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As Ukraine’s Defeat Looms, Imaginary War Unravels

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | April 24, 2024

On April 11th, US General Christopher Gerard Cavoli, chief of Washington’s European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, addressed US lawmakers on Ukraine’s dire battlefield situation, warning Kiev “could lose” without further Wunderwaffe. Along the way, he made a number of startling disclosures about the size of Russia’s military, and losses, which detonated numerous narratives universally and unquestioningly perpetuated by the mainstream media from the very start of the proxy war to this day.

“We do not see significant losses in the air domain, especially their (Russian) long-range and strategic aviation fleets…Russia’s strategic forces, long-range aviation, cyber capabilities, space capabilities, and capabilities in the electromagnetic spectrum have lost no capacity at all,” Cavoli said. In all, while the Russian air force had lost “some aircraft”, this represented “only about 10% of their fleet”:

“The overall message I would give you is [Russia’s military has] grown back to what they were before… their overall capacity is very significant still, and they intend to make it go higher… Russia is reconstituting [its forces] far faster than our initial estimates suggested. The army is actually now larger — by 15% — than it was when it invaded Ukraine… Russia launches very large-scale attacks every few days keeping with their production rate… They produce, they save up, they launch a big attack.”

Such is the pace at which events move these days, many may have forgotten that in December 2023 a US intelligence report, conveniently declassified right when Volodymyr Zelensky was touring Washington desperately attempting to drum up support for yet more “aid”, suggested Russia had lost 90% of its prewar army, with combat deaths in excess of 300,000. The report claimed Moscow’s personnel and vehicle losses were so severe, it would take 18 years to replenish what was hemorrhaged over the invasion to date.

Independent analyst Will Schryver has coined the term “Imaginary War” in respect of the proxy conflict. It is a battle primarily concerned with convincing Western citizens that free, democratic Kiev is making a heroic stand against Russian barbarism, which it can and will win. Ukraine, with NATO’s backing, was until recently excelling in this effort. Every step of the way though, they’ve been losing the real war – and badly.

‘Intelligence Updates’

Social media is a core component of the Imaginary War. Academic research shows Twitter is home to a massive pro-Ukraine bot army, endlessly pumping out pro-Kiev, anti-Russian messaging. The same is no doubt true of every social media platform. This helps create the illusion of nigh-universal support for Ukraine globally, when outside the West, populations and governments are either neutral, or outright supportive of Russia, perceiving the conflict to be a strike against NATO, and Western imperialism.

Furthermore, over the first 18 months of the conflict, mainstream journalists, pundits, and politicians heavily depended on the unsubstantiated pronouncements of “Oryx”, an anonymous Twitter account analysing on-the-ground imagery, for loss figures on both sides. Its posts suggested from day one, destruction of Russian tanks, jets, armoured vehicles and more was many orders of magnitude higher than that suffered by Ukraine, indicative generally of the war being an unmitigated disaster for the invaders.

A representative March 17th 2022 Washington Post investigation boldly declared Russia had to date “lost thousands of soldiers and thousands of vehicles while failing to make significant progress,” based almost entirely on Oryx’s findings. Similarly, a BBC article the next month prominently touted figures produced by Oryx suggesting Ukraine had “destroyed, damaged or captured at least 82 Russian aircraft, including jets, helicopters and drones,” while only sacrificing 33 of its own.

A nameless Western intelligence official told the BBC Kiev desperately required “long and mid-range air defences”, in “large quantities.” UAF Captain Vasyl Kravchuk, reportedly possessed of a “surprisingly ready smile” when he spoke to Britain’s state broadcaster, signed off by stating, “past wars have shown, whoever dominates the air wins the war.” The underlying propaganda message, that Ukraine was so far comfortably prevailing in the skies, but needed Western help to keep it up – and therefore emerge victorious overall – couldn’t have been clearer.

Oryx’s findings were even routinely cited by Britain’s Ministry of Defence in daily Twitter “intelligence updates”, which were widely shared, and subsequently featured in and informed the content and headlines of many news reports. For example, in April 2023 an update asserted, “Russia has lost 10,000+ military vehicles since its illegal invasion of Ukraine began, according to tracker Oryx.” The post was viewed over one million times. Parliament’s 2023 Intelligence and Security Committee report boasted that “the impact” of these “unprecedented” updates was “substantial”.

The report went on to note how the Ministry of Defence intelligence estimates “informed decisions made by [government] ministers and Armed Forces chiefs” on London’s “posture towards Russia.” One can only hope Oryx’s output did not formally influence Britain’s proxy war strategy in Ukraine. Audits by eagle-eyed internet sleuths have demonstrated the account consistently perpetuated wildly inaccurate, inflated figures, by counting photos and footage of the same damaged vehicles shot from different angles as individual, separate Russian losses, while misrepresenting Ukraine’s destroyed Soviet-era vehicles as Russian.

Conspicuously, Oryx abruptly ceased its work when Ukraine’s much-vaunted, long-delayed “Spring” counteroffensive began in June 2023. A cynic might suggest, given Kiev was equipped with heavily hyped Western Wunderwaffe for the effort, whoever was running the operation – and/or the individuals and entities ultimately managing them – concluded the same dishonest tactics couldn’t work this time round. In October 2023, the account was deleted outright without warning or explanation, meaning its bogus archive can no longer be critically scrutinised at all.

