Western media manufactured narratives to rally support for Syria militants: Report
Press TV – September 24, 2020
Western governments and their media outlets have been concocting narratives to sway public opinion in favor of militant groups operating in the Arab country, according to a report.
Citing leaked documents, the investigative journalism group Grayzone revealed in a report published on its news website on Wednesday that Western governments and their affiliated news agencies carefully organized English- and Arabic-language media coverage of the war in Syria to drum up support for the militant groups there.
“Virtually every aspect of the Syrian opposition was cultivated and marketed by Western government-backed public relations firms, from their political narratives to their branding, from what they said to where they said it,” the article said.
The group said US and European contractors trained and advised Syrian “opposition” leaders, including young media activists, at all levels and organized interviews for them on mainstream outlets such as the BBC and the UK’s Channel 4.
“Western government public relation firms not only influenced the way the media covered Syria, but as the leaked documents reveal, they produced their own propagandistic pseudo-news for broadcast on major TV networks in the Middle East, including BBC Arabic, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and Orient TV,” Grayzone said.
The UK-funded firms functioned full-time to serve the militant outfits in Syria, according to the article, with one contractor, called InCoStrat, saying it was in constant contact with a network of more than international 1,600 journalists and “influencers,” and used them to promote anti-Damascus narratives.
The leaked documents also revealed that the Western government contractor, ARK, had played a role in “popularizing” the so-called civil defense group the White Helmets in American and European media.
“ARK ran the social media accounts of the White Helmets, and helped turn the Western-backed group into a key propaganda weapon of the Syrian opposition,” the article said.
The so-called White Helmets have been implicated by Syria and its ally Russia in numerous violations, including working with Takfiri militants in the Arab country and staging false-flag gas attacks to be blamed on Damascus as an excuse for Western allies to attack Syria.
ARK also ran an anti-Damascus propaganda outlet called Moubader, which developed a huge following on social media, including more than 200,000 likes on Facebook. The Western government contractor also printed 15,000 copies per month of a “high-quality hard copy” Moubader magazine and distributed in militant-held areas of Syria.
Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011.
Idlib, in northwestern Syria, and small parts of an adjacent area in Aleppo form the only large areas in the hands of militants after the Syrian military managed to undo militant gains across the country and bring back almost all of Syrian soil under government control.
Idlib is now held by an array of militants dominated by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Takfiri group, which is led by members of the former al-Qaeda franchise.
The Syrian government says the Israeli regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri terrorist groups that are wreaking havoc in the country.
The American deep state revives its tired allegations of Russian interference in November’s presidential elections
By Scott Ritter | RT | September 23, 2020
CIA and FBI officials, helped by MSM chums, allege the Kremlin’s running a campaign to denigrate Joe Biden. But where’s the evidence? The real threat to US democracy isn’t Russia, but the anonymous sources behind the claims.
There have been a spate of reports recently, alleging Russian interference in the 2020 US presidential election, specifically the charge that Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to “sow divisiveness and discord” to “denigrate” the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, and undermine public confidence in the legitimacy of the electoral process.
While allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election continue to be bandied about by those who believe that President Donald Trump’s victory over Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton was solely due to Russian malfeasance, the new allegations arise from a separate set of facts unique to this year’s race.
These are the efforts of Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and the Republican chairmen of the Senate Homeland Security and Finance Committees (Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley, respectively) to uncover evidence of corruption on the part of Joe Biden and his son Hunter regarding the latter’s relationship with Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. These efforts have led to the release of an 87-page joint report, titled ‘Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns’, published by Senator’s Johnson and Grassley on September 22.
There is nothing substantively new in the report that has not already been publicly disclosed previously. The difference is that Giuliani, Johnson, and Grassley have made extensive use of information provided to them by a pro-Russian member of the Ukrainian Parliament, Andriy Derkach, in fleshing out the allegations of corruption leveled against Joe and Hunter Biden. The information contained in the report does not significantly further the case against either Joe or Hunter Biden and, if left to its own devices, the report would most likely have been ignored by the voting public.
But the Derkach angle has caught the eye of elements within the US intelligence community and the FBI, who have used the connection between Giuliani, Johnson, and Grassley on the one hand, and Derkach on the other, to promote their own conspiracy theories linking the Russian government to the revelations. This linkage was furthered by the fact that Derkach was singled out by the US Department of Treasury in August for being “an active Russian agent for over a decade,” who employed “manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States.”
Derkach’s activities were also the subject of a classified CIA assessment published on August 31 in the CIA World Intelligence Review. But the CIA took it a step further, stating: “We assess that President Vladimir Putin and the senior-most Russian officials are aware of and probably directing Russia’s influence operations aimed at denigrating the former U.S. Vice President, supporting the U.S. President and fueling public discord ahead of the U.S. election in November.”
Details of this classified CIA assessment were shared with Josh Rogin, an opinion columnist with the Washington Post (and vehement opponent of Trump), who published them in a column that appeared in his newspaper on September 22. According to Rogin, the information about the CIA assessment came from two unnamed sources “familiar with” the report. Rogin claims he withheld details about the intelligence used to form the assessment at the request of his sources to protect them and their methods.
Rogin’s ‘scoop’ comes on the heels of similar claims put forward in written testimony to Congress by the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, William Evanina, in early August. “We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment,’” Evanina wrote. “This is consistent with Moscow’s public criticism of him when he was Vice President for his role in the Obama administration’s policies on Ukraine and its support for the anti-Putin opposition inside Russia.”
Evanina’s concerns were echoed by FBI Director Christopher Wray, who testified before the House Homeland Security Committee on September 17. “We certainly have seen very active, very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020 … to both sow divisiveness and discord and … to denigrate Vice President Biden,” Wray said.
Both Evanina and Wray drew heavily on the efforts by Derkach to assist Giuliani, Johnson, and Grassley in their aim of digging up dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden. Wray’s testimony, when viewed in conjunction with the Rogin revelations about the CIA’s assessment, appears to be timed to pre-empt the impact of the Johnson-Grassley report.
If that’s true, then the FBI director, together with whomever in the intelligence community leaked the details of the CIA’s assessment to Rogin, are guilty of the kind of politicization of intelligence that undermines public confidence in the US system of government far more than any thinly sourced allegations about Russian interference.
One can scour the government’s organizational charts, looking in vain for an entity that describes itself as the ‘deep state’, and the efforts will be in vain. But the deep state exists. It exists in the form of so-called intelligence professionals who craft analysis about alleged foreign interference in domestic American politics, derived from secret ‘sources and methods’, which is then leaked to a willing recipient in the press who publishes it for the sole purpose of undermining a sitting president on the eve of a national election, without disclosing what these ‘sources and methods’ are.
It exists in the form of an organization, the FBI, that is already stinging from the public disclosure of its massive failings on issues related to allegations of Russian collusion on the part of a sitting president (the Mueller Report fiasco, the disaster that was the Steele Dossier, and the incompetence manifested in the Carter Page FISA warrant process, to name but a few) suddenly seeking relevance – and, one might say, revenge – by speculating on the domestic impact of the same allegations put forward by the intelligence community.
The only purpose one can ascribe to these actions is the denigration of President Trump for the purpose of sowing divisiveness and discord regarding the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election – the very charge that those who embrace the CIA and FBI allegations about Russian interference have levelled against Moscow.
A reasonable person can conclude that President Trump, by questioning the legitimacy of mail-in ballots and openly speculating about voter fraud, is actively engaging in a politically motivated ploy to undermine public confidence in the election for the purpose of preparing the public for an inevitable challenge if the results point to a Biden victory.
While this is not conduct that any politician seeking elected office should engage in, it isn’t being done in the shadows, as part of a vast secret conspiracy, but rather out in the open, for all the public to see and, by extension, to opine on come election day.
That’s the difference between what Trump and his supporters are doing, and the actions of the deep state. Both are destroying public confidence in whatever the outcome may be on election night, to make the case that their candidate has the more legitimate claim to electoral victory.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but the fact that one side – the supporters of Donald Trump – are conducting their work with complete transparency, while the other side hides behind the impenetrable walls the deep state affords them, does serve as a discriminator.
America does not need any help in undermining the foundations of democratic rule, nor does it need help in destroying public confidence in the notion of a free and fair election. The actions of both political parties have shown they are collectively and individually more than capable of accomplishing this in their own right; all an outside power need do is sit back and watch the show.
There is nothing to gain for Putin, were he to orchestrate a campaign designed to attack Joe Biden, and everything to lose. If there wasn’t an Andriy Derkach, Rudy Giuliani and Senator Johnson would have found someone just like him. The Hunter Biden/Burisma story is to Republican operatives like chum is to sharks – irresistible.
It wasn’t manufactured by Putin and co behind the Kremlin walls, but was rather the by-product of Hunter and Joe Biden’s own words and deeds. The American electorate is sophisticated enough to sort through the chaff to get to the wheat. Nothing Giuliani or Johnson did was in secret – and they most certainly don’t hide behind secret ‘sources and methods’ when making their allegations.
One cannot say the same thing for the intelligence community, the FBI, or the partisan mainstream media. At the end of the day, the information they describe as being at the heart of the alleged Russian interference – the Derkach papers – contains the same fact set as does the report published by Senators Johnson and Grassley.
The big difference, however, is how this information is packaged and marketed. The Republicans have taken the path of full transparency, where every voter is capable of discerning whether this is a matter of legitimate national concern, or a political witch hunt. Most important of all is the fact that both Johnson and Grassley are elected officials who, at the end of the day, are accountable to their respective constituencies for their conduct while in office.
The deep state, however, has taken a different path – one of secret allegations about foreign manipulation of American democratic processes. The deep state seeks to distract from the political reality of what the Republicans have done – namely, to put it all on the line for the American people to see whether the Hunter Biden/Burisma story holds water, or to conclude that the Republicans have behaved poorly.
