Will mainstream media heads roll over Trump ‘Russiagate’ fraud?
By Paul Robinson | RT | November 19, 2021
If you want to know how reliable journalists and TV talking heads are, look at their record when it comes to the biggest stories of the past decade: Iraq’s purported ‘weapons of mass destruction’ or the invasion of Afghanistan.
If they told you at the time that Iraq was knee-deep in lethal chemicals and victory over Islamist militias across the border would surely come in another six months’ time, then you have grounds for considering them to be less than reliable. If, on the other hand, they told you that all that WMD stuff was built on shaky ground and the war in Afghanistan would probably end badly, then you’ve got grounds for trusting them.
Once you start doing this, you reach a sad conclusion. The people who got it wrong have risen onwards and upwards to greater things, never having to repent for their errors, while those who got it right have been shoved to the margins. There is, in short, an astonishing lack of accountability for journalistic failure.
Still, errors need explaining, so it’s interesting to see how people go about it. Roughly speaking, there are three methods: first, deny any error; second, say you never actually believed it; and third, say you were the victim of deception. So, with the invasion of Iraq, you have a few who still maintain it was a good idea; a bunch who claim that they were secret doubters all along; and then some more who argue that the real problem was that Saddam Hussein deliberately misled everybody into thinking he had WMD, so it was quite reasonable to believe it.
Move on a few years and we can see much the same process at work in the aftermath of Russiagate – the breathless scandal that obsessed the American media for the best part of four years, with allegations that Donald Trump had colluded with the Russian state to win the 2016 election. Much like Iraq’s secretive chemical weapons program, proof of collusion has proved embarrassingly elusive. Moreover, as has become very clear, one of the key documents driving the story, the so-called Steele dossier, has turned out to be utterly worthless.
The latest nail in the coffin of the collusion narrative came with the arrest this month of the man who compiled the dossier on behalf of former British spy Christopher Steele, one Igor Danchenko. The reaction of the punditocracy has echoed that which followed the failure to find Iraqi WMD: denial by some; claims by others that they never believed the story; and, last, allegations that the whole affair was a deliberate act of deception by the Russian state.
Prime place among the first group, the deniers, goes to Max Boot. Writing in the Washington Post on Thursday, Boot showed not the slightest bit of repentance for boosting the Steele Dossier, any more than he has previously shown for backing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Even if the Steele dossier is discredited, there’s plenty of evidence of Trump’s collusion with Russia,” he says.
Paul Pillar, writing in the National Interest this week, likewise claims the dossier was unimportant. Pillar doubles down on what he knows to be the truth, that “Trump and his circle encouraged, welcomed, facilitated, and exploited a foreign power’s interference in a US election.” Incredibly, Pillar concludes that what is needed is, “a well-funded investigation to look into this further,” as if the only reason that proof of collusion is lacking is that we haven’t looked hard enough.
Given just how hard a huge number of people have looked, this is patently silly. But at least the deniers display the virtue of consistency. Perhaps more irritating are those who are now coming forward to claim that, although they didn’t say so until now, they never believed in collusion. They were, you might say, secret, silent sceptics.
Thus, Max Seddon of the Financial Times turned to Twitter to declare that the lesson of the affair was to “listen to reporters on the ground.” “I don’t know a single Moscow corr[espondent] who bought the dossier,” he says, adding that the immense fuss about Russiagate was the fault of “editors” who wasted journalists’ time on the matter rather than on “substantive coverage of Russia.”
I’m willing to believe Seddon when he implies that he never swallowed the nonsense in the Steele dossier as well as the rest of the collusion narrative. But I have to ask him, “Why didn’t you say so at the time?” Lots of people did. One assumes he’d blame his editors, and I get it – when you work for a media outlet, you’re constrained by what your editors want. But that hardly lets journalists off the hook. All it does is explain why the people who did publicly scoff at the dossier were to be found outside the mainstream media, while the likes of The Guardian’s Luke Harding were earning big bucks writing books on collusion and telling everybody what a great guy Christopher Steele was. But it doesn’t explain why all those journalists who say that they disbelieved the collusion story never called out Harding and co. Clearly something is amiss.
And then, we have the third group: those who claim innocence on the grounds of deception. The logic here is that the dossier was indeed garbage, but very clever garbage dreamt up by Russian intelligence to deceive us all. By spreading stories of Trump-Russia collusion, the Russians aimed to sow chaos and set Americans at each other’s throats.
It is, of course, ridiculous, but that hasn’t stopped many supposedly serious commentators from suggesting it as a means of excusing their own gullibility. For instance, Newsweek’s deputy opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon went on air to discuss the “irony of American journalists falling for Russian disinformation en masse because it confirmed what they *really* wanted to believe.”
