Tag: news

Authored by Alan Mammoser via OilPrice.com,

In the panorama of renewable energy technologies, hydrogen’s potential is seen in several sectors. It is what the IEA calls an ‘integration’ technology. It promises to play a cross-sectoral role throughout the energy system, contributing simultaneously to decarbonization in various ways. It can make clean energy sources more efficient and increase overall system flexibility.  What has increased its appeal, beyond the basic need to address climate change, is the remarkable decline in the cost of renewable energy, which makes the large-scale production of low-carbon hydrogen more feasible. These factors have motivated a growing number of plans and pilot projects throughout the world, reaching a high point of announcements for new projects last year. 

Now the outlines of how hydrogen will function in future energy systems, and the pathways to get there, are beginning to appear. One region of particular importance is northern Europe. 

But it is a critical moment when momentum has slowed in large part due to the pandemic. With recovery, it is not certain that investment in low-carbon hydrogen applications will continue to grow. Strong and specific commitments from companies and governments will be required to spur demand and foster markets.  

A shifting emphasis 

The current actual worldwide production of low-carbon hydrogen is a tiny amount. However, there is a growing activity on several fronts, with new pilot and early commercial projects appearing with unprecedented momentum until this year. They suggest how government and business will give birth to clean hydrogen markets. 

Experts have noticed a shift in emphasis. Up until recently, the transport sector has been the center of focus for clean hydrogen, with efforts to develop fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) and hydrogen refueling stations. Some impressive gains have been made. According to the IEA, the FCEV market has continued to expand especially in China, Japan and Korea. And at the end of 2019, there were 470 hydrogen refueling stations in operation worldwide, an increase of more than 20% from 2018. There has even been production of two fuel cell trains by Alstom in Germany, with more coming next year. 

But the area of activity is expanding beyond transport. Governments and companies are working together to ramp up green hydrogen with projects in key end-use technologies and low-carbon production. Although the starting point is low, new projects are for large scale deployment of electrolysers of a hundred megawatts. They have applications in heavy industry, chemical production, heat for cities, and the all-important area of energy storage. 

A glance at a few major projects shows the extent of planning for large scale electrolysis, industrial applications, and the deployment of gas grids to carry hydrogen for multiple purposes. These appear in the IEA’s Hydrogen Projects Database, which offers a comprehensive record of low-carbon hydrogen projects commissioned, in planning or construction worldwide for the past twenty years. The database can be accessed on-line.

North European nexus 

The shifting emphasis can be seen especially in Northern Europe, where large concentrations of projects are now found. Renewable energy will power electrolysers to produce hydrogen for industries in northern industrial centers. Other projects focus on power and heat for urban districts. Key applications include large-scale electrolysis, carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), and utilization of natural gas networks. 

A few notable projects are described briefly here. 

Electrolysis: There are a number of planned projects for hydrogen electrolysers that would produce hydrogen from decarbonized electricity. German and French projects are leaders. 

In Germany, a power-to-gas project in Emsland in the Ruhr region has been called ‘Hybridge’ for its capacity to couple electric and gas networks. In a partnership of transmission system operator Amprion and gas net operator Open Grid Europe (OGE), electricity from renewable energy will be converted, by means of electrolysis, into hydrogen and methane. The companies will deploy a 100 MW electrolyser, with the resulting hydrogen transported by an OGE hydrogen pipeline and the existing gas pipeline network throughout the Ruhr and beyond. The project is anticipated to start operation in 2023.

In France, in the Les Hauts de France region around Dunkirk, one of the world’s most ambitious power-to-gas projects will build five 100 MW hydrogen electrolyser production units over five years. The project, a partnership of France’s H2V Industry and Norway’s HydrogenPro, will introduce hydrogen into the natural gas distribution network in order to decarbonize the natural gas used for heating and cooking as well as for transport. 

These ambitious European projects have large-scale electrolysis counterparts in North America. Most notable is a project of the British Columbia-based Renewable Hydrogen Canada (RH2C), which is backed by a private sector utility and investors. The company is planning to build a large electrolysis plant in BC, to produce renewable hydrogen through water electrolysis powered by local hydropower and winds off the Rockies. Meanwhile, in the US, dedicated research on electrolysis to produce hydrogen from renewables is centered in the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. 