‘Classic Hero’

Coincidentally, that same month, a number of anonymous, high profile “OSINT” accounts similarly focused on Ukraine likewise abruptly shuttered, or announced their intention to do so. This included Calibre Obscura. Beloved by NAFO, the account similarly emphasised Russian embarrassment and failure. A video Calibre Obscura published in September 2022 of a fleeing Russian tank crashing into a tree set to farcical music went viral, generated much mainstream coverage, and was presented by Zelensky at a press conference celebrating that month’s successful counteroffensive in Kharkiv.

With the Imaginary War nearing over, and the Zionist genocide in Gaza beginning, it was of course necessary to wind down “OSINT” operations entirely, or focus them elsewhere. The silence of Bellingcat, a British and US government-funded validator of NATO narratives, on Israel’s crimes, despite a wealth of photo and video footage attesting to the monstrousness, is palpable, and illuminating.

In December 2023, novelist Lionel Shriver authored a lament for The Spectator, on how she “got caught up” in the proxy conflict’s “story”, which “had a spectacular opening chapter, a classic hero… and as wicked a villain as Shakespeare could have contrived.” However, Kiev’s catastrophic counteroffensive – which saw over 100,000 Ukrainians die to recover 0.25% of lost territory – meant she was now “quietly losing interest in this conflict,” along with many others in Europe and the US:

“This is supposed to be a David and Goliath story. But David and Goliath is a crap story if the giant wins… Predictable, a bit disheartening and not really a story at all, just the way the world works. Besides, a Western audience wants to see the good guy win, both to mete out justice and to enjoy victory by proxy. Ukraine’s anguishing self-defence is not a novel. But it’s not satisfying our fictional appetites.”

Shriver concluded that it was “time to urge the Zelensky government to enter talks to bring this depressing war to its depressing conclusion,” as “dragging out an entrenched stalemate merely racks up a higher body count and destroys more Ukrainian homes and infrastructure to no purpose.” She added, “sitting back and giving Ukrainians just enough weaponry to keep fighting to the last man and woman, only for the country to finally end up where we always knew it would, is not just immoral. It’s murder.”

It is indeed immoral, and murder, to keep the unwinnable, real war Ukraine has been fighting since February 2022 grinding on, as anti-imperialist, anti-war activists and journalists have been intoning every step of the way. That confirming this self-evident fact came at the expense of so many lives, marking it as a criminal tragedy. Unhappily for Shriver and many others, with the total collapse of the frontline impending any day now, and Russia seeking Kiev’s “unconditional surrender”, the “story” may not end with Ukraine electively entering talks.

April 24, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Revealed: Israel’s hidden history of attacks on Iran

By Robert Inlakesh | MintPress News | April 17, 2024 

Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel was framed in the West as a reckless attempt to spark a major regional war, but in reality, Israel has been attacking Iran for decades.

As is routinely the case with Western-backed wars, the corporate media’s timeline begins at the moment that suits their narrative. We have seen this play out recently, with the attempt to rob the Gaza war of all contexts before October 7, 2023. Similarly, when it comes to Israel’s conflict with Iran, the two have been embroiled in what is referred to as a “shadow war,” the details of which are pretty shocking.

While the international media’s attention was riveted on Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel, drawing great focus to some 300 drones and missiles used in the attack, no major deal was made of Israel’s strike on April 1 against the consular segment of Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria, that killed a dozen people, including seven Iranian officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In this unprecedented act of aggression against Iranian soil, breaking international diplomatic norms, the Israelis were shielded by the U.S. government at the United Nations Security Council, blocking any condemnation of this act.

Despite an admission from British Foreign Secretary David Cameron that had the UK embassy been attacked similarly, they too would retaliate, the double-standard argument that Iran shouldn’t respond continues to dominate the airways.

This is as Iran’s IRGC has received condemnation for seizing a container ship in the Persian Gulf associated with the Zodiac Maritime shipping company of Israel billionaire Eyal Ofer and his family. In 2021, the Mercer Street oil tanker, which Zodiac Maritime also operated, was struck by Iranian drones, prompting similar condemnation. Yet, little was to be said regarding the Israeli-owned company’s role in collaborating with the Israeli military and intelligence establishment to ferry arms and operatives around the region and carry out assassinations or reconnaissance missions.

However, the Israel-Iran “Shadow War” did not begin with recent events. Israel has been carrying out brutal assassinations of civilian scientists on Iranian soil since 2010 while also carrying out acts of espionage that have endangered innocent civilians in the country.

As early as in the years 2010, 2011 and 2012, Israeli Mossad agents have been planting viruses designed to cause malfunctions in Iranian oil and nuclear power facilities. Another kind of provocative action occurred in 2018, when it was reported that an Israeli Mossad team had raided an archive facility in Tehran, stealing documents that pertained to its nuclear power program.

In 2020, the New York Times and Washington Post reported that Israel planted bombs inside Iran’s Natanz Nuclear facility, which almost caused an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Later that year, the Israeli Mossad assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in Tehran. Then, in April of 2021, another explosion occurred at the Natanz facility, which the New York Times reported was Israel’s doing.

The Israelis have also trained members of the MEK terrorist group to carry out attacks on civilian targets inside Iran. The list of Mossad-linked cells that have been arrested by the Iranian authorities or carried out acts of espionage and sabotage is simply too numerous to cover at length. Early last year, U.S. officials even told Reuters that a suicide drone attack targeting a factory in the city of Isfahan was an Israeli attack.

More recently, in late December, Israel launched airstrikes on Damascus and assassinated IRGC official Seyed Razi Mousavi. And in January, Israel launched airstrikes in Damascus, murdering five Iranian military personnel members and Syrian citizens. Then, in early February, Israel was accused of blowing up gas pipelines in Iran. None of these actions, which would likely illicit a response by most nations, provoked Iran to launch a direct strike on Israel.

