Back in May, I wrote an article titled “Was the Maidan Massacre a False Flag?”, which covered the work of Ukrainian-Canadian academic Ivan Katchanovski. Briefly, Katchanovski argues that the massacre of police and protestors on the Maidan Square in February of 2014 was a false flag operation carried out by the Ukrainian far-right.
I concluded my article by saying, “If others believe that Katchanovski is mistaken, they must come forward and their arguments.” Well, Ian Rons did just that. In an article titled “A Load of Ballistics”, he not only argued that Katchanovski is wrong but implied that he is spreading Russian propaganda.
When reading Rons’ article, the first thing that struck me was that he’d only addressed a small part of the evidence that Katchanovski presents in his papers. Aside from quoting two of Katchanovski’s critics, he spends almost the entire article dealing with the issue of ballistics (types of bullets used, angles from which people were shot).
And he admits as much in the conclusion: “I’ll note that there are a lot of other dubious claims made by Katchanovski that I haven’t addressed.” Rons’ stated reason for not addressing these other claims is that “it requires a lot less time, energy and knowledge to make false claims than to refute them”. The fact that Rons ignored most of Katchanovski’s evidence implies that even if his points are correct, there is still a lot of evidence for the ‘false flag theory’.
Another thing that struck me when reading Rons’ article was his rather uncharitable tone. For example, he accuses Katchanovski of playing the “now rather shabby-looking get-out-of-jail-free card”, and suggests that what Katchanovski “hopes” to do is delegitimise the Maidan movement. Needless to say, Katchanovski did not appreciate Rons’ article, describing it as an “open whitewashing of the Maidan mass killers”.
The remainder of this article comprises a point-by-point response. The text is largely based on a 14-page rebuttal that I was sent by Katchanovski. It can therefore be read as his response to Rons – although it was edited by me.
Katchanovski is a political scientist with no expertise in firearm forensics, yet he’s claiming to have analysed the events of 2014 from that perspective and to have published ‘academic’ work on the subject. As far as I can see, none of his work on this topic has passed peer review.
Ian Rons’ article is an open whitewashing of the Maidan massacre and of the far-right elements responsible for it. He has smeared a Ukrainian-Canadian scholar and ignored the overwhelming evidence presented in my studies. Such evidence includes not only forensic evidence revealed by the Maidan massacre trial, but also videos, audio and photographs of Maidan snipers; public confessions by 14 members of the Maidan sniper groups; and testimonies by over 500 witnesses, including the majority of wounded protesters.
The evidence for the false flag theory is beyond any reasonable doubt, and far exceeds what is typically presented in academic studies. However, Rons reduces the evidence to forensics and then misrepresents that evidence.
My studies of the Maidan massacre have been published in a peer-reviewed journal and a book by a top academic press. I have also presented them at several top conferences in my field. I am in the process of finishing a book-length manuscript about the Maidan massacre for an academic press. My video appendixes – with synchronized videos of the massacre, as well as testimonies of trial witnesses and other evidence – are publicly available on my YouTube page and without age verification on my academic website.
[Katchanovski’s arguments] fall into the general narrative that Ukraine’s recent history can only be assessed in terms of, and is only explicable as a result of, neo-Nazism… Russia has been advancing these claims – along with others – as a justification for what is now being credibly described as genocide.
This is false and slanderous. In fact, my 2020 article in Journal of Labor and Society concludes as follows:
Contrary to the narrative by Russian and separatist politicians and the media, and the Yanukovych government, the Euromaidan was not a “fascist coup” and the Maidan government was not a “fascist junta” because the neo-Nazi organizations did not have dominant roles among the Ukrainian far-right. The far-right organizations were involved in the violent overthrow of the Yanukovych government and in the Maidan governments in the alliance with oligarchic Maidan parties and leaders.
What’s more, I have repeatedly stated in media interviews that Putin’s claims concerning genocide in Donbas and Neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian government are false.
Katchanovski is a political scientist with no expertise in firearm forensics, yet he’s claiming to have analysed the events of 2014 from that perspective and to have published ‘academic’ work on the subject.