The Republicans have given the American voter a choice – one the deep state seeks to obviate by tainting it with unfounded allegations of Russian interference. Moreover, the deep state has put forward its case in an opaque way and in a manner where those making the case cannot be held accountable to the American public because they were never elected in the first place, and have opted to keep their identities a secret.
And it is destroying American democracy as we speak.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
Betrayal. Infuriating, Betrayal
By Mike Whitney • Unz Review • September 23, 2020
“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” Joseph Conrad
Here’s your political puzzler for the day: Which of these two things poses a greater threat to the country:
- An incompetent and boastful president who has no previous government experience and who is rash and impulsive in his dealings with the media, foreign leaders and his critics?
- Or a political party that collaborates with senior-level officials in the Intel agencies, the FBI, the DOJ, the media, and former members of the White House to spy on the new administration with the intention of gathering damaging information that can be used to overthrow the elected government?
The answer is “2”, the greater threat to the country is a political party that engages in subversive activity aimed at toppling the government and seizing power. In fact, that’s the greatest danger that any country can face, an enemy from within. Foreign adversaries can be countered by diplomatic engagement and shoring up the nation’s military defenses, but traitors–who conduct their activities below the radar using a secret network of contacts and connections to inflict maximum damage on the government– are nearly unstoppable.
What the Russiagate investigation shows, is that high-ranking members of the Democrat party participated in the type of activities that are described above, they were part of an illicit coup d’etat aimed at removing Donald Trump from office and rolling back the results of the 2016 elections. It is a vast understatement to say that the operation was merely an attack on Donald Trump when, in fact, it was an attack on the system itself, a full-blown assault on the right of ordinary people to choose their own leaders. That’s what Russiagate is really all about; it was an attempt to torpedo democracy by invoking the flimsy and unverifiable claim that Trump was an agent of the Kremlin.
None of this, of course, has been discussed in a public forum because those platforms are all privately-owned media that are linked to the people who executed the junta. But for those who followed events closely, and who know what actually happened, there has never been a more serious crime in American history. What we discovered was that the permanent bureaucracy, the media and the Democrat party are riddled with strategically-placed quislings and collaborators that are willing to sabotage their own government if they are so directed. The question that immediately comes to mind is this: Who concocted this plot, who authorized the electronic eavesdropping, the confidential informants, the widespread spying, the improperly obtained warrants, the fake news, and the endless leaks to the media? Who?
What we witnessed was not just an attempted coup, it was a window into the inner-workings of a secret government operating independently from within the state. And the sedition was not confined to a few posts at the senior levels of the FBI, CIA, NSA, or DOJ. No. The corruption has saturated the entire structure, seeping down to the lower levels where career bureaucrats eagerly perform tasks that are designed to damage or incriminate elected officials. How did it ever get this bad?
And who is calling the shots? We still don’t know.
Let me pose a theory: The operation might have been concocted by former CIA-Director John Brennan, but Brennan surely is not the prime instigator, nor is Clapper, Comey or even Obama. The real person or persons who initiated the coup will likely never be known. These are the Big Money guys who operate in the shadows and who have a stranglehold on the Intelligence agencies. These are the gilded Mandarins who have their tentacles wrapped firmly around the entire state-power apparatus and who dictate policy from their leather-bound chairs at their high-end men’s clubs. These are the people who decided that Donald Trump “had to go” whatever the cost. They pulled out all the stops, engaged their assets across the bureaucracy, and launched a desperate 3 and half year-long regime change operation that blew up in their faces leaving behind a trail carnage from Washington, DC to Sydney, Australia. In contrast, Trump somehow slipped the noose and escaped largely unscathed. He was pummeled mercilessly in the media, disparaged by his political rivals, and raked over the coals by the chattering classes, but — at the end of the day– it was Trump who was left standing. Trump– who took on the entire political establishment, the Intel agencies, the FBI, the mainstream media, and the Democratic party– had beaten them all at their own game. Go figure??
Keep in mind, the Democrats have known that the Mueller probe was a fraud from as early as 2017 when the President of Crowdstrike, Shawn Henry, (who provided cyber security for the DNC) admitted to Congress that there was no forensic evidence that the DNC emails had been hacked by Russia or anyone else.
Think about that for a minute: The entire Mueller investigation was based on the assumption that Russia hacked into the DNC servers and stole the emails. We now know that never happened. The cyber-security team that conducted the investigation of the DNC computers admitted in sworn testimony before Congress that there was no evidence of “exfiltration” or pilfering of any kind. Repeat: There was no proof of hacking, no proof of Russian involvement, and no proof of foul play. The entire foundation upon which the Russia investigation was built, turned out to be false. More importantly, Democrat members of the Intelligence Committee knew it was false from the get-go, but opted to let the charade continue anyway. Why?
Because the truth didn’t matter, what mattered was getting rid of Trump by any means necessary. That’s why they used “opposition research” (Note– “Oppo” research is the hyperbolic nonsense political parties use to smear a political opponent.) to illegally obtain warrants to spy on members of the Trump team. It’s because the Democrat leadership will do anything to regain power.
By the way, we also have evidence that the warrants that were used to spy on Trump were obtained illegally. The FISA court was deliberately misled so the FBI could carry out its vendetta on Trump. Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith “did willfully and knowingly make and use a false writing and document, knowing the same to contain a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and entry in a matter before the jurisdiction of the executive branch and judicial branch of the Government of the United States.” Bottom line: Clinesmith deliberately altered emails so that FISA applications could be renewed and the spying on the Trump campaign could continue.
So, let’s summarize:
- The Democrats knew there was no proof the emails were stolen; thus, they knew the Russia probe was a hoax.
- The Democrats knew that their fraudulent “opposition research” was being used to illegally obtain warrants to spy on the Trump camp. This makes them accessory to a crime.
- Finally, the Democrats continue to spread (virtually) the same Russia-Trump collusion allegations today that they did before the Mueller investigation released its report. The lies and disinformation have persisted as if the “nation’s most expensive and exhaustive investigation” had never taken place. What does this tell us about the Democrats?
On a superficial level, it tells us that they can’t be trusted because they don’t tell the truth. But on a deeper level, it expresses the party’s Ruling Doctrine, which is to control the public by means of deceit, disinformation, propaganda and lies. Only the powerful and well-connected are entitled to know the truth, everyone else must be subjected to fabrications that are crafted in a way that best coincides with the overall objectives of ruling elites. That’s why the Democrats stick with the shopworn mantra that Trump is in bed with Russia. It doesn’t matter that the theory has been thoroughly discredited and disproved. It doesn’t even matter that the theory was never the slightest bit believable to begin with. What matters is that party leaders are preventing ordinary people from knowing the truth, which is an essential part of their governing doctrine. It’s surprising that this doesn’t piss-off more Democrats, after all, it’s the ultimate expression of contempt and condescension. When someone lies to your face relentlessly, repeatedly and shamelessly, they are expressing their loathing for you. Can’t they see that?
But maybe you think this is overstating the case? Maybe you think the Dems are just trying to “cover their backside” on a matter that is purely political?
Okay, but answer this: Were the Democrats involved in a plot to overthrow the President of the United States?
Yes, they were.
Is that treason?
Yes, it is.
Then, are we really prepared to say that treason is “purely political”?
No, especially since Russiagate was not a one-off, but just the first shocking example of how the Democrats operate. If we examine the Dems approach to the Covid-19 crisis, we see that their policy is actually more destructive than the 4-year Russia fiasco.
For example, which party has imposed the most brutal, economy-eviscerating lockdowns and the most punitive mask mandates, while steadily ratcheting up the fearmongering at every opportunity? Which states suffered the most catastrophic economic damage due in large part to the edicts issued by their Democrat governors? Which party is using a public health emergency to advance the global “Reset” agenda announced at the World Economic Forum (WEF)? Which party is using the Covid-19 fraud to crash the economy, eliminate 40 million jobs, roll-back basic civil liberties and turn the United States into a NWO slave-state ruled by Wall Street bankers, Silicon Valley technocrats and Davos elites? Which party?
And which party has aligned itself with Black Lives Matter, the faux-social justice organization that is funded by foreign oligarchs that are working tirelessly to crush the emerging populist movement that supports “America First” ideals? Which party applauded while American cities burned and small businesses across the country were looted and razed by masses of hooligans engaged in an orgy of destruction? Which party’s mayors and governors rejected federal assistance to put down the riots and reestablish order so ordinary people could get back to work to provide for themselves and their families? And which party now is threatening widespread social unrest and anarchy if the upcoming presidential election does not produce the result that they or their globalist puppet-masters seek?
The Democrat party has undergone a sea-change in the last four years. There’s no trace of the party that was once headed by progressive-thinking idealists like John F Kennedy. What’s left now is a shell of its former self; a cynical, self-aggrandizing, cutthroat organization that has betrayed its base, the American people, and the country. Indeed, for all its many failings, it is the ‘betrayal’ that is the most infuriating.
Coming Soon to a U.S. Neighborhood Near You? Regime-Change Foot Soldiers Parading as Social Justice Warriors
By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 22, 2020
Is the ‘Trump regime’ about to get a taste of the color revolution tactics that America has employed in the past against “illiberal” foreign governments that refused to toe the neoliberal globalist line? It’s looking highly likely.
Despite great efforts by the mainstream media to play it down, an increasing number of Americans are being subjected to a level of aggression, intimidation and street violence that the authorities seem unable or unwilling to control. This is no accident.
Since 2016, a series of actions by the political left indicate that the chaos unfolding on the streets of America is no grassroots movement on behalf of ‘social justice,’ but rather a carefully coordinated plan to oust Trump in the event the Democrats fail to get Biden into office. Indeed, for the orchestrators of this coup, what happens on Nov. 4 is of far more relevance that what happens on Election Day.
