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Study Buried For Four Years Shows Crime Lab DNA Testing Is Severely Flawed

By Tim Cushing – TechDirt – September 27, 2018

DNA is supposed to be the gold standard of evidence. Supposedly so distinct it would be impossible to convict the wrong person, yet DNA evidence has been given far more credit than it’s earned.

Part of the problem is that it’s indecipherable to laypeople. That has allowed crime lab technicians to testify to a level of certainty that’s not backed by the data. Another, much larger problem is the testing itself. It searches for DNA matches in samples covered with unrelated DNA. Contamination is all but assured. In one stunning example of DNA testing’s flaws, European law enforcement spent years chasing a nonexistent serial killer whose DNA was scattered across several crime scenes before coming to the realization the DNA officers kept finding belonged to the person packaging the testing swabs used by investigators.

The reputation of DNA testing remains mostly untainted, rose-tinted by the mental imagery of white-coated techs working in spotless labs to deliver justice, surrounded by all sorts of science stuff and high-powered computers. In reality, testing methods vary greatly from crime lab to crime lab, as do the standards for declaring a match. People lose their freedom thanks to inexact science and careless handling of samples. And it happens far more frequently than anyone involved in crime lab testing would like you to believe.

An op-ed about the failures of crime lab DNA testing at the New York Times — written by Boise State Professor of Biology Greg Hampikian — discusses this ongoing problem using some science of his own: a recently-released NIST study. (h/t Grits for Breakfast)

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology gave the same DNA mixture to about 105 American crime laboratories and three Canadian labs and asked them to compare it with DNA from three suspects from a mock bank robbery.

The first two suspects’ DNA was part of the mixture, and most labs correctly matched their DNA to the evidence. However, 74 labs wrongly said the sample included DNA evidence from the third suspect, an “innocent person” who should have been cleared of the hypothetical felony.

This is already a problem. People’s lives are literally on the line and crime lab testing is more likely to make the wrong call on evidence than the correct one. What’s truly disturbing is this study was completed in 2014, but the report was apparently buried by the scientists it implicated. As Dr. Hampikian states in his op-ed, the study’s results may still be unpublished if it weren’t for forensic scientists publicly complaining about the burial.

Four years have passed since the study’s completion and it appears no improvements have been made. The study notes testing protocols vary widely and very little effort is being made to improve error-prone procedures. In addition, the study [PDF] comes with a disclaimer meant to dissuade litigants from challenging DNA evidence by quoting the study’s findings.

The results described in this article provide only a brief snapshot of DNA mixture interpretation as practiced by participating laboratories in 2005 and 2013. Any overall performance assessment is limited to participating laboratories addressing specific questions with provided data based on their knowledge at the time. Given the adversarial nature of the legal system, and the possibility that some might attempt to misuse this article in legal arguments, we wish to emphasize that variation observed in DNA mixture interpretation cannot support any broad claims about “poor performance” across all laboratories involving all DNA mixtures examined in the past.

This certainly doesn’t raise the reader’s confidence in crime lab DNA testing. Instead, it gives the impression the four-year delay between completion and public release was for wagon-circling purposes as crime lab forensic scientists looked for ways to mute the impact of the study’s findings.

But there are also problems with the study itself. The authors of the study appear far too willing to cut crime labs slack for their failures. Rather than point out the problems originating from a lack of standardized processes, the study uses them to excuse the failures, as if unintentionally nailing the wrong person for the crime was somehow worthy of gold stars for effort. Here’s Hampikian’s take:

It is uncomfortable to read the study’s authors praising labs for their careful work when they get things right, but offering sophomoric excuses for them when they get things wrong. Scientists in crime labs need clear feedback to change entrenched, error-prone methods, and they should be strongly encouraged to re-examine old cases where such methods were used.

The study confirms much of what has been exposed earlier: DNA evidence may be based on hard science, but any small variable — including the inevitable tainting of DNA samples — has the ability to throw things off. And when it’s used as evidence in criminal trials, it has the potential to destroy lives. This study shows — at least indirectly — the labs handling DNA evidence aren’t taking it nearly as seriously as they should.

September 29, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

US Intel Officials Publicly Contradict Netanyahu’s UN Speech On ‘New’ Iran Atomic Facility

By Tyler Durden | ZeroHedge | September 28, 2018

Netanyahu’s Thursday UN General Assembly speech predictably included the familiar props and visuals condemning Iran over what the Israeli prime minister says is a continuing nuclear program it is hiding from the world’s view.

Like pretty much all prior Netanyahu speeches focusing on Iran, he held up a physical “evidence” to illustrate his points as he spoke — this time it was a “proof” that Iran has yet another secret warehouse holding nuclear-related material in the form of an aerial photograph of the Iranian capital marked with a red arrow pointing to a large building.

Though this was perhaps a step up from the cartoon bomb performance at the UNGA in 2012, the act is now a fixture and entirely predictable after many others spanning years, barely eliciting much media excitement compared to six years ago.

But unlike the last number of similar speeches, US intelligence officials have told Reuters that the claims are not true.

“I am disclosing for the first time that Iran has another secret facility in Tehran, a secret atomic warehouse for storing massive amounts of equipment and materiel from Iran’s secret nuclear program,” Netanyahu said as if breathlessly leading a breaking news press conference.

He said the site had previously held some 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of radioactive material that has since been moved in a curiously specific claim that would now seem very hard if not impossible to prove — given that… well it’s all been moved according to the claims. He called on the UN atomic agency to initiate immediate inspection with Geiger counters.

“Since we raided the atomic archive, they’ve been busy cleaning out the atomic warehouse. Just last month they removed 15 kilograms of radioactive material. You know what they did with it?” he said. “They took it out and they spread it around Tehran in an effort to hide the evidence.”

And on Twitter the Israeli prime minister began making a public appeal in parallel to his speech, asking people to “Google it” and offering the coordinates “35.5022 51.2997. It’s Iran’s secret nuclear warehouse in Tehran. Look for it and share it asking people to.”

Iranian officials were quick to seize upon his once again attempting to persuade through ample use of props and visuals, with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif mocking, “No arts & craft show will ever obfuscate that Israel is only regime in our region with a *secret* and *undeclared* nuclear weapons program – including an *actual atomic arsenal*. Time for Israel to fess up and open its illegal nuclear weapons program to international inspectors.”

