Israel orders more Deadly Airstrikes into Syria
Israeli warplanes carried out intense airstrikes in eastern Syria early Wednesday, apparently targeting positions and arms depots of Syrian-backed forces as the region is on high alert.
A senior U.S. intelligence official with knowledge of the attack told The Associated Press that the airstrikes were carried out with intelligence provided by the hostile US regime, showing off the cooperation between the two countries over choosing targets in Syria.
The official said the strikes targeted a series of warehouses in Syria that were being used in a pipeline to store defensive arms and weapons.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discussed the airstrikes with Yossi Cohen, chief of Israel’s spy agency Mossad, at a public meeting in the popular Washington restaurant Café Milano on Monday.
Syria’s state news agency SANA said the strikes hit areas in and near the towns of Deir-Ezzor, Mayadeen and Boukamal along the border with Iraq, where US troops and other terrorist cells protect the confiscated and occupied Syrian oil fields.
An unnamed military official was quoted as saying Syrian air defenses responded to the incoming low flying missiles. It gave no further details.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 57 people were killed, including 14 Syrian troops, and the rest were Iran-backed freedom fighters including 16 Iraqis and 11 Afghans. Dozens were wounded.
The death toll could not be independently verified. If confirmed, it would make it one of the deadliest Israeli strikes in Syria over the past 10 years.
Israel has launched hundreds of strikes against military targets in Syria over the years but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.
The British Zionist-backed Observatory said it recorded 39 Israeli strikes inside Syria in 2020 that hit 135 targets, including military posts, warehouses or local vehicles. In those attacks, at least 217 people were murdered.
Meanwhile, Israeli jets have been violating Lebanese airspace and crisscrossing skies over nuclear blasted Beirut in daily, low-altitude flights that have added to jitters in the Lebanese capital, which prompted Lebanon to file an urgent complaint to the U.N. about the violations of its airspace.
Israeli officials have said the overflights are necessary because Hezbollah is violating the 2006 U.N. resolution that bars it from building up its military defensive capabilities operating in Lebanon near the Israeli border.
AP / ABC Flash Point News 2021.
Britain spreading its Military Naval Bases towards Asia
British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson said that the London military head-quarters aims to establish a new naval base somewhere in Asia in the coming years.
Singapore or Brunei, two of Britain’s old colonies in Southeast Asia, could be potential sites for the broached new base. Brunei already hosts a small British military base, where a battalion of the Royal Gurkha Rifles is stationed and paid for by the country’s ruling Sultan.
It seems unlikely that Britain would opt for an Asian country that is not part of its Commonwealth, a political association mostly composed of the UK’s former territories.
In April 2018, Britain opened a new naval base in Bahrain, its first new base east of Suez since 1971. Also a new ‘training’ base in Oman is set to open in 2019.
With 16 military bases across the world, Britain is second only to the USA in the global scale of foreign deployment of their military forces.
Regardless of where the prospective base is located, or how significant it will be militarily, it is yet another indication that Britain aims to play a much bigger role in Asian affairs than it has for decades.
Britain, virtually absent from the Asia-Pacific since de-colonization more than half a century ago, appears to feel there is a place to reposition itself in the region.
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, said on January 5 that she welcomed a new British military base in the region.
It is clearly a muscle-flexing gesture targeting China and shows closer engagement of external powers in the South China Sea disputes.
While for decades previous governments have had nothing similar to America’s policies, Britain has nonetheless maintained significant military interests in the Asia-Pacific.
Moreover, one likely location for Britain’s new Asia military base is Brunei, an oil-rich state of less than a million people dominated and dictated by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah for more than 50 years.
China, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam all count Britain as an important trading partner, though by no means their most important.
Senior British ministers have spent a considerable part of the last two years touring Asia to drum up support for new bilateral economic agreements once Britain is removed from the EU’s pacts.
It would thus be of interest for these exporters to be on friendly terms with Britain post-Brexit, lest they suffer future trade slumps. But trade, per se, is not enough: Vietnam, for example, trades more with Germany than with the UK.
Asia Times / ABC Flash Point News 2019.
Venezuela banning Fascist and Zionist Activities
Venezuela’s National Assembly is nearing the approval of its Law Against Fascism, Neo-Fascism, and Similar Expressions, commonly referred to as the Antifascist Law.
The bill, which will classify fascism as a crime, seeks to preserve peace by banning the dissemination of content that promotes or glorifies fascism and similar ideologies.
It will also require media outlets to promote peaceful coexistence, diversity, tolerance, and respect in their messaging.
In this interview, we talk to long-time activist Hindu Anderi from the Platform for Solidarity with the Palestinian Cause, which is actively lobbying for the new legislation to ban Zionist expressions and Zionist associations in Venezuela.
Anderi presents a compelling argument for including Zionism in the law.
The new law is timely, not only because of the national context – where the fascist threat is very tangible – but also because we have seen a global surge of fascism, particularly in Europe and in the USA.
However, we have also seen clear manifestations of fascism in other parts of Latin America, especially in Argentina and El Salvador.
In Venezuela, fascism is not a new phenomenon. During the Fourth Republic, security forces operated with fascist methods and included among their ranks both overt fascists as well as known Zionists.
Later, during Chávez’s presidency, there were ample expressions of fascism on the part of the opposition, especially rhetorical, but we also witnessed numerous acts of fascist violence.
The guarimbas [extreme-right street protests] were a blatant expression of fascism, and in 2017 we witnessed the tragic case of Orlando Figuera, a young Venezuelan man set on fire by a fascist mob simply because he was poor, Black, and identified as Chavista.
More recently, we’ve seen the extreme right destroy and burn spaces associated with Chavismo and several Chavista grassroots leaders have been assassinated in the post-July 28 violence unleashed by the María Corina Machado-led opposition.
The bill, which first reached the National Assembly floor in April, is currently being debated by the pueblo in a process known as “Parlamentarismo de Calle” [street Parliamentarism]. It will return to the National Assembly for the final debate soon.
The document, which aims to promote democratic values, will classify fascism as a crime.
Indeed, we’ve been advocating for Zionism to be included in the law alongside fascism, because the two are closely linked.
We have been heard by some members of the National Assembly and received positive feedback. However, the text is still under debate, so we continue to lobby for Zionism to be included in the final version.
I think this is the time. We cannot allow expressions of fascism in our country, just as we cannot allow expressions of Zionism.
Zionism is fascism’s twin, a racist movement based on supremacy and expansion. Zionism is a colonialist project that promotes apartheid, slavery, and death. Zionism is the ideology behind the genocide currently underway in Gaza.
Zionism, like fascism, it is an extremely dangerous and destructive movement on planet Earth. It has to be eradicated before it will kill billions of people in this world.
It’s important to include Zionism in this law because it is not less harmful than fascism and it operates in a similar manner.
Fascism is easily identifiable, particularly because of 20th-century Nazi-fascism. Hitler adopted the ideology and killed millions of people in World War II in concentration camps – Jews, Romani people, communists, intellectuals, differently-abled people, and more.
Fortunately, everyone knows the story.
Zionism is just as dangerous and is older than fascism. However, unlike fascism, Zionism has evolved and become more sophisticated. Today, Zionism is not only committing genocide in plain sight but has also shown a relentless willingness to carry out eternal war.
