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British intelligence operative’s involvement in Ukraine crisis signals false flag attacks ahead

BY KIT KLARENBERG · THE GRAYZONE · MARCH 24, 2022

Shadowy UK intel figure Hamish de Bretton-Gordon was at the forefront of chemical weapons deceptions in Syria. Now in Ukraine, he’s up to his old tricks again.

With Washington and its NATO allies forced to watch from the sidelines as Russia’s military advances across Eastern Ukraine and encircles Kiev, US and British officials have resorted to a troubling tactic that could trigger a massive escalation. Following similar claims by his Secretary of State and ambassador the United Nations, US President Joseph Biden has declared that Russia will pay a “severe price” if it uses chemical weapons in Ukraine.

The warnings emanating from the Biden administration contain chilling echoes of those issued by the administration of President Barack Obama throughout the US-led dirty war on Syria.

Almost as soon as Obama implemented his ill-fated “red line” policy vowing an American military response if the Syrian army attacked the Western-backed opposition with chemical weapons, Al Qaeda-aligned opposition factions came forth with claims of mass casualty sarin and chlorine bombings of civilians. The result was a series of US-UK missile strikes on Damascus and a prolonged crisis that nearly triggered the kind of disastrous regime change war that had destabilized Iraq and Libya.

In each major chemical weapons event, signs of staging and deception by the armed Syrian opposition were present. As a former US ambassador in the Middle East told journalist Charles Glass, “The ‘red line’ was an open invitation to a false-­flag operation.”

Elements of deception were especially clear in the April 7, 2018 incident in the city of Douma, when an anti-government militia on the brink of defeat claimed civilians had been massacred in a chlorine attack by the Syrian army.

Veteran inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found no evidence that the Syrian army had carried out any such attack, however, suggesting the entire incident had been staged to trigger Western intervention. Their report was subsequently censored by organization management, and the inspectors were subjected to a campaign of smears and intimidation.

Throughout the Syrian conflict, a self-proclaimed “chemical warrior” named Hamish de Bretton-Gordon was intimately involved in numerous chemical weapons deceptions that sustained the war and ratcheted up pressure for Western military intervention.

This February 24, just moments after Russia’s military entered Ukraine, de Bretton-Gordon surfaced again in British media to claim that Russia was preparing a chemical attack on Ukrainian civilians. He has since demanded that Ukrainians be provided with a guide he wrote called, “How To Survive A Chemical Attack.”

So who is de Bretton-Gordon, and does his sudden reappearance as an expert voice on the Russia-Ukraine war signal a return to the dangerous US-UK red line policy?

Hours after war erupts, a “chemical warrior” demands Western escalation

Following months of fevered speculation about an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, when it finally came to pass on the early morning of February 24th, most were caught entirely by surprise. Media outlets and pundits scrambled to get their stories straight, while Western leaders rushed to construct a cohesive ‘response’.

By contrast, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a British army veteran identified by UK media as a “former spy,” was in no such muddle. Within just three hours, he had a fiery op-ed prepared for The Guardian, demanding the US and Europe “show their steel in the face of Putin’s aggression.” Warning that Vladimir Putin was “much more willing to face off with NATO” than before, de Bretton-Gordon charged that the West “stood back and watched in Syria,” and “it must not do the same in Ukraine.”

“Syria shows what happens when you turn a blind eye and are too heavily influenced by peaceniks,” de Bretton-Gordon fulminated. “Those of us involved in interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 30 years…we look at Syria and know we should have done better. That knowledge should inform our response to Putin’s aggression now.”

In reality, Washington and its allies did not stand back and watch in Syria; it waged a decade-long proxy war employing jihadist paramilitaries and airstrikes on Damascus, then occupied oil-producing portions of the country and subjected its citizens to crippling sanctions, which to this day deprive them of food, electricity and vital medical supplies.

Of all people, de Bretton-Gordon – whose Twitter profile once identified him as a member of 77th Brigade, the British Army’s official psychological warfare division – is uniquely placed to know of these horrors. After all, he played a pivotal role in promoting and extending the dirty war through the management of information surrounding chemical weapons incidents.

Manipulation, absurdities and obvious fraud

As The Grayzone has revealed, the involvement of de Bretton-Gordon in the Syrian conflict dates back to at least 2013, when by his own admission he was engaged in a covert effort to smuggle soil samples out of the opposition-occupied areas. This work would have inevitably placed him in extremely close quarters with jihadist elements raking in Western funding while benefiting from NATO training and weapons.

Contemporary media reports reveal the UK’s MI6 was engaged in a sample-gathering effort in the country at the very time time de Bretton-Gordon was inside Syria, strongly suggesting his linkage to the foreign intelligence agency. One article makes abundantly clear the purpose of the soil-sample exercise was to push the US into intervening by proving government culpability for alleged chemical weapons attacks.

Other forms of evidence were also collected on-the-ground by de Bretton-Gordon, and provided to a number of official investigations into chemical attacks. In at least one instance – an OPCW/UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) probe into a purported chemical strike in Talmenes, April 2014 – videos submitted by CBRN Taskforce, a shady organization he founded in Aleppo, were found to show clear signs of falsification.

De Bretton-Gordon threw his chemical weapons expertise into further doubt when he told British media that any common refrigerator could be transformed into a chemical weapon, falsely claiming that R22 refrigerant cylinders contained material for improvised chlorine bombs. “Somebody could go to a waste site where people chuck away fridges [in the UK] and get a whole bunch of those things and blow them up,” the supposed arms specialist claimed.

De Bretton Gordon has gone as far as claiming to a British tabloid that Russia could deploy missiles and hand grenades containing the highly deadly Soviet-era chemical agent Novichok “in any future war with the West.”

