Reader’s Links for December 19th, 2022

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Here is a link to the VladTepesBlog social media Mastodon Pod. Please feel free to check it out and sign up for an account if you are sufficiently annoyed with Twitter and Facebook to try something new.

Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.

This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.

So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.

This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

43 Replies to “Reader’s Links for December 19th, 2022”

    • sky news UK – Has the World Cup ‘changed the perception’ of the Middle East?

      Qatar World Cup chief Hassan Al Thawadi says that the World Cup has changed perceptions of the region and transformed his country.

      He also insists that there should be recognition for improved workers’ rights after previously “unacceptable” conditions – adding, “the progress will not end when the final whistle is blown.”

  8. Global deal to protect nature adopted at UN summit in Montreal

    A historic deal has been passed reversing decades of environmental destruction.
    The proposal was adopted in a marathon UN biodiversity summit in Montreal, despite objections from Congo.

    It was pushing for greater funding for developing countries.

    COP15 president China declared the adoption of the deal, as more than 190 other states rallied behind it after four years of tough negotiations.

    Dr Shawn Lum, Senior Lecturer at the Asian School of the Environment at NTU, and President of the Nature Society (Singapore), shared his views on how the Kunming-Montreal agreement will impact the region.

    • BBC – UN biodiversity summit COP15 reaches ‘historic’ deal to protect nature

      There will also be targets for safeguarding vital ecosystems such as rainforests and wetlands.

    • europravda – Historic biodiversity deal reached at the COP15 summit in Montreal

      Nations have agreed to protect 30% of the world’s sea and landmass by 2030, in a historic deal that will also provide critical financing to buttress biodiversity in the developing world.

    • sky news australia – Australia’s first offshore wind zone declared

      The federal government is heading further down the road to renewables, formally declaring part of the Bass Strait Australia’s first offshore wind zone.

      But voters are seemingly more concerned with their power bills with a new poll showing most support extracting more gas to lower prices.

      + comments on the YT page

    • PBS – Increasing number of people in United Kingdom go hungry because of price spikes

      A winter of discontent is coming for the United Kingdom. Monday, the first in what will be weeks of nationwide strikes across professions began in protest of the skyrocketing living costs.

      Now, a bleak winter forces many to decide whether to heat their homes or feed their family.

      Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports from Whitehawk, one of the poorest districts of Brighton.

    • WaPo -For better or worse, billionaires now guide climate policy

      Bill Gates and other ultra-wealthy businessmen are steering the energy transition toward their worldview and favored technologies

      They are not elected to any office. But in the fight against global warming, the world’s billionaires have more influence than many heads of state.

      As government struggles to move quickly to contain greenhouse gases, ultrawealthy investors and philanthropists are increasingly grabbing the reins, using their fortunes to guide the transition to cleaner energy toward their favored projects and market strategies.

      They are men with household names like Jeff Bezos (net worth: $113 billion, according to Forbes), Mike Bloomberg ($77 billion) and Bill Gates ($106 billion), along with other billionaires who have lower profiles but equally large climate ambition. Their role as shadow policymakers has grown amid the evolution of the Biden administration climate agenda and the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, known as COP27, where their projects were on prominent display.

      “This kind of hobbyist approach has become a big factor in the way we are addressing climate change,” said David Victor, co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at the University of California at San Diego. “Is this the ideal way to do it? No. The ideal way would be large publicly oriented programs. But that is not happening anywhere in the world.”

      “In some cases the billionaires are making real progress,” Victor said.

      It is a growing point of tension in the climate movement, as the pursuits of billionaires come under heightened scrutiny more broadly. Some of the recent financial and philanthropic misadventures of figures such as crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried and Tesla founder Elon Musk are leading the public to ask whether these people are as well-equipped to solve the planet’s problems as they claim — or if they are using their influence to steer public policy toward vanity projects.

      Many of these men have benefited from the same industrialization they are now purporting to save us from. In a recent report, Oxfam International found that 125 billionaires create more emissions through their investments and lifestyle than all of France.