In Palestine, Zionism is attempting to wipe out an entire people. It doesn’t put children in gas chambers, but it dismembers them.
While fascism is real, and we have seen the violence it unleashes in our homeland, Zionism is even more dangerous because it is the ideology driving an ongoing genocide. That is why it is so important to include Zionism in the law.
We should never forget that Zionist associations here and abroad conspire against our democratically elected government. We saw rabbi Pynchas Brener, a Zionist agent, take the stage during the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez.
Later we saw the [opposition-led] Chacao township send police forces to train in Israel.
I don’t know if this specific situation has been neutralized, it probably has, but I do know that there are Venezuelan mercenaries alongside the occupying IDF in Palestine. I think there could be a few links there.
Finally, while María Corina Machado is the most visible leader of a fascist movement here, she also has strong ties with international Zionism.
She has openly supported the genocide in Gaza and even requested military intervention in Venezuela from Benjamin Netanyahu [2018]. Moreover, Machado has promised to reopen Venezuela’s embassy in Israel, this time in Jerusalem, if she comes to power.
Let’s not forget that Hugo Chávez severed all diplomatic ties with Israel in 2009 when the Venezuelan embassy in Tel Aviv closed its doors.
The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that declared that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination [1975].
However, laws against Zionism are rare for one simple reason: Zionism is closely linked to capitalism and imperialism, and it uses threats, coercion, and blockades to achieve its goals.
Here in Venezuela, we are taking an important step by attempting to include Zionism in our soon-to-be-approved Antifascist Law.
If it is included, the law will be a significant achievement of the Bolivarian Revolution and should be recognized globally by progressive forces and international bodies.
If our popular initiative succeeds, the new law will contribute to the battle against Zionism, which is a battle for the preservation of Palestinian life and culture, and ultimately for the preservation of humanity.
Zionism, like fascism, is a political movement and ideology that threatens life itself. It’s evident that when Zionism is given free rein in a country, that country cannot be free, sovereign, and well-nourished.
In Palestine, children are literally dying of malnutrition because of US-backed Zionism, while in Venezuela, children have also suffered hunger due to the impact of the US blockade, which hijacked our economy.
Now, it’s important to highlight that the sanctions regime imposed on Venezuela was requested by operators such as the fascist and Zionist María Corina Machado.
Zionism, like fascism, contrasts sharply with the principles of any life-loving society. It steals land, tortures, destroys, and is driven by a supremacist ideology that knows no limits.
For these reasons, fascism and Zionism are utterly opposed to the Bolivarian doctrine and the socialist project.
We are firmly against imperialism, fascism, and Zionism because, as Bolivarians and socialists, we are committed to life and dignity.
That is why it is crucial to include Zionism in the law currently under discussion.
It is also necessary to launch an informative campaign about the dangers of Zionism and how it manipulates a portion of the world population as we speak.
As we, the people of Venezuela, struggle for sovereignty and emancipation, taking a firm stand against fascism and Zionism is essential.
Venezuela Analysis / ABC Flash Point Future News 2024.
The End of Western Global Domination
The Western sanctions against Russia, decided unilaterally by Washington, are presented as a just punishment for the aggression against Ukraine.
But, without mentioning their illegality under international law, everyone can see that they do not reach their target. In practice, the United States is isolating the West in the hope of maintaining its hegemony over its allies.
For Thucydides, the ambition of Sparta and Athens was the same and could only lead them to war. On the contrary, the Russian and Chinese leaders envisage a multi-polar world in which each could have different ambitions. Nothing would push them to go to war.
The United States, which was a late participant in the World Wars and suffered no losses on its territory, emerged victorious from the world conflicts.
Inheriting the European empires, it developed a dollar denominated system of domination that made it the world’s policeman. However, their hegemony was fragile and could not resist the development of large nations.
As early as 2012, political scientists began to describe the “Thucydides trap” by analogy with the Greek strategist’s explanation of the wars between Sparta and Athens. According to them, China’s rise to power also made a confrontation with the United States inevitable.
Noting that, if China had become the first world economic power, Russia had become the first military power, Washington decided to fight them one after the other.
It is in this context that the war in Ukraine took place. Washington presents it as Russian aggression, adopts sanctions and forces its allies to take them too.
The first thing that comes to mind is that the United States, knowing that it is militarily inferior but economically superior, decided to choose its battlefield. However, an analysis of the forces involved and the measures taken belies this reading of events.
The global economic system was created by the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. They aimed to establish a framework for capitalism beyond the crisis of 1929, for which Nazism had proven to have not been the solution.
The United States imposed its currency as a gold-convertible benchmark. Neither the Soviet Union nor China participated in the conference.
In 1971, President Richard Nixon decided to unofficially end the dollar’s parity with gold. This allowed him to finance the war in Vietnam. In practical terms, there were no longer any fixed exchange rates.
The measure was not formalized until after the war, in 1976. It was also at this time that China formed an alliance with the Anglo-Saxon multinationals.
The European Community (the forerunner of the European Union) adapted by regulating the now-floating exchange rates in 1972 (the currency snake), and then by creating the euro.
From 1981 on-wards, the United States began to let its debt slip away. It went from 40% of its GDP to 130% today. The US economy, which represented 30% of the world economy when the USSR was dissolved, has slipped to only 10%.
They tried to globalize the world economy, i.e. to impose their rules on the solvent countries and to destroy the state structures of the remaining countries (the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy).
To pay their debt, they printed dollars, spied on the companies of their allies and stole all the reserves of two big oil states, Iraq and Libya. Nobody dared to say anything, but from 2003 on-wards, the US economic system was no longer what it claimed to be.
Officially they were still liberal, but everyone could see that they were no longer producing their own food and necessities, and that they were living on rapine.
Many states anticipated the end of the Bretton Woods rules and thought about a new deal. In 2009, Brazil, Russia, India and China, soon joined by South Africa for Africa, created the BRICS.
These countries have set up financial institutions which, unlike the IMF and the World Bank, do not make their loans conditional on structural reforms or political commitments to align with Washington.
The BRICS members invest on a leasing basis, with the host country becoming the owner of the investment when it is profitable. In 2010, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, soon joined by Armenia, founded the Eurasian Economic Union.
These border countries established a free trade zone with Egypt, China, Iran, Serbia, Singapore and Vietnam. They could be joined by South Korea, India, Turkey and Syria.
In 2013, China began its vast “New Silk Roads” project. The following year, when its GDP surpassed that of the United States at purchasing power parity, Beijing created the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and in 2020, it regulated foreign capital.
In 2021, the European Union devised its Global Gateway to compete with China and impose its political model. But this demand was seen as colonial overreach by many countries and was rejected en masse.
Gradually, the Russian and Chinese blocs have come closer together thanks to the joint project of the Great Eurasian Global Partnership (2016) within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The aim is to develop the whole space by creating balanced communication channels on the ideological bases defined by Kazakh Sultan Nazerbayev: inclusiveness, sovereign equality, respect for cultural and socio-political identity, openness and readiness to integrate other ensembles.
Washington’s attempt to destroy this emerging entity has no chance of success. It is striking that the economic attack began not with the invasion of Ukraine, but two days before.
It is primarily directed against Russian banks, Russian billionaires and the Russian gas industry and not at all against the new Eurasian communication system.