For, you see, all those stories saying the Russians were spreading disinformation were themselves Russian disinformation. Damn, but those Ruskies are clever!
The reality is this – the Steele dossier was obvious rubbish from the start, but the mass of the journalistic community either swallowed it wholesale or, alternatively, chose to stay silent about its doubts while allowing the believers to dominate the headlines. Belated claims that “I never believed,” or absurd allegations that the whole thing was a Russian plot, are just excuses designed to deflect blame. If we are to avoid such failures in the future, we need an honest reckoning. Judging by what’s come out from Western journalists this week, it doesn’t seem we are likely to get it.
Paul Robinson is a professor at the University of Ottawa. He writes about Russian and Soviet history, military history and military ethics, and is author of the Irrussianality blog.
Fact checking the Radio New Zealand fact check
COVID Plan B | November 17, 2021
Radio New Zealand has recently criticized a Facebook live conversation between former National MP Matt King and epidemiologist Dr Simon Thornley. While people should undertake their own research, we provide some comments related to the media’s critique. The evidence related to covid-19 policy continues to change and be updated.
In the interview, Professor Rod Jackson made several claims, decrying Thornley personally during the interview. Let’s examine them in turn.
- “There is no trial evidence that ivermectin [an anti-parasitic drug used as early treatment for covid-19 in some parts of the world] works in people with Covid – it doesn’t exist.”
Trials do exist. In fact a meta-analysis or summary study of six such trials exist. The pooled effect of these trials is a 79% decline in all-cause mortality (95% confidence interval: 89% to 58%). These trials are from Iraq, Iran, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey and India, places less reticent about its use. But they are trials, and the reduction in all-cause mortality is stark, an endpoint which is generally considered clinically important and free of error and bias. Another trial points to effective treatment, such as from vitamin D supplementation, which reduced intensive care admissions to 1/50 (2%) in the treated from 13/26 (50%) in the untreated in Spanish covid-19 patients.
We’re not advocating ivermectin at all. But we are prepared to look at the evidence. The fact that Jackson didn’t know there were trials invalidates his point.
- “Professor Jackson also said claiming Covid-19 was no worse than the flu was nonsense”.
In the interview, Thornley claimed the infection fatality rate of covid-19 was as bad as a ‘severe flu’. A summary study of many countries indicates that the average global infection fatality rate of covid-19 is 0.15% or 1/667 people.
The fatality rate for H1N1 influenza is variable, but this figure from covid-19 is well within the range of estimates presented from a similar summary study.
The comparison between covid-19 and flu is therefore fair and accurate. Jackson’s claim is misinformation.
We should note that many fatality studies take the definition of a covid-19 death at face value but it does not mean the individual died exclusively from the virus. This was exemplified by the counting a recent covid-19 death in a man who was actually shot and killed, yet tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 during the autopsy. This was defended by the Ministry of Health, as it conformed with World Health Organization policy.
We are able to test the accuracy of Jackson’s claimed fatality risk. In May 2020, Jackson admonished Sweden for its lax approach. He said the fatality rate of covid-19 was 1/100 people infected, so predicted 56,000 deaths from covid-19 in the country, assuming 60% of the population would be infected. To date, there have been about 15,000 covid-19 deaths, with an age distribution similar to that of background deaths (figure). In fact, by all accounts, Sweden has fared through the epidemic particularly well compared to other European countries.
Figure. Deaths with covid-19 in Sweden, by age at November 3, 2021. Source: statistica.com
- “This is a severe disease and we have a evidence-based treatment [the vaccine] where there is definitive evidence that it reduces the risk of severe disease and death by 95 percent, in that order.”
This is an extraordinary claim for several reasons. First, the original Pfizer trial reported about the same number of overall deaths in the treated and the untreated groups (14 in the treated and 13 in the untreated). In the six-month trial results, only three covid-19 deaths occurred, one in the treated and two in the untreated group. This is not consistent with Jackson’s assertion of a 95% reduction in risk of severe disease and death.
Given the numbers of deaths in the original trial, it is possible to work out whether the trial would have picked up a 95% reduction as Jackson claims. The trial would have been expected to have only one death in the treated group, and would have detected a difference more than expected by chance with 96% certainty.
There is observational evidence from Sweden of reduced covid-19 hospitalisations and deaths (not from all-causes), however, the vaccine effect diminished to zero for all three outcomes eight months after the date that the vaccine was administered.
To compound the confusion about the effect of the vaccine, the original Pfizer trial now is marred by whistle-blowers who have given the British Medical Journal evidence of fraud occurring during its conduct. Sixteen Swedish doctors have now called for the injection to be suspended as a result of these revelations.
Both Jackson and RNZ use extensive use of ad hominem attacks, which are considered an invalid, and lowest, form of argument.
