Yes, it’s the same old pack of lies they roll out every year, trying to convince that global health is suffering because of climate change.
You only have to read the first paragraph to understand that this is a political document, not a serious scientific one.
And sure enough, they claim to have found “record-breaking threats” to health and even survival:
Each year is the same – they ignore real world data, which positively shows the opposite to be true, and instead concoct increasingly obscure and dubious ways to satisfy their agenda.
The idea, of course, that the world’s climate has changed so much since 2015 is itself absurd – but that does not stop the Lancet from saying it has!
They start by claiming that heat-related deaths have increased since the 1990s, but there is no mention of the fact that cold-related deaths have decreased by many more. They claim that heat exposure has reduced labour productivity, forgetting that, thanks to mechanisation, productivity has rocketed and workers are therefore less exposed to heat stress.
They claim that extreme precipitation has increased since 1960, but this is not derived from real world data, which is far too sparse to make such bold claims. Instead it is all based on computer modelling.
To be fair, the IPCC also claim that the number of heavy rainfall events has been increasing, but significantly also tell us that they can find no global trends in floods. In many places heavy rainfall is welcomed because it alleviates drought. Try telling the Indians that they had too much rainfall during this summer’s monsoon. As for those who suffered during the Dust Bowl years in the US, they would have given their right arm for a few storms.
IPCC AR6
It is the same with drought. Apparently 48% of the world’s landmass was affected by at least 1 month of extreme drought last year, up from 15% in the 1950s. But droughts build up over a period of months and even years, not one single month. It is plainly ridiculous to use such a metric – I wonder why they did?
And as with extreme precipitation, the Lancet study does not use actual rainfall data, but computer models which can be programmed to come up with any results you want, because the real world data they would need simply does not exist for most of the world.
But where we do have actual precipitation data, the IPCC only find that although some regions have seen an increase in droughts, while others have seen fewer:
And so it goes on. Apparently there are more sand storms, but again this is gleaned from computer models, a “state-of-the-art multimodel reanalysis ensemble”.
Malaria, we are told, is being spread by global warming, despite the fact that the number of new cases has been steadily dropping, with the exception of COVID affected 2020:
But the biggest joke of all must be this:
The mind boggles!
If they really were concerned about global health, there is plenty or incontrovertible, real world data which they could use, instead of their phoney models.
Around the world people live longer, child mortality is much lower, fewer live in extreme poverty or are undernourished. They live healthier lives, thanks to better access to clean water, medicines and healthcare. The children are better education, and technology is transforming people’s lives.
Thanks mainly to fossil fuels food output hits new records year after year. Meanwhile in contrast to the Lancet’s claims of desertification, the planet is greening because of increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere.
But the Lancet are not interested in the truth, nor for that matter do they appear to care about global health.
They only want to generate alarmist headlines, to push forward their Net Zero agenda.
Donald Trump recently announced his intention to sue CBS News for $10 billion, claiming that the network’s editing of Kamala Harris’s interview on 60 Minutes constituted “election interference.”
In a parallel move, House Republicans are contemplating an investigation into how the White House edited President Joe Biden’s controversial “garbage” comment. They argue this might violate the Presidential Records Act of 1978.
The GOP contends that both the White House and the media are engaged in efforts to portray Biden and Harris more favorably as Election Day approaches. This appears to be part of a larger trend of collaboration between the press and White House staff that has been ongoing for some time.
In mid-August, The National Interest lambasted the US mainstream media for what it referred to as Kamala Harris’s “rebranding.” The publication pointed out that Harris received “glamorous cover profiles” and positive coverage, despite her historically low approval ratings as vice president and her inability to address the border crisis after being appointed by Biden as “border czar.”
In mid-October, Fox News anchor Bret Baier confronted Harris with a series of challenging questions regarding migration, her economic agenda, and her vice-presidential record. This line of questioning led Harris’s aides to cut the interview short after less than 30 minutes.
Earlier, the White House repeatedly downplayed and sugar-coated Joe Biden’s “gaffes”, including the one concerning US “military defense” of Taiwan.
In July, Civic Media, a radio station in Milwaukee, acknowledged that it had made two edits to a July 3 recording of an interview with Biden that aired later, following a request from his campaign. This interview came on the heels of Biden’s poor performance in his June 27 debate against Trump.
The first edit concerned Biden’s claim that his administration included more Black officials than “all other presidents combined.”
The second edit removed his comments about Trump’s call for the death penalty for the Central Park Five teens, who were later exonerated. “I don’t know if they even called for their hanging or not, but he–but they said […] convicted of murder,” Biden asserted.
In early July, Andrea Lawful-Sanders, a host on Philadelphia’s WURD radio, conducted a separate interview with Biden and later admitted that she had asked four out of the eight questions that had been drafted for her by Biden’s aides. Michael LaRosa, a former press secretary for First Lady Jill Biden, commented to Axios that the practice of “pre-submitting questions” for interviewees has long been a strategy of the Biden team.
In February 2024, the White House pressured Fox News to revise its coverage of corruption allegations against President Biden, arguing that the claims were based on misleading data provided by FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who allegedly fabricated the accusations against the president. Fox News declined the request, citing broader corruption allegations put forth by House investigators concerning the Biden family.