For my latest paper, I analyzed several hundred hours of video recordings of the Maidan massacre trials, along with over 2,500 court decisions. I also examined the testimonies of wounded protesters, relatives of those protesters, prosecution and defence witnesses, and top officials from the Yanukovych Government. In addition, I analysed the results of forensic ballistic and medical examinations and investigative experiments – as well as videos and photos of the Maidan massacre made public during the trial.
The video appendices to my paper include testimonies of wounded protesters and other witnesses; relevant social media posts; and synchronized segments of American, Belgian, Belarusian, British, Finish, French, Dutch, German, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian TV footage.
The Maidan massacre trials and investigations revealed that four killed and several dozen wounded policemen, as well as the majority of 49 killed and 157 wounded protesters, were killed by snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings.
Videos presented at the trial showed that, in the majority of cases, the exact times protestors were hit did not coincide with the exact times Berkut officers were discharging their weapons. Forensic medical examinations determined that the overwhelming majority of protesters were shot from steep directions, and from the sides or back. Forensic examinations of bullet holes by government experts indicated that Berkut policemen were shooting above the protesters at snipers in the Hotel Ukraina.
What’s more, there is evidence of a cover-up and stonewalling on the part of post-Maidan governments. In fact, the prosecution denied there were any snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings, despite the overwhelming evidence for them. And not a single person has been convicted for the massacre almost eight years after the event.
[Katchanovski’s work] has apparently not been well received – for instance by fellow Canadian-based Ukraine experts Professor David R. Marples and Dr Taras Kuzio.
I am one of the most cited scholars specializing in the politics of Ukraine. My studies on the Maidan massacre have been cited (overwhelmingly favourably) by over 100 other scholars and experts, replicated in a book by the political scientist Gordon Hahn, and corroborated by BBC and German investigative TV reports, as well as Italian, Israeli and U.S. TV documentaries.
Rons cites a 2014 article written by Taras Kuzio, but fails to mention that Kuzio was the head of a propaganda outlet linked to the far-right OUN. As David Marples notes (see p.29), Kuzio was “best known as Director of the CIA-financed Ukrainian Press Agency”. In 2012, Kuzio admitted to having received payments from the Fatherland Party for his media publications about Ukraine. More recently, Kuzio’s contract at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies was not renewed (see p.148), “partly as a result of his YouTube broadcasts, several of which targeted CIUS among his usual victims of scholars who in his view were hostile to Ukraine, “Putinophiles”, or fellow travellers”.
Rons also cites a 2014 article by David Marples. Although Marples is a respected historian, he has not researched the Maidan massacre himself. Since writing the 2014 article, he has changed his view, stating that the Massacre was carried out primarily by “snipers firing from the rooftops of nearby buildings” and that responsibility for it “remained unclear”. He has also cited my studies in his own academic work.
Referring to Kuzio and Marples, Rons falsely claims that I don’t “engage with their criticisms” of my work. In fact, I wrote an article titled “The Snipers’ Massacre in Kyiv: A Response to Critics”.
Rons also repeats the claim made by Kuzio and Marples that the far-right did not come to power after the Maidan massacre. I addressed this claim in the article mentioned above, as well as in my academic studies. The far-right Svoboda Party was given almost a quarter of cabinet positions in the interim Government, leading two observers to write in Foreign Policy that “a sizeable portion of Kiev’s current Government… are, indeed, fascists”. Dmytro Yarosh, the head of Right Sector, was offered a post of Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, but he rejected it.
Katchanovski acknowledges that the Government had been shooting and killing protesters during this period before, during and after his supposed neo-Nazis had taken up their positions on February 20th.
This is false. I have argued there is a lack of evidence concerning whether protesters were shot by the Berkut police or Government snipers. Neither the trial, investigation, nor the media have revealed any evidence that Yanukovych or his ministers or commanders ordered killings of the Maidan protesters.
The presence of far-right protester-murdering snipers on February 20th – which must obviously have been unknown to the vast majority of protesters – certainly wouldn’t (as Katchanovski hopes) delegitimise the protests themselves.
