Saudi regime to displace 521 families, raze houses in Shia-majority Qatif
Press TV – March 16, 2021
The Saudi regime plans to displace hundreds of families in Saudi Arabia’s Shia-majority Qatif region and raze their houses as part of a crackdown on dissent.
Nashet Qatifi, a renowned Saudi human rights activist, said in a post on his Twitter account on Monday that the Riyadh government had announced plans for the eviction of more than 521 families from Qatif within 90 days as well as the destruction of their houses in retaliation for their children’s participation in a 2011 anti-regime uprising.
Local sources in the Shia-majority region confirmed the Saudi plan and said the regime intended to displace hundreds of families from al-Thawra (Revolution) Street in the city center.
Reports said the goal of the Saudi regime was to erase any signs and memories of the demonstrations in 2011, especially al-Thawra Street, which had become a symbol of the revolution and protests in Qatif.
A similar incident took place in the al-Masura district of Qatif in 2017, and many houses were destroyed by bulldozers. In November last year, Saudi officials also leveled to the ground a Shia Muslim mosque south of al-Awamiyah Town in Qatif.
Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province has been the scene of peaceful demonstrations since February 2011. Protesters have been demanding reforms, freedom of expression, the release of political prisoners, and an end to economic and religious discrimination against the oil-rich region.
The protests have been met with a heavy-handed crackdown by the regime, whose forces have ramped up measures across the province.
Ever since Mohammed bin Salman became Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader in 2017, the kingdom has ramped up arrests of activists, bloggers, intellectuals, and others perceived as political opponents, showing almost zero tolerance for dissent even in the face of international condemnations of the crackdown.
Muslim scholars have been executed, women’s rights campaigners have been put behind bars and tortured, and freedom of expression, association, and belief continue to be denied.
The Intellectually Superior Perpetual Victim Again on Display
By Philip Giraldi | Unz Review | March 16, 2021
Those who have followed developments in the Middle East would likely agree that Israel covers up its war crimes and other human rights violations by regularly invoking its own victimhood. Whether the subject is U.S. aid to the Jewish state or media coverage of the illegal expansion of Israel into the West Bank, one will always find references to the so-called holocaust or claims of anti-Semitism to discredit any criticism. And the results of this assiduous effort to assign guilt are clearly seen as the mainstream media in both the United States and Europe exhibits considerable reluctance to report honestly on what is being done to the Palestinians while politicians in the west sometimes appear to count themselves more as “friends of Israel” than as representatives advancing the interests of their own constituents.
As defenders of all things Israeli go, there is no one more assiduous than Bret Stephens of the New York Times. He is, of course, Jewish, and was the editor of the right-wing Jerusalem Post between 2002 and 2004. The Times employs him as one of its resident conservatives, though he would be better described as a neoconservative. Stephens’ recent piece entitled “California Ethnic Studies Follies” takes aim at California’s controversial diversity program that is being imposed on the state’s public school system.
Stephens’ article is sub-headed “A proposed curriculum magnifies differences, encourages tribal loyalties and advances ideological group think.” While it is clear that “Ethnic Studies,” a precursor to the current Critical Race Theory and similar to programs in a number of other states, does all that and more, Stephens inevitably turns the whole argument around to the alleged victimization of his own highly privileged caste, i.e. American Jews.
Stephens gets into it immediately, beginning his piece with:
“The first time California’s Department of Education published a draft of an ethnic studies ‘model curriculum’ for high school students, in 2019, it managed the neat trick of omitting anti-Semitism while committing it. More than a million Jews live in California. They are also among the state’s leading victims of hate crimes.
“Yet in a lengthy draft otherwise rich with references to various forms of bigotry, there was no mention of bigotry toward Jews. There was, however, an endorsement of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction [BDS] movement, which essentially calls for the elimination of the Jewish state. There was also an approving mention of a Palestinian singer rapping that Israelis ‘use the press so they can manufacture’ — the old refrain that lying Jews control the media.
“The draft outraged many Jews. And they were joined by Armenian, Assyrian, Hellenic, Hindu and Korean civic groups in a statement urging the California Department of Education to ‘completely redraft the curriculum.’ In its original form, they said, the document was ‘replete with mischaracterizations and omissions of major California ethnoreligious groups.’
“Last September, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would mandate ethnic studies as a graduation requirement in California’s high schools, pending further review of the model curriculum. While some maintained that a critical ethnic studies curriculum was a mistake, and not just for Jews, others took the view that, when it came to those revisions, it was better to be at the table than on it. Progressive Jews helped redraft a curriculum that included two sample lessons on the Jewish-American experience, along with testimonials about Jewishness from the likes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Dianne Feinstein. A victory? One can still quarrel with the curriculum’s tendentiously racialized view of the American-Jewish experience. But at least the anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist dog whistles have been taken out and the history of anti-Semitism has been put in.”
To be sure, Stephens makes some good points about how the California program, which is again going to be voted on by the Board of Education later this month, is indoctrination and not education. But Stephens is also blind to the reality of what constitutes political power in the United States. He observes that the Irish, Poles and Italians apparently do not need to be supported by inclusion in an Ethnic Studies program while he simultaneously accepts that if there is such a thing Jews have to be carefully protected by it. And based on some of his other articles, his view of his own ethnicity seems to go well beyond that and is flattering to him and those who agree with his apparent view that that Ashkenazi Jews are intellectually and genetically superior to other groups.
