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U.S. Government Has an Accurate Measure of U.S. Temperature That Shows No Recent Warming But It’s Hidden, Says Meteorologist

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 8, 2023

Government-controlled surface datasets, the bedrock of climate thermogeddon fears promoting Net Zero, cannot possibly be accurate, and are only “an estimate with high uncertainty”. The claim comes from the noted U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts, who has spent the last decade highlighting the numerous flaws built into global temperature monitoring systems. Data are collected by government bodies from a weather station network, “that was never intended to detect a ‘global warming signal’”, notes Watts. He goes on to call for a new independent global climate database. Given that governments are spending billions of taxpayer dollars on climate mitigation programmes, “doesn’t it make sense to get the most important thing – the actual temperature – as accurate as possible”, he asks.

To date, continues Watts, there is only one network of climate capable weather stations that is accurate enough to fully detect a climate change signal. This is the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), started in 2005 as a state-of-the-art automated system designed specifically to accurately measure climate trends at the surface. It comprises 114 stations across North America sited well away from any non-climatic effects, such as urban heat caused by humans.

The USCRN graph above shows that there has been no significant warming trend over the last two decades in the United States. “Unfortunately, the data from the USCRN network are buried by the U.S. Government, and are not publicly reported in monthly or yearly global climate reports. [The network] has also not been deployed worldwide,” observed Watts.

Watts notes that past temperature records were collected to validate weather forecasting. Temperatures were rounded by volunteers to the nearest whole degree of Fahrenheit. When comparing such “coarsely recorded” data to claims of 1.8°F global warming since the late 1800s, “obvious questions” of accuracy arise. Referring to his own recent work, Watts says that even more concerning is the widespread corruption of data by urbanisation. Many stations are compromised by being placed next to air conditioners, jet exhausts and concrete, asphalt and nearby buildings. This happens not just in the USA but in many other territories, including the U.K.

In the U.K., the state-funded Met Office has become highly politicised in recent years as it relentlessly pushes the collectivist Net Zero project. Despite writing a paper on the temperature standstill between 2000-14, it removed the pause in later retrospective adjustments to its HadCRUT global database. In under 10 years it added 30% extra warming to the recent global record, at a time when accurate satellite measurements suggested global warming started running out of steam about 25 years ago. Last summer, the Met Office confirmed and promoted a new U.K. record temperature of 40.3°C at Coningsby. In fact the record was set halfway down the runway at RAF Coningsby, home of Typhoon fighter jet squadrons, and lasted just 60 seconds. It was achieved with a sudden spike in temperature of 0.6°C followed by an almost immediate drop. To this day, the Met Office has refused to answer questions from the Daily Sceptic asking if jet aircraft movements were a contributing factor.

Watts is not the only scientist raising important concerns about the databases at the heart of the political campaign to promote panic about rising temperatures. Recent work by Dr. Roy Spencer and Professor John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville found that up to a fifth of all warming reported across the planet by around 20,000 weather stations is invalid due to corruption from non-climatic data. The stations form part of the Global Historical Climate Network and are an important constituent of all global datasets. Interestingly, the two scientists noted that the U.S. weather service NOAA claims to remove urban heat distortions, but they found that on average it is “spuriously warming station temperature data trends when it should be cooling them”. The detailed reasons are given in a note published by Dr. Spencer, where he asks why NOAA adjustments are going in the wrong way. “To say the least, I find these results … curious”, he adds.

Lopping off chunks of recent warming at a time when very little ‘heating’ is occurring would be unwelcome in Net Zero extremist circles. Scientists such as Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen point out that the warming since the ending of the Baroque mini ice age is already tiny. Evidence continues to accumulate that recent periods were much warmer than the present. In February, a group of bio scientists (Brozova et al., 2023) presented evidence showing that the Arctic around Svalbard was 6°C warmer in the early Holocene around 10,000 to 8,000 years ago. Further scientific evidence showing past warming can be found here, here and here.

Global surface temperatures recorded and compiled by government agencies are said by Watts to be a mishmash of rounded, adjusted and compromised readings, rather than being an accurate representation of Earth’s temperature. “Given the Government’s monopoly on use of corrupted temperature data, questionable accuracy, and a clear reticence to make highly accurate temperature data from the USCTN available to the public, it is time for a truly independent global temperature record to be produced,” Watts concludes.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

The US Attorney in Utah has given the anti-vax movement in America the greatest gift ever

They charged Kirk Moore with a crime. Dr. Moore is allowed discovery to prove his innocence. JACKPOT!

The US Attorney has given Dr. Kirk Moore the right to request the state and federal public health records. Now the truth will finally be exposed. Dr. Moore can single handedly do something nobody else has been able to do: expose the corruption and end the COVID vaccination in the US and worldwide.
By Steve Kirsch | April 9, 2023

Executive summary

The US Attorney in Utah issued a criminal indictment against Dr. Kirk Moore for “running a COVID-19 Vaccine Scheme to Defraud the Government and CDC.”