      “They need to pay up, and not as philanthropy,” said Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a climate activist from the Philippines. “What they are doing is not solidarity or aid. They should not be praised for this. Their greed has caused the global climate crisis.”

      But billionaires are nevertheless stepping into the void, holding themselves out as uniquely well positioned financially and intellectually to meet a challenge that they say has become too big for government, burnishing their legacies as planet-savers along the way.

      Bill Gates-backed innovations are in line to receive potentially billions of dollars of U.S. subsidies and push the energy transition toward new hydrogen, nuclear and carbon-capture technologies after the climate package the Microsoft founder helped champion was signed by President Biden over the summer. The Bezos Earth Fund, created by the Amazon founder (and Washington Post owner), is a key partner to the U.S. government in pursuit of controversial carbon trading programs as a potential climate solution.

      Mike Bloomberg looms so large over international climate efforts that he has been named a U.N. special envoy on climate. Bloomberg Philanthropies has invested more than $1.5 billion into programs that move countries away from fossil fuels.

      Billionaires are so intertwined with climate policy now that when Bloomberg mounted a 2020 presidential bid, he could not claim the climate billionaire lane for himself among the candidates. He had to share it with Tom Steyer, a fellow Democratic hopeful who made his fortune running a hedge fund.

      The climate billionaires are not always reliable partners. Bankman-Fried had big plans to push climate action forward. But nonprofits that were promised funds from him are now scrambling for cash after his crypto empire collapsed, triggering federal investigations.

      Musk, whose leadership at Tesla propelled the electric-vehicle revolution, said as Biden took office that he was “super fired up” to help the new administration advance its climate agenda. He then soured on it, dumping on the president’s proposals to invest big in EV charging and clean energy infrastructure.

      Claims that global warming is a hoax or exaggerated have surged on Twitter, alarming climate scientists, since Musk bought it in October and gutted its content moderation policies.

      Nevertheless, billionaire engagement in climate action is growing as nations lean evermore on private companies and philanthropists willing to make big — often financially risky — bets on decarbonization.

      In the United States, in particular, an inability to muster the political support for robust regulations that limit emissions and force companies to reshape their operations has the government looking to billionaires to help redirect the economy to where mainstream science says it needs to go.

      “You can’t expect every government to do everything or be on top of every issue,” Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce, an enterprise software company, said in an interview. Benioff, an environmental philanthropist himself, has a net worth of nearly $6 billion, according to Forbes. “There always have been philanthropists and this has been the role of philanthropy for generations: to help put a light on places where there is a darkness.”

      “We can take on more risk and assume more failure than commercial organizations or governments or NGOs,” he said.

      Benioff and Bezos are at the forefront of a U.S. initiative unveiled at the Egypt summit that puts faith in carbon trading to help solve the climate crisis. Carbon trading allows companies to pay a fee to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions.

      The Bezos Earth Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation were the Biden administration partners in creating the program U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry touts as crucial to fighting warming. “No government in the world has enough money to get this job done,” Kerry said at the program’s unveiling. “We will only succeed with a massive infusion of private capital.”

      The initiative got mixed reviews in Egypt at a time when many studies, including a major new one commissioned by the United Nations, find the credits are too often a sham, covering up rather than mitigating the corporate contribution to global warming.

      Kerry and the Bezos Earth Fund assure the new program will bring integrity to carbon credits, but critics said the initiative reflected an American approach to climate change that is unworthy of the moment. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance dismissed it as “a new veneer on the same old market-based carbon credit programs that have never reduced emissions at the source.”

      Officials at the Earth Fund declined to comment. Bezos is poised to invest tens of billions of dollars in the fight against warming — beyond the $10 billion he has already committed to the Earth Fund — after telling CNN last month it will be a major focus of his plan to give away most of his fortune.