One can only imagine what the reaction would have been if Stephens had written instead that whites are superior to blacks. And the points that Stephens raises in support of revising the California document to highlight both Jewish suffering and achievements are, of course, extremely self-serving. They are also deliberately deceptive. Yes, Jews have been “victims” of so-called “hate crimes” but the crimes themselves are very rarely violent. It has been demonstrated that many recent so-called anti-Semitic attacks on Jews involve easily recognizable Hasidic Jews and are actually based on community tensions as established neighborhoods are experiencing dramatic changes with the newcomers using pressure tactics to force out existing residents. And after the Hasidim take over a town or neighborhood, they defund local schools to support their own private academies and frequently engage in large scale welfare and other social services fraud to permit them to spend all their days studying the Talmud, which, inter alia teaches that gentiles are no better than beasts fit only to serve Jews.
Much more often “hate crimes” against Jews consist of graffiti or reaction to criticism of Israel for its brutal suppression of the Palestinians. Indeed, there are now organizations at universities like Canary Mission funded by Jewish oligarchs which encourage Jewish students to claim damages from critics while also “exposing them” on campus on behalf of Israel. A Jewish student walking on a college campus who passes by protesters objecting to Israel’s behavior can claim to feel threatened and the incident is recorded as anti-Semitism, for example, and slurs written on the sides of buildings or grave stones, not necessarily the work of Jew-haters, are similarly categorized. In one case in Israel in 2017, the two street swastika artists were Jews.
One is surprised that Stephens does not raise the issue of the “libel” of “Jews and money,” as if the Republicans actually loved a repulsive toad like Sheldon Adelson, who was dedicated to promoting Israeli interests, and bought the GOP foreign policy for $100 million. And Stephens is way over the top when it comes to characterizing BDS as a hate group that seeks to the “eliminate the Jewish state.” The group is explicitly non-violent and does in fact have significant liberal Jewish membership. It seeks to use economic pressure to compel Israel to behave better towards the Palestinians, similar to what produced change in apartheid South Africa.
But the most interesting aspect of the Stephens piece is the demand that Jews be universally recognized for their unique suffering. He considers it a libel when one maintains that Jews control the media… has he looked around the newsrooms at his own paper, the Washington Post, CNN, CBS and MSNBC lately? And as for bigotry and discrimination, how about consideration of the fact that Jews run Hollywood and the entertainment industry, are the wealthiest and best educated demographic in the country, are grossly disproportionate in high status and high pay jobs, and hold many of the top positions in the Biden Administration. Authorities like Professor Alan Dershowitz are quite outspoken in their praise of Jewish power in the United States. And Jewish organizations already receive more than 90% of the discretionary funding from the Department of Homeland Security to “protect themselves.” American Jews hardly seem to constitute a minority that needs more consideration and breaks because it is under siege, so when will Stephens stop whining?
And as for the claim of widespread anti-Semitism, one recalls the comment by former Israeli Education Minister Shulamit Aloni, speaking about calling critics anti-Semites. She said “Well, it’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country people are criticizing Israel, then they are anti-Semitic. And the organization is strong, and has a lot of money, and the ties between Israel and the American Jewish establishment are very strong and they are strong in this country, as you know. And they have power, which is okay. They are talented people and they have power and money, and the media and other things, and their attitude is ‘Israel, my country right or wrong,’ identification. And they are not ready to hear criticism. And it’s very easy to blame people who criticize certain acts of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic, and to bring up the Holocaust, and the suffering of the Jewish people, and that is to justify everything we do to the Palestinians.”
Shulamit Aloni has described Bret Stephens and the political culture that he comes out of. Criticizing Israel or the sometimes predatory behavior of American Jews is one of the few remaining total taboos in America. One marvels at the recent account of a basketball player who apparently blurted out the word “kike” while engaged in a video game. Even though he apparently did not know that the word referred in derogatory fashion to Jews, he was suspended by his team and fined $50,000 by Adam Silver the NBA commissioner. Does anyone seriously believe that if he had said “Wop,” “Mick,” “Spick” or “Polack” he would have been punished at all? He was also required to publicly express contrition and forced to go through a counseling session with a representative from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is, if I might be so bold as to suggest, the U.S. based enforcement arm of the powerful Israel Lobby.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
Russian company hit by Biden’s ‘chemical weapons’ sanctions says US left firm in ‘economic Guantanamo’ without trial
RT | March 16, 2021
The head of a scientific equipment supplier targeted by officials in Washington over supposed links to a shadowy Russian “chemical weapons” program has insisted the US’ accusations are untrue and it’s being unfairly singled out.
Andrey Mezinov, Director General of Femteko LLC, a Moscow-based wholesaler specializing in technical supplies, described how he was surprised to discover the firm among a list of organizations facing new sanctions from America. In an interview with business outlet RBK published on Tuesday, he said “we are accused, as I understand it, of supporting the production and development of chemical weapons… this is just nonsense.”
According to the businessman, far from participating in the alleged development of deadly toxic agents, Femteko has only ever done business with defense research institutes in the country on two occasions. This included “spare parts for the detector of a gas chromatograph” for a laboratory at the 27th Scientific Center of the Ministry of Defence, which also found itself on the sanction list. The equipment is used in laboratories throughout the world to analyze the content of gases, and the 2017 delivery was reportedly worth only 408,000 rubles ($5,590).