But what if Dr. Moore was actually saving lives instead and is a hero?

Since this is a criminal proceeding in federal court, Dr. Moore cannot be denied discovery to show that the vaccines are deadly.

This is relevant due to the opportunity for jury nullification where a jury has the right to issue a “not guilty” verdict if they believe the law is unjust.

If the judge denies Moore the discovery, he can appeal because there is no country in the world that has correlated the death-vax data and released the records for public analysis. They all keep it hidden behind closed doors and all attempts to get that data have been rebuffed.

A federal court has jurisdiction over all 50 states and can order the CDC and all states to turn over COVID vaccination records and death records. You know, the records that the states and CDC don’t want to be made public for some reason. Those records.

So Dr. Moore is now empowered to do something that nobody else in the world can do: access the secret public health records of every state in the US that will finally show to the entire world what everyone in power wants to hide from the public: the truth.

Kirk is one of my followers on Substack and I reached out to him today to suggest the records he should request to aid in his defense.

The judge can allow these records to be made public if they are in the public interest, which they will be.

Finally, it is the job of the courts to find the truth. And thanks to the US Attorney in Utah, we are finally going to find the truth!

Introduction

Not a single country, state, or even county health official anywhere in the world has correlated the vaccination data with the health data. I wonder why?

But now, courtesy of the US Attorney in Utah, Dr. Kirk Moore will have the right to do that.

And people are going to be stunned at what it will reveal. I can promise you that.

More about jury nullification

Some background on Jury Nullification, for those unfamiliar with it:

Cornell law discussion

Department of Justice discussion (1993)

NY Times discussion focus on marijuana, but applies to all (2011)

Vox discussion focused on race, but applies to all (2016)

Jury nullification is a powerful check on abusive government and unjust laws. But most Americans aren’t aware of it and lawyers aren’t allowed to inform a jury of their right to nullify a law. It will take a massive public education effort to make enough Americans aware of the power they hold in jury duty to make a difference in trials. So spread the word!! Tell two friends.

You can follow Dr. Moore on Twitter

You can follow Dr. Moore on Twitter here.

You can donate to help his defense here

Kirk Moore GiveSendGo

If you are a lawyer and want to help out on this case

Fill out the form here.

Why the court has to allow the discovery

There is a necessity defense. The discovery is crucial to showing that this defense is justified.

Also, the prosecution has to show criminal intent to harm the US government. Could it be that Dr. Moore’s intent was to save the life of his patients? Is that a crime in America today?

Summary

The bottom line is the US Attorney in Utah has given Dr. Moore the ability to end the narrative worldwide. And I have a feeling that Dr. Moore will take full advantage of the opportunity.

I leave you with this post Dr. Moore recently made on my Substack:

This is the biggest opportunity ever to end the narrative. The US government has literally opened up the secret books in every state (aka our public health data) for inspection. I could not be happier that the truth will finally be known.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Time to Revisit the Viktor Bout Case

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | April 10, 2023

With Russia’s arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, U.S. officials are accusing Russia of using Americans as “political hostages.” That may well be true, but the fact is that while the U.S. government acts like an innocent, the fact is that it plays the political-hostage game as well as Russia. In fact, the U.S. government might well be the one that started this vicious political game with Russia.

On March 6, 2008, a Russian arms dealer named Viktor Bout was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, on criminal charges brought by the U.S. government. The U.S. government sought Bout’s extradition to the United States, which he fervently opposed. The extradition proceedings took two years, during which time Bout was incarcerated in a Thai jail.

A Thai district court denied the U.S. extradition request, but the ruling was overturned by a Thai appellate court. On November 10, 2010, Bout was extradited to the United States to stand trial.

The Russian government vehemently objected to Bout’s prosecution, much as the U.S. government is vehemently objecting to Evan Gershkovich’s prosecution. But U.S. officials steadfastly ignored Russia’s objections to Bout’s prosecution as much as Russia is ignoring U.S. objections to Gershkovich’s prosecution.

Bout was an international arms dealer. He sold weaponry to all sorts of groups around the world. U.S. officials condemned him for his profession, while ignoring one great big important fact: The U.S. government is the biggest arms dealer in the world, also selling arms to all sorts of groups around the world, including tyrannical regimes that use such arms to suppress their own citizenry. 

It’s worth noting that Bout wasn’t the only international arms dealer. There were lots of them around the world. 