Examples include:
- “anti-vax”
- “discredited academic”
- “And we have someone who is questioning that evidence, who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, talking to an epidemiologist who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
- “outlier in his field”.
The purveyors and writers of such ‘argument’ appear to have no embarrassment at the anti-intellectualism and inhumanity of their conduct.
We’ll stick to the contest of ideas by again considering Jackson’s accuracy. Back in August 2020, Jackson and his colleagues claimed that elimination was still the best strategy for New Zealand to tackle covid-19. That article has not dated well, yet the personalised tirade and arguments are familiar.
“He [Thornley] is the only dissenter in the epidemiological community,”
“It’s not like this is a discussion like a boxing match with two equal partners. What you’ve got is every experienced epidemiologist in the country supporting the Government’s elimination approach.”
“We are all advising the Government, and we speak with one voice. And you have got a junior epidemiologist who is presenting a different case.”
Jackson has made increasingly inaccurate claims during the pandemic, claiming, unchallenged that one in five infected people will be hospitalised after infection with covid-19. No media have ever fact checked this.
New Zealand’s own government data shows Jackson overestimated by at least a factor of ten, since the proportion of cases (rather than infections) hospitalised is 2% (table).
Table. Counts of cases of covid-19 in New Zealand (16 November 2021).
| Count | % | |
| Self-isolation | 2058 | 56% |
| Isolation Complete | 969 | 26% |
| Managed Isolation | 396 | 11% |
| Hospital | 73 | 2% |
| Other | 198 | 5% |
As sailing great Russell Coutts has recently pointed out, it is questionable how “media entities can maintain objectivity when they have accepted a government grant that is conditional on them promoting certain government policies”.
It is prudent to check all sources of information, not only those who dare to question the what is coming from the Beehive.
BBC Believes a Conspiracy Drives Climate Conspiracy Theories
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | November 16, 2021
Shadows everywhere: The possibility that people might want to reject climate lockdowns and Covid lockdowns of their own volition does not seem to occur to BBC conspiracy theorists.
Covid denial to climate denial: How conspiracists are shifting focus
By Marianna Spring
Specialist disinformation reporter, BBC NewsMembers of an online movement infected with pandemic conspiracies are shifting their focus – and are increasingly peddling falsehoods about climate change.
Matthew is convinced that shadowy forces lie behind two of the biggest news stories of our time, and that he’s not being told the truth.
“This whole campaign of fear and propaganda is an attempt to try and drive some agenda,” he says. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s climate change or a virus or something else.” […]
And recently, groups like the ones he’s a part of have been sharing misleading claims not only about Covid, but about climate change. He sees “Covid and climate propaganda” as part of the same so-called plot.
The White Rose network
It’s part of a larger pattern. Anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine Telegram groups, which once focused exclusively on the pandemic, are now injecting the climate change debate with the same conspiratorial narratives they use to explain the pandemic.
The posts go far beyond political criticism and debate – they’re full of incorrect information, fake stories and pseudoscience.
According to researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think tank that researches global disinformation trends, some anti-lockdown groups have become polluted by misleading posts about climate change being overplayed, or even a so-called “hoax” designed to control people.
“Increasingly, terminology around Covid-19 measures is being used to stoke fear and mobilise against climate action,” says the ISD’s Jennie King.
She says this isn’t really about climate as a policy issue.
“It’s the fact that these are really neat vectors to get themes like power, personal freedom, agency, citizen against state, loss of traditional lifestyles – to get all of those ideas to a much broader audience.”
One group which has adopted such ideas is the White Rose – a network with locally-run subgroups around the world, from the UK to the US, Germany and New Zealand – where Matthew came across it.
“It’s not run by any one or two people,” Matthew explains. “It’s kind of a decentralised community organisation, so you obtain stickers and then post them on lampposts and things like that.” […]
While we chat, he mentions “The Great Reset” – an unfounded conspiracy theory that a global elite is using the pandemic to establish a shadowy New World Order, a “super-government” that will control the lives of citizens around the world. … Full article: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-59255165
The Great Reset is a public programme promoted by the World Economic Forum. The annual “Great Reset” WEF Davos event costs more than $50,000. According to Wikipedia, in 2011 an annual membership cost $52,000 for an individual member, $263,000 for “Industry Partner” and $527,000 for “Strategic Partner”. An admission fee cost $19,000 per person. In 2014, WEF raised annual fees by 20 percent, bringing the cost for “Strategic Partner” from CHF 500,000 ($523,000) to CHF 600,000 ($628,000)
A simple google search turns up the WEF page near the top of the list of searches. The page cites Covid and climate change as justifications for their programme.
In my opinion there is room to debate the true nature of the Great Reset programme, but calling it “unfounded”, as in non-existent, is at best plain ignorant, and well below the BBC journalistic standards we once thought we had a right to expect.