I have always favoured liberal democracy, human rights, and peace in Ukraine – even when it was dangerous to do so. I attended the opposition rallies in Kyiv when I was at university there in the late 1980s. During the first such rally, which was attended by just a few dozen people, undercover KGB agents arrested a female protester because she unveiled a blue and yellow Ukrainian flag.
In 1990, my department chair threatened to expel me from a Kyiv university because I based my final thesis on the theories of Max Weber and various Western economists, and wrote that the Soviet economic system was bound to collapse. Because of Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost reforms, I was not expelled but merely given a “C” – meaning I could not pursue graduate education in the Soviet Union.
I publicly supported EU membership for Ukraine before and during the Maidan protests, and have continued to do so since then.
But I believe scholars must base their research on evidence, not on their political convictions. I have done research on all the major violent conflicts in modern Ukraine, including the Nazi and Soviet genocides, the mass murder by the OUN and the UPA, the Odesa massacre, the civil war and Russian military interventions in Donbas, and the Russia-Ukraine war.
Nobody is disputing that Government forces shot and killed protesters… However, Katchanovski’s core contention is that some protesters also deliberately shot other protesters.
There is overwhelming evidence – documented in my video appendices – that protestors were shot from behind.
In this video, an ICTV reporter states that snipers from the Hotel Ukraina were shooting advancing protesters from the back. The video shows a concealed shooter firing from the hotel at 10:25am. Protesters and a BBC TV crew are then seen running, after they point out a “sniper” shooting from the hotel at 10:28am. A BBC reporter zooms in on an 11th floor window. Google maps, videos, and on-site observation confirm that it was physically impossible to shoot at the Berkut barricade from this hotel window, which matches the window in the ICTV video.
One protester stated that three other protesters fall to the ground when a sniper was firing from the same window of the Hotel Ukraina, where he saw gunshot flashes. Pastushok testified that he, Khrapachenko, and two other protesters from the Volhynian company were filmed by the BBC running, after shouts about “a sniper” in the Hotel Ukraina. Another protester then told him that this was “our sniper.”
The government investigation subsequently revealed that a deputy from the far-right Svoboda party occupied the relevant hotel room. About half the rooms on this floor were occupied by Svoboda deputies. Recall that the prosecution in the Maidan massacre trial denied there were any snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings like the Hotel Ukraina.
Shotgun pellets are of course used for hunting, but also for home defence and in law enforcement, and there is clear evidence of Government forces carrying shotguns and no evidence of protesters using them.
Synchronized and time-stamped videos show that all three protesters who were shot with hunting pellets on February 20th were killed before the Berkut special company (whose members were charged with their killings) even appeared in the Maidan area. At the time these protestors were killed, there was a live broadcast by a Polish TV journalist stating that a sniper was shooting at both police and protesters. Right after the protestors were willed, a warning not to shoot fellow protesters in the back was given from the Maidan stage.
I began to wonder whether Ukrainian Government forces could have been using Western-made sniper rifles chambered in 7.62 NATO or similar. The possibility was worth investigating, since if they weren’t using these rounds, it might tend to confirm Katchanovski’s claim that these came from commercially-available hunting rifles.
The government investigation, synchronised videos of the massacre, security cameras recordings, and testimonies of the commanders and snipers from SBU Alfa and Internal Troops Omega showed that those two units were deployed to the Maidan area only after almost all the protesters were killed or wounded. This means that government snipers could not have physically shot the two protesters with 7.62×54 caliber bullets, and Viktor Chmilenko with a 30-06 caliber ‘Springfield’ bullet.
What’s more, all the commanders and snipers from government units testified at the Maidan massacre trial as prosecution witnesses! They stated that their orders were to locate the snipers who were shooting at police and protesters, that they themselves were fired upon by snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings, and that the killing of protesters in the areas of their observation stopped shortly after their deployment. Their testimony is corroborated by synchronised videos of the massacre, including those compiled by “anonymous volunteers” with funding from the Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine.
Rons ignores numerous videos, photos, eyewitness testimonies, and admissions by members of Maidan sniper groups that are cited in my studies. They show that the Maidan snipers were armed with hunting and Mosin rifles that match both the calibers and types of the bullets extracted from the bodies of the protesters, and that they were shooting from the Music Conservatory, the Hotel Ukraina, and the Maidan barricades.