Since the “Let’s Go, Brandon” incident, the media has been repeatedly accused of reframing news or rewriting words to benefit the President or the Biden-Harris Administration. This week, the White House Press Office and various media outlets like Politicoand MSNBC have been ridiculed for denying that President Joe Biden called Trump supporters “garbage.” It has created a weird dissonance as Democratic politicians denounced what the White House and many in the press denied was said. Now, the White House Press office is being criticized from a new quarter for the clean up on aisle three: the Director of White House Stenography, Amy Sands. The White House stenographers objected to the rewriting of the transcript by the Biden White House staff to suggest that the President was condemning Trump’s rhetoric, not his supporters.
The President’s attack on Trump supporters was nothing new. Leaders like Hillary Clinton called them “deplorables,” and Biden himself has described their views as a return of the confederacy and the rise of fascism. Democrats have called the movement a modern form of Nazism and an effort to destroy democracy, round up homosexuals, and create internment camps.
The problem was the timing. As Harris was denouncing Trump for name-calling and insisting that Democrats are bringing the country together (while condemning Trump as a modern version of Hitler), Biden was literally behind her in the White House, calling tens of millions of Trump supporters “garbage.”
Fox News reportedly obtained an email in which the supervisor sounded the alarm on the White House press office’s “breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.” Sands went on to say that
“if there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently. Our Stenography Office transcript — released to our distro, which includes the National Archives — is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff… After last night’s process, our team would like to reiterate that rush drafts/excerpts the Stenography Office sends to assist the Press Office are not intended for public distribution or as the final version of the transcript. Please avoid sharing rush drafts/excerpts, which are subject to review and might create confusion among staff, media, and the public while our Stenography Office completes a thorough review process.”
The White House was criticized for adding an apostrophe to the President’s comments to change the meaning of the key line.
After the statement, there was an immediate clean-up effort by Politico White House bureau chief and MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire, who was accused of changing the language by saying that “Biden, in a Zoom call with the organization Voto Latino, said ‘the only garbage’ was the ‘hatred’ of Trump supporters who said such things about American citizens.”
Lemire was widely ridiculed. For many, it sounded like another “Let’s Go Brandon” moment. He later turned to the apostrophe spin: “The full Biden quote from the Zoom tonight, which is being taken out of context.” Accompanying the text is a screenshot of a transcript that has Biden saying: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
The spin would have been more convincing if many of these pundits were not at the same time insisting that a line from a comedian delivered at a Trump event should be attributed to Trump (despite his later condemnation of any such view). It would also be more credible if Biden had not spent much of the last four years portraying the Trump movement as a new confederacy (before it was reframed as the new Third Reich).
When asked about the internal objections, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates only repeated the prior statement: “The President confirmed in his tweet on Tuesday evening that he was addressing the hateful rhetoric from the comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. That was reflected in the transcript.”
However, Fox noted that it remains “unclear … whether the transcript the White House cites is the one that was altered and released to the press or the final transcript that was sent to the National Archives.”
Other reporters now admit that Biden said what he said but describe it, as did CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell, as “a gaffe by President Biden where he, in his explanation, inadvertently called Trump supporters garbage.” The “inadvertent gaffe” ignores years of portraying Trump supporters as seeking to return the United States to the Jim Crowe period or pursuing a neo-Nazi future.
While various Democratic politicians have denounced Biden’s statements and Harris has said that she strongly disagrees with them, diehards like MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell mocked those who were critical as “some of the worst” or just ungrammatical journalists:
“To do so, they had to refuse to listen to the actual sentence Joe Biden spoke. They had to refuse to look at the written words of that sentence. They had to refuse to understand English grammar. They had to refuse to understand what a singular possessive is. They had to refuse to understand what apostrophe ‘s’ means. They had to refuse to remember what they learned in elementary school about the English language.”
It appears that the non-partisan, career stenographers who recorded the interview contemporaneously are also on that “worst” list of ungrammatical morons.
The mainstream media is now dismissing the entire matter as just the placement of an apostrophe. Yet, many of these same voices were supporting a full-fledged investigation into the transcript of the Ukraine call during the Trump Administration over “the use of ellipses.”
I was critical of that call and supported calls for an accurate transcript, particularly on such a weighty issue. However, back then, the accuracy of such transcripts was accepted as of paramount importance. Whether it is a matter of foreign or domestic policy (or an apostrophe or ellipses), the public should be confident on the accuracy of White House transcripts, as stressed by Sands in her internal objections to the White House Press Office.
The Economist reports that “Russia is slicing through Ukrainian defences” and Ukraine is subsequently “struggling to survive”.[1] Across the Western media, the public is prepared for defeat and painful concessions in future negotiations. The media is changing the narrative as reality can no longer be ignored. Russia’s coming victory has been obvious since at least the summer of 2023, yet this was ignored to keep the proxy war going.
We are witnessing an impressive demonstration of narrative control: For more than two years, the political-media elites have been chanting “Ukraine is winning” and denounced any dissent to their narrative as “Kremlin talking points” that aim to reduce support for the war. What was “Russian propaganda” yesterday is now suddenly the consensus of the collective media. Critical self-reflection is as absent as it was after the Russiagate reporting.
Similar narrative control was displayed when the media reassured the public for two decades that NATO was winning [in Afghanistan], before fleeing in a great rush with dramatic images of people falling off an airplane.
The media deceived the public by presenting the stagnant frontlines as evidence that Russia was not winning. However, in a war of attrition, the direction of the war is measured by attrition rates – the losses on each side. Territorial control comes after the adversary has been exhausted as territorial expansion is very costly in such high-intensity warfare with powerful defensive lines. The attrition rates have throughout the war been extremely unfavourable to Ukraine, and they continuously get worse. The current collapse of the Ukrainian frontlines was very predictable as the manpower and weaponry have been exhausted.