Last July, the firm also supplied forensic laboratory bottles to the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology, for a total cost of 86,000 rubles ($1,180 ). “We knew what these would be used for,” Mezinov said, “but to say that the sale of such bottles supports the distribution [of chemical weapons]…”
While these purchases were made publicly accessible through tender processes and other documents, Mezinov insists that there was no off-the-books dealings with defense research institutes. However, he accepts that the equipment could potentially be used in a way that is undesirable for the US, “because we supply equipment that is versatile.” He added that, “most often it is used in the pharmaceutical industry, for the analysis of environmental substances, as well as in forensics, medicine, acute poisoning centers, anywhere.” At the same time, Femteko has also done business with US firms, and received clean bills of health as part of due-diligence inquiries.
The business is now reportedly weighing up its legal options and considering how best to extricate itself from the list of sanctioned organizations. In theory, Mezinov said, he could overcome the measures by simply shutting the business and transferring its assets to a new one with a different name, but at present, US officials are “engaged in the most obvious lawlessness.” Comparing the current state of affairs to “economic Guantanamo,” a notorious US prison for suspected terrorists on the island of Cuba, he added that “I would like to receive explanations and by my own means prove the injustice and illegality of this decision.”
Femteko was among nine Russian firms included on the list of organizations that Washington claims are involved in an alleged secretive chemical weapons program, as well as three based in Germany and one based in Switzerland. At the time, American authorities said that the businesses were engaged in “the production of biological and chemical weapons,” as well as “activities that are contrary to US national security and foreign policy interests.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has insisted that the US claims are not based in reality. “Russia declared and verified the destruction of all chemical weapons on its territory many years ago and fully complied with international conventions,” he said. “Russia has no chemical weapons.”
How Do Big Media Outlets So Often “Independently Confirm” Each Other’s Falsehoods?
NBC News’ national security reporter and long-time de facto CIA spokesman Ken Dilanian purporting to “independently confirm” a false CNN story, Dec. 8, 2017
By Glenn Greenwald | March 16, 2021
There were so many false reports circulated by the dominant corporate wing of the U.S. media as part of the five-year-long Russiagate hysteria that in January, 2019, I compiled what I called “The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump-Russia Story.” The only difficult part of that article was choosing which among the many dozens of retractions, corrections and still-uncorrected factual falsehoods merited inclusion in the worst-ten list. So stiff was the competition that I was forced to omit many huge media Russiagate humiliations, and thus, to be fair to those who missed the cut, had to append a large “Dishonorable Mention” category at the end (note: the Intercept’s site seems to be down for the moment, rendering that first link inoperable).
That the entire Russiagate storyline itself was a fraud and a farce is conclusively demonstrated by one decisive fact that can never be memory-holed: namely, the impetus for the scandal and subsequent investigation was the conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign had secretly and criminally conspired with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election, primarily hacking into the email inboxes of the DNC and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. And a grand total of zero Americans were accused (let alone convicted) of participating in that animating conspiracy.
The New York Times’ May, 2017 announcement of Robert Mueller as special counsel stated explicitly that his task was “to oversee the investigation into ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials” and specifically “investigate ‘any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.’”
The related secondary media-created conspiracy theory was that the Kremlin clandestinely controlled U.S. political institutions by virtue of sexual and financial blackmail held over President Trump, which they used to compel him to obediently obey their dictates. “I don’t know what the Russians have on the president, politically, personally, or financially” was the dark innuendo which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her media allies most loved to spout. “Prestige news” outlets created their own Q-Anon-level series of art designed to implant in Americans’ minds a slew of McCarthyite imagery showing the Kremlin (or an iconic Moscow cathedral they mistook for the Kremlin) having fully infiltrated Washington’s key institutions.
Cover story of The New Yorker, Feb. 24, 2017
But that all came crashing down on their heads in April, 2019, when Mueller announced that he was closing his investigation without charging even a single American with the criminal conspiracy that launched the entire spectacle: criminally conspiring with the Russian government to interfere in the election. Again: while Mueller — like so many Washington special counsels before him — ended up snaring some operatives in alleged process crimes committed after the investigation commenced (lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice) or unrelated crimes (Manafort’s financial sleaze), the 18-month aggressive, sprawling investigation resulted in exactly zero criminal charges on the core claim that Trump officials had criminally conspired with Russia.
If that were not sufficient to make every person who drowned the country in this crazed conspiracy theory feel enormous shame (and it should have been), the former FBI Director’s final Report explicitly stated that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election.” In many cases, the Report went even further than this “did not establish” formulation to state that there was no evidence of any kind found for many of the key media conspiracies (“The investigation did not identify evidence that any U.S. persons knowingly or intentionally coordinated with the IRA’s interference operation”; the “evidence does not establish that one campaign official’s efforts to dilute a portion of the Republican platform was undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia”; “the investigation did not establish that [Carter] Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election”). The Report also barely even dignified let alone confirmed the long-standing, utterly deranged Democratic/media conspiracy theory that the Kremlin had taken over U.S. policy through blackmail.