In addition to all of this, Israel has been the world’s top cheerleader for the West’s crushing sanctions that have significantly impacted Iran’s civilian population, specifically access to lifesaving medical supplies. AIPAC, the powerful Israeli Lobby group in the United States, worked hard to prevent the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal from passing, then pushed for the Trump administration to unilaterally withdraw before pressuring the Biden administration to refrain from reviving the deal despite this being a campaign promise. Israel even played a role in the Trump administration’s assassination of Iran’s top general tasked with battling ISIS, Qassem Soleimani.

Yet, despite Israel’s long history of documented attacks against Iran and around 30 years of false predictions as to when Iran is supposedly going to develop a nuclear weapon, which is the premise for Western sanctions, the corporate media is still trying to sell the public on the lie that Israel is an innocent victim and that there was no justifiable reason for Iran to retaliate.

April 24, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Conformity Colleges: the Occupation and Destruction of the Academy by the Radical Left

UK Column | April 11, 2024

Ben Rubin speaks with Professor David Barnhizer about the ideological capture of American universities, and its implications for the future of higher education and Western civilisation itself.

The UK Column is an independent multimedia news website supported by its members.

April 24, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Fake Physician Allison Neitzel Caught Running Real Medical Misinformation Site

Medical clown for “disinformation reporters” at NBC and Mother Jones crashes her own disinformation circus

By Paul D. Thacker | The DisInformation Chronicle | April 3, 2024

Promoted to national prominence by a coterie of reporters tackling pandemic misinformation, physician Allison Neitzel took a hard fall last week when she was forced to atone for promoting misinformation and defaming medical experts—by posting an apology on her website, and pinning the same to the top of her social media X account. But unless you hang on every word of Democratic Party aligned reporters with a knack for labeling everyone they don’t like a “conspiracy theorist,” you likely don’t know physician Allison Neitzel.

If you haven’t heard of her, you should know her name and story.

Allison Neitzel’s story encapsulates everything that went wrong during COVID when self-defined “disinformation reporters” glommed onto anyone they tripped over on social media as an “expert” they could deploy to castigate those refusing to bend the knee to Big Pharma.

“I know of Allison because of the way she has targeted me,” says Tracey Beth Høeg, a physician researcher and associate professor of clinical research at the university of Southern Denmark. Neitzel has deleted many of her social media posts denigrating Hoeg, including one in which she labeled her “Hoeg hag.”

“The fact she has not nearly completed her training but has appointed herself as an expert physician in pointing out misinformation strikes me as both odd and ironic,” Hoeg continued. “For example, as you can see, she is really attacking me rather than anything substantive about what I have done or said.”

Allison Neitzel rocketed to national fame on CNN after graduating from the Medical College of Wisconsin and posting a letter on social media that accused Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers of spreading COVID misinformation. Rodgers said he was allergic to one of the vaccine ingredients and didn’t need to be vaccinated because he had already been sick with COVID, however, this was almost a year before the CDC stated that prior infection was no different than being vaccinated.

Despite spreading false information about Rodgers, Neitzel’s letter and purported medical bona fides proved catnip to reporters at MedPage Today, Mother Jones, and NBC, who quoted her as a physician exposing medical misinformation. Columns Neitzel has written for websites WhoWhatWhy and Science-Based Medicine also claim she is a physician focusing on disinformation.

And this is where the circus fun begins, because famed medical misinformation expert Allison Neitzel is not now, nor has she ever been, a physician.

Allison Neitzel did not respond to multiple requests for comment to explain.

COVID clown show

I began unraveling Allson Neitzel’s COVID circus act shortly after she posted the apology to her website with the ironic name “MisinformationKills” and pinned it to the top of her @AliNeitzelMD X account.

Neitzel’s apology details a long list of false statements she made against multiple physicians accusing them of a fraud and grift, along with weasel words that make clear this is a non-apology apology, in the vein of “I am sorry if you feel bad.”

“I regret if anyone understood the statements as accusations that any of them had engaged in fraudulent professional or business practices,” Neitzel writes.

You can read her apology, but the depth and particulars of Neitzel’s defamation of real medical experts is impossible to know because she has deleted many of her posts on social media and on MisinformationKills.

But particulars don’t matter.

Neitzel is one in a legion of medical clowns the media launched into prominence during the pandemic because they served as useful idiots for “disinformation journalists” needing a quotable “expert” to bash people who dared question conventional COVID wisdom, or who charged that the government made phony claims about a lab accident in Wuhan, overstated the efficacy of masks and lockdowns, or lied about the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines.

What makes Allison Neitzel unique from the COVID clown posse is that she was forced to retract and apologize for her lies and fake claims.

Interested, I dug into her background and discovered that all the outlets claiming Neitzel was a physician hadn’t bothered to do a modicum of due diligence before platforming her, because guess what? Allison Neitzel isn’t a physician.

Donning clown costume

The first social media trace I could find for Allison Neitzel is a 2019 Facebook post by the Medical College of Wisconsin. “Third-year med student Allison Neitzel helped teach young students how to use blood pressure cuffs, listen to heart and lung sounds through the use of a stethoscope, how to perform CPR and more.”

But when Neitzel jumped into the national conscience in 2021, she began claiming she was a “physician.” A group called the National Association of Medical Doctors (NAMD) posted Neitzel’s letter criticizing Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers in their Journal of Medicine, where she signed as “Allison Neitzel is a physician.” (Stay tuned: While researching the NAMD, I learned even more about COVID grift, which I will report in a future investigation.)