Industry: Most of the current demand for hydrogen is in oil refining, the chemical sector and steel manufacturing. Therefore the main near term opportunity to reduce emissions in the industrial sector is to displace fossil fuel hydrogen with electrolytic hydrogen produced from renewable sources (‘green’ hydrogen) or with CCUS (‘blue’ hydrogen). This is feasible in the production of chemicals such as ammonia and methanol and in oil refining. And electrolytic hydrogen is gaining momentum in steelmaking, with a large demonstration plant under construction in Sweden that is expected to be operational by 2025. 

The development of infrastructure that couples conventional hydrogen production with CCUS is moving forward across a broad range of applications. According to the IEA, six projects with a total annual production of 350 000 metric tons of low-carbon hydrogen were in operation at the end of 2019. Moreover, more than 20 projects to be launched in the 2020s have been announced, for the most part in countries around the North Sea. 

One such project, known as H-vision, will establish blue hydrogen infrastructure in the Rotterdam harbor area in the Netherlands. It will consist of hydrogen production with CCUS in four steam-reforming plants, with a total capacity of 15-20 metric tons of hydrogen production per hour. They will produce hydrogen for industrial plants in the harbor, with the resultant CO2 to be sequestered in depleted gas fields under the North Sea or used in chemical production. The consortium contains 14 parties from within the harbor and others in the process chain. Starting from a 2019 feasibility study, their goal is to realize the complete project by 2030. 

Gas grid: According to the IEA, several projects around the world are already injecting hydrogen into existing natural gas grids. It is possible to blend up to 20% hydrogen on a volumetric basis into a gas grid with minimal or even no modifications to the infrastructure or end-user home appliances. 

An enormous pilot project to convert the gas networks to hydrogen in the north of England is being planned now. First announced in 2016, the H21 North of England (H21 NoE) project, is a collaboration of two British gas distributors, Northern Gas Networks and Cadent, and Norway’s Equinor (formerly Statoil). They have produced a hydrogen blueprint that will utilize the existing natural gas distribution infrastructure serving a region of 5 million inhabitants including several large cities for domestic and industrial users, with applications including heat, power and transport. 

The project’s planners view it as a way to achieve the ‘deep decarbonization’ that could not be reached with renewable electric power alone. To do so will require carbon capture and storage (CCS). Equinor’s role is to build a hydrogen production facility utilizing a standard reforming process with natural gas. The captured CO2 will be transported offshore to undersea storage. A specially built hydrogen transmission pipeline will link to the local gas distribution networks. The new transmission pipeline is required because injecting hydrogen into gas transmission pipelines is more difficult (although Italy’s Snam has already demonstrated the feasibility of blending hydrogen up to 10% in gas transmission grids).  

Project implementation is to occur between 2028 and 2034. It is anticipated to achieve deep decarbonization of 14% of the UK’s heat demand by 2034. Its large scale and significant impact on carbon emissions will make H21 NoE the world’s first at-scale hydrogen economy. Should it succeed, it will lay a basis for expanding such a system across the entire UK, decarbonizing a large percentage of domestic heat, transport and power by 2050. Indeed it will serve as a model for many other countries. 

A more modest project in France is called GRHYD (Gestion des Réseaux par l’injection d’Hydrogène pour Décarboner les énergies, i.e., grid management through the injection of hydrogen for energy decarbonization). Launched in 2018, it is managed by the energy services firm Engie with local partners and support of the French government. The current phase is a power-to-gas project deploying renewable energy to blend up to 20% hydrogen into the natural gas grid for a district of Dunkirk. It is demonstrating the technical feasibility of this approach for domestic use. 

A critical moment

Last month the IEA released its annual World Energy Outlook Special Report under the title ‘Sustainable Recovery.’ In it, the agency places hydrogen among six key sectors that governments should focus on for economic recovery, calling on them to ‘boost innovation in crucial technology areas including hydrogen, batteries, CCUS, and small modular nuclear reactors.’

And in a recent Tracking Energy Integration 2020 report, the IEA calls hydrogen one of several integration technologies that are ‘increasingly crucial’ for a low-carbon energy transition. The report notes that important political momentum had been building through last year, listing ten international initiatives and national plans that appeared during 2019. These include top level G20 discussions and target-setting plans by Korea, Japan, Netherlands, Australia and Canada. 

Clearly the hydrogen movement is at a critical moment when continuing innovation is required. The role of government will remain important as fledgling industries seek to gain scale and find markets. Governments will need to provide direct, targeted support for projects that can achieve technical and market advances. And they will need to help stimulate demand in sectors where good near-term opportunities appear. 