Finally, it aims at excluding Russia from international organizations, but does not concern the states that refuse to condemn Russia. Therefore it will push them into the arms of Beijing.
In other words, the USA is not isolating Russia, but it is isolating the West (10% of humanity) from the rest of the world (90% of humanity).
The process of separating the West from the rest of the World :
The very day after Moscow recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (February 21, 2022), the USA launched an economic attack on Russia (February 22). The EU followed suit the day after (February 23). Vnesheconombank and Promsvyazbank were excluded from the global financial system.
Vnesheconombank (VEB.RF) is a regional development bank. It could have helped the Donbass. Promsvyazbank (PSB) invests mainly in the defense sector. It could have played a role under the Mutual Assistance Treaty.
As Russia started a special military operation in Ukraine (February 24), the United States extended the exclusion of the first two banks from the global financial system to all Russian banks (February 25). The European Union followed suit (February 25, 2022).
In order to prevent as many states as possible from joining Russia, Washington extended the trade bans to Belarus.
The European Union began to deny Russian banks access to the SWIFT system as previously instructed by the United States, extended sanctions to Belarus and censored the Russian state media, Russia Today and Sputnik (March 2, 2022).
Washington began to target wealthy Russian citizens (erroneously called “oligarchs”) with bad relations with the Kremlin (March 3) and to ban imports of Russian energy sources (March 8). The European Union followed suit, but was forced to resist a ban on the import of much-needed Russian gas (March 9, 2022).
Washington extended financial sanctions in the IMF and World Bank, expanded the list of oligarchs and banned the export of luxury goods to Russia (March 11). The European Union followed suit (March 15, 2022) in order to confiscate and steel Russian assets.
Washington ensured that members of the Duma and oligarchs no longer have any rights in the West; that Russia would no longer be able to use its assets in the USA to pay its debts to the USA; and that it would no longer be able to use its gold to pay its debts abroad (24 March, 2022).
The European Union followed in these prohibitions. It pronounced a ban on the import of Russian coal and oil, but still no ban on Russian natural gas.
The rest of the World’s response :
It is an extremely surprising phenomenon to observe: the U.S. has managed to sway a majority of states to its side, but these states are the least populous in the world. It is as if they have no means of putting pressure on countries capable of independence.
Due to the unilateral actions of the Anglo-Saxons and the European Union, the world is being divided into two heterogeneous spaces. The era of economic globalization is over. The economic and financial bridges are being broken one by one.
Reacting swiftly, Russia has convinced its BRICS partners to stop trading in dollars and to eventually create a common virtual currency for their exchanges. Until then, they will proceed in gold.
This currency should be based on a basket of BRICS currencies, weighted according to the GDP of each member state, and on a basket of commodities listed on the stock exchange. This system should be much more stable than the current one.
Above all, Russia and China appear to be much more respectful of their partners than the West. They never demand structural reforms, neither economic nor political.
The Ukrainian affair shows that Moscow does not seek to take power in Kiev and occupy Ukraine, but to push back NATO and fight the Banderites (the “neo-Nazis” according to Kremlin terminology). Nothing but very legitimate, even if the method is brutal.
In practice, we are witnessing the end of four centuries of domination by Westerners and their empires. It is a confrontation between different ways of thinking.
Westerners now think only in terms of weeks. With this short-sightedness, they may have the impression that the United States is right and the Russians wrong.
On the contrary, the rest of the world thinks in decades, even centuries. In this case, there is no doubt that the Russians are right and the West as a whole is wrong.
Moreover, the West rejects international law. They attacked Yugoslavia and Libya without the authorization of the Security Council and lied to attack Afghanistan and Iraq.
They only accept the rules they make. On the contrary, the other states aspire to a multi-polar world in which each actor would think according to their own culture.
They are aware that only international law would make it possible to preserve peace in the world as they dream of it.
Rather than confronting Russia and China, the United States has chosen to withdraw into its empire: to isolate the West in order to maintain its hegemony.
Since 2001, all world leaders have viewed the West, and particularly the United States, as wounded predators.
They do not dare to confront them and look for ways to accompany them gently to the cemetery. No one ever imagined that they would isolate themselves to die.
Voltaire Thierry Meyssan / ABC Flash Point News 2022.
Australia mandates Food Rations to prepare for Bird Flu Pandemic
Food rationing and lockdowns have arrived in Australia as the WEF puppet government lays the groundwork to plunge the masses into starvation, and Australians pay the price for allowing the government to confiscate their guns without a fight.
The elite have warned that a global food crisis is on the agenda and Australia has emerged as the New World Order’s testing ground where Chinese style authoritarian tactics are tested on the captured population before they are rolled out to the rest of the world.
Will Australia put up with the sadism of the global elite, including starvation rations, mandatory vaccines, and a poisoned water supply, or will they wise up, rise up, banish the tyrants, and reclaim their freedom?
Food bans and food rationing has begun in Australia as the puppet government continues rolling out World Economic Forum policies to please their globalist overlords.
Citing the so-called avian influenza as the excuse, the Australian state of Victoria has ordered farms to go on lock-down, culled millions of chickens, and banned consumers from purchasing healthy, everyday products including eggs.
According to the government, ultra processed food is fine, but natural products and high quality sources of protein like eggs and meat must be avoided.
But it gets even worse for those in Australia. The tyrannical government are also responsible for a water crisis that has left the public in a state of shock.
Carcinogenic chemicals in the water supply? You’d almost swear the elite want us all to die off en masse before our time.
Meanwhile, the government are laying the groundwork to ban cash and move to a fully digital CBDC system with Digital ID which will mean the elite can control every transaction by everybody in society.
It appears Australia placed far too much trust in their WEF-aligned government. But don’t think these things couldn’t happen in the USA. In fact, the food supply in the USA is under attack and the crisis is about to bite.
Food is the foundation of civilized society. But when the food runs out, all bets are off.
We are living in truly unprecedented times. Most of us in the Western world have lived our entire lives in a state of more than enough because food production has never been a problem in our countries.
But now things are changing.
The global elite warned that a major food crisis will be the next 9/11 and food production is being hit from all sides by a perfect storm of manufactured problems.
The following are 6 reasons why the food supply in the USA is going to continue to shrink…
- We all know the elite are determined to stop ordinary people eating red meat. Are you ready to eat less beef? The worst drought in the western half of the US “in 1,200 years” is forcing countless ranchers to reduce the size of their herds amid warnings “beef production is expected to decline by 7%” by 2025.
- The extraordinary drought in the west has also had an enormous impact on the winter wheat harvest. It was 8% smaller than last year, and so that is going to mean less bread and pizza to go around as the year rolls along.
- Thanks to extremely unnatural and bizarre weather conditions, spring planting was way behind schedule in many parts of the Midwest and when crops don’t get planted in time, that means lower yields when harvest season finally arrives.
- More than 37 million chickens and turkeys have been wiped out in the U.S. during the new bird flu panic that coincidentally arrived just as Bill Gates applied to finishing touches to his new bird flu vaccine.
- This is going to mean less chicken meat, less turkey meat and less eggs for all of us. Already, the price of eggs has reached absolutely insane levels and its only going to get worse.
- In Florida, a disease known as citrus greening is causing immense damage. In fact, we just witnessed the worst crop of oranges in Florida in 70 years.