But when you look into Wisconsin law, you find the state defines a physician as “an individual possessing the degree of doctor of medicine or doctor of osteopathy or an equivalent degree as determined by the medical examining board, and holding a license granted by the medical examining board.”

So I looked up Neitzel in the National Provider Identifier Standard (NPI) which lists everyone licensed as a physician in the U.S. And guess what?

Allison Neitzel isn’t a physician.

Of course, her false claims of being a physician didn’t stop multiple media outlets from promoting Neitzel as a “physician” and misinformation expert. Let’s take a look.

COVID clown circus

Neitzel made two appearances as a “physician” in 2023 stories written by Kiera Butler at Mother Jones. Butler specializes in “COVID disinformation” stories that uncover “anti-vaxxers” and “right-wing” forces peeking out from every corner of America to harm the public with “misinformation.”

In one of her more amusing reporting incidents, Butler penned an article that claimed natural immunity from prior COVID infection was a “dangerous theory” spread by anti-vaxxers.

After California passed a law to discipline doctors for sharing “false COVID information” with patients that differs from the “scientific consensus” (whatever that is), Butler began attacking physicians who sued to stop the censorship, claiming that they were spreading medical lies. Linking to a tweet by Neitzel, who she labeled a “physician and disinformation researcher” Butler reported that “far-right rhetoric” and Nazi propaganda were supporting the lawsuits.

In fact, a California judge blocked the law for violating physicians’ First Amendment rights. Having first signed a bill that created the law, Governor Newsom then repealed it.

Neitzel was also featured in a story by NBC’s Brandy Zadrozny, another “disinformation reporter” who specializes in “extremism”—code in the disinformation world for “conservative” as people like Zadrozny never seem to find extremism among liberals.

In a story looking into anti-vaxxers—a favored topic for disinformation types—Zadrozny reported on aggressive online harassment against physicians and quoted Neitzel as an expert.

Online harassment has become increasingly common for doctors during the pandemic, according to Dr. Ali Neitzel, a physician researcher who studies misinformation.

“The targeting of individual physicians is a well-worn tactic,” Neitzel said. “But this cheaply done fake — trying to frame a doctor who is doing unpaid advocacy work — that’s a new low.”

Forget that Neitzel is not even a physician. The absurdity is that Zadrozny quoted Neitzel—forced to post an apology last week for fomenting years of misinformation, and years of harassing physicians—as an expert commentator on misinformation and harassment of physicians.

It’s that ludicrous.

Trying to understand Zadrozny’s reporting, I emailed her questions pointing out that Neitzel was never a physician, and asking if she had bothered to check into Neitzel’s credentials.

“Do you plan to correct your article?” I asked.

True to the disinformation journalism game, in which reporting errors are never admitted nor corrected, Zadrozny never responded.

Neitzel’s online persona as a misinformation expert also gained her entrée into three different articles at MedPage Today.

“Can you explain why MedPage Today ran so many stories featuring Allison Neitzel who falsely claimed to be a physician and has been forced to post an apology for defaming physicians?” I emailed MedPage Today’s editor-in chief Jeremy Faust, an instructor at Harvard Medical School.

“I’m trying to understand if such reporting meets the standards at MedPage Today and if you plan to run any corrections or clarifications.”

Faust refused to respond to questions sent to his Harvard email.

Neitzel’s claims of being a physician also garnered her a column at the nonprofit news organization WhoWhatWhy. “Allison Neitzel, MD, is physician-researcher and founder of the independent research group MisinformationKills, which has investigated the dark money and politics behind public health disinformation with a focus on the pandemic,” reads her author bio page.

“Why have you claimed Allison Neitzel is a physician?” I emailed WhoWhatWhy’s editor-in-chief, Russ Baker. “And do you plan to continue claiming Neitzel is a physician?”

Baker did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Neitzel also wrote a column for the site “Science-Based Medicine” where her bio states she is a physician. Science-Based Medicine is a marketing site for the biopharmaceutical industry run by David Gorski, a Wayne State University surgeon, self-described “misinformation debunker,” and ardent vaccine cheerleader.

After the European Medicines Agency concluded in April 2021 that unusual blood clots should be listed as a very rare side effect for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, Gorski called foul on the regulator. The UK government eventually stopped offering the AstraZeneca vaccine, and The BMJ reported last year that dozens of patients had launched legal action against AstraZeneca after suffering the same vaccine side effects that Gorski claimed were nonexistent.

In an email to Gorski, I asked why he lists Neitzel as a physician when she doesn’t meet the legal requirements for a physician in Wisconsin where Neitzel resides.

Gorski called the question “pedantic” and said he will ignore Wisconsin law in favor of a definition for “physician” that he found on the website for the American Medical Association.

“In general, ‘misinformation’ reporting seems to have certain ideas they are told are true/false and it’s about finding evidence to support what they have been told,” says Hoeg. “Also the ‘misinformation’ reporters often seem less qualified in terms of understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the scientific studies and domains than the people/scientists they are accusing of spreading ‘misinformation.’”

CORRECTION: In reporting on Allison Neitzel’s farcical rise to media glory, I mixed up the websites MedPage Today and Medscape. The Medscape articles featuring Allison Neitzel are Young Doc to Aaron Rodgers: Be a ‘Team’ Player on COVID Vaccine and Physicians Get Cyberbullied Over Vaccine Advocacy.

Shame on me for making this mistake. Shame on Medscape and MedPage Today for platforming COVID circus clown Allison Neitzel.