As for the White Rose network, never heard of it. I have no doubt White Rose and many similar groups exist, in our unsettled world there are plenty of concerned people seeking out like minded fellows. But some groups are run by people with their own agenda, who are not acting in their member’s best interests, and any significant group will be heavily monitored by the government, so I strongly urge caution for anyone who participates in large private social media groups.
In Britain there is a “malicious communication act”, which makes it an offence to distribute written material which causes offence or anxiety, which has been used to arrest people campaigning against British government Covid policy. I am not a lawyer, but in my opinion it is only a matter of time before this act is used against people who oppose other high priority government policies in Britain. Be careful what electronic footprints you leave, your words could be misinterpreted. Above all, stay within the law, wherever you live.
Ukraine gives its view on alleged Russian military buildup near border
By Jonny Tickle | RT | November 16, 2021
Ukraine’s State Border Service has rejected claims that Russia’s military is gathering near the two countries’ shared border, after NATO’s Secretary-General said there was a “large and unusual” build-up of forces at the frontier.
Speaking to the Ukraine-24 TV channel on Monday, border service spokesman Andrey Demchenko revealed that Kiev does not have reason to believe Russian troops are accumulating nearby.
“We do not register any movement of equipment or military of our neighbouring country near the border,” he explained. “If any actions are taking place, it may be dozens or even hundreds of kilometres from the state border.”
Demchenko’s comments directly contradict a claim from NATO head Jens Stoltenberg, made earlier that day. “We see an unusual concentration of troops, and we know that Russia has been willing to use these types of military capabilities before to conduct aggressive actions against Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.
Last week, American business outlet Bloomberg reported that US officials warned their European counterparts that Moscow may be planning an invasion of Ukraine, noting that their concerns were backed by “publicly available evidence.”
The suggestion of an invasion was quickly slammed by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov groundless.
“This is not the first publication and not the first statement by the US that they are concerned about the movement of our armed forces in Russia,” he said. “We have repeatedly said that the movement of our armed forces on our own territory should be of no concern to anyone. Russia poses no threat to anyone.”
ANOTHER BOGUS RUSSIAN WAR SCARE
By Paul Robinson | IRRUSIANALITY | November 12, 2021
I have had a couple more pieces published in RT in the last two days. One concerns the probably temporary closure of the Kyiv Post and why it seems to have provoked immense outrage whereas the previous shutting down of Russian-language Ukrainian media outlets did not. The other responds to a letter of resignation sent by Russian liberal journalist Konstantin [von] Eggert [MBE] to the Chatham House think tank in protest the institute’s decision to give an award to a BLM activist. I use this an opportunity to delve into different Russian and Western conceptions of rights and freedoms. You can read these here and here.
For this post, though, I intend to tackle another topic, which follows on naturally from my last one. In that, I mocked the idea being floated around in some circles that Russia was behind the Belarus-EU migrant crisis and somehow using it as a provocation for further aggressive action, including maybe a military assault on the ‘Suwalki Gap’.
As we now know from Bloomberg, this theory is nonsense: Russia has no intention of invading Poland, it’s planning to invade Ukraine instead. Or so say ‘American officials’, and as we all know you can trust their judgement 100%.
According to Bloomberg:
“The U.S. is raising the alarm with European Union allies that Russia may be weighing a potential invasion of Ukraine as tensions flare between Moscow and the bloc over migrants and energy supplies.
With Washington closely monitoring a buildup of Russian forces near the Ukrainian border, U.S. officials have briefed EU counterparts on their concerns over a possible military operation, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
… The assessments are believed to be based on information the U.S. hasn’t yet shared with European governments, which would have to happen before any decision is made on a collective response, the people said. They’re backed up by publicly-available evidence, according to officials familiar with the administration’s thinking.
… Russia has orchestrated the migrant crisis between Belarus and Poland and the Baltic states — Lithuania and Latvia share a border with Belarus — to try to destabilize the region, two U.S. administration officials said. U.S. concerns about Russian intentions are based on accumulated evidence and trends that carry echoes of the run-up to Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, another administration official said.
… Some analysts argue that Putin may believe now is the time to halt Ukraine’s closer embrace with the West before it progresses any further.
“What seems to have changed is Russia’s assessment of where things are going,” said Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. “They seem to have concluded that unless they do something, the trend lines are heading to Russia losing Ukraine.”
According to defense-intelligence firm Janes, the recent Russian deployment has been covert, often taking place at night and carried out by elite ground units, in contrast to the fairly open buildup in the spring.
Let’s take a look at all this. We have some statements from three anonymous officials, based on “publicly available information” (none of which I have seen that points to an imminent invasion) and some sort of secret information that the US hasn’t shared with anybody and so can’t be assessed. Now call me a sceptic, but unverifiable information from anonymous sources doesn’t sound like something very solid to me.