And elsewhere foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said, “The world will only laugh loudly at this type of false, meaningless and unnecessary speech and false shows,” according to Fars news.

Considering this usual run of events anytime Netanyahu addresses the UN, the only surprise came later in the day, when Reuters cited US intelligence officials who immediately contradicted the content of his speech.

Reuters called the claims of the freshly revealed purported atomic facility “nothing new” to the Americans, according to an unnamed intelligence source:

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States is aware of the facility Netanyahu announced and described it as a ‘warehouse’ used to store ‘records and archives’ from Iran’s [civilian] nuclear program.

And further citing a second intelligence official, the report continued:

A second US intelligence official called Netanyahu’s comments ‘somewhat misleading. First, we have known about this facility for some time, and it’s full of file cabinets and paper, not aluminum tubes for centrifuges, and second, so far as anyone knows, there is nothing in it that would allow Iran to break out of the JCPOA any faster than it otherwise could.’

A separate Israeli media report also noted the contradiction between Netanyahu’s speech and US intelligence: “The claims gainsay the remarks made by Netanyahu, who said that the site, which sits a short distance from Shourabad, contained some 15 kg (33 pounds) of radioactive material that has since been moved.”

Thus it appears the media — including Israeli media — aren’t so lockstep in uncritically repeating Netanyahu’s talking points anymore.

Also on Thursday the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) made more claims connected with the UN speech, tweeting satellite images via its official account that claim Iran is establishing at least three missile factories inside Lebanon in partnership with Hezbollah, specifically in dense civilian neighborhoods of Beirut.

Israel has lately vowed to continue attacking Iranian forces stationed in Syria, and Thursday’s media information and propaganda blitz portend it is prepping for more rounds of strikes.

With Russia threatening response and now set to deliver the S-300 air defense system to Syria, it could be that Israel sets its sights on these purported Hezbollah “missile factories” on Lebanese soil.

September 28, 2018 Posted by | Deception | , , , , | Leave a comment

United against Precision

By Gilad Atzmon | September 28, 2018

Yesterday PM Netanyahu, speaking at the UN, insisted that Israel has found the ‘secret atomic warehouse’ where Iran is allegedly “storing massive amounts of equipment and materiel from Iran’s secret nuclear weapons programme.” Netanyahu failed to provide any evidence to support his claim, nor did he try to substantiate his comic assertion that Iranian government officials, in an attempt to dispose of 15kg of radioactive material, had spread the material around the streets of Tehran.

This is even funnier when you consider that the rest of the world knows exactly where Israel’s nukes factory is. The rest of the world also knows that it is actually Israel that doesn’t allow anyone into its WMD plant in Dimona, Rehovot or anywhere else.

Not for the first time, Netanyahu also brought some visual aids to illustrate his claims, seeming to believe that those who dwell outside of his ghetto are in desperate need of visual explanations.

The thing that surprised me the most was that Netanyahu was upset about the existence of Hezbollah’s underground precision missile production facilities in Beirut. I had thought that Israel would be delighted to find out that the Hezbollah are attempting at precision so they can hit military, logistic and strategic targets and avoid unnecessary killings of innocent civilians.

I guess that despite my intense efforts and my dedication to the study of the Jewish national project I still struggle to grasp the depth Netanyahu’s rationale.

September 28, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , | Leave a comment

A CIA lucky break? How the death of the ‘Smiling Pope’ helped Washington win the Cold War

By Neil Clark | RT | September 28, 2018

The sudden death of Pope John Paul I, exactly 40 years ago today, stunned the world. The ‘Smiling Pope’ had only served for 33 days. His demise and replacement by John Paul II marked an important turning point in the old Cold War.

The year 1978, as I argued in a previous op-ed, was the year today’s world was made.

There was nothing inevitable about the ascendancy of Reagan and Thatcher, the rise of groups like Al-Qaeda and IS, and the downfall of the Soviet Union. The neoliberal, neoconservative world order and its associated violence came about because of key events and decisions which took place 40 years ago. The Vatican was at the heart of these events.

The drama which unfolded there in the summer of 1978 would have been rejected as being too far-fetched if sent in as a film script. In a space of two and a half months, we had three different Popes. There was no great surprise when, on August 6, the first of them, Pope Paul VI, died after suffering a massive heart attack. The Supreme Pontiff, who had served since 1963, was 80 and had been in declining health. But the death of his much younger successor, John Paul I, a radical reformer who wanted to build a genuine People’s Church, has fuelled conspiracy theories to this day.

Cardinal Albino Luciani, the working-class son of a bricklayer (and staunch socialist), from a small town in northern Italy, was a Pope like no other. He refused a coronation and detested being carried on the sedia gestatoria – the Papal chair. He hated pomp and circumstance and pretentiousness. His speeches were down to earth and full of homely observations, with regular references to popular fiction. He possessed a gentle humor and always had a twinkle in his eye. He was by all accounts an incredibly sweet man.

But there was steel there, too. Luciani was determined to root out corruption, and to investigate the complex financial affairs of the Vatican’s own bank, and its connection to the scandal-hit Banco Ambrosiano.

While he had declared communism to be incompatible with Christianity, his father’s egalitarian ethos stayed with him. “The true treasures of the Church are the poor, the little ones to be helped not merely by occasional alms but in the way they can be promoted,” he once said. At a meeting with General Videla of Argentina, he made clear his abhorrence of fascism. “He talked particularly of his concern over ‘Los Desaparecidos’, people who had vanished off the face of Argentinian earth in their thousands. By the conclusion of the 15th minute audience the General began to wish that he had heeded the eleventh-hour attempts of Vatican officials to dissuade him coming to Rome,” noted David Yallop in his book ‘In God’s Name’.

One cleric, Father Busa, wrote of John Paul I: “His mind was as strong, as hard and as sharp as a diamond. That was where his real power was. He understood and had the ability to get to the centre of a problem. He could not be overwhelmed. When everyone was applauding the smiling Pope, I was waiting for him ‘tirare fuori le unghie’, to reveal his claws. He had tremendous power.”