Each one of the factors that I just listed is a crisis. Collectively, they represent an extremely serious threat.
We are going to produce a lot less food than anticipated this year, and this comes at a time when the entire globe is facing a global famine of unprecedented size and scope.
Sara Menker, the CEO of Gro Intelligence, recently warned the UN Security Council that global food supplies are dwindling fast.
“It is important to note that the lowest grain inventory levels the world has ever seen are now occurring while access to fertilizers is highly constrained
That should chill you to the core, because there isn’t going to be enough food to feed everyone in the months to come.
Preparations for the elite’s false flag and power grab are underway and if you have been paying attention you can see evidence of the deception everywhere you look.
A wargame or preparedness exercise was held in Brussels earlier this year that just so happened to envision a 2024 to 2025 food shortage in Europe that sparks a major worldwide famine.
Anybody who paid attention in the early days of the Covid-19 plandemic will understand that war-games and preparedness exercises are full-dress rehearsals for the elite’s upcoming false flags and dystopian plans for humanity.
Remember “Event 201”, a preparedness exercise featuring a coronavirus pandemic, conducted in October 2019 under the watchful eye of the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and involving the usual suspects including the World Health Organization, China’s CDC, and Anthony Fauci?
The elite have been caught in the act all over again, and this time Gates is boasting that hunger is a problem that can be weaponized. Here at the People’s Voice we are determined to expose the elite and bring them to justice.
News Punch / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
BBC hired convicted Pedophiles to Chauffeur Children and Elite VIP’s
The BBC hired convicted pedophiles to chauffeur children and elite VIPs for over 30 years, according to a new report. A chauffeur service headed by a convicted child rapist was used by the BBC from the late 70’s until 2006.
Dailymail.co.uk reports: Niven Sinclair was paid millions as his firm transported celebrities – including Jimmy Saville and high-profile guests such as then-Prime Minister Ted Heath – to and from the corporation’s studios.
The BBC itself issued glowing praise for Sinclair as being a ‘wily and determined’ man who ‘built a reputation for digging programs out of holes’.
Also known as Niven Cars, his business had 150 cars being driven for the BBC at one stage, The Telegraph reported.
One of the drivers – David Smith – went on to abuse at least two children at the studios.
The newspaper spoke to one of Smith’s victims and revealed he is considering suing the under-fire broadcaster in the latest of scandals to batter the BBC.
Both Sinclair and Smith had BBC passes and the cars used to drive the celebrities used number plates referring to the corporation.
Smith began working as a chauffeur for the broadcaster in the early 1980’s – and he had already racked up five convictions for abusing children.
It is understood that he was convicted in 1989 of abusing another child, and reportedly remained working for the firm until the early 90’s.
Shockingly, Dame Janet Smith’s investigation following the Jimmy Savile scandal failed to identify either of the men.
One of Smith’s victims told The Telegraph he was sexually abused between the ages of 12 and 14 and believes the BBC should be ‘held to account’ for a lack of vetting.
Smith pleaded guilty to abusing him in 2001, and the victim said one of the allegations regarded an incident at the BBC’s Television Center in West London.
He was convicted of abusing another child in 2001 who went on to kill himself in 2015. It is understood he told his family he had been abused at the BBC’s studios.
The victim ‘hope[s] to understand is whether or not the BBC have been negligent in the way that they have dealt with child sexual abuse and particularly, surrounding Niven Sinclair and Niven Cars and people that worked for him’, he told the newspaper.
Smith accumulated 22 convictions for child abuse at the time of his death in 2013, on the eve of another sexual abuse trial. Court documents at the time revealed he ‘was contracted to work as a driver for the BBC’.
His boss, Sinclair, began working for the BBC in 1977 and ran a ‘significant’ part of its transport. But chillingly, he already had convictions for abusing children in 1961, 1967 and 1971 and served several years behind bars.
The BBC itself described him as the ‘driving force’ and ‘hero’ of the organization who ‘delivered thousands of guests to the studio on time’ in an article about the driver.
He assisted both Panorama and News-night and in 2005 had 92 cars ‘working around the clock for scores of programs’. The corporation also said he was at meetings on election night.
In 2000, Sinclair’s contract was suspended for cost-saving reasons but he was later brought back and reportedly demanded a ‘stiff’ price. He died 17 years later.
Sinclair pleaded guilty to possessing a Beretta automatic pistol without a firearms certificate, having it in a public place and having a pistol despite being a convict in 1971. He was given three concurrent two-year prison terms.
In 1966, he got five years for buggery and indecent assault on one boy and a second indecent assault on a 12-year-old.
In 1971, he was convicted of buggery and sexual assault of four boys aged 13 to 14.
Sinclair groomed boys by paying them for odd jobs, offering them wine before forcing himself on them at his flat in Stanmore, North West London. He was jailed for six months in June 1961 for indecent assaults on two boys.
He only stopped working for the BBC in 2005, when he was 82-years-old.
In 2016, Sinclair told the Sunday People: I was contracted to the BBC via my company, I was never a direct employee so there was never any reason for them to check about my convictions.
But that was a very different chapter in my life. The only reason I’m being dragged into this now is because of Jimmy Savile.’
A BBC spokesman said: Today’s BBC has incredibly robust safeguarding policies and processes, which have been strengthened decade upon decade.
If people have any complaints or concerns to put to us we want to hear from them, and they will be treated with the utmost care and seriousness.’
The revelation comes just days after BBC star Jermaine Jenas, 41, was let go by the corporation after women complained about his workplace conduct.
A junior member of staff – said to have been previously impressed by the BBC star – raised concerns over alleged flirty texts.
The football pundit was fired by the BBC this week over ‘alleged issues relating to workplace behavior, which the broadcaster confirmed involved ‘digital communications such as texts, which were raised with the corporation a few weeks ago’.
Other women have since come forward as messages allegedly sent by Jenas are being investigated.
BBC bosses axed Jenas so quickly not even Alex Jones knew about it as he was airbrushed off publicity websites within minutes – in contrast to Huw Edwards who stayed on the payroll for 10 months in a move which was heavily criticized.
The contrast with Edwards is striking, with the BBC continuing to pay him a salary from July last year – when The Sun informed them of allegations he had paid a teenager for sexual images – until April, when he resigned on medical advice.
The 63-year-old has now been asked by the BBC to hand back the estimated £200,000 he received in the five months after his arrest in November on three counts of making indecent images of children.
The case of Huw Edwards dogged the BBC from the moment the first allegations emerged, with the corporation announcing a day after the story that it would investigate the allegations and contact the Met Police.
In yet another blow to the BBC’s reputation, Strictly Come Dancing came under scrutiny when Giovanni Pernice and Graziano Di Prima were on the receiving end of allegations they had mistreated their celebrity dance partners.
Giovanni has vehemently denied any wrongdoing while Graziano, 30, initially confirmed and regretted his actions against Zara McDermott.
The BBC has been rocked by scandals in recent years stretching back decades as flagship faces including Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall hid a secret dark side
Huw Edwards was just the latest in a long series of paedophiles who have worked at the BBC, many of whom have been exposed following the Savile scandal which rocked the corporation in the early 2010s.
The reputation of the BBC has been marred by one pedophile scandal after another dating back over half a century.