Such absurd commentary and subterfuge has done nothing to dent de Bretton-Gordon’s credibility, however. His mainstream profile has only grown over time, with outlets invariably presenting him as a courageous human rights defender risking his life to train local doctors and rescue workers.

On more than one occasion, however, de Bretton-Gordon has directly involved Western journalists in MI6’s soil gathering efforts. For instance, during a 2014 podcast interview with Wilton Park, an NGO funded by the UK Foreign Office, de Bretton-Gordon boasted of his responsibility for a story in the Times of London alleging a Syrian chemical attack in the town of Sheikh al-Maqsood.

“In March last year there was a reported sarin attack in Sheikh al-Maqsood and I helped the Times – chap called Anthony Lloyd who very sadly got shot two weeks ago – to cover this story and tried to get samples to the UK for analysis … I won’t go into the details of that,” he recalled.

Then-Prime Minister David Cameron invoked the Sheikh al-Maqsood incident to increase pressure on Damascus, citing “the picture as described to me by the Joint Intelligence Committee” as the basis for his assertion of a chemical attack against the town by the Syrian army.

Throughout the dirty war on Syria, de Bretton-Gordon routinely cropped up in the media attributing gas attacks and war crimes to Syrian and Russian forces, and fear-mongered about their implications for future conflicts with the West.

The latter role is one de Bretton-Gordon has enthusiastically resumed throughout the war in Ukraine, aggressively hyping the threat to Western countries. His messaging has tracked seamlessly with that of the US government, which initiated a program months before Russia’s military operation to prepare Ukraine’s security sector for an impending weapons of mass destruction attack.

Months before war, US trains Ukrainians in the threat of “targeted weapons of mass destruction attacks”

Back in May 2021, the State Department announced that Washington had conducted a “virtual training exercise” with “partners” in Kiev, including domestic security services, law enforcement, and first responders, to “identify, respond to, and investigate assassinations involving weapons of mass destruction,” due to “recent events in Europe” highlighting “the real threat of government-sanctioned, targeted weapons of mass destruction attacks.”

Along the way, Ukrainians were tutored in “[identifying] the medical symptoms that indicate WMD material use, the attack cycle involved in WMD assassination attempts, and the specific measures that enable safe and secure detection and response to WMD incidents.”

Quite why this instruction was given at this particular time is unclear, as was the “recent events in Europe” to which the press release referred. Perhaps the State Department was alluding to the alleged novichok poisoning of the Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny in August 2020. On what grounds that failed assassination necessitated a grand, multi-agency training exercise in dealing with “targeted WMD attacks” is anyone’s guess.

Whatever the purpose of the US training program was, Ukrainian security personnel can now claim they have the training to identify the precise “medical symptoms that indicate WMD material.”

This is significant, because ever since the conflict began, Kiev has exhibited an endless enthusiasm for lying, having distorted or even outright concocted events and facts whole-cloth to advance its objectives on countless occasions.

The most dangerous claims advanced by Ukrainian propagandists have been reinforced by the supposed authority of de Bretton-Gordon, who has argued that Russian chemical strikes were absolutely inevitable, based his prediction on his opinion that Moscow “has no morals or scruples.”

The self-styled chemical weapons expert has even cautioned that Putin could deploy nuclear weapons or create a pandemic “more deadly than Covid” with an Ebola weapon. He has further speculated that Russian forces may unleash a deadly virus seized from one of several Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine, then blame it on the US.

From Syria to Ukraine, it is happening again

In a typical media appearance, on March 10th, de Bretton Gordon told London’s LBC radio show that “nothing is off the table at this stage.” Among the horrors he forecast was the use of white phosphorous “to set towns and cities on fire.”

Justifying his certainty, de Bretton-Gordon forcefully asserted, “the only way to take a large city or town ultimately is to use chemical weapons.” He pointed to Syria to prove his point – but without referencing his own pivotal role in escalating that conflict through the manipulation of evidence and scientifically bereft fear-mongering in the media.

Now, de Bretton-Gordon has resurfaced at the center of the aggressive push for escalation with a nuclear armed Russia. If his role in Syria is any guide, a series of cynical deceptions could be on the way.

March 25, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 3 Comments

How long can US politicians and media continue to play ‘double act’?

Global Times | March 21, 2022

Recently, over the Ukraine crisis, Washington and the US media have been playing a “double act” again. After repeatedly failing to force China into their game, they have started talking up “exclusive reports,” quoting “anonymous US officials” and fabricating many scenarios related to the situation in Ukraine.

For example, they claimed that Beijing had some level of direct knowledge about Russia’s military operations against Ukraine but asked Russia to delay them until after the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games. In addition, they alleged that Russia asked China for military and economic aid and further argued that China has “expressed some openness to providing such aid to Russia.”

The above lies are well concocted, but without any evidence. Certainly, the problem of no evidence may be a bit of overthinking, because when does Washington need to provide evidence to smear others? Isn’t it always following the logic of “if I say so, it has to be so?” If you must ask for any “evidence,” it will again hold up a tiny vial of white powder, or produce a video of the White Helmets being instructed to pose…

The Global Times has recently learned from multiple sources that the “anonymous US officials” quoted in the two New York Times reports that were throwing mud at China on Ukraine came from the National Security Council (NSC) of the White House. In the recent series of disinformation, the White House and the US media repeatedly staged a “double act” with obvious intentions. On the one hand, they must distort China’s just position and smear China internationally, creating momentum for its strategic suppression of China. On the other hand, they intend to drive a wedge between China and Russia in an attempt to “kill two birds with one stone” and ease the pressure of the US’ “two-front war.”