The first sign of trouble came in 2016, when none other than George Soros began spending a king’s ransom in local judicial elections. As the Daily Signal noted, “[r]adical social justice activists will serve as the top prosecutors for three major Washington, D.C., suburbs—including the two wealthiest counties in the U.S.—after George Soros’ political action committee poured $2.1 million into ordinarily sleepy local races.”
Only a crazed conspiracy theorist, like Newt Gingrich, apparently, would see any connection between Soros supporting radical prosecutors, and his other pet project of supporting ‘social justice’ groups, like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, who occasionally find themselves in need of a sympathetic justice system. And if local courts somehow fail to catch and release the hoodlums, Hollywood has shown a disturbing willingness to write out the bail checks. The only thing the looters and ‘peaceful protesters’ need now is a government mandate that requires masks be worn in public to protect their identities, and for property owners to understand they will be prosecuted for demonstrating their 2nd Amendment rights.
Now that the radicals have their institutional support structure all in place, a strange yet not wholly unexpected thing is happening. Although police brutality has been occurring in the United States long before Trump became president, and it effects both whites and blacks, the ‘peaceful protesters’ are venting their outrage primarily against Republicans, which the left has come to associate with ‘white supremacists’ and ‘fascism.’ This demonization of the right, which the mainstream media is happy to accentuate so long Trump is at the helm, gives left-wing groups the bare amount of legitimacy they need to carry out their activities.
By way of example, consider the way members of Black Lives Matter aggressively taunted Republicans as they attempted to leave the Republican National Convention where Trump accepted the nomination for the presidential election. As Senator Rand Paul and his wife Michele walked down the sidewalk, a frenzied mob could be heard shouting, “say her name!” in reference to Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was shot to death by police at her home in March during a botched raid. Apparently it did not matter to the rabble, or they never knew, that Paul was responsible for filing legislation to prohibit police officers from using no-knock warrants like the one that led to the fatal shooting of Ms. Taylor.
Another strange coincidence for the coincidence theorists is that a number of Democrats have been calling for exactly the sort of harassment against Trump supporters that is now unfolding across the nation. In June, Maxine Waters, for example, incited her followers to “create a crowd, and you push back on them.” More recently, Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice president nominee, said in an interview with Stephen Colbert, “They [the protesters] are not going to stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not going to stop after Election Day… They’re not going to let up, and they should not, and we should not.”
Reading such comments almost forces one to conclude that the Democrats, at least the radical progressive wing of the Democratic Party, have no illusions about Biden’s real chances for beating Trump. After all, if victory looked certain there would be no need for the threats. In other words, what the Democrats are most concerned about are not the actual results of the election, which have a very high chance of being unfavorable, but rather the reaction to the results. On this point, appearances are everything. Thus the mainstream media, in cahoots with left-leaning polling agencies and colleges, have conditioned Liberals – in the very same way they did in 2016 with their hugely inaccurate polls – to believe that Biden simply cannot lose. It doesn’t require a degree in the theory of revolutions to predict how those BLM/Antifa protesters, many of whom were too young to vote in 2016, are going to react to the news of four more years of a ‘white supremacist in chief.’ Not calmly and rationally, that’s for sure. After all, we are talking about an entire generation that has graduated from Woke U. with a Marxist major in ‘American Imperialism’ and a minor in ‘Mass Destruction’.
Here is where the stage has been rigged for a full-blown ‘color revolution’ erupting on or shortly after November 3rd. If anyone needs more proof, consider Hillary Clinton’s telling comment that “Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances” because he will win if “we don’t give an inch.” In other words, the election has nothing to do with counting votes, or even mail-in ballots, but rather which side, according to the rationale of Hillary Clinton, has the greater staying power.
As witnessed in faraway places where the U.S. State Department prepared the groundwork for regime change operations against governments and leaders they did not like, as in Ukraine, for example, and more recently in Belarus, it will take no effort whatsoever for the puppet masters to mobilize ‘social justice groups’ like BLM and Antifa to come out in massive protest against the results of November’s contest. And since we are talking about a homegrown operation, there is no need for NGOs working secretly behind the scenes to rally the locals into action; the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer was all that was required to mobilize the media and the young radicals of the left against ‘systemic racism,’ which is just another way of saying ‘white supremacy,’ which is just another way of saying ‘Donald Trump.’
Have America’s regime-change vultures come home to roost? Unfortunately, such a grim prospect is looking more likely with each passing day as Nov. 3rd promises to be a presidential election without precedent in U.S. history. That is the day when the American Revolution may go full circle.
Lies, Damned Lies and Health Statistics – the Deadly Danger of False Positives
By Dr Michael Yeadon | Lockdown Sceptics | September 20, 2020
I never expected to be writing something like this. I am an ordinary person, recently semi-retired from a career in the pharmaceutical industry and biotech, where I spent over 30 years trying to solve problems of disease understanding and seek new treatments for allergic and inflammatory disorders of lung and skin. I’ve always been interested in problem solving, so when anything biological comes along, my attention is drawn to it. Come 2020, came SARS-CoV-2. I’ve written about the pandemic as objectively as I could. The scientific method never leaves a person who trained and worked as a professional scientist. Please do read that piece. My co-authors & I will submit it to the normal rigours of peer review, but that process is slow and many pieces of new science this year have come to attention through pre-print servers and other less conventional outlets.
While paying close attention to data, we all initially focused on the sad matter of deaths. I found it remarkable that, in discussing the COVID-19 related deaths, most people I spoke to had no idea of large numbers. Asked approximately how many people a year die in the UK in the ordinary course of events, each a personal tragedy, they usually didn’t know. I had to inform them it is around 620,000, sometimes less if we had a mild winter, sometimes quite a bit higher if we had a severe ’flu season. I mention this number because we know that around 42,000 people have died with or of COVID-19. While it’s a huge number of people, its ‘only’ 0.06% of the UK population. Its not a coincidence that this is almost the same proportion who have died with or of COVID-19 in each of the heavily infected European countries – for example, Sweden. The annual all-causes mortality of 620,000 amounts to 1,700 per day, lower in summer and higher in winter. That has always been the lot of humans in the temperate zones. So for context, 42,000 is about ~24 days worth of normal mortality. Please know I am not minimising it, just trying to get some perspective on it. Deaths of this magnitude are not uncommon, and can occur in the more severe flu seasons. Flu vaccines help a little, but on only three occasions in the last decade did vaccination reach 50% effectiveness. They’re good, but they’ve never been magic bullets for respiratory viruses. Instead, we have learned to live with such viruses, ranging from numerous common colds all the way to pneumonias which can kill. Medicines and human caring do their best.
So, to this article. Its about the testing we do with something called PCR, an amplification technique, better known to biologists as a research tool used in our labs, when trying to unpick mechanisms of disease. I was frankly astonished to realise they’re sometimes used in population screening for diseases – astonished because it is a very exacting technique, prone to invisible errors and it’s quite a tall order to get reliable information out of it, especially because of the prodigious amounts of amplification involved in attempting to pick up a strand of viral genetic code. The test cannot distinguish between a living virus and a short strand of RNA from a virus which broke into pieces weeks or months ago.
I believe I have identified a serious, really a fatal flaw in the PCR test used in what is called by the UK Government the Pillar 2 screening – that is, testing many people out in their communities. I’m going to go through this with care and in detail because I’m a scientist and dislike where this investigation takes me. I’m not particularly political and my preference is for competent, honest administration over the actual policies chosen. We’re a reasonable lot in UK and not much given to extremes. What I’m particularly reluctant about is that, by following the evidence, I have no choice but to show that the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, misled the House of Commons and also made misleading statements in a radio interview. Those are serious accusations. I know that. I’m not a ruthless person. But I’m writing this anyway, because what I have uncovered is of monumental importance to the health and wellbeing of all the people living in the nation I have always called home.
Back to the story, and then to the evidence. When the first (and I think, only) wave of COVID-19 hit the UK, I was with almost everyone else in being very afraid. I’m 60 and in reasonable health, but on learning that I had about a 1% additional risk of perishing if I caught the virus, I discovered I was far from ready to go. So, I wasn’t surprised or angry when the first lockdown arrived. It must have been a very difficult thing to decide. However, before the first three-week period was over, I’d begun to develop an understanding of what was happening. The rate of infection, which has been calculated to have infected well over 100,000 new people every day around the peak, began to fall, and was declining before lockdown. Infection continued to spread out, at an ever-reducing rate and we saw this in the turning point of daily deaths, at a grim press conference each afternoon. We now know that lockdown made no difference at all to the spread of the virus. We can tell this because the interval between catching the virus and, in those who don’t make it, their death is longer than the interval between lockdown and peak daily deaths. There isn’t any controversy about this fact, which is easily demonstrated, but I’m aware some people like to pretend it was lockdown that turned the pandemic, perhaps to justify the extraordinary price we have all paid to do it. That price wasn’t just economic. It involved avoidable deaths from diseases other than COVID-19, as medical services were restricted, in order to focus on the virus. Some say that lockdown, directly and indirectly, killed as many as the virus. I don’t know. Its not something I’ve sought to learn. But I mention because interventions in all our lives should not be made lightly. Its not only inconvenience, but real suffering, loss of livelihoods, friendships, anchors of huge importance to us all, that are severed by such acts. We need to be certain that the prize is worth the price. While it is uncertain it was, even for the first lockdown, I too supported it, because we did not know what we faced, and frankly, almost everyone else did it, except Sweden. I am now resolutely against further interventions in what I have become convinced is a fruitless attempt to ‘control the virus’. We are, in my opinion – shared by others, some of whom are well placed to assess the situation – closer to the end of the pandemic in terms of deaths, than we are to its middle. I believe we should provide the best protection we can for any vulnerable people, and otherwise cautiously get on with our lives. I think we are all going to get a little more Swedish over time.