The BBC’s most prolific pedophile scandal concerned presenter Jimmy Savile, who died before allegations of his sexual abuse of young children became widely known.
He faced repeated allegations during his life but refuted them, and was the subject of two police investigations – although neither led to charges.
In 2009 Savile famously defended viewers of child pornography, claiming they ‘didn’t do anything wrong’. After his death in 2011 Newsnight drew up a report on Savile’s alleged offenses, including interviewing survivors, but it was never published.
The following year ITV revealed details of allegations against Savile concerning up to ten women, one of whom was 14 at the time.
As more victims came forward the BBC faced immense scrutiny over how Savile was permitted to abuse girls and women for decades, including those who were seriously ill in hospital.
It is thought up to 450 young people were assaulted by the presenter. Police recorded 199 crimes in 17 police force areas in which Savile was a suspect, among them 31 allegations of rape.
The crimes stretched 1955 to 2009 and allegations included the abuse of desperately ill children and necrophilia with corpses at included Leeds General Infirmary mortuary.
BBC bosses were accused of staging various cover-ups to protect Savile, who committed the offenses at hospitals and locations across the country including BBC Television Centre.
Chris Denning, one of the original Radio 1 presenters, was repeatedly found guilty of various child sex offenses until his death in 2022.
He was a member of the pedophile ring the Walton Hop in the 1970’s and was first convicted for gross indecency and indecent assault in 1974.
Presenter and singer-songwriter Jonathan King was another member of the Walton Hop with Denning and rose to fame with his hit song, Everyone’s Gone to the Moon.
The 1980’s saw him in prominent roles on the BBC including on Top of the Pops.
But in 2001 King’s success ended as he was convicted of sexual offences committed between 1983 and 1987 against five boys aged 14 and 15, for which he was jailed for seven years.
Several other trials either collapsed or King was not convicted.
Actor Chris Langham, who starred in the BBC’s hit series The Thick of It as cabinet minister Hugh Abbott, became a familiar face – and voice – on the BBC after featuring in a series of radio shows and TV series.
Langham, 75, was named Best Comedy Actor in the 2005 British Comedy Awards and won the Best Comedy Performance award for his role in The Thick of It.
But in 2005 the actor was arrested by Kent Police as part of Operation Ore, which targeted credit-card customers paying to access indecent and abusive images of children on the internet.
News Punch / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
Israel made Fentanyl a Weapon of War long before it was killing 50.000 Americans per year
Long before Fentanyl was killing 50.000 American whites a year, Mossad was using poppy morphine product as a weapon for chemical warfare
Jazz and James are now looking at a long-forgotten act of terror, spearheaded by Benjamin Netanyahu, that temporarily shook up relations in the Middle East and thunderstruck even U.S. intelligence officials with its chutzpah.
Speaking of Zionists, Hamas leader hunted by Netanyahu haunts Israel in a gay-op gone wrong. Khaleed Khalid Meshaal is a Hamas guy who Mossad tried to kill with Sentinel.
In 1997 two Mossad agents lay in wait outside of Michel’s office one morning as he approached, one sprayed the painkiller Fentanyl into Michelle’s ear with the device disguised under a bandaged arm.
The Israeli’s had hoped that their lethal dose of modified fentanyl up to 100 times more potent than morphine, would send Meshaal into a coma and that he would never awake.
So the agents would slip away, leaving no evidence of foul play, but the plan went awry from the start.
Michele’s bodyguards were suspicious of the Mossad agents even before their assault. Yeah. What gave the game away there, people still wonder, but they were able to chase and capture them.
Three other agents would later be found elsewhere in the city. All had entered Jordan using Canadian passports. So Mossad showing up in Jordan with Canadian passports to assassinate a guy outside of his apartment.
Chuck Meshaal knew the assailants had tried something strange but thought they had failed to harm him. He felt a loud noise in his ear. Meshaal later said it was like a boom boom.
He ended up in the hospital. Did he understand that this was actually an assassination attempt? No, but in the end he was briefed on the situation in hospital.
A furious King Hussein threatened to cut off relations with Israel by midnight. Dennis Ross, then Bill Clinton’s chief Middle East negotiator, received an early morning call from Netanyahu, who explained the crisis and urgently wanted to speak with Clinton.
The American asked the Israel prime minister, according to his 2004 memoir, why Netanyahu hadn’t tried to get the Jordanians to quietly apprehend Michelle for him. Didn’t it occur to you that something could go wrong?
Clinton mediated the ensuring diplomatic crisis in a furious effort to salvage a major peace agreement between Jordan and Israel.
Fast forward 20 years later and Israel is going to annex the entire Jordan Valley, including the entire West Bank. But with the Gaza Strip also gone.
Goodbye. Just like all going down. Going down the tubes. That’s why you can’t negotiate with these people in good faith for in any way. They’re not going to help you.
Going out there and pretending like, you know, you’re like getting down on your knees and in front of the Jews and prostrating yourself. They don’t fucking care. They just laugh and laugh.
Netanyahu ultimately provided the antidote formula to Jordanian doctors who would not trust any chemical supplied directly by the Israel, of course.Why should they?
Yeah, he also apologized in person to the brother of the king who refused to see him. To ensure the return of the captured Israeli’s he even released from prison.
They also freed Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. So, what started as an operation to demonstrate the costs to the Hamas leadership outside the territories ended with Israel permitting the spiritual leader of Hamas to return to Gaza is a hero.
Ross writes, Meshaal also emerged as a hero. His enhanced stature helped position him to assume Hamas’s top political post seven years later in 2004, after Israel, this time dispensing with cloak and dagger techniques, killed his predecessor.
Abdel Aziz was killed by firing missiles at his car from a helicopter gunship. The soul felt no like cloak and dagger. Israel was just going to blow this guy out of the fucking universe. This is what these people do for a living.
It’s like, what’s another thousand dead Arabs. It don’t matter. Yeah. I mean that’s how they look at it. Netanyahu may attempt to complete his unfinished business, killing Michelle and Kutter would can create another dangerous diplomatic crisis.
But Israel’s Russian born foreign minister, as Avik Dore Lieberman, believes it should be done anyway.
So Mossad agents drugged and suffocated the leader of Hamas military wing in a Dubai hotel in March 2010.
An Al-Jazeera reporter asked former Mossad chief Danny Yatom, who oversaw the bungled Mashaal attack, whether Israel might try again to kill the Hamas leader. The terrorist.
Yet, Tomáš answered, must understand that anyone who executes terror will not enjoy immunity. But who is the terrorist here?
So I can you describe the other operation? It’s had a hundred percent success rate and that is the operation in the USA. Yeah, that’s a Israeli federal operation with a 100% fatality rate.
Yeah, they are. They are always telling you just a sliver of the truth, even when they’re lying. And yeah, that’s where we are. Nothing but Chuks. Nothing but filthy lying.
I mean, you you put this all together and, you know, from Fentanyl to Tulsi Gabbard, it’s like, yeah, it’s like enough, put down the shibboleths. Put down the cops. It’s over.
That’s why I’m glad in a way that Trump got elected, because here we are. We had to come through it out on the other side. I’ve said this many times. It would have Trump it lost in 2016. Maybe he would have gone away. But imagine if he didn’t go away.
And what would he be doing in May of 2020 with all of our politicians. The Israeli’s are so creepy and evil. That place should quarantined and embargoed. Certainly no dual citizens. Send all of them to Israel minus their US citizenship.