Why has the former narrative expired? The public could be misled by fake attrition rates, yet it is not possible to cover up territorial changes after the eventual breaking point. Furthermore, the proxy war was beneficial to NATO when the Russians and Ukrainians were bleeding each other without any significant territorial changes. Once the Ukrainians are exhausted and begin to lose strategic territory, it is no longer in the interest of NATO to continue the war.
Narrative Control: Weaponising Empathy
The political-media elites weaponised empathy to get public support for war and disdain for diplomacy. The Western public was convinced to support the proxy war against Russia by appealing to their empathy for the suffering of Ukrainians and the injustice of their loss of sovereignty. Yet, all appeals to empathy are always translated into support for continued warfare and dismissing diplomatic solutions.
Those who disagreed with the NATO’s mantra that “weapons are the way to peace” and instead suggested negotiations, were quickly dismissed as puppets of the Kremlin who did not care about Ukrainians. Support for continued fighting in a war that cannot be won has been the only acceptable expression of empathy.
For the postmodernists seeking to socially construct their own reality, great power rivalry is largely a battle of narratives. The weaponisation of empathy enabled the war narrative to become impervious to criticism. War is virtuous and diplomacy is treasonous as Ukraine was allegedly fighting Russia’s unprovoked war with the objective to subjugate the entire country. A strong moral framing convinced people to deceive and self-censor in support of the noble cause.
Even criticism of how Ukrainian civilians were dragged into cars by their government and sent to their deaths on the frontlines was portrayed as supporting “Kremlin talking points” as it undermined the NATO war narrative.
Reporting on high Ukrainian casualty rates threatened to undermine support for the war. Reporting on the failure of sanctions threatened to reduce public support for the sanctions. Reporting on the likely US destruction of Nord Stream threatened to create divisions within the miliary bloc. Reporting on the US and UK sabotage of the Minsk agreement and the Istanbul negotiations threatens the narrative of NATO merely attempting to “help” Ukraine. The public is offered the binary option of adhering either to the pro-Ukraine/NATO narrative or the pro-Russia narrative. Anyone challenging the narrative with inconvenient facts could thus be accused of supporting Moscow’s narrative. Reporting that Russia was winning was uncritically interpreted as taking Russia’s side.
There are ample facts and statements that demonstrate NATO has been fighting to the last Ukrainian to weaken a strategic rival. Yet, the strict narrative control entails that such evidence have not been permitted to be discussed.
The Objectives of a Proxy War: Bleeding the Adversary
The strict demand for loyalty to the narrative conceals unreported facts that US foreign policy is about restoring global primacy and not an altruistic commitment to liberal democratic values. The US considers Ukraine to be an important instrument to weaken Russia as a strategic rival.
RAND Corporation, a think tank funded by the US government and renowned for its close ties with the intelligence community, published a report in 2019 on how the US could bleed Russia by pulling it further into Ukraine. RAND recognised that the US could send more military equipment to Ukraine and threaten NATO expansion to provoke Russia to increase its involvement in Ukraine:
“Providing more U.S. military equipment and advice could lead Russia to increase its direct involvement in the conflict and the price it pays for it… While NATO’s requirement for unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the foreseeable future, Washington pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian resolve while leading Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a development”.[2]
However, the same RAND report recognised that the strategy of bleeding Russia had to be carefully “calibrated” as a full-scale war could result in Russia acquiring strategic territories, which is not in the interest of the US. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the strategy was similarly to keep the war going as long as there were not significant territorial changes.
In March 2022, Leon Panetta (former White House Chief of Staff, US Secretary of Defence, and CIA Director) acknowledged: “We are engaged in a conflict here, it’s a proxy war with Russia, whether we say so or not… The way you get leverage is by, frankly, going in and killing Russians”.[3] Even Zelensky recognised in March 2022 that some Western states wanted to use Ukraine as a proxy against Russia: “There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives”.[4]
US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin outlined the objectives in the Ukraine proxy war as weakening its strategic adversary:
“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine… So it [Russia] has already lost a lot of military capability. And a lot of its troops, quite frankly. And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability”.[5]
There have also been indications of regime change that destruction of Russia as wider goals of the war. Sources in the US and UK governments confirmed in March 2022 that the objective was for “the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin” as “the only end game now is the end of Putin regime”.[6] President Biden suggested that regime change was necessary in Russia: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power”. However, the White House later walked back Biden’s dangerous remarks.