In recent weeks, though, it cannot have escaped anyone’s attention that there has been a drum beat which feels for all the world like a prelude to yet more fruitless and damaging restrictions. Think back to mid-summer. We were newly out of lockdown and despite concerns for crowded beaches, large demonstrations, opening of shops and pubs, the main item on the news in relation to COVID-19 was the reassuring and relentless fall in daily deaths. I noticed that, as compared to the slopes of the declining death tolls in many nearby countries, that our slope was too flat. I even mentioned to scientist friends that inferred the presence of some fixed signal that was being mixed up with genuine COVID-19 deaths. Imagine how gratifying it was when the definition of a COVID-19 death was changed to line up with that in other countries and in a heartbeat our declining death toll line became matched with that elsewhere. I was sure it would: what we have experienced and witnessed is a terrible kind of equilibrium. A virus that kills few, then leaves survivors who are almost certainly immune – a virus to which perhaps 30-50% were already immune because it has relatives and some of us have already encountered them – accounts for the whole terrible but also fascinating biological process. There was a very interesting piece in the BMJ in recent days that offers potential support for this contention.
Now we have learned some of the unusual characteristics of the new virus, better treatments (anti-inflammatory steroids, anti-coagulants and in particular, oxygen masks and not ventilators in the main) the ‘case fatality rate’ even for the most hard-hit individuals is far lower now than it was six months ago.
As there is no foundational, medical or scientific literature which tells us to expect a ‘second wave’, I began to pay more attention to the phrase as it appeared on TV, radio and print media – all on the same day – and has been relentlessly repeated ever since. I was interviewed recently by Julia Hartley-Brewer on her talkRADIO show and on that occasion I called on the Government to disclose to us the evidence upon which they were relying to predict this second wave. Surely they have some evidence? I don’t think they do. I searched and am very qualified to do so, drawing on academic friends, and we were all surprised to find that there is nothing at all. The last two novel coronaviruses, Sar (2003) and MERS (2012), were of one wave each. Even the WW1 flu ‘waves’ were almost certainly a series of single waves involving more than one virus. I believe any second wave talk is pure speculation. Or perhaps it is in a model somewhere, disconnected from the world of evidence to me? It would be reasonable to expect some limited ‘resurgence’ of a virus given we don’t mix like cordial in a glass of water, but in a more lumpy, human fashion. You’re most in contact with family, friends and workmates and they are the people with whom you generally exchange colds.
A long period of imposed restrictions, in addition to those of our ordinary lives did prevent the final few percent of virus mixing with the population. With the movements of holidays, new jobs, visiting distant relatives, starting new terms at universities and schools, that final mixing is under way. It should not be a terrifying process. It happens with every new virus, flu included. It’s just that we’ve never before in our history chased it around the countryside with a technique more suited to the biology lab than to a supermarket car park.
A very long prelude, but necessary. Part of the ‘project fear’ that is rather too obvious, involving second waves, has been the daily count of ‘cases’. Its important to understand that, according to the infectious disease specialists I’ve spoken to, the word ‘case’ has to mean more than merely the presence of some foreign organism. It must present signs (things medics notice) and symptoms (things you notice). And in most so-called cases, those testing positive had no signs or symptoms of illness at all. There was much talk of asymptomatic spreading, and as a biologist this surprised me. In almost every case, a person is symptomatic because they have a high viral load and either it is attacking their body or their immune system is fighting it, generally a mix. I don’t doubt there have been some cases of asymptomatic transmission, but I’m confident it is not important.
That all said, Government decided to call a person a ‘case’ if their swab sample was positive for viral RNA, which is what is measured in PCR. A person’s sample can be positive if they have the virus, and so it should. They can also be positive if they’ve had the virus some weeks or months ago and recovered. It’s faintly possible that high loads of related, but different coronaviruses, which can cause some of the common colds we get, might also react in the PCR test, though it’s unclear to me if it does.
But there’s a final setting in which a person can be positive and that’s a random process. This may have multiple causes, such as the amplification technique not being perfect and so amplifying the ‘bait’ sequences placed in with the sample, with the aim of marrying up with related SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA. There will be many other contributions to such positives. These are what are called false positives.
Think of any diagnostic test a doctor might use on you. The ideal diagnostic test correctly confirms all who have the disease and never wrongly indicates that healthy people have the disease. There is no such test. All tests have some degree of weakness in generating false positives. The important thing is to know how often this happens, and this is called the false positive rate. If 1 in 100 disease-free samples are wrongly coming up positive, the disease is not present, we call that a 1% false positive rate. The actual or operational false positive rate differs, sometimes substantially, under different settings, technical operators, detection methods and equipment. I’m focusing solely on the false positive rate in Pillar 2, because most people do not have the virus (recently around 1 in 1000 people and earlier in summer it was around 1 in 2000 people). It is when the amount of disease, its so-called prevalence, is low that any amount of a false positive rate can be a major problem. This problem can be so severe that unless changes are made, the test is hopelessly unsuitable to the job asked of it. In this case, the test in Pillar 2 was and remains charged with the job of identifying people with the virus, yet as I will show, it is unable to do so.
Because of the high false positive rate and the low prevalence, almost every positive test, a so-called case, identified by Pillar 2 since May of this year has been a FALSE POSITIVE. Not just a few percent. Not a quarter or even a half of the positives are FALSE, but around 90% of them. Put simply, the number of people Mr Hancock sombrely tells us about is an overestimate by a factor of about ten-fold. Earlier in the summer, it was an overestimate by about 20-fold.
Let me take you through this, though if you’re able to read Prof Carl Heneghan’s clearly written piece first, I’m more confident that I’ll be successful in explaining this dramatic conclusion to you. (Here is a link to the record of numbers of tests, combining Pillar 1 (hospital) and Pillar 2 (community).)
Imagine 10,000 people getting tested using those swabs you see on TV. We have a good estimate of the general prevalence of the virus from the ONS, who are wholly independent (from Pillar 2 testing) and are testing only a few people a day, around one per cent of the numbers recently tested in Pillar 2. It is reasonable to assume that most of the time, those being tested do not have symptoms. People were asked to only seek a test if they have symptoms. However, we know from TV news and stories on social media from sampling staff, from stern guidance from the Health Minister and the surprising fact that in numerous locations around the country, the local council is leafleting people’s houses, street by street to come and get tested.
The bottom line is that it is reasonable to expect the prevalence of the virus to be close to the number found by ONS, because they sample randomly, and would pick up symptomatic and asymptomatic people in proportion to their presence in the community. As of the most recent ONS survey, to a first approximation, the virus was found in 1 in every 1000 people. This can also be written as 0.1%. So when all these 10,000 people are tested in Pillar 2, you’d expect 10 true positives to be found (false negatives can be an issue when the virus is very common, but in this community setting, it is statistically unimportant and so I have chosen to ignore it, better to focus only on false positives).
So, what is the false positive rate of testing in Pillar 2? For months, this has been a concern. It appears that it isn’t known, even though as I’ve mentioned, you absolutely need to know it in order to work out whether the diagnostic test has any value! What do we know about the false positive rate? Well, we do know that the Government’s own scientists were very concerned about it, and a report on this problem was sent to SAGE dated June 3rd 2020. I quote: “Unless we understand the operational false positive rate of the UK’s RT-PCR testing system, we risk over-estimating the COVID-19 incidence, the demand on track and trace and the extent of asymptomatic infection”. In that same report, the authors helpfully listed the lowest to highest false positive rate of dozens of tests using the same technology. The lowest value for false positive rate was 0.8%.
Allow me to explain the impact of a false positive rate of 0.8% on Pillar 2. We return to our 10,000 people who’ve volunteered to get tested, and the expected ten with virus (0.1% prevalence or 1:1000) have been identified by the PCR test. But now we’ve to calculate how many false positives are accompanying them. The shocking answer is 80. 80 is 0.8% of 10,000. That’s how many false positives you’d get every time you were to use a Pillar 2 test on a group of that size.
The effect of this is, in this example, where 10,000 people have been tested in Pillar 2, could be summarised in a headline like this: “90 new cases were identified today” (10 real positive cases and 80 false positives). But we know this is wildly incorrect. Unknown to the poor technician, there were in this example, only 10 real cases. 80 did not even have a piece of viral RNA in their sample. They are really false positives.
I’m going to explain how bad this is another way, back to diagnostics. If you’d submitted to a test and it was positive, you’d expect the doctor to tell you that you had a disease, whatever it was testing for. Usually, though, they’ll answer a slightly different question: “If the patient is positive in this test, what is the probability they have the disease?” Typically, for a good diagnostic test, the doctor will be able to say something like 95% and you and they can live with that. You might take a different, confirmatory test, if the result was very serious, like cancer. But in our Pillar 2 example, what is the probability a person testing positive in Pillar 2 actually has COVID-19? The awful answer is 11% (10 divided by 80 + 10). The test exaggerates the number of covid-19 cases by almost ten-fold (90 divided by 10). Scared yet? That daily picture they show you, with the ‘cases’ climbing up on the right-hand side? Its horribly exaggerated. Its not a mistake, as I shall show.
Earlier in the summer, the ONS showed the virus prevalence was a little lower, 1 in 2000 or 0.05%. That doesn’t sound much of a difference, but it is. Now the Pillar 2 test will find half as many real cases from our notional 10,000 volunteers, so 5 real cases. But the flaw in the test means it will still find 80 false positives (0.8% of 10,000). So its even worse. The headline would be “85 new cases identified today”. But now the probability a person testing positive has the virus is an absurdly low 6% (5 divided by 80 + 5). Earlier in the summer, this same test exaggerated the number of COVID-19 cases by 17-fold (85 divided by 5). Its so easy to generate an apparently large epidemic this way. Just ignore the problem of false positives. Pretend its zero. But it is never zero.
This test is fatally flawed and MUST immediately be withdrawn and never used again in this setting unless shown to be fixed. The examples I gave are very close to what is actually happening every day as you read this.
