Mainstream propaganda machine’s laughable meltdown over Putin interview
By Drago Bosnic | February 12, 2024
As expected, Tucker Carlson is getting a lot of flak for conducting his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He’s not merely being accused of “spreading Russian propaganda” (he’s long been accustomed to that, as well as the mainstream propaganda machine’s obsession with all sorts of deranged “Russia, Russia, Russia” conspiracy theories), but there’s an actual push in the European Union to sanction Carlson. It seems journalists doing journalism is considered “heresy” by most other mainstream “journalists”. The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt is unhappy that the interview was “neither a talk show nor a real conversation”, so he went on to parrot every propaganda trope in the book. Al Jazeera’s Mansur Mirovalev insists that Putin is “obsessed”, concluding his remarks by quoting a certain Valentin, the Kiev regime’s drone operator who allegedly complained that both Putin and Carlson are “conspiracy theorists” and that “Ukraine is real and it will prevail.”
In a piece published by Politico, a German-owned publication infamous for attempts to whitewash Nazism, Sergey Goryashko claimed that Putin supposedly “lied”. Among several propaganda claims he used to, as he says, “debunk” Putin’s points was that the Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky “only signed a decree banning negotiations specifically with Putin, not Russia as a country”. Such ludicrous claims aren’t only false, but are even childish. Pushed by the United States, United Kingdom and NATO, the Kiev regime certainly broke the March 2022 peace deal that could have ended the special military operation (SMO) in less than a month. What’s more, it even publicly promotes its so-called “10-point peace plan” that boils down to Russia’s unconditional capitulation, a fantasy that the political West wholeheartedly supports and even promotes through some sort of absurd unilateral “peace talks”. In doing so, the Neo-Nazi junta effectively codified the impossibility of a peaceful settlement.
So much for Putin “lying”. However, that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to frenzied attacks by the mainstream propaganda machine. In a piece for The New Yorker, Masha Gessen, the infamous “woke” ideologue obsessed with Putin, called the interview “boring”. She (although Gessen insists her pronouns are “they/them”, a request I earnestly refuse to comply with) obviously loathes historical facts, so the trouble she has with going through the entire interview, a problem most likely exacerbated by her two-second attention span (tends to happen to a lot of people staring at reels all day), perfectly explains her rather poor judgment of Putin’s points. Then came the “fact-checkers” such as Charlie Hancock of the Amsterdam-based Moscow Times who essentially repeated several of Goryashko’s long-debunked claims and added a few of his own. After all, what would the mainstream propaganda machine ever do without “fact-checkers“?
Of course, Hancock wasn’t the only one. The UK’s state-run BBC also published its own version, “fact-checking Putin’s nonsense history“. It would seem Masha Gessen isn’t the only one who skipped history classes in primary school, as the BBC’s Ido Vock quoted several self-styled “experts” and “pundits” to supposedly “debunk Putin’s rambling”, as he called it, clearly implying that he was also bored by the interview, which further indicates just how much he actually knows about the topic he covered for the UK’s state-run news agency. And of course, there’s also the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), claiming that Carlson’s Putin interview supposedly serves as a “propaganda platform”, which is quite rich coming from a literal CIA front formed to spread Washington DC’s state-sponsored propaganda. The Economist insists that “Russia’s president is not a man to be trusted, still less to emulate or admire”, because, luckily, they “know Putin’s real message” better than he himself does.
Newsweek’s Brendan Cole quoted Oleksandra Matviichuk, the Kiev regime’s “human rights activist”, who also slammed Carlson. Comically enough, Cole insists that Matviichuk’s opinion “matters” because she’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Is it even necessary to explain just how politicized that vaunted “peace prize” is when laureates include people like Barrack Obama and Al Gore? The Obama administration came to power criticizing the previous government run by George W. Bush for its aggression across the Middle East. Obama promised to end these wars, which is why he got the once-prestigious award in the first place. However, as soon as Bush left the White House, Obama expanded his aggression from two countries (Iraq and Afghanistan) to another five (Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan), seven in total. Worse yet, during Obama’s presidency (2009-2017), Washington DC launched ten times more airstrikes than under Bush, killing millions of innocent civilians in the process.
While the DNC-dominated media always try to whitewash Obama by shifting blame solely on Bush, it should be noted that the former personally authorized at least 6,000 drone strikes (approximately 2 per day during 8 years of his presidency), although the actual number may be orders of magnitude higher. So much for Obama’s contribution to “peace”. As for Al Gore, his active role in the Clinton administration’s war crimes and aggression on Serbia/former Yugoslavia requires an entirely separate analysis. However, as previously mentioned, this isn’t the end of the mainstream propaganda machine’s attempts to denigrate Putin’s interview with Carlson. The Associated Press (AP) insists that Russia’s president “missed the bigger picture”, so they felt the urge to “fill the gaps” with five points, composed largely of debunked propaganda tropes. And yet, these were expanded to nine in another piece by Politico, signed by Eva Hartog and, once again, Sergey Goryashko.
The key takeaway is that the mainstream propaganda machine is in meltdown over the interview, seen by hundreds of millions (if not billions at this point) on TV and across numerous Internet platforms. The political West is genuinely terrified of Putin’s global popularity, so the goal is to try and tarnish his reputation by twisting his remarks or simply telling outright lies about him. And while the interview may seem lengthy (by today’s standards), Putin simply had to get a lot of propaganda out of the way, as NATO and its Neo-Nazi puppets have been falsifying historical facts about Ukraine quite intensively, particularly in recent times, all in an attempt to show that the country supposedly has “nothing to do with Russia“. In that sense, websites such as Wikipedia have experienced an unprecedented number of edits with the goal of promoting these historically baseless claims. Putin is certainly aware of that, which is why he had to explain the complex history of the Ukrainian conflict.