      Billionaires have long been active in global warming policy. But Biden’s signature on two landmark pieces of climate legislation — the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act — cements their role as the government’s partner.

      A clear example is Australian mining executive Andrew Forrest, a billionaire who says he personally met with Biden and the lawmaker key to pushing the Inflation Reduction Act through Congress, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) to lobby for it. Forrest’s vision for solving the climate crisis leans heavily on green hydrogen, a technology still being developed, for gutting emissions from big industrial operations that analysts had warned was too costly to be used widespread before the end of the decade.

      The Act changed that with subsidies for the technology so lucrative that Forrest, who placed big bets on it, is no longer an eccentric outlier in the quest to decarbonize heavy industry. The U.S. government has effectively anointed the billionaire chief executive of the Fortescue Metals Group — which creates more greenhouse gas emissions than many small countries — a key steward of that transition.

      “It’s very hard for environmentalists to say this is a bad thing, even though our company is everything they love to hate,” Forrest said in an interview. “The company is investing in these technologies and creating massive green energy sites around the world, all committed as a galloping herd to help send the world green.”

      Forrest, one of the richest men in Australia, will have stiff competition in the race to scale up green hydrogen from the richest man in India, billionaire Mukesh Ambani, who is leaning on Indian incentives to turn that country into a hub for the technology.

      But no billionaire is more influential in charting the technological course of the transition than Gates, whose Breakthrough Energy organization is investing billions of dollars in dozens of next-generation clean-tech companies.

      Many of them would fit right into sci-fi texts, making things like lab-cultivated meat, giant machines that vacuum carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and traveling wave nuclear reactors which create “a slow-moving chain reaction of concentric waves of fission” and use uranium 30 times more efficiently than current nuclear power technology. Another company Gates backs, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, is chasing fusion technology it hopes could ultimately provide limitless clean energy with almost zero pollution. “One glass of water will provide enough fusion fuel for one person’s lifetime,” the company predicts on its website. Bezos also invests in fusion.

      The companies Breakthrough invests in are particularly well suited to claim lucrative subsidies in the act, which Gates aggressively lobbied lawmakers to pass. The billionaire says he will plow his investment profits back into climate work.

      Mike Boots, executive vice president of Breakthrough, said in an email that although government’s role in confronting climate change is crucial, “companies, investors, and philanthropists must do more to ensure climate solutions can quickly go from breakthroughs in a lab to affordable solutions the entire world can access.”

      Yet not everyone is pleased to see government following the lead of Gates on some investments, such as technologies that aim to capture carbon dioxide emitted by factories, vehicles, and agriculture operations and bury it.

      “Carbon capture and storage is not a climate solution,” said Julia Levin, national climate program manager at Environmental Defense, a Canadian nonprofit. “Despite decades of research, billions of dollars of investment, carbon capture’s track record is of failure after expensive failure.”

      Public money is getting poured into the technology, she said during a panel at the U.N. summit, because “governments are listening to the wrong people.”

      Mikaela Loach also argued that the wrong people are charting the course for confronting climate change, at a forum in September in New York where the British climate activist said billionaires should not exist. The forum was hosted by the Gates Foundation, which paid Loach to speak. (She says she donated the fee to charity.)

      “I could only show up in that space if I challenged it,” Loach wrote on Twitter.

      She’s not the only billionaire-wary activist finding themselves in the climate billionaire orbit, in a sign of just how wide it has grown. Among the organizations that have received millions of dollars from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is Oxfam — the same group calling out billionaires, including Gates, for the climate damage they are causing.

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/12/billionaires-climate/

      =================================

      World Economic Forum

      Wind energy is healthier for us, here’s why

      The health benefits associated with wind power could more than quadruple if operators make better decisions about which fossil-fuel-based power plants to turn down when energy from wind is available, a new MIT study finds.

      Markets are currently choosing which natural gas and coal-fired power plants to scale down based on cost savings, the researchers say.

      Targeting the most-polluting plants instead could spread the health benefits of wind power much further, and much more evenly.