I’m bound to ask, did Mr Hancock know of this fatal flaw? Did he know of the effect it would inevitably have, and is still having, not only on the reported case load, but the nation’s state of anxiety. I’d love to believe it is all an innocent mistake. If it was, though, he’d have to resign over sheer incompetence. But is it? We know that internal scientists wrote to SAGE, in terms, and, surely, this short but shocking warning document would have been drawn to the Health Secretary’s attention? If that was the only bit of evidence, you might be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the evidence grows more damning.
Recently, I published with my co-authors a short Position Paper. I don’t think by then, a month ago or so, the penny had quite dropped with me. And I’m an experienced biomedical research scientist, used to dealing with complex datasets and probabilities.
On September 11th 2020, I was a guest on Julia Hartley-Brewer’s talkRADIO show. Among other things, I called upon Mr Hancock to release the evidence underscoring his confidence in and planning for ‘the second wave’. This evidence has not yet been shown to the public by anyone. I also demanded he disclose the operational false positive rate in Pillar 2 testing.
On September 16th, I was back on Julia’s show and this time focused on the false positive rate issue (1m 45s – 2min 30s). I had read Carl Heneghan’s analysis showing that even if the false positive rate was as low as 0.1%, 8 times lower than any similar test, it still yields a majority of false positives. So, my critique doesn’t fall if the actual false positive rate is lower than my assumed 0.8%.
On September 18th, Mr Hancock again appeared, as often he does, on Julia Hartley-Brewer’s show. Julia asked him directly (1min 50s – on) what the false positive rate in Pillar 2 is. Mr Hancock said “It’s under 1%”. Julia again asked him exactly what it was, and did he even know it? He didn’t answer that, but then said “it means that, for all the positive cases, the likelihood of one being a false positive is very small”.
That is a seriously misleading statement as it is incorrect. The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89-94%, or near-certainty. Of note, even when ONS was recording its lowest-ever prevalence, the positive rate in Pillar 2 testing never fell below 0.8%.
It gets worse for the Health Secretary. On September the 17th, I believe, Mr Hancock took a question from Sir Desmond Swayne about false positives. It is clear that Sir Desmond is asking about Pillar 2.
Mr Hancock replied: “I like my right honourable friend very much and I wish it were true. The reason we have surveillance testing, done by ONS, is to ensure that we’re constantly looking at a nationally representative sample at what the case rate is. The latest ONS survey, published on Friday, does show a rise consummate (sic) with the increased number of tests that have come back positive.”
He did not answer Sir Desmond’s question, but instead answered a question of his choosing. Did the Health Secretary knowingly mislead the House? By referring only to ONS and not even mentioning the false positive rate of the test in Pillar 2 he was, as it were, stealing the garb of ONS’s more careful work which has a lower false positive rate, in order to smuggle through the hidden and very much higher, false positive rate in Pillar 2. The reader will have to decide for themselves.
Pillar 2 testing has been ongoing since May but it’s only in recent weeks that it has reached several hundreds of thousands of tests per day. The effect of the day by day climb in the number of people that are being described as ‘cases’ cannot be overstated. I know it is inducing fear, anxiety and concern for the possibility of new and unjustified restrictions, including lockdowns. I have no idea what Mr Hancock’s motivations are. But he has and continues to use the hugely inflated output from a fatally flawed Pillar 2 test and appears often on media, gravely intoning the need for additional interventions (none of which, I repeat, are proven to be effective).
You will be very familiar with the cases plot which is shown on most TV broadcasts at the moment. It purports to show the numbers of cases which rose then fell in the spring, and the recent rise in cases. This graph is always accompanied by the headline that “so many thousands of new cases were detected in the last 24 hours”.
You should know that there are two major deceptions, in that picture, which combined are very likely both to mislead and to induce anxiety. Its ubiquity indicates that it is a deliberate choice.
Firstly, it is very misleading in relation to the spring peak of cases. This is because we had no community screening capacity at that time. A colleague has adjusted the plot to show the number of cases we would have detected, had there been a well-behaved community test capability available. The effect is to greatly increase the size of the spring cases peak, because there are very many cases for each hospitalisation and many hospitalisations for every death.
Secondly, as I hope I have shown and persuaded you, the cases in summer and at present, generated by seriously flawed Pillar 2 tests, should be corrected downwards by around ten-fold.
I do believe genuine cases are rising somewhat. This is, however, also true for flu, which we neither measure daily nor report on every news bulletin. If we did, you would appreciate that, going forward, it is quite likely that flu is a greater risk to public health than COVID-19. The corrected cases plot (above) does, I believe, put the recent rises in incidence of COVID-19 in a much more reasonable context. I thought you should see that difference before arriving at your own verdict on this sorry tale.
There are very serious consequences arising from grotesque over-estimation of so-called cases in Pillar 2 community testing, which I believe was put in place knowingly. Perhaps Mr Hancock believes his own copy about the level of risk now faced by the general public? Its not for me to deduce. What this huge over-estimation has done is to have slowed the normalisation of the NHS. We are all aware that access to medical services is, to varying degrees, restricted. Many specialities were greatly curtailed in spring and after some recovery, some are still between a third and a half below their normal capacities. This has led both to continuing delays and growth of waiting lists for numerous operations and treatments. I am not qualified to assess the damage to the nation’s and individuals’ health as a direct consequence of this extended wait for a second wave. Going into winter with this configuration will, on top of the already restricted access for six months, lead inevitably to a large number of avoidable, non-Covid deaths. That is already a serious enough charge. Less obvious but, in aggregate, additional impacts arise from fear of the virus, inappropriately heightened in my view, which include: damage to or even destruction of large numbers of businesses, especially small businesses, with attendant loss of livelihoods, loss of educational opportunities, strains on family relationships, eating disorders, increasing alcoholism and domestic abuse and even suicides, to name but a few.
In closing, I wish to note that in the last 40 years alone the UK has had seven official epidemics/pandemics; AIDS, Swine flu, CJD, SARS, MERS, Bird flu as well as annual, seasonal flu. All were very worrying but schools remained open and the NHS treated everybody and most of the population were unaffected. The country would rarely have been open if it had been shut down every time.
I have explained how a hopelessly-performing diagnostic test has been, and continues to be used, not for diagnosis of disease but, it seems, solely to create fear.
This misuse of power must cease. All the above costs are on the ledger, too, when weighing up the residual risks to society from COVID-19 and the appropriate actions to take, if any. Whatever else happens, the test used in Pillar 2 must be immediately withdrawn as it provides no useful information. In the absence of vastly inflated case numbers arising from this test, the pandemic would be seen and felt to be almost over.
Dr Mike Yeadon is the former CSO and VP, Allergy and Respiratory Research Head with Pfizer Global R&D and co-Founder of Ziarco Pharma Ltd.
Reds Plot to Control America!
By Peter Van Buren | WeMeantWell | September 19, 2020
Like me, you got most of your news from PeaceData.net. It was what you looked to to form your opinions, including the all-important one about which way to vote. What you missed on PeaceData you caught up with via Facebook memes and Tweets from people you do not know.
Or maybe not. Maybe like nearly everyone on planet earth you have no idea what I’m talking about and have never looked at the PeaceData site. That reality should pretty much end the discussion but this is 2020. So you must know by now Facebook claims an unvisited and now defunct web site named PeaceData was actually a Russian influence operation posing as an independent news outlet targeting voters in the United States. Including in their sneaky tactics were hiring American freelance “journalists” to write about US politics and racial tensions from their parents’ basements.
PeaceData operated 13 Facebook accounts, now suspended, supposedly using fake identities and “coordinated inauthentic behavior” by people with some kind of link “to individuals associated with past activity by the Internet Research Agency,” the Russkie company which US intelligence officials say was part of Comrade Trump’s 2016 win.
Yep, that old story, Russians, social media, blah. To say Peacedata itself truly does not matter, especially in relation to the attention it has received in death, gives too much credit to not mattering. What does matter is how the intel community, quasi-private tech firms, the media, and the Democrats worked together to exaggerate the threat and create the narrative outcome of “foreign influence.” Pay attention; this is the magician revealing how the trick is done.
It seems the Russians have gotten so good at influencing cow-like Americans that only five percent of English-language articles on PeaceData actually directly concerned the US election, out of over 700 articles published. You’d think no one would have even noticed they existed. However, some sneaky company called Graphika nonetheless told Facebook to conclude “this facet of the operation suggests an attempt to build a left-wing audience and steer it away from Biden’s campaign.” See, the conclusion from Graphika is by making almost no impact whatsoever, PeaceData was actually “trying harder and harder to hide.” Graphika found most of the English-language posts achieved only single-digit engagement.
Who funds net nanny Graphika? Their venture capital was raised privately, in two tranches of about three million dollars each, in 2014 and 2019. We do know who they work with. Their current “Innovation Officer” is Camille François, who once worked for Google’s analytics offshoot Jigsaw before quitting to run a secretive project for the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, alongside now Graphika CEO John Kelly (no relation to the Marine.) Their December 2018 reporting helped “prove” how the Russians used social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to influence the 2016 election. Graphika also has ties to the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Defense Department’s Minerva Initiative. If you pay to look at their stuff you realize they write like spooks, talk like spooks, and snitch out news sites like spooks. So you can decide if they’re involved in all this again because they are just good at proving Russian stuff or because they are tied to a corporate-quasi government structure alongside the intel community.
What is missing from Graphika’s work is any evidence whatsoever of any actual influence on the only thing that matters: how people vote. Graphika offers nothing quantitative, claiming only that by using American freelancers PeaceData was part of the “fabric” of communities and this made them credible. A step up from 2016 efforts, which relied on what Graphika said were foreign “trolls who typically researched American life so they could more effectively pose as US citizens online. One key trick was to watch American TV shows like House of Cards.”