Putin’s intellect and encyclopedic knowledge of history, law, intelligence and several other key fields are a massive boost to Russia’s already world-class diplomacy. This stands in stark contrast to the US and its current administration. Could anyone imagine Joe Biden giving an unscripted, two-hour-long interview to a foreign journalist, much less one conducted with near-scholarly precision? Regardless of whether one adores or loathes President Putin, the fact is that the increasingly unpopular and impotent leaders of the political West are simply no match for him, which is why we never see any of them giving remotely similar interviews to journalists of Tucker Carlson’s caliber. And while he might be among the most prominent journalists to ever interview Putin, Russia’s president is well-known for hours-long discussions with hundreds (if not thousands) of journalists from all over the world, without any papers, cliff notes or scripted questions. He simply doesn’t need them.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
“Electrify Everything” Slammed Again By Ninth Circuit
Court’s latest ruling has national implications and affirms that bans on direct use of natural gas violate federal law
By Robert Bryce | February 5, 2024
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has cranked up the heat on the “electrify everything” foolishness.
Last month, the Ninth Circuit denied the city of Berkeley’s petition to re-hear its case after the city’s ban on natural gas use in homes and businesses was ruled illegal last April. The January 2 ruling has national implications and is an enormous loss for the electrify everything movement, the lavishly funded campaign that seeks to ban natural gas stoves, water heaters, and other gas-fired appliances in the name of climate change.
Before I delve into the court ruling, it’s essential to understand the danger to our energy security posed by the electrify everything effort and the dark money groups that are pushing it.
As I have reported here, the electrify everything movement could result in enormous reductions in the affordability, reliability, and resilience of our electric grid. The campaigners want to add massive amounts of new load onto an energy network that is already cracking under existing demand. Indeed, the electrify everything jihadis are pushing for the electrification of heating, transportation, and industry at the very same time that numerous policymakers and regulators are warning about the declining reliability of the power grid.
To cite two recent examples, last May, members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission delivered stark warnings to the members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The agency’s acting chairman, Willie Phillips, told the senators, “We face unprecedented challenges to the reliability of our nation’s electric system.” FERC Commissioner Mark Christie echoed Phillips’ warning, saying the U.S. electric grid is “heading for a very catastrophic situation in terms of reliability.” His colleague, Commissioner James Danly, averred that there is a “looming reliability crisis in our electricity markets.”
Last August, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation named “changing resource mix” as a top reliability risk facing the electric grid. And for the first time, it named climate policy as one of the most significant risk factors. It said, “policy decisions can significantly affect the reliability and resilience of the [bulk power system]. Decarbonization, decentralization, and electrification have been active policy areas. Implementation of policies in these areas is accelerating, and, with changes in the resource mix, extreme weather events, and physical and cyber security challenges, reliability implications are emerging.” (Emphasis added.)
Further, the same NGOs pushing to electrify everything are also aggressively promoting policies that will make our electric grid even more reliant on weather-dependent sources like wind and solar. As the slide above shows, NERC is warning that our grid is increasingly vulnerable to “wind and solar droughts.” If climate change means we are facing more extreme weather of all types, the last thing we should do is make our grid more dependent on the weather.
The electrify everything movement is fueled by massive contributions from some of the world’s richest people, including Michael Bloomberg, John Doerr, and Laurene Powell Jobs. Numerous climate-focused NGOs, including the Sierra Club (2022 budget: $168 million) and Rocky Mountain Institute (2022 budget: $117 million), as well as dark-money entities like Climate Imperative and Rewiring America, are leading the attack against gas stoves and the direct use of gas. In 2022, Climate Imperative — headed by veteran climate activist Hal Harvey and two former Sierra Club employees, Bruce Nilles and Mary Anne Hitt — had revenue of $289 million. For comparison, the American Gas Association, which represents gas utilities, had revenue of about $37 million that year.
Jobs and Doerr were founding board members of Climate Imperative, which does not reveal the identities of its donors. Last March, in “The Dark Money Behind The Gas Bans,” I wrote about Rewiring America, which had recently hired Georgia politician Stacey Abrams. I explained that Rewiring America has about 40 employees and:
is among the most prominent members of this dark money network. The group doesn’t publish its budget or file a Form 990. Instead, it is a sponsored project of the Windward Fund, a 501c3 non-profit that does not disclose its donors. Nor does it reveal how much it is giving to Rewiring America. Although it is impossible to know exactly how much dark money is being shuffled among groups like the Windward Fund, Rewiring America, and others, my tally shows that just four of the dark money NGOs behind the gas bans have combined budgets of about $820 million.
Now, back to the Ninth Circuit. The court’s January 2 decision not to entertain a rehearing of the Berkeley case confirms that the gas bans enacted in California over the past several years are invalid. According to the Sierra Club, which has been gleefully tracking the bans, some 76 cities or counties in the state have enacted bans or restrictions on gas since Berkeley enacted its ban in 2019. On a website that tracks the restrictions, the Sierra Club makes no mention of the Ninth Circuit’s rulings. The group may want to ignore it, but the decision affects all of the states in the Ninth Circuit: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. That means the recent bans on gas in Seattle and the statewide ban in Washington, which was adopted last year, are invalid. So, too, is the ban imposed by Eugene, Oregon, in early 2023.