But John Paul I never lived to exercise his “tremendous power.” He was found dead in his bed on the morning of September 28, 1978. The official story was that the ‘Smiling Pope’ had died from a heart attack. But it wasn’t long before questions were being asked. John Paul I was only 65 and had appeared to be in fine health. The fact that there was no post-mortem only added to the suspicions. “The public speculation that this death was not natural grew by the minute. Men and women were heard shouting at the inert form: Who has done this to you? Who has murdered you?” wrote David Yallop.

David Yallop revealed that on the day of his death, the Pope had discussed a reshuffle of Vatican staff with Secretary of State Cardinal Jean Villot, who was also to be replaced. Yallop claimed that the Pope had a list of a number of clerics who belonged to the Freemasons, membership of which was strictly prohibited by the Church. The most sinister of these Masonic lodges was the fiercely anti-communist Propaganda Due (P2), which held great influence in Italy at this time, being referred to as a “state within a state.” The murky world of P2, and its leaders’ links with organized crime, the Mafia and the CIA is discussed in ‘In God’s Name’.

Another writer, Lucien Gregoire, author of ‘Murder by the Grace of God’, points the finger of blame squarely at the CIA. He notes a seemingly strange coincidence, namely that on September 3, 1978, just 25 days before the Pope himself died, Metropolitan Nikodim, the visiting leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, who was later revealed to have been a KGB agent, fell dead at John Paul’s feet in the Vatican after sipping coffee. He was only 48. Gregoire says that the CIA dubbed John Paul I ‘the Bolshevik Pope’ and was keen to eliminate him before he presided over a conference the Puebla Conference in Mexico. “Had he lived another week, the United States would have been looking at a half a dozen mini-Cubas in its back yard,” he writes.

While there’s no shortage of suspects if you believe that John Paul I was murdered, it needs to be stressed that despite the contradictory statements made about the circumstances of his death, and the strange coincidences, no evidence has yet been produced to show that his death was not a natural one. What we can say though is that there will have been quite a few powerful and influential people in Italy and beyond who were relieved that the ‘Smiling Pope’ had such a short time in office.

His successor, the Polish Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, who took the name ‘John Paul II’ as a homage to his predecessor, made it clear that investigating the Vatican’s financial activities and uncovering Freemasons was not a priority. As a patriotic Pole, his appointment was manna from Heaven for anti-communist hawks in the US State Department. “The single fact of John Paul II’s election in 1978 changed everything. In Poland, everything began… Then the whole thing spread. He was in Chile and Pinochet was out. He was in Haiti and Duvalier was out. He was in the Philippines and Marcos was out,” said Joaquin Navarro-Valls, John Paul II’s press secretary.

The way that Pope John Paul II spoke out against what he regarded as communist repression, not only in his native Poland but across Eastern Europe and beyond, saw him being toasted by the neocon faction. It might not have been just words either, which helped undermine communist rule. There was a rumor that ‘God’s Banker’ Roberto Calvi, who in 1982 was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London, had sent $50mn to ‘Solidarity’ in Poland on behalf of the Pope.

In May 1981, John Paul II was shot and wounded by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca. Neocons in the US promoted the narrative that it was a communist plot (organized by Bulgaria), but Sofia denied involvement. In 1985, Agca’s confederate, Abdullah Catli, who was later killed in a car crash, testified that he had been approached by the West German BND spy organization, which promised him a large sum of money  “if he implicated the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB in the attempt on the Pope’s life.”

Martin Lee, writing in Consortium News, also notes that in 1990, “ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman disclosed that his colleagues, under pressure from CIA higher-ups, skewed their reports to try to lend credence to the contention that the Soviets were involved. ‘The CIA had no evidence linking the KGB to the plot,’ Goodman told the Senate Intelligence Committee.”

In 2011, a new book entitled ‘To Kill the Pope, the Truth about the Assassination Attempt on John Paul II’, which was based on 20 years of research, concluded that the CIA had indeed tried to frame Bulgaria, in order to discredit communism.

The great irony of course is that after the Berlin Wall came down, Pope John Paul II became a strong critic of the inhumane ‘greed is good’ model of capitalism which had replaced communism. In Latvia, he said capitalism was responsible for “grave social injustices” and acknowledged that Marxism contained “a kernel of truth.” He said that “the ideology of the market” made solidarity between people “difficult at best.” In Czechoslovakia, he warned against replacing communism with materialism and consumerism.

Having enlisted the assistance of the Vatican in helping to bring down ‘The Reds’, the neo-liberals and neo-cons then turned on the Church. The Church survived communism, but it hasn’t fared too well under consumerism. The Vatican is nowhere near as influential as it was in 1978. The US, meanwhile, unconstrained by a geopolitical counter-weight, threw its weight around the world after 1989, illegally invading and attacking a series of sovereign states.

One can only wonder how different things might have been if the ‘Smiling Pope’ had lived.

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. He has written for many newspapers and magazines in the UK and other countries including The Guardian, Morning Star, Daily and Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Spectator, The Week, and The American Conservative. He is a regular pundit on RT and has also appeared on BBC TV and radio, Sky News, Press TV and the Voice of Russia. He is the co-founder of the Campaign For Public Ownership @PublicOwnership. His award winning blog can be found at http://www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66

September 28, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

BBC Ignores Widely Publicized IPCC Problems

By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | September 26, 2018

The BBC recently issued a document telling its journalists how to approach climate stories. That document treats the findings of a UN entity known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as gospel.

The “best science on the issue,” it says, is expressed by the IPCC, “which drew on the expertise of a huge number of the world’s top scientists.”

Cripes. Out here in the real world, it’s 2018. But the last decade may as well not have happened as far as the BBC is concerned. In the bubble in which BBC bureaucrats reside it’s still 2007, the year Al Gore and the IPCC were each awarded half of the Nobel Peace Prize – not for their scientific prowess, but for their role in raising the alarm about climate change.

The world was more innocent back then. The InterAcademy Council (IAC) – an international collection of science entities – wouldn’t strike a committee to examine the IPCC’s internal workings until two years later.

The release of the IAC’s August 2010 report should have been a game changer. After all, the report identified “significant shortcomings in each major step of IPCC’s assessment process” (see the first paragraph of Chapter 2).

The New Scientist magazine considered the report so devastating it called for the resignation of the IPCC’s chairman in an article titled Time for Rajendra Pachauri to go.