UPDATE: Following this exposé, Allison Neitzel changed her X account to be compliant with Wisconsin law and more honestly represent her credentials.

She’s a work in progress.

April 23, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

ABC fact checking is a ‘black box’

Who are the fact checkers, what are their qualifications and how do they decide what is true or false?

Maryanne Demasi, reports | April 22, 2024

Australia’s public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), proudly announced in 2022 that it had partnered with the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), an international alliance of major news corporations and Big Tech firms, to counter the growing threat of “fake news.”

It was part of sweeping reforms in the media to deliver ‘trusted’ news to global audiences and protect the public from the harms of misinformation and disinformation online.

Spearheaded by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), partners include Reuters, Associated Press, Financial Times, The Washington Post, and ABC Australia, along with social media and tech giants – Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Microsoft (LinkedIn) and Google (YouTube) to name a few.

When ABC announced its new alliance with TNI, Justin Stevens, ABC News Director said, “We’re pleased to join the Trusted News Initiative and, in the process, provide Australian audiences with a deeper and better-informed view of our region and the world.”

Justin Stevens appointed ABC News Director in April 2022

During the pandemic, the alliance promised to focus on preventing “the spread of harmful vaccine disinformation,” and “the growing number of conspiracy theories,” targeting online memes that featured anti-vaccine messaging or posts that downplayed the risk of covid-19.

But critics have grown increasingly uneasy about the alliance. They say governments are being protected by journalists, instead of being held to account for their pandemic policies and they’re concerned the alliance has shaped public discourse by controlling people’s access to information and censoring content that diverges from the status quo.

Weaponising fact checking

Deploying fact-checkers is one way that TNI members control the dissemination of public information. When they label a statement ‘false’, ‘wrong’, or ‘misleading’, it’s used by social media platforms to legitimise the censorship of that content by deprioritising, hiding, demonetising, or suppressing it.

Debunking content is time consuming and costly. Fact-checkers are invariably junior journalists or intern researchers, with little to no understanding of complex scientific issues or public health policies, and often appeal to governments for the ‘truth’.

When the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration opposed government enforced lockdowns, fact checkers ran hit pieces on the authors – the notable academics were then shadow-banned, censored and deplatformed from social media.

In the case of the ABC, its original in-house fact checking unit was axed in 2016 because of Federal budget cuts, but was revamped the following year when the ABC teamed up with RMIT University in Melbourne to form the RMIT ABC Fact Check and RMIT FactLab departments.

The ABC paid more than $670,000 to RMIT between 2020 – 2023 as part of its joint fact-checking venture but they quickly gained a reputation for being flawed. For example, concerns about the suppression of the lab leak theory were labelled as “false” even though they were true.

ABC’s fact checkers were also accused of being biased by SkyNews because they had used their influence to censor disfavoured political views in the Voice to Parliament referendum.

Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick grilled ABC’s Managing Director David Anderson at a Senate Estimates hearing about the network’s dodgy fact-checking practices last year.

“Who is fact-checking the fact-checkers?” asked Senator Rennick.

“You’ve made some outrageous claims on these fact-checks that aren’t correct, and you haven’t actually backed them up with any facts,” added Rennick, accusing the ABC of bias for predominantly fact-checking politically conservative voices in the media.

Sources say these controversies have prompted the ABC to cut ties with RMIT whose contract ends in June 2024.

New fact-checkers, same problems?

An ABC spokesperson said the network is now building its own internal fact-checking team, called “ABC NEWS Verify,” which appears to have similarities to the “BBC Verify” initiative.

“ABC NEWS Verify will be our centre of excellence for scrutinising and verifying information in online communities,” said the spokesperson outlining the various tasks of fact checkers. “Establishing a dedicated team will enhance and focus our efforts, creating a hub for verification best practice.”

I asked the ABC if it had any internal policy document outlining the criteria its fact-checkers would use to deem content as ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ but the spokesperson responded saying “no it doesn’t.”

Andrew Lowenthal, an expert in digital rights and a Twitter Files journalist, said the ABC’s failure to explain how it intends on fact-checking claims was “seriously ridiculous.”

“That the ABC is seeking to decide what is misinformation without laying out any criteria demonstrates just how farcical and political ‘fact-checking’ has become,” said Lowenthal.

“Without transparent and publicly available criteria the program will quickly turn into a partisan advocacy initiative,” he added.

Andrew Lowenthal, Twitter Files journalist

Lowenthal’s Twitter Files investigation confirmed the Australian government was monitoring Covid-related speech of its citizens and requesting that posts were flagged and censored if they deemed them to be misinformation.

“In that investigation, the government’s Department of Home Affairs was relying on Yahoo! News and USA Today, among others, to justify their take down requests or they’d hire journalists without scientific credentials. We need dialogue, not diktats, to determine what is true,” said Lowenthal.

Senator Rennick agreed, saying the ABC’s process lacks transparency. “Who are these people that claim to be the fact-checkers in the first place and what are their credentials? Sounds to me like it’s a black box,” said Rennick.

“Often when fact checkers come out with their reports, they don’t give the other person they’re fact checking, a right-of-reply. Also, they rarely disclose the conflicts of interest of the so-called ‘experts’ they use to fact check claims,” he added.

Michael Shellenberger, author, journalist and founder of Public, has written extensively on the “censorship industrial complex.”

“That’s what the trusted news initiative [TNI] was all about…a strategy to use fact checking initiatives to demand censorship by social media platforms,” said Shellenberger.