The San Francisco Chronicle summarized the appeal, noting that “Berkeley, joined by the Biden administration, other cities and states, and conservation groups, then asked the full appeals court, which has 16 Democratic appointees among its 29 judges, to order a rehearing. But only 11 judges, all appointed by Democratic presidents, voted for a new hearing…the ruling will now become final unless the conservative-majority Supreme Court agrees to review it.” The article quoted Sarah Jorgensen, a lawyer for the California Restaurant Association, who said the court recognized that “energy policy was a matter of national concern and that there should be uniform national regulation.”
Berkeley’s gas ban was first ruled illegal last April, when the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the restaurant association. The January 2 decision affirmed the court’s prior ruling and noted that Congress, when it passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) of 1975, “ensured that states and localities could not prevent consumers from using covered products in their homes, kitchens, and business. EPCA thus preempts Berkeley’s building code, which prohibits natural gas piping in new construction buildings from the point of delivery at the gas meter.”
As I explained in these pages shortly after the April ruling in “The Ninth Circuit Spikes Berkeley’s Gas Ban,” the three judges assigned to the case found that EPCA:
expressly preempts State and local regulations concerning the energy use of many natural gas appliances, including those used in household and restaurant kitchens. Instead of directly banning those appliances in new buildings, Berkeley took a more circuitous route to the same result and enacted a building code that prohibits natural gas piping into those buildings, rendering the gas appliances useless… By its plain text and structure, EPCA’s preemption provision encompasses building codes that regulate natural gas use by covered products. And by preventing such appliances from using natural gas, the new Berkeley building code does exactly that.” (Emphasis in original.)
A January 3 article published by Oakland-based KTVU, quoted Berkeley City Council member Kate Harrison, who authored the gas-ban ordinance, saying her city “will continue to do everything in its power to fight climate change and protect the health of its residents.”
The Ninth Circuit’s latest decision should also mean that bans on natural gas in other parts of the country should also be nullified. But the Ninth Circuit only covers part of the country. That means its decisions may set a precedent, but it doesn’t mean the precedent applies to other regions. That could change soon, however, because Jorgenson has filed a similar suit against the state of New York.
Last May, New York became the first state to ban gas stoves and furnaces in most new buildings. The law requires all-electric heating and cooking in new buildings shorter than seven stories by 2026, and for taller buildings by 2029. The city of New York has also passed a ban in the form of Local Law 97, which is even more destructive. That measure requires building owners to remove gas boilers over the next few years or face huge financial penalties. For more on Local Law 97, see the September 26, 2023 edition of the Power Hungry Podcast with my pal, Jane Menton, a lifelong New Yorker, who calls the measure an “electrification monster” that could result in a humanitarian nightmare in Gotham.
On October 12, Jorgenson filed suit on behalf of a group of plaintiffs, including propane dealers, homebuilders, and plumbers. In a press release, Jorgenson’s firm said the “The drastic step of requiring ‘all-electric’ new buildings despite an already-strained electric grid stands at odds with the public’s need for a reliable, resilient, and affordable energy supply. New York’s gas ban is preempted by federal law, is contrary to the public interest, and harms plaintiffs and the members they represent.”
If Jorgenson prevails in New York, and she should, the next stop on the litigation is the U.S. Supreme Court, which should weigh in and declare that the electrify everything effort, is, as Jorgenson says, “contrary to the public interest.”
Ford Lost $4.7B On EVs Last Year, Or About $64,731 For Every EV It Sold
By Robert Bryce | February 7, 2024
How bad is the EV business? Yesterday afternoon, Ford Motor Company reported that the operating loss it incurred on its EV business in 2023 exceeded its total profit for the year.
That shocking fact comes directly from the company’s earnings report, which carried the headline, “Ford+ Delivers Solid 2023…” The Dearborn-based auto giant had an operating loss (also known as EBIT, or earnings before interest and taxes) of $4.7 billion on its EV business last year. Meanwhile, the company reported net income (profit) of just $4.3 billion, on revenue of $176 billion. The company also reported operating income, or what it called “adjusted EBIT,” of $10.4 billion.
Calculating the company’s per-EV operating loss requires only a bit of simple division. The company sold 72,608 EVs last year and had an EBIT loss of $4.7 billion in its “Model e” segment. Thus, the auto giant lost a knee-buckling $64,731 for each EV it sold in 2023. To put that $64,731 per-vehicle loss in perspective, a top-of-the-line Mustang Mach-E listed on the website of a large Ford dealership here in Austin (see below) is selling for $66,615.
The company said the $4.7 billion loss reflected “an extremely competitive pricing environment, along with strategic investments in the development of clean-sheet, next-generation EVs.” The $4.7 billion loss is far higher than the $3 billion loss Ford projected back in March. Further, it’s more than double the $2.2 billion loss it recorded in the EV segment in 2022. Thus, in the last two years alone, the company has lost nearly $7 billion on its foray into fully electric automobiles. Recall that, as I reported here last July, the company has plans to spend $50 billion on EVs.
Given the company’s 2023 results, it’s clear that Ford’s headlong plunge into the EV market has been an unmitigated disaster and that the company would be far more profitable had it ignored the EV fad. Of course, the company tried to put a positive spin on its EV results, noting that EV sales rose by 18% last year. But those sales must be put into context. In 2023, Ford sold 750,789 F-Series trucks. Thus, the auto giant sold more than 10 times as many conventionally powered trucks as EVs (72,608).