The Financial Times similarly ran an editorial that urged Mr. Pachauri “to move on.”

Geoffrey Lean, then Britain’s longest-serving environmental correspondent, said the report revealed the IPCC to be an “amateurish, ramshackle operation.”

Louise Gray, environment correspondent for Telegraph, began her account with these words: “In a damning report out earlier this week…”

Over at the Daily Mail, writer Fiona Macrae called it a “scathing report.”

Environmental studies professor Roger Pielke Jr. thought the report “remarkably hard hitting” – and was quoted by the Associated Press saying the IPCC might be redeemed via this flavour of “tough love.”

A headline in the London Times declared: This discredited science body must be purged. Two others – in India and America – used the word “slams” when characterizing the IAC’s conclusions.

Precious few improvements have occurred since then. Being a UN bureaucracy, the IPCC is essentially a law unto itself, an entrenched culture with no meaningful oversight mechanisms.

But the BBC wouldn’t know that. Because rather than performing due diligence to determine how much progress has been made since 2010, the BBC chooses to behave as though the IAC report doesn’t exist. The IPCC’s fall from grace simply never happened.

September 28, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

‘US & UK Funded White Helmets Because They Served Their Interests’ – David Icke

Sputnik – September 27, 2018

The UK government has started resettling White Helmets activists and their families to the UK and the group is reportedly working closely with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. This comes amid reports that the Netherlands has decided to cut off funding for the group due to alleged links between members of the White Helmets and terrorist organizations.

Sputnik discussed London’s decision to resettle the White Helmets activists and their families in the UK with David Icke, a political commentator.

Sputnik: What can you say about the recent news that we’re getting, very contradicting news, on the one hand we have the Netherlands that has decided to cut funding to the White Helmets over their alleged links to terrorism, on the other hand, we have the UK welcoming members of the White Helmets and their families to the country, what are your thoughts on this?

David Icke: To understand the White Helmets is to understand that we live in an incredibly inverted world where everything is upside down. We have terrorists who are called moderate rebels, we have a United States government that says it fights terrorism when Washington is the global epicenter of state-sponsored terrorism, we have Silicon Valley giants saying they’re going to stop the influence of US elections, when through their censorship and their search engines they’re absolutely influencing the US elections.

At the same theme, the White Helmets are called brave volunteers and true modern day heroes when they are fundamentally connected to the proxy army of terrorists that have been ultimately controlled by the US and, of course, the UK. That’s why the UK was so happy to launch the so-called resettlement of the White Helmets when in fact it’s an evacuation of people who have been now pushed into this enclave of Idlib thanks to Syria and Russian intervention, and basically they have nowhere else to go. There are those that have been caught in other enclaves; there was an example recently, where the US, the UK and Israel combined to get them out through the Golan Heights.

It’s all gone pear-shaped, basically, because the drip, drip, drip of the alternative media and the alternative view has basically accumulatively combined to show the people of the world what the White Helmets really are, and so repatriating them is what you would expect. Also, of course, they want to keep control of what these people say, because there’s so much that these White Helmets, from their experience, could actually tell the world about what they were actually doing and who was really funding them. Of course from the UK angle, we should not forget that the White Helmets were actually created by a British army officer and mercenary called James Le Mesurier, who is very much involved in military intelligence, and as soon as he created them in Turkey in 2013, suddenly, just by coincidence, about $125 million of aid from the US, UK and other countries started heading the way of the White Helmets.

There is a quote by a UK admiral, a guy called Sir Philip Jones, he is Chief of Naval Staff; he wasn’t talking about the White Helmets but he captured (the essence of the situation) in one sentence, when he said about military techniques: “The hard punch of military power is often delivered inside the kid glove of humanitarian relief.” The White Helmets are an absolutely fundamental example of this, and this is why people like George Soros and his Open Society foundation NGOs, using humanitarian excuses, are politically manipulating country after country; it’s an old technique.

Sputnik: Do you think there’s a risk involved to UK citizens in the resettling of the White Helmets? Is there any chance that there could actually be people with very radical, dangerously radical sentiments?

David Icke: Well let’s put it this way, you have a situation where people are being repatriated to the UK and resettled, as they call it, who have been involved in the movie rescues exploiting children, pulling them from behind rubble, saving them from Assad’s bombs, when actually the child has no dust on them and they’re holding a pristine rag doll that is straight out of the packaging. You have the White Helmets who have faked chemical attacks to justify US missile attacks on Assad, so you’re not dealing with a rational people, you’re dealing with deeply disturbed people, you have only to go on the Internet to see footage of the White Helmets absolutely working together with ISIS at the time of people being shot and all the rest of it, so they’re very, very disturbed people.

But we should not forget this, the UK has an horrendous record, like the US, of sponsoring terrorism and using terrorists for its own ends. I mean the Prime Minister who is overseeing this White Helmets resettlement, Theresa May, was Home Secretary when people from UK-based Libyan families were allowed to move between Libya and the US without question when they were seeking, which was of course the plan of the UK, the US and NATO removal of Gaddafi. One of the people from those families involved in that was later blamed for the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, which killed 23 people and wounded 139, half of them children, so when you do mess with very disturbed people for your own ends, then there is a kickback potential, very much so.

Sputnik: The Netherlands has decided to cut the funding, to what extent do you think the true nature of the White Helmets has become known and to what part of the world? How many people, how many countries have actually acknowledged or understand their true nature?David Icke: I think the United States and the United Kingdom have understood the true nature of what they are from the start, that’s why they were funding them, because they were serving their interests in trying to unseat Assad in Syria, but I think those that were not in it from the start, they are beginning to see more and more that there’s a hoax going on here.

September 27, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

William of Ockham Lends His Razor to the Skripal Case

By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | September 26, 2018

Firstly, I’d like to thank the UK Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, who in a Tweet, which he subsequently deleted, wrote in response to the new Bellingcat report:

“The true identity of one of the Salisbury suspects has been revealed to be a Russian Colonel. I want to thank all the people who are working so tirelessly on this case.”