The spokesperson of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, also made an explicit reference to regime change by arguing “the measures we’re introducing, that large parts of the world are introducing, are to bring down the Putin regime”. James Heappey, the UK Minister for the Armed Forces, similarly wrote in the Daily Telegraph :
“His failure must be complete; Ukrainian sovereignty must be restored, and the Russian people empowered to see how little he cares for them. In showing them that, Putin’s days as President will surely be numbered and so too will those of the kleptocratic elite that surround him. He’ll lose power and he won’t get to choose his successor”.[7]
Fighting to the Last Ukrainian
Chas Freeman, the former US Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs and Director for Chinese Affairs at the US State Department, criticised Washington’s decision to “fight to the last Ukrainian”.[8]
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham outlined the favourable arrangements the US had established with Ukraine: “I like the structural path we’re on here. As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person”.[9] The Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, cautioned against conflating idealism the hard reality of US objectives in the proxy war:
“President Zelenskyy is an inspiring leader. But the most basic reasons for continuing to help Ukraine degrade and defeat the Russian invaders are cold, hard, practical American interests. Helping equip our friends in Eastern Europe to win this war is also a direct investment in reducing Vladimir Putin’s future capabilities to menace America, threaten our allies, and contest our core interests… Finally, we all know that Ukraine’s fight to retake its territory is neither the beginning nor end of the West’s broader strategic competition with Putin’s Russia”.[10]
Senator Mitt Romney argued that arming Ukraine was “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money… a weakened Russia is a good thing”, and it comes at a relatively low cost as “we’re losing no lives in Ukraine”. Senator Richard Blumenthal similarly asserted: “we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment” because “for less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half… All without a single American service woman or man injured or lost”.[11] Congressman Dan Crenshaw agrees that “investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea”.[12]
Retired US General Keith Kellogg similarly argued in March 2023 that “if you can defeat a strategic adversary not using any US troops, you are at the acme of professionalism”. Kellogg further explained that using Ukrainians to fight Russia “takes a strategic adversary off the table” and thus enables the US to focus on its “primary adversary which is China”. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg also argued that defeating Russia and using Ukraine as a bulwark against Russia “will make it easier” for the US “to focus also on China… if Ukraine wins, then you will have the second biggest army in Europe, the Ukrainian army, battle-hardened, on our side, and we’ll have a weakened Russian army, and we have also now Europe really stepping up for defense spending”.[13]
In Search of a New Narrative
A new victory narrative is required as a NATO-backed Ukraine cannot realistically defeat Russia on the battlefield. The strongest narrative is obviously to claim that Russia has failed in its objective to annex all of Ukraine to recreate the Soviet Empire and thereafter conquer Europe. This narrative enables NATO to claim victory. After Ukraine’s disastrous counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, such a new narrative was indicated by David Ignatius in the Washington Post, where he argued the measurement of success is the weakening of Russia:
“Meanwhile, for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance”.[14]
Sean Bell, a former Royal Air Force Air Vice-Marshal and Ministry of Defence staffer, argued in September 2023 that the war had significantly degraded the Russian military to the point it ‘no longer poses a credible threat to Europe’. Bell therefore concluded that “the Western objective of this conflict has been achieved” and “The harsh reality is that Ukraine’s objectives are no longer aligned with their backers”.[15]
The Ukrainian proxy has been exhausted, which ends the proxy war unless NATO is prepared to go to war against Russia. As NATO is preparing to cut its losses, a new narrative is required. As the narrative changes, it will soon be permitted to call for negotiations as a display of empathy for the Ukrainians.
This article includes some excerpts from my book: “The Ukraine War and the Eurasian World Order”
[1] The Economist, ‘Ukraine is now struggling to survive, not to win’, The Economist, 29 October 2024.
[2] RAND, ‘Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground’, RAND Corporation, 24 April 2019, p.99.
[3] L. Panetta, ‘U.S. Is in a Proxy War With Russia: Panetta’, Bloomberg, 17 March 2022.
[4] The Economist. ‘Volodymyr Zelensky on why Ukraine must defeat Putin’ The Economist, 27 March 2022.
[5] G. Carbonaro, ‘U.S. Wants Russia ‘Weakened’ So It Can Never Invade Again’, Newsweek, 25 April 2022.
[6] N. Ferguson, ‘Putin Misunderstands History. So, Unfortunately, Does the U.S.’, Bloomberg, 22 March 2022.
[7] J. Heappey, ‘Ukrainians are fighting for their freedom, and Britain is doing everything to help them’, The Telegraph, 26 February 2022.
[8] A. Maté, ‘US fighting Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’: veteran US diplomat’, The Grayzone, 24 March 2022.
[9] A. Maté, ‘US, UK sabotaged peace deal because they ‘don’t care about Ukraine’: fmr. NATO adviser’, The Grayzone, 27 September 2022.
[10] M. McConnell, ‘McConnell on Zelenskyy Visit: Helping Ukraine Directly Serves Core American Interests’, Mitch McConnell official website, 21 December 2022.
[11] R. Blumenthal, ‘Zelenskyy doesn’t want or need our troops. But he deeply and desperately needs the tools to win’, CT Post, 29 August 2023.
[12] L. Lonas, ‘Crenshaw, Greene clash on Twitter: ‘Still going after that slot on Russia Today’’, The Hill, 11 May 2022.
[13] T. O’Conner, ‘So, if the United States is concerned about China and wants to pivot towards Asia, then you have to ensure that Putin doesn’t win in in Ukraine’, Newsweek, 21 September 2023.
[14] D. Ignatius, ‘The West feels gloomy about Ukraine. Here’s why it shouldn’t’, The Washington Post, 18 July 2023.
[15] S. Bell, ‘The West remains committed to Ukraine’s counteroffensive – but there’s scepticism over Zelenskyy’s ultimate objectives’, Sky News, 9 September 2023.
That being said, it’s not his only redeeming quality, but it’s by far the most important one. However, the lunatics in power aren’t going to give up that easily. Namely, after all else failed, they’re now desperately launching defamation attacks on Trump in hopes of turning the tables at the polls. In the two latest cases of the Trump derangement syndrome (TDS), we have yet another alleged “sexual assault”, as well as an attempt to destroy the growing support Trump enjoys among Latinos and African Americans. The Guardianjust published a story about Stacey Williams, a former model who claims that (for now) former president “touched her in an unwanted sexual way in 1993, after Epstein introduced them”. Williams didn’t say why she “suddenly” decided to publicly speak about the supposed “incident” only now after over 30 years of silence, although it’s quite clear who would benefit from such a story.