Warnings about the company’s failing EV business have been coming for months. In December, the automaker announced it was slashing production of its F-150 Lightning in half, from 3,200 trucks per week to 1,600 per week, as part of an effort “to match Lightning production to customer demand.” On January 19, the company said it was cutting production of Lightning even further because, as Reuters reported, “demand for EVs has been lower than expected.”
What should be particularly worrisome for investors — and for the company’s CEO, Jim Farley — is that Ford’s EV losses aren’t falling, they are rising. Indeed, those losses doubled between the first quarter and fourth quarter of 2023. Ford’s first-quarter EV operating loss was $722 million. In the second quarter, it was $1.1 billion. In the third quarter, it was $1.3 billion, and in the fourth quarter, Ford’s EV operating loss hit $1.57 billion.
Ford’s losses are only part of the ongoing train wreck in the EV market. Last October, General Motors said it would delay the opening of a $4 billion electric truck factory in Michigan for a year. That same month, Reuters reported that Honda and General Motors “were ending a $5 billion plan to develop lower-cost EVs together just a year after announcing the effort.” The article continued, noting that GM “would focus near-term EV efforts on meeting demand rather than hitting specific volume targets.”
In November, nearly 3,900 automobile dealers across the country sent a letter to President Biden telling him that EV demand is “not keeping up with the large influx of BEVs arriving at our dealerships prompted by the current regulations. BEVs are stacking up on our lots.” They continued, saying EVs are “not selling nearly as fast as they are arriving at our dealerships.”
As I explained in the written testimony I submitted to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last month, EVs have always been a niche-market product, not a mass-market one. And that niche market is dominated by wealthy, white, male, liberal voters who live in a handful of heavily Democratic cities and counties.
I wrote:
Further, that niche market is primarily defined by class and ideology. Some 57% of EV owners earn more than $100,000 annually, 75% are male, and 87% are white. Last March, Gallup reported, “a substantial majority of Republicans, 71%, say they would not consider owning an electric vehicle.”
Last October, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, released a remarkable study that found “counties with affluent left-leaning cities” like Cambridge, San Francisco, and Seattle “play a disproportionately large role in driving the entire national increase in EV adoption.” The researchers found that over the past decade, about half of all the EVs sold in the U.S. were sold in the most heavily Democratic counties in the country. The summary of the study deserves quoting at length:
“The prospect for EVs as a climate change solution hinges on their widespread adoption across the political spectrum. In this paper, we use detailed county-level data on new vehicle registrations from 2012-2022 to measure the degree to which EV adoption is concentrated in the most left-leaning U.S. counties. The results point to a strong and enduring correlation between political ideology and U.S. EV adoption. During our time period about half of all EVs went to the 10% most Democratic counties, and about one-third went to the top 5%. There is relatively little evidence that this correlation has decreased over time, and even some specifications that point to increasing correlation. The results suggest that it may be harder than previously believed to reach high levels of U.S. EV adoption.” (Emphasis added.)
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the staggering losses at Ford and the other automakers is that the carmakers didn’t understand the limited appeal of EVs. Their lack of knowledge of the history of EVs, the concentrated nature of the market, and the limited number of motorists interested in buying EVs should go down as one of the biggest blunders in modern automobile history. Again, as I noted in my written testimony:
Ford and the other big automakers have been spending billions of dollars to cater to the whims of a tiny segment of the overall car market — a segment heavily concentrated in a handful of liberal counties. That’s a lousy business strategy. But it is an even worse strategy for federal policymakers who must be responsive to the transportation needs of every American, not just those who live in liberal cities and large, wealthy states.
In October, the chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation, Akio Toyoda, gloated about his company’s success with hybrids and the friction other automakers face in the EV business. Toyoda said automakers are “finally seeing reality” about all-electric cars. Unfortunately for Ford and its shareholders, finally seeing reality comes with multi-billion-dollar losses.
A final note: Ford’s EV sales in January fell by 11% compared to the same period last year. There’s more carnage ahead for FoMoCo.
Here’s why you shouldn’t trust the ‘declining’ Gaza death toll narrative
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | February 11, 2024
Shortly before the International Court of Justice’s highly anticipated decision to pursue South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide, the New York Times released a report titled ‘The Decline of Death in Gaza’.
The article attributed this alleged decline to a change in Israel’s battle strategy in Gaza, yet the piece omitted key data that contradicted its claims. Then, in the aftermath of the ICJ preliminary ruling, the NYT became the first news outlet to receive and publish information from an Israeli dossier that accused UNRWA staff of complicity in the armed activities of Hamas.
Since the beginning of the war between Israel and Gaza, which began with the Hamas-led attack on October 7, Western corporate media have shown what can only be described as pro-Israeli double standards. On January 9, The Intercept published a quantitative analysis of over 1,000 articles in US mainstream media, including by the NYT, proving the undeniable bias demonstrated in favor of Israeli life and underreporting on Palestinian suffering.
An even more targeted analysis was published by researchers Jan Lietava and Dana Najjar, who specifically looked at the BBC’s coverage of the conflict between October 17 to December 2. The study documented that words like murder(ed), massacre(d) and slaughter(ed) were used by the BBC to describe Israelis 144 times, while Palestinians had only been described as having been murdered or massacred one time each; the word slaughter had never been used to describe the killing of Palestinians. The study clearly shows the disparity in humanizing language used and the number of stories on Palestinian deaths, despite the Palestinian death toll being far higher than the Israeli one.