One is inclined to imagine here the customer service rep with a south Indian accent who asks you to call him “Mike” and wonders “How it goes my man in that American town of Iowa?” Older readers, please substitute Boris and Natasha voices.
So who are these nefarious America writers unknowingly selling out their country? The New York Times tracked down one freelancer who ended up writing for no money somehow, though PeaceData rates of $75-$200 per article fluttered below average (lots of unknown sites recruit freelancers for small payouts; PeaceData used Guru.) This particular PeaceData journalist also once played Rusty in Starlight Express before selling insurance. One of his recent articles outlines his battle with dementia. Sorry to pick on the poor guy, but the NYT profiled him and it seems using such services to influence an election may not be the best use of those rubles.
He did write a nice piece claiming Susan Rice would have made a fine Vice President. One point in her favor was “I challenge anyone to find a video, or statement which shows Susan Rice raising her temper, shouting, acting hysterical or making comments.” Rice of course is known for her signature profanity and temper; here’s the Washington Post calling her out for describing Lindsey Graham as a “piece of sh*t.” Her f-bombs are legend. She famously flipped the bird at Richard Holbrooke, told France’s U.N. ambassador “you’re not going to drag us into your sh*tty war” and drew complaints of disrespect from allies on the U.N. Security Council.
But before just calling a Susan Rice-like bullsh*t on this whole sad attempt to frighten Americans into believing foreigners are here to steal our precious bodily Internet fluids, let’s go have a look at some of what else PeaceData had to say.
For example, here’s a quote from a PeaceData article about Q-Anon: “The effort to mainstream conspiracy is meant to distract from the true mechanisms of exploitation and alienation, while allowing for the continued consolidation of capital and upending norms with power grabs. As liberal institutions fail and capitalism continues to deliver uncertainty, the extension of a false mythos — that promises to yield revolutionary change and free the masses — gives allure to desperately confused people.”
Ok, that was too easy, somebody just held on to their Socialism 101 textbook. From a PeaceData article on the post office is lifted idea-for-idea from the NYT : “One way or another, the truth always comes out and with President Donald Trump, his motives were especially apparent after a news conference in the White House Briefing Room. He admitted on Thursday he opposed additional funding for the United States Postal Service (USPS) in order to make it more difficult to deliver mail-in ballots. Trump’s desire to not expand on voting by mail further sent society into a chaotic state amidst a pandemic.” Actually the NYT said “President Trump stirred new questions on Thursday about whether he would seek to hold up new money to the Postal Service to impede mail-in voting this fall in the middle of the pandemic.” Kinda the same thing but one is Russkie propaganda and the other is the New York Times.
It is very unclear whether any of this is illegal. Foreign organizations hire American writers all the time. And the line between “taking an editorial stance” and “influencing an election” lies closer to how paranoid you are than anything in the law. That did not stop the FBI from telling social media to act against PeaceData based on Graphika tattling. The action Facebook (and Twitter, who called PeaceData “Russian state actors” and blocked them) took against PeaceData was based entirely on so-called violations of Terms of Service. It allows the social media giants to show off how they are doing something to whatever, save democracy. If the Founders were alive today they would be editing Terms of Service instead of creating a Bill of Rights. Facebook was not asked to return the $480 in advertising money Peacedata spent on the site.
PeaceData doesn’t matter by itself. The real value in this fluffy jihad against a no-name site is to allow the MSM and Democrats to announce again Trump is being helped by a foreign power, that our electoral process is corrupt if Trump wins, and to revive whatever distant wet memories the faithful had in Russiagate ending the Trump presidency. A fantasy, a little day dreaming maybe the old tricks will work this time where they have failed ever before.
No big deal, just a glimpse behind the scenes where under the cover of blaming foreign collusion, corporate America, the intel community, and the media hide their own collusion, here, in the Twilight Zone of democracy.
US-based ‘creator of Novichok’ apologizes to Navalny, but Russian scientists say he wasn’t even involved in poison’s development
By Jonny Tickle | RT | September 21, 2020
US-based chemist and independence campaigner for Tatarstan Vil Mirzayanov has ‘apologized’ to Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, saying he considers himself indirectly responsible for his high-profile alleged poisoning.
Mirzayanov, who left Russia in the mid-1990s, has frequently claimed that he was one of the developers of Novichok. This has been rejected by other scientists known to have been on the team which created the lethal substance. In 1992, Mirzayanov leaked the structure of the poison, which resulted in Russian authorities charging him with treason, in a case that later collapsed.
Speaking to TV Rain, Mirzayanov said that he was part of the group behind the military-grade poison, which Germany claims has been found in the activist’s body. He also asserted that Navalny’s symptoms are typical of those experienced by people who have experienced exposure to Novichok.
“All the symptoms are similar,” Mirzayanov said. “Navalny will have to be patient. But in the end, he should recover.”
As none of Navalny’s associates were infected, the former scientist believes that the poison must have entered his body through his digestive tract.
However, according to Leonid Rink, a man commonly referred to in Russian media as the creator of Novichok, Mirzayanov was not involved in the development of the poison and is not an expert on its symptoms.
“He has nothing to do with biochemistry, nothing. He is an ordinary chromatographer,” Rink told Moscow news agency RIA Novosti. “He’s had nothing to do with the creation of Novichok.”
According to Rink, Navalny would not be alive if he was genuinely poisoned by Novichok.
Rink was backed up by Vladimir Uglev, another scientist known to have been on the poison’s development team, who claimed that Mirzayanov “never took part in field tests.”
Navalny, a well-known opposition figure and investigative journalist, fell ill on August 20, on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. Following an emergency landing, he was immediately hospitalized in the Siberian city of Omsk. Two days later, after a request from his family and associates, Navalny was flown to Germany for treatment at Berlin’s Charité clinic. Over a week later, Berlin announced that the opposition figure was poisoned with a nerve agent from the ‘Novichok’ group. Contrary to German experts’ diagnoses, medical professionals in Omsk deny that any poison was found in his body.
On Saturday, a post on Navalny’s Instagram account explained that he is slowly recovering and is expected to get back to normal.
Mirzayanov has long been a vocal Kremlin opponent and Tatar activist. A member of the Presidium of the Milli Mejlis of the Tartar People in exile, he has prominently advocated for Tatarstan, a majority Muslim republic, to separate from Moscow. Back in 2008, he was declared “Prime Minister” of the region’s “government in exile”
New European migration policy could repeat the 2015 crisis
By Lucas Leiroz | September 21, 2020
Five years ago, German Chancellor Angela Merkel unilaterally allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa to enter European territory, causing the EU to enter one of the biggest crises in its history. The lack of a previous agreement with the other European governments has created great political instability on the continent that has never been overcome. However, when Berlin considered the number of foreigners in its territory “sufficient”, it simply closed its borders, keeping thousands of immigrants captive in other European countries waiting for a new destination. As a result, many European states were overcrowded with immigrants, while Germany rejoiced in cheap labor for its companies.
Now, history seems to repeat itself. Recently, the EU announced a new immigration and asylum policy, supposedly based on “solidarity” and humanitarian values, but which, once again, failed to reach a consensus within the organization’s countries. Interestingly, the new EU migration policy comes precisely from Germany, but this time the author of the project is Ursula von der Leyen, current President of the European Commission and a member of the Christian Democratic coalition that supports Angela Merkel.
Von der Leyen presented to the European Parliament a proposal to abolish the “Dublin-3”, a regulation according to which immigrants arriving in Europe are forced to register immediately in the country in which they are located. This norm had been causing a serious imbalance in the immigrant population in countries like Greece, Malta, Italy and Spain, but the big problem is that until now Von der Leyen and her supporters have not announced which mechanism will replace the current regulation, just stating that it will be a policy based on “governance and solidarity”, keeping obscurity until the final version of the project is presented.
The total disagreement between the members of the Union is leading to different solutions presented unilaterally by the members. The intention is simple: to survive, in the face of an uncertain future. Italy is working to establish strategies together with Libya to curb migratory flows. Greece is asking for EU support to rebuild the Lesbos camp. On the other hand, Budapest and Warsaw demonstrate total antipathy to humanitarianism as a basic principle of migratory policies. Hungary and Poland have already expressed officially that are not interested in receiving Muslim immigrants. Being culturally and ethnically homogeneous nations, these countries see with fear and terror the multiculturalism that increasingly penetrates Western Europe as a result of intense migratory flows.
In fact, the whole of Europe sees Van der Leyen’s plans with suspicion, simply because they see her as a representative of the interests of Angela Merkel, who is responsible for the 2015 migration crisis. Apparently, the abolition of Dublin-3 will mean nothing more than a mechanism to facilitate the distribution of immigrants across European territory, which will be imposed as a Union policy, disregarding the national interests of member states. Van der Leyen is simply continuing, five years later, what Merkel started in 2015: a policy of distributing cheap labor on European soil disguised by humanitarian principles.
As previously mentioned, Germany closed its borders when deemed necessary. But the “more migrations” speech remains the main agenda for Merkel and her representative in Brussels. So, what remains to be seen is whether Germany will also participate in the “solidarity distribution” of the immigrants currently located in southern European camps due to Dublin-3 or will it again restrict the entry of foreigners because it considers that there is “a sufficient amount” of them.
Apparently, Berlin created a major state of crisis and instability in Europe but managed to keep itself reasonably out of the worst consequences, because, unlike other countries, it closed its borders when it considered it necessary. Now, the Germans are trying to disperse a huge surplus of immigrants and refugees on European soil under a humanitarian flag and their dogma is supported unconditionally by NGOs, political parties and the business sector interested in precarious and low-cost foreign labor.