I like to think that Gavin was including all the contributors to this website, who are indeed working tirelessly to get to the truth of what really happened on 4th March and following, so many thanks for that Gavin. Why he subsequently deleted his Tweet I don’t know, but I suspect it may be that even he couldn’t quite square the prostitute-cavorting, cannabis-smoking, coin-shopping, Boshirov, who got lost and couldn’t find his way back to Salisbury train station after his alleged mission, with his being a Spetsnaz officer. Some things are too absurd even for Gavin, I guess.

Secondly, I was somewhat amused to see a commenter on the previous thread refer to Occam’s Razor in reference to the Salisbury case. Apparently “Occam says that Russia assassinates Russian traitors, ergo Russia attempted to murder the Skripals”. As a reminder, here is what Occam’s Razor is all about:

“Occam’s razor is the problem-solving principle that the simplest solution tends to be the right one. When presented with competing hypotheses to solve a problem, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions.”

Now, if Mr Skripal had dropped dead at his doorstep from symptoms consistent with exposure to the deadliest nerve agent on the planet, and if Petrov and Boshirov had actually been seen at the house, then there may have been a case for “Russia murdering Skripal with the world’s deadliest nerve agent” as being Occam’s most plausible explanation (although of course, there are plenty of others who might have done that and indeed could have done it). But of course this didn’t happen. Far from it.

So what would Occam actually have made of the Skripal case? Let’s see:

1. The official narrative says that Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned at the door handle of his house, yet it also says that they collapsed on a park bench, simultaneously, some 4 hours later.

Occam’s verdict: They were probably poisoned near the bench.

 

2. The official narrative says that the substance used to poisoned them was a military grade nerve agent, 5-8 times more toxic than VX, and of “high purity”. Yet not only did they not die on the spot, but they went into town, fed some ducks, had a meal and a drink, before collapsing on a bench, simultaneously, with symptoms far more in keeping with an incapacitant, such as Kokokol-1, for instance.

Occam’s Verdict: They were probably poisoned by an incapacitant, such as Kolokol-1, not a military grade nerve agent.

 

3. The table they ate at in Zizzis was subsequently taken away and incinerated, apparently because it was heavily contaminated with “Novichok”. Yet literally hundreds of people came into contact with items they touched before they got to the table, without becoming contaminated. This includes the three boys who received bread from Mr Skripal’s hands (one of whom ate a piece). It includes the hundreds of people who would have touched the ticket machine in Sainsbury’s car park before it was cordoned off on 12th March (eight days after the incident). It includes the dozens of people who touched the door handles at Zizzis and The Mill throughout the rest of 4th March and some of 5th March (yes, they touched more door handles than just the one at Chez Skripal that day). And let’s not forget the policemen who entered the house before the door handle theory was conjured up.

Occam’s Verdict: Their hands were not contaminated with military grade nerve agent when they touched these things.

 

4. Official statements for public consumption refer to the substance alleged to have poisoned the Skripals by the nebulous name “Novichok” (which “Novichok” is it Theresa?). Yet in its official statement to the High Court on 20-22nd March, Porton Down referred to the substance using the much broader phrase, “a nerve agent or related compound” and a “Novichok or related agent.” Why the inability or reluctance to be more specific in this official statement, despite apparent Government certainty?

Occam’s Verdict: The folks at Porton Down refused to identify the substance used on 4th March as one of the series A-230-A-234 because it wasn’t.

 

5. The Metropolitan Police have made their case, and yet their timelines are full of holes. For instance, they have given out incomplete timelines and then conspicuously failed to update them, such as the movements of the Skripals on the morning of 4th March. They have reversed the timeline from what all the early reports and witnesses testified to, that the Skripals visited Zizzis first then The Mill, and they have done so without explaining how all those witnesses could be so wrong. They have left crucial details out of their timelines, such as the duck feed at 13:45. They have been absurdly vague in other timelines, such as the claim that Mr Skripals car was seen in London Road, Churchill Way North, and Wilton Road, all at 9:15am. And they have altered timestamps on some images (i.e. the Gatwick entrance images), and added them to others (i.e. most of those of Boshirov and Petrov on 4th March).

Occam’s Verdict: There’s a massive cover up going on, and more than a little incompetence.

 

We could go on for a long time, but let’s leave it with one more:

It is claimed that Sergei Skripal was deliberately poisoned by Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, at the door handle of his house on 4th March. Mr Skripal has been out of hospital for over four months now. And yet he has not been seen in public, there have been no public statements from him, and he has not been in contact with his mother, who I understand recently turned 90.

Occam’s Verdict: Where is Sergei? He’s either dead, or he can’t be prevailed upon to make a statement backing up the official narrative, because he knows it isn’t true.

September 27, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Illegal US Nuclear Weapons Handouts

By John Laforge | CounterPunch | September 27, 2018

The US military practice of placing nuclear weapons in five other countries (no other nuclear power does this) is a legal and political embarrassment for US diplomacy. That’s why all the governments involved refuse to “confirm or deny” the practice of “nuclear sharing” or the locations of the B61 free-fall gravity bombs in question.

Expert analysts and observers agree that the United States currently deploys 150-to-180 of these nuclear weapons at bases in Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Turkey and Belgium. The authors of the January 2018 report “Building a Safe, Secure, and Credible NATO Nuclear Posture” take for granted the open secret that nuclear sharing is ongoing even though all six countries are signatory parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

In a paper for the journal Science for Democratic Action, German weapons expert Otfried Nassauer, director of Berlin’s Information Center for Transatlantic Security, concluded, “NATO’s program of ‘nuclear sharing’ with five European countries probably violates Articles I and II of the Treaty.”

Article I prohibits nuclear weapon states that are parties to the NPT from sharing their weapons. It says: “Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly….” Article II, the corollary commitment, states says: “Each non-nuclear weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly … or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices….”

What nuclear sharing means in practice

The five NATO countries currently hosting US H-bombs on their air bases are officially “non-nuclear weapons states.” But as Nassauer reports, “Under NATO nuclear sharing in times of war, the US would hand control of these nuclear weapons over to the non-nuclear weapon states’ pilots for use with aircraft from non-nuclear weapon states. Once the bomb is loaded aboard, once the correct Permissive Action Link code has been entered by the US soldiers guarding the weapons, and once the aircraft begins its mission, control over the respective weapon(s) has been transferred. That is the operational, technical part of what is called ‘nuclear sharing.’”