Nonetheless, U.S. officials decide to target him with criminal prosecution. Why would they select him out of all the other international arms dealers? My hunch is that there were two reasons: (1) As the biggest arms dealer in the world, the U.S. didn’t like the competition that Bout provided; and (2) More important, Bout was a Russian citizen, and it was during this period of time — 2008 — that the Pentagon was proceeding apace with its long-term plan of reinvigorating its old Cold War racket against Russia. By targeting a Russian citizen — especially one with close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin — with arrest, prosecution, and incarceration, the Pentagon knew that that could go a long way toward reestablishing hostile relations and a renewed Cold War with Russia.

But there was one big problem: Bout hadn’t violated any U.S. laws.

So, what does a regime do when it wants to target a person who hasn’t committed a crime? Answer: It simply makes up a crime. And that is precisely what the U.S. government did to get Russian citizen Viktor Bout. U.S. officials used a concocted, made-up crime to get him.

Here’s how their scheme worked. U.S. officials assigned the dirty deed to the DEA. Yes, you read that right — the DEA. Now, keep in mind that the DEA stands for the Drug Enforcement Administration. The operative word in the title is “Drug.” The DEA is charged with enforcing one of the U.S. government’s biggest and oldest failed and destructive government programs — the war on drugs. 

Thus, notwithstanding that the DEA’s balliwick is drug enforcement and not arms enforcement, the DEA was charged with the task of coming up with a concocted, made-up crime relating to the sale of weapons in order to get Viktor Bout. 

The DEA enlisted the assistance of two Colombians to serve as secret agents of the DEA. Acting as agents of FARC, the Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group in Colombia that U.S. officials have designated as a terrorist organization, the secret DEA agents contacted a man named Andrew Smulian, who was a friend of Bout. The secret DEA agents falsely told Smulian that FARC wanted to purchase arms from Bout.

Smulian contacted Bout and told him about the proposed deal. Bout agreed to meet with the secret DEA agents in Bangkok. During that meeting, which was being secretly recorded, Bout and the secret DEA agents struck a deal in which Bout agreed to sell them a large quantity of armaments. At that point, the Thai police, which were working with the DEA, swooped in and arrested Bout.

U.S. officials charged Bout with “conspiracy” to sell armaments to a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. During the negotiations, the secret DEA agents had said that they planned to use the weapons to kill U.S. drug-enforcement officials operating in Colombia. Bout remarked something to the effect that he didn’t care, given that the U.S. was an enemy to him as well. Based on that remark, which was made in the context of sales negotiations in response to what the secret DEA agents had said to Bout, U.S. officials ended up charging Bout with a “conspiracy” to kill U.S. officials. 

There are few things that stick out in this scenario. 

One, Bout never entered the United States. His actions in attempting to sell arms to what he was led to believe was FARC took place entirely in Thailand, which is about 8,500 miles from the United States.

Two, there is no legal reason why any Russian citizen is bound by some designation by the U.S. government that some foreign entity is a terrorist organization. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, Russian citizens, like other foreign citizens, are not bound by laws or edicts issued by the U.S. government, any more than U.S. citizens are bound by laws or edicts issued by the Russian government or some other foreign government.

Three, Bout never sold any arms to FARC because FARC wasn’t part of this deal. It was the DEA that was secretly acting like it was FARC.

The question naturally arises: Why does the U.S. government have criminal jurisdiction over a Russian citizen’s decision to sell weapons to a group in Colombia, especially given that the Russia citizen never sets foot in the United States?

Knowing that they would have problems proving that Bout sold weapons to FARC, which he clearly didn’t, U.S. officials decided to rely on a “conspiracy” charge against him. A “conspiracy” is an agreement to perform a criminal act. It has long been an easy way for U.S. officials to win convictions when all else fails. 

But a “conspiracy” requires an agreement between two or more people. It is difficult to understand who Bout supposedly agreed with to sell the armaments. He couldn’t be charged with conspiring with those secret DEA agents to sell arms because conspiracy law requires that he enter into an agreement with someone else — i.e., not the government — to perform a criminal act. That is, under the law of conspiracy, Bout cannot be charged with conspiring with those secret DEA agents to sell the arms. 

Moreover, he didn’t conspire with his friend Smulian because Smulian wasn’t selling the armaments. He was simply acting as a go-between who got the two parties together, much like a real-estate broker does in a sale of a home. When Bout met with those secret DEA agents in Bangkok, he agreed on his own to sell them the weapons. Thus, who did he conspire with?

Of course, none of this mattered when Bout was brought to trial. He was a Russian and an international arms dealer. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in jail. Not surprisingly, his sentence was upheld on appeal. 

It was all based on a made-up crime, one concocted by the DEA. But it served its purpose in helping to fulfill the Pentagon’s long-term aim of bringing about hostile relations between the United States and Russia and reinvigorating the Pentagon’s old Cold War racket against Russia.