Apparently, there will be a scenario of uncontrolled migration, completely out of alignment with the national interests of any European state. This will generate a new movement of dissatisfaction in the bloc and could lead to new divisions and to the resurgence of radical nationalist tendencies that are already being born in several countries. For now, we can foresee new “exits” appearing in the coming years, or, worst case scenario, real waves of cultural and social conflicts – as it is already happening in France – in a large number of European countries.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
The Criminal Prosecution of Boeing Executives Should Begin
Mish Talk | September 18, 2020
Damning details of purposeful malfeasance by Boeing executives emerged in a Congressional investigation.
FAA, Boeing Blasted Over 737 MAX Failures
On Wednesday, the Transportation Committee Blasted FAA, Boeing Over 737 MAX Failures
The 238-page document, written by the majority staff of the House Transportation Committee, calls into question whether the plane maker or the Federal Aviation Administration has fully incorporated essential safety lessons, despite a global grounding of the MAX fleet since March 2019.
After an 18-month investigation, the report, released Wednesday, concludes that Boeing’s travails stemmed partly from a reluctance to admit mistakes and “point to a company culture that is in serious need of a safety reset.”
The report provides more specifics, in sometimes-blistering language, backing up preliminary findings the panel’s Democrats released six months ago, which laid out a pattern of mistakes and missed opportunities to correct them.
In one section, the Democrats’ report faults Boeing for what it calls “inconceivable and inexcusable” actions to withhold crucial information from airlines about one cockpit-warning system, related to but not part of MCAS, that didn’t operate as required on 80% of MAX jets. Other portions highlight instances when Boeing officials, acting in their capacity as designated FAA representatives, part of a widely used system of delegating oversight authority to company employees, failed to alert agency managers about various safety matters.
Boeing Purposely Hid Design Flaws
The Financial Times has an even more damning take in its report Boeing Hid Design Flaws in Max Jets from Pilots and Regulators.
Boeing concealed from regulators internal test data showing that if a pilot took longer than 10 seconds to recognise that the system had kicked in erroneously, the consequences would be “catastrophic”.
The report also detailed how an alert, which would have warned pilots of a potential problem with one of their anti-stall sensors, was not working on the vast majority of the Max fleet. It found that the company deliberately concealed this fact from both pilots and regulators as it continued to roll out the new aircraft around the world.
In Bed With the Regulators
Boeing’s defense is the FAA signed off on the reviews.
Lovely. Boeing coerced or bribed the FAA to sign off on the reviews now tries to hide behind the FAA.
Only One Way to Stop This
There is only one way to stop executive criminals like those at Boeing.
Charge them with manslaughter, convict them, send them to prison for life, then take all of their stock and options and hand the money out for restitution.
BLM’s War on the Deplorables
By Mike Whitney • Unz Review • September 19, 2020
Let’s assume that Black Lives Matter is not a “social justice” movement, but a corporate-sponsored public relations vehicle that’s being used to advance the agenda of elites? Is that too much of a stretch?
And let’s say that the massive protests that erupted across the country were not random or spontaneous events as some people seem to think, but part of a broader strategy to control the headlines by shifting the dominant “narrative” to race. The death of George Floyd fits perfectly with this “broader strategy”, as the incident took place 6 months before the general election, which (conveniently) gave the Democrats enough time to mount an effective attack on Donald Trump using an issue on which they feel he is particularly vulnerable. (Race)
Was it all a coincidence?
Maybe or maybe not. But it’s certainly worth investigating, after all, we’ve just endured 3 and a half years of relentless fabrications connected to the Russiagate scam, so the idea that this latest headline-grabbing fiasco might be, well, fake, is certainly within the realm of possibility.
So, let’s see if we can figure out “why” wealthy elites and their giant charitable foundations would choose to dump millions of dollars into an organization that claims to be Marxist. Could be that….
- They are genuinely committed to social justice for black people?
- They think “racist” cops are the Number 1 problem facing black people today?
- They think the massive protests are raising consciousness which will have a transformative effect on the country?
- They need a flashy social justice organization (BLM) to divert attention from widening inequality, spiraling unemployment, ballooning poverty, shrinking growth, and the savage restructuring of the economy that is creating a permanent underclass forced to scrape by at food banks, homeless shelters and tent cities that are sprouting up across the country but which are religiously ignored by our prostitute media?
If you chose Number 4, you guessed right. The protests, demonstrations and riots are all part of a spectacular “Product Launch”, the most impressive Madison Avenue-type extravaganza of all-time. BLM has exploded onto the scene just months before the election eliminating all of the 10 Top issues listed by Gallup that voters really care about, and skillfully shifting the public’s attention to race, race relations, social justice and cops. What an astonishing turnaround! In the old days we would have called this the “old switcheroo”, an art-form that has been perfected by BLM (and their Democrat handlers) who have turned the election on its head by burning down half the country, then claiming they are the victims. How’s that for twisted logic?
So, what can we say definitively about BLM? What does the group really believe and what is it trying to achieve? Having spent a fair amount of time on their website, I’m still puzzled. The website contains a number of emotive videos with pulsing background music and lively narration. But–like everything else with this shadowy group– there doesn’t seem to be much substance. The emphasis seems to be on appearances rather than policy, slogans rather than remedies, and catchy monikers (Black Lives Matter) rather than thoughtful recommendations for real change. So, where’s the beef? Who is Black Lives Matter and what do they want?
Are they a civil rights group in the tradition of Martin Luther King?
No.
Are they a black power group in the tradition of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers?
Nope.
Are they “Marxists” like they say?
Of course not. Have you ever heard them talk about “historical materialism”, “social relations”, “capitalist accumulation”, or any of the other concepts that are central to Marxist ideology? No. Heck, they don’t even talk about the glorious “revolution” that’s supposed to topple the capitalist system and pave the way to “socialist utopia”.
Why would anyone call themselves a Marxist when they never talk about revolution, wage-labor or class struggle? Why?
Because it’s a silly affectation that appeals to leftists, that’s why. It’s like wearing a beret to an art exhibit, it’s a meaningless display of ideological conformity. The Marxist label is a glitzy designation that is intended to mislead the public about who runs the group, how it is organized, what its leaders believe and what their true intentions are. The idea that a “trained Marxist” –who wholeheartedly believes that society is broken into “classes whose interests stand in irreconcilable opposition”– would create a group whose views are entirely shaped by race and race relations is patently absurd. It is a contradiction in terms. These are not Marxist leaders and this is not a “social justice” movement. So, what are they?
They’re an NGO, a non-governmental organization which provides services to its members and its patrons. Like many NGOs, they have won the public’s trust, which makes them a useful proxy for stakeholders who remain largely in the shadows. In short, BLM is corporate-funded, agenda-driven franchise performing the tasks that best promote the interests of its deep-pocket contributors. The grassroots social justice stuff is mostly baloney.
And who are the contributors? Check out this excerpt from an article at The Unz Review:
“In the wake of the racial unrest which followed Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore in 2015, George Soros’s Open Society Institute donated $650,000 to Black Lives Matter… According to one watchdog group, “In 2016 organizations in the Black Lives Matter movement received $33 million in grants from the Open Society Foundations, founded by Hungarian hedge fund manager George Soros in 1993, and the Center for American Progress, founded by former White House chief of staff and Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta in 2003.” According to the Washington Times, access to Soros money insured another $100 million from “a series of wealthy liberal foundations including The Ford Foundation, in addition to $33 million in grants from the Open Society Foundations, with additional grant-making from the Center for American Progress.” (“The Invisible Man at the Race Riots”, E Michael Jones, The Unz Review )
Is it safe to assume that the money flowing into BLM from these uber-Capitalists is not being provided to support a “Marxist” revolution?
Yes, that’s a fair assumption. Big donors don’t hand out millions of dollars to groups that want to overthrow capitalism and redistribute their wealth to the struggling proles. That’s NOT why they’re funding BLM. They’re funding BLM because it is an effective vehicle for achieving their political ambitions while hiding behind the fig leaf of “social justice”. That’s what’s really going on. BLM is just a mask behind which the elites operate.
And what do these donors get for their money?
They get a logistically-sophisticated, well-trained, fully-mobilized domestic insurgency which is capable of inflicting massive damage on cities or towns across the country at a moment’s notice. They also get an activist militia that uses military-type tactics while taking advantage of a highly-developed social media infrastructure which is second to none. Finally, they get an experienced band of street-smart hooligans capable of prosecuting a hybrid war on the state, the objective of which is to undermine confidence in government institutions, roll back critical civil liberties protections, plunge the country into a protracted, fratricidal war, replace the existing Constitutional Republic with a new authoritarian order and spread social unrest and mayhem from sea to shining sea. If you are a foreign oligarch who wants to transform America into an impoverished Third World Shithole, BLM is not a bad place to put your money.
Of course, according to Wikipedia, there are no “Financial transparency issues”. Take a look:
“Some observers have stated that the Black Lives Matter nonprofit does not adequately disclose what their financial contributions are spent on. Executives from Black Lives Matter have denied that it uses ActBlue to donate to the Democratic National Committee. In an AskReddit thread, Black Lives Matter indicated that their expenditures include “… civic engagement, expansion of chapters, Arts & Culture, organizing and digital advocacy resources and tools.” (Wikipedia)”
“Civic engagement”?!?
Is that like ‘burning down a furniture store in Kenosha’ or beating a 70 year-old Asian woman to death with a 2×4? The group needs to clarify.
The funding issue is not going to go away nor should it. The American people need to know who is providing the resources for the massive rampage that took place in over 700 cities across the country. As yet, not one US corporation has withheld donations pending an investigation of whether BLM was responsible for the damage or not. Why is that, do you think?
Is it because these foundations and plutocrats are getting exactly what they paid for?
Uh huh. What we know for certain, is that the riots were the worst in the nation’s history and that the insurance payouts already exceed $2 billion. Check it out from RT:
“The tidal wave of arson, vandalism, and other property crimes that swept across the nation in the aftermath of the Floyd killing left between $1 billion and $2 billion in damages, as measured by insurance claims paid out by the industry….