Evidence of Western-made sniper rifles in government hands was not difficult to find, and the former Azov Battalion volunteer Carolus Löfroos (whose unvarnished account of the war in the Donbas in 2014–15 I’d highly recommend) was able to identify the specific types of rifle.
It is revealing that Rons “highly recommends” the writings of a volunteer from the far-right Azov battalion. He ignores the videos and testimonies cited in my studies, which show that one of the locations from which snipers fired was the Kozatsky Hotel. This hotel is located on the Maidan, was controlled by the Maidan forces, and served as the headquarters of Patriot of Ukraine – a neo-Nazi organisation that founded and led the Azov battalion.
[While] police units weren’t using 7.62 NATO rounds, other Government forces were. In particular, the Sako make of rifle – as seen in Government hands – was singled out by the prosecutor. Katchanovski has completely omitted these hugely important facts.
Rons fails to note that the judge at the Maidan massacre trial read aloud the following forensic examination of the Khrapachenko bullet fragments: “this bullet is a part of hunting bullets 7.62×51 with expansive bullet soft point which could have been fired from the above-named hunting firearms…” A Berkut lawyer read aloud the same forensic report, which states that the bullet had “layers of corrosion”.
There is no evidence that Alfa, Omega or other government snipers fired hunting bullets, particularly with corrosion(!), nor other non-sniper bullets, such as 7.62×54 LPS rounds. The government investigation found that snipers from the SBU Alfa and Internal Troops Omega units did not massacre the protesters, and hence did not charge them (with the one notable exception). The prosecution alleged that officers from the Berkut special company killed protestors using such bullets, even though their calibers do not match the calibers of AKMs used by the Berkut special company.
Rons ignores the video and photographs, forensic and medical examinations, and testimonies of eyewitnesses – all of which show that Khrapachenko was shot from the Maidan-controlled Hotel Ukraina in the back, and that it was physically impossible for him to have been shot by Berkut officers or Omega snipers.
Forensic and medical examinations by government experts found that he was shot by a corroded expanding hunting bullet in the back at a steep top-to-bottom angle. A laser used during an on-site experiment to determine a bullet trajectory also suggested a gunshot from the top of the Hotel Ukraina. Two protesters near him testified that he was shot from the Hotel Ukraina or another Maidan-controlled building. The prosecution initially found that he was shot from the Hotel Ukraina, but then charged the Berkut officers and an Omega sniper with his killing.
As documented in my video appendices, Pastushok testified during the government investigation that Khrapachenko, who was next to him at the time, was shot from the left side of the Hotel Ukraina. Pastushok also stated that protesters were fired upon from the Hotel Ukraina when they were carrying Khrapachenko.
Without any explanation, the Prosecutor General Office reversed its own previous findings that at least three protesters were killed from the Hotel Ukraina and ten others were also killed from significant heights, instead charging the Berkut officers with their killings. The GPU charged an Omega sniper with killing Khrapachenko even though it had already charged the Berkut officers. The court later released the Omega sniper due to lack of evidence.
The reports prepared by SITU were used in evidence in the trials of some Berkut police officers in 2016.
This is false. Maidan victims asked the court to use the SITU model that they commissioned as evidence during the Maidan massacre trial, but the trial did not admit it as evidence and did not examine it. In contrast, my publicly available video appendix with testimonies of over 80 witnesses concerning the Maidan snipers was admitted and shown as evidence during the trial, although I was not involved in any capacity.
[Katchanovski] dismisses the medical evidence suggesting Dmytriv was hit by one bullet that first passed through his right arm before entering his chest, instead choosing to assert that there were two bullets, only one of them (the fatal one) entering Dmytriv’s chest.
This is false. My video appendix shows the judge reading the original medical examination during the trial, which refers to separate bullet wounds in his hand and chest. It clearly specifies both the locations of the wounds and their steep top-to-bottom and right-to-left directions. Rons and the SITU misrepresented these wound locations and their directions, which clearly suggest Dmytriv was shot from the Bank Arkada, not from the Berkut barricade.