Northern Europe, where low carbon hydrogen projects are just beginning to gain significant scale, will be an important region to watch. The work occurring across the region should produce technological improvements on a wide range of applications and expand hydrogen use to new applications. Success in this region will help other countries and regions continue to refine their hydrogen strategies and roadmaps and set realistic targets for the deployment of specific technologies.

Key indicators for a true V-shaped economic recovery (i.e. actual productivity, not just printing money) for the American economy simply don’t seem to be lining up. For example, used heavy duty truck metrics for May are indicating that volumes have plunged 12% sequentially and longer term sales are down 20% year over year. 

The data, released by ACT, shows that YTD sales have still managed to eke out a 2% gain over last year, mostly due to an abysmal 2019, according to Truck Parts and Service. Class 8 average prices and miles barely budged, rising just 2% and 1% respectively from April to May, the report found. 

“Longer term, average price, miles and age all contracted year-over-year, as well as year-to-date, down respectively from the first five months of 2019 by 16 percent, 2 percent and 6 percent,” the ACT report notes. 

Kenny Vieth, ACT president and senior analyst commented: “Dealers are reporting that low used truck prices and high inventories were challenges before COVID-19 struck and they continue to be an issue. The upside for people buying trucks is that there are bargains available. Not surprisingly, most sales reps are reporting their business as much slower now than in early March, with some saying they are doing well with dump trucks and other vocational truck types, while aerodynamic sleepers continue to be grossly oversupplied.”

Full Class 8 sales data for June will be available in coming days. 

Recall, in mid-June we noted that Class 8 heavy duty truck orders had crashed 62.5% in May to their lowest levels since 2011. 

Still struggling with the remnants of an order backlog that started almost two years ago with record orders in August 2018, the industry was unable to find an equilibrium prior to the coronavirus pandemic. Orders were sluggish and we noted numerous trucking companies that closed up shop altogether in 2019.

After a 73% crash in April, Class 8 orders once again plunged 62.5% in May, to their lowest sales levels since 2011. Sales came in at just over 9,000, according to Transport Topics. 

Don Ake, vice president of commercial vehicles at FTR, tried to look at the bright side: “It’s not a horrible number. It’s a fair number under bad conditions. It is going to be a long, slow climb back.”

Dan Clark, head of BMO Transportation Finance, says a V-shaped recovery isn’t likely: “Given that the industry is still wrestling with the hangover of a near-record two-year stretch of heavy-duty truck sales, which is now compounded by lower than previously expected economic activity for the next year or two, we aren’t expecting to see a V-shaped recovery in Class 8 sales.”

He believes that orders will remain “choppy” during the second half of 2020, especially heading into the election.

Authored by Daniel Payne via JustTheNews.com,

Since December, the World Health Organization has flip-flopped and fumbled its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, at times reversing course on major health issues that has led to confusion among world leaders on just how to handle the pandemic.

Among the earliest failures of the WHO—one which only became apparent last week—was the organization’s omission of how it initially learned of the disease outbreak.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on April 20 that “the first report [of the disease] came from Wuhan, from China itself,” suggesting that the Chinese Communist Party informed the organization of the pandemic in the first days of the outbreak.  

Yet, an updated timeline published last week states instead that WHO’s Country Office in China first learned of the disease from “a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission” on Dec. 31.  The lack of clarity led multiple media outlets to report that Chinese authorities told the WHO’s China office about the outbreak.

But according to the WHO’s timeline, Chinese officials only provided the organization with information on the initial outbreak of cases there on Jan. 3. 

Chinese officials have been accused of covering up the extent of the outbreak, including when it first arose in Wuhan. Some experts have estimated that, had China’s Communist government revealed the disease’s outbreak when it first began and requested international help, the worst of the global pandemic likely could have been averted.

No masks, then masks

The WHO has also whipsawed regarding the question of face coverings. The organization had previously declared that “the wide use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not supported by current evidence and carries uncertainties and critical risks.” Among those risks, according to the WHO, were “breathing difficulties,” “self-contamination,” a “false sense of security” and a “diversion of resources from effective public health measures.”

In June, the organization clarified its recommendations, suggesting that “governments should encourage the general public to wear masks in specific situations and settings as part of a comprehensive approach to suppress SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”

Though the advice was highly qualified and still included a list of associated risks involving mask-wearing, the effect on the general public was largely unequivocal: “WHO reverses course, now advises people wear face masks,” read one typical headline.