Of course, what’s behind it is Washington’s hegemony and ambition. Kurt Campbell, the NSC’s Indo-Pacific policy coordinator, “took the initiative” to say at the end of February that the US will keep its focus on the “Indo-Pacific region” despite the Ukraine crisis. In order to maintain the US’ hegemonic self-interests, fabricating lies has become a “necessary means” for Washington. In the words of Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, “The US, as usual, lies to try to achieve its political goals.”

Last year, several “anonymous US officials” have told the media either “the Chinese military has three times rejected requests for calls from the US defense secretary,” “researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick and sought hospital care before COVID-19 outbreak disclosed,” or “China has no intention of engaging in serious or substantive talks with the US.” All of these have later been proven to be utter disinformation, which only serves as “cannonballs” for attacking China.

When looking back at his past as CIA director, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo once said publicly, “We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses.” So how does the US lie and deceive people? It is easier for Washington and the US media to quote “anonymous officials” to spread lies as shocking “exclusive news.” The cooperation between US propaganda machines and diplomatic and intelligence services has greatly increased the deceptiveness of those lies. Moreover, the US’ alliance system and hegemony in public opinion can make sure that even though Washington is a habitual liar, it can obtain a certain amount of assentation and support. This has become the bases for the US to play politics as it wants.

While US media maliciously falsifies the truth, Washington deliberately pretends to know nothing. These two to some extent have even formed an integral production, supply and distribution chain of fake news. This is unprofessional, immoral, and irresponsible, and will only further discredit the US in front of the world. As some comments pointed out, whenever people see the news reports that include sentences like “anonymous officials revealed…” and “US intelligence agencies claimed…,” they should in their minds replace everything in those sentences with “They may be lying.”

Therefore, unsurprisingly, as Washington is changing its foreign strategy to “great power competition,” it will use its hegemony in public opinion and media to spread false information and launch a “public opinion warfare.” Of course, we can also be sure that such a “double act” will sooner or later fail to work as the deficit in the US’ account of credibility rises.

Right now, when the military conflict in Ukraine is getting increasingly serious under Washington’s provocation, and when the energy and refugee crises become more and more severe in Europe, the US’ smear campaign will only unmask it as the initiator. More and more people will see the true face of the US – an “empire of lies.”

March 21, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , | 2 Comments

Nasrallah Denies Hezbollah Fighting in Ukraine alongside Russian Forces

Al-Manar | March 18, 2022

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah on Friday categorically denied the media reports which alleged that a number of Hezbollah fighters and military experts are fighting in Ukraine alongside the Russian Forces.

Addressing Al-Mahdi Scouts Anniversary Ceremony, Sayyed Nasrallah said that Arab Channels circulated rumors, alleged to be quoting Ukrainian Military Staff, claiming that Hezbollah dispatched fighters and military experts who are professional at street battles.

“I categorically deny such rumors. These are baseless lies and rumors. Hezbollah did not dispatch any fighter or expert to Ukraine.”

Sayyed Nasrallah warned against similar media rumors about the alleged Hezbollah participation in Ukraine war, confirming that they are false.

Meanwhile, Sayyed Nasrallah called on the Lebanese government to form an emergency committee to cope with the economic repercussions of the war in Ukraine, pertaining mainly the prices of the basic commodities.

March 19, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | 1 Comment

The NYT Now Admits the Biden Laptop — Falsely Called “Russian Disinformation” — is Authentic

By Glenn Greenwald | March 17, 2022

One of the most successful disinformation campaigns in modern American electoral history occurred in the weeks prior to the 2020 presidential election. On October 14, 2020 — less than three weeks before Americans were set to vote — the nation’s oldest newspaper, The New York Post, began publishing a series of reports about the business dealings of the Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in countries in which Biden, as Vice President, wielded considerable influence (including Ukraine and China) and would again if elected president.

The backlash against this reporting was immediate and intense, leading to suppression of the story by U.S. corporate media outlets and censorship of the story by leading Silicon Valley monopolies. The disinformation campaign against this reporting was led by the CIA’s all-but-official spokesperson Natasha Bertrand (then of Politico, now with CNN), whose article on October 19 appeared under this headline: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”

These “former intel officials” did not actually say that the “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo.” Indeed, they stressed in their letter the opposite: namely, that they had no evidence to suggest the emails were falsified or that Russia had anything to do them, but, instead, they had merely intuited this “suspicion” based on their experience:

We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.

But a media that was overwhelmingly desperate to ensure Trump’s defeat had no time for facts or annoying details such as what these former officials actually said or whether it was in fact true. They had an election to manipulate. As a result, that these emails were “Russian disinformation” — meaning that they were fake and that Russia manufactured them — became an article of faith among the U.S.’s validly despised class of media employees.

Very few even included the crucial caveat that the intelligence officials themselves stressed: namely, that they had no evidence at all to corroborate this claim. Instead, as I noted last September, “virtually every media outlet — CNN, NBC News, PBS, Huffington Post, The Intercept, and too many others to count — began completely ignoring the substance of the reporting and instead spread the lie over and over that these documents were the by-product of Russian disinformation.” The Huffington Post even published a must-be-seen-to-be-believed campaign ad for Joe Biden, masquerading as “reporting,” that spread this lie that the emails were “Russian disinformation.”

This disinformation campaign about the Biden emails was then used by Big Tech to justify brute censorship of any reporting on or discussion of this story: easily the most severe case of pre-election censorship in modern American political history. Twitter locked The New York Post‘s Twitter account for close to two weeks due to its refusal to obey Twitter’s orders to delete any reference to its reporting. The social media site also blocked any and all references to the reporting by all users; Twitter users were barred even from linking to the story in private chats with one another. Facebook, through its spokesman, the life-long DNC operative Andy Stone, announced that they would algorithmically suppress discussion of the reporting to ensure it did not spread, pending a “fact check[] by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners” which, needless to say, never came — precisely because the archive was indisputably authentic.