The Advocate, Mar. 10, 2017
For a few weeks following the issuance of the Mueller report, Democrats and media figures gamely attempted to deny that it obliterated the conspiracy theories to which they had relentlessly subjected the country for the prior four years. How could they do otherwise? They staked their entire reputations and the trust of their audience on having this be true. To avoid their day of reckoning, they would hype ancillary events such as Paul Manafort’s conviction on unrelated financial crimes or Michael Flynn’s guilty plea for a minor and dubious charge (for which even Mueller recommended no prison time) or Roger Stone’s various process charges to insist that there was still a grain of truth to their multifaceted geopolitical fairy tale seemingly lifted straight from a Tom Clancy Cold War thriller about the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
But even they knew this was just a temporary survival strategy and that it was unsustainable for the long term. That the crux of the scandal all along was that key Trump allies if not the President himself would be indicted and imprisoned for having conspired with the Russians was too glaring to make people forget about it.
That was why former CIA Director John Brennan assured the MSNBC audience in March — just weeks before Mueller closed his investigation with no conspiracy crimes alleged — that it was impossible that the investigation could close without first indicting Trump’s children and other key White House aides on what Brennan correctly said was the whole point of the scandal from the start: “criminal conspiracy involving the Russians . . . . whether or not U.S. persons were actively collaborating, colluding, cooperating, involved in a conspiracy with them or not.” Brennan strongly insinuated that among those likely to be indicted for criminally conspiring with the Russians were those “from the Trump family.”
As we all know, literally none of that happened. Not only were Trump family members not indicted by Mueller on charges of “criminal conspiracy involving the Russians,” no Americans were. Brennan believed there was no way that the Mueller investigation could end without that happening because that was the whole point of the scandal from the start. To explain why it had not happened up to that point after eighteen months of investigation by Mueller’s subpoena-armed and very zealous team of prosecutors, Brennan invented a theory that they were waiting to do that as the final act because they knew they would be fired by Trump once it happened. But it never happened because Mueller found no evidence to prove that it did.
In other words, the conspiracy theory that the media pushed on Americans since before Trump’s inauguration — to the point where it drowned out most of U.S. politics and policy for years — proved to have no evidentiary foundation. And that is one reason I say that the sectors of the media pretending to be most distraught at the spread of “disinformation” by anonymous citizens on Facebook and 4Chan are, in fact, the most aggressive, prolific and destructive disseminators of that disinformation by far (nor was it uncredentialed YouTube hosts, Patreon podcasters or Substack writers who convinced Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear weapons and was in an alliance with Al Qaeda but rather the editor-heavy prestige outlets such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, NBC News and The Atlantic).
With the crux of the Russiagate conspiracy theory collapsed, U.S. media outlets began acknowledging — because they had to — that none of it was vindicated by Mueller’s report. To do so, they abruptly nullified a rule that had been in place since Mueller’s appointment: one may not speak ill of the former FBI Director because he is a patriotic man of the highest integrity and to malign him is to undermine the Brave Men and Women of the FBI Who Keep Us Safe. The only self-preservation tactic they could find to salvage their credibility was to turn on Mueller, quite viciously. Overnight, the storyline emerged: the conspiracy theory we pushed on you was correct all along, but Mueller was a coward and failed in his patriotic duty to say so.
While the hypocrisy of watching a media that for months demanded reverence for Mueller turn on a dime to accuse him of being a borderline-senile, unpatriotic coward was quite amazing, it was at least some progress toward acknowledging the undeniable reality that the media had collectively failed. Their dark conspiracies and predictions of doom were pipe dreams. They flooded the country with disinformation for years about all of this. And while they characteristically engaged in exactly zero self-reflection or self-critique — preferring to heap all the blame on Mueller instead for failing to find the evidence that is still out there of their cognitive derangements — it at least consecrated the fact that this scandal ended in humiliation for them.
When I created my top ten list of media Russiagate debacles, choosing the top ten was difficult but choosing the top spot was not. It is worth briefly revisiting that particular journalistic humiliation because of what it reveals about ongoing media behavior.
On the morning of December 8, 2017, CNN went on the air with one of the most cataclysmic and breathless scoops of the entire Russiagate saga. The network hauled out all of its most melodramatic graphics, music and host voice-tones to signify that this was it : the smoking gun, the ultimate bombshell, the final nail in the coffin, inescapable proof for their conspiracy theory. The big huge scoop notably came from its Congressional reporter Manu Raju (one of the favorite dumping grounds for false leaks by leading House Democrat Russiagate fanatics such as Rep. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell (D-CA)).
According to this historic CNN revelation, a stunning and incriminating email had been obtained by “congressional investigators,” and “multiple sources” conveyed its contents to CNN. This email proved, said CNN, that Donald Trump Jr. was given advanced access to the archive of DNC and Podesta emails ultimately published by WikiLeaks on September 14, 2016. This earth-shattering email to Trump, Jr. was dated September 4 — ten days before WikiLeaks began publishing — and this, in the minds of CNN, proved somehow that the Trump campaign was in on the plot from the start.