After being forced to serve some 12 years of his life in a federal penitentiary (and two additional years in a Thai jail) for committing a made-up, concocted, fake crime, on December 8, 2022, Bout was traded for U.S. citizen Brittney Griner, who, ironically, was caught in Russia violating the war on drugs, which the Russian government enforces as fiercely as the DEA does here in the United States. As far as I know, the DEA has never issued an official opinion on the Griner-Bout trade. 

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Taiwan in the age of Neo-McCarthyism

By Drago Bosnic | April 10, 2023

McCarthyism, otherwise known as the so-called (Second) “Red Scare”, is officially defined as “the repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of alleged communist and socialist influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s”. The policy was spearheaded by a Republican US Senator Joseph McCarthy, but while he was the most prominent proponent of this internal (and foreign) policy approach, he most certainly wasn’t the only one. And although the term McCarthyism is largely considered obsolete and/or outdated nowadays, as the role of one individual in such a massive nationwide policy framework is obviously overstated, it stuck and now even includes additional definitions and changes.

The McCarthyism of our age can certainly be dubbed Neo-McCarthyism, as it includes more than just the ideological rejection of non-Western ideas and is now targeting anything remotely connected to countries such as China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, etc. This is especially true when it comes to Beijing, which Neo-McCarthyists see as the “source of all evil”, turning their emotional reaction into disastrous policies that make the geopolitical situation a lot worse.

One particularly obvious example of this is Taiwan, China’s breakaway island province currently under US patronage. However, Beijing is actively pushing back against threats from the US and its numerous vassals and satellite states in the region, despite Washington DC’s constant attempts of a crawling invasion so as to undermine China’s national interests and security in seas surrounding the country.

On April 5, Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen made a stopover visit to Los Angeles after a tour to Latin America to visit Guatemala and Belize, its only remaining official allies in an attempt to stop the repeat of the recent episode when Honduras finally cut ties with Taipei and opted for Beijing instead. Tsai also met with senior security officials on Tuesday to discuss the “regional situation” ahead of her meeting with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California, which China had once again warned against.

“China is strongly opposed to the US arranging for Tsai Ing-wen to transit through its territory, and is strongly opposed to the meeting between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the third-ranking US official, and Tsai Ing-wen,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stated, adding: “It seriously violates the One-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques, and seriously undermines China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

And yet, Taipei enjoys strong bipartisan support in the US, one of the very few unifying factors in Congress as Washington DC increasingly sees China as its primary adversary. McCarthy had originally even planned to visit Taiwan himself, but has opted instead to meet Tsai in the US. Some analysts saw this as sort of a “compromise” that wouldn’t be seen as escalatory as a direct visit to Taipei. However, McCarthy’s comments on a future visit to Taiwan effectively invalidated this view, while China slammed it as yet another form of US meddling in its internal affairs.

The behind-closed-doors meeting makes McCarthy the highest-ranking US official to have met a Taiwanese president on US soil since 1979 when America officially established diplomatic relations with China, effectively recognizing Beijing’s “One-China policy”. China’s strong reaction to the meeting is certainly expected, as it has repeatedly warned against such high-profile visits, stressing that they aren’t just against international law, but are also deeply destabilizing and harmful to Beijing’s national interests in the Asia-Pacific.

However, while the US officially doesn’t maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan, it de facto does. Worse yet, Washington DC has been actively arming Taipei for decades and has even recently escalated this with promised deliveries of advanced weapons, including SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems and anti-ship missiles, obviously aimed against China’s potential amphibious combined arms operation to restore its full sovereignty.

For his part, Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, has been outspoken in his criticism of China. True to his last name, in December he stated that “the greatest threat to the United States is the Chinese Communist Party”. Considering the fact that he’s the third highest ranking US official and second in line for the US presidency, such statements are a borderline declaration of war, to say nothing of McCarthy’s continued support for additional arms sales to Taipei.

As previously mentioned, he also reiterated the strong possibility of visiting Taipei and stressed the need for arming China’s breakaway island province by saying: “I don’t have any current plans, but that doesn’t mean I will not go… …Based on our conversations, it’s clear that several actions are necessary. First, we must continue the arms sales to Taiwan and make sure such sales reach Taiwan on a very timely basis. Second, we must strengthen our economic cooperation, particularly with trade and technology. Third, we must continue to promote our shared values on the world stage.”

Strangely enough, while insisting on further arms deliveries, McCarthy also stated that “tensions in this world are at their highest point since the end of the Cold War, as authoritarian leaders seek to use violence and fear to provoke needless conflict”. This is an obvious reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese colleague Xi Jinping, who recently held a historic meeting in Moscow, something the US wasn’t too happy about, which somewhat explains Washington DC’s frustrations.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Chinese Media Reveals Why Russia Unlikely to Have Leaked Sensitive Ukraine Docs

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 10.04.2023

The FBI and the Pentagon have kicked off investigations after the leak of a damning US intelligence assessment on the Ukrainian conflict. US officials and media immediately blamed Russia, while Kiev characterized the leak as “Russian propaganda.” The Kremlin said the docs show the dramatic extent to which NATO is entrenched in the conflict.