Beyond that, if the final lines from Janes are correct, we have a deployment of “elite ground units,” but you can’t invade a foreign country just using “elite” units, let alone a country the size of Ukraine. You’d need a massive build-up of a very considerable volume of rank-and-file line units. So, the actual evidence presented doesn’t fit the scenario portrayed.
As for Mr Charap’s statement that “They seem to have concluded that unless they do something, the trend lines are heading to Russia losing Ukraine,” I have yet to see any indication of this. Quite the contrary. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s recent comment that Russia should do “nothing” about Ukraine and simply wait until the Ukrainians come to their senses, points to an entirely different conclusion. We are “patient,” said Medvedev, who is Deputy Chairman of the Security Council, and so one imagines, well versed in what is in people’s minds at the highest level. His comments hardly suggest that senior officials are thinking that radical action is urgently required.
The fact that American “officials” are briefing the press that war is possible, and that analysts from the RAND Corporation are backing them up, speaks to an awful lack of understanding of things Russian in the United States. The fact that Bloomberg then repeats these claims without serious challenge points also to a disturbing lack of critical thinking on behalf of the American press (no surprise there!), as well as reinforcing what academic studies of the media have long since noted – its worrisome dependence on official sources.
The only part of the Bloomberg article that gives readers a real sense of what’s going on comes in the following lines, which say:
Russia doesn’t intend to start a war with Ukraine now, though Moscow should show it’s ready to use force if necessary, one person close to the Kremlin said. An offensive is unlikely as Russian troops would face public resistance in Kyiv and other cities, but there is a plan to respond to provocations from Ukraine, another official said.
This strikes me as accurate. There is absolutely no reason for Russia to start a war with Ukraine. It would be enormously costly and bring no obvious benefits. Besides which, war needs careful advance preparation of public opinion. There have been absolutely no indications of the Kremlin doing anything of the sort. That said, as I have noted before, I have little doubt that if Ukraine launched a major attack on the rebel regions of Donbass, and if large numbers of civilians were killed as a result (as would be most likely), Russia would respond. And its response would likely be very tough, much tougher than it was in August 2014 when it very briefly sent a limited number of forces into Donbass to defeat the Ukrainians at Ilovaisk. If there is a Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s likely to be large-scale, to settle the issue once and for all.
All this talk of war is therefore rather dangerous. It helps to ramp up tensions on Russia’s borders, and also serves to justify a build-up by NATO forces in the region. That in turn may send the wrong messages to Ukraine and encourage it to act rashly. Fortunately, I don’t think that things will go that far, but I do think that “American officials” and the press are playing with fire. They would be well advised to stop. Unfortunately, one gets the impression that their lack of knowledge and understanding makes that impossible. Sad times indeed.
Russia denies US media reports that it plans to invade Ukraine
By Jonny Tickle | RT | November 12, 2021
The Kremlin has strongly denied suggestions that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine, after reports emerged that officials from the US had warned their counterparts in Europe that Moscow is considering a “military operation.”
Speaking to the press on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov slammed the suggestion as groundless.
“This is not the first publication and not the first statement by the US that they are concerned about the movement of our armed forces in Russia,” he said. “We have repeatedly said that the movement of our armed forces on our own territory should be of no concern to anyone. Russia poses no threat to anyone.”
Reports that Washington fears Russian aggression against Ukraine were first published by business outlet Bloomberg on Thursday. Citing unnamed sources, the news agency reported that US officials had briefed their partners in the EU over a “potential invasion,” noting that their concerns were backed by “publicly available evidence.”
“Such headlines are nothing but empty, unfounded tension build-up. Russia poses no threat to anyone,” Peskov reiterated.
The suggestion was earlier refuted by Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s first deputy ambassador to the UN, who wholly denied any plan to attack its neighbor.
“We have never planned [an invasion] and never will, unless we are provoked by Ukraine or someone else, and it is a matter of defending our national sovereignty,” he said.
Russian MP Viktor Vodolatsky also commented on the accusation, suggesting that the article is more indicative of NATO’s plan to create conflict in Ukraine.
“This is all done with only one goal: to get Ukraine involved in a war, realizing that Russia will not turn a blind eye to it,” he said. Vodolatsky is the first deputy head of the parliamentary committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration, and Relations with Compatriots.
A “Deadly Attack” on the Capitol?
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | November 10, 2021
Yesterday, I was listening to a classical-music station when NPR came on with the news. Addressing the controversy surrounding former President Trump’s efforts to keep secret his records relating to the January 6 protests at the Capitol, the NPR reporter referred to the “deadly attack” on the Capitol.
I immediately thought to myself, “Well, that’s certainly an interesting use of language.”
