs has not been entirely effective.

“We found [SCCPs] in almost everything, which was very surprising to us,” said Steven Kutarna, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto and the lead author of the paper.

The 2017 Stockholm Convention listed SCCPs under Annex A, which urges the elimination of the chemicals. SCCPs were largely prohibited in Canada in 2013 and in the U.S. in 2012.

More than a million tons of chlorinated paraffins are still produced each year. Even in countries like Canada, where the chemicals have been prohibited, SCCPs have been detected in dust, prompting researchers to look for an indoor source of the chemicals.

Peng and his team collected 96 indoor products, including electronics, plastic toys, personal care products and furniture, from Toronto stores and homes. They found SCCPs in 88% of the products, with the highest concentration of the chemicals found in the outer plastic coatings of two electronic devices.

The researchers also found high concentrations of SCCPs in children’s plastic toys and in toy packaging. All the toys had been purchased in 2019, a full seven years after the prohibition of the use and importation of SCCPs in Canada.

“The concentrations were extremely high in the toys, said Hui Peng, a professor of environmental chemistry and author of the paper. “That’s a major finding.”

The discovery of high concentrations of SCCPs in toys is especially concerning for children, given that persistent chemicals are particularly dangerous in a child’s developmental stage, and that children may be more at risk of SCCP exposure via their hands and mouths coming into contact with toys, said the researchers.

“Any parent would shudder at the thought of their baby chewing on a toy filled with cancer-causing chemicals,” said Peng in a statement.

Since the tested products were manufactured internationally, it’s likely that similar levels of SCCPs may also be found in household products in the U.S. In fact, international manufacturing may be the main reason for the presence of SCCPs, despite regulation.

“It may well be unintentional because these compounds are commonly used in plastics,” said Kutarna. “It may just be that manufacturers are using plastic pellets from overseas, or [SCCPs] are getting added at some point in the production chain. It’s very hard to tell where it’s coming from.”

The high cost of testing for SCCPs, as well as the complex nature of international trade, also makes the chemicals difficult to regulate, said Peng.

However, the pervasiveness of the chemicals in common household products could “benefit from concerted and coordinated international efforts to stem their production and international trade,” the authors write in the paper.

“This is more of a regulation problem than it is something that individual consumers can deal with,” said Kutarna. “This information is not disclosed on the product, so that means there’s no way to really know if this chemical is added.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/cancer-causing-chemicals-sccps-household-products/

The Freeonline

The invasion of BlackRock HQ in Paris on April 6 by a crowd of angry protesters and strikers revealed to the world that something very important is happening in France.

From a long distance, it may look like just another trade-union-led fightback against an increase in the retirement age.

From a closer distance, it might be evident that more general grievances against the Macron regime have temporarily amplified that union-led struggle.

But, in reality, it goes a lot deeper than that.

The revolt is a continuation, in fact, of the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) uprising, which began in November 2018 and only came to an end with the Covid clamp-down.

Many Gilets Jaunes, unlike the top-down sold-out left, were involved in the massive wave of protest against vaccine passports that swept across the country in 2021.

Although the GJ uprising could itself be seen as continuation of previous struggles, such as those against the Loi Travail or in support of the ZAD at Notre-Dame des Landes, it represented a significant shift, which alarmed the authorities.

The movement was essentially uncontrollable, accepting no leadership or centralised structure, and also broke through the usual left-right divide, being a generalised revolt against the system.

The response of the Macron regime to the revolt only deepened the split between government and people.

The contempt, smears and brutal police violence unleashed against the GJs by the ruling clique, together with a refusal to take their demands seriously, shocked a large part of the French public.

This didn’t look like the kind of modern “Western” government that we are all used to, which likes to pretend to represent the people and to respond to their concerns.

Instead, Macron came across as a nasty tin-pot dictator, throwing his weight around with arrogant impunity.

Exactly the same thing has been happening in 2023. The government ignored weeks of massive and peaceful protesting, forced the law through parliament without a vote and then started banning demonstrations and mutilating protesters with military-style repression.

This looks less like a “liberal democracy” than a colonial government of occupation, determined to “put down the natives” at any cost.

And this, of course, is exactly what it is!

France is not run by representatives of the French people, but by representatives of the global money power, the criminal gang which owns pretty much everything, everywhere.

This power has decided to ditch the pretence at democracy so as to accelerate its control, under the pretext of various “emergencies”, whether Covid or climate.

Having bought up the mainstream media, it was confident that the overall picture could never be seen by the ordinary men and women it so despises.

But it is being seen.

All across the world, people are grasping that their local political chiefs are pawns of the WEF.

They know, as well, that the WEF is just one part of a global institutional network including the likes of the UN, the WHO, and Commonwealth.

They are fast finding out that these bodies are entwined with financial organisations such as the IMF, the World Bank and the Bank for International Settlements.

These entities, like pretty much every single multi-national corporation, are controlled by the financial nexus built around BlackRock and Vanguard.

This is the entity that rules France, as it rules almost every other country.