Contrary to Rons’ claim that Dmytriv was shot from a nearly horizontal direction by Berkut officers in front of him, the autopsy report specifies a top-to-bottom and right-to-left wound channel. In addition, the wound location under his right arm, and the wound direction pointing to the Bank Arkada, are consistent with a bullet hole that appeared on the side of his shield after the shooting.
The deformation of the steel plate led the forensic pathologists to suggest that the bullet deviated (i.e., in a downwards direction), but Katchanovski takes no account of this and simply draws another straight line from entry to exit wound.
This is another false claim. The Dyhdalovych autopsy report clearly specifies that “the bullet canalwas straight, continuous… The bullet canal direction: anteroposteriorly, top down… The shot was in the right upper body part in the direction of anteroposteriorly, top down…” Contrary to Rons’ claim that the bullet deviated in his body after passing through a steel plate in his bulletproof vest, the report specified that the bullet passed “through the bulletproof vest’s front part (without any contact with the front protective sheet)”, and hit the protective sheet at the back.
As in the case of Dmytriv, Rons ignores the fact that a bullet hole appears in a shield on the Bank Arkada side of Dyhdalovych, and that another protester – who was behind him at the time – stated that Dyhdalovych was killed by a sniper on the Bank Arkada. Rons also ignores the synchronized videos, which show there were no Berkut policemen firing from their barricade at the times Dmytriv and Dyhdalovych were killed.
Katchanovski dismisses the medical report because he doesn’t think it matches the bullet holes in the orange hard hat worn by Parashchuk, suggesting that one should prefer his analysis based on the holes in the hard hat he claims to see.
All three videos in my video appendix show the same bullet hole in the same right back area of Parashchuk’s helmet, and show there is no entry hole in the front left area of the helmet – contrary to what the SITU claimed. There was no other protester wearing such a helmet who was shot in the head.
Rons ignores the fact – documented in my video appendix – that Parashchuk could not have been shot from the top of the truck barricade by a Berkut officer because he was in a blind spot below the line of fire. He also ignores the fact that a female Maidan medic in a BBC video, and a Maidan protester in a French photographer’s video, pointed to snipers on the Bank Arkada shortly before he was shot.
In addition, Rons ignores the clear evidence of a cover-up that I documented: Parashchuk’s helmet and shield with the bullet holes that appeared after the killings of Dmytriv and Dyhdalovych, and all other such shields and helmets (with only a couple of exceptions), simply “disappeared”.
[Katchanovski] never provides any real evidence that these buildings were ever controlled in any meaningful sense by protesters, despite asserting it repeatedly.
This is another false claim. My studies (see p.13) and their video appendixes include numerous videos and testimonies indicating that the far-right Svoboda party and the Maidan Self-Defence controlled and guarded the Hotel Ukraina during the massacre. They also indicate that Maidan protesters searched all rooms of the hotel for snipers during the massacre and that they captured some snipers there, but those snipers were released by Maidan leaders. There is similar evidence for Maidan control of other buildings and areas. Recall once again that the prosecution denied there were any snipers in the Hotel Ukraina, the Bank Arkada or other Maidan-controlled buildings.
[Katchanovski] takes seriously the claims of some Georgian ‘protesters’ who supposedly ‘confessed’ inside Russia – to Russian authorities – that they were the snipers.
This is a complete distortion. My latest study (see pp. 30–31) notes that testimonies of the majority of wounded protesters and several dozen prosecution witnesses are “generally consistent” with the testimonies of 8 Georgian ex-military personnel – and with their interviews in American, Italian and Israeli TV documentaries, as well as Macedonian and Russian media.
Three of the Georgians testified at the Prosecutor General Office of Belarus on request of the Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine, following an appeal by the Berkut lawyers. In November of 2021, the Maidan massacre trial admitted as evidence the testimony of one Georgian who confessed to being a Maidan sniper. Three self-identified Georgian snipers gave written depositions to Berkut lawyers for the trial; two provided notarized letters to the Ukrainian courts and offered to testify via video link from Belarus.