When I hear the word “attack,” I think of weapons, specifically guns, grenades, or missiles that are intended to kill people. For example, when the Pentagon fired a missile at that family in Afghanistan shortly before exiting its 20-year war in that country, I would term that an “attack” — and a “deadly attack” at that, especially given that many innocent people, including children, were killed by that missile.
One of the fascinating aspects of the “attack” on the Capitol is that the “attackers” didn’t have guns. In fact, as far as I know, they didn’t even have any swords. To me, that’s one unusual “attack.” In fact, I’ll bet that there haven’t been many other “attacks” in history in which the “attackers” failed to use weapons to commit their “attack.”
What about words? Yeah, the Capitol “attackers” certainly employed a lot of words during the course of their “attack.” Maybe that is what NPR means when it describes what happened as an “attack” — that the “attackers” were engaged in a “word attack” on the Capitol. Imagine how frightening that “attack” must have been — with “attackers” hitting one victim with some particular word — maybe “Tyrant!” — followed by some other word, perhaps “Thief!”
Now, I think you would agree with me that that would be one scary “attack”!
In fact, it was so scary that one Capitol police officer shot and killed one of the “attackers” because he was so afraid that the “attackers” were coming to get him. He wasn’t the only one who was afraid. Many members of Congress were equally terrified of the Word-Attackers.
Hey, don’t judge these people too harshly. You don’t know how you would react if a bunch of Word-Attackers were coming after you and flinging and hurling nasty words at you.
Another interesting aspect of the NPR news broadcast was the reporter’s reference to the “deadly” attack on the Capitol. Now, when I hear that someone has engaged in a “deadly” attack, I immediately think that the attackers have killed people in the course of their attack.
Yet, here, the “attackers” didn’t kill anyone. Instead, the only person killed was one of the “attackers.” Her name was Ashli Babbitt. She was shot dead by that Capitol policeman who was terrified that Babbitt and the “attackers” were coming to get him and members of Congress. It’s still not clear why he didn’t fire a warning shot over her head. If he had done that, she undoubtedly would have backed off, especially since she was unarmed, well, except for words in her vocabulary.
For a while, the news media was reporting that Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick was beaten to death by the “attackers.” For example, the New York Times reported that he “was overpowered and beaten by rioters from the mob at the Capitol.”
Could that be what NPR is referring to when it cites the “deadly” attack on the Capitol?
I don’t think so because as things turned out, what the Times reported about Sicknick turned out to be incorrect. An autopsy revealed that Sicknick died of natural causes, to wit: strokes.
The New York Times also reported that a woman named Rosanne Boyland, who was one of the “attackers,” “appears to have been killed in a crush of fellow rioters during their attempt to fight through a police line.”
Alas, what appeared to be true wasn’t. An autopsy revealed that she died of a drug overdose, not trampling.
Two other “attackers” — Kevin Greeson and Benjamin Phillips — died of a heart attack and a stroke.
Thus, five people died during the “deadly attack.” One “attacker “was killed by a terrified Capitol police officer. One Capitol police officer and two of the “attackers” died of natural causes. Another “attacker” died of a drug overdose.
Given the nature of those deaths, is it really proper to refer to the “deadly” attack on the Capitol? Doesn’t the use of the term “deadly” imply that the attackers deliberately shot or killed people as part of their “attack”?
Maybe NPR is saying that the words that the “attackers” were employing as weapons caused those people to have heart attacks, strokes, and drug overdoses. Maybe their words are what caused that police officer who killed Ashli Babbitt to become terrified.
Ironically, as far as I know, the Justice Department hasn’t charged any of the January 6 protestors with murder or even a massive conspiracy to initiate a “deadly attack” on the Capitol.What’s up with that? Those federal prosecutors need to start listening to NPR.
Attenborough and his climate cohorts are scaring the young into mental illness
By David Seedhouse | TCW Defending Freedom | November 10, 2021
THE BBC last week re-published yet another video article – Climate Change: The Facts – featuring David Attenborough. It shows scenes of calamity and collapse and has a single main message: ‘Act now or we are all doomed.’
Despite its title, there is no attempt whatsoever at a balanced analysis of ‘the facts’. The video includes a comment from the discredited Michael Mann, whose faulty algorithm created the famous ‘hockey stick‘ chart of supposed global warming that so exercised Al Gore and Greta Thunberg – who has no scientific credentials, or arguably any right at all to be included in a ‘fact-based’ video.
Towards the end of his presentation, Attenborough declares: ‘We now stand at a unique point in our planet’s history, one where we must all share responsibility both for our present wellbeing and for the future of life.’
Hyperbole, hubris, hysteria … but no humility. We have apparently become the gods of ancient Greece, able to control all aspects of life, including the planet.