The Israeli death toll throughout the war officially stands around 700 civilians and 600 combatants, while for Palestinians it is roughly 27,600, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The estimates are that between 61% to 75% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza are women and children. Ranging estimates as to how many Palestinian combatants have been killed are not trustworthy. Israeli spokespeople claim between 7,000 to 10,000 Hamas fighters, depending on the time of day, but provide no estimate for the number of fighters killed who are members of the dozen or so other armed groups in Gaza.
While the NYT report attempts to make the point that deaths in Gaza are steadily declining as the Israeli operation goes on, statistics released by the authorities in Gaza, from January 17 (when the NYT data chart ends) until January 24, clearly show the opposite trend. For reference the daily death tolls read: 163, 172, 142, 165, 178, 190, 195, 210.
The piece also lacks any evidence showing a correlation between the Israeli announcement of what it calls “phase 3” of its battle plan and the death toll charts that showed a downward arc in the daily fatality rate. Israel began announcing its intention to implement its new phase at the beginning of January, yet the argument presented in the article attempted to draw the conclusion that pressure from the US government had contributed to a lowering of fatalities between early December and January 17.
There was a decline in the daily reported death toll, but this occurred prior to any stated change in the military strategy. Also observable is that during the week that the report was released, the daily Gaza death toll actually jumped to 188. Monday through to Sunday of that week there were some 1,317 Palestinians killed by Israel. The week prior, a total of 1,110 were killed.
The NYT also pointed to the Israeli withdrawal of forces from northern Gaza, attempting to use this as evidence of a change in tactics in January that had been brought about due to efforts from the Biden administration. Israel actually reinvaded the north, briefly, after the article was published.
Furthermore, Israel didn’t start withdrawing from northern Gaza in January – it began this process around December 21, when it withdrew the elite Golani Brigades. In late December, five brigades were withdrawn and the reservists amongst them were released for economic reasons. Then, earlier last month, a further four brigades were withdrawn as the Israeli army implemented a retreat from most of the built-up areas in northern Gaza.
Israeli authorities claim that the reason for the change in the war strategy, shifting from the high-pressure tactics of the first two phases, was due to their desire to continue the fight for the whole of 2024. If Israel is planning to fight a year-long war, it makes sense for it to use fewer munitions and soldiers, as munitions are finite and the cost of the initial battle strategy would have been a significant economic burden.
Another crucial point is that the report completely left aside all other considerations as to what could explain a decline in death tolls across certain periods of time. A major issue that is faced today is a lack of a properly functioning health sector in Gaza altogether; according to the World Health Organization (WHO), only 16 hospitals out of 36 remain operational and all are “minimally or partially functioning.”
One of the last remaining professional journalists in northern Gaza, Anas al-Sharif, reported to Al Jazeera Arabic, on January 16, of the intensifying bombardments in the area and the underreporting of casualties there. A resident named Akram based in the Jabalia Refugee Camp told RT that “the bombing over those few days returned to how it was at the start of the war, it was terrifying and it seemed like it didn’t stop at all for over a day.”
With a health sector that has all but collapsed, properly accounting for the dead is a tough challenge, which is why the Gaza Health Ministry routinely includes the caveat to its daily death tolls that there are others under the rubble who are unaccounted for. To demonstrate how big of a difference the death toll is, when those missing under the rubble are factored in, take the statistics released by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which stated that 31,497 Palestinians had been killed by January 14.
Aside from us not having a full picture of the true daily death toll, Israel is also being accused of using starvation as a weapon of war, and the statistics that are being cited do not include those who are now dying due to disease and starvation. Some 400,000 people living in northern Gaza are without aid altogether, as efforts by international organizations to transport medical, food and fuel aid to the north have repeatedly been blocked. On December 9, Save The Children warned that the primary cause of death in Gaza could soon be starvation and disease, instead of bombs, with the humanitarian situation having severely deteriorated since then.
When the Israeli government later released its allegations that 12 UNRWA employees – out of 13,000 working in Gaza – had participated in the Hamas-led attack of October 7, the New York Times was the first to get its hands on the Israeli dossier that detailed its allegations. The newspaper failed to report that most of the allegations were based on interrogations conducted by the Shin Bet (Israeli secret police), which is renowned for extracting confessions through torture. The article that the NYT published on the issue made the dossier’s information seem somewhat credible, yet, when the UK’s Channel 4 obtained it and quoted it directly to the public, it concluded that “no evidence” was contained within the dossier.
The NYT’s reporting on Israeli allegations that Hamas conducted a premeditated mass rape campaign have come under fire also. In one case family members of an Israeli woman killed on October 7 had to take to social media to denounce the NYT’s attempts to suggest she had been raped, which the newspaper allegedly failed to tell the family it was planning to include in its article.
At every turn, Western corporate media has used distortions, linguistic manipulation, and outright lies to mislead its audiences on the truth about what is occurring in Gaza. It does not get lower than playing with statistics in order to downplay what the highest judicial body on earth has overwhelmingly ruled is plausibly a genocide, or what UN aid chief Martin Griffiths has called “the worst ever” humanitarian crisis.
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.
Vote fraud prevented Trump victory in 2020 – study
RT | February 11, 2024
Mail-in ballot fraud “significantly” impacted the 2020 US presidential election, handing President Joe Biden his victory, according to a study published by conservative think tank the Heartland Institute on Friday.
“Had the 2020 election been conducted like every national election has been over the past two centuries, wherein the vast majority of voters cast ballots in-person rather than by mail, Donald Trump would have almost certainly been re-elected,” the report stated, citing survey data collected in December.