Russia is not likely to be behind the leak of the top secret US intelligence assessment of the situation in Ukraine, since it would prefer to keep the information under wraps and use it to its advantage, a major Chinese outlet speculates.

“If Russia has obtained these classified documents, it would not post them online, because this will make Russia lose the source or sources that had provided these documents,” an anonymous Chinese international security and intelligence expert told the Global Times. “The leak is unlikely caused by Russian intelligence agencies, because this does not make sense,” the expert said.

The source argued that there was “no reason for Russia to let its enemies know that it has obtained this intelligence, because this will also make its enemies change plans, making the hard-won military intelligence useless.”

Instead, GT noted, the leak goes to show to the world the “disunity, distrust and divergences” between the US, its allies and Kiev, and to demonstrate that Washington “is the biggest obstacle for the international community to promote a ceasefire and peace talks” to ending the Ukrainian crisis.

The documents demonstrate the precarious state of the Ukrainian military, and will both demoralize the Ukrainian military and reduce Western countries’ confidence in supporting Kiev against Russia, whether or not they are genuine, the Chinese newspaper suggested.

Whodunit?

US and Ukrainian officials immediately blamed Russian intelligence for the leak of the classified documents, and suggested that the assessment seems to combine a “statistical analysis of supplies, possible operational and tactical plans, as well as a large volume of fictitious information.”

The documents serve to confirm Russia’s public assessment on the state of the Ukrainian conflict, showing that Ukrainian air defenses have been depleted by months of strikes, and that Ukrainian casualties are over four times higher than those of the Russian side (contrasting sharply with public estimates by the Pentagon and the Ukrainian military of six-figure Russian losses).

The Pentagon’s reported efforts to scrub the documents from the internet were met with trolling by Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who sarcastically quipped that it was “totally” possible to “delete things from the internet,” and that doing so definitely wouldn’t “draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the leaks “quite interesting,” and said it was not surprising that Moscow has been blamed. “You and I know that there is a tendency to always blame everything on Russia. It is, in general, a disease,” the spokesman told reporters Monday.

Commentators speaking to Sputnik expressed a healthy measure of a skepticism over the documents’ authenticity, saying that although they serve to confirm Russia’s internal assessments on the state of the Ukrainian military, they provide Moscow “no benefit” as far as the strategic situation is concerned. Others pointed out that it would be highly unlikely for the documents to be published in legacy media outlets without the approval of the national security state.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Deception | , | Leave a comment

BBC ‘government-funded’ Twitter tag triggers journalists

RT | April 10, 2023

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has ignited a feud with the BBC by labeling the British broadcaster a “government funded media” organization. The BBC denies taking state money and its defenders claim that being funded by the British government differs from being funded by the British public.

Twitter applied the label to the BBC’s main account earlier this week, after slapping US broadcaster NPR with a similar tag describing it as “US state-affiliated media.” While Twitter previously reserved such labels for foreign media outlets – like RT and China’s CGTN, Musk said that applying it to NPR “seems accurate.”

NPR’s tag was changed to read “government-funded media” after an outcry from US liberals.

The BBC bristled at receiving the tag. “We are speaking to Twitter to resolve this issue as soon as possible,” the broadcaster said in a statement on Sunday. “The BBC is, and always has been, independent. We are funded by the British public through the licence fee.”

On Twitter, the BBC’s defenders pointed to the license fee as proof of the network’s independence. The BBC, Deadline reporter Jake Kanter argued, “is funded by the British public through a system known as the licence fee. The BBC’s operations and editorial decision-making are entirely independent of the government.”

However, commenters pointed out that the license fee “is a government tax in all but name.”

Set by the government, the fee is an annual payment of £159 ($197) owed by any household with a television or device capable of receiving television broadcasts. The BBC hires contractors to visit the homes of suspected evaders, and those who refuse to pay can be prosecuted by the broadcaster. Around 45,000 people per year are prosecuted for failing to pay the license, the Telegraph reported last month.

The UK’s Office for National Statistics classifies the fee as a tax, and the BBC as part of the “central government sector” of the UK economy.

Additionally, the broadcaster does actually receive direct government funding for BBC World Service. The TV license covers 75% of the service’s operational costs while the rest is directly paid for by the UK government to the tune of some £90 million ($111 million) per year. Last month, the service was also awarded a £20 million ($24 million) one-time payment to help “fight against the spread of disinformation around the world.” BBC World Service is predominantly aimed at non-UK audiences and broadcasts in over 40 languages.