These individuals stated that they and other snipers from Georgia and the Baltic States received orders, weapons, and payments from specific Maidan leaders and former Georgian government officials and commanders. Their orders were to massacre both police and protesters in order to stop an agreement that was due to be signed by Yanukovych and the Maidan leaders. Most of the Georgians revealed their names, passport numbers, border stamps, copies of plane tickets, videos and photos in Ukraine or the Georgian military, and gave other evidence in support of their testimonies.
I’ll end with a statement made by an audience member in response to Katchanovski’s first conference presentation in 2014.
I did not present my Maidan massacre paper at this conference. As the video of my presentation shows, I presented a different paper – one concerning the civil war in Donbas. (This happens to be the most cited academic paper on that subject.) I merely discussed the findings of my Maidan massacre study, which I first presented at the Ukrainian Studies seminar at the University of Ottawa. The audience member, who is an activist from a successor organisation to the far-right OUN, attacked my study of the Maidan massacre without having read or heard it.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Primary school education in England and Wales is not bad, from looking at textbooks, but it starts to go downhill rapidly after that, this UN interference is just another burden.
The problem is the Education Blob, eager to adopt any progressive ideology that comes along. That is because they are educationalists, a strange bunch who have studied some useless subject to degree level, AND who are eager to avoid real jobs.
Many things forced on children are not in the least bit useful, but are taught simply because they are teachable and examinable. Oxbow lakes for example, still being taught 50 years after I encountered them in class, but never in the real world.
Get rid of some/all of the educationalists, and bring in people such as James Dyson, to prepare pupils for the world of real work.
To be honest, I found the formation of oxbow lakes to be one of the most interesting topics in geography. Though, now I come to think about it, what is an oxbow?
‘A U-shaped piece of wood fitted under and around the neck of a harnessed ox and attached to the yoke.’
“Primary school education in England and Wales is not bad”
Depends on your definition of “bad”. I used to do an activity in the hall of an infants school. The walls were plastered with stuff about “British values” and “anti-racism”. Why are schools involved in this stuff? Those things are for parents to communicate, not for a school.
What I’d like to know is when did education ( specifically at school level ) become woke? There was zero evidence of this when I was at school. Also, who’s pushing it? Because I think this goes way beyond who the Education Secretary happens to be, as this wouldn’t be a thing in many countries, would it? Yet again, I assert it’s coming from the usual ‘shadowy cabal’ that move behind the scenes, the architects of woke and those responsible for the overall fragmentation of society because that works in their favour, to weaken our communities and divide the populace. The ones that aren’t backwards in coming forwards about their ability to “penetrate the cabinets”. That’s where all this stems from. The politicians are mostly just mere puppets, being controlled by those more powerful.
Just in case anyone’s interested, this from 1 year ago lists all the Education Secretaries in the UK and a little blurb about them;
https://www.ssatuk.co.uk/blog/40-years-of-education-secretaries/
Indeed.
I was at school in the 70s and early 80s and I don’t remember any of that – no moralising beyond just being expected to behave ourselves and punished if we didn’t. My kids were at school about 20 years ago and there was more of it but nothing like now.
Definitely more conspiracy than cockup.
It’s a legal requirement to actively promote ‘British values’ in schools, I guess they don’t have a choice
Indeed it is, and they don’t. I don’t think there should be any legal requirements for what is taught in schools. Let parents choose.
Education knows what to do with the brightest students. Teachers want those classes, less hassle, more able students, get them over the line with their GCSE’s and A levels and pack them off to Uni. Easy. The problem is lower ability students who are disruptive and who do cause problems, and have little interest or ability to learn academically. The mantra there appears to be ‘keep them busy and out the way’. My wifes school even sections off the lowest and most disruptive and requires them to do three, two hour days, at a building away from the main school.
As teaching becomes more and more feminised, (80% plus classroom contacts are women Mogwai, before you try to label me as misogynistic.). I’m afraid that there just aren’t enough male teachers as figures of authority, punishments are staged and based on ‘personal reflection’ (yeah right…). I go back to my schooling where my Maths teacher might have only been 5ft 4 (Mr Smith…) but he was a former Marine commando, and carried himself like it. No-one messed Mr Smith about. We (as in the more able students) still had a game of rugby and a cross country run every week. The less able students had two games of rugby, a cross country run and an hour in the gym. It got rid of their energy and gave them other ways to excel through sports, not just be written off because they couldn’t sit still.