This flaunting of the NPT is what peace activists on both sides of the Atlantic refer to when calling the US bombs in Europe “illegal.” Nassauer notes, “The pilots for these aircraft are provided with training specific to use nuclear weapons. The air force units to which these pilots and aircraft belong have the capability to play a part in NATO nuclear planning, including assigning a target, selecting the yield of the warhead for the target, and planning a specific mission for the use of the bombs.”

“NATO nuclear sharing,” Nassauer writes, “was described in 1964 by one member of the US National Security Council … as meaning that ‘the non-nuclear NATO-partners in effect become nuclear powers in time of war.’ The concern is that, at the moment the aircraft loaded with the bomb is on the runway ready to start, the control of the weapon is turned over from the US, a nuclear weapon state, to non-nuclear weapon states. … To my understanding, this is in violation of the spirit if not the text of Articles I and II of the NPT.”

How Do the US and its Allies Explain their Lawlessness?

An undated, 1960s-era letter from then-US Secretary of State Rusk explained the US ‘interpretation’ of the NPT. The pretext for ignoring the treaty’s plain language, the Rusk letter “argues that the NPT does not specify what is allowed, but only what is forbidden. In this view, everything that is not forbidden by the NPT is allowed,” Nassaure explained.

In its most absurd section, Rusk simply denies the treaty’s obvious purpose and intent. “Since the treaty doesn’t explicitly talk about the deployment of nuclear warheads in countries that are non-nuclear weapon states,” Nassaure writes, “such deployments are considered legal under the NPT.”

It is so easy to show that the United States and its nuclear sharing partners are in violation of the NPT, the governments involved work hard pretending there is nothing to worry about, no lawbreaking underway, no reason to demand answers. This is why so many activists across Europe have become nonviolently disobedient at the air bases involved.

The transparent unlawfulness of NATO’s nuclear war planning is also the reason why prosecutors in Germany don’t dare bring serious charges against civil resisters; even those who have cut fences and occupied hot weapons bunkers in broad daylight. Some Air Force witness might testify at trial that US nuclear weapons are on base.

John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.

September 27, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Magnitsky affair: the confession of a hustled journalist

By Elias Hazou | The Duran | September 25, 2018

Before getting down to brass tacks, let me say that I loathe penning articles like this; loathe writing about myself or in the first person, because a reporter should report the news, not be the news. Yet I grudgingly make this exception because, ironically, it happens to be newsworthy. To cut to the chase, it concerns Anglo-American financier Bill Browder and the Sergei Magnitsky affair. I, like others in the news business I’d venture to guess, feel led astray by Browder.

This is no excuse. I didn’t do my due diligence, and take full responsibility for erroneous information printed under my name. For that, I apologize to readers. I refer to two articles of mine published in a Cypriot publication, dated December 25, 2015 and January 6, 2016.

Browder’s basic story, as he has told it time and again, goes like this: in June 2007, Russian police officers raided the Moscow offices of Browder’s firm Hermitage, confiscating company seals, certificates of incorporation, and computers.

Browder says the owners and directors of Hermitage-owned companies were subsequently changed, using these seized documents. Corrupt courts were used to create fake debts for these companies, which allowed for the taxes they had previously paid to the Russian Treasury to be refunded to what were now re-registered companies. The funds stolen from the Russian state were then laundered through banks and shell companies.

The scheme is said to have been planned earlier in Cyprus by Russian law enforcement and tax officials in cahoots with criminal elements. All this was supposedly discovered by Magnitsky, whom Browder had tasked with investigating what happened. When Magnitsky reported the fraud, some of the nefarious characters involved had him arrested and jailed. He refused to retract, and died while in pre-trial detention.

In my first article, I wrote: “Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian accountant, died in jail in 2009 after he exposed huge tax embezzlement…”

False. Contrary to the above story that has been rehashed countless times, Magnitsky did not expose any tax fraud, did not blow the whistle.

The interrogation reports show that Magnitsky had in fact been summoned by Russian authorities as a witness to an already ongoing investigation into Hermitage. Nor he did he accuse Russian investigators Karpov and/or Kuznetsov of committing the $230 million treasury fraud, as Browder claims.

Magnitsky did not disclose the theft. He first mentioned it in testimony in October 2008. But it had already been reported in the New York Times on July 24, 2008.

In reality, the whistleblower was a certain Rimma Starova. She worked for one of the implicated shell companies and, having read in the papers that authorities were investigating, went to police to give testimony in April 2008 – six months before Magnitsky spoke of the scam for the first time (see here and here).

Why, then, did I report that about Magnitsky? Because at the time my sole source for the story was Team Browder, who had reached out to the Cyprus Mail and with whom I communicated via email. I was provided with ‘information’, flow charts and so on. All looking very professional and compelling.

At the time of the first article, I knew next to nothing about the Magnitsky/Browder affair. I had to go through media reports to get the gist, and then get up to speed with Browder’s latest claims that a Cypriot law firm, which counted the Hermitage Fund among its clients, had just been ‘raided’ by Cypriot police.

The article had to be written and delivered on the same day. In retrospect I should have asked for more time – a lot more time – and Devil take the deadlines.

For the second article, I conversed briefly on the phone with the soft-spoken Browder himself, who handed down the gospel on the Magnitsky affair. Under the time constraints, and trusting that my sources could at least be relied upon for basic information which they presented as facts, I went along with it.

I was played. But let’s be clear: I let myself down too.

In the ensuing weeks and months, I didn’t follow up on the story as my gut told me something was wrong: villains and malign actors operating in a Wild West Russia, and at the centre of it all, a heroic Magnitsky who paid with his life – the kind of script that Hollywood execs would kill for.

Subsequently I mentally filed away the Browder story, while being aware it was in the news.

But the real red pill was a documentary by Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, which came to my attention a few weeks ago.

Titled ‘The Magnitsky Act – Behind The Scenes’, it does a magisterial job of depicting how the director initially took Browder’s story on faith, only to end up questioning everything.

The docudrama dissects, disassembles and dismantles Browder’s narrative, as Nekrasov – by no means a Putin apologist – delves deeper down into the rabbit hole.

The director had set out to make a poignant film about Magnitsky’s tragedy, but became increasingly troubled as the facts he uncovered didn’t stack up with Browder’s account, he claims.

