Wild Exaggeration and Egregious Lies
By Kip Hansen | Watts Up With That? | May 6, 2021
The Covering Climate Now propaganda effort was “co-founded by the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation in association with The Guardian and WNYC in 2019, CCNow’s 460-plus partners include some of the biggest names in news” with the stated purpose “to produce more informed and urgent climate stories, to make climate a part of every beat in the newsroom”. Their basic document, the CCNow Climate Emergency Statement, claims, in part, “… to preserve a livable planet, humanity must take action immediately. Failure to slash the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will make the extraordinary heat, storms, wildfires, and ice melt of 2020 routine and could “render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable…”. To accomplish their goals, CCNow provides its partners with republishable stories from other partners (.pdf), editorial guidance, story writing ideas, a list of talking points labelled Climate Science 101 provided by Katharine Hayhoe.
Important Notice: Call 911 immediately if you are choking or experiencing chest pains as a result of reading that last sentence – in Europe, dial 112 – in the UK, dial 112 or 999 – in Australia, 000 or 112.
CCNow also supplies NPR’s Climate Guide of mis- and dis-information on climate and their own “fact sheet“ [ sic ] “Who says it’s a climate emergency?” in addition to their list of ten “Best Practices” for climate propagandists.
If this is your first time hearing about CCNow, please read my previous essays posted here at WUWT, most recently The Climate Propaganda Cabal and Turning Opinion into Science Fact. There are some earlier essays as well – here and here.
Last week, on April 27 2021, CCNow web site posted a list of Nine Pieces We Loved. One of those featured was:
How Warming Oceans Are Accelerating the Climate Crisis — Humans have locked in at least 20 feet of sea level rise—can we still fix it?” by Harold R. Wanless
On the upside, the article in The Nation is clearly and prominently marked:
Adapted from an article for the Florida Climate Reporting Network’s project “The Invading Sea,” this article is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
My quick check of web search results show this article, one week old now, being re-posted or linked 16 times, before I stopped counting.
This article represents the “Big Lie” aspect of professional propaganda. Big Lies sell better, persuade people better than little nit-picky lies.
Here’s the bottom line Big Lie from this CCNow propaganda piece:
The climate emergency is bigger than many experts, elected officials, and activists realize. Humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions have overheated Earth’s atmosphere, unleashing punishing heat waves, hurricanes, and other extreme weather—that much is widely understood. The larger problem is that the overheated atmosphere has in turn overheated the oceans, assuring a catastrophic amount of future sea level rise.
As oceans heat up, the water rises—in part because warm water expands, but also because the warmer waters have initiated a major melt of polar ice sheets. As a result, average sea levels around the world are now all but certain to rise by at least 20 to 30 feet. That’s enough to put large parts of many coastal cities, home to hundreds of millions of people, under water.
Let me point out, unnecessarily for many readers, that not a single phrase or sentence in the first paragraph is true. The second paragraph fares little better. But only because “warm water does rise” — just not in the odd way Wanless says. [Technically, warming the water in the ocean causes expansion of the ocean’s water — the fact the ‘warmer water rises’ is not involved in this – it is the expansion that can lead to rising sea levels.] Nothing else in the second paragraph is true.
I am loathe to exaggerate, as this is what I am accusing CCNow and Wanless of doing, so let’s take a close look:
“The climate emergency is bigger than many experts, elected officials, and activists realize.” There is no real physical climate emergency – there is only a shared opinion that there is a climate emergency. At best, the sentence is an unsupported opinion (being presented here as fact). It would be hard for the real climate situation to be bigger (worse) than some of the more bizarre activists and politicians (“we have nine years left” – John Kerry).
“Humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions have overheated Earth’s atmosphere, unleashing punishing heat waves, hurricanes, and other extreme weather—that much is widely understood.” There is no scientific consensus that the Earth’s atmosphere has been “overheated”. Increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are believed to have caused a small amount of warming – but only that since the mid-1900s. Many think that that small warming and the CO2 that may have caused it are beneficial, including some of the smartest people in America. The real data on global heat waves, hurricanes, and extreme weather do not support the claim that the small warming experienced has “unleash[ed] punishing heat waves, hurricanes, and other extreme weather” – that is the climate activist’s preferred meme, not fact. More on the facts are available from the specialized pages on this web site and here. [Readers: Please supply links in comments to reliable graphs showing that the CCNow/Wanless claims are false.] Since this point is broadly contested by experts in wildfires, heat waves, hurricanes and extreme weather, it cannot be said to be “widely understood”.