However, as the “sexual scandal” strategy was already tried several times, with little success, the mainstream propaganda machine wanted to make sure to simultaneously run several narratives aimed against Trump. This one isn’t new either, but it comes in a “new package”. Namely, the Atlantic, infamous neoliberal mouthpiece, is claiming that he supposedly tried to “walk back on a promise” to support the family of US soldier Vanessa Guillén who was killed in 2020. According to the report, Trump was allegedly “outraged when he learned that Guillén’s funeral, which included heightened security and closed streets, cost $60,000”. Quoting “anonymous sources”, the Atlantic reports that Trump said that “it doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican” and then “ordered then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to deny payment”. There’s just one “tiny” problem with these claims – none of it is true.
“I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics – hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members,” Guillén’s sister Mayra posted on X, condemning the Atlantic’s highly politicized reporting and adding: “President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today.”
Meadows himself also denied the claims made by the infamous warmongering mouthpiece, insisting that “any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillén or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false” and that “he was nothing but kind, gracious and wanted to make sure that the military and the US government did right by Vanessa Guillén and her family”. Meadows instructed his spokesperson Ben Williamson to demand the Atlantic remove the deliberate disinformation. However, the magazine only added that Meadows “didn’t hear Trump say it”. This was the second time that the Atlantic published misleading and/or outright false information on Trump. Back in September 2020, it claimed that he “refused to visit a veteran cemetery” because he allegedly “called fallen soldiers ‘suckers’ and ‘losers'”. This blatantly fake story was never retracted.
In a twisted interpretation and in line with the preestablished propaganda narrative, the Western media unanimously declared Israel’s aggression against Iran as “retaliation.”
From CNN to Fox News to Axios to the New York Times to the Washington Post – all major Western media outlets rallied behind the Tel Aviv regime as it added fuel to the already raging flames.
In the early hours of Saturday, the regime jets carried out a fresh act of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran, attacking several sites in Tehran, Khuzestan and Ilam provinces with missiles.
Although most of the missiles were intercepted and the military damage was minor, the regime’s move represented a serious escalation as four servicemen on Iranian soil were martyred in the attacks.
The motive for the attack was face-saving after a barrage of Iranian ballistic attacks pounded Israeli military and intelligence sites earlier this month that again laid bare the inefficacy of much-hyped Israeli air defense systems such as Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow.
Iran’s ‘Operation True Promise II’ was carried out as a response to the cowardly assassinations of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Iranian military commander Abbas Nilforoushan by the Israeli regime.
Iran’s military action was in full accordance with its inherent right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, and a direct response to the regime’s repeated acts of aggression, including the violation of Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Manipulative headlines used by major US television networks and newspapers
The same applied to ‘Operation True Promise I’ in April when Iran retaliated after the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate building in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
These facts, however, were deliberately disregarded by most of the Western media outlets while reporting on Saturday’s aggression against Iran, offering the audience a decontextualized interpretation of the Israeli regime as a victim “retaliating” against the Iranian attack.
Manipulative headlines
A cursory look at Western media, of which a sample of about 20 are selected here, it is noticeable that they all shaped the headline in the same suggestive way, using the same terminology.
The term “retaliation” has been used by all these outlets for the Israeli act of aggression against Iran, while also employing other terms such as “reprisal”, “response” and “payback,” while ignoring the full sequence of events that have shaped this region in the past year.
The list of media outlets that employed such terminology includes major US networks CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News, together covering over three-quarters of the American audience.
It also includes six of America’s most circulated newspapers, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and New York Post.
Among them, Fox News went the farthest in its pro-Zionist bias, stating in its headline that Israeli “retaliatory” strikes against Iran followed a “missile barrage targeting Israelis,” although only military targets were precisely targeted and there were no settler casualties.
The Washington Post stated that the Israeli attacks add to the “cycle of tit-for-tat strikes” between the two sides, without specifying who started that cycle by provocatively targeting the other side.
Most other media outlets in the story summary and the text itself treated the Iranian retaliatory ballistic attack as the “cause” and did not mention what preceded it.
In this way, media analysts say, the deception of the majority of the American public has been completely achieved and there has been no progress since the times when by similar propaganda methods they turned the majority of the population for military aggressions in the West Asia region.
Other US media that resorted to the same distortions by describing Israeli aggression as “retaliatory” are the news agency Associated Press (AP), National Public Radio (NPR), the state propaganda broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), news websites Al-Monitor and Axios, etc.
Among the international media, the same terminology in the headlines was also used by the French pan-European television network EuroNews, the newspaper Le Monde, the British television news channel Sky News, the Saudi television network Al Arabiya, Emirati news website The National, and of course, the Israeli media.
Congruently, the headline of the five mentioned major American television networks for the Iranian retaliatory attack from the beginning of the month was again almost uniform, “Iran launches missile attack on Israel,” without mentioning that it was retaliatory in nature.
Headlines in Western media seek to manufacture consent for Israeli terrorism
These identical headlines with unanimous manipulation of the context are by no means a coincidence, according to media analysts, but a reflection of centralized propaganda emanating from the top of the American regime and projected further onto the media and client states.
Such statements and the aforementioned media headlines are the result of unquestioningly following the official American narrative that the Israeli regime is a “victim” and that their aggressions on all surrounding countries are “the right of self-defense.”
Social media users took to X to call out the hypocrisy of Western media outlets.
“This is ridiculous pro-Israel propaganda in the media. Israel’s attack on Iran was not “retaliatory”; Iran’s response to Israel was retaliatory,” wrote journalist Ben Norton.