      Health benefits of using wind energy instead of fossil fuels could quadruple if the most polluting power plants are selected for dialing down, new study finds.
      Dec 14, 2022

      Nearly 10 percent of today’s electricity in the United States comes from wind power. The renewable energy source benefits climate, air quality, and public health by displacing emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants that would otherwise be produced by fossil-fuel-based power plants.

      A new MIT study finds that the health benefits associated with wind power could more than quadruple if operators prioritized turning down output from the most polluting fossil-fuel-based power plants when energy from wind is available.

      In the study, published today in Science Advances, researchers analyzed the hourly activity of wind turbines, as well as the reported emissions from every fossil-fuel-based power plant in the country, between the years 2011 and 2017. They traced emissions across the country and mapped the pollutants to affected demographic populations. They then calculated the regional air quality and associated health costs to each community.

      The researchers found that in 2014, wind power that was associated with state-level policies improved air quality overall, resulting in $2 billion in health benefits across the country. However, only roughly 30 percent of these health benefits reached disadvantaged communities.

      The team further found that if the electricity industry were to reduce the output of the most polluting fossil-fuel-based power plants, rather than the most cost-saving plants, in times of wind-generated power, the overall health benefits could quadruple to $8.4 billion nationwide. However, the results would have a similar demographic breakdown.

      “We found that prioritizing health is a great way to maximize benefits in a widespread way across the U.S., which is a very positive thing. But it suggests it’s not going to address disparities,” says study co-author Noelle Selin, a professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT. “In order to address air pollution disparities, you can’t just focus on the electricity sector or renewables and count on the overall air pollution benefits addressing these real and persistent racial and ethnic disparities. You’ll need to look at other air pollution sources, as well as the underlying systemic factors that determine where plants are sited and where people live.”

      Selin’s co-authors are lead author and former MIT graduate student Minghao Qiu PhD ’21, now at Stanford University, and Corwin Zigler at the University of Texas at Austin.

      Turn-down service

      In their new study, the team looked for patterns between periods of wind power generation and the activity of fossil-fuel-based power plants, to see how regional electricity markets adjusted the output of power plants in response to influxes of renewable energy.

      “One of the technical challenges, and the contribution of this work, is trying to identify which are the power plants that respond to this increasing wind power,” Qiu notes.

      To do so, the researchers compared two historical datasets from the period between 2011 and 2017: an hour-by-hour record of energy output of wind turbines across the country, and a detailed record of emissions measurements from every fossil-fuel-based power plant in the U.S. The datasets covered each of seven major regional electricity markets, each market providing energy to one or multiple states.

      “California and New York are each their own market, whereas the New England market covers around seven states, and the Midwest covers more,” Qiu explains. “We also cover about 95 percent of all the wind power in the U.S.”

      In general, they observed that, in times when wind power was available, markets adjusted by essentially scaling back the power output of natural gas and sub-bituminous coal-fired power plants. They noted that the plants that were turned down were likely chosen for cost-saving reasons, as certain plants were less costly to turn down than others.

      The team then used a sophisticated atmospheric chemistry model to simulate the wind patterns and chemical transport of emissions across the country, and determined where and at what concentrations the emissions generated fine particulates and ozone — two pollutants that are known to damage air quality and human health. Finally, the researchers mapped the general demographic populations across the country, based on U.S. census data, and applied a standard epidemiological approach to calculate a population’s health cost as a result of their pollution exposure.

      This analysis revealed that, in the year 2014, a general cost-saving approach to displacing fossil-fuel-based energy in times of wind energy resulted in $2 billion in health benefits, or savings, across the country. A smaller share of these benefits went to disadvantaged populations, such as communities of color and low-income communities, though this disparity varied by state.

      “It’s a more complex story than we initially thought,” Qiu says. “Certain population groups are exposed to a higher level of air pollution, and those would be low-income people and racial minority groups. What we see is, developing wind power could reduce this gap in certain states but further increase it in other states, depending on which fossil-fuel plants are displaced.”