That shift on masks mirrored flip-flops from public health officials in the United States and around the world. As with many health authorities, WHO officials claimed that new information on asymptomatic spread of the disease was part of the reason they changed their recommendations.

Asymptomatic spread actually ‘rare’

Fears of infected individuals walking around and spreading the disease while showing no symptoms have been one of the main drivers of panic surrounding the virus, and have led many governments around the world to impose harsh lockdown measures to prevent nominally healthy individuals from transmitting the virus. 

Yet WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said on June 9 that, based on her organization’s observations, asymptomatic spread of the disease appears to be highly unlikely. “We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing,” she said at a press conference. “They are following asymptomatic cases, they are following contacts and they are not finding secondary transmission onward, it’s very rare.” Those remarks echoed earlier findings from the WHO that, for instance, “transmission from an asymptomatic person is very rare with other coronaviruses.”

The comment generated furious rebuke from officials, many of whom had based strict national policy off the idea that asymptomatic spread was common and widespread. Van Kerkhove offered a clarification of her comments 24 hours later, calling the matter of asymptomatic spread “a big open question and that remains an open question” but didn’t go as far as retracting her earlier statements about asymptomatic spread being “very rare.” 

However, despite that clarification several media outlets claimed that Van Kerkhove had “walked back” her earlier remarks and that the WHO “didn’t actually mean” that asymptomatic spread was rare.

Hydroxychloroquine study halted

The WHO in May halted a study examining the effects of the drug hydroxychloroquine in treating the coronavirus, claiming the study was based on a report indicating increased mortality in patients who took the drug to treat the disease.

The move came as President Trump in March touted the drug as a possible cure for COVID-19. At the time, commentators and health officials have claimed repeatedly in the subsequent months that the drug—which has been safely used for over six decades to treat numerous ailments—is lethally risky and unsafe for coronavirus patients. 

Yet, last month the journal that published the study retracted its increased mortality findings, declaring that its authors could “no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources.”

Just prior to that retraction, the WHO resumed its hydroxychloroquine trials, however, later in June it would ultimately drop the drug from those trials, citing data indicating that the drug offered no benefit to COVID-19 patients. 

Meanwhile, a study conducted by the Henry Ford Health System and published Thursday in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases stated that its own trials of hydroxychloroquine had resulted in significant mortality reduction of COVID-19 patients. 

We’ve never heard of a government shake-up this big being first announced on social media, but on Sunday United Arab Emirates vice president and prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum shocked his country as well as Gulf-watchers by unveiling on Twitter a sweeping government restructuring. 

Sheikh Mohammed said said in Arabic: “The aim… is a government that can more quickly make decisions and deal with changes and more adeptly seize opportunities in dealing with this new stage in our history; a swift and agile government,” according to an Al Jazeera translation.

هدفنا من التغييرات الهيكلية اليوم هو حكومة أسرع في اتخاذ القرار .. وأكثر مواكبة للمتغيرات .. وأفضل في اقتناص الفرص وفي التعامل مع المرحلة الجديدة في تاريخنا .. حكومة مرنة وسريعة هدفها تعزيز منجزات ومكتسبات الوطن..

— HH Sheikh Mohammed (@HHShkMohd) July 5, 2020

The drastic restructuring is being reported as ostensibly due to the threat of severe economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and includes the goal of permanently transforming half of all government service centers into remote, online platforms. 

About half of all UAE’s federal agencies are to be merged with an apparent aim of reducing unnecessary bureaucracy and increasing centralization for the sake of more rapid speed in decision-making.

Here are some of the shake-up highlights and new appointments as well as reappointments, as reported in Al Jazeera:

• The head of Abu Dhabi’s national oil company ADNOC, Sultan al-Jaber, was named as industry and advanced technology minister and Abdullah al-Marri was appointed economy minister.
• The energy and infrastructure ministries were merged under a single portfolio to be headed by current energy minister Suhail Al Mazrouei.
• The Federal Water and Electricity Authority, Emirates Post, Emirates General Transport Corp, and Emirates Real Estate Corp were placed under the Emirates Investment Authority.
• The economy ministry got two ministers of state – Ahmed Belhoul for business and small and medium enterprises, and Thani al-Zeyoudi for foreign trade. Omar al-Olama was named minister of state for digital economy and artificial intelligence.
• A woman was named to head the nascent Emirates Space Agency. Sarah al-Amiri is currently leading the UAE’s Hope Probe to Mars, which will launch this month from Japan with the goal of providing a new look at the planet’s climate and atmosphere.