As many as 28.2% of mail-in voters potentially committed some form of fraud, acting in ways that were “under most circumstances, illegal,” the institute’s data suggested.
With over 43% of 2020’s votes cast by mail – the highest percentage in US history – this alleged fraud “significantly” impacted the election results.
The group’s December survey of 1085 likely voters found that about one in five mail-in voters may have acted fraudulently. Over a fifth (21%) of respondents admitted to filling out ballots for others or voting in a state where they were no longer a permanent resident, while 17% said they signed ballots for family members without their approval. Another 19% said a friend or family member had filled out their own ballot.
After subjecting the data to further statistical analysis, however, Heartland upped the percentage of potentially fraudulent mail-in ballots to 28.2%, adding that mail-in voters disproportionately favored Biden, further skewing the results.
Even if the percentage of fraudulent mail-in ballots was as low as 3%,Trump would have won, the think tank, which is known for opposing government regulation, argued, laying out 29 different scenarios with varying degrees of fraud to bolster its case that the Republican incumbent would have triumphed in the absence of fraudulent ballots.
The report urged lawmakers to crack down on mail-in voter fraud by requiring in-person voting or, in cases where that was impossible, requiring mail-in vote signatures be notarized or otherwise authenticated by a trusted third party.
“If state lawmakers fail to solve this problem, Americans’ confidence in the legitimacy of elections in 2024 and beyond will likely decrease, paving the way for chaos and civil unrest,” the report stated.
Mail-in voting, previously restricted to a small segment of the US population, was opened up to all during the 2020 presidential election due to the Covid-19 pandemic, despite bipartisan concerns about the potential for voter fraud.
While the Department of Homeland Security insisted the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history,” Trump and many of his supporters blamed voter fraud for his loss. Thousands descended on Washington DC on January 6, 2021 to protest the certification of Biden’s victory in the Electoral College. Clashes between Capitol police and protesters attempting to enter the Capitol building subsequently triggered the infamous riot for which thousands – including the former president – have been charged.
Max Planck Institute Fires Professor Over Criticizing Israel
Pro-Palestine Ghassan Hage was a visiting professor of anthropology at the Max Planck Society in Germany
Press TV | February 11, 2024
A German research institute has terminated the contract of a pro-Palestine professor of anthropology after criticizing the Israeli regime’s ongoing war on the Gaza Strip.
The Max Planck Society said they had severed their relationship with “highly acclaimed” academic Ghassan Hage over a set of social media posts that they said were “incompatible” with the society’s values, media reported this week.
The leading German research institution added that “racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, discrimination, hatred, and agitation have no place in the Max Planck Society.”
The Lebanese-Australian Melbourne University professor, who had posted a series of pro-Palestine posts on social media condemning the Israeli regime forces’ months-long genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza, criticized the Max Planck Institute for its decision to sever its ties with him over his support for peace.
He said he could live with being characterized as having “incompatible values” with the German institution; however, “implying that I am a racist, I cannot accept.”
Since the Israeli regime launched the genocidal war on Gaza in early October, Germany has seen an escalating crackdown on pro-Palestinian advocacy, with rallies and Palestinian flags banned in many parts of the country.
Events and rallies where pro-Palestinian speeches were held have been banned in schools, and the traditional keffiyeh scarfs are also barred.
Samidoun, a group that advocates for Palestinian prisoners, was banned in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October attack.
Pro-Palestinian voices have also been widely silenced with cultural institutions reporting pressure to cancel events featuring groups critical of Israel.
The Frankfurt Book Fair canceled a planned award ceremony for the Palestinian author Adania Shibli in October.
Oyoun Cultural Institution’s state funding was cut in November after hosting an event for a Jewish-led organization that supported the BDS movement against Israel, a movement that Germany’s Bundestag classified as anti-Semitic in 2019.
Also, pro-Palestine British playwright, Caryl Churchill, was stripped on October 31 of the European Drama Prize she had received in April in recognition of her life’s work, over her support for Palestine.
Prepare for conflict with Russia in five years – German general
RT | February 11, 2024
Germany should beef up its military to prepare for a potential conflict with Russia in five years’ time, Bundeswehr General Carsten Breuer has argued. He called for a “change in mentality” within German society, insisting that the nation needs to build credible deterrence.
In an interview with Welt am Sonntag published on Sunday, Breuer warned that Germany does not have “endless time” to become war-capable, claiming that the potential of a military confrontation with Moscow is at its highest since the end of the Cold War.
“If I follow the analysts and see what military threat potential comes from Russia, then it means five to eight years of preparation time for us,” he predicted.
Breuer, who serves as the Bundeswehr’s inspector general, claimed that “this doesn’t mean that there will be a war then. But it’s possible.”
The general also did not rule out the reintroduction of some form of mandatory military service in Germany. Breuer noted that the issue is still being discussed, but cited the “Swedish model,” which envisages mandatory military training for most citizens, who then become reservists.
Breuer’s comments come after German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated in November that the country must become “war-capable.” He insisted again in January that Berlin and the whole of NATO should arm itself more actively to be able to “wage a war that is forced upon us.”
However, the German defense chief noted last month that “at the moment, I don’t see any danger of a Russian attack on NATO territory or on any NATO partner-country.”
Also speaking in January, British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps claimed that “in five years’ time, we could be looking at multiple theaters [of conflict] including Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.”
Elsewhere, Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom stated last month that Stockholm “must be realistic and assume – and be prepared for – a drawn-out confrontation” with Moscow. Defense Minister Pal Jonson echoed that sentiment, saying that “war can also come to us.”