The ‘aha’ moment arrives when Nekrasov appears to show solid proof that Magnitsky blew no whistle.

Not only that, but in his depositions – the first one dating to 2006, well before Hermitage’s offices were raided – Magnitsky did not accuse any police officers of being part of the ‘theft’ of Browder’s companies and the subsequent alleged $230m tax rebate fraud.

The point can’t be stressed enough, as this very claim is the lynchpin of Browder’s account. In his bestseller Red Notice, Browder alleges that Magnitsky was arrested because he exposed two corrupt police officers, and that he was jailed and tortured because he wouldn’t retract.

We are meant to take Browder’s word for it.

It gets worse for Nekrasov, as he goes on to discover that Magnitsky was no lawyer. He did not have a lawyer’s license. Rather, he was an accountant/auditor who worked for Moscow law firm Firestone Duncan.

Yet every chance he gets, Browder still refers to Magnitsky as ‘a lawyer’ or ‘my lawyer’.

The clincher comes late in the film, with footage from Browder’s April 15, 2015 deposition in a US federal court, in the Prevezon case. The case, brought by the US Justice Department at Browder’s instigation, targeted a Russian national who Browder said had received $1.9m of the $230m tax fraud.

In the deposition, Browder is asked if Magnitsky had a law degree in Russia. “I’m not aware that he did,” he replies.

The full deposition, some six hours long, is (still) available on Youtube. As penance for past transgressions, I watched it in its entirety. While refraining from using adjectives to describe it, I shall simply cite some examples and let readers decide on Browder’s credibility.

Browder seems to suffer an almost total memory blackout as a lawyer begins firing questions at him. He cannot recall, or does not know, where he or his team got the information concerning the alleged illicit transfer of funds from Hermitage-owned companies.

This is despite the fact that the now-famous Powerpoint presentations – hosted on so many ‘anti-corruption’ websites and recited by ‘human rights’ NGOs – were prepared by Browder’s own team.

Nor does he recall where, or how, he and his team obtained information on the amounts of the ‘stolen’ funds funnelled into companies. When it’s pointed out that in any case this information would be privileged – banking secrecy and so forth – Browder appears to be at a loss.

According to Team Browder, in 2007 the ‘Klyuev gang’ together with Russian interior ministry officials travelled to Cyprus, ostensibly to set up the tax rebate scam using shell companies.

But in his deposition, the Anglo-American businessman cannot remember, or does not know, how his team obtained the travel information of the conspirators.

He can’t explain how they acquired the flight records and dates, doesn’t have any documentation at hand, and isn’t aware if any such documentation exists.

Browder claims his ‘Justice for Magnitsky’ campaign, which among other things has led to US sanctions on Russian persons, is all about vindicating the young man. Were that true, one would have expected Browder to go out of his way to aid Magnitsky in his hour of need.

The deposition does not bear that out.

Lawyer: “Did anyone coordinate on your behalf with Firestone Duncan about the defence of Mr Magnitsky?”

Browder: “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

Going back to Nekrasov’s film, a standout segment is where the filmmaker looks at a briefing document prepared by Team Browder concerning the June 2007 raid by Russian police officers. In it, Browder claims the cops beat up Victor Poryugin, a lawyer with the firm.

The lawyer was then “hospitalized for two weeks,” according to Browder’s presentation, which includes a photo of the beaten-up lawyer. Except, it turns out the man pictured is not Poryugin at all. Rather, the photo is actually of Jim Zwerg, an American human rights activist beaten up during a street protest in 1961 (see here and here).

Nekrasov sits down with German politician Marieluise Beck. She was a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Pace), which compiled a report that made Magnitsky a cause celebre.

You can see Beck’s jaw drop when Nekrasov informs her that Magnitsky did not report the fraud, that he was in fact under investigation.

It transpires that Pace, as well as human rights activists, were getting their information from one source – Browder. Later, the Council of Europe’s Andreas Gross admits on camera that their entire investigation into the Magnitsky affair was based on Browder’s info and that they relied on translations of Russian documents provided by Browder’s team because, as Gross puts it, “I don’t speak Russian myself.”

That hit home – I, too, had been fed information from a single source, not bothering to verify it. I, too, initially went with the assumption that because Russia is said to be a land of endemic corruption, then Browder’s story sounded plausible if not entirely credible.

For me, the takeaway is this gem from Nekrasov’s narration: “I was regularly overcome by deep unease. Was I defending a system that killed Magnitsky, even if I’d found no proof that he’d been murdered?”

Bull’s-eye. Nekrasov has arrived at a crossroads, the moment where one’s mettle is tested: do I pursue the facts wherever they may lead, even if they take me out of my comfort zone? What is more important: the truth, or the narrative? Nekrasov chose the former. As do I.

Like with everything else, specific allegations must be assessed independently of one’s general opinion of the Russian state. They are two distinct issues. Say Browder never existed; does that make Russia a paradise?

I suspect Team Browder may scrub me from their mailing list; one can live with that.

September 26, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Pro-Israeli Terror Threat at Labour Conference Covered Up By MSM

By Craig Murray | September 26, 2018

A fringe venue at the Labour conference was evacuated last night after the screening of a film about my friend Jackie Walker was cancelled by a terrorist bomb threat. Jackie, a black Jewish prominent critic of Israel, is currently among those suspended from the Labour Party over accusations of anti-semitism which are, in her case, nonsense.

What is astonishing is that the state and corporate media, which has made huge play around the entirely fake news of threats to pro-Israel MP Luciana Berger leading to her being given a police escort to protect her from ordinary delegates, has completely ignored this actual and disruptive pro-Israeli threat – except where they have reported the bomb threat, using the big lie technique, as a further example of anti-semitism in the Labour Party!

The Guardian’s report in this respect is simply unbelievable. Headed “Jewish event at Labour conference abandoned after bomb scare” it fails to note that Jewish Voice for Labour is a pro-Corbyn organisation and the film, “The Political Lynching of Jackie Walker”, exposes the evil machinations of the organised witch-hunt against Palestinian activists orchestrated by Labour Friends of Israel and the Israeli Embassy. It is not that the Guardian does not know this – it has carried several articles calling for Jackie Walker’s expulsion.