Society and the culture of entitlement plays a big part too. BAME? You’re a victim. Poor.? You’re a victim. Stupid.? You’re a victim, and we go easy on victims. We make excuses for you, of course, because we want equality of outcome. Mad…
Do you have a source for that figure, or can I expect you to spit your dummy out again because I have the audacity to ask such an unreasonable question? Also, if teaching has become “feminised”, who do you think is responsible? Because I think nowadays the teachers have very little control in what they have to teach kids. All of this material is mandatory for them to teach. So how’s about thinking critically and scratching the surface for once, just to see who’s running the show, as opposed to just pointing fingures? After all, there are plenty of women who oppose the woke mind virus just like there are plenty of men on board with it.
That would be the same Dyson who relocated all his manufacturing to Asia once he had made enough money by exploiting British workers to be able to do so? That’s certainly going to be a brilliant choice for preparing pupils for the real world: Don’t bother to acquire any useful skills, kids, you can never compete with Asians who don’t have to pay British taxes in world-wide work marketplace! Thankfully, there are so many rich people in Britain who’ll continue to buy my products that no one needs you!
Climate Change 100% Propaganda
I have come to think about the climate change, net-zero stuff as having much in common with the Nazi idea of the ‘Big Lie’. It seems to me to be a basic issue with humans that we have the ability to build a huge complex social structure on a false or dodgy basic idea, the social structure then becomes so huge and critical that nobody dares challenge the underlying false idea. With climate change I am inclined to think that a core of powerful people driving this know it is false but are driving it forward for insidious, evil, malevolent, anti-human intentions and they will do all they can to brook no opposition or dissent.
Goebbels wold have been green with envy if he could see what they have achieved and what they are doing.
Goebbels and his arm-raising friends would also have been very proud of all the Covid scams – although I can’t imagine any of them saying “a Scotch egg is a proper meal” (in German, of course). They were grown up fascists, not childish morons like Johnson, Hancock, Gove, et al
Yet the planes still fly, in greater numbers than ever.
And there will still be a need for engineers. If there are fools who don’t want to work and study (nor read Wind, Sand and Stars by St Exupery, for example) then there’s more space and time for my children to learn with those who do.
St Exupery was familiar with these deluded types, too.
President Trump will cut U.N. funding from the U.S. by 30%, about $6bn
And so he should. The U.N. approach to climate change is deeply flawed….because it is not backed by evidence:
‘Andy Pitman, Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes admits that he and fellow climate alarmists have no idea:
♦ when and where so-called “tipping points” might arise.
♦ whether climate change will increase or decrease the Murray Darling water flows
♦ whether an increase in CO2 will cause more or less rain for a given location
♦ how climate change will impact cities and urban landscapes (Andy, stop upsetting the Melbourne and Sydney city councils’ climate crusaders)
♦ how wind droughts and heavy clouding might undermine renewables and net-zero targeting (via week-long blackouts).
In a repudiation of the “settled science” notion the climate crowd has pushed for 25 years, Pitman now acknowledges that despite decades of study, the catastrophists still have no idea if Australia will see more El Nino, rather than La Nina, climate events, or even whether more vegetation will reduce or increase greenhouse emissions (so much for tree plantings offsetting emissions). “These are not easily solvable but offer profoundly different futures for Australia,”.
Odd that we are to invest trillions in net zero when we have no idea what’s what.
Other profound unknowns include, according to Pitman, include sea-ice extent, cloud processes, ice-sheet dynamics and urban and agricultural landscape impacts (p22). He lets another cat out of the bag with news that between March 16 and 18 of this year, a giant 70-billion tonne snowfall hit East Antarctica, contributing to a net ice gain in Antarctica reversing the 20-year trend of ice loss.
Climate models remain too crude to handle the key processes of atmospheric rivers around the Antarctic which created that startling reversal, he says (p25). This is quite a hiccup to the orthodoxy of Antarctica contributing to sea rise, a typical manifestation of boffins’ “incomplete” knowledge and “major gaps”.
