“Fake News” from NBC on US-Russian talks about an ‘off ramp’ to the Ukraine war in April 2023 that never took place
By Gilbert Doctorow – July 6, 2023
News portals in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe were quick to pick up a feature item today on NBCNews.com entitled “Former U.S. officials have held secret Ukraine talks with prominent Russians.” The subtitle goes on: “The aim of the discussions is to lay the groundwork for potential negotiations to end the war, people briefed on the talks tell NBC News.”
The very notion that such talks could have taken place elicited disparaging comments from the usual suspects who would not miss a chance to be in the public eye: former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, and Matt Dimmick, a former Russia and Eastern Europe director at the National Security Council. Said comments form part of the NBC report.
This news item also surfaced on Russian state television in the early evening edition of Sixty Minutes under the heading “Fake News.” Their panel discussion opened with an announcement from the RF Ministry of Foreign Affairs, responding to what is said in the second paragraph in the NBC article, which reads:
“In a high-level example of the back-channel diplomacy taking place behind the scenes, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with members of the group for several hours in April in New York, four former officials and two current officials told NBC News.”
Per Lavrov, no such meeting ever took place and there are no back channels.
And then the Sixty Minutes panel was off to the races, as we say.
They listed the former U.S. officials who were said to have taken part in the meeting – Charles Kupchan, Richard Haass, and Thomas Graham, all members of the Foreign Relations Council and, as they stressed with truculent humor, all are decidedly very former. Their heyday was decades ago and today none of them holds a rank that would justify Lavrov’s spending any time with them, let alone discussing the basic principles for some negotiated settlement of the Russia-Ukraine war. They are just a bunch of old academics who get together to reminisce about the arms control negotiations of the distant past and similar issues long ago laid to rest.
After breaking its fake news story, NBC spent the greater part of its article talking about how back channel communications, dubbed Track Two talks, function and what utility they have in general.
To be sure, backchannels have served a constructive purpose in U.S. – Russian relations in the not too distant past, though I doubt that journalist Josh Lederman has a clue about this. Thomas Graham’s former mentor and associate, Henry Kissinger, had been an important initiator of such an outreach back in the summer-early autumn of 2008 when he, too was a former, not active political actor. But then Kissinger was and is Kissinger, not some flunky. That was in the time just after the Russia-Georgia war, when relations between the two countries were very tense, almost as seriously as today. And, most importantly, at the time Kissinger’s was not the only backchannel operating. In parallel there was another channel headed by a couple of members of the U.S. Senate. The end result was a paper on steps to improve bilateral relations that became known as the ‘re-set’ in the early days of the first Obama administration. Whether that initiative was creative enough to go beyond atmospherics and set the groundwork for a real change in the relationship is a different matter. The answer to that, of course, is ‘no.’
The likes of Kupchan, Haass and Graham cannot be compared to the operators of the 2008 backchannel and it was no wonder that the Sixty Minutes panel thumbed its noses at them. I, for one, have in the past taken the measure of two of these three as thinkers and found that Haass and Kupchan are muddle headed and their writings are mired in contradictions. Supposedly what they write and publish in the house organ Foreign Affairs magazine is peer vetted, but it helps not a whit. When everyone is aligned and no one disagrees, when there are no debates, only back slappers, then the quality of thinking sinks.
See my critique of Kupchan’s article ‘Nato’s final frontier: Why Russia should join the Atlantic Alliance” in Stepping out of Line (2012) pp. 199 -208 and my piece “Richard Haass: the Absent Voice at Valdai-Sochi” in Does Russia Have a Future (2015) pp 259-262
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
Myth of Big Oil’s Funding of Climate Scepticism vs Reality of Big Green’s Billions Driving Climate Alarmism
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JUNE 15, 2023
In 2019 the climate activist and UCL Geography Professor Mark Maslin wrote that oil companies were spending $200 million a year promoting something he termed “climate change denial”. The ‘dark forces’ claim has been in regular use ever since. The Guardian recently reported Big Oil was “wringing humanity dry”, noting once again the annual $200m spent on climate change lobbying. Great story. Shame there is no actual evidence to back it up.