“Israel started this by first bombing Iran’s consulate in Syria, then launching an attack inside Tehran, then killing an IRGC general.”
Peter Daou, a political analyst, said these distortions are how the propaganda works.
“You’ll notice mainstream US media outlets using the word “retaliatory” in describing Israel’s attack on Iran. That’s how state propaganda works,” he wrote.
If bullshit was fungible, both Israel and Ukraine would be rolling in dough and not need another dime of foreign aid. The nonsense spilling out of Tel Aviv and Kiev is legendary and much of the Western public is slurping it up like a ravenous dog eating a bowl of rabbit stew.
Let’s start with Israel. The Zionists used more than 100 aircraft to send an estimated 200 air-launched ballistic missiles into Iran. Israeli aircraft did not dare to fly inside Iran. And what happened? Iran, with Russian help, shot down the majority of the Israeli missiles. Iran showed no signs of panic or anger in the aftermath of the attack — not what one would expect if Israel’s assault had been a smashing success.
Compare for yourself. The first video show’s Iran’s October 1 attack on Israel. The second video shows what happened in the skies over Tehran.
It is true that some of the Israeli missiles got through and killed four Iranian soldiers. Yet, check out this headline in today’s Jerusalem Post:
The Zionist spin patrol is working overtime to paint lipstick on their pig operation. The Zionists convinced themselves that Iran’s strike on October 1 was meaningless, notwithstanding clear video — and later satellite imagery — of damage from Iran’s missile barrage. Now, when confronted with evidence of Iranian air defense knocking Israeli missiles from the sky, they simply pretend it did not happen.
Here is a typical response from an ardent Zionist upon reports that Israel’s attack was underway:
The Israeli attack has begun and apparently they had no problem getting past the Iran air defenses. Early reports are about attacks hitting around Tehran which suggests they are going after command and control and possibly military leadership. Too early to know what is happening but by morning the real war will be underway. So far they have not hit the oil which is a surprise as that would finally sink Kamala which Netanyahu wants to do. The oil markets may think this is all OK and oil prices will remain around where they are but this is just chapter one. Before this is over the nukes and oil will get destroyed by Israel. The nukes will be next up as there is no time to lose for Israel to stop any chance of Iran fining some way to use a nuke against Israel.
So, what was Mr. Big Predictor’s reaction as dawn broke in Tehran?
It seems this was a staged attack with the intent to send a message and not to do grave damage. Arab nations were told ahead of time and passed that along to Tehran. We will need to wait a few hours to see what really happened, but it now seems clear this was not the all out attack Israel is capable of and it is instead a tit-for-tat strike to keep the US onside for now until Trump takes over. Israel needs Thaad and supplies of arms for now, so it may be that Netanyahu decided to play ball with DC to get what it needs and not use weapons it currently needs in Lebanon. The oil market will get this wrong and not realize what is yet to happen next time.
What sane folks need to understand is that no amount of evidence will shake the Zionists from their delusional fantasies. It is akin to those Americans who still insist that we could have won in Vietnam. We just didn’t try hard enough.
While Israel is doing its victory dance over its totally awesome, amazing, incredible air strike in Iran, Hezbollah, which was supposedly decapitated and rendered impotent, is stepping up its missile and rocket attacks in Israel. Here is a list of Hezbollah’s operations in the last 24-hours.
1- On the afternoon of Friday, October 25, 2024, a gathering of zionist forces in the “Shoumera” settlement was targeted (https://t.me/PalestineResist/65037) with a guided missile, resulting in confirmed casualties.
3- At 06:00, (https://t.me/PalestineResist/64867) a rocket barrage targeted a gathering of zionist forces around the town of Aita al-Shaab.
4- At 11:30, (https://t.me/PalestineResist/64868) as part of the Khaybar series of operations and in response to the attacks and massacres committed by the zionist enemy, and with the call “At your service, Nasrallah,” Islamic Resistance fighters launched an aerial attack with a squadron of attack drones on the “Tel Nof” airbase south of “Tel Aviv,” hitting their targets accurately.
5- At 12:15, (https://t.me/PalestineResist/64876) a rocket barrage targeted the “Mishar” base (the main intelligence headquarters for the northern region in Safad).
7- At 13:00, (https://t.me/PalestineResist/64954) as part of the Khaybar series of operations and in response to the zionist enemy’s attacks and massacres, and with the call “At your service, Nasrallah,” Islamic Resistance fighters launched a qualitative rocket barrage at zionist forces gathered at the “Ayelet” base.
8- At 13:23, (https://t.me/PalestineResist/64877) a rocket barrage targeted a gathering of zionist forces in the Al-Musharifa area in Ras Al-Naqoura.
20- At 18:00, (https://t.me/PalestineResist/64985) as part of the Khaybar series of operations and in response to the zionist enemy’s attacks and massacres, and with the call “At your service, Nasrallah,” Islamic Resistance fighters launched an aerial attack with a squadron of attack drones on the “Naoura” base east of Afula, hitting their targets accurately.
Speaking of barely hanging on, Ukrainian forces are retreating all along the 900-mile front.
Selidovo has fallen.An unexpected dash of the Russian Army and we are already at NOVOUKRAINKA.
Information is coming from the field that our troops, after a big breakthrough, were able to firmly establish themselves in Shakhtyorskoye and continue to push the enemy out of the village.
The prospects for a Shakhtar breakthrough are impressive.
As far as we understand, the goal is to reach Razliv and take up positions on the Volchya River with access to the rear of the enemy garrison in Kurakhovo.