It is unclear how we all have responsibility for ‘the future of life’, which managed very well before humans existed and, according to experts of Attenborough’s ilk, will inevitably change according to the laws of evolution in any case.
However, we surely do have responsibility towards each other, especially not to cause unwarranted alarm, and to support the mental health of our young people, which according to many reports is at a nadir.
One large survey found that nearly 60 per cent of young people approached said they felt very worried or extremely worried about the climate issue.
More than 45 per cent said such feelings affected their daily lives. Some 75 per cent thought the future was frightening, while 56 per cent think humanity is doomed.
Take a minute to digest this. The survey, led by Bath University in collaboration with five other universities, spanned ten countries. It amassed responses from 10,000 people aged between 16 and 25 and found that a staggering majority are so scared and depressed that they feel they have no future.
This devastating situation has not happened spontaneously. Nor is it a rational response to the actual evidence. Rather it is the result of years of uninhibited scaremongering by older people who prefer to be part of a lucrative alarmist club than set a decent example of balanced reasoning.
Most traditional societies revere and respect their elders, for their life experience and wisdom. And in return the elders quietly and calmly protect the young, beneficently pointing to the good things in life that may come.
This seemingly timeless human – and indeed animal – circle of life has come close to breaking with astonishing speed. Many of our prominent elders, who should be sage, measured and knowing, are behaving like reckless toddlers in a sandpit they think is all theirs.
They spent 2020 and much of 2021 locking young people away from their schools, their friends, and their elderly relatives, terrifying them with useless masks and distancing to ‘protect’ them from a virus that poses hardly any risk to them.
These thoughtless adults constantly say how much they care for the future of humanity but show, with every poorly-researched exaggeration, that they don’t give two hoots for the psychological wellbeing of the young who actually are the future.
Whether through guilt, ignorance, psychological bias or just the misplaced desire to show how powerful they are, such infantile elders display little awareness of the damage they are causing. And if they have even an inkling of how they are harming the young, they show no restraint.
Their imagined certainties do not exist. We do not know everything there is to know about viruses and we certainly do not know everything about the climate of a vast and complex planet. We cannot possibly say with any confidence what will happen to us, and we cannot control Nature. Nor should we try.
Young people do not need to be saved by anyone, not least these false prophets of doom. They need the wherewithal to live fulfilled lives – with knowledge, curiosity, social support, friendships, honesty and, above all, the modesty to accept human limitations, without self-righteous hectoring from older adults who have lived most of their own lives in circumstances where the future held promise rather than terror.
Those such as David Attenborough and the rest of the climate establishment presumably have the best of intentions. But their obsession with controlling the uncontrollable has completely blinded them to the awful damage their blinkered obsessiveness has caused our young.
They have abjectly failed to provide sensible information and an inquisitive, questioning environment. They should be setting an example of gentle wisdom, where problems are solved by open minds. Instead, they have caused a huge avoidable mental health crisis, and have barely noticed what they have done.
The first “climate change” diagnosis is here. It will not be the last.
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | November 9, 2021
Doctor Kyle Merritt, an attending physician at an emergency department in Nelson BC, added “climate change” as a contributing factor to the medical issues of one of his patients. And, in so doing, has achieved a remarkable and troubling world first.
The first-ever medical diagnosis of “climate change”.
Dr Merritt said in an interview with Glacier Media:
If we’re not looking at the underlying cause, and we’re just treating the symptoms, we’re just gonna keep falling further and further behind,” the emergency room doctor told Glacier Media. […] It’s me trying to just… process what I’m seeing.”
The entire situation raises some interesting questions.
DOES IT MAKE MEDICAL SENSE?
Of course it doesn’t.
He diagnosed her as “suffering from climate change”. You can’t do that, it is insane.
That’s like diagnosing someone who was struck by lightning as “suffering from the effects of rain” or a person having a heart attack as “suffering from the effects of Mcdonald’s”.
… actually, it’s worse than that. At least my examples have a distinct cause-and-effect relationship, and there are no scientific papers suggesting Mcdonald’s doesn’t actually exist.
The patient in question is over 70, asthmatic, diabetic and suffering from heart failure. She’s very, very sick… no matter the climate.
Even if Dr Merritt can somehow trace a decline in her health due to the weather (and there’s no evidence at all that he can), actually diagnosing it is completely bonkers.
… SO WHY DO IT?
It’s a staged PR move. A very obvious one, when you think about it.
For one thing, there’s the question of how the media ever found out it happened, since medical records and diagnoses are completely private.
Clearly Dr Merritt didn’t just diagnose his patient with “climate change”, he then immediately called up the local media to tell them he had done it.
Throw in the fact that this happened to occur during the COP26 conference in Glasgow, which only today warned of “climate-linked health risks” rising, and that the move has already spawned a new NGO, “Doctors and Nurses for Planetary Health”, and you have a textbook example of a stage-managed media rollout.