Michael Shellenberger, author of San Fransicko (HarperCollins 2021) and Apocalypse Never (Harper Collins 2020)

“They can pretend that’s not what it’s about, but the fact that the news media are participating in this, is grotesque. It’s a complete destruction of whatever reputation and integrity they used to have,” he added.

“Organisations like BBC and ABC… they used to have reputations for independence and integrity, but they’ve now decided to destroy their entire reputation on the mantle of them being the deciders of the truth. The Central Committee. That’s totalitarianism that’s not free speech.”

The ABC says its new ABC NEWS Verify will have no connection to TNI.

Impartiality and credibility?

TNI’s broad principles of working in lockstep towards a single narrative, has meant that legacy media operate largely as a mouthpiece for government propaganda, offering little critique of public health policies…and ABC has been no exception.

During the pandemic, the broadcaster repeatedly came under fire after its medical commentator Dr Norman Swan made countless calls for harsher lockdowns, mask mandates and covid boosters – policies that strongly aligned with the government but had little scientific backing.

Swan’s commentary rarely provided an impartial perspective and he was eventually called out for failing to publicly disclose his financial interest in seeking government contracts related to covid-19.

In addition, Ita Buttrose, who was ABC Chair until last month, was seen fronting Pfizer’s advertising campaigns for covid products. ABC defended Buttrose saying, “Given she was not involved in editorial decisions, there was no conflict of interest.”

Ita Buttrose, former ABC Chair, March 2019 – March 2024

The ABC denies its alliance with TNI has impacted its editorial independence but Shellenberger says the entire purpose of joining TNI is to ensure they become the single source of truth.

“They’ve stopped doing real reporting, and they’re just out there wanting to be paid to regurgitate and act like publicists for the government. It’s grotesque. It’s not journalism, it’s propaganda,” said Shellenberger.

Resisting the tyranny

Some journalists have been resisting what they perceive to be ‘tyranny’ in legacy media and the widespread suppression of free speech.

In June 2021, a group of around 30 journalists rallied together to denounce TNI’s “censorship and fearmongering” and accused the alliance of subjecting the public to a distorted view of the truth.

The group known as ‘Holding the Line: Journalists Against Covid Censorship’ shared concerns that reporters were being reprimanded by their superiors and freelancers were being blacklisted from jobs for not following the “one official narrative.”

Presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr has filed a lawsuit against TNI alleging that legacy media organisations and Big Tech have worked to “collectively censor online news” about covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election.

The lawsuit states:

“By their own admission, members of the “Trusted News Initiative” (“TNI”) have agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the world’s dominant Internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting on certain issues relating to COVID-19 and U.S. politics.”

A group of 138 scholars, public intellectuals, and journalists from across the political spectrum have since published The Westminster Declaration.

In essence, it’s a free speech manifesto urging governments to dismantle the “censorship industrial complex” which has seen government agencies and Big Tech companies work together to censor free speech.

In Australia, the journalist’s union MEAA has called on ABC’s newly appointed Chair Kim Williams to “restore the reputation of the national broadcaster by addressing concerns about the impact of external pressures on editorial decision making.”

Kim Williams, current Chair, ABC Network Australia

Williams, who took over from Buttrose last month, has warned his journalists that “activism” is not welcome at the ABC and that if they fail to observe impartiality guidelines, they should consider leaving the network.

Will the ABC course-correct with Williams at the helm? Now that trust in legacy media is at historical lows, the ABC’s partnership with TNI does little to assuage fears that the network has passed the point of no return.

NB: I was a TV presenter/producer at ABC TV (2006-2016) and wrote about my experiences with censorship at the network here and here.

April 23, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

They Think We Are Stupid, Volume 8

By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | April 23, 2024

Everything you need to know about our ruling class’s opinion of you. As always, these headlines are presented without commentary.

April 23, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | 1 Comment

Russian Strike on Kharkov TV Tower Deprives Ukraine’s Army of Eyes and Ears for Spying

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 23.04.2024

Russia attacked the Kharkov Television Tower with a precision cruise missile on Monday, destroying it. Ukrainian officials instantly labeled the strike an act of meaningless “terror” against Kharkov’s civilian population. In reality, it’s going to become a massive headache for Ukraine’s military, says veteran defense observer Viktor Litovkin.

Kharkov’s pro-Russian underground confirmed to Sputnik on Monday that the Russian military had struck the Kharkov Television Tower, an awesome, 240.7-meter tall Soviet-built structure used for radio and television broadcasting situated in the northern part of the city in local woodlands, causing it to break in half.

The attack occurred at 4:36 pm local time. Kharkov regional military administration chief Oleh Synegubov blasted the Russian “occupiers” over the strike, saying that while there were no victims, “there are interruptions with the digital TV signal.”

“Therefore, we once again appeal to citizens: trust only official sources of information,” Synegubov urged.

President Zelensky, meanwhile, went on television Monday night to accuse Russia of trying to “make the terror visible to the whole city and to try to limit Kharkov’s connection and access to information.”

Ukrainian Institute of Mass Information chief Oksana Romaniuk called the tower’s destruction a “war crime,” saying “civilian objects, such as TV towers, have absolute protection and cannot be a legitimate target in an armed conflict.”

But according to the Kharkov underground, the structure was used by the Ukrainian air defenses to communicate, with the military said to have attached a communications antenna to the tower.

Vitaly Ganchev, head of the Russian administration in the Kharkov region, did not rule out that along with its use by Ukraine’s air defenses, the tower may have been used to coordinate artillery and missile strikes targeting nearby Belgorod and other Russian cities.