Do the research before you speak up. It’s easy to find tons of evidence on the ancestry and geographic origin of the Ashkenazi Jews. It is undisputed that the Khazarians from Central Asia are their ancestors.
You can also read books by Israeli scholar Shlomo Sands and other Jewish scholars to enlighten yourself further. And finally, you can check on DNA studies done on Ashkenazi Jews, the majority of Israel’s Jewish population. Good luck.
Jews of our era fall into two main categories the Ashkenazim Jew (common), whom in 1960 numbered around 11 million.
Many of those people now are living in modern-day Israel. It looks as though 90% of them are probably descendants of the Great Khazars and never were descendants of Abraham.
The Khazars were a fierce nomadic warring people who were driven out of Asia by numerous defeats by their neighbors. The Khazars invaded Europe over the land route between the north end of the Caspian Sea and the south end of the Ural mountains.
The Khazars were a Pagan civilization, and in a short period in history became the largest and most powerful kingdom in Europe, and possibly the wealthiest also.
The term Ashkenazim Jew is associated with Germany, Hungary and Poland which shared culture and borders with the Khazarian empire.
The Sephardim Jews who numbered about 500,000 in 1960 and are the descendants of the Spanish Jews that were expelled from Spain by the Muslims in 1492.
ABC Flash Point History News 2020.
The Dark Side of Green Technology & modern Child Slavery
As US President Joe Biden touts his administration’s climate agenda, some observers are drawing attention to the consequences of the global drive towards green energy.
Abuses in Africa have attracted criticism from some influential quarters, including Amnesty International and Pope Francis.
Biden’s renewable energy crusade exploits and enslaves thousands in poor nations, says Jason Isaac, the founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute.
The human suffering caused by mining for electric vehicle batteries and wind turbine construction is unimaginable — as is the environmental destruction caused by these mines and their toxic byproducts,
As the head of a group funded by US-based petroleum producers, Isaac has ample incentive to critique the burgeoning green energy industry. But he isn’t the only one questioning the response to the climate crisis.
The sustainable development goals set a target for the elimination of child labor of 2025, says Ben Smith, a senior technical officer focused on child labor at the International Labor Organization. We are far from achieving it.
A key issue is the mining of cobalt, an important component of many rechargeable batteries.
The metal is mined throughout the African continent, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the working conditions of those extracting it often attract harsh criticism.
Cobalt is a critical component in rechargeable car batteries, and the European Union’s 2030 climate target will only increase demand for this metal.
Despite the [European] commission’s zero‑tolerance approach to child labor in trade agreements, it is estimated, according to reports by UN agencies, that in the southern Katanga province, more than 40,000 children are working in hazardous conditions in cobalt mines with inadequate safety equipment and for very little money.
Reports indicate children sometimes labor for $5 per day working long hours in dangerous tunnels where they’re often exposed to cancer-causing chemicals. The conditions have been called modern-day child slavery.
Labor in cobalt mining is a serious violation of children’s rights that puts the health and safety, and even the lives of many children, at risk, says Smith.
This vicious cycle of poverty and child labor must be broken for the sake of the children exposed to this harsh reality and for the social and economic progress of countries like the DRC.
Professor Chukwuemezie Raphael Eze of Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Nigeria says the low wages serve another important purpose for Western companies beyond merely the cheap acquisition of raw materials.
Low pay and poor conditions drive Africans to migrate to the United States and Europe where they can also be utilized for cheap labor.
Eze claims the economic consequences destabilize Africa’s political economy while Western collaboration with local militias drives a divide-and-conquer policy that undermines internal unity.
Transnational mining giants are eager to cash in on the global trend towards renewable energy, and human rights group Amnesty International notes they don’t always play fair.
The people living in the region should be benefiting from the growth in mining, said the organization in a report focusing on the DRC’s southern province of Lualaba.
Instead, many are being forced out of their homes and farmland to make way for the expansion of large-scale industrial mining projects.
The report claimed that industrial giants often remove people from their land with little concern for the rights of affected communities and little heed for national laws meant to curtail forced evictions in the mining sector.
In the villages of Samukonga and Tshamundenda, hundreds lost access to nearby farmland. Farmers told Amnesty International they were sometimes forced to accept insufficient compensation for their land while being intimidated by the presence of military officials.
Some received no compensation at all. Military personnel sometimes used unlawful force while evicting residents, or destroyed farmers’ crops without notice.
One evicted victim claimed that she was sexually assaulted by military forces while attempting to retrieve crops. When residents were compensated with new housing, it was often cheaply-built and lacked running water, electricity, and sewage connections.
The forced evictions taking place as companies seek to expand industrial-scale copper and cobalt mining projects are wrecking lives and must stop now.
Experts say mining transnationals’ conduct in Africa perpetuates a cycle wherein the continent serves to provide cheap raw materials for the West rather than developing economically, a phenomenon called dependency syndrome.
The Western preaching of human rights and democracy promotion in relation to Africa is of double standard and national interest-oriented as despotic African leaders that cooperate with Western parasitic economic interests are protected, says Eze.
Anti-imperialistic and nationalistic leaders are always either directly or indirectly eliminated, visited with excruciating sanctions, or arbitrary sent to International Criminal Court.
Economic interests have long been recognized to be a major driver of the West’s foreign policy, as when Belgium backed the assassination of pan-Africanist leader Patrice Lumumba.
French interests are said to be behind the killing of African revolutionary Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso, and research has shown the involvement of US-trained military officers in a dozen coups throughout the continent.
The combined effects of political and economic interference mean that the historical pattern of Western exploitation of Africa continues, a relationship that Ghanian politician Kwame Nkrumah termed neocolonialism.
The angle of human rights abuse has, over the past few decades, been referred to by academics as the ‘Resource Curse, says researcher Ashraf Patel, a thesis that says if a nation has valuable resources that the global economy needs (i.e. oil, minerals, coal, copper) than it is bound to be cursed with conflict.
Patel noted a similar pattern throughout the 1990’s when cell phones first saw widespread adoption. At that time lithium was the hot commodity. Today it’s joined by copper and cobalt.
In a sense African development is frozen and trapped in this ‘Back to The Future’ dystopia.
At an event earlier this year in DRC capital Kinshasa, Pope Francis spoke with uncharacteristic bluntness regarding the economic forces that stifle Africa’s development.
Hands off Africa. Stop choking Africa. It is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered. After decades of exploitation, many Africans feel the same.
And while Western leaders claim companies based in China and elsewhere merely seek to duplicate the same patterns of dependency and debt trap diplomacy, several African leaders have found solidarity with fellow nations in the Global South.
The most promising new multilateral institution-forum is BRICS Plus, which is offering a more equitable deal for the Developing South and for Africa.
Institutions such as the New Development Bank and alternative currencies, as well as technology support can go a long way to meet the real development and industrial needs.
Patel called BRICS the anchor of the Global South and praised its potential to reconfigure global power relations.
While US-backed institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have required countries receiving loans to pursue Neo-liberal structural adjustment policies that open the doors to Western multinationals, China-backed development programs are largely agnostic over the policy pursued by other nations.
Africa refutes the view that a new colonialism is taking hold in Africa as our detractors would have us believe, said South African president Cyril Ramaphosa at a recent forum on China-Africa cooperation.