The archive’s authenticity, as I documented in a video report from September, was clear from the start. Indeed, as I described in that report, I staked my career on its authenticity when I demanded that The Intercept publish my analysis of these revelations, and then resigned when its vehemently anti-Trump editors censored any discussion of those emails precisely because it was indisputable that the archive was authentic (The Intercept‘s former New York Times reporter James Risen was given the green light by these same editors to spread and endorse the CIA’s lie, as he insisted that the laptop should be ignored because “a group of former intelligence officials issued a letter saying that the Giuliani laptop story has the classic trademarks of Russian disinformation.”) I knew the archive was real because all the relevant journalistic metrics that one evaluates to verify large archives of this type — including the Snowden archive and the Brazil archive which I used to report a series of investigative exposés — left no doubt that it was genuine (that includes documented verification from third parties who were included in the email chains and who showed that the emails they had in their possession matched the ones in the archive word-for-word).

Any residual doubts that the Biden archive was genuine — and there should have been none — were shattered when a reporter from Politico, Ben Schreckinger, published a book last September, entitled “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power,” in which his new reporting proved that the key emails on which The New York Post relied were entirely authentic. Among other things, Schreckinger interviewed several people included in the email chains who provided confirmation that the emails in their possession matched the ones in the Post‘s archive word for word. He also obtained documents from the Swedish government that were identical to key documents in the archive. His own outlet, Politico, was one of the few to even acknowledge his book. While ignoring the fact that they were the first to spread the lie that the emails were “Russian disinformation,” Politico editors — under the headline “Double Trouble for Biden”— admitted that the book “finds evidence that some of the purported Hunter Biden laptop material is genuine, including two emails at the center of last October’s controversy.”

The vital revelations in Schreckinger’s book were almost completely ignored by the very same corporate media outlets that published the CIA’s now-debunked lies. They just pretended it never happened. Grappling with it would have forced them to acknowledge a fact quite devastating to whatever remaining credibility they have: namely, that they all ratified and spread a coordinated disinformation campaign in order to elect Joe Biden and defeat Donald Trump. With strength in numbers, and knowing that they speak only to and for liberals who are happy if they lie to help Democrats, they all joined hands in an implicit vow of silence and simply ignored the new proof in Schreckinger’s book that, in the days leading up to the 2020 election, they all endorsed a disinformation campaign.

It will now be much harder to avoid confronting the reality of what they did, though it is highly likely that they will continue to do so. This morning, The New York Times published an article about the broad, ongoing FBI criminal investigation into Hunter Biden’s international business and tax activities. Prior to the election, the Times, to their credit, was one of the few to apply skepticism to the CIA’s pre-election lie, noting on October 22 that “no concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian disinformation.” Because the activities of Hunter Biden now under FBI investigation directly pertain to the emails first revealed by The Post, the reporters needed to rely upon the laptop’s archive to amplify and inform their reporting. That, in turn, required The New York Times to verify the authenticity of this laptop and its origins — exactly what, according to their reporters, they successfully did:

People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.

That this cache of emails was authentic was clear from the start. Any doubts were obliterated by publication of Schreckinger’s book six months ago. Now the Paper of Record itself explicitly states not only that the emails “were authenticated” but also that the original story from The Post about how they obtained these materials — they “come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop” — “appears” to be true.

What this means is that, in the crucial days leading up to the 2020 presidential election, most of the corporate media spread an absolute lie about The New York Post‘s reporting in order to mislead and manipulate the American electorate. It means that Big Tech monopolies, along with Twitter, censored this story based on a lie from “the intelligence community.” It means that Facebook’s promise from its DNC operative that it would suppress discussion of the reporting in order to conduct a “fact-check” of these documents was a fraud because, if one had been conducted, that no fact-check was even published because, if an honest one had been conducted, it would have proven that Facebook’s censorship decree was based on a lie. It means that millions of Americans were denied the ability to hear about reporting on the candidate leading all polls to become the next president, and instead were subjected to a barrage of lies about the provenance (Russia did it ) and authenticity (disinformation! ) of these documents.

The objections to noting all of this today are drearily predictable. Reporting on Hunter Biden is irrelevant since he was not himself a candidate (what made the reporting relevant was what it revealed about the involvement of Joe Biden in these deals). Given the war in Ukraine, now is not the time to discuss all of this (despite the fact that they are usually ignored, there are always horrific wars being waged even if the victims are not as sympathetic as European Ukrainians and the perpetrators are the film’s Good Guys and not the Bad Guys). The real reason most liberals and their media allies do not want to hear about any of this is because they believe that the means they used (deliberately lying to the public with CIA disinformation) are justified by their noble ends (defeating Trump).

Whatever else is true, both the CIA/media disinformation campaign in the weeks before the 2020 election and the resulting regime of brute censorship imposed by Big Tech are of historic significance. Democrats and their new allies in the establishment wing of the Republican Party may be more excited by war in Ukraine than the subversion of their own election by the unholy trinity of the intelligence community, the corporate press, and Big Tech. But today’s admission by The New York Times that this archive and the emails in them were real all along proves that a gigantic fraud was perpetrated by the country’s most powerful institutions. What matters far more than the interest level of various partisan factions is the core truths about U.S. democracy revealed by this tawdry spectacle.