The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office is also the biggest funder of the BBC’s Media Action service, which additionally receives funding from the governments of the US, Canada, Norway, Sweden, the EU, the UN, as well as donors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The service supplies two dozen developing countries with “information they can trust,” per the BBC’s own website.

While the BBC stated that it is editorially independent, internal communications published by the Guardian last month showed that its editors asked reporters to avoid using the term “lockdown” when talking about the government’s response to the Coviid-19 pandemic, under direct order from the government. Furthermore, journalists were instructed to be more critical of the opposition Labour Party due to complaints from the government.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine attempts to blame Russia for humiliating Pentagon leak

By Ahmed Adel | April 10, 2023

The Pentagon announced it was trying to remove from the internet a major leak of secret documents which have exposed plans relating to Ukraine’s war on Russia. For his part, Elon Musk sarcastically highlighted the vain attempt, saying on Twitter: “Yeah, you can totally delete things from the Internet – that works perfectly and doesn’t draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide at all.”

The American billionaire derided on Twitter the Pentagon’s attempt to remove social media posts containing leaked classified documents relating to the conflict in Ukraine. The day before his tweet, the New York Times newspaper indicated that officials were not successful in removing the publications from the internet.

The leak was described to the News York Times by a senior intelligence official as “a nightmare for the Five Eyes,” the intelligence sharing apparatus between the Anglo countries – the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Some of the documents were found on Twitter and other sites on April 7, a day after US officials announced that they were investigating a potential leak of classified Ukrainian war plans. These war plans include an alarming assessment of Ukraine’s faltering air defence capabilities and notes that 12 brigades are being formed for Ukraine, including nine trained by the US and other NATO allies.

One of the leaks, dated February 23, is labelled “Secret/NoForn,” meaning it was not meant to be shared with foreign countries, and thus confirms the secrecy of the documents.

It is the belief of Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, that the leak is “a significant breach in security” that could hamper Ukrainian military planning as it reportedly prepares for a spring offensive. “As many of these were pictures of documents, it appears that it was a deliberate leak done by someone that wished to damage the Ukraine, US, and NATO efforts,” he said.

The Kremlin said it had no doubts about the participation of the US or NATO, direct or indirect, in the conflict in Ukraine. None-the-less, the leaks would still provide a fascinating insight for decisionmakers in Moscow.

The New York Times reported that the leaks appear to be legitimate Defense Department documents. None-the-less, this did not stop Ukrainian officials from suggesting that the leak was only part of a Russian disinformation campaign aimed at influencing Ukraine’s possible spring offensive.

Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters that the data contained a “very large amount of fictitious information” and Russia was trying to seize back the initiative in its “invasion.” His claim, instead, is part of Ukraine’s disinformation campaign, one that has been insisted upon yet exposed consistently since the first days of the war when we consider incidents like Snake Island.

Podolyak, for his part, had only recently spread his own “fictitious information” by claiming that Ukraine will capture Crimea through military means in the next five to seven months because Russia does not have enough resources to control the situation.

Despite ridiculous attempts by Kiev to contradict Washington and blame Moscow, US authorities are trying to find the culprit of the leak. According to a US official, they are determining how the documents were leaked by first identifying which officials had access to them.

The documents are at least five weeks old, with the most recent dated on March 1. The plans did not provide specific action such as when Ukraine would launch the offensive, but experts strongly believe it will occur during the spring. This offensive will include Western-trained troops and newly supplied weapons, including dozens of battle tanks. Although initial gains might be made, it is expected that the offensive will quickly tire out before Russia ultimately launches its own counteroffensive.

In preparing for this offensive, Ukraine has received 49 battle tanks from Western countries; London said it finished training a second group of Ukrainian soldiers on the AS90 self-propelled howitzers it is donating; Washington announced it was providing another $500 million in ammunition for howitzers, rocket artillery, Patriot anti-air systems and other systems; and Poland said it had transferred four of the 14 MiG-29 fighter jets it is giving Ukraine, following a similar move from Slovakia last month.

Very evidently, there are nowhere near enough resources to take an entire peninsula that has been militarised for the better part of eight years, let alone the regions between Crimea and where the Ukrainian forces currently are. No serious analyst believes that Ukraine will capture Crimea, let alone in a time frame of five to seven months, but the propaganda is aimed at securing more Western funds and weapons.

It is for this reason that the leaks are an embarrassing humiliation as it will likely hamper these efforts, and also why Podolyak tried denying them as Russian disinformation. But as Elon Musk sarcastically said: “Yeah, you can totally delete things from the Internet – that works perfectly and doesn’t draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide at all.”