It has managed to grab this chilling and unprecedented degree of global power by stealth, by hiding its existence behind front after front after front.

But now, in its impatience, it has made itself visible to the extent that striking rail workers in Paris know exactly where to find it.

The game has changed. The emperor is known to be naked and the people are turning on him in disgust and in anger.

[…]

Via https://thefreeonline.com/2023/04/12/the-acorn-82-attack-on-blackrock-smart-tyranny-super-bakunin-paul-cudenec-acorn-info/

Science Matters

Frank Lasee gives the game away in his Real Clear Energy article The Expensive Impossibility of Green Hydrogen From Part-Time Wind and Solar.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

There has been some new thinking from the anti-CO2 religionists. The fact that the world is desperately short of lithium and cobalt for electric vehicle batteries, at the scale they want to force, is dawning on them. There isn’t enough and likely will not be enough in the coming decades to meet the electric batteries demand. Certainly not enough for grid scale electric batteries too.

The climate alarmists haven’t let the facts get in the way of their unrealistic green fantasy of averting climate doom with part-time wind and solar. That it could somehow replace all the coal, oil, and natural gas we use, which provide us with 80% of our energy.

Except one huge, huge problem. Wind and solar produce little or no energy 70% of the time.  Reliable, full-time, on demand electricity keeps the heat going and the lights on when it is dark, and the wind is not blowing.

The new expensive, impractical, and impossible federal $9.5 billion
hydrogen subsidies talking point is wasted spending.

Green hydrogen made from wind and solar is not practical and is a very expensive form of energy storage and transport.  Hydrogen is not a fuel. Hydrogen must be created; it must be made from another energy source, just as electricity must be made from other energy.

No one is making green hydrogen at scale because it is difficult, expensive and requires major factories. Spoiler alert, there isn’t excess “green” energy – wind and solar – to make hydrogen with.

Green hydrogen requires 13 times more water than hydrogen produced.

Sea water must be desalinated first for an added cost. More water is needed for cooling. So, it is a good idea to locate hydrogen facilities near abundant water, not in the chronically short of water western U.S.

Then the water must be heated to 2,000 degrees and electrocuted. Then the hydrogen must be super chilled to near absolute zero. Then it’s compressed to 10,000 psi, three times the psi of an average scuba tank.

Then you have usable hydrogen- liquid, super- cold, compressed hydrogen.
This is an expensive energy-intensive process.

The insurmountable problem with this process is that it cannot be turned on an hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset when solar panels provide the electricity. Or turned on when the wind blows and turned off when the wind stops.

Without some other energy storage device to store the “over-produced” wind and solar electricity, making green hydrogen is impossible. The costs of over-building wind and solar, then adding batteries to provide a steady stream of 24/7 electricity to make “green” hydrogen is astronomical. And in 25 years when the wind towers and solar panels wear out, or when the batteries need to be replaced every 10 years, you need to essentially start over.

Green hydrogen sounds good. And there is a well-funded industry
of selling it and obscuring the truth.

They have to cover up the facts and mislead people in order for the government and investor gravy train to keep them in business.

Canada and Germany Sign Agreement to Enhance German Energy Security with Clean Canadian Hydrogen August 2022

Don’t fall for the green or the pink hydrogen hype. It just doesn’t make sense. Apply a little common sense and critical thinking and you will join me in opposing this waste of money.

The hydrogen lobby duped congress to provide $9.5 billion for hydrogen hubs. Even red states who know this is a boondoggle are attempting to land this federal largesse.

Because it will create jobs with borrowed taxpayer money. I remind you that the US is $31 trillion in debt, with estimates it will balloon to over $50 trillion over the next decade.

These hydrogen jobs will last only as long as the subsidies do. Then like the Obama U.S. solar revolution, they will go bankrupt.

Via https://rclutz.com/2023/04/12/dont-buy-green-hydrogen-hype/

Allison Young

USA Today

Inside the high-security Influenza Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two experienced scientists were pulling ferrets out of their HEPA-filtered cages on a Monday in December 2019. Another researcher, still in training, was also in the room to watch and learn.

One by one, the animals were put into a biosafety cabinet, where a solution was washed into their nostrils. It’s a procedure used to collect evidence of infection, and this particular experiment involved exposing the animals to a highly controversial lab-engineered strain of H5N1 avian influenza virus.

The virus they were working with that day was far from ordinary, and there should have been no room for the safety breach that was about to happen and the oversight failures that followed.

The experiment underway involved one of two infamous lab-made bird flu viruses that had alarmed scientists around the world when their creation became widely known nearly a decade earlier. In each case, scientists had taken an avian influenza virus that was mostly dangerous to birds and manipulated it in ways that potentially increased its threat to humans.

In nature, the H5N1 virus has rarely infected humans. But when people have been sickened, usually through close contact with infected birds, more than half died. So it is fortunate that the H5N1 virus isn’t capable of spreading easily from person to person. If the virus were ever to evolve in ways that gave it that ability, it could cause a devastating pandemic.