WHY NOW?
In simple terms, because Covid worked and climate didn’t.
They have been stoking up public fear of “a new ice age” and acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer and myriad other supposedly incipient climate disasters for literal decades, and never touched one-tenth of the level of hysteria created by the Covid19 “pandemic”.
Somewhere, some not especially bright public relations executive has decided that the way to push the “pivot from Covid to climate” is to try and turn the long-predicted environmental disaster into a public health issue.
It’s hamfisted, a little funny, and probably won’t work, but it does open up some troubling possibilities going forward.
LIKE WHAT?
Well, for starters, this may be the first “climate change diagnosis”, but do you honestly believe it will be the last?
Don’t be surprised if we see a huge spike in “climate diagnoses” in the next few months.
There are already widespread academic efforts to create a causal link between “climate change” and common illnesses.
A few days ago, the Independent headlined The climate crisis is not just about the environment – it’s about health too.
As I mentioned earlier, just today the COP26 panel warned that “climate-linked health risks” are going to rise.
Only last week the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology published a paper titled “Climate Change and Global Issues in Allergy and Immunology” which argues climate change is already making asthma and some allergies worse.
It’s not hard to put together a list of other common afflictions that are already being linked back to climate change.
Cancer, pneumonia, heatstroke, diabetes, heart disease and essentially all lung conditions.
There’s also all diseases spread by mosquitos or other zoonotic agents, plus every waterborne illness.
And that’s without even severely stretching logic, which Covid has shown our medical and scientific institutions have no trouble doing.
They are already discussing “climate-related” mental health issues such as stress, anxiety and depression. These could easily become further types of “climate-related diagnoses” too.
Now, allow me to speculate for a few paragraphs…
The practice of “climate-related diagnosis” is likely going to expand. When questions about the science behind this are raised by sceptics, they will naturally be accused of “climate denial”.
Opinion pieces will appear torturing reason to defend the practice of diagnosing “climate illness”. So-called journalists, or mercenary experts in made-up fields like “climate ethics”, will crochet strands of reason into positions so full of holes they barely exist.
We’ll be told that even if the practice is technically inaccurate, it’s serving a greater truth. That people might not literally be sick due to climate change, but we are all figuratively dying of it.
“Covid has shown us people only do what’s right when they’re scared: We need to make them feel climate fear.”
“Climate change diagnoses are on the rise. And that’s a good thing.”
“Healthcare workers take stand on climate with new diagnosis trend.”
“NHS workers saved us from Covid, and now want to take on climate.”
… you don’t have to read the Guardian as much as I have to feel those headlines, or ones very like them, in our future.
Then the deaths can start happening. Covid has demonstrated that you can create a “mass casualty” scare by essentially just adding an extra line on a death certificate. They can do that for climate too. The headlines will carry on…
“Physicians see spike in “climate deaths” as people suddenly feel the consequences of inaction”
When people point out the flaws in reasoning the papers will argue that, even if people aren’t really dying of climate change, symbolically putting it on death certificates is the best way to illustrate how much danger we’re in.
They’ll backhandedly admit the statistic isn’t real, but then use it as an excuse to call for action anyway:
“Weekly climate deaths are outstripping Covid – we need to address the “climate pandemic.”
… it will go on and on.
Climate change will start being listed as an “underlying cause of death” for more and more diseases. I already mentioned cancer, lung disease and heart disease. They’ll all be “climate-related”.
The press spent the last year telling us that climate change “makes pandemics more likely”, so any future “pandemic” can be linked to climate and boom, a few hundred thousand climate deaths.
Climate change is allegedly bad for unborn babies, so stillbirths and miscarriages can all be “climate deaths”.
They can do a study finding “higher levels of solar radiation” can “increase the risk of cancer”, and then start saying anyone who dies of cancer also died of climate.
They don’t even have to limit it to natural causes.
Drowned in a flash flood? That’s a climate death.
Starved due to drought? Climate death.
Committed suicide? “he was pretty upset about the climate”.
Attacked by a polar bear? Well, climate change forced it out of its natural habitat.
I’m not being funny. This is not satire, I wish it were. Believe me, they could easily actually say it, or something like it, eventually.
If the past twenty months have done nothing else, they should at least have taught you this valuable lesson: There is nothing – NOTHING – too dishonest, too cynical or even too insane for the establishment to sell.
It doesn’t matter if it’s unlikely, or self-contradictory or irrational – it doesn’t even matter if it’s literally physically impossible – they will say it, and they will expect you to believe it.
We now have our first climate “case”. The first death “with climate” probably won’t be far behind. Thousands more will likely follow.
That’s when talk of “climate lockdowns” will come back.
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