“This tower contained radar antennas, there were also communications antennas, electronic warfare antennas, and communication antennas,” Viktor Litovkin, a veteran Soviet and Russian Army officer and respected military journalist, told Sputnik.

“This equipment was situated at an altitude of almost 200 meters, which made it possible to see at a great distance the territory both of the Russian Federation and areas in which Russian troops are concentrated, that is – to engage in reconnaissance. The higher the antenna, the better the visibility. Because [things like] mountains, trees, houses and so on interfere with radio waves. But at such a height there’s nothing interfering with their distribution. Moreover, from this tower it was possible to coordinate the work of several military systems: air defense systems, reconnaissance systems, Ukrainian artillery systems, control centers, etc. It was possible to transfer information, commands and orders between military units and combat systems,” the observer explained.

For these reasons, Litovkin said that Monday’s precision missile strike was a “very important” step in depriving Ukraine’s military and intelligence services of the eyes and ears afforded by the tower. “Now, Ukraine is deprived of the opportunity to conduct reconnaissance and coordinated actions against our armed forces,” the retired military officer said.

The tower was the only comparable piece of infrastructure of its kind in the region, but its destruction will not allow Russian forces to rest easy, Litovkin stressed.

“In addition to the tower, there are also cables, there is also the internet. So of course, the tower has ceased to function as an information channel. But I don’t think Kharkov’s communication system can be destroyed completely… You know that in Ukraine, despite the categorical ban by the government on Ukrainian citizens receiving information from Russia, many citizens receive Russian information through the internet, through small antennas at home, watch our television and so on. So it’s very difficult to completely deprive someone of information in the world today,” the observer summed up.

April 23, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine, Israel Aid Bill ‘Abomination’ That Will Prolong Suffering – Former US Diplomat

Sputnik – 23.04.2024

WASHINGTON – The $95 billion aid bill that Congress passed on Friday is an “abomination” that will only prolong the suffering caused by the Ukraine war and the Israeli onslaught in the Gaza Strip, former US diplomat and State Department consultant James Carden said on Monday.

“Seems to me the spending bill will only prolong the suffering in Ukraine and Gaza,” Carden said. “The parts of the bill having to do with funding Israel are an abomination and make us even more complicit in their crimes.”

The bill is expected to quickly be approved by the US Senate starting on Tuesday. The measure will provide funds to send Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s regime $60.84 billion, including $23 billion for new US weapons and ammunition; $26 billion to Israel; and another $8.12 billion to the Indo-Pacific region.

“Some of the bill was probably necessary in the sense that the United States needed to ‘restock’ after having wasted so much over the past couple of years,” Carden said.

Close to $30 billion in its provisions will go directly to refill US weapons and ammunition inventories which have been largely emptied over the past two years to primarily arm Ukrainian forces, Carden added.

The bill was approved earlier by 311 votes to 112 in the House of Representatives. No Demcorats voted against the bill and most of them waved Ukrainian flags inside Congress.

April 23, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

New $17Bln Aid to Israel ‘Last Nail in Coffin of US Credibility’ – ex-US Envoy to Riyadh

Sputnik – 23.04.2024

WASHINGTON – The US House of Representatives approval of $17 billion in additional military aid to Israel amid the ongoing war on Gaza demonstrates US disregard for international law and human decency, delivering the final blow to its reputation, former US Ambassador to Riyadh Chas Freeman told Sputnik.

On Saturday, the US House passed legislation to provide $26.38 billion in supplemental appropriation for Israel and Gaza. It includes $17 billion in military aid for Israel and $9 billion for worldwide humanitarian aid, including for civilians in Gaza.

“This puts the last nail in the coffin of US credibility around the world. It makes it clear to everyone beyond a reasonable doubt that the United States has joined Israel in contempt of both international law and human decency,” Freeman, who also served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the Clinton administration, said.

The “obscenely massive aid” will enable Israel to continue to carry out “the very genocide in Gaza and the occupied West Bank that the United States hypocritically claims to oppose,” Freeman said.

“Neither Israel nor the United States is likely soon to overcome the international opprobrium generated by their partnership in depravity,” he predicted.

Saturday’s aid package approved more than double the amount of funds also for the Volodymyr Zelensky regime in Ukraine. But it would not avert Kiev’s looming defeat there at the hands of Russia, Freeman cautioned.

“Ukraine’s morale will be boosted by the renewal of financial support from the United States but this will not remedy its problems on the battlefield. It will not create more Ukrainian men with military training. Nor will it supply more artillery shells,” he said.

Along with Israel aid, the US national security supplemental package authorized $60.84 billion for Ukraine, including $23 billion to restore US arsenals of weapons and ammunition, and $8.12 billion for the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan. The package is expected to quickly pass the Senate this week.

April 23, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Pro-Palestine rallies spread on US campuses despite heavy repression

The Cradle | April 23, 2024

Pro-Palestinian protests at major US universities continued to grow on 22 April despite arrests by police, suspensions by university administrators, and sabotage by pro-Israel lobby groups.

Columbia, a prestigious university in New York City, has been the epicenter of the student protests opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The protests have now spread to other universities, including Harvard, New York University, Yale, Arizona State, and California State Polytechnic University at Humboldt.

Police have arrested dozens at Columbia and Yale for refusing to leave protest encampments after administrators demanded it.

Columbia student and protester Grant Miner told the New Statesman that the protesters’ demands include “amnesty for students who had been suspended by the administration over earlier campus protests [he being one of them]; divestment from Israeli bonds and equity; financial transparency around how the university invests its $14 billion endowment.”