      Tweaking power

      The researchers then examined how the pattern of emissions and the associated health benefits would change if they prioritized turning down different fossil-fuel-based plants in times of wind-generated power. They tweaked the emissions data to reflect several alternative scenarios: one in which the most health-damaging, polluting power plants are turned down first; and two other scenarios in which plants producing the most sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide respectively, are first to reduce their output.

      They found that while each scenario increased health benefits overall, and the first scenario in particular could quadruple health benefits, the original disparity persisted: Communities of color and low-income communities still experienced smaller health benefits than more well-off communities.

      “We got to the end of the road and said, there’s no way we can address this disparity by being smarter in deciding which plants to displace,” Selin says.

      Nevertheless, the study can help identify ways to improve the health of the general population, says Julian Marshall, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Washington.

      “The detailed information provided by the scenarios in this paper can offer a roadmap to electricity-grid operators and to state air-quality regulators regarding which power plants are highly damaging to human health and also are likely to noticeably reduce emissions if wind-generated electricity increases,” says Marshall, who was not involved in the study.

      “One of the things that makes me optimistic about this area is, there’s a lot more attention to environmental justice and equity issues,” Selin concludes. “Our role is to figure out the strategies that are most impactful in addressing those challenges.”

      This work was supported, in part, by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and by the National Institutes of Health.

      https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/12/wind-energy-healthier-human-us

      =====================

      twitter @backtolife_2023

      EU member states agree details of world-first carbon border tax

      Source: World Economic Forum

      + 1 min 41 video

      https://twitter.com/backtolife_2023/status/1604891652492906496

      ====================================

      paul j watson – This is scary.

  9. zero hedge – TWITTER FILES: How The FBI Moved To Quash Hunter Laptop Story Before, And After, NY Post Bombshell

    In the latest episode of ‘THE TWITTER FILES,’ journalist Michael Shellenberger reveals “How the FBI & intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020.”

    In Twitter Files #7, we present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/twitter-files-how-fbi-moved-quash-hunter-laptop-story-and-after-ny-post-bombshell

    =================================

    TWITTER FILES: PART 7

    The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop

    How the FBI & intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020

    https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604871630613753856

  10. As Trump-Era Policy “Title 42” Ends in Two Days, Destruction to America Looms (VIDEO)
    By Jim Hoft
    Published December 19, 2022 at 11:29am
    111 Comments

    The immigration policy invoked by former President Donald Trump, called Title 42, is set to end in two days on December 21.

    Since its inception in March 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Title 42 has been an integral part of the border policies and management techniques of both the Trump administration and the Biden regime.

    According to American Immigration Council, Title 42 is a public health law that was used by President Trump in 2020 that allows U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to expel migrants seeking asylum during the COVID pandemic into the United States in order to “prevent [the] spread of communicable disease,” as the lives of Americans should come first before anyone else.

    Emergency measures to prevent the spread of communicable diseases are authorized by the federal government under Title 42

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/trump-era-policy-title-42-ends-two-days-destruction-america-looms-video/

    • JUST IN: Chief Justice John Roberts Temporarily Blocks Biden’s Attempt to End Trump-era Border Policy
      By Jim Hoft
      Published December 19, 2022 at 4:18pm
      162 Comments

      At the request of Republican officials in 19 states, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked Biden’s regime attempt to end Trump-era border policy, Title 42, according to Reuters.

      “UPON CONSIDERATION of the application of counsel for the applicants, IT IS ORDERED that the November 15, 2022 order of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, case No. 1:21-cv-00100, is hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court. It is further ordered that a response to the application be filed on or before Tuesday, December 20, 2022, by 5 p.m. (EST),” the court document stated.

      https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/just-chieft-justice-john-roberts-puts-temporary-hold-end-trump-era-border-policy/

  11. WATCH LIVE: Kari Lake’s Attorneys Give Oral Argument In Stolen Election Lawsuit Hearing
    By Jordan Conradson
    Published December 19, 2022 at 11:07am
    199 Comments

    Kari Lake’s attorneys are back in court today for two hours of oral arguments over the Defendants’ motions to dismiss her lawsuit contesting the stolen Midterm Election.