March 17, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

La Stampa responds to disinformation claims over Donetsk photo

© Twitter/@rusembitaly
Samizdat | March 17, 2022

Italian newspaper La Stampa said on Thursday it didn’t do anything wrong when it printed a frontpage image showing the aftermath of a ballistic missile strike on Donetsk, the capital of a breakaway republic in eastern Ukraine, while promising readers coverage of Russian attacks in Kiev and Lvov.

The photograph was meant to demonstrate the “clear horror of the war” and not to assign blame to any particular party, editor-in-chief Massimo Giannini said in an interview with La7 TV channel, responding to criticism of his editorial choices. He said his newspaper didn’t try to mislead readers, despite what detractors say.

“The thing that bothers me most and pains me a lot is that there are also some people here in Italy, some disgraced people of the web, who amplify this and call it a case of disinformation. Where is the disinformation?” he asked.

The Wednesday issue of the paper featured a full-page photo of a street littered with dead bodies, with a man covering his face in grief. “The Carnage,” the headline read. Short text teasers promised stories further in the paper about the “traumatized children in Lvov” and “Kiev preparing for the final assault” by Russian troops.

The photograph was taken on Monday in Donetsk, the capital of the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic, after its center was struck by a tactical Tochka-U ballistic missile. Its leadership and Russia said Ukraine was the only party that could have launched it and that the rocket’s warhead was a cluster weapon, designed to kill unprotected soldiers in a wide area.

The attack on Donetsk killed 21 civilians and injured scores of others. Moscow called it a terrorist attack and a war crime. The Russian embassy in Italy, responding to La Stampa’s frontpage, said the newspaper didn’t bother to cover it.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said on Thursday that the Italian news outlet, as with other Western mainstream media, was intentionally “distorting the perceptions of its own readers.”

The missile attack proved once again how strong the influence of radical nationalists was on Ukrainian armed forces, the Russian official said. NATO members allowed those forces to entrench themselves in the country “while the media kept silent,” she pointed out. La Stampa’s use of the photo stands out among examples of fake news and is “a real crime,” she asserted.

Lvov, a city in western Ukraine, is now a major destination for refugees fleeing the fighting in other parts of the country. The capital, Kiev, is partially encircled by Russian troops and has been damaged to some extent amid the fighting. The Ukrainian side alleges Russia is deliberately attacking civilians in Kiev to terrorize them. Moscow denies the claim and blames civilian casualties on Ukrainian troops, who allegedly deploy their artillery and anti-aircraft weapon systems near civilian facilities, which get hit by return fire.

March 17, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | 1 Comment

China accuses US of disinformation

RT | March 15, 2022

In response to Western media reports that Moscow requested military aid from Beijing to conduct its operation in Ukraine, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China has accused US officials of spreading disinformation with sinister intent.

“The United States has been spreading false information against China on the Ukraine issue recently, with sinister intentions,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Monday, answering a foreign reporter’s question on whether China will assist Russia with arms.

“China’s position on the Ukraine issue is consistent and clear, and we have always played a constructive role in persuading peace and promoting talks,” he added. Zhao also called on the belligerent parties to exercise restraint and de-escalate tensions rather than fueling them, while insisting that all countries should push for a diplomatic solution.

On Sunday, the Financial Times reported that Moscow asked China “for equipment and other kinds of unspecified military assistance” to support its military operation in Ukraine. The report added that the White House was concerned “Beijing may undermine western efforts to help Ukrainian forces defend their country” if it chooses to grant the alleged request.

Earlier, Washington threatened to shut down Chinese chip manufacturers if Beijing assists Moscow in overriding US sanctions.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia has sufficient military resources to conduct the operation in Ukraine without requesting aid from other countries.

“Newspapers write a lot these days. You shouldn’t take it as a primary source. Russia has an independent potential to continue the operation, as we said, it is developing according to plan and will be completed on time and in full,” he stated.

The US and its EU allies have imposed unprecedented sanctions on Moscow in response to the military operation in Ukraine. Russia announced its decision in late February, following a seven-year standoff over Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics in Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to regularize the status of the two regions within the Ukrainian state.

Moscow has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join NATO. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

March 15, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 2 Comments

Zelensky Thanks Zuckerberg For Fighting ‘Side by Side’ With Ukraine in Info War

By Chris Menahan | InformationLiberation | March 13, 2022

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday expressed his gratitude to Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook and Instagram censoring Russian news outlets, allowing calls for violence against Russians and helping his government spread endless disinformation.

“War is not only a military opposition on UA land. It is also a fierce battle in the informational space,” Zelensky said Sunday on Twitter. “I want to thank @Meta and other platforms that have an active position that help and stand side by side with the Ukrainians.”

Last month, Facebook changed their rules to allow users to praise the “neo-nazi” Azov Battalion and this week they changed their rules further to allow calls for violence against Russians.

Facebook blocks RT and Sputnik in the EU but allows the Ukrainian military to announce plans to commit war crimes.

Facebook has helped Zelensky himself spread endless disinformation to try and con NATO into World War III. Most recently, they helped Zelensky spread the lie that Russians attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with tanks and it was leaking radiation and could lead to a nuclear holocaust wiping out all of Europe (if NATO doesn’t immediately get involved in the war and start WW3).

They also helped Zelensky spread the lie that Russians attacked the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and were trying to trigger a meltdown.

With Mark Zuckerberg’s full backing, Zelensky used Facebook to lie about Snake Island and spread the fake news that Russia attacked a Holocaust memorial “to erase our history.”

Whereas Facebook said in the past they would censor content that may cause harm or lead to violence, they now boost Israeli-funded “neo-nazi” groups in Ukraine and spread Zelensky’s lies and disinformation to millions in an effort to start WW3.