The county’s central bank had issued dire numbers related to the local and global impact of the coronavirus, forecasting the oil-rich UAE economy would contract by 3.6% this year.

“As the drop in economic activity is expected to be followed by sharp contractions in the subsequent quarters, non-energy growth contraction is projected at (minus)-4.1% for 2020,” the central bank had said in its first-quarter report.

“While recovery of economic activity is projected to commence in the second half of the year, recovery of economic sentiment will hinge on deploying policy support measures,” it said.

Authored by Eric Zuesse via the Saker Blog,

On Friday, July 3rd, the judge in the Netherlands court case against Russia as having fired a Buk missile that brought down the Malaysian Airlines plane that Ukrainian Air Traffic Control had instructed to fly over Ukraine’s civil-war zone on 17 July 2014, ruled out any consideration of evidence from Russia.

Judge Hendrik Steenhuis “refused to allow Russian military intelligence to reveal where the missile was located between 1987 and July 17, 2014, when the Dutch prosecution claims the missile was fired by a Russian military crew at MH17,” as John Helmer reported on Friday. The Dutch prosecutor says that that Buk missile was fired by Russia’s Government, not by Ukraine’s Government, and that it was owned by Russia and had been maintained by Russia ever since having been manufactured in Russia in 1986, and the Dutch judge announced that he refuses to consider Russia’s evidence to the contrary.

Russia’s Government alleges that it can provide evidence that that missile did not, in fact, bring the airliner down, and that, instead, it was brought down by two Ukrainian Air Force jets that fired directly at and into the airliner’s pilot, but previously the Dutch court had ruled out any consideration of such evidence, though even the Dutch Government’s own investigation included and buried the following information, as I reported just a few days ago on June 24th:

The Dutch Government’s 279-page investigative findings on the “Crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17” were published in October 2015, and reported, on page 84, (under 2.13.2 “Crew autopsy”) that “First Officer Team A … During the body scan of the First Officer’s body, over 120 objects (mostly metal fragments) were detected. The majority of the fragments were found in left side of the upper torso.” Then, it reported, on page 85 (under 2.13.3) “the First Officer, from Team A, who was operating the aeroplane at the time of the crash.”

(Note that they buried this crucial information, instead of saying clearly that “The pilot’s upper left torso, immediately to the left of the area of the fuselage that had been shot out, had 120 objects that were mostly metal fragments.”) (Here is a closer picture of that side-panel on the left side of the fuselage, to the pilot’s immediate left, and here is that side-panel shown back on the airliner, so that one can see that this firing had to have been done from below, shooting upward into the pilot.)

This crucial physical finding, that the pilot’s corpse had been loaded with “over 120 objects (mostly metal fragments),” is entirely consistent with the side-panel’s having been shot through by bullets, which would have been coming from a Ukrainian military jet and aimed upward, directly at the pilot. That marksman had to have been highly proficient in order to hit the pilot so accurately with so many bullets.

Nothing else was found to be shot through with anything like such an intensity of “mostly metal fragments,” but only the pilot’s upper left torso. This, alone, is virtually conclusive proof that a Ukrainian military jet plane had fired directly at the pilot in order to bring down this civilian plane. (More will be cited here, in #2 below.)

All of this evidence was entirely buried and ignored by the Dutch Government, revealed deep in the report, and only in sub-clauses, instead of in any direct sentences. Furthermore: “There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been really pockmarked with what almost looks like machine-gun fire, very very strong machine-gun fire.” This remarkable statement comes not from Haisenko, but from one of the first OSCE investigators who arrived at the scene of the disaster. Go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ze9BNGDyk4  and you will see it. [But, now, it has been removed. Here is the information on that video. That video was titled “OSCE monitor mentions bullet holes in MH17”.]

That evidence is consistent with the Dutch Government’s having found (but buried) that the pilot’s corpse had been riddled with “metal fragments.”

The matter which was being addressed on July 3rd was strictly concerning which Government owned and operated that Buk missile (which Russia has always contended did not bring down that plane).