Now, even if Trump had been shown the archive in advance by WikiLeaks or someone else, it would not have remotely proven that the Trump campaign was a participant in the plot, but let us not get detained on that hypothetical. The CNN story was treated by the entire liberal sector of the press as the most devastating and incriminating evidence yet produced to prove the truth of the Russiagate conspiracy theory, with one particularly loyal Democratic partisan-writer using an image of a nuclear explosion to convey its significance:
Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall, Dec. 8, 2017
As it turns out, there was one small problem with the CNN story: it was completely and utterly false. The email to Trump, Jr. on which the entire bombshell was based was sent after WikiLeaks began publishing the archive, not before. And it was sent not by some super-secret inside source with the Kremlin or WikiLeaks, but by a random member of the public who, having read about the WikiLeaks publications in the newspaper, emailed Trump, Jr. to encourage him to take a look.
How “multiple sources” all got the date on the email wrong — mis-reading it as September 4 rather than the real date of the email: September 14 — was never explained by CNN. That is because corporate media outlets believe they owe the public no explanation or accountability for the massive errors they commit.
But what was most notable about this episode is that it was not just CNN which reported this fraudulent story. An hour or so after the network shook the political world with its graphics-and-music-shaped bombshell, other news networks — including MSNBC and CBS News — claimed that they had obtained what they called “independent confirmation” that the story was true.
All of these media outlets, reading Orwell as if it is an instruction manual, have now scrubbed most of the humiliating videos where they did this from the internet. But one can still watch here as NBC News’ national security reporter and long-time de facto CIA spokesman Ken Dilanian breathlessly tells an MSNBC host, who herself can barely maintain her composure, that he has spoken with “sources” who have provided independent confirmation of the CNN story, thus adding NBC News’ imprimatur to it. Shortly thereafter, CBS News did the same.
All of this prompted the obvious question: how could MSNBC and CBS News have both purported to “independently confirm” a CNN bombshell that was completely false? The reason this matters is because the term “independently confirm” significantly bolsters the credibility of the initial report because it makes it appear that other credible-to-some news organizations have conducted their own investigation and found more evidence that proves it is true. That is the purpose of the exercise: to bolster the credibility of the story in the minds of the public.
But what actually happens is as deceitful as it is obvious. When a news outlet such as NBC News claims to have “independently corroborated” a report from another corporate outlet, they often do not mean that they searched for and acquired corroborating evidence for it. What they mean is much more tawdry: they called, or were called by, the same anonymous sources that fed CNN the false story in the first place, and were fed the same false story. And just as CNN did — repeated what they were told (almost certainly by Democratic Congressional members and/or their staff) without independently investigating it, because they knew any anti-Trump story would please their partisan audience — NBC News pretended they had obtained “independent confirmation” when all they had done was speak to the same sources that fed CNN.
This episode is so worth recalling not only because it is one of the most stunning and pathetic media humiliations of the Trump era — though it is that — but also because the shoddy tactic that drove it is still in full use by the same media outlets. We just saw proof of that again with a major Washington Post “correction” — which should be called a retraction — of one of the most-discussed news stories of the last six months: the Post’s claims about what Trump said when he called a Georgia election official while he was still contesting the 2020 election results.
On January 9, The Washington Post published a story reporting that an anonymous source claimed that on December 23, Trump spoke by phone with Frances Watson, the chief investigator of the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, and directed her that she must “find the fraud” and promised her she would be “a national hero” if she did so. The paper insisted that those were actual quotes of what Trump said. This time, it was CNN purporting to independently confirm the Post’s reporting, affirming that Trump said these words “according to a source with knowledge of the call.”
But late last week, The Wall Street Journal obtained a recording of that call, and those quotes attributed to Trump do not appear. As a result, The Washington Post — two months after its original story that predictably spread like wildfire throughout the entire media ecosystem — has appended a correction at the top of its original story. Politico’s Alex Thompson correctly pronounced these errors “real bad” because of how widely they spread and were endorsed by other major media outlets.
This is a different species of journalistic malpractice than mere journalistic falsehoods. As I detailed in February and again two weeks ago, the U.S. public was inundated for weeks with an utterly false yet horrifying story — that a barbaric pro-Trump mob had savagely murdered Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick by bashing his skull in with a fire extinguisher. That false tale about the only person said to have been killed at the January 6 riot other than pro-Trump supporters emanated from a New York Times report based on the claims of “two anonymous law enforcement officials.”
As it turns out, Sicknick’s autopsy revealed that he suffered no blunt trauma, and two men arrested this week were charged not with murder but assault and conspiracy to injure an officer: for using an unidentified gas. In reporting those arrests, even The New York Times acknowledged that “prosecutors stopped short of linking the attack to Officer Sicknick’s death the next day” because “both officers and rioters deployed spray, mace and other irritants during the attack” and “it remains unclear whether Officer Sicknick died because of his exposure to the spray.”
Many liberals defenders of these corporate media outlets insist that these major factual errors do not matter because the basic narrative — Trump and his supporters at the Capitol are bad people who did bad things — is still true. But these errors are enormous. That Trump, Jr. received that email from a random member of the public after WikiLeaks began publicly publishing documents transforms the story from smoking gun to irrelevant. That Trump did not utter the extremely incriminating quotes attributed to him in that call at least permits debate about whether he did anything wrong there and what his intent was (encouraging the official to find the fraud he genuinely believed was there or pressuring her to manufacture claims with threats and promises of reward). And there is, manifestly, a fundamental difference in both intent and morality between deliberately murdering someone by repeatedly bashing their skull in with a fire extinguisher and using a non-lethal crowd-control spray frequently used at protests even if it is ultimately proven that the spray is what caused Officer Sicknick’s death (which is why those two acts would carry vastly different punishments under the law).