March 14, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 3 Comments

Another predicted spike in heart attacks (but it’s still nothing to do with the vaccines)

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | March 11, 2022

This past week saw two high-profile Australians – cricketer Shane Warne and Labour senator Kimberley Kitching – both die of sudden heart attacks aged 52.

As such, heart disease is back in the headlines. Again.

We predicted in our new-years post that explaining heart attacks would be a big part of 2022’s news cycle, and only three months in it has been a torrent.

It actually started in December of 2021, with medical doctors theorising that the stress and anxiety of dealing with Covid was going to cause a huge spike in heart problems due to “post-pandemic stress disorder”.

Before the end of January, the media were reporting that aortic stenosis was actually massively under-diagnosed and we could see up to 300,000 new cases of heart disease or damage in the near future.

At the beginning of February, a new reason was added to the list. As energy prices began to spike – do remember, that happened before the war – we were told the increased cold and stress could also cause heart disease.

Then, in mid-February scientific papers appeared claiming that “even a mild case of COVID” causes your “heart attack risk to soar”.

In short, and for many reasons, you’re much more likely to have a heart attack this year than you were last year.

Well, now the Sydney Morning Herald has joined in, with this article headlined “‘This is our biggest killer’: Shock deaths put spotlight on heart disease”, which warns:

The shock deaths of cricketer Shane Warne and Senator Kimberley Kitching should serve as a wake-up call to Australians about the prevalence of heart disease, doctors say, as a study shows COVID-19 may increase the risk for what was already one of the nation’s biggest killers.

Yes, having had covid – even if you just tested positive and had no symptoms – makes it more likely you’ll have a heart attack.

On top of that, warn the doctors quoted in the article, thousands of people will have missed their heart screenings due to lockdown, or have been sedantry and gained weight, not to mention the anxiety and stress.

All in all, Australians can expect a “rise in preventable heart disease deaths over the next five years”, according to health modellers.

But don’t worry, none of that is anything to do with the untested vaccines they’ve injected into literally millions of people.

Yes, all the major Covid vaccines are known to have “rare” side effects that impact the heart, such as blood clots and myocarditis, but clearly, that’s just a coincidence.

After all, the Sydney Morning Herald article doesn’t even use the word “vaccine”, not one single time. And they wouldn’t ignore anything that important, would they?

March 12, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | 3 Comments

White House briefs top social media influencers on Ukraine – reports

RT | March 12, 2022

White House officials have held a special briefing on the conflict in Ukraine for some 30 social media creators, the US media have reported, adding that the Biden administration is increasingly exploring new means of communication to get its message across to younger audiences.

The briefing was held on Thursday by the White House National Security Council special adviser for communications, Matt Miller, and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. The officials explained the US “strategic goals in the region” and answered questions about US aid to Ukraine, about NATO and Washington’s potential reaction to a Russian nuclear strike, addressing the social media creators on a zoom call, The Washington Post has reported on Friday.

The list of those invited to the briefing included people creating “explanatory” content on the conflict on TikTok, YouTube and Twitter. According to the Post, the first to break the story, the Biden administration has cooperated with Gen Z For Change – a nonprofit group – to identify content creators for the briefing.

One of those invited was Aaron Parnas, the 22-year-old son of Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-born American businessman and a former associate of Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York mayor and lawyer of then-President Donald Trump. Lev Parnas was convicted in October on campaign finance charges and pleaded guilty to conspiracy.

“We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way the American public is finding out about the latest,” the White House director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, explained, adding that Washington wanted to “make sure” the social media influencers get “the latest information from an authoritative source.”

According to the Washington Post, some influencers said following the briefing they “felt more empowered to debunk misinformation and communicate effectively about the crisis.” “I’m here to relay the information in a more digestible manner to my followers,” 18-year-old Ellie Zeiler, who has 10.5 million followers, told the Washington Post after the briefing. “I would consider myself a White House correspondent for Gen Z,” the TikTok influencer added.

Others, however, appeared unimpressed by the event. “The energy of the call felt like a press briefing for kindergartners,” said Jules Suzdaltsev, a Ukrainian-born journalist who also operates a popular TikTok channel. The officials had dodged hard questions, he added.

The development comes amid an ongoing Russian military action in Ukraine. Moscow has accused Kiev of failing to implement the Minsk Agreements – a set of accords regulating its relations with the then-rebel regions of the Donbass. The Kremlin also maintains it has launched the operation to protect the people of the Donbass republics, and to “demilitarize” Ukraine.

Kiev has blasted the operation as a completely unprovoked invasion and argues that, in the first instance, it had never planned to attack the two secessionist regions.

The US media have also claimed that a lot of misinformation has surfaced on TikTok and other social media amid the conflict, and that Moscow had reportedly paid Russian influencers to share videos promoting the Kremlin’s narrative.

TikTok blocked all new content and livestreaming from Russia altogether from March 6, citing Russia’s own ‘fake news law’ that prohibits the spreading of false information about the Russian military. The company insisted at that time it was putting the “the safety of our employees and our users” first.

March 12, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

Moscow responds to Ukraine maternity clinic bombing accusation

RT | March 10, 2022

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denied Ukrainian claims that Russian troops had shelled an operating maternity hospital in Ukraine. The building had been used as a base by the far-right Azov Battalion of the Ukrainian National Guard, the top Russian diplomat claimed on Thursday, during a press conference in Turkey.

The hospital in question has been for days under the control of a Ukrainian paramilitary group and Moscow presented evidence of this to the UN Security Council several days ago, Lavrov said.

“The Azov Battalion and other radicals kicked out all the expectant mothers, the nurses and other staff members. It was the base of the Azov ultra-radicals,” he said, speaking after meeting his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in Turkey’s Antalya.