Commenting on claims that Russia might be planning an attack on NATO, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in January that European officials were “inventing an external enemy” to divert attention from domestic problems.
Speaking at UN headquarters in New York the following day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that “no one wants a big war,” especially Moscow.
President Vladimir Putin has also repeatedly dismissed such speculation as “complete nonsense,” insisting that Moscow has “no geopolitical, economic… or military interest” in starting a conflict with NATO.
New Jeffrey Epstein autopsy photo proves he didn’t kill himself – brother
RT | February 10, 2024
The brother of Jeffrey Epstein has revealed a previously unreported autopsy photo, arguing that it proves the convicted child-sex trafficker couldn’t have committed suicide in his jail cell.
Mark Epstein discussed the photo and other evidence in an interview on Friday with US podcast host Megan Kelly. The graphic picture shows a large red scar across the middle of the deceased pedophile’s neck, which his brother said was inconsistent with reports by authorities that he hung himself in his New York City jail cell.
If Jeffrey Epstein had been found hanging from the upper bunk, as reported, ligature marks should have gone up under his chin and behind his ears, his brother said. “From that picture, the ligature mark on his neck is more in the middle of his neck and sort of goes straight back,” he said. “In a hanging, it goes really high up in the front of the neck because you sink down into that noose.”
Jeffrey Epstein was found dead inside his cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center in 2019, while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide by the city’s chief medical examiner. A doctor hired by Epstein’s family who was present for the autopsy claimed that some of the evidence, including multiple neck fractures, suggested that he was murdered.
Doubts cast on the official findings stoked speculation that Epstein was killed to prevent possible exposure of the rich and politically powerful people on his client list. Previously sealed court documents from a case involving one of the pedophile’s alleged victims were released last month but didn’t contain any of the bombshell information that some observers expected.
Mark Epstein has speculated that another inmate in the section of the jail where his brother was held killed him. The camera in that section wasn’t working on the night of Epstein’s death, according to government authorities, who have refused to release footage from a camera outside the wing or to disclose the identities of the other inmates.
“All I got from them, for every question I asked, was, ‘After a thorough investigation, we determined it was a suicide,’” Mark Epstein said. “That was the answer I got to every question.” He claimed that normal investigative practices weren’t followed, such as leaving the body in place until the medical examiner arrived.
Mark Epstein also raised questions about an autopsy photo of his brother’s legs, which didn’t have lividity marks, contrary to official claims about his body position. “If he was hanging the way they said, there would be evidence of lividity in his legs and buttocks,” he said.
Are You an Anti-Paxxer?
As doctors drop Paxlovid because of drug interactions, Covid rebounds, and virus shedding, Pfizer cranks the PR machine to hide the facts and shame “anti-paxxers.”
BY LINDA BONVIE | RESCUE | FEBRUARY 9, 2024
When an article by Los Angeles Times metro reporter Rong-Gong Lin II recommended last month that practically everyone who tests positive for Covid takes Pfizer’s Paxlovid, some media veterans may have wondered what had become of the traditional wall between news reporting and advertising.
The story, which appeared on January 28, swept away almost all of the reservations that have been raised about the safety and effectiveness of this patent medicine, assuring us that “Paxlovid rebound” is a non-issue and fear of serious side effects is “erroneous.” It even went so far as to suggest that if your doctor won’t prescribe this “highly effective” medication, it’s time to go doctor shopping.
So why is this LA Times writer so desperately trying to sell us this fast-tracked antiviral that comes with a black box warning?
The article appeared at a particularly critical time for Pfizer just as it transitions from Emergency Use Authorization, or EUA Paxlovid, to FDA-approved Paxlovid. Originally free to patients, the medication was stockpiled by the U.S. government to the tune of 24 million treatment courses at a cost to taxpayers of $530 a box. Now, the FDA-approved version (same drug, different box) sells for a list price of up to $1,500. (According to an analysis by researchers at Harvard University, the actual cost to Pfizer for a five-day Paxlovid course is $13).
But to Pfizer’s chagrin, it now doesn’t seem to be able to even give the stuff away, let alone sell it at a premium price. Last fall Pfizer accepted a return of nearly 8 million boxes sent back by the U.S. government.
What’s a drugmaker to do when both patients and doctors shun a product that was anticipated to be the better half of Pfizer’s post-Covid “multibillion-dollar franchise?
Flush with all that Covid cash and new Paxlovid FDA approval last May, Pfizer went shopping for partners to help promote its products.
No stranger to top-tier PR firms such as Edelman and Ogilvy, the drugmaker tagged two of the biggest names in contemporary communications companies, Publicis Groupe, a Paris-based giant PR and ad agency, and the humongous Interpublic Group. These high-level agencies come at a big price tag, but what they can offer is priceless—a way to get your story told by respected media outlets.
That’s right, if you have enough money to hire the folks with all the right contacts, you too can create your own “news!” And these special contacts are something that PR firms, such as Edelman, are very proud of. Many agency hires, in fact, are recruited directly from major media outlets, such as Edelman NYC Brand Director Nancy Jeffrey, who spent a decade at the Wall Street Journal.
As quoted in an Edelman website blog, Jeffrey recalls how Richard Edelman (son of founder Dan) would call her during her time working at the paper “to meet a client with a story to tell.” As Jeffrey says, “No one at Edelman ever rises too high to pitch a reporter.”
So was our LA Times reporter “pitched,” or does he just have an evangelical connection with Paxlovid?
Let’s take a close look at his story and see what we find.