    The Gateway Pundit reported on last week’s hearing, where Judge Peter Thompson set the schedule for this lawsuit.

    Advertisement – story continues

    Watch the full hearing from last Tuesday here.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/watch-live-kari-lakes-attorneys-give-oral-argument-hearing-stolen-election-lawsuit/

  12. REVEALED: Twitter Employed So Many ‘Former’ FBI Operatives That They Formed Their Own Private Slack Channel at Twitter
    By Jim Hoft
    Published December 19, 2022 at 12:50pm
    10 Comments

    There were so many ‘former’ FBI agents at Twitter that they had their own private Slack group.

    On Monday independent journalist Michael Shellenberger published the latest Twitter Files release.

    The latest release included several details on how the FBI worked with Twitter executives to ban any mention of the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election.

    Specifically, today’s release details FBI’s Elvis Chan relationship with Twitter’s Yoel Roth.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/revealed-twitter-employed-many-former-fbi-operatives-formed-private-slack-channel-twitter/

  13. BREAKING: Twitter Files Part 7 Released: The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop
    By Cristina Laila
    Published December 19, 2022 at 10:43am
    598 Comments

    This is a breaking story. Please refresh page as the Twitter thread unrolls.

    Elon Musk’s Twitter Files part 7 was released Monday morning by Michael Shellenberger.

    Part 7: The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop

    1. TWITTER FILES: PART 7

    The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop

    How the FBI & intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020

    — Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/breaking-twitter-files-part-7-released-fbi-hunter-biden-laptop/

  14. The Truth About the Welfare Clause

    This letter to the editor titled “The US Constitution favors the liberal left” is wrong. The letter claims that federally funded social welfare programs are constitutional because the Constitution’s preamble includes the phrase “promote the general Welfare.” The letter claims that federal programs funding food stamps, unemployment insurance, “public” education, and student loans are authorized by the preamble:

    https://www.uncoverdc.com/2022/12/19/the-truth-about-the-welfare-clause/

  15. MORE MIGRANTS! – Move Over ‘The Great Replacement’, The ‘Great Replenishment’ Is the New Plan to Flood Rural Areas with Cheap Labor.

    Migrants to Western countries like the UK usually prefer to settle in urban areas, leading the government’s Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to believe special measures are needed to ensure rural areas do not miss out on the “benefits of diversity”.

    These special measures were set out in the MAC’s new annual report published at the beginning of December. The measures are aimed, in particular, at contributing to the government’s bizarrely monikered “levelling-up agenda”, described as a “moral, social and economic programme for the whole of government” to “spread opportunity more equally across the UK”.

    Rural areas such as Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are among the poorest in northern Europe, as well as being home to older populations. Increases in the proportion of people over 65 in rural areas are driven in part by internal migration from cities. Places like London and Birmingham have seen net outflows of over-65s in recent years, and a net influx of younger people.

    https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/12/18/more-migrants-move-over-the-great-replacement-the-great-replenishment-is-the-new-plan-to-flood-rural-areas-with-cheap-labor/

  16. Blossoming Iran-Russia Axis Becomes a Big Problem
    Peter Brookes / @Brookes_Peter / December 16, 2022After nearly two years of the Biden administration’s failed diplomacy, the revival of the Iran nuclear deal—aka the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—is all but dead, likely making Tehran thrilled with its burgeoning friendship with Moscow.

    Why?

    Well, it turns out that Russia can do many things to support Iran in a post-nuclear deal world—and Tehran likely is expecting that, considering what it already has done for Moscow in its unjust war on Kyiv.