But all of this highlights the real crisis in journalism, the reason public faith and trust in media institutions is in free fall. With liberal media outlets deliberately embracing a profit model of speaking overwhelmingly to partisan Democrats who use them as their primary source of news, there is zero cost to publishing false claims about people and groups hated by that liberal audience.
That audience does not care if these media outlets publish false stories as long as it is done for the Greater Good of harming their political enemies, and this ethos has contaminated newsrooms as well. Given human fallibility, reporting errors are normal and inevitable, but when they are all geared toward advancing one political agenda or faction and undermining the other, they cease to be errors and become a deliberate strategy or, at best, systemic recklessness.
But whatever else is true, it is vital to understand what news outlets mean when they claim they have “independently verified” the uncorroborated reports of other similar outlets. It means nothing of consequence. In many if not most cases — enough to make this formulation totally unreliable — it signifies nothing more than their willingness to serve as stenographers for the same anonymous political operatives who fed their competitors similar propaganda.
Journalist Proclaims She Would “Love to Die” From the AstraZeneca Vaccine if it Helps Others
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | March 16, 2021
A Norwegian journalist bizarrely claimed she would “love to die from the AstraZeneca vaccine” if it meant other people in Europe were not discouraged from taking it.
The statement was made in the headline of Linn Wiik’s article, which literally translates as “I would love to die from the AstraZeneca vaccine.”
The AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine has been temporarily pulled by numerous countries across Europe, including Spain, France, Portugal, Cyprus, Austria, Denmark, Slovenia and Norway, due to reports of blood clotting and several deaths of people who took the jab.
In response to the news, Wiik defiantly suggested that she would be prepared to die from taking the vaccine if it meant others were not discouraged from taking it.
“Some must be sacrificed in the war against the corona,” she wrote. “That’s the way it is in all wars. This time it may well be me.”
Wiik went on to downplay deaths and illnesses linked to the vaccine, asserting, “People get blood clots and die of cerebral hemorrhage every year.”
“But even if it turns out that it is the AstraZeneca vaccine that has caused blood clots or cerebral haemorrhage, I have no doubt: If I get the offer, I will take it anyway,” she continued.
“Because, sorry to say it so bluntly: Someone has to sacrifice in order for the rest to be safe.”
Judging by her picture, Wiik is not over the age of 69, meaning she has a better than 99.5% of surviving COVID-19 if she catches it.
One wonders if given the choice between those odds and risking serious illness from taking a vaccine from a contaminated batch that she would still choose the latter.
“Have we hit peak journo-ism yet?” asked Chris Menahan.
REPORT: Biden White House Working with Silicon Valley to Censor Vaccine Criticism
21st Century Wire | March 15, 2021
As reports of problems regarding the new experimental COVID vaccines continue to mount internationally, officials in the United States have been working behind the scenes to try and censor any dissent against the official party line on COVID policy, and vaccine efficacy, safety and distribution.
A recent Reuters report has revealed how a worried Biden administration has reached out to Silicon Valley’s digital monopoly firms Google Inc, Facebook, and Twitter – to coordinate efforts to shut down any discussions or independent journalism online which might challenge the credibility of either government or World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic and vaccine policies, as well crush any serious challenge to the credibility of pharmaceutical firms and the products they are pushing, namely their new experimental range of COVID vaccines.
According to a White House official, the new effort is meant to curb supposed “COVID misinformation” included making sure Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter prevent any independent content from going viral.
A Twitter spokesman admitted that the firm was coordinating their censorship operation with the Biden team, and were “in regular communication with the White House on a number of critical issues including COVID-19 misinformation.”
According to a report by Reuters, a source confirmed the collusion between the White House and Big Tech is focused on protecting Biden’s vaccine numbers:
“Disinformation that causes vaccine hesitancy is going to be a huge obstacle to getting everyone vaccinated and there are no larger players in that than the social media platforms,”
“We are talking to them … so they understand the importance of misinformation and disinformation and how they can get rid of it quickly.”
The source also told Reuters that the companies “were receptive” as they engaged with the White House. “But it is too soon to say whether or not it translates into lessening the spread of misinformation.”
For its part, Facebook has committed to adding even more ‘dangerous informational’ labels to any posts which mention vaccines in a negative light, as part of its wider censorship effort to counter what it claims is “COVID-19-related misinformation” on its platforms.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed in a blog post this week that his new warning labels will contain “credible information” about the vaccines from the W.H.O. which Facebook believes is an infallible source of information COVID and pharmaceutical products. Zuckerberg said that this operation will be global, covering multiple languages.
The social network is also adding a tool to help get users vaccinated by connecting them to information about where and when they can get their shot.
The mainstream media have been applying continuous pressure on Facebook and Instagram for allowing “anti-vaxxer propaganda”, with Facebook responding by applying its notorious ‘fact-check’ labels and other censorship measures.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from Childrens Health Defense recently explained how this coordinated censorship effort is also targeting high-profile advocates, including himself:
Over the last two weeks, Facebook and other social media sites have deplatformed me and many other critics of regulatory corruption and authoritarian public health policies. So, here is some fodder for those of you who have the eerie sense that the government/industry pandemic response feels like it was planned — even before there was a pandemic.