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

HOW SWEDEN GOT COVID RIGHT

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | April 6, 2023

The data is in, and it suggests that government lockdowns killed people. Sweden led the world with the sanest, evidence-based response to the pandemic maximizing freedoms for its citizens while minimizing the litany of harms.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Twitter withholds tweet worldwide after legal demand from India’s government

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | April 8, 2023

Twitter globally withheld a tweet by an Indian Home Minister in response to a “legal demand.” The news was shared by Journalist and Right to Information (RTI) activist Saurav Das, who posted screenshots of two tweets, one of which was a quoted Union Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah with a notice from the social media platform that said the content had been withheld in “worldwide.”

This is a first as Twitter normally restricts content in the territory that the legal demand has come from unless the tweet has violated the platform’s Terms of Service.

Das said that he could not remember the context of the withheld tweet. It is also not clear which government agency requested the content to be taken down.

The tweet was not accessible even via a virtual private network connected to the US.

“Twitter representatives expressed concern about the growing number of actors demanding that platforms remove content under broad and unclear definitions and the need for greater transparency from governments about such requests,” the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression (SRFOE) of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) said in a press release following a delegation’s visit to the company’s headquarters.

“They also argued that demands to curb illegal content must adhere to human rights regulatory frameworks and respect the fundamental purposes of freedom of expression,” the delegation added. Twitter’s Global Government Affairs team (formerly its Policy team) said in a tweet mentioning the delegation’s visit that “government requests [should] respect the fundamental purposes of freedom of expression.”

April 9, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Classified Leak May Look to Embarass Biden Into ‘Cutting Back’ Ukraine Support

Sputnik – 09.04.2023

While the value of the information contained in the leaked documents appears somewhat questionable, the timing of the leak itself may speak volumes about the motives of the people who caused it, according to Philip Giraldi, a former CIA station chief.

An apparent classified information leak, which resulted in what seems to be a batch of US documents related to the conflict in Ukraine being posted on social media, has left experts pondering on the significance of this development.

Philip Giraldi, who now serves as executive director of a non-profit anti-war advocacy group the Council for the National Interest, told Sputnik that the significance of the leaked materials stems from the fact that they seem to be “highly classified” and have “presumably been leaked by someone senior in the hierarchy of the Pentagon.”

He pointed out that the docs, which appear to be briefing materials for a “military audience,” date back to February and March and feature “limited tactical information.”

“Russia would only benefit by their appearance because it would underline the carelessness of the Pentagon in its handling of sensitive information. Otherwise, I see no benefit,” Giraldi surmised.

At the same time, he argued that the timing of this leak is actually important, as it seems to hint that some people in the US “intelligence/military pipeline” are none too thrilled with the continued “pointless support for Ukraine” and seek to “embarrass the Biden administration into cutting back its efforts.”

“They are likely hoping that the US will begin to seriously support negotiations to end the war,” Giraldi mused. “Recall the Pentagon papers, which did so much to diminish the support of the country for the Vietnam conflict. If the Pentagon cannot keep its own secrets, it would be a major embarrassment.”

He also observed that the US government’s and the media’s reaction to this leak has been quite strong, with Giraldi noting that the Pentagon has apparently suspended some of its daily briefings, “which presumably have been the source of some of the leaked material.”

April 9, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Israel strikes Syria in response to rare missile attack

The Cradle | April 9, 2023

Israel launched several airstrikes against Syria during the early hours of 9 April, targeting Syrian military sites in the vicinity of the capital Damascus and other areas south of the country, state-media reported.

“At about 05:00 AM, the Israeli enemy launched an aerial aggression with a number of missiles from the direction of occupied Syrian Golan targeting some sites in the southern region,” a military source told state-news outlet SANA.

“Our air defenses intercepted the enemy’s missiles and downed some of them,” the Syrian source added.

The Israeli army claimed to have used airstrikes and artillery to target rocket-launchers and a Syrian military compound. So far, no casualties have been reported and only some material damages ensued.

The Israeli strikes came in response to the firing of several rockets from Syrian territory into the Israeli occupied Golan Heights the night before. Late on 8 April and after midnight on 9 April, a total of six rockets were fired from Syria towards the Golan Heights, three of which landed in Israeli controlled-territory. The missiles were launched in separate barrages.

Two others fell in an open space while the last was intercepted, the Israeli military claimed. Reports suggested that one of the missiles fell in Jordanian territory.

Israel “sees the State of Syria responsible for all activities occurring within its territory and will not allow any attempts to violate Israeli sovereignty,” the Israeli military said in a statement.

The Liwa al-Quds (Jerusalem Brigade) faction, a pro-Syrian government militant group formed in 2013 and made up predominantly of Palestinians, claimed responsibility for the rocket-attack into Israel. The group said that the attack was a response to Israel’s brutal assaults on worshipers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque over the past few days.

In older statements, the Liwa al-Quds group has pledged to “liberate Jerusalem and all of Palestine after purifying Syria from terrorism.”

The rocket-attack was a rare occurrence. The last time rockets were launched from Syria into Israel was in 2019.