While that figure represents only the damage done between May 26 and June 8 – meaning the real figure taking into account the destruction in cities like Portland and Kenosha is likely much higher – it still represents the worst riot damage in insurance industry history, according to the report. Previously, only natural disasters like hurricanes and floods had resulted in over $1 billion in damage claims.” (“George Floyd riots cost insurance companies as much as $2 BILLION – more than any in HISTORY, industry claims“, RT)
We also know that BLM was at the center of the action despite the pathetic coverup by the Democrat-owned media. Here’s more background from an article at The Federalist:
“Contrary to corporate media narratives, up to 95 percent of this summer’s riots are linked to Black Lives Matter activism, according to data collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). The data also show that nearly 6 percent — or more than 1 in 20 — of U.S. protests between May 26 and Sept. 5 involved rioting, looting, and similar violence, including 47 fatalities….
Of the 633 incidents coded as riots, 88 percent are recorded as involving Black Lives Matter activists…. BLM activists were involved in 95 percent of the riots for which there is information about the perpetrators’ affiliation…
… the data shows just how widespread the summer BLM-linked rioting has been. It has not been limited merely to anarchist strongholds such as Portland, Oregon… but has stretched across both major and minor U.S. cities and included dozens of locales with no violent police incidents this summer. (“Study: Up To 95 Percent Of 2020 U.S. Riots Are Linked To Black Lives Matter“, The Federalist)
See what I mean? So, don’t be confused by the media’s obfuscation. These riots have BLM fingerprints all over them.
Fortunately, 50 House Republicans have asked Attorney General Barr to investigate this summer’s riots and determine where these groups are getting their money. In their letter to Barr they said:
“It is clear that these individuals are well-funded and supported by a national network of left-wing activists committed to perpetrating violence and furthering anarchy in our streets… As such, we urge you to immediately open an investigation to identify and prosecute all individuals and groups responsible for funding and organizing these terroristic acts that are wreaking havoc on our nation.” (“House Republicans Demand DOJ Investigate Organized Riots”, The Federalist)
It’s clear, that the Republican congressmen are referring to Antifa and other Black Bloc groups, but it probably won’t matter. Once the investigation begins, BLM’s finances will come under greater scrutiny and we’ll finally see the source of their funding and how it filters through the organization. I’m not at all convinced that BLM is the leaderless “non-hierarchical” organization they pretend to be. That’s another “leftist” fable. Large piles of money are not handed off to clerks in the back of the plant. They are given to trusted leaders who distribute the loot in a way that meets the requirements of the donors. BLM is not a charity, it’s a franchise, which means it’s probably run like every other top-down business.
The most damning critique of BLM appeared in an April, 2017 article at the World Socialist Web Site titled “Black Lives Matter cashes in on Black Capitalism”. The article is an excellent investigative piece that provides essential information for understanding how BLM is set-up, who provides the funding, how the group has aligned itself with elite organizations, and how it is being used to splinter the working class consistent with the Democrats “divide and conquer” political strategy. Here’s an extended excerpt from the piece which is “must read” material:
“Last summer, the Ford Foundation, one of the most powerful private foundations in the world, announced that it was organizing to channel $100 million to the Black Lives Movement over the next six years… In a statement of support, Ford called for the group to grow and prosper. “We want to nurture bold experiments and help the movement build the solid foundation that will enable it to flourish.”…
From the beginning, the “mothers of the movement” Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi… specifically opposed uniting blacks, whites and immigrants against the brutal class-war policies of the capitalist state. Instead, the group did its best to confine anti-police violence protests within the framework of the capitalist system and push a racialist and pro-capitalist agenda.
Even prior to 2013, however, all three of t he co-founders had developed close ties to corporations, foundations, academia and/or government-sponsored agencies. Tometi, in particular, was a well-known quantity in these circles. She had spoken at the UN … had been to the White House and met with Obama liaison Heather Foster, and addressed the Aspen Institute, a high-level think tank associated with the US military and intelligence community…
The real substance of the group’s policies is the unremitting injection of racial divisions and animosity into the movement of opposition to police violence. It aims to update the age-old tactic of divide and conquer, seeking to prevent the unity of the working class—black, white and immigrant—from challenging the capitalist system, the source of the deepening social and political oppression.
… The Ford Foundation—with its long history stretching from its CIA fronts in the 1940s and the promotion of black capitalism in Detroit in the aftermath of the 1967 riots—provided a financial anchor for BLM’s expansion.
The Ford Foundation enlisted other such “philanthro-capitalists”: the Hill-Snowden Foundation, Solidaire (Ford Foundation and Leah Hunt-Hendrix, granddaughter of the oil and gas tycoon H.L. Hunt), the NoVo Foundation (started by Warren Buffett’s son Peter and daughter-in-law Jennifer Buffett in 2006), the Association of Black Foundation Executives (Kellogg Foundation and JPMorgan Chase and its Black Organization for Leadership Development [BOLD]), the Neighborhood Funders Group–Funders for Justice (also funded by Ford), among others.
The media and the state
While spontaneous protests began to adopt the #BLM hashtag as opposition to police violence developed, it was the promotion by the bourgeois media that brought #BLM into national prominence…. As data accumulated by killedbypolice.net and other news media sources underscored the fact that police killings were directed against poor and working-class whites as well as inner-city blacks, the issues of social inequality, poverty and class began to take center stage. The more universal slogan “All Lives Matter” came into wide use.
BLM denounced the specter of growing class unity and decried “All Lives Matter” as illegitimate and even racist. …
BLM personnel meanwhile were being groomed for top-level official positions. Leading Black Lives Matter spokespersons made repeated trips to the White House in 2015 and 2016 to hold meetings with President Obama and his representatives. The Democratic Party was conferring official authority upon the group. …
Later in July, at a separate meeting with Obama, Mckesson and Packnett agreed that Packnett would serve as an official representative on Obama’s Task Force for 21st Century Policing…These remarkable meetings of top Black Lives Matter associates with the US president and his top police agencies demonstrated that the group had no objection to being incorporated into the state apparatus. Indeed, a “seat at the table” was their aim… BLM’s hostility to the working class and reactionary rhetoric play an ever more dangerous role in the current political climate, dovetailing with the extreme right wing and legitimizing racialism.
Their assessment of the election of Donald Trump demonized the white working class, a view also promoted by Hillary Clinton, the New York Times and other pro-Democratic Party media. Utterly hostile to the unification of the working class against the class-war policies of the new government, BLM sees the possibility of “opportunities” under the Trump administration. Vowing to train 300 black leaders to take positions on “school boards, city councils, neighborhood councils, and every branch of government,” the group looks to a further political future within the Democratic Party.”
(“Black Lives Matter cashes in on black capitalism”, World Socialist Web Site)
Does it sound like BLM is a cog in a much bigger corporate-political-elitist machine?
Yes, it does.
Does it sound like they are being used to fragment and suppress the emerging populist movement that supports Trump’s nationalism over the Democrat’s globalism?
Yes, again.
Then, what can we glean from this article in the WSWS ?
We can assume that BLM is largely an invention of ruling class elites to divert attention from the collapsing economy and the unprecedented human catastrophe that will follow shortly after the election. The plan involves shifting public attention to divisive racial issues that put working people at each other’s throats while concealing the vicious class war that is being prosecuted behind the shield of a fake social justice movement.
Bottom line: BLM is not the friend of working people, in fact, it is funded by their sworn enemies. They are the footsoldiers in the War on the Deplorables.
Featured Video
Billionaires and Officials Are Just Blatantly Ignoring the Will of the People
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Villains of Judea
Samuel Zemurray
The ruthless businessman who financed coups in Central America and shaped Israeli statehood
José Niño Unfiltered | May 7, 2026
Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
Few figures in American business history wielded power as ruthlessly or as secretly as Zemurray. Born Schmiel Zmurri on January 18, 1877, to a poor Jewish family in Imperial Russia, this teenage immigrant would rise from peddling rotting bananas off railroad cars in Alabama to become the controlling force behind the United Fruit Company, the most powerful agricultural corporation on earth. Along the way he overthrew governments, bribed presidents, hired mercenaries, and played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the creation of the State of Israel. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Hamas leaders say targeting families will fail to extract concessions
- Harrowing testimonies expose Israeli torture of Gaza hospital director
- UAE provides $100m for US-backed Gaza police force vetted by Shin Bet
- Britain quietly approves $11.85m arms licence to Israel despite Gaza ban
- Britain’s population replacement has passed the point of no return
- US-Iran ‘Calibrated Escalation’ Risks Sliding Into All-Out War – Expert
- Iran – End of the Drought & the Destruction of US Radar Installations in the Middle East
- Prediction: NATO’s Collapse & Nuclear War
- ‘Operation Fauxios’: Axios, Israeli spy, and $2 billion oil scam to prop up Trump
- Iran blasts US ceasefire violations, says Washington trapped in ‘self-created quagmire’
- If Americans Knew
- A Conservative’s View: Trump’s War on Iran Is Destroying America
- Israel’s war on the West Bank comes for Palestinian greenhouses
- New $270 million Israeli-only roads project in the West Bank is Netanyahu’s latest bid to impose de facto annexation
- Gaza investigation: A family’s fight to find their missing relatives
- MSF: Israel’s deliberate restriction of food and aid led to alarming malnutrition levels in Gaza
- Israel earmarks $270M for Israeli-only roads (that’s apartheid) – Daily Update
- Two Supreme Court Justices were secret agents who helped Israel cover up its attack on the USS Liberty
- Bari Weiss ‘Meddles’ With ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ Story on Palestine
- Zionists Are Gunning for Your Freedom of Speech
- The horrors in Gaza continue: Here are the facts
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Declining Trends In 1980-2023 Tropical Cyclone Frequency, Accumulated Energy
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
Aletho News 