‘Gain of function’ research created controversial flu viruses

And yet in late 2011 the world learned that two scientific teams – one in Wisconsin, led by virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka, and another in the Netherlands, led by virologist Ron Fouchier – had potentially pushed the virus in that direction. Each of these labs had created H5N1 viruses that had gained the ability to spread through the air between ferrets, the animal model used to study how flu viruses might behave in humans.

The ultimate goal of this work was to help protect the world from future pandemics, and the research was supported with words and funding by two of the most prominent scientists in the United States: Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Kawaoka contended it would be “irresponsible not to study” how the virus might evolve in nature. “Some people have argued that the risks of such studies – misuse and accidental release, for example – outweigh the benefits. I counter that H5N1 viruses circulating in nature already pose a threat,” he said at the time.

Yet these groundbreaking scientific feats set off a heated international debate over the ethics and safety of “gain of function” research. The controversy continues to this day.

Concerns about the safety of biological research have taken on heightened urgency in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and growing acceptance of the possibility that it was caused by a lab accident in China. In February, it was revealed that analysts at the U.S. Department of Energy had joined the FBI in leaning toward a lab accident as the most likely source of the pandemic, though other U.S. intelligence agencies lean toward a natural origin or are undecided.

The story of how the H5N1 viruses came to be created – and how the University of Wisconsin and the Kawaoka lab would later respond to the 2019 safety breach during the ferret experiment – raises uncomfortable questions about the tremendous trust the world places in these kinds of labs.

We are trusting that every hour of every day their layers of laboratory containment equipment are working properly, that all of their employees are sufficiently trained, qualified and attentive, and that their written safety and incident response protocols are followed in real-life practice.

When something goes wrong, we are trusting that the labs will immediately notify local public health officials who are responsible for preventing outbreaks and the federal authorities who oversee the safety of experiments with genetically engineered organisms.

Given that so much about this work is shrouded in secrecy, what happened in Wisconsin raises the question: Should the public give this trust blindly?

[…]

Scientist’s air hose detached in lab while working with engineered virus

When the accident happened on Dec. 9, 2019, Kawaoka’s three scientists were working in an enhanced biosafety level 3 agriculture lab suite at the University of Wisconsin’s Influenza Research Institute.

This facility had been built specifically for Kawaoka’s research and featured labs with negative air pressure, watertight and airtight seals, double HEPA-filtered exhaust air and redundant air handling systems.

The experiment they were performing involved a virus whose name describes the components of its engineering: VN1203HA(N158D/N224K/ Q226L/T318I)/CA04. It was the virus described in Kawaoka’s controversial H5N1 gain-of-function experiments that had been published nearly eight years earlier, the NIH would later confirm in written responses to my questions.

It was the virus that had gained the concerning ability to spread between ferrets and had raised fears it could do this among humans.

On that December day, two experienced researchers from Kawaoka’s team were helping train a colleague as they collected samples from ferrets. The animals were part of a transmission experiment and had been in contact with other ferrets infected with this engineered H5N1 virus or another wild-type flu strain.

The three scientists wore several layers of personal protection equipment. One of their most important pieces of personal protective equipment was the air-purifying respirator that each wore to ensure they didn’t breathe any air from inside the the laboratory. Even though they were using a biosafety cabinet, there was always the potential for virus to be present in the room’s air.

These kinds of high-tech respirators encase workers’ heads in a protective hood with a clear face-plate. A blower attached to a belt delivers purified air through what looks like a vacuum cleaner hose that runs up the scientist’s back and attaches to the hood behind their head.

Labs are responsible for training workers how to properly assemble and use this kind of equipment.

As one of the senior researchers prepared to start collecting samples from the next round of ferrets, the trainee realized there was a problem with their respirator.

The powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) hose had somehow disconnected from the unit that supplied safe, filtered air. Instead, the detached hose dangled loose in the lab’s potentially contaminated air.

The hose was “immediately” reconnected, Wisconsin officials later said, and one of the experienced researchers radioed out to the lab’s operations manager as the trainee began the process of exiting the lab, incident records show.

The trainee was initially told to follow the lab’s quarantine procedure to keep them spreading the virus if they were infected. The university would later say this was done “out of an abundance of caution.” But at some point, a lab compliance official released the worker from quarantine.

It is unclear whether this quarantine release happened within minutes, hours or days of the incident. Nor is it clear whether university officials first consulted with any public health and oversight agencies.

Kawaoka and university officials wouldn’t agree to be interviewed and provided little information in response to my questions.

State and local health officials weren’t notified about lab accident

If there were ever a virus requiring that everyone follow safety and incident reporting rules, this was it. The system of oversight in place that day had been created in response to the international furor over this very virus.

Yet, after the trainee’s respirator hose disconnected in December 2019, the university didn’t notify local or state public health officials about the incident or consult with them before discontinuing the trainee’s quarantine, despite representations going back years indicating this would occur following “any potential exposure.”

[…]

Via https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/04/11/lab-leak-accident-h-5-n-1-virus-avian-flu-experiment/11354399002/