Plus pressure from two flanking directions: on the AFU group in Bogoyavlenka, thus enabling their expedient removal, and on Velikaya Novosyolka – leveling the main “joy” of the counter oink last year.
By the way, the direction of the conscious flight of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to the Dnipropetrovsk region is also a so-so idea – the enemy has no sensible fortifications between Pavlograd and Pokrovsk. So the AFU will not be able to pull off the trick of drawing us to the prepared lines and then splitting up between Pavlograd and Konstantinovka.
Then there is the Ukrainian/CIA story claiming that North Korean troops are fighting on the front because Russia has lost so many men, it had to import new cannon fodder. I believe this story was ginned up by an increasingly desperate CIA in order to create a cover story for bringing South Korean pilots to Romania to fly F-16s. The “news” about the North Korean troops first appeared in the New York Times under David Sanger’s byline on October 8. Sanger has a long history of being a willing conduit for CIA “leaks.”
Now it has become clear why the North Korea issue is being actively stirred up during the SMO. South Korea is sending its soldiers and officers to fight in Ukraine. Let me remind you that South Korea is a passionate, evil six of the USA (slang for “lackey”- in Russia, 6 is the lowest numbered card in a deck of cards). They are not as smart as Japan, but not as dumb as the Ukraine. Most importantly, they are high-tech. . . .
Last week, the first 16 pilots from South Korea’s 19th Air Wing arrived at NATO’s Romanian air base near Mihail Kogalniceanu. Apparently, South Korea sent the first squadron of the air wing, the most prepared and combat-ready, to the war in full force. This means they are planning to throw them into battle immediately.
Currently, the F-16 fighters allocated to Ukraine are also in Romania – at the Fetești air base on the border with Moldova. As soon as the South Korean pilots go there, this will be an indicator of the imminent use of these aircraft in Ukraine. In addition to the F-16 pilots, pilots of South Korean T-50 combat training aircraft, which are used in the southern army as light attack aircraft, have arrived at the air base in the commune of Mikhail Kogalniceanu. It is assumed that these aircraft may be useful as hunters for “Geraniums” in the protection of the Odessa port.
Remains to be seen if the South Koreans will actually enter the fight. If they do, they will learn that Russia ain’t playing games and many of those pilots will likely die. I discussed this issue with Judge Napolitano. I am also posting a live podcast that Andrei Martyanov and I did with Nima as Israel’s attack was wrapping up Friday night my time.
Even Gallup admits the US is suffering from a crisis in confidence in their institutions, and the least trusted of all is “the media”.
For some reason, telling readers that they are selfish, small minded people who are screwing up the world isn’t resonating with the Rednecks. In 2020 40% of US Citizens thought the media was trustworthy, but now only 31% do, an all time record low. This is the same media that told us elections were secure, vaccines were safe and effective and Joe Biden was sharp as a tack right up until the day everyone discovered he had dementia.
The Pullitzer-prize-guys fell for every bureaucratic lie they could — Hunter Bidens laptop was Russian disinfo, ivermectin was horse-dewormer, and an unarmed mob with a horned hat and flags staged an insurrection against the largest military power in the world.
There’s a price to pay for lying and the media have barely begun to pay it.
Obviously they need to censor blogs and social media
The big question is why do 31% still trust the media?
Possibly their paypacket depends on believing the program. And welfare is so much easier to take with a dose of Media entitlement-sauce.
It’s a long term decline
The full graph shows just how different things used to be. Once upon a time, 70% of the people believed the media.
Imagine a tool so effective, with such a brand, that 70% of voters believed it. Such a tool would be a magnet for the rich and powerful to control for other purposes, and so it has come to pass…
The media are impartial professionals, of course, but for some reason the audience are biased:
Over half of Democrats like what they hear, but only 1 in 8 Republicans do.
Trump’s Fake News meme in 2016 hit a nerve with Republicans and it stuck. The hate campaign against him only proves his point to Republican voters.
Since the media are supposed to be the watchdogs, the graph is almost a proxy for the decline of The West.
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has grounds to hear a complaint against CBS for deceptively editing an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a Republican-appointed commissioner has said.
Earlier this month, the broadcaster aired two different answers by Harris to the same question, one in a preview and the other in the actual ‘60 Minutes’ show, prompting accusations of misleading editing to make the sitting vice-president sound more coherent than she actually was.
The Center for American Rights (CAR) filed a complaint to the FCC on Wednesday, accusing the network of “deliberate news distortion,” which would be an actionable offense under the regulator’s rules.
“What this claim is alleging is that an act of distortion took place,” Commissioner Nathan Simington told Fox News Digital on Friday. The FCC has “certainly contemplated the possibility of distortionary reporting taking place via splicing,” he explained, noting that in a previous proceeding the commissioners “gave the example of substituting a yes answer to one question or a no answer to an entirely different question.”
Simington reminded the audience that the FCC can’t regulate what can be said or written, given that the US has the First Amendment to the Constitution that protects freedom of speech and the press. However, CBS could still find itself in trouble for “abuse of public trust,” he said.
“I think everyone agrees that deliberately misleading the public is a bad idea,” the commissioner said, adding that if CBS did so, Americans should be upset, “because people go to the news in order to learn about things that they would never be able to learn about themselves. In other words, going to the news is an act of extending trust. Now, the thing about trust is that once it’s lost, it’s very difficult to regain.”
Simington is one of the two Republicans on the five-member FCC. He was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2020. Trump will face Harris in the November 5 election for the White House, after the Democrats pressured President Joe Biden to drop out of the race in July.