In fact, a simulation called Event 201, which involved top public health officials, academics and NGOs was in fact paid for by Bill and Melinda Gates, taking place only a few months before the ‘global pandemic’ was declared in January 2020. Kennedy describes the confab which took place in late October 2019 at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC:
Gates’ co-conspirators included representatives from the World Bank, the World Economic Forum (Great Reset), Bloomberg/Johns Hopkins University Populations Center, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, various media powerhouses, the Chinese government, a former Central Intelligence Agency/National Security Agency director (there is no such thing as a former CIA officer), vaccine maker Johnson & Johnson, the finance and biosecurity industries and Edelman, the world’s leading corporate PR firm.
At Gates’ direction, these eminences role-played members of a Pandemic Control Council, wargaming government strategies for controlling the pandemic, the narrative and the population. Needless to say, there was little talk of building immune systems, off-the-shelf remedies or off-patent therapeutic drugs and vitamins, but lots of chatter about promoting uptake of new patentable antiviral drugs and vaccines.
But the participants primarily focused on planning industry-centric, fear-mongering, police-state strategies for managing an imaginary global coronavirus contagion culminating in mass censorship of social media.
The real danger here is the Government and Big Tech may in fact be censoring important critical voices of what are fast proving to be highly problematic experimental vaccines. In doing so, they may be preventing important public health opinion and commentary from being heard, which raises the likelihood that any rank corruption like with the WHO’s Swine Flu hoax in 2009, or the Swine Flu vaccine disaster in 1976 – may happen again, only this time on a global scale.
When it comes to vaccines, suddenly “from vs with” matters again
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | March 15, 2021
In the last few weeks the media has demonstrated one of the clearest, most concise displays of true-life doublethink I’ve ever seen. It truly is the perfect exemplar.
The dichotomy is in “covid deaths” vs “vaccine related injuries”.
As we all know by now, countries all around the world define “Covid deaths” as “people who die, of any cause, within 30 days of a positive test result” (the number of days changes by country, it’s usually between 28 and 60). This trend was started in Italy last spring, and spread all around the world.
Globally, with a few notable exceptions, a “covid death” is a death “from any cause” following a positive test.
And when they say “any cause”, they mean it. Up to, and including, shooting yourself in the head.
In one blackly hilarious case, a man “died of coronavirus” after being shot by the police, with his 7 gunshot wounds being listed as “complications”.
That’s how loosely defined “covid death” has become, it is more or less meaningless. However, Covid “vaccines”, and possible related injuries or deaths, are a very different matter.
The establishment is going out of its way to make sure everyone understands that anybody who gets ill, or dies, after being vaccinated, is absolutely NOT a “vaccine death”.
What’s hilarious is those same journalists and “experts” preaching against “Covid denial”, are now literally employing our own arguments against us in the name of defending the vaccines.
Check out this article from ABC a few weeks ago, quoting one doctor:
We have to be very careful about causality. There are going to be spurious relationships, especially as the vaccine is targeting elderly or those with chronic conditions. Just because these events happen in proximity to the vaccine does not mean the vaccine caused these events. Nursing home centers and hospices are of particular concern, because they are homes to incredibly frail populations, and you have to look at the background rate of these events within those populations.”
You see, it’s important not take deaths out of context. After all, many of the people who die after being vaccinated are old and frail and already seriously ill. We need to be “careful about causation”, just because event B happened after event A, does not mean A caused B to happen.
In other words: There is a difference between with and from.
Hmmm. Does that argument sound familiar to anyone else?
The article continues:
In fact, an average of 8,000 people die each day in the United States. Some of them may have just received a coronavirus vaccine.
Fascinating. Apparently 8000 people die each and every day in the United States – translating to roughly 3 million people per year – and falsely attributing natural human mortality to a potentially totally unconnected event might cause panic.
I really feel like I might have read a similar sentiment somewhere else, too. Don’t you?
The Reuters “fact check” on vaccine injury says exactly the same thing:
Reports of death following vaccination do not necessarily mean the vaccine caused the death,”
The sheer desperation of the PR in the press is apparent in all the headlines. Such as:
Pfizer Covid vaccine probably didn’t kill woman, 78, who died shortly after having it
Or:
Woman dies from brain haemorrhage in Japan days after vaccine, but link uncertain
Or:
Macomb County man, 90, dies after COVID-19 vaccine — but doctors say shots are safe
Essentially, if you die within two months of testing positive for Sars-Cov-2, you’re a “Covid death”, and if you die within two minutes of getting the vaccine, you’re a coincidence.
Now, that’s not to say the vaccine definitely did kill those unfortunate people, I don’t know the details of the cases. The point is the equivocation. The soft use of language which is totally at odds with the apocalyptic prose discussing “Covid deaths”.
Nowhere is this contradiction more apparent than in the UK right now, following the AstraZeneca situation.
A quick recap, for those who haven’t heard: Recently, the Norwegian government suspended use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, following it being linked to increased risk of blood clots. Several other countries soon followed suit.