This new attack came just two days after dozens of rockets were fired into northern Israel from Lebanese territory in response to Israel’s brutality in Al-Aqsa Mosque.

No group claimed responsibility for firing the rockets from Lebanon. However, Israeli media suggested that it was a coordinated attack carried out by the Palestinians in Lebanon and green-lighted by Hezbollah.

The Hebrew media claims represented the growing fear in Israel of increased coordination between Hezbollah, Iran, the Palestinians, and the axis of resistance in general – while also reinforcing the fear that several fronts are now open against Israel.

These recent rocket attacks against Israel have coincided with an unprecedented surge in Palestinian resistance operations against settlers and soldiers inside of Palestine.

April 9, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Recent hostilities between Syrian and US forces could be a turning point

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | April 9, 2023

US President Joe Biden ordered airstrikes on a number of positions in northeastern Syria last month, after Washington announced the death of a contractor in a drone strike.

What followed was an unprecedented response from the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and allied militias, shelling US positions throughout the duration of the following day. This exchange of fire marks a turning point in the conflict between the two sides.

On March 23, the US Department of Defense claimed that a drone, of Iranian origin, had struck US forces stationed near al-Hasakah, in northeastern Syria, killing an American contractor and injuring a number of service members. To which F-15 fighter jets were launched from Doha in order to target Iranian-allied militia groups in the Deir ez-Zor province of Syria. Throughout recent years there have been several exchanges between US and Iranian-allied militia groups in Syria’s east. However, these rarely resulted in American casualties and the brief escalations were controlled.

What changed following the US strikes on March 24 is that there was intense return fire from not only Iranian-aligned militias in Deir ez-Zor, but also from the SAA itself. A number of US bases were struck in the response, which primarily targeted American forces around the al-Omar oil fields, inflicting traumatic brain injuries on six US troops, according to the Pentagon. During a trip to Canada the following day, Joe Biden remarked that the US was “not going to stop” when asked about retaliating against Iran for the exchange in Syria. “Be prepared for us to act forcefully to protect our people” he said.

It later emerged that the Biden administration had moved one of its aircraft carriers, the USS George H.W. Bush, closer to Syria, which, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh explained, was due to “increased attacks from [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)]-affiliated groups targeting our service members across Syria.” What this represents, regardless of whatever action the US may take in the future, is a strategic change in the equation set forth by Syria and its allies in Syria’s east. What an Iraqi source with intimate knowledge of the situation claimed had been an “order to now kill American troops and not just fire warning shots.”

According to a Syrian political source, who chose to remain anonymous for security reasons, the escalation in the northeast is directly tied to the ongoing Israeli aggression against the country:

“The recent move by Syria and allies is a direct response to a wave of Israeli escalation against the country that began last year. If you remember in August of 2022, there was a similar stand-off between the Americans and IRGC allies in northeastern Syria. The Israeli escalation is directly enabled by the United States, whose officials talked in the past about the importance of the American military presence in Syria for Israel’s war-between-wars campaign against Iran-aligned forces there.”

The “war between wars” is one of Tel Aviv’s inter-war campaigns, where covert operations are carried out against enemy states during a period of relative calm between both sides. Israel’s recent campaign has primarily consisted of operations against Iranian-linked targets, both inside and outside of Iran; it also has included a large number of unannounced airstrikes inside Syria, where members of the IRGC have been targeted, along with allied militia groups. The Israel Defense Forces have a policy of not commenting on these attacks but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in the past admitted that “hundreds” of them had taken place over the years.

If Damascus’ new approach of responding forcefully against the US military in northeastern Syria is adopted going forward, it will give Washington only two options: negotiate with Damascus or leave the country completely. If American soldiers are coming home in body bags over maintaining an occupation inside a country that the US public, along with  Congress, were never consulted on, the pressure of remaining could become a burden on the Biden administration. This is especially the case at a time when the Arab World is beginning to normalize formal ties with Damascus, in addition to Washington’s NATO ally Türkiye.

A Syria-Türkiye rapprochement could be essential to forcing the US out of Syria also, as both countries could end up coordinating during any future Turkish offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northeast. The SDF operate as a kind of US proxy force, allowing for the Americans to use a small number of their own troops to occupy roughly a third of Syria’s territory; included in which are the most fertile agricultural lands and the majority of Syria’s natural resources. Both previous attacks, launched by Ankara in 2018 and 2019, led to a withdrawal of US forces so as to not accidentally cause friction with their NATO ally. In the event that another military operation from Türkiye is launched, Syria could be poised to retake its oil fields, in theory.

The adoption of a head-on confrontation strategy by Iran-aligned groups and the Syrian government could lead to new horizons and to the possibility of a US withdrawal, that is assuming the Biden administration is not wedded completely to the idea of staying.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News.

April 9, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

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