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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Moscow and Kiev issue updates on Ukrainian border guards reported killed
RT | February 26, 2022
The Russian military has claimed that Ukrainian border guards, whom Ukraine initially declared entirely slain, survived, while Kiev’s military concurred that it might indeed be the case.
Both countries’ armed forces on Saturday said that a group of Ukrainian border guards stationed on Zmeinyy (Snake) Island, located some 48km off Ukraine’s southern coast in the Black Sea, were captured by Russian forces. Russia says they were taken alive and unharmed to Sevastopol in Crimea.
However, the initial story allegedly went as follows: a group of 13 border guards on the island were confronted by a Russian warship on Thursday. The Russian ship ordered the group by radio to surrender, the Ukrainians replied “go f**k yourself,” and the Russian ship opened fire. After several hours of fighting, all the guards were killed.
The story spread like wildfire on social media and was held up by the Ukrainian government, Western media outlets and journalists as an example of Ukrainian “heroism.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky honored the troops he declared slain, saying: “On our [Snake] Island, defending it to the last, all the border guards died heroically,” and promising to award them the posthumous title of “Hero of Ukraine.”
The first signs that something else may have happened came early on Saturday, as Russia’s Black Sea Fleet announced that dozens of Ukrainian border troops were delivered to Sevastopol, Crimea, with videos online purportedly showing their arrival.
Ukraine’s Border Guard Service stated shortly afterwards that the troops on Snake Island “bravely defended themselves,” but were taken prisoner when the island was captured. According to the military branch, reports that all had perished were “preliminary,” and came after the Ukrainian military lost contact with the island. The ministry did not say how many guards were stationed on the island, and did not claim to know whether any died or were injured.
The Russian Ministry of Defense likewise confirmed the capture of the island. Spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said that 82 Ukrainian servicemen had been stationed on the island, that all surrendered, and that none were injured. Konashenkov said that as prisoners were being transported off the island, 16 Ukrainian Navy boats disguised as civilian vessels launched an attack on Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
Konashenkov said that Russians destroyed six of the Ukrainian vessels, and claimed that US drones were seen operating in the area, suggesting that the US “directed” the Ukrainian boats. These reports have not yet been corroborated.
A recording of the Snake Island garrison supposedly telling the Russian ship to “go f**k yourself” is still circulating on social media. There is currently no evidence that the recording is genuine, and Ukraine’s Border Guard Service only said that the troops gave a message indicating “no one will surrender.”
Following the Money on Climate Change Media Coverage
By Chris Morrison | The Daily Sceptic | February 20, 2022
The Associated Press (AP) is assigning another two dozen journalists across the world to cover ‘climate issues’. AP Senior Vice President Julie Pace described the move as a “far reaching initiative that will transform the way we cover the climate story”. Over 20 of the journalists will be new hires and they will be funded by an $8m gift from five billionaire philanthropic organisations, including the Left-wing Rockefeller Foundation. The money is just the latest in a series of such gifts and AP reports that 50 writing jobs are funded from these sources.
AP is not the only large media company to collect such hand-outs. The BBC and the Guardian regularly receive multi-million dollar contributions from the trusts of wealthy philanthropists. It is estimated that Bill Gates has given over $300 million over the last decade to a wide variety of media outlets. Faced with plummeting paid readers and advertisers, mainstream legacy media seems eager to tap a new revenue stream.
The money is spread wide across such media. This month, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting received $1.5 million from Rockefeller to “expand coverage of under-reported and/or inaccurately reported critical public health information”. The Quadrivium Foundation, run by Democrat power couple James and Kathryn Murdoch, is also paying climate wages at AP. On its website, the Foundation notes that it also invests in Climate Central, using meteorologists as “trusted messengers” of the links between extreme weather and climate change. Since it is not possible to link individual weather events to long term climate change with any scientific certainty, this aim looks to be a waste of money, or perhaps not.