First, there’s the article’s headline, which began: “If it’s COVID, Paxlovid”? Getting your oft-advertised product’s rhyming tagline in a headline—now that’s branding! And we don’t have to tell any of the side effects in this venue. The LA Times piece was off to a great start.
Why aren’t more people being given Paxlovid, the reporter wanted to know. It’s “cheap or even free for many,” he said. And then he delivered his first rave review, calling it “highly effective.”
By paragraph four, however, our intrepid reporter had uncovered the bad news that “a number of doctors are still declining to prescribe it.” But why? It must be those pesky “outdated arguments” about “Paxlovid rebound.” Anyone who gets Covid “has a similar rare chance of rebound,” he told us. For extra punch, he called on Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, professor of medicine at UCSF, to back up that statement. Rebound is “like, bogus” and “just dumb,” Chin-Hong said.
What Lin didn’t report is that a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in November 2023, by researchers from Mass General Brigham, found that in Covid patients taking Paxlovid, rebound was “much more common” and often without symptoms. Nearly 21 percent had virologic rebound versus under 2 percent not on the drug. Of perhaps even more significance, prolonged viral shedding for an average of fourteen days was noted in those who rebounded, indicating that they “were potentially still contagious for much longer.” The virologic rebound “phenomenon,” in Paxlovid patients, the authors noted, “has implications for post-N-R (Paxlovid) monitoring and isolation recommendations.” This study closely monitored patients with follow-ups three times a week “sometimes for months.”
After quoting from several Paxlovid-positive FDA and CDC statements and referencing a California Public Health commercial where people dance to an upbeat tune singing “Test it, treat it, beat it, California you know you need it,” Lin got around to some serious stuff—side effects.
Not mentioned by Lin, but good to know anyway, Paxlovid bears an FDA-required black-box warning about drug interactions, cautioning of “potentially severe, life-threatening, or fatal events.” But the article carefully danced around this inconvenient issue, simply mentioning that some Paxlovid takers may need to have their medications adjusted. The fear of “serious side effects . . . is largely erroneous,” it claimed.
Really?
“There are 125 drug interactions (for Paxlovid) across twenty-five different classes of medicines,” author and FLCCC President Dr. Pierre Kory said in a phone interview. “I’ve never used any medicine that had that number and degree of drug interactions, and I find it absurd,” added Kory, who is an expert in early Covid treatment.
And this is no secret. The Paxlovid package insert lists thirty-nine specific drugs that interact with this anti-viral (which is not a complete list, we’re warned) including medications that treat conditions such as an enlarged prostate, gout, migraines, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arrhythmias, and angina.
With side effects out of the way, our reporter moved on to an interesting idea—doctor shopping.
If your doctor turns you down for Paxlovid, “what other options are there?” How about “reaching out to another healthcare provider” we’re advised, one “who might be more knowledgeable about Paxlovid . . .”
Don’t be an ‘Anti-Paxxer!’
The LA Times isn’t alone in this timely pushing of Paxlovid. The New York Times also ran a glowing Paxlovid piece at the beginning of January. The black-box warning was glossed over by simply saying that some “doctors balk” over the “long list of medications not to be mixed with Paxlovid,” referring to the drug as being “stunningly effective.” The NYT reporter also added five mentions of a study—actually a preprint (not yet peer reviewed or published)—which through the use of statistical magic concluded that during the course of the research had only half of the eligible Covid patients in the U.S. taken Paxlovid, 48,000 lives would have been saved.
The server where the research was posted warns journalists and others when discussing preprints to “emphasize it has yet to be evaluated by the medical community and information presented may be erroneous.”
Paxlovid is not the only drug that gets special treatment by the media. Last January, a 60 Minutes segment was called out by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine as “an unlawful weight loss drug ad” for the med Wegovy. The piece, it noted, “looked like a news story, but it was effectively a drug ad,” the group said in a press release. PCRM also stated that Novo Nordisk, which makes Wegovy, paid over $100,000 to the doctors CBS interviewed for the segment.
With this new frenzy to sell Paxlovid, one can’t help but compare it to the campaign against ivermectin. Kicked off by the FDA in August 2021, it successfully branded this Nobel Prize-winning, FDA-approved drug as nothing more than a horse dewormer endorsed by fanatical outlier doctors and accepted by gullible patients. Despite being found to be an extremely safe treatment as well as an effective one for Covid, the FDA, CDC, and its media “partners” made ivermectin the subject of false accusations and warnings about the supposed risks of using it.
But early on in the game it was decided, as Dr. Kory pointed out, “to keep the market open for their novel pricey Paxlovid pill.” And to that effect, nothing was going to stand in the way. In an interview last summer with the head of the UCSF Department of Medicine, FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf admitted that he helped promote Paxlovid—something he acknowledged is explicitly against the rules.
“In normal times, the FDA should not be a cheerleader . . .” Califf said. But since back then EUA drugs could not be advertised (a policy that changed in the fall of 2022) he went ahead and pitched it himself.
The Paxlovid campaign is far from over. In fact, it may now be revving up to full throttle. There’s even a name being bandied about for those who question the drug: “Anti-Paxxers.”
And if we can take any insight from the new Pfizer tagline (just filed for protection with the US Patent and Trademark Office), “Outdo Yesterday,” there are even more spurious strategies in its pharmaceutical pipeline.
Linda Bonvie is an investigative journalist, freelance health and environmental writer and co-author of several books including “Chemical-Free Kids” and most recently “A Consumer’s Guide to Toxic Food Additives.”
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