    As we are aware, Iran has provided several hundred—likely more—combat drones to Russia for its military campaign in Ukraine. The Iranian drones have had a sizable impact on the war, attacking military and civilian targets, destroying critical infrastructure, and killing innocents.

    The Russian attacks on this critical infrastructure, using Iranian drones and other Russian weapons systems, seemingly are designed to terrorize the Ukrainian people as the bitter cold of Central Europe’s winter descends upon the region.

    https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/12/16/blossoming-iran-russia-axis-becomes-a-big-problem/

    • REDACTED – Putin’s next move will be DEVASTATING, and NATO is out of options

      The U.S. is sending Patriot missiles to Ukraine in a last ditch PR move. Colonel Douglas MacGregor joins Natali and Clayton Morris to talk about Putin’s massive oncoming offensive which will have three main goals.

      JK Rowling upsets the internet by trying to protect biological women.

      Member of Parliament Andrew Bridgen is calling for the complete suspension of mRNA jabs in the U.K.

    • CIA Director Bill Burns on war in Ukraine, intelligence challenges posed by China

      Bill Burns was a career diplomat and pillar of the State Department for decades, rising to Deputy Secretary in Barack Obama’s second administration.

      He’s been ambassador to Russia and was instrumental in setting up the Iran nuclear deal.

      For much of the last two years, he’s served as director of the CIA.

      Judy Woodruff sat down with Burns at the CIA headquarters for a rare interview.

  17. Commotion Erupts in India After Man Dies Suddenly from Heart Attack Minutes After Giving a Speech on Stage
    By Jim Hoft
    Published December 19, 2022 at 1:57pm
    343 Comments

    In India, a man dies suddenly on stage from a heart attack minutes after delivering a speech on stage during an election campaign.

    Amar Nade, of Latur City, a district in the Indian state of Maharashtra, died suddenly on Wednesday after suffering a heart attack while campaigning for his wife in the Sarpanch polls in Latur, according to local newspaper Loksatta
    Gram Panchayat (village council) elections are currently going on in the state of Maharashtra, India.

    Amar was campaigning for his wife Amrita, who was running as a candidate for the post of Sarpanch, or the head of a village.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/commotion-erupts-india-man-dies-suddenly-heart-attack-minutes-giving-speech-stage/

  18. FBI Paid Twitter $3.4 Million in US Tax Dollars for Administration Costs Related to the Staff’s Time Spent Working with the FBI
    By Joe Hoft
    Published December 19, 2022 at 3:00pm
    196 Comments

    The FBI paid Twitter millions in tax dollars to censor, suspend and harass Twitter users who only wanted to share the truth.

    Earlier today, Twitter released another traunch of tweets, this one focused on the FBI and Hunter Biden’s laptop.

    In one of the tweets, Twitter reports that the FBI paid Twitter millions for their work censoring free speech

    Here is the tweet from Michael Shellenberger sharing that the FBI paid Twitter $3.4 million:

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/fbi-paid-twitter-3-4-million-us-tax-dollars-administration-costs-related-staffs-time-spent-working-fbi/

  19. White House Refuses to Comment on Latest Twitter Files Showing FBI’s Involvement Suppressing Hunter Biden Laptop Story (VIDEO)
    By Cristina Laila
    Published December 19, 2022 at 3:20pm
    76 Comments

    White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to say whether the FBI was involved in the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

    Elon Musk’s Twitter Files part 7 was released Monday morning by Michael Shellenberger

    Part 7: The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop was released Monday morning.

    The FBI actively worked to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story published by the New York Post in October 2020

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/white-house-refuses-say-whether-fbi-involved-suppression-hunter-biden-laptop-story/

  20. The annual Turning Point USA AMPFest Conference is being held this weekend in Arizona.

    The annual conference devoted to young conservatives is one of the most highly attended political conferences in the United States.

    On Monday MAGA favorite Lauren Boebert spoke to the crowd. Boebert won her election for the US House in Colorado, a state where elections are increasingly questioned and election results are nonsensical.