This has prompted a UK-wide defence of the AstraZeneca jab. Including this piece from David Spiegelhalter, in the Guardian just today, in which he uses the same exact argument as the ABC article, almost word for word:
It’s human nature to spot patterns in data. But we should be careful about finding causal links where none may exist
After 12 months of ignoring the conversation on “with” vs “from”, suddenly all the vaccine pushers have rediscovered the difference. None of them seem in any way aware of their self-contradiction.
But this ludicrous double standard doesn’t just apply to death, but also the concept of acceptable risk.
Appearing on Good Morning Britain today, UK Dr Nighat Arif encouraged the continued use of the AstraZeneca shot, by explaining that technically there’s always a small chance you’ll get a blood clot, but you can’t let that stop you doing what needs to be done:
As a GP I see clots a lot, unfortunately our background risk of getting a clot is about 1/1000 people. If you’re on a flight, your risk of clot increases. If women are on the contraceptive pill, their risk of clot increases. People going to hospital for surgery. However, we don’t stop doing any of those things.
The doctor is actually arguing that refusing to live your life based on a 0.1% risk of death is foolish, and that nobody should be expected to do that.
It is, literally, word for word a “Covid sceptic” argument, reproduced in the mainstream, without even the tiniest hint of irony or self-awareness. The very attitude they are taking towards “vaccine injury” is the same one they have condemned in “covid deniers” for over a year. By their hypocrisy they prove their own mendacity.
If they want to define a “Covid death” as dying within 60 days of a positive test, fine. But then anyone who dies within two months of getting vaccinated is a “vaccine death”. And they should have those two big red numbers counting up, right next to each other, on the front page of every news website in the world.
And if they don’t do that – which they obviously won’t – then you have a deliberately employed double standard, and that is a tacit admission of intentional deception.
It really is just that simple.
Gazprom significantly boosts natural gas supplies abroad in 2021
RT | March 15, 2021
Russian energy major Gazprom’s gas exports to non-CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries increased by 28.3% since the beginning of the year to 42.9 billion cubic meters, the company said.
That is “9.5 billion cubic meters more than in the first 2.5 months of last year,” according to Gazprom.
The company pointed out that the high demand for gas was due to the cold start of the calendar spring this year. “We continue to provide gas to domestic and foreign consumers on a full-scale basis,” it said.
Gazprom’s supplies particularly rose in Turkey (by 80.5%), Romania (77.7%), Finland (74.2%), Serbia (61.5%) and Bulgaria (52.1%). Gas deliveries to Germany and Greece also saw a boost of 28.7% and 24.5%, respectively.
The company said that in the first two weeks of this month, gas supplies to Turkey increased 11.5 times compared with the same period last year. Exports to China via the Power of Siberia mega gas pipeline regularly exceed Gazprom’s daily contractual obligations. The actual volume of supplies from March 1 to March 15 was 3.2 times more than in the same period of 2020, it said.
Is Biden Holding America Hostage Until ‘Independence’ Day?
By Ron Paul | March 15, 2021
Last week President Biden addressed the nation on the first anniversary of the coronavirus being declared a “pandemic.” It was a disturbing speech, warning us that the “hopeful spring” will only emerge “from a dark winter” if all Americans “stick with the rules.”
Whose rules? His rules.
The message from the president was clear: he will only allow us to have some of our freedoms back if we do exactly as he tells us. It was the language of extortion, of a bank robber who demands you do what he says or face the consequences. It was not the language of someone we are told is the leader of the free world.
In the speech Biden laid out a list of what was taken from us over the past year, “weddings, birthdays, graduations… family reunions, the Sunday night rituals.” It was as if somehow the virus, instead of authoritarian government officials, prevented us from enjoying these normal human activities.
Though we continue to see Covid disappear across the country with the end of the winter season, Biden was not about to let go of his perceived power to control our lives. He said, “if we do all this, if we do our part, if we do this together, by July the 4, there’s a good chance you, your families and friends, will be able to get together in your backyard or in your neighborhood and have a cookout or a barbecue and celebrate Independence Day. That doesn’t mean large events with lots of people together, but it does mean small groups will be able to get together.”
Imagine our Founders hearing this speech. The US president might – just might – allow small family gatherings at home in four months if we follow all of his rules. King George looked benevolent by comparison!
As Rep. Thomas Massie Tweeted shortly after the speech, “If you’re waiting for permission from the chief executive to celebrate Independence Day with your family, you clearly don’t grasp the concept of Independence.”
It seems like yesterday – it almost was – that Biden “asked” us to just wear the mask for 100 days. “Just 100 days to mask, not forever. 100 days,” he said. So from “just 100 days” to maybe you can have a small gathering by July 4th? Perhaps he just forgot his earlier speech?
As usual, the goalposts keep being moved because politicians cannot bear the possibility that they might have to give up some of that power over us they have grabbed for themselves. Fauci made the usual mainstream media rounds over the weekend and was asked by the fawning host when Americans might have permission to hold weddings again!
So now Americans need Fauci’s permission to get married? What is happening to this country? The propaganda is so relentless that it seems most Americans don’t see how not normal this is! In saner times, Fauci would be laughed off the stage. Now, he’s treated as some sort of divine source of truth.
Biden promised he was “using every power… as the president of the United States to put us on a war footing.” Of that I have no doubt. But Biden’s war is not against the virus. It’s against the US Constitution and liberty itself.
Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute
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