“The larger problem is that the overheated atmosphere has in turn overheated the oceans, assuring a catastrophic amount of future sea level rise.” The oceans have not overheated – that is simply not true in any sense – it is difficult to even scientifically support that the oceans have warmed in any substantial, climatically important way. Measuring ocean water temperature is an ongoing project and we have a very short time series of even moderately reliable data. It is madness to claim that the tiny amount (if any) of ocean water warming has “assur[ed] a catastrophic amount of future sea level rise.”
I will leave parsing the rest of second paragraph to readers. But let’s take a further look at the idea that sea levels are assured to rise “20 to 30 feet”.
Wanless states: “But if seas rise 20 feet or more over the next 100 to 200 years—which is our current trajectory—the outlook is grim. In that scenario, there could be two feet of sea level rise by 2040, three feet by 2050, and much more to come.”
That link in there leads to “NOAA Technical Report NOS CO-OPS 083 — GLOBAL AND REGIONAL SEA LEVEL RISE SCENARIOS FOR THE UNITED STATES” [ .pdf ] which you will not be surprised says no such thing. The NOAA document does not say that the most extreme (RCP8.5) scenario is our current trajectory at all. And it does not, under any of the scenarios, predict 2 feet of sea level rise by 2040 or three feet by 2050, not even under RCP8.5 (a scenario which is now widely considered highly improbable to impossible).
Even under impossible RCP8.5 conditions, NOAA predicts only 16 inches (2040) and 25 inches (2050) [yellow highlight] – but in the real world, we saw only the 0.03m (30 mm) predicted for 2010 to 2020 for the very lowest scenario [blue highlight]. Wanless apparently gets his claimed our current trajectory to 20-30 feet from the lower right corner, highlighted in red, RCP8.5 at 2200.
Adding insult to injury, Wanless goes on to claim in his article that “Today, oceans are rising six mm a year (over two inches a decade), and this pace will continue to dramatically accelerate.” The only thing correct in this sentence is that 60mm is over two inches. Wanless’s link to a CSIRO page is broken but current sea level rise, according to NOAA:
Not 6 mm/yr, but 3.3 mm/yr, and level for the last two or three years. [source: https://climate.nasa.gov/ to see this graph select Sea Level from right hand bottom section of the graphic at the top of the page.]
You may ask, “How can any article with so many obvious, egregious errors – wild exaggerations, inaccuracies and falsehoods — get published in The Nation?” That might be the wrong question. Better to ask, “How did it get published by the AGU in EOS in its science news section?”
The answer is: The Nation, AGU and EOS are all partners of CCNow.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) and its associated online magazine, EOS, have abandoned even the pretext of science and opted to join forces with the acknowledged propaganda effort, Covering Climate Now, with its anything-goes push to convince the world that there is a Climate Emergency so they will willingly give up fossil fuels. This example today shows that that effort extends to publishing wild exaggeration and egregious lies to forward The Message – propaganda’s Big Lie in play.
I honestly don’t know how it has come to this and am simultaneously saddened and outraged.
This has now gone far, far beyond the go-along-to-get-along mutual back-patting of climate alarmists at AGU meetings of the 1990’s. Where are the real scientists who are members of the AGU? How can they remain silent when EOS publishes such articles without even a disclaimer. Shame.
Promoting and Profiting from Mass-Toxification
By Stephen Lendman | May 6, 2021
Founded in 1823, the Lancet calls itself “an independent, international weekly general medical journal (that) strive(s) (for) medicine (to) transform society, and positively impact the lives of people.”
Instead of fulfilling its pledge on all things covid, it’s been going the other way by promoting toxic mass-jabbing to be shunned, never used as directed.
In late April, the Lancet proved it can’t be trusted for falsely claiming the following:
Pfizer and AstraZeneca covid inoculations “have shown excellent safety and efficacy in phase 3 trials (sic).”
One in four people experienced mild, short-lived side effects, usually lasting one or two days (sic), it added.
Inoculations “decrease the risk of (covid) infection after 12 days (sic).”
Pharma-connected epidemiologist Tim Spector was quoted, saying:
“The data should reassure many people that in the real world, after effects of the (jab) are usually mild and short-lived, especially in the over 50’s who are most at risk of the infection (sic).”