Rather than viewing China as a predatory force, many African nations instead see the Asian power as an inspirational example of a formerly poor country able to dramatically improve its economic position. Some leaders are even pursuing greater ideological cooperation with Chinese leaders.
Professor Eze advocates the rise of courageous political leadership across the continent and the strengthening of ties with the less exploitative and less dehumanizing world powers like Russia and China.
The academic claims the two countries offer checks and balances on the world stage, challenging a global paradigm where might makes right and justice is the advantage of the stronger.
Sputnik / ABC Flash Point News 2023.
Over 800 Ethiopians killed after defending ‘Ark of the Covenant’ in 2021
At least 800 people were reportedly killed in Ethiopia as worshipers and soldiers risked their lives to protect what Christians there say is the sacred Ark of the Covenant from assailants.
Ethiopian Christians claim the Ark, the wooden chest built to hold the Ten Commandments of Moses, is being kept safe in a chapel in the holy northern city of Axum in the Tigray region.
The Church of St. Mary of Zion in Axum, Ethiopia, where the sacred Ark of the Covenant is believed to be housed.
The battle between Ethiopian soldiers and mercenaries happened in the fall of 2020, The Sunday Times reported, but it is only being reported now.
When people heard the shooting they ran to the church to give support to the priests and others who were there protecting the ark.
Little was known about the deadly siege since Tigray is cut off from the world and journalists had been blocked from entering the region.
A deacon residing in Axum told the Associated Press he helped count the bodies, gathered victims’ identification cards and assisted with burials in mass graves.
He believes that an estimated 800 people were killed at the church and around the city.
If you attack Axum, you attack first of all the identity of Orthodox Tigrayans but also of all Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, Wolbert Smidt, an ethnohistorian who specializes in the region.
The Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia announced that on Friday, June 26, 2009, he will unveil to the world the Ark of the Covenant.
There has been a legend for many years that the Ark of the Covenant is in the Saint Mary of Zion Church in Axum, Ethiopia.
In recent years this legend has been popularized in the writings of Grant Jeffrey, a Canadian Bible prophecy writer who often specializes in the sensational.
This legend is based on a bizarre story that the Ark was smuggled out of Jerusalem by Menelik I, the supposed son of a union between the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon.
Supposedly, a replica of the Ark was left in the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem. The motivation for moving the Ark was to protect it from King Manasseh, one of the most ungodly kings in the history of Judah.
There are all kinds of problems with this legend. For one thing, it is doubtful that the Queen of Sheba ruled over Ethiopia. It is more likely that her realm was modern day Yemen.
At that time there was a dispute over who should be king, and one of the contenders claimed to be a descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
The insurmountable problem with the Ethiopian legend is that 2 Chronicles 35:3 states that the Ark was still in the Temple during the time of King Josiah who reigned from 640 to 609 B.C.
That passage makes it clear that the Ark was still in existence at the time of the spiritual revival led by the boy king, Josiah. Within 22 years after Josiah died, Judah fell to the Babylonians (586 B.C.), and the Ark disappeared.
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No one knows for sure what happened to the Ark. Some scholars believe it was simply destroyed when the Temple was burned. Others believe it was captured as a prize of war, taken to Babylon, and probably melted down for its gold.
The strongest tradition is that the Ark was taken out of the Temple by Jeremiah and hidden. Some are convinced he hid it in the ground on the Temple Mount.
But most who hold to the Jeremiah rescue theory believe he either hid the Ark in a great cavern beneath the Temple Mount (known today as Solomon’s Quarry) or that he hid it somewhere near Mt. Nebo in the modern day nation of Jordan.
Christ in Prophecy / ABC Flash Point News 2021.
Climate change warms the Himalayas, melting Glaciers and heating Rocks
The living Himalayan mountains are sick, and if they die, they could take millions with them. Climate change warms the Himalayas, melting glaciers and heating rocks. This will dry up rivers in 30 years, impacting food security in northern India even sooner .
If we consider the Himalayas as a ‘Living Entity’, then it has already lost its legs. And at present, its stomach fat is getting churned by the rise in temperature brought about by climate change and increased human activity.
Smriti Basnett, a glaciologist from Sikkim, a Himalayan state in India says that the melting snow has increased due to the heating of rocks under the thin ice during summers, and within 30 to 40 years, perennial rivers emerging out of the Himalayas may start to dry up.
This and a range of studies – by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), the Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business, and Yale Environment 360 – have prompted demands for the Himalayas to be granted ‘Living Entity Status’.
This status is called by activists from over 60 social organizations from almost all Himalayan states, including Himachal Pradesh (HP), Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim.
This entails giving the Himalayas the same legal rights and protections enjoyed by humans, and helps to draw urgent attention to the Himalayan crisis. In India, the Ganges river was granted ‘living status’ seven years ago.
Activists in some of the states are also flagging fault lines in planning for developmental activities, besides social discrimination in relief and rehabilitation.
Prakash Bhandari, co-founder of the non-governmental organization (NGO) Himdhara, said the increasing Himalayan disasters – landslides, flash floods, and flooding in the plains – is caused by climate change, and the result of faulty practices in the past few decades.
The 2013 Uttarakhand flood disaster and subsequent tragedies in HP and J&K, including the recent discovery that the small Uttarakhand town of Joshimath is sinking, had repeatedly been flagged as key challenges.
Though better practices and planning is discussed immediately after the disasters, there is no significant action or follow-up discussion to tackle the challenges.
The Science of receding Glaciers
The trend of retreating glaciers is highlighted in a study by Anjal Prakash, research director and adjunct associate professor at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, south India.
Around 210 million people live within the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region, while 1.3 billion people live downstream and are dependent on the freshwater from its rivers and rivulets.
Prakash quoted an ISRO study that approximately 75% of Himalayan glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate.
This retreat will increase the variability of water flow to downstream areas and endanger the sustainability of water use in the Earth’s most crowded basins.
The effects are heightened by climate change and global warming. Activists are alarmed by the paucity of snowfall and rains during this past winter, and more gradually over the last decade.
Their concerns are growing with record high temperatures this summer across India, including the normally cooler Himalayan states.
An article in Yale Environment 360 pointed out that the area of Himalayan glaciers has shrunk by 40% from its maximum during the Little Ice Age between 400-700 years ago.
It noted that the melting of ice in the Himalayas accelerated at the fastest rate of any mountainous region in the world.
Soumya Dutta, an energy expert, green activist and researcher working on climate justice, told RT that climatic changes will have serious consequences for Indian states that are dependent on water from Himalayan rivers.
Over 200 rivulets, originating from Himalayas, have dried up in recent years and 25% of the area under Himalayan glaciers has reduced in the last few decades.
An average temperature increase of 1.6C in the western Himalayan region and 1.49C in the eastern Himalayan region were recorded in recent years.
Food Bowl Impact
The impact will be visible in India’s northern food bowl states: Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. India produces over 330 mt of food-grain, which is 11% of the total cereal production worldwide, and the sector contributes 23% to the GDP.
UP, Bihar and West Bengal fall in the upper, middle, and lower Ganga river basin and contribute 30% of India’s total food grain production.
Less snowfall and rainfall activity will result in lower food-grain production and cause food insecurity in India and worldwide as the country is the second-highest exporter of cereals.