The protests made headlines in the US on Monday as new mass graves were discovered outside Nasser Hospital in Gaza with over 200 civilian bodies, including doctors and nurses still wearing scrubs, as well as women, men, and children, all killed by the Israeli army.

On Monday night, police cleared a protest encampment centered at New York University’s Gould Plaza at the university’s request. Faculty and students were arrested.

The Washington Post reported that videos on social media showed “dozens of officers in tense confrontations with protesters. Some officers tossed tents, and others grappled with demonstrators. Videos also showed police loading people, whose hands were zip-tied behind their backs, onto correctional buses.”

The confrontations began after university police blocked access to the plaza Monday morning, where about 50 protesters were demonstrating “without authorization,” NYU spokesman John Beckman said.

The barriers were breached early in the afternoon by additional protesters, “many of whom we believe were not affiliated with NYU,” who exhibited “disorderly, disruptive, and antagonizing behavior” and refused to leave when told the protests would be disbanded, he said. The university then requested assistance from the [New York Police Department] NYPD, he said, adding there were “several antisemitic incidents reported.”

Last week, over 100 students at Columbia were arrested amid accusations of violence and antisemitism among protesters. NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said: “The students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say.”

According to Grant Miner, a Jewish Columbia student, allegations of antisemitism are unfounded.

“I’m not sure what people would be referring to,” Miner said. “I myself am Jewish. The narrative is that … we’re a violent mob, and there’s been no violence here. The only anti-Jewish sentiments I’ve received are from hard-core Zionist Jews calling me a fake Jew. In fact, I got a fun email to my work email calling me, just a subject line, ‘Judenrat.’”

Journalist Max Blumenthal reported that pro-Israel lobby groups are offering “cash compensation” to young Zionists “willing to wear keffiyehs and walk in these demonstrations” as provocateurs to spread antisemitic slogans and issue threats against Jews.

On Monday, Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley used alleged concerns about the safety of Jewish students to demand that President Joe Biden call in the National Guard to suppress the protests at Columbia.

April 23, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Google fires more employees protesting giant deal with Israel

Press TV – April 23, 2024

Google has fired about 20 more employees over recent protests against a deal between the US technology giant and Israel.

The activist group No Tech for Apartheid said on Monday that the new layoffs bring to more than 50 the total number of Google workers dismissed in the past week.

“The corporation is attempting to quash dissent, silence its workers and reassert its power over them,” said Jane Chung, a spokesperson for No Tech for Apartheid.

Meanwhile, a Google spokesperson confirmed the company had sacked more employees after continuing its investigation into the April 16 anti-Israel demonstrations, which included sit-ins at offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California.

The protesters held posters reading, “No More Genocide For Profit,” “No cloud apartheid,” “We Stand with Palestinian, Arab and Muslim Googlers” and “Don’t be evil, stop retaliation”.

They denounced Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract awarded to Google and Amazon to supply the Israeli regime with cloud computing services.

The contract dates back to 2021. However, the protests followed a report in Time magazine earlier this month, citing an internal company document, that the Israeli ministry of military affairs is a Google Cloud customer.

No Tech for Apartheid said the report showed that Google had “built custom tools” for the Israeli ministry of military affairs and had “doubled down on contracting” with the regime’s army after the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip began.

Israel waged its brutal war on the besieged Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

The Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 34,183 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 77,143 others.

Since the start of the onslaught, the US, Israel’s most dedicated ally, has fast-tracked arms shipments to the occupying regime and blocked UN resolutions that called for a Gaza truce.

April 23, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU will be the biggest loser if it confiscates assets – Moscow

RT | April 23, 2024

Moscow has drafted a package of retaliatory measures in the event that Western countries seize Russian sovereign assets that have been frozen over the Ukraine conflict, senior senator Valentina Matvienko warned on Tuesday.

In an interview with Russian journalist Dmitry Kiselyov, the chairwoman of the Federation Council said that the EU’s potential move to confiscate Russian assets would be “unprecedented,” adding that it “would destroy the global economy.”

“Of course, it would be absolutely illegal, and everyone in Europe understands that they can’t do that,” the official stated.

The West has frozen around $300 billion in Russian central bank assets since the start of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Most of the funds are being held in the EU. Moscow has repeatedly denounced the seizure as “theft.”

Officials in several Western nations, notably the US and the UK, have insisted on the outright confiscation of Russian assets despite widespread concerns that this would have no legal basis. In contrast, the EU has been reluctant to do so, reportedly fearing Russian retaliation.

Matvienko stressed that Russia has “a prepared response” to a potential confiscation. “We have a bill that we are ready to consider immediately in response. And the Europeans will lose more than we will. Of course, they are afraid of this, especially given that their economy is collapsing.”

The senator argued that Washington has crushed the EU, both politically and economically. “In the defense and security area, it used to be a vassal… but now it has been simply squashed by the Americans. They now want to strangle it even more… to make it even less competitive,” she stated.

With this in mind, Matvienko suggested that the European business community should vehemently protest against the potential seizures, as they would be the primary target of Moscow’s retaliatory measures.

While the EU has been dragging its feet on confiscating Russian assets, it has been working on a plan to seize the profits generated by those funds in order to procure weapons for Ukraine and boost its defense production capabilities.

According to Politico, however, some members of the bloc have voiced serious misgivings about the initiative. Hungary and Slovakia have opposed the idea of sending weapons to Ukraine, while Malta and Luxembourg are reportedly unhappy that they were not consulted about the plan.

April 23, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , , | 1 Comment

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