“Rates of new disease are at a new low in the UK (sic) due to a combination of social measures and (mass-jabbing), and we need to continue this successful strategy to cover the remaining population.”
“The results also show up to 70% protection after 3 weeks following a single dose (sic), which is fantastic news for the country, especially as more people have now had their second jabs.”
Mathematician — specializing in statistical genetics — Cristina Menni defied reality by claiming that “results support the aftereffects safety of both vaccines with fewer side effects in the general population than reported in the Pfizer and AstraZeneca experimental trials and should help allay safety concerns of people willing to get” jabbed (sic).
All the above rubbish reported by the Lancet is fake news.
It’s part of relentless US-led Western mind-manipulating propaganda to get maximum numbers of unwitting people to self-inflict harm.
The Lancet allied with Western governments, their public health handmaidens, Pharma, and media press agents to all of the above in promoting what’s harmful to health, not beneficial.
There’s nothing remotely safe and beneficial from use of experimental, unapproved Pfizer/Moderna mRNA drugs or AstraZeneca/J & J vaccines for covid.
When used as directed, they risk likely irreversible harm to health or death — sooner or later.
State-sponsored coverup in the West is concealing slow-motion genocide.
According to an unnamed UK National Health Service health professional whistleblower, what’s going on is “genocide… Your children are next.”
In the US, the Pharma-connected FDA is set to OK mass-jabbing emergency use authorization for children aged 12 – 15.
If contract seasonal flu-renamed covid, their risk of serious harm or death is virtually nil.
The survival rate for flu now called covid for individuals under age-70 is 99.95% — 95% for people over age-70.
Mass-jabbing for covid should be banned.
It’s well known that toxins in experimental covid inoculations risks serious harm, nothing beneficial.
Mass-jabbing children should be criminalized, not OK’d and promoted.
State-sponsored draconian social control and depopulation hugely benefit Pharma.
Since mass-jabbing for covid began last December, Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and J & J have been cashing in big on a bonanza of huge profits.
If things go as planned, the diabolical scheme will be a gift that keeps on giving.
One or two jabs aren’t enough. Plans are for perpetual mass-toxification of unwitting people annually or semi-annually worldwide.
In Q I 2021, about one-fourth of Pfizer’s pharmaceutical revenue came from jabbing with its hazardous mRNA covid drug.
For 2021, the company projects around $26 billion in revenue from covid mass-jabbing — an annual revenue stream it aims to be permanent.
Perhaps so if countless millions of mass deceived people continue to self-inflict harm — the more covid jabs taken, the greater the harm to health near-or-longer-term.
All of the above goes on while the myth of a nonexistent pandemic persists because of the power of establishment media promoted mass deception.
Followers of my writing and likeminded others on this cutting-edge issue of our time know what’s deceptively called covid is garden variety seasonal flu.
It shows up annually without perpetual mass deception fear-mongering.
Until last year, non-beneficial/potentially harmful flu shots were promoted annually.
When for the first time ever, flu disappeared last year — because it was renamed covid — draconian mandates and recommendations have effectively manipulated the public mind in the West and elsewhere to harm health instead of protecting what’s too precious to lose.
If what’s going on continues unchecked because of public ignorance, harm to health in the West and elsewhere is highly likely to be unprecedented and suppressed — so most people will remain unaware of state-sponsored genocide.
It’s unfolding in real time below the radar — Western dark forces and their media press agents convincing most people that what’s harmful and deadly is beneficial.
I’ve stressed before and it bears repeating.
No matter how many times people have been fooled before, they’re easy marks to be duped again and again and again ad infinitum.
It’s because of the power of state-sponsored/media promoted fake news, along with the failure of most people to do minimal due diligence fact-checking.
Every literate person connected online can learn the truth on most all issues that affect their rights, health, and well-being with minimal effort.
Yet most people are easily distracted by bread and circuses.
They’re putty in the hands of manipulative dark forces and their hostile to truth-telling press agents.
We’re consistently lied to and mass deceived about all important domestic and geopolitical issues.
Yet most people are too out-of-touch with reality to notice.
My personal interfacing with individuals intelligent enough to know better but fooled like most others bears out the above reality.
Iran Meddling In Scottish Election – Think Tank
By Richie Allen | May 4, 2021
A think tank has claimed that Iran is using online specialists to try and influence the outcome of this weeks Scottish election. The Henry Jackson Society produced a report yesterday, that claims Tehran is using fake social media accounts to break up the UK.