    On Monday a fired up Lauren Boebert spoke to the crowd about Joe and Hunter Biden running an international pay-for-play scheme that raised millions of dollars for the family in exchange for political influence with the Biden family.

    TRENDING

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/ampfest-2022-crowd-chants-lock-lauren-boebert-talks-joe-bidens-part-familys-multi-million-dollar-pay-play-schemes/

  21. BREAKING: 19 Republican States File Emergency Request with the Supreme Court to Uphold Trump-era Title 42 Policy
    By Jim Hoft
    Published December 19, 2022 at 3:50pm
    Comment

    On Monday, 19 Republican-led states filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court requesting the justices to uphold a pandemic policy invoked by former President Donald Trump known as Title 42.

    Since its inception in March 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Title 42 has been an integral part of the border policies and management techniques of both the Trump administration and the Biden regime.

    This policy allows U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to expel migrants seeking asylum during the COVID pandemic into the United States in order to “prevent [the] spread of communicable disease,” as the lives of Americans should come first before anyone else.

    On Friday, a federal appeals court rejected a bid by several states led by Republicans to maintain Title 42 in effect. This decision cleared the way for the case to be heard by the United States Supreme Court.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/breaking-19-republican-states-file-emergency-request-supreme-court-uphold-trump-era-title-42-policy/

  22. (Richard; This is in reaction to what the Fsr Eastern nations are doing to stop China from invading it’s neighbors.)

    China, Russia “Strengthen Cooperation” With Large-Scale Joint Navy Drills
    Tyler Durden’s Photo
    BY TYLER DURDEN
    MONDAY, DEC 19, 2022 – 03:40 PM
    Russia and China have announced new large-scale joint naval drills to be held this week in the East China Sea at a moment the West has continued to be alarmed that relations between Moscow and Beijing have remained unfazed by the Ukraine war.

    The Russian defense ministry (MoD) announced the drills will be held December 21-27, with a purpose to “strengthen cooperation between the two navies to maintain peace and stability in the Asian Pacific region.” There will also be an anti-submarine warfare and missile launch training component to the drills.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-russia-strengthen-cooperation-large-scale-joint-navy-drills

  24. Fire Breaks Out at Saginaw County Grain Elevator – Fire Could Burn for Another Week – Latest Fire at a Food Processing Plant
    By Jim Hoft
    Published December 19, 2022 at 6:50pm
    22 Comments

    A fire broke out at a grain elevator in Hemlock, Michigan overnight.

    Fire crews from 29 departments took part in the battle to put out the flames

    This is the latest fire to break out at food plant in the US this year.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/fire-breaks-saginaw-county-grain-elevator-fire-burn-another-week-latest-fire-food-processing-plant/

  25. DOJ to Charge ABC News Journalist Who “Fell Off the Face of the Earth” After FBI Seized Classified Documents From His Laptop in Home Raid
    By Cristina Laila
    Published December 19, 2022 at 6:00pm
    115 Comments

    As previously reported, an Emmy-winning investigative journalist went missing after the FBI raided his Virginia home and seized classified information from his laptop in April.

    James Gordon Meek, 52, went missing after the feds raided his Arlington penthouse apartment, the Rolling Stone reported.

    Meek produced the Hulu documentary “3212 Unredacted” which detailed the 2017 Pentagon coverup of the deaths of US special forces in Niger.

    The “lightning raid” was conducted after a search warrant was approved by a federal magistrate judge in the Virginia Eastern District Court, Rolling Stone reported.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/doj-charge-abc-news-journalist-fell-off-face-earth-fbi-seized-classified-documents-laptop-home-raid/

  26. REDACTED – The FDA Drops BOMBSHELL over Pfizer Vaccine

    The FDA has released data showing the prevalence of blood clots and other adverse events for the Covid vaccine and as you can image, we have some questions.

    The FDA says that it is not taking any action based on the study because the findings do not prove much and that they are “still under investigation and require more robust study.”