Trump accused ‘60 Minutes’ of perpetrating “the greatest fraud in broadcast history” by swapping Harris’ responses. FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, responded by accusing the former president of attacking free speech and democracy itself.
“The FCC does not and will not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage,” she said last week.
The CAR complaint specifically names WCBS-TV in New York, which is owned and operated by CBS Corporation, rather than an affiliate who could assert plausible deniability. While Simington would not speculate about a possible probe, he said the FCC might levy a fine or place conditions on the network’s license renewal, if CBS is found to have deliberately distorted the Harris interview.
A day before the CAR complaint was filed, House Speaker Mike Johnson accused CBS of selectively and deceptively editing his own interview. The Louisiana Republican offered proof by posting raw footage recorded by his office, alongside what actually aired, on X.
It appears that you have misquoted FM Lavrov on page 88 of your new book.
Lavrov’s full quote was: “Those who mechanically repeat the points made in Bucharest and insist that ‘third countries’ have no right to express their position on the issue of NATO enlargement are playing with fire. I am convinced that they cannot be unaware of this.” “Statement by Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, at the Twenty-Eighth Meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council,” December 2, 2021, https://osce.org/files/f/documents/a/c/506840.pdf.
Here is your version from page 88 of War, to compare to the original above: “‘Third countries’ — meaning, the United States — ‘have no right to express their position on the issue of NATO enlargement and are playing with fire,’ Lavrov warned, ‘I am convinced that they cannot be aware of this.’”
You omitted everything before “third countries,” and failed to put brackets around his capital T, to indicate it was not truly the beginning of the sentence, importantly losing the context that he was discussing others: “Those who… repeat and insist that,” at the beginning. You also added “— meaning, the United States —” after “third countries,” when Lavrov clearly meant Russia, and added the word “and” after “enlargement” to make it at least make sense grammatically, if in no other way. But you did not put brackets around the and as though you are sure that was what he meant to say. Perhaps because you knew that he did not?
The sentence as reproduced in your book makes no sense at all in English without the addition of the word “and.”
And it makes no sense whatsoever in context: You would have us accept that the Russian foreign minister believes and said out loud that the United States of America is a “third country” which has “no right” to an opinion on the size of its own military alliance, only he does, and that the US is “playing with fire” by having an opinion, rather than by disregarding Russia’s — really?
We are now a year into the Israel government’s military action devastating the people and infrastructure of Gaza and since expanded into escalating violence against countries including Lebanon and Iran. Yet, even today, United States Senate members are repeating flagrant lies produced in the war’s early days to trick Americans and others around the world into supporting Israel’s war.
On Monday, Republican US Senators introduced a resolution repeating some of these old lies that helped build support among Americans for Israel’s war — that “Hamas terrorists” killed “approximately 1,200 individuals” in their October 7, 2023 attack and that Hamas used “rape as a weapon of war.” Why repeat the lies? To support the resolution’s conclusions, including that the Senate wants to “ensure the forever survival of Israel.” Left unsaid in the resolution is that the way the US government continually acts to purportedly achieve this goal includes shoveling more and more money, weapons, and intelligence to Israel for Israel to use in whatever way it chooses. Indeed, the US government’s commitment seems unfazed no matter Israel’s level of barbarity and no matter how much Israel’s actions cause further geographic expansion of the war.
To the extent American politicians repeating these baseless claims regarding October 7 are doing so because they are ignorant about what happened, they would do well to watch a new documentary — Atrocity Inc. — featuring reporter Max Blumenthal. Blumenthal was there from the beginning calling no dice on the propaganda promoted by Israel and US politicians, along with American media, that has been used to gain public support for Israel’s aggressive actions. The widespread rape allegations are ridiculous fabrications and a significant portion of the death toll is from the willful killing of Israelis by agents of their own government, Blumenthal explains in the documentary. Blumenthal also debunks other outrageous lies, including claims related to the killing of, and even beheading of, babies on October 7.
Senators, and everyone else, can watch the documentary here.
Hezbollah Media Relations issued a statement to comment on reports published by some media outlets and attributed to the “group sources” regarding the fate of Hezbollah officials following the brutal raids on the southern suburb of Beirut.
The statement highlighted Agence France-Presse, which attributed its reports to senior Hezbollah sources.
“We would like to reiterate that Hezbollah does not have ‘sources’, and our position is reflected in an official statement issued by Hezbollah’s media relations.”
Some media outlets, especially a number of websites, have also published false news and worthless rumors regarding the organizational situation of a number of senior Hezbollah officials, according to Hezbollah statement.
This falls within the framework of the psychological warfare against the resistance supporters by those who have consecrated their pens, tongues and positions at the service of the Zionist occupation, the statement concluded.
The Israeli enemy went ahead with its brutal raids across Lebanon on Saturday, day 12 of the aggression, with air strikes on Beirut’s Dahiyeh.
By Irfan Chowdhury | Palestine Chronicle | July 18, 2020
… Israel has been carrying out the longest-running military occupation in modern history and the longest-running siege in modern history. These two facts alone render Israel unique in terms of the scope of its brutality and criminality.
There are other respects in which Israel stands out from other countries in its use of terror and violence; for example, it is one of the most aggressive countries in the world, having waged wars of aggression against Lebanon in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996 and 2006, and against Gaza in 2004, 2006, 2008/9, 2012 and 2014, killing huge numbers of civilians in the process (all while issuing threats and carrying out various covert attacks against Iran, which are all in violation of the UN Charter). … continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Aletho News 