Pitman even concedes that current climate models can’t predict whether natural disasters will become more or less common in the warming era. Remember his words when you next hear the ABC or Climate Council claiming that such-and-such storms and floods are “climate-fuelled”.
As for global climate models, Pitman says they aren’t fit for purpose as they can’t catch “key processes in all spheres of the climate system.” With the globe divided into 100-square-kilometre units, models can’t represent “critical weather systems” such as Southern Ocean. Nor can they predict weather-disaster processes such as the lead-up to the Lismore 2022 floods.
He wants resolution improved down to 1 square km, “overcoming a long-recognised Achilles heel in climate modelling.” (p17). The super-computing cost? He doesn’t say.
Pitman also threw the climate dogmatists under his Uncertainty Bus with these further remarks:
‘Climate predictions are built on very old science……’
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/12/13/climate-science-you-can-believe/
They don’t need evidence because it isn’t about science and never was. It is about Politics and that doesn’t require any evidence.
Which is why President Trump will, quite rightly, cut U.S. funding for the U.N.
The UK and EU just hate Trump for throwing a spanner in their phony planet saving works——-Trump is “Man of the Year” though, not Starmer, nor any technocrat from the UN or WEF. Trump has it 100% right and the phony planet savers have it 100% WRONG. .
Check out UK Fires, a collaboration from Oxford, Cambridge, Nottingham, Bath Universities and Imperial College, London which is advising the British Government and you will find that that is precisely what they are promoting here.
https://ukfires.org/impact/publications/reports/absolute-zero/
They intend that we should live in a pre-industrial world. Welcome back to the standard of living of the 13th century. (But it won’t apply to the “Elites” of course.)
Never forget that Chancellor Sunak was fully on board with the Agenda, saying in 2021 that the UK would “rewire” the global financial system for net zero, saying London will also commit 100 million pounds ($136.19 million) to make climate finance more accessible to developing countries. Outlining Britain’s strategy over the next five years to the United Nations COP26 climate summit, he said in addition to the 100 million pounds, London would also support a new capital markets mechanism to issue billions of new green bonds.
Our only hope of stopping the process has just been re-elected as President of the USA, and in due course a Reform Government in the UK.
That report is insane. Pseudoscientific anti-human nonsense. Fu#@ Cambridge University. This crap needs to be utterly destroyed.
Living in a mud hut and doing subsistence farming sounds ever so romantic. Until you starve to death.
The 2030 deadline for the Great Reset is looming and it is evident all the stops are out to get their, and it doesn’t matter how blatant.
When kids and young people start giving up their mobile electronic devices, home entertainment systems, meat products, takeaways, foreign holidays, private transport, and other ‘polluting extravagances’, and when they blame the West, and Western culture (past and present) for all the world’s climate ills, then I will know that this (Western) civilisation has come to an end.
But I’m hopeful that once out of the clutches of these academic zealots, most of them will see sense.
” It basically says everything you’d expect it to about the necessity of mankind living in harmony with nature”
Just like the Georgia Guide Stones. There seems to be a conspiracy of silence over who blew them up, and why they were subsequently demolished when they could’ve easily been repaired.
” Spanish politician called the whole thing a “Communist plot”
Buy the man a pint!
You have to ask yourself who actually are the educated, if any, for surely teachers pushing this utter drivel out are not educated, and the little “darlings” soaking this idiocity up are definately not educated, I can only assume they think we are all going to go back to medieval/caveman eras for the good of the planet, which up to roughly 50 years or so was managing perfectly well on its own, its called weather, not climate change!!!.
In 1614 Galileo was arrested by the Inquisition, imprisoned and banished and had his writings banned because of expressing his belief (fact) that the Earth revolves around the Sun and not as the Pope and Catholic Church (settled science) insisted, that the Sun revolved around the Earth. A mere 376 years later, in 1992, the church finally apologised and changed its mind.
I’m old enough to remember the Maoist Red Guards and the waving of their little red books. When would that be? 1960’s? Then it was the cultural revolution. Now its the climate revolution. East now West. History repeating itself. This cult will eventually fizzle out but not before I do I fear!