Previously, when Ukraine’s Government authorized Holland’s Government to investigate and rule on what caused the MH17 to be shot down, Holland’s Government signed onto a secret agreement with Ukraine’s Government that included a provision allowing Ukraine’s Government to block and prevent any finding from being issued that would implicate Ukraine’s Government in having shot it down. Holland’s Government violates its own Freedom of Information law by refusing to make public what that secret agreement says. However, at the time when the existence of the agreement slipped through into mention by a Ukrainian news-site on 8 August 2014, that news-report said “As part of the four-party agreement signed on August 8 between Ukraine, the Netherlands, Belgium and Australia [all of which nations are allies of the United States and are cooperating with its new Cold War against Russia], information on the investigation into the disaster Malaysian ‘Boeing-777’ will not be disclosed.”

*  *  *

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

With overwhelming bipartisan support, the House Armed Services Committee has added a Liz Cheney-spearheaded amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which throws severe roadblocks in the Trump administration’s proposed scale-down of US military presence in Afghanistan and Germany.

As The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald notes, both parties advancing the amendment cited in their arguments the completely unsubstantiated intelligence leak that was recently published by credulous mass media reporters alleging that Russia has paid bounties to Taliban fighters for killing the occupying forces in Afghanistan. Yet another western imperialist agenda once again facilitated by unforgivably egregious journalistic malpractice in the mass media.

House Democrats, working with Liz Cheney, restrict Trump’s planned withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Germany https://t.co/WZEjALgJHH

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 2, 2020

Every aspect of this development is enraging.

The mass media have continued to add to their mountain of Gish gallop fallacies promoting this narrative with a new Daily Beast report citing former senior Taliban figure Mullah Manan Niazi who asserts that “The Taliban have been paid by Russian intelligence for attacks on U.S. forces — and on ISIS forces — in Afghanistan from 2014 up to the present.” The Beast’s own article admits that its source has severe conflicts of interest and is believed to be a CIA asset by Taliban leadership, and that Niazi provided no evidence of any kind for his claim or any further details whatsoever.

These flimsy, poorly-sourced allegations are being hammered into mainstream liberal consciousness on a daily basis now in the exact same way the discredited Russiagate psyop was, and just like with Russiagate the narrative they are being used to shape helps advance military expansionism and new cold war escalations which just so happen to fit perfectly into pre-existing geostrategic agendas of planetary domination.

The way mainstream news outlets consistently refuse to account for a fact so obvious and indisputable as intelligence agencies being known liars should by itself be enough to discredit the entire institution of mass news reporting. Yet here we are with these reports being treated as established fact throughout the entire political/media class and down through the entire population of propagandized rank-and-file citizenry.

The Afghanistan Papers established conclusively that the occupation has been unwinnable and without a clear picture of what winning would even look like from the very beginning, and that this fact has been hidden from the world by systematic deceit for two decades. The revelation was in the news for a day and then quickly memory holed without having any meaningful impact on the dominant narrative about Afghanistan, and now the mainstream consensus is that even trying to reduce the number of troops there is a hazardous and outlandish notion.

This is because the mainstream consensus is shaped not by facts, but by narrative. We see this in the way the fact-filled Afghanistan Papers have played no role in shaping the dominant narrative about what should be done about the nineteen-year occupation, and we see it in the way the fact-free “bounty” narrative is shaping public opinion and determining US foreign policy. The propagandists who manufacture consent for imperialist agendas understand that truth and facts play far less of a role in what the propagandized consider important than does mindless repetition and emotion.

The Empire Files has an absolutely phenomenal mini-documentary on the Afghanistan occupation which came out the other day, and everyone should watch it. Abby Martin quickly breaks down the geostrategic, resource control, and military-industrial complex agendas which are advanced by this interminable war, the deceit and depravity which went into initiating and maintaining it, and the devastating toll it has taken on the Afghan people. I strongly encourage my readers to give it a view when you get the chance.

The continued Afghanistan occupation is like if the police stormed a house, shot a bunch of people, realized they got the wrong house and they’d never find the guy they were looking for by staying there, stayed anyway, moved in, and then years later said they can’t move out because they heard a rumor that the neighbors are trying to make them leave.

In a sane world it would be the violent invasion and occupation of sovereign nations which elicits outrage and opposition from elected officials and intense skepticism and critical reporting from prominent journalists. In today’s propaganda-maddened society we get the exact opposite: the invasions and occupations are treated as the normal default position and any attempt to end them is regarded as outlandish.

This cannot continue. We must find a way to awaken from the brainwashing and force it to end. Anyone who works to prevent this from happening is an enemy of human progress.

*  *  *

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