The farmers in Punjab, Haryana, UP and West Bengal that rely on river water for irrigation may in the future be able to reap only two crops, instead of the present three.
In the near future, water for irrigation will be available till April each year followed by an acute shortage which will be a major cause of concern.
The hill states, on the other hand, face a reduction in fruit production. J&K and HP, major apple producers, have continuously seen a decline in production.
The crop was badly affected by the lack of snowfall in 2022-23. The trend continued this year, with farmers expecting a lower yield, according to Bhagya Sidholi, an apple grower from Chopal in Shimla, the capital of HP.
Impact recharging Groundwater
Prakash said that the trend of receding glaciers could also affect ‘groundwater recharge’ in the Himalayan region, as glaciers are its main source.
In the foothills, where precipitation is high, groundwater is abundant, Prakash said in his study. However, due to the sloppy and rocky surface, a large percentage of precipitation flows out. This results in less water going from the subsurface into groundwater bodies.
He added that groundwater seeped out through springs in favorable circumstances, forming the main water source to rural and urban hamlets in the entire Himalayan range. We are in an ice age termination event. Going to be one heck of a bottleneck for our species.
As a solution, Dutta calls for changes in cropping patterns or sowing timings. He warned that the situation in the western Himalayan region could be more serious than that of major food grain producing states of UP, West Bengal and Bihar.
He also suggested a better implementation of the Jal Jeevan Mission (which seeks to provide drinkable tap water to every household) and sustainable agriculture practices.
But also the need to find a middle way between modern and traditional farming methods prevalent in India to ensure food security for the world’s most populous country.
RT. com / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
The US government operates the largest Black Market arms Syndicate in the World
A recent investigation has uncovered explosive evidence that the US regime is supplying weapons to terror groups in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The finding blows the lid sky-high on Washington’s much-vaunted claims of “fighting terrorism”.
The evidence cannot be clearer: the US government is arming, sponsoring and directing terror networks as a proxy force in several countries.
Remember these proxies have committed unspeakable barbarities against hundreds of thousands of civilians, including decapitating women and children, across the Middle East.
That means that when the US air force is bombing countries like Iraq, Syria and Yemen (vicariously with regional allies’ warplanes), Washington is really serving as the air command for terrorist ground forces.
The giant gun-running scheme operates to purchase non-standard US weaponry from arms companies in the Balkans – Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia.
The cargo’s comprising millions of weapon pieces, including assault rifles, mortars and rockets, are usually flown to the US airbase, Al Udeid, in Qatar.
From there, the arms are transported to various terrorist outfits fighting in the battlefields of Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
This is by no means the first time that Washington has been accused of covertly sponsoring terror groups for regime-change machinations.
In Syria, US and other NATO weaponry has been recovered over and over again in former terrorist dens. There have also been several reports of American military helicopters making secretive arms drops or transporting militants to safe havens.
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai made damning claims in a media interview in 2017 in which he said that he was convinced US special forces were aiding and abetting the ISIS network in Afghanistan.
Since the 9/11 designed terror attacks on the USA in 2001, the world has been utterly changed by constant American warmongering.
Whole countries have been demolished, civilizations desecrated, millions of civilians have been killed or maimed, millions of children orphaned, millions of refugees on the move.
This astounding record of de facto criminality and state terrorism by Washington has been repeatedly justified or concealed by its claims of conducting a war on terror.
If the USA is not fighting terrorism but rather actually mobilizing it and weaponizing it, as the above investigation demonstrates, then the conclusion is truly awesome.
The world is being held hostage by the biggest terror syndicate ever – which masquerades as a democratic government in Washington.
Sott Network / ABC Flash Point News 2019.
Rising Risk of use of Nuclear Weapons causes Global Concern
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is concerned about the heightened risk of nuclear weapons being used, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Wednesday, amid reports of the USA approving a new secret nuclear strategic plan refocusing on an alleged Chinese threat.
The UN secretary-general is very concerned about the acute risk of nuclear weapons being used. Dujarric stressed the importance of dialogue and diplomacy to move toward a nuclear-free world.
The remarks were in response to a reporter’s question about a New York Times report that US President Joe Biden approved a classified US nuclear strategy plan that shifts focus to China, a country with significantly fewer nuclear warheads and a no-first-use policy.
The new strategy is also said to address concerns of potential coordinated nuclear challenges by China, Russia, and North Korea against the USA.
The document is highly classified and has no electronic copies, the report said. Biden is expected to provide a notification to Congress in connection with the revised strategy before leaving office.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed concerns with the reports about the new US strategy. The USA is promoting a “Chinese nuclear threat” to evade its nuclear disarmament commitments.
Sputnik / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
Animals held in Captivity for Human Entertainment is Animal Abuse
It doesn’t take an animal activist to realize that animal theme parks are an unsophisticated display of mankind’s imposed dominance over caged animals.
We have reached a juncture in anti-captivity efforts that will lead us toward the possibility of a post-captivity society and align us with other anti-captivity countries, like Costa Rica.
Thanks to social media and a little documentary that you might have heard of called “Blackfish,” the American public (not just activists) are demanding change and freedom for animals in captivity.
The film has captivated the interest of people from all walks of life and has called into question the purpose of captive animals in today’s society.
Finally, the ramifications of holding animals captive have breached the headlines of mainstream media and they are here to stay.
When it comes to captivity, animals pay the ultimate price. Like the Taiji dolphin hunt (happening in Japan) is driven by the demand for marine mammal entertainment.
Animals die prematurely in captivity because their social, physical, and mental needs are not adequately met, and cannot be met because animals do not belong in captivity.
Death in captivity isn’t limited to animals, it also happens to their caretakers. Keeping wild animals in captivity is a dangerous business that has no place in our society. Both the animals and humans involved must be protected from the greed of the business.
Captive flamingos and elephants, alike, suffer from foot problems due to being held in unnatural habitats, captive chimpanzees suffer from heart disease, and now, captive elephants are suffering from weight problems.
The National Institute for Health (NIH) retired nine baboons to Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary and is poised to retire 310 chimpanzees to sanctuaries around the USA.
In 2011, PETA filed suit against SeaWorld for violating the rights of five captive Orca’s (Tilikum, Katina, Kasatka, Corky, and Ulises) citing that they are forced to perform and are being held as slaves, which is a violation of the 13th Amendment.
Flamingos do not belong in Denmark, or polar bears do not belong in the hot European sun, and whales certainly do not belong in bathtubs.
The big business of animal theme parks is a lackluster endeavor that, despite its prominence, is largely unpopular with the American public.
Animal abuse for human entertainment has been blacklisted for some time now. Worldwide circuses are being closed together with most of the sea aquariums in the USA.
Some Caribbean aquariums remain open, like in Curacao were dolphins are being tortured 7 days per week to rake in profits disguised as swimming with dolphins. One person must pay hundreds of dollars to experience a caged dolphin encounter.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t experience wild animals. Hop on a boat and take a whale tour, grab a pair of binoculars and go birding, visit a sanctuary, volunteer at a wildlife refuge, or simply take a hike!
There are so many ways to experience wildlife, in the wild! Sometimes, all you need to do is look around you.
One Green Planet.org / Crickey Conservation Society 2018.
Crickey Amigu di Natura 