‘Trusted messengers’ seems to be a phrase much in vogue around philanthropic operations. Last October, Rockefeller gave $4.5 million to Purpose Global, a non-profit company that aims to help corporate clients with their “cultural intelligence”. The money was given in support of facilitating a “communication network of trusted messengers”. This would “amplify accurate information and combat mis- and dis- information on COVID-19 vaccines”. In September 2020, the Gates Foundation gave the Guardian $3.5 million to “support” its regular reporting on global health. Likewise, the Global Health Security Team at the Telegraph is Gates-funded.
Old school journalists might be a little happier to see less of the ‘trusted messenger’ stuff and more of the requirement to investigate. But critical inquiry of climate change science has been more or less banned from many mainstream outlets. This is despite the fact that the hypothesis that humans cause all or most global warming is unproven, and many scientists look more to natural causes for long term change. Predictions – often termed evidence – of future warming, are based on climate models that have never provided an accurate forecast in the last 40 years. Global warming started to run out of steam two decades ago, and it has been at a standstill for the last seven. When Google Adsense banned the main climate web page tracking accurate satellite data showing the standstill, the interest was confined to just a few outlets, including the Daily Sceptic.
One of the largest suppliers of cash for climate change is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the BBC and the Guardian are two of its favourite giftees. The Guardian has received upwards of $20 million over recent years starting with £6m in 2011 to establish a “millennium Development Goals” feed that provides “compelling evidence-based content”. During the last decade, Gates has given at least $20 million to help fund the BBC World Service and $5.5 million for the Corporation’s Media Action charity.
In that time, the software tycoon, once treated with great suspicion for early monopolistic tendencies, has become a prized ‘talking head’ across the BBC for epidemics, vaccines and anti-meat diets. His recent scary tales of climate change, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”, was recently given five airings on prime time Radio 4.
Elsewhere, there are prizes for the best behaved – sorry – most distinguished climate journalist. Every year, the foundation of BBVA, a Spanish bank heavily involved in financing Net Zero projects, hands out €100,000 to the lucky recipient. Last year it went to Marlow Hood of Agence France-Presse, who describes himself as the “Herald of the Anthropocene”, the latter being a political renaming of the current Holocene era. In 2019, Matt McGrath of the BBC pocketed the cash, while in 2020 the award went to – no great surprise – the Guardian.
Much of the BBC money appears to support advocacy in the developing world, although the terms of specific grants are sometimes hard to understand. A letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in August 2019 describing the purpose of a $2.03 million grant to the BBC reads as follows: “To help us learn deepen our underpinning of processes and user journeys for different sets of women’s empowerment collectives, develop use cases for where digital can help amplify effects bring efficiencies, and close gender gaps for women”.
No doubt when this non-sensical gibberish was translated into understandable English, the money was spent wisely.
Canadian Media STILL Pushing Crackpot Theory That Truckers Are Russian Agents
By Steve Watson | Summit News | February 14, 2022
As the Canadian freedom convoy rolls on and continues to influence other protesters around the globe, Canadian media continues to push outright disinformation by suggesting that the Russian government is behind the movement.
When the convoy first came to prominence at the end of January, state broadcaster the Canadian Broadcasting Company began spreading completely unfounded claims that “Russian actors” were present among the Canadian truckers holding up major cities including Ottawa and Toronto, as well as border crossings.
The tenuous reasoning behind the theory is that Canada has expressed support for Ukraine during the country’s ongoing tensions with Russia.
Rather than admit that working class truckers are sick of enforced restrictions and vaccine mandates threatening their livelihoods, CBC floated the crackpot idea that Vladimir Putin is secretly behind the protests.
CBC continues to push the conspiracy theory, with correspondent Harry Forestell filing the following report Friday giving airtime to ‘New Brunswick cybersecurity expert’ David Shipley, who is adamant that the Russians are behind everything.
Shipley proclaimed “Who would have reason right now to cause as much chaos in Canada as possible? Well, at the top of that list is Russia.”