The attempt to spin this as the precise opposite of what it was continues on social media. This chap is followed on Twitter by the Foreign Office.

I want you to undertake a little mental exercise for me, and try it seriously. Just imagine the coverage on Newsnight, the Today Programme and Channel 4 News if a Labour Friends of Israel meeting had been cancelled by a bomb scare. Imagine through the experience of seeing or listening to the coverage, on each of those in turn, of a bomb threat to Labour Friends of Israel.

Done that?

Well the bomb threat to the pro-Palestinian rights Jewish Voice for Labour has so far received zero coverage on those programmes.

September 26, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

BBC’s climate change ‘facts’ are fiction

By Harry Wilkinson – The Conservative Woman – September 22, 2018

In order to avoid giving ‘false balance’ to the climate alarmists at the BBC, I thought it would be a good idea to fact-check their new internal guidance on climate change. This is their totalitarian memorandum aimed at stamping out free scientific discourse, on the basis that certain facts are established beyond dispute.

The problem is that these aren’t, and the BBC is guilty of repeatedly failing to describe accurately the nuances of climate science and the degree to which certain claims are disputed.

The crucial paragraph reads:

‘Most climate scientists regard a rise of 2 degrees C as the point when global warming could become irreversible and the effects dangerous. At current rates, we are on track for a rise of more than 3-4 degrees C by the end of the century.’

There are so many things wrong with this short statement.

That global warming can be somehow ‘irreversible’ is pure propaganda; the climate has always been changing and it always will. The briefing later describes the idea of catastrophic tipping points as a ‘common misconception’, so they have comically failed their own test right at the start.

A temperature rise of more than two degrees is not inherently dangerous either. The majority of economic impact studies put the cost of climate change by the end of the century at between 1.5% and 3% of world GDP, but these studies often make the inaccurate assumption that either no or little adaptation will take place.

In contrast, even the IPCC has admitted (p.15) that the cost of reducing emissions (‘mitigation’) to meet the 2oC target may be up to 4% of world GDP in 2030, 6% in 2050 and 11% in 2100.

These numbers do not incorporate the benefits of reducing our emissions, which are primarily the avoided costs of climate change. But given that a certain amount of warming is already ‘baked in’, it looks almost certain that this ‘mitigation’ will actually be far more expensive than not doing anything. If warming actually turns out to have a positive effect, the gamble will have failed even more spectacularly.

The IPCC has openly admitted that its cost forecasts come with incredibly optimistic assumptions that immediate mitigation takes place in all countries, that there is a single global carbon price, and that there are ‘no additional limitations on technology relative to the models’ default technology assumptions’. With no carbon capture and storage (CCS), they predict the total mitigation cost rises by a staggering 138%. The bad news is that CCS is currently failing to deliver, and few now expect it to play a significant role in reducing emissions.

Given the record of economic forecasts, all these predictions should be taken with a pinch of salt, but on the available evidence it appears we are sleepwalking into spending trillions of pounds to achieve only a negligible reduction in global temperatures.

The father of the two-degree target, veteran climate alarmist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, has admitted the number is entirely fabricated: ‘Two degrees is not a magical limit; it’s clearly a political goal’.  He nonetheless celebrates its cynical effectiveness at motivating international political action.

Other prominent climate scientists, such as Hans von Storch, have been much more critical of this approach. Storch reflects on how scientists have become political sermonisers in a way which damages science as a whole: ‘Unfortunately, some of my colleagues behave like pastors . . . it’s certainly no coincidence that all the mistakes that became public always tended in the direction of exaggeration and alarmism.’

The statement that we are on track for ‘more than 3-4 degrees’ is an even more blatant distortion of the scientific evidence. Earlier this year, Peter Cox of the University of Exeter announced the results of his latest study which ruled out higher levels of warming. He concluded that ‘climate sensitivity’ would be in the narrower range of 2.2-3.4oC, thus ruling out warming of 4 or 5 degrees by 2100. His voice adds to a growing consensus that climate sensitivity will be lower than previously estimated. Does the BBC now consider him a climate denier too? 

Quite surreally, the document also describes the statement that ‘climate change has happened before’ as a ‘common misconception’. How much longer before the BBC renames itself The Ministry of Truth?

Estimating the current and future impacts of climate change is a complex and contested enterprise, but the BBC would rather you didn’t know. ‘The science is settled’ they say, so move on. This climate memorandum is nothing less than propaganda presented as fact by controller Fran. There is a critical debate to be had, so inquisitive people had better look elsewhere.

September 25, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

The BBC’s Naive View of the UN’s Climate Machine

Big Picture News | September 24, 2018

SPOTLIGHT: Bureaucracies put their trust in other bureaucracies.

BIG PICTURE: A few weeks back, Joanne Nova perfectly captured the position of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) regarding the scandalous UN entity known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

A recent internal document gives BBC journalists advice about how to report on climate matters. In Nova’s words, it declares that the “IPCC is God, can not be wrong.”

The document’s exact words:

What’s the BBC’s position?

  • Man-made climate change exists: If the science proves it we should report it. The BBC accepts that the best science on the issue is the IPCC’s position, set out above. [italics added]

Well, here’s the problem. The IPCC does not do science. The IPCC is a bureaucracy whose purpose is to write reports.

The primary function of those reports is to pave the way for UN climate treaties. A set of facts need to be agreed-upon by all parties in advance, so that negotiators can start from the same page.

IPCC reports get written by government-appointed scientists, according to predetermined guidelines. Portions of IPCC reports then get re-written by politicians, bureaucrats, and diplomats (in effect, this is an unofficial round of negotiating, in advance of the official negotiations that take place later).

International treaties are political instruments. The IPCC exists to make climate treaties possible. The ‘science’ involved has therefore been selected and massaged to serve a political purpose.

Let’s ditch the naiveté. How likely is it that experts appointed by governments that have spent billions fighting climate change, would conclude that man-made climate change doesn’t exist?

TOP TAKEAWAY: Journalists are part of a system of checks and balances that help keep governments and large organizations honest. The BBC is a huge bureaucracy. The geniuses running it have declared another bureaucracy – the UN’s IPCC – a font of scientific truth. How pathetic.

LINKS:

September 25, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

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