That can be concluded from a major new work from the investigative journalist Ben Pile. He traces the Maslin claim to a Forbes article, which in turn was based on the work of InfluenceMap, an international think tank at the “cutting edge of climate and sustainability issues”. InfluenceMap claims to use a funding methodology based on “best available records”, but Pile notes the presence of a “tower of estimates”. This is largely guessing, “not the discovery of a cache of receipts”, he observes.
In more detail, Pile notes that this stack of assumptions involves defining areas of corporate activity that might be used for climate lobbying and then estimating spending associated with these activities, and then further estimating the proportion of spending directed at climate change related issues, before finally categorising as ‘lobbying’ or ‘branding’ based on whether the activity pertains to a political agenda. Overall, Pile concludes, “it is just guesses”. The work is “performative” in nature, and gives the impression of an investigation in order to make real one of green ideology’s major articles of faith.
He goes on to note: “And so the idea of an entire industry of climate denial servicing the interests of big oil companies has become the most respectable conspiracy theory at all levels of society – the online troll is as comfortable reproducing the smear as the chair of the internationally-renowned scientific organisation.”
Of course there is no reason why Big Oil, which includes Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Chevron and Total, cannot spend money in the course of contributing to the energy debate. Fossil fuels provide over 80% of global energy needs and make huge contributions to society, including the pumping of billions of pounds into state funds and individual pension schemes. The oil business is a lawful enterprise that has helped provide humankind with a current standard of living almost unimaginable to the vast majority of people that existed previously. But the actual evidence indicates they have been keeping a lowish profile in the current debate, possibly taking the view that when the madness of Net Zero subsides, they will still be required to provide 80% of the world’s energy.
Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT notes that the current climate narrative – from ‘settled’ science to Net Zero – is “absurd”, but trillions of dollars currently says it is not absurd. Pile’s latest work – an excellent examination of many of the sources funding climate and Net Zero extremism – goes into great detail about many of the green billionaire foundations that bankroll everything from activist scientists, political campaigns and parts of the mainstream media, including, of course, the Guardian. The Daily Sceptic has reported on many of these activities, noting for instance the funding of green propaganda in schools and the provision of Armageddon-friendly copy for newsrooms and TV meteorologists.
To provide an insight into the vast amount of money available to fund the green agenda, Pile tabulated the information below estimating all the annual grants made by InfluenceMap’s own benefactors.
In total, InfluenceMap’s funders alone are making grants of about $1.2 billion every year to fund climate change lobbying. And these are only the funds with which InfluenceMap has a direct relationship. There are many others, including the Rockefeller family, Bezos, Bloomberg, Gates along with the Hewletts, Packards and Gettys.
Set against this, Pile goes on to note that in a small Westminster office building at 55 Tufton Street, scene of Extinction Rebellion paint-throwing and protests, is a clutch of small think tanks including the Global Warming Policy Foundation that are, as he gently puts it, “somewhat misaligned to the dominant ideologies of woke Western politics and media”. In total, Pile estimates the income of all nine campaigning organisations at just $6.7m.
Pile is able to show that billions of dollars have been poured into “manifestly false” philanthropic foundations with the money claimed to have been used to construct narratives, to found fake civil society organisations, to actively misinform the public, policymakers, governments and intergovernmental agencies, and to buy favours from or into research organisations, media companies and public institutions. Any contrary influence from Big Oil simply does not compare, he adds.
The vast sums spent by the Green Blob are noted, but Pile observes that members are confused as to why they are not living in a green Utopia. They have long felt it unnecessary to explain themselves, preferring to smear, fearmonger, block roads, use moral blackmail in place of reason – and invent conspiracy theories around oil companies. Furthermore, even after nearly two decades of lobbying, adequately effective green tech remains a distant dream. Wind power has been a failure, EVs are an expensive luxury and heat pumps cost multiples of gas boilers. As we have started to see all too clearly, nudge has now come to shove as activists demand that society must reorganise around the shortcomings of green technology and the ‘climate emergency’. This requires the construction of supranational political agencies in the form of technocratic bureaucracies with unprecedented power, beyond democratic control, populated by unaccountable wonks.
“Environmentalism is an elite ideology, and climate change fearmongering is a preoccupation only of the topmost parts of society. The rest of us find it implausible, somewhat ridiculous and manifestly self-serving,” Pile concludes.
Poland refutes Nord Stream sabotage claim
RT | June 11, 2023
Poland had nothing to do with last September’s explosions on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, high-ranking security official Stanislaw Zaryn has stated. Reports alleging Warsaw had a role in the sabotage are aimed at distracting the public’s attention from what actually happened, he added.
On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal claimed that German investigators were seeking to establish if Poland was somehow involved in the attack on the undersea pipelines, built to deliver Russian natural gas to Europe via Germany.
According to the paper, officials in Berlin suggested that Ukrainian saboteurs could have used the country as an operational base before the explosions. They reached this assumption based on the fact the Andromeda yacht, which could have been used in the attack, had been chartered through a Ukrainian-owned travel agency in Warsaw, and that the suspects arrived at a German port, where they boarded the vessel on a van with Polish license plates, the report claimed.
“Poland had no connection with the blowing up of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2,” Zaryn wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
Attempts to link Poland to those events are “baseless,” the official, serves as Secretary of State in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland and as acting deputy of the minister coordinator of Special Services, insisted.
The recent spreading of theories on who might have destroyed a key component of Europe’s energy infrastructure “resembles the tactics of information noise, the aim of which is to distort the true picture of events,” he argued.
“The hypothesis that the blow-up was committed by Russia, which had the motive and the ability to carry out such an operation, remains valid,” Zaryn said.
Russia has repeatedly denied accusations made by some in the West that it blew up its own pipelines. It has also rejected claims that a “pro-Ukrainian” group was responsible for the sabotage, saying such stories were aimed at distracting attention from a bombshell article by veteran reporter Seymour Hersh, who insisted in February that Nord Stream had been destroyed by American operatives.
According to an informed source who talked to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the explosives were planted on the pipelines in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the cover of a NATO exercise and detonated two months later on the order of US President Joe Biden.
Top 5 completely absurd lies about Russia since SMO started
By Drago Bosnic | June 8, 2023
Russophobia and anti-Russian propaganda run very deep, particularly in the political West. For centuries, various European invaders have been portraying Russia in the worst possible light. Over time, this became extremely intricate and even found its way into the mainstream. However, more recently, particularly since the start of the special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine, Russophobic propaganda became completely absurd. Choosing the top 5 of these certainly wasn’t an easy task, as the amount of ludicrous claims is absolutely mind-boggling. From the “Ghost of Kiev” and “the last stand of the Snake Island defenders” to pickle jar air defenses and the “Goat of Kiev”, you get a pretty good idea of just how laborious such a task could’ve been. However, in terms of being completely devoid of any logic, here are the top 5, in chronological order.
Russia destroys its own Nord Stream pipelines
According to the “free press”, on September 26, 2022, Moscow was extremely bored with all the windfall coming from rising natural gas prices, so it decided to blow up its Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines after spending the previous 17 years building them. Interestingly, Russia decided to do this only a day after Poland and Norway opened the Nord Stream’s primary competitor, the Baltic Pipe, running through Denmark and bringing in gas from the North Sea. Obviously, in order to make the task more difficult, but also more fun, Russia decided to conduct the attack within the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of Denmark and Sweden, instead of its own.
For months, various “conspiracy theorists” kept claiming that Russia didn’t actually destroy its own pipelines. However, the “free press” had “conclusive evidence” that the “cartoonishly evil Kremlin”, previously accused of “weaponizing” its vast energy reserves against the European Union, decided to destroy it and help the US profit immensely from the EU’s weaning off Russian natural gas. US President Joe Biden openly threatening to destroy Nord Stream, as well as Victoria Nuland’s snarky boastfulness about the pipelines becoming “a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea” mean absolutely nothing and are just Russian propaganda.
The destruction of its own pipelines came approximately a month after some in the EU suggested using the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to increase Russian energy imports and also “coincided perfectly” with the manifold surge in US LNG shipments to the EU, which surpassed Russian natural gas deliveries for the very first time. This resulted in even the usually compliant Brussels bureaucrats complaining that the US is engaged in war profiteering.
Russia blows up the Crimean Bridge
On October 8, the “evil dictator Putin” was sick and tired of seeing the Crimean Bridge whole, so he decided to blow it up. Unfortunately, the men he entrusted this task with failed and managed to “only” partially damage the bridge which is crucial for Russian logistics. Once again, in order to make it more fun, Putin ordered the saboteurs to try and reach Crimea through Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia, then go through southern Russia and reach the bridge from the east. Repeated snarky remarks by Zelensky’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak who boasted about the attack, as well as similar statements from the Kiev regime’s Defense Ministry and even Zelensky himself were just another piece of Russian propaganda and they could never in any way implicate anyone else.
Russia wants to irradiate itself by attacking the Zaporozhye NPP
After Russian forces took over the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (NPP), “evil Putin” realized that his troops there didn’t have much to do, so he decided to order the nearby Russian artillery unit to start shelling their own comrades in the NPP. Apparently, this was the only way to extract the sensitive US nuclear technologies from there, as Russia lacks such advanced high-tech due to its extremely underdeveloped nuclear energy industry. According to undeniably truthful reporting by the “free press”, Russian shelling is ongoing as President Putin wants to make sure his forces there also get irradiated in case of a catastrophic detonation of one or all reactors. The only reason this hasn’t happened yet is the chronic lack of shells and the poor precision of the Russian artillerymen.
Russia regularly attacks itself with drones
The escalating drone attacks across western parts of Russia, including the capital city of Moscow, clearly cannot be the fault of its neighbor to the southwest. Which begs the question of where do these mysterious unmanned flying machines come from? Once again, the only logical conclusion could be President Putin’s unrelenting boredom. Because Moscow is too safe, this significantly amplifies the monotony, resulting in the Russian president’s orders for repeated attacks on the capital city. This is also a good way to make sure Russian air defense units in and around Moscow have something to do. However, Putin might have gone a bit too far recently, as he ordered a drone strike on the Kremlin and possibly on himself. The “free press” reports that this might have something to do with his rapidly deteriorating physical and mental health, as clearly indicated by the way Putin sits and places his hands.
Russia blows up its own dam in order to flood itself
On the morning of June 6, Russia realized it has had enough of the Kakhovka dam being too whole, so it decided to blow it up. The “evil Kremlin” went ahead with this plan after realizing it would result in catastrophic flooding of the areas under its control and also endanger hundreds of defensive positions of the Russian military. In addition, the water supply for Crimea is now at risk, once again clearly implying that Putin had every reason to order the destruction of the dam, as Crimeans were obviously too bored with all the water they’ve been getting since the Northern Crimean Canal was reactivated. Another important piece of evidence pointing to Moscow is that this also endangers the Zaporozhye NPP, which Russia clearly wants to destroy in order to irradiate itself (see point four).
However, although several Kiev regime’s top officials, such as Major General Andriy Kovalchuk, stated they’ve been planning to attack Kakhovka and even conducted “test strikes”, this is obviously just Russian propaganda by rabidly pro-Kremlin outlets such as the Washington Post. Interestingly, some Western analysts and experts, particularly those from the “free press” such as CNN and NBC have suggested this might have something to do with Russia finally acknowledging that the Normandy landings were much more important than the Eastern Front during the Second World War, as the event “coincided” with the 79th anniversary of the D-Day.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Chinese ‘Secret Police Stations’… Fact or Fiction?
Canadian Patriot | May 28, 2023
In this first of a series of Canadian Patriot short films debunking anti-China Psyops, we ask the question ‘Is there actual evidence that secret Chinese Police Stations have been set up around the world as part of a Communist subversion of western freedom? This film will evaluate whether the single source used to justify this claim (a Spain-based human rights group called Safeguard Defenders) actually proves its accusations, and what actually controls it?
Stay tuned for future videos in this series which will investigate claims of Chinese election interference in Canada, Russian interference in the USA, Chinese spy balloon attacks, and more.
To pick up a copy of Breaking Free of Anti-China Psyops, click here:
https://canadianpatriot.org/2022/12/03/new-release-breaking-free-of-anti-china-psyops-how-the-cold-war-is-being-revived-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/
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Former CBC reporter says outlet suppressed negative stories about COVID shots, lockdowns
By Anthony Murdoch | LifeSiteNews | May 25, 2023
OTTAWA, Ontario – A former journalist who worked for the state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) shockingly revealed that reporters were stopped from being able to cover stories critical of COVID vaccines and lockdowns, and were instead encouraged to push government “propaganda.”
The shocking revelations were made by past CBC Manitoba reporter Marianne Klowak during testimony at the National Citizen’s Inquiry (NCI) on May 18 in Ottawa.
“I know that as a public broadcaster, you’d expect us to be telling you the truth, and we stopped doing that,” said Klowak.
“And it was a number of stories that I have put forward that were blocked, but it seemed to me as a journalist who’d been there 34 years, it’s like the rules had changed overnight. And it changed so quickly that it left me just dizzy.”
Klowak noted that it was her editors who prevented her from doing stories in relation to protests against the COVID mandates, as well as reports of people having adverse events to the COVID shots, as reported by doctors.
She noted she had “witnessed in a very short time the collapse of journalism, news gathering, investigative reporting,” adding that the way she “saw it” is that “we were in fact pushing propaganda.”
“Not only had we shut down one side by silencing and discrediting anyone opposing the narrative, we had elevated and designated ourselves as gatekeepers of the truth. We no longer believed our audience was capable of thinking for themselves,” she told the NCI.
Klowak said a story of hers about a woman who had a COVID vaccine injury was completely neutered, or in effect “sanitized.”
“It should be just a straight story about someone who suffered an adverse reaction and we shouldn’t downplay it,” she noted.
“Instead, the way I saw it, her story was buried in experts and health officials and stats, which sanitized it.”
Klowak admitted that journalists “failed to hold power to account and no one was holding the media to account.”
In July of 2022, Klowak revealed that the CBC deliberately skewed its reporting on COVID-19 inoculations.
She said that CBC was “canceling one whole side of the debate” as the experimental COVID-19 shots became available across the world.
The NCI is a citizen-led and citizen-funded independent initiative investigating the government’s response to the COVID so-called pandemic.
At the inquiry in Ottawa as well, Dr. Christopher Alan Shoemaker, a Canadian doctor with 45 years of experience, testified about the injuries correlated with the COVID-19 mRNA injections, notably the jab’s effects on kids and reproductive health.
Shoemaker had his medical license suspended in January of 2022 by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) because he spoke out against the COVID shots.
As for Klowak, she left the CBC in late 2021. Since then, other CBC reporters have left over what they also see as biased COVID news coverage.
In January 2022, journalist Tara Henley quit for similar reasons, saying, “Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted.”
About a month ago, retired Canadian Lt. Col. David Redman testified before the NCI that legacy media outlets such as the CBC are “ministries of propaganda.”
Many have accused the CBC and other media outlets of holding a pro-government bias because of those outlets’ ties to public funds.
In 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised that his Liberal government would give legacy media, including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), an extra $595 million in federal assistance over the next four years.
Per its 2020-2021 annual report, the CBC receives about $1.24 billion in public funding every year, which is about 70% of its funding.
Despite these efforts, the Department of Canadian Heritage recently admitted the “bailout” of media has not worked in helping to prop up legacy media outlets.
UKRAINE CLAIM OF ATTACK ON RUSSIAN SHIP, THE IVAN KHURS, DEBUNKED
By Larry Johnson | SONAR | May 26, 2023
Let’s give the Ukrainian Government of Volodomyr Zelensky credit for one thing — they are world class liars. Yesterday I wrote about the attempted attack on the Russian ship, the Ivan Khurs, by three maritime drones and simply acknowledged that there was a video that claimed to show one of the drones hitting a ship. It was implied that the ship was the Ivan Khurs but there was no identifying information to corroborate the claim.
Today we know the truth. Ukraine lied. The Ivan Khurs pulled into port in the Black Sea on its own power with no visible damage.
This is a consistent pattern for Ukraine. Remember the Ghost of Kiev? That intrepid Ukrainian ace that allegedly shot down six Russian combat aircraft during the first month of the Special Military Operation? Turns out that was footage lifted from a video game and most of the Western media, not to mention several gullible politicians, gobbled up the lie and exulted over Ukraine’s faux victory.
Normally a person or institution regularly exposed as a prevaricator would be denounced and ignored. But not Ukraine. Zelensky and company insisted a year ago that Russia had not taken Mariupol despite conclusive video evidence of the remnants of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi AZOV battalion surrendering to the Russian Chechens as they limped out of the Azovstal steel plant.
Rinse and repeat with Bakhmut. Russia’s Wagner Group was busy hoisting victory flags over the fallen city while Ukrainian political and military leaders continued to insist that their boys were still in the fight. Nope, they were dead, captured or retreating. It was only today that a Ukrainian official, ex-Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, finally conceded that Bakhmut was kaput.
The lies and self-delusion are not restricted to Ukraine. In the United States a bi-partisan group of legislators called on Dementia Joe to send Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) to Ukraine:
Yesterday, members of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the U.S. Helsinki Commission, Chairman Representative Joe Wilson (SC-02), Ranking Member Representative Steve Cohen (TN-09) and Commissioner Representative Victoria Spartz (IN-05) sent a letter to President Biden, requesting he grants the transfer of MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) to Ukraine.
In the letter, Commissioners thank the Administration for its beginning steps on getting F-16s to Ukrainian defenders and emphasize the importance of ATACMS on targeting Russian frontlines in occupied Ukraine as well as pushing back Russian supply chain systems which fuel their genocidal war. During the Commissioners’ recent trip to Ukraine and meeting with President Zelensky, ATACMS were requested for an immediate battlefield advantage. These powerful weapons could provide the advantage Ukraine needs to secure its freedom, and the only remaining hurdle to their delivery is the President’s approval.
This should put Russia and China on notice that it is not just Joe Biden and his inept National Security team that are intent on escalating the war in Ukraine. There also is a vocal, bipartisan group of legislators who are pressing to expand the war and are oblivious to the risk inherent in their proposal of Russian retaliation. The Washington Establishment is still willing to bet the lives of Ukrainians on their illusory vision that Russia is teetering towards defeat and their belief that Ukraine is just one Wunderwaffen miracle weapon from total victory.
I am sad to report to those of you who live outside of the Untied States that most Americans are clueless about the implications of the United States apparent strategy of escalation. Most assume that if Russia can bomb Ukrainian cities then fair play dictates that Ukraine should be able to do the same. The point they miss is that Ukraine is incapable of such attacks without the help of the United States and other NATO countries. Increasing Ukraine’s ability to strike further inside Russian territory will inevitably lead Russia to retaliate against those responsible for making those attacks possible. That means an inevitable clash with NATO. I believe that the United States should be doing everything in its power to avoid that. But it is doing the exact opposite and the potential for something terrible looms larger with each passing day.
BBC fights ‘fake news’ with fake Twitter accounts
RT | May 23, 2023
A journalist with the British broadcaster’s new fact-checking spinoff BBC Verify has admitted to deploying multiple fake Twitter accounts to combat “disinformation.”
In a segment broadcast on Saturday, BBC “disinformation correspondent” Marianna Spring warned the audience that “mistruths can cause really serious harm to societies and the people in them.” She then revealed she had set up multiple “undercover accounts” on Twitter for the BBC’s Americast broadcast, each one representing different political views so as to better “interrogate” the viewpoints of the network’s target audience.
While the deception was portrayed as an attempt to “understand polarization online” by observing a cross-section of what kind of content social media platforms are recommending to different demographics, all three “characters” were white women. Emma, a 25-year-old atheist graphic designer with a “live-in partner” based in New York City, hails from the “progressive left.” Britney, a recently-divorced 50-year-old mother of three living in Houston, comes from the “populist right” and works as a school secretary. Gabriela, 44, a married mother of three who moonlights as a nanny, is cast as a “stressed sideliner.”
The graphics surrounding the fake profiles suggested a presence across Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, though the network stopped short of revealing its sock-puppets’ usernames. Twitter explicitly forbids using the platform to “artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience or platform manipulation defenses,” and most other social media platforms have similar policies.
According to the BBC, its Verify division consists of a team of 60 “forensic journalists and expert talent” from within the network, tasked with “fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation, analyzing data, and – crucially – explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth.”
The BBC got a £20 million ($24.13 million) shot in the arm from the UK government earlier this year specifically to “counter disinformation,” with Foreign Secretary James Cleverly hailing the network as “the world’s most trusted international broadcaster.”
However, critics have called out the BBC for putting out what they claim are heavily biased and outright fabricated stories, particularly with regard to the conflict in Ukraine, even while the network continues to portray “disinformation” as the exclusive province of Russian media.
The network has nurtured the careers of ‘Russian bot’ hunters like the Atlantic Council alumnus Ben Nimmo, who has made a livelihood out of reclassifying genuine political dissent as “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” and having its practitioners deplatformed as state operatives. The BBC has also hosted government-controlled journalists tasked with waging information warfare against Russia, while its “charitable” arm, BBC Media Action, engaged in covert operations designed to “weaken the Russian state’s influence” in the Balkans.
Poll finds disconnect between US public and media
RT | May 22, 2023
Most Americans believe the ‘Russiagate’ investigation of Donald Trump was based on lies and that President Joe Biden’s family engaged in influence-peddling crimes, a new Harvard CAPS-Harris poll has shown, suggesting that legacy media outlets have failed to sway public opinion.
The poll, released on Friday, found that 56% of US voters believe the claim that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election was a “false story.” The same percentage believe the Steele dossier, which was the basis for an FBI investigation of Trump’s campaign, was false.
Nearly seven in ten respondents said they weren’t surprised that the Durham Report, released earlier this month, found that the FBI violated its own standards in starting the Trump-Russia investigation and became a funnel for “disinformation” from Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Likewise, 70% of voters are concerned about interference by the FBI and intelligence agencies in US presidential elections, and 71% believe the federal government needs “wide-ranging reform” to prevent such meddling.
CNN and other US media outlets hyped the Trump-Russia collusion allegations for three years and downplayed last week’s release of the Durham Report, calling the special prosecutor’s findings about the FBI a “whole big nothing.” Just before voters went to the polls in 2020, media outlets amplified claims by former US intelligence officials that a bombshell report on alleged influence-peddling by Biden’s family – sourced to a laptop computer that Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had abandoned at a repair shop – was based on “Russian disinformation.”
The Harvard CAPS-Harris poll found that 63% of voters believe Hunter Biden engaged in illegal influence-peddling and tax evasion, while 53% think Joe Biden was involved in the alleged criminal operation when he was vice president, according to the Harvard CAPS-Harris poll. Most voters (55%) also believe that the FBI and the US Department of Justice aren’t really investigating the Biden family’s alleged corruption, and 59% think the Russian disinformation claim was false.
Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald said the poll illustrated how “radically out of touch” liberal corporate media was with the views of Americans. He added that major media outlets were not only pushing narratives that Americans didn’t believe, but also didn’t permit the majority’s views to be heard.
The poll found other troubling opinions on Biden’s 2024 election prospects. Nearly two-thirds of voters (65%) believe Biden is showing signs that he’s too old to be president, while 57% have doubts about his mental fitness, and 61% think he wouldn’t make it through a second term.
Trump is the current frontrunner for the Republican Party’s 2024 nomination and is widening his lead over Biden in a hypothetical rematch. Harvard CAPS-Harris poll found that voters favor the former president over his successor by a 47%-40% margin, up from a five-point lead last month. If Vice President Kamala Harris is the Democratic Party’s nominee, Trump is favored by a 50%-39% margin.
NATO Is Panicking After Russia’s Kinzhal Hypersonic Missiles Smashed Kiev’s Patriots
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 18, 2023
The fake news that circulated earlier this month alleging that Kiev’s Patriots shot down one of Russia’s Kinzhal hypersonic missiles has become even more ridiculous in the days after since they’re now claiming that another six were supposedly downed during a recent strike. The Mainstream Media’s (MSM) laundering of these lies isn’t just due to them taking everything their Ukrainian proxies say at face value, but even includes their own military experts actively contributing to this disinformation campaign.
The US’ Patriots lack the technical capabilities to track and intercept hypersonic projectiles, but that isn’t anything for them to be embarrassed about since there doesn’t presently exist any air defense system in the world that could do this. The West’s problem is therefore one of perceptions, however, since the MSM hyped up their deployment to Ukraine to the point where the public expected that former Soviet Republic to become invulnerable to any Russian strikes.
The Kremlin was aware of the West’s soft power interests in transferring this equipment there, hence why it cleverly decided to include several hypersonic missiles in its latest spree of strikes against military targets, knowing that there was no way that they’d be intercepted and thus discrediting their opponents. Not only that, but they even managed to destroy five launchers and a multifunctional radar on 16 May according to the Russian Ministry of Defense’s report that was shared the day after.
Footage of that night’s strikes subsequently appeared on social media, after which those who shared such were detained by the Ukrainian secret police on the pretext that this could have helped Russia’s military-intelligence services. In reality, Kiev was left flustered after that same footage showed how many millions of dollars’ worth of air defense missiles were wasted in trying to shoot down the Kinzhals. The US also confirmed that the Patriots were indeed damaged but denied that any of them were destroyed.
Nevertheless, the public was able to see for themselves just how desperate Kiev was to intercept those hypersonic projectiles, and many interpreted America’s confirmation that the Patriots were damaged as a limited hangout to deflect from their suspicions that they were actually destroyed. 16 May will therefore be seen in hindsight as a pivotal turning point in popular perceptions since Russia’s claim that its Kinzhals smashed the Patriots is believed by a growing number of people after watching that footage.
This poses a major reputational problem for the West, which claims to be able to defend its people in the event of any contingency, especially the worst-case one of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine turning into a direct conventional conflict between those two. Nobody who saw Tuesday night’s footage and heard about Russia’s achievement the day after can say with confidence that they still believe in the viability of their side’s air defenses since they’ve now been exposed as worthless by the Kinzhals.
The Kremlin currently wields a monopoly on this game-changing military technology after being the first country in the world to produce these missiles and then use them in battle, which means that it can pierce NATO’s Patriot-centric air defenses with ease in the worst-case scenario described above. The preceding observation about the US’ struggle to compete with Russia in this respect isn’t so-called “propaganda” like skeptics might claim but was confirmed by The Hill two months ago.
In their piece on 14 March explaining “Why the US is going full throttle on hypersonic missiles”, they wrote that “The United States is opening the throttle in its push to develop and procure hypersonic missiles after falling behind key foreign adversaries China and Russia in the race to field a potentially game-changing defense system”, adding that “the Defense Department has not fielded the weapons yet, and there remain challenges in the industrial production base and with testing infrastructure.”
Most damning of all, The Hill also informed their audience that “Not even the U.S. currently has an adequate defense system to take down hypersonic missiles. Air defense systems, such as Patriots and Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, are capable of taking down ballistic missiles that reach hypersonic speeds, but only over small areas.” That “politically inconvenient” fact not only discredits this month’s disinformation campaign, but also reaffirms Russia’s military dominance in the hypersonic domain.
Simply put, the Kremlin has full confidence that its Kinzhals would successfully reach all their targets in the worst-case scenario of a conventional NATO-Russian war, thus meaning that Moscow could in theory destroy the West’s nuclear second-strike capabilities if it carried out a first strike to preempt its enemies’. Its achievement the other day in Kiev where it destroyed five Patriot launchers and a multifunctional radar sent shivers down the spines of NATO’s warmongers and sobered them up to what they’re facing.
Any thoughts they might have had of trying to “Balkanize” Russia by conventional military means as a last resort upon the failure of their Ukrainian-fronted Hybrid War to this end instantly evaporated since they realized that it could provoke the Kremlin into destroying the West out of self-defense. To be sure, some of their second-strike capabilities would likely remain intact and thus be used against Russia, but the point is that Moscow could first inflict unacceptable damage to them if it’s pushed to do so.
Despite popular claims to the contrary from many of the Alt-Media Community’s top influencers, NATO isn’t “insane” in the sense of its leaders being willing to sacrifice themselves as long as their deaths resulted in dismembering Russia. Like all elites, they want to live as long as possible, hence why they’ll now think twice about indulging in the neoconservative fantasy of resorting to conventional means to “Balkanize” that targeted Great Power upon the failure of their proxy war on it through Ukraine to that end.
In practical terms, this suggests that they might be more amenable to a ceasefire once Kiev’s NATO-backed counteroffensive ends by this winter, thus raising the prospects that the upcoming African-led peace mission to Russia and Ukraine could earn their approval and lead to Kiev agreeing to these terms. The leading Anglo-American Axis within NATO could never endorse the parallel Chinese-led initiative so it therefore follows that the African-led one could give them a “face-saving” way to support a ceasefire.
It’s premature to predict this latest initiative’s success or lack therefore, but the relevance of this development to the present piece is that it can help give NATO an “exit strategy” from this proxy war after its leaders just realized how suicidal it would be to escalate it to a conventional one. Russia’s Kinzhals smashed their Patriots in Kiev, which proved that the Kremlin can pierce the West’s air defenses with ease, thus representing both a military game-changer and possibly even a diplomatic one soon too.
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