He continued, “We are actively engaged in a geopolitical battle about the future of the Ukraine. Our Foreign Affairs minister, our Prime Minister, others have been very vocal in our support for the Ukraine and it seems very likely that the tactics that we are seeing, the creation of the massive Facebook groups using fake identities or in the case now alleged by a U.S. media outlet, a stolen identity of a Missouri woman to create these groups and to foster this communication hundreds of thousands of people, this is the Russian internet research agency playbook writ large.”
Shipley has considered that possibly the truckers are Chinese agents too, but ultimately no, they’re Russian.
He declared “You have other enemies as well. You have China, you have other states but when I narrow down my list of suspects and I don’t have enough evidence to win in a court of law but I don’t need that right now, this smacks of the kind of move that Russia has made in the past, the United States, and is continuing to do around the world.”
When asked what the solution to this pressing Russian agent problem is, Shipley’s solution was to restrict and shut down the convoy’s social media presence.
You certainly don’t have enough evidence Mr Shipley because there isn’t any.
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Not Ready for the Big Leagues
Patriot Missile Launcher
By William Schryver | imetatronink | January 20, 2024
… In an attempt to cover just three large airbases against a series of salvos of 100+ missiles of various types, the entire US stockpile of PAC-3 interceptors could very conceivably be exhausted in little more than a week or two. … continue
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Aletho News- Iraq and Cuba hit by blackouts amid US pressure and attacks on Iran
- US-Israeli Efforts to Degrade Iran’s Missile Might Failed – Military Researcher
- New American copium: Ghost of Kuwait
- IRGC strikes critical Israeli military sites with Khorramshahr-4 missiles in latest wave
- US racks up billions in losses during first four days of war as Iran pummels key Pentagon assets: Report
- US and Israeli Claims of Depleted Iranian Arsenals are Just Military Propaganda – Expert
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- The myth of military ‘decapitation’
- Zelensky issues military threat to Orban
- If Americans Knew
- War rages on Iran, while Israel withholds everything from Gaza – Not a ceasefire Day 146
- Is the International Norm Against Assassination Dead?
- More than 1,000 Civilians Killed in U.S.-Israeli Bombing of Iran, Rights Group Says
- The Neocons: First in War, Last in Peace
- With focus on Iran and Gaza, Israel is quietly annexing the West Bank
- Experts Worldwide Agree: US-Israel Attack on Iran a Clear Violation of International Law
- 1,000+ reported dead in Iran, in the war that Israel wanted – Not a ceasefire Day 145
- Rubio Suggests Trump Joined Israel’s Planned Attack on Iran Instead of Stopping It
- CNN: Timing of attack on Iran bears symbolic meaning in Judaism
- How the New York Times paved the way for apocalyptic war
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: A Century Warming Of 1.1°C Is ‘Commonplace’ And ‘Not Unusual’ During This Interglacial
- New Study: ‘Internal Noise’ And Volcanic Forcing Can Trigger 10-15°C Warming Within Decades
- Glaciers Worldwide Are Suddendly Surging, Experts Blame Warming!
- Surprising Discovery: Sahara Is Greening…Billions Of Trees Where Once Thought To Be Barren
- New Research Reaffirms Clouds, Aerosols, And Surface Solar Radiation Are ‘Driving The Climate System’
- Germany: Electric Car Catches Fire At Charging Station, Sets Off Local “Inferno”, Widespread Damage
- New Study: Canada’s New Brunswick Was 1°C Warmer Than Today During The Medieval Warm Period
- Coal Power Back In Trend As Globe Tries To Keep Pace With Growing Demand For Power
- New Study: A 4°C Warmer Beaufort Sea Had ‘No Sea Ice’ 11,700 – 8200 Years Ago
- Unfudging The Data: Dutch Meteorological Institute Reinstates Early 20th Centruy Heat Waves It Had Erased Earlier
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