The think tank offers no proof mind, but it doesn’t matter. This morning, the nation’s presstitutes are repeating the baseless claims as if they are fact. Nobody is asking for evidence. Heaven forbid someone should actually do their job.
The report states that Iran has “put considerable effort into developing its political relationships with Scottish political elites who advocate independence.” Does it name these elites? Of course not.
It also says that:
“Iran has shown itself to be a country which engages in Russian style disinformation campaigns, repeatedly establishing fake websites and internet accounts in an effort to disrupt the political systems of liberal democracies.
Judged within this context, Iran is almost certainly looking to disrupt our current elections, most likely those under way for the Scottish parliament.”
Once again, the report provides no evidence that Iran (or Russia for that matter), is using fake websites and accounts in an attempt to influence elections here or anywhere else.
This is one of the most pathetic and ridiculous stories that has ever crossed my desk. I had a good laugh at the line about Iran trying to “disrupt the political systems of liberal democracies.”
The UK is a liberal democracy is it? I’ve been listening to government ministers all weekend telling us that soon we’ll have permission to hug our parents and grandparents and meet our friends indoors.
On Sunday, I witnessed the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab tell the BBC’s Andrew Marr that social distancing and face coverings will be with us for the foreseeable future. His government is about to introduce vaccine passports for work, international travel and for socialising.
His government also plans to vaccinate the nation’s children for an illness that is no danger to them whatsoever.
A liberal democracy? Give me a break.
Iran hasn’t raised so much as a finger against a neighbouring country in centuries. It’s preposterous to claim that Tehran is trying to interfere in the outcome of the Scottish election.
Think tanks and spooks can make any claims they like. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous. The media will just rinse and repeat.
CNN tries to make case for trusting anonymous-source echo chamber despite steady stream of fake news
RT | May 3, 2021
CNN took a holier-than-thou approach to explaining away mainstream media’s penchant for telling anonymously sourced stories that later prove to be false, saying that unlike “MAGA media,” it tries to get the news right.
“There are safeguards in place,” CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy told ‘Reliable Sources’ host Brian Stelter on Sunday. “Unfortunately, human error is still at play, and news organizations sometimes do get burned like this.”
Darcy was referring to the latest correction debacle involving multiple MSM outlets that supposedly confirmed each other’s anonymously sourced reports – only to later issue corrections admitting that their central claim was completely false. The New York Times, NBC News and the Washington Post said on Saturday that their reports claiming that US law enforcement had warned Rudy Giuliani and One America News that they were being targeted by a “Russian influence operation” were not true.
The false claim was so integral to the story that correcting it was not as simple as changing a name or recasting a sentence. “The premise and headline of the article below have been changed to reflect the corrected information,” NBC said in its correction.
Stelter lamented that “a bogus report of this magnitude” tars all mainstream outlets and allows “bad-faith actors” to lump them in with less credible outfits. Darcy argued that “responsible” media outlets set themselves apart by correcting their mistakes, whereas publications such as the New York Post avoid admitting their errors.
“Sometimes, it seems like they are intentionally promoting falsehoods and moving on, some of those folks in MAGA media,” Darcy said.
The Post last week removed an article from its website that said copies of a children’s book written by Vice President Kamala Harris were being put in the welcome kits given to migrant children being held at a shelter in California. In an updated version it issued a correction, saying it turned out there was only one known copy of the book at the shelter.
However, it was the New York Post that broke bombshell news last October, reporting on alleged influence-peddling by then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, after obtaining emails from a laptop that the younger Biden had allegedly left at a repair shop. At the time, with the presidential election just a couple of weeks away, CNN called the reports “dubious” and cited anonymous people saying that “US authorities” were investigating whether the Hunter Biden emails were part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said there was no connection between Hunter Biden’s laptop and Russian disinformation, but only later did the likes of the New York Times and the Washington Post admit that the evidence-free conspiracy claims were apparently false.
The Washington Post has had its share of falsehoods lately. In March, the newspaper corrected a January story accusing former president Donald Trump of pressuring a Georgia official to help overturn the election’s result. The Post admitted that it had misquoted the official. In fact, it said that claims Trump urged the official to “find the fraud” and that she would be a “national hero” if she did were completely false.
CNN technical director Charlie Chester suggested that such “mistakes” weren’t accidental – at least at his network. Chester was shown on video telling an undercover Project Veritas reporter that CNN’s main focus was to help oust Trump from office through propaganda and that it purposely fearmongered about Covid-19 to boost ratings. He added that CNN also endeavored to make Black Lives Matter look good, a task made more difficult by the group’s conduct.
Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who helped break the Edward Snowden NSA scoops in 2013, said MSM outlets are able to “independently confirm” each other’s false reports because their meaning of “confirm” is misleading. Rather than confirming that a report is true, they merely get the same anonymous source to make the same false claims to them.
“It’d be one thing if this were some rare occurrence,” Greenwald said. “The opposite is true. Over and over and over, these same big corporate outlets purport to have ‘independently confirmed’ one another’s stories that turn out to be totally false. Is that trustworthy?”
Daisies Under Threat From Climate Change! says the Telegraph
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | April 30, 2021
Where do they dredge up these dolts?
From the Telegraph :
Perhaps somebody should tell Dr Dines the difference between “weather” and “climate”!
Spring last year was a dry one, but there is nothing at all unusual in that, and there have been eight drier springs on record. Nor is there any sort of trend in spring rainfall:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-temperature-rainfall-and-sunshine-time-series
Shame on the increasingly absurd Telegraph, not to mention dopey Olivia Rudgard for printing this nonsense.
India Situation: What does the Current Data Say?
Ivor Cummins | April 27, 2021
So then, what DOES the actual DATA say? Surely we should care, right?
*** NOTE THIS IS NON-CENSORABLE – NO medical advice or information here, NO conflicting with the WHO (remember they shared the Prof Ioannidis paper in their Oct 2020 bulletin).
Just the data and some scientific inferences – period. DOWNLOAD here and use with my permission (just click yes to cookies – no need to subscribe): https://we.tl/t-aRo1uhxv2c
My Odysee link: https://odysee.com/@IvorCummins:f
ITV’s Lorraine Show Caught Lying! Photoshops Picture To Push For Climate Lockdowns
WE GOT A PROBLEM
Show was aired thursday 22/04/21 https://www.itv.com/hub/lorraine/1a93…
NYT ‘bounties’ non-story shows US/UK media has got so used to blaming Russia, it’s now doing it out of habit
By Paul Robinson | RT | April 20, 2021
As holes predictably appear in claims that Russia paid the Taliban to kill American soldiers, questions arise as to why such erroneous stories keep appearing in the American press. Domestic US politics provide part of the answer.
“A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories.” So ran a headline in the New York Times in August 2016. If it were only a Russian phenomenon, the world would be a much better place. Alas, the Times is far from immune from spreading “false stories” itself. From Walter Duranty’s reporting from the Soviet Union, through Judith Miller’s articles on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, up to its coverage of accusations that US President Donald Trump had colluded with the Russian government, The New York Times has had its fair share of “fake news” experiences.
“A little tiny bit flat footed,” was how the Times executive editor Dean Baquet described the newspaper when the Mueller investigation failed to find Trump guilty of collusion. “I mean, that’s what happens when a story looks a certain way for two years. Right?” added Baquet.
You have to feel a bit for him. He really believed in collusion. In his eyes, it did “look a certain way.” It was rather embarrassing when he turned out to be completely wrong.
The New York Times’ iffy relationship with reality is back in the news today. US presidential spokesperson Jen Psaki admitted that the US intelligence community was not at all convinced by accusations first aired in the Times that the Russian government had paid bounties to the Taliban in Afghanistan to kill American soldiers. Rather, it had only “low to moderate confidence” that the story was true. Psaki explained:
“The reason that they have low to moderate confidence in this judgment is in part because it relies on detainee reporting, and due to the challenging environment and also due to the challenging operating environment in Afghanistan. So it’s challenging to gather this intelligence and this data.”
The accusation against Russia appeared in The New York Times in June last year. The Times then followed up with additional stories on the same topic. “Afghan Contractor Handed Out Russian Cash to Kill Americans, Official Say,”claimed the headline of a second article. “How Russia Built a Channel to the Taliban, Once an Enemy,” read the headline of a third.
Commentators soon pointed out problems. While the CIA had moderate faith in the claim, the National Security Agency didn’t. In any case, the primary sources of information were Afghan prisoners who hadn’t themselves been involved in the alleged transaction. Their claims needed to be treated with a fair degree of caution.
Others pointed out that the story didn’t make any sense from a Russian point of view. The Russian government values the stability of Afghanistan, and had consistently supported both the Afghan government and the US military presence there. There was no obvious