Lavrov added that reports coming from Ukraine that contradict this were obviously meant to “manipulate global public opinion” about what is happening in the country, and he also chastised Western media for taking part in the propaganda effort.

“I have seen reports … that were really emotional. Unfortunately, the other side of the situation, which would allow one to form an objective opinion, was not given any prominence,” Lavrov said.

The Russian diplomat was commenting on claims raised by Ukraine that Russian troops had deliberately attacked a medical facility in the city of Mariupol on Wednesday. Ukrainian officials claimed that a Russian airstrike had injured at least 17 people but killed nobody.

Footage from the scene showed a heavily damaged building with broken medical equipment scattered inside and Ukrainian troops helping women, some of them carrying infants in their arms, who were implied to be survivors of a bombing.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on Wednesday that the incident proved that Russia was conducting a genocide of the Ukrainian people and called on other nations to stop Russian atrocities.

March 10, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 1 Comment

The climate scaremongers: BBC’s campaign against fossil fuels

By Paul Homewood | TCW Defending Freedom | March 4, 2022

As political pressure mounts for the UK fully to exploit North Sea oil reserves and begin fracking, the BBC is doubling down in its campaign to fight fossil fuels.

There is nothing new in this, of course: we have become used it down the years. But now they don’t even attempt to disguise it, so convinced are they of their moral superiority in the matter.

Last week they published two articles attacking critics of Net Zero. The reports were full of the opinions of the BBC’s chums in the Green Blob, such as Greenpeace, Carbon Brief and the Committee on Climate Change, but gave scant mention of opposing views.

The first report, ‘Climate change: Can the UK afford its net zero policies?’ was an attempt to take down the arguments of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG), made up of about 20 Conservative MPs, who have perfectly legitimately drawn the public’s attention to the very real costs of Net Zero.

The article begins by portraying the NZSG as a tiny bunch of ultra Right-wing Brexiteers – you know, the ones who should be ignored!

The rest of the article carries on in the same one-sided vein, with grossly misleading and inaccurate comments and a failure to present the other side of the argument.

It starts by claiming that our energy bills are only £159 a year higher on average because of climate policies. But this does not reflect the full cost of those policies, which in total are estimated to cost £17.6billion this year. That is not £159, but £650 per household.

Much of this cost is paid by the public sector and industry/commerce, meaning higher taxes and prices. Either way, the public end up paying.

The BBC then go on to claim that we should be building wind farms, because they are cheaper than gas power stations.

They imply that you can simply swap wind for gas, ignoring the fact the former is highly intermittent. Currently we need reliable, dispatchable generation, such as gas, to turn on when wind power fails to meet demand. When this is factored in, wind power is nearly double the cost of gas power.

Next the BBC turns its attention to claims that fracking will reduce energy prices in the UK. They argue that we cannot affect global prices of gas, which totally misses the point. Even if UK gas is sold at world prices, the country will still benefit hugely, and in particular government revenues will be boosted. Moreover it will greatly enhance our energy security.

The NZSG have rightly raised the question of how much we will all have to pay for Net Zero, something which the public has been kept in the dark about. The BBC’s response quotes the ultra optimistic calculations of the Committee on Climate Change, which have already been proved to be false and give a cost of ‘only’ £344billion by 2050.

Anybody who claims what the economy will look like three decades hence is a charlatan. But what we do know about is the crippling cost being imposed on the public in the short term. Things like heat pumps, insulation and electric cars will cost us tens of thousands of pounds. The new hydrogen networks being proposed will drive our energy bills up yet further.

For some reason, the BBC makes no mention of any of this.

But won’t the costs of climate change far outweigh all of this? The BBC think so:

‘The UK government’s latest report into the risks of climate change warns that based on a conservative estimate of a 2C temperature rise by 2100, flooding for non-residential properties across the UK is expected to increase by 27 per cent by 2050 and 40 per cent by 2080. At 4C this increases to 44 per cent and 75 per cent respectively.’

Leaving aside the fact that these claims are pure make-believe, does the BBC really think that eliminating the UK’s 1 per cent of world emissions will have the slightest effect on the climate?

The second BBC article, ‘Government climate advisers say cut fossil fuels to lower energy bills’ is by our old friend Roger Harrabin, ‘BBC environment analyst’. Again it does little but report the views of the Committee on Climate Change and others in the Green Blob, who are campaigning for more renewable energy.

As in the first article, it repeats the claim that energy prices won’t drop if we develop shale and North Sea gas reserves as the amounts are so insignificant. However, a recent study by the Warwick Business School estimated that our shale reserves could easily supply a quarter of the UK’s gas consumption over the next twenty years – a hardly insignificant amount at a time when North Sea gas output is expected to halve.

But for ideological reasons, the Committee on Climate Change would like to throw this all away!

John Kerry worries about Ukraine war’s effect on emissions

Joe Biden’s Climate Tsar, the gaffe-prone John Kerry, put his foot in it again last week. In an interview with a Middle East TV station he said he was worried that the Ukraine war would have ‘massive emissions consequences’, and that it could divert the world’s attention away from climate change.

This is the same John Kerry who flew in a private jet to Iceland last year to collect an Environmental Award.  When asked why he chose private jet, he responded it was ‘the only choice for someone like me’.

It was only the other day that Kerry was full of praise for India’s climate efforts, despite the fact they continue to burn more and more coal. He was impressed by Prime Minister Modi’s promise to build lots of solar farms, which Kerry claimed would make India compliant with the 1.5C goal set at Glasgow, a goal which requires global emissions to be cut in half in this decade.

Evidently arithmetic is not John Kerry’s strong suit!

While Modi’s plans would increase wind and solar output tenfold by 2040, this will not be enough to even meet the rising demand for energy in India, which is projected to increase by 69 per cent by then. This means that fossil fuel consumption will continue to grow as well.

Even with all of this investment in renewables, wind and solar together will still only be supplying 20 per cent of India’s energy in 2040.

BP Energy Review & International Energy Agency Outlook

While John Kerry strolls around with his head in the clouds, the Indian Government have long realised that you cannot run a modern economy just on the wind and the sun.

Selling the UK steel industry down the river

As I explained a few weeks ago, the UK operates an Emissions Trading Scheme, a cap and trade system, applying to electricity generators, energy intensive industry and domestic aviation.

The scheme is designed to cut the use of fossil fuels by forcing companies to purchase carbon allowances if they dare to use them.

As a direct consequence of government policy, the price of these allowances has in effect quadrupled in the last couple of years. (Although the UK system was only introduced last May, it directly replaced a similar EU scheme, which it now tracks.)

Higher carbon prices have not only pushed electricity prices through the roof, but they are also hitting industry hard as well, not least the steel industry.

According to the Telegraph, steelmakers are now facing the prospect of cutting production thanks to a doubling of the carbon price in the last nine months.

Steel companies receive a set number of free allowances each year, but this quota is reduced each year. Once they have used these up, they must buy them on the market, which adds £175/ton to the cost of the steel produced. This amounts to a third of the price they sell the steel for, which is quite clearly unsustainable.

Indeed, so high are the carbon prices that firms can often be better off selling their allowances and producing nothing!

Cutting production however has its own problems for the steel industry, because its fixed costs are so high. In the real world, steel plants need to run at near to full capacity to be profitable. It makes no financial sense shutting down furnaces and rolling mills for days at a time.

In other words, they are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Furthermore there is little that steel firms can do to cut fossil fuel use. By definition, making steel is a highly energy intensive process. From personal experience I know that steel works have forever been looking at ways to reduce energy use on a daily basis.

It is true that electric arc furnaces, which melt scrap steel, don’t need the colossal amounts of coke required in blast furnaces, but higher electricity prices have already crippled their viability.

The inevitable result of government policy is that we will end up importing more steel instead of making it ourselves. It will be made in countries like China and India, where carbon emissions will be much higher than here. And more emissions will arise from shipping it halfway around the world.

The whole thing makes no sense whatsoever.

It is just another senseless sacrifice to the Great Green God.

March 8, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

They lied about everything else, but believe them about this war

By Frederick Edward | TCW Defending Freedom | March 5, 2022

HOW long until we get reports of people pelting Siberian huskies on the street?

Probably not too long. Already there are videos of Russian food shops being vandalised such as this one in Germany.

A friend who runs a Russian language school in Britain has received threats, including that all Russians should leave the UK. That the school employs mostly Ukrainians and the owner’s wife is from Kiev is neither here nor there when you’re caught up in the latest tide of moral righteousness.

Having forgotten utterly about the preoccupations of yesterday – Covid, Partygate (whatever happened to Sue Gray’s report?) – we are now fully at work with our latest, all-consuming passion. War. Lots of it. Each detonation of a mortar round more titillating than the last. I haven’t seen this much unanimity since the first days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Do you believe what you read in the media? Plucky Ukrainians, incompetent Russians. After a few days, claims that ‘Russia has lost the war’ abound. Stuck in the mud and stranded without fuel. That wars are rarely decided on the opening day seems lost to a world obsessed with only the present moment. There is plenty more time for Ukraine to fall.

But not without additional, unnecessary bloodshed, all encouraged by our politicians and media. Those wishing to volunteer for Kiev are sent away on a bandwagon of positive vibes and profile pictures with superimposed Ukrainian flags. That they are being sent to a probable death is neither here nor there.

The Russians are evil. The West never puts a foot wrong. Ignore the wars of the past – Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya – we are geopolitically chaste and without sin. That Ukraine is of approximately zero geostrategic interest to us does not matter. The forward march of Western hubris in its institutional form cannot be impeded.

Why would Nato not just say Ukraine will remain a buffer state? That nation’s entry into the alliance was so clearly a red line for the strategists of Moscow, nevertheless we courted its favour, assuming that being on the ‘right side of history’ would be enough. When Russia finally did invade, our ignorance leads us to throw our hands up and scream ‘bully!’ at Putin. I do not care much for Putin, but it is for the birds to assume that the West is entirely without blame.

Having been systematically lied to about every imaginable topic, I cannot simply buy our government’s line. Warrior Truss, whose unfamiliarity with the geography of the area should set alarm bells ringing, solemnly plays her role as a second-rate Thatcher-at-war. Johnson, who until yesterday was on the ropes of various scandals, is recast as a latter-day Churchill.

We’re fighting for democracy and freedom. Fighting for it in a corrupt eastern European state, cleft in two by a linguistic and ethnic fault line, and whose elites have bought the ear of the American President and his family.

We’re fighting it from the high horses of the West, which has just spent two years imprisoning its own citizens and demanding they undergo forced medical procedures. From the same West which would not dare comment on Trudeau’s totalitarian seizure of the bank accounts of those who dared disagree with him, nor on the dictatorial powers used daily in the Antipodes.

Forget all of that. We are the good guys. They are the bad guys. The world is black and white. We are not to blame, not one iota. Cheerlead for war and let the stakes get higher. Assume that Russia’s interests are invalid and to be ignored. We’re back to the gilded age of liberal democracies beating the drum of war.

Whatever you do, don’t look back or think about the recent past. Let your minds be firmly occupied by the indulgent orgy of violence, peddled by the same people who conned you so many times before, and who seek to keep us in a perpetual state of crisis. And certainly, never think about the law of unintended consequences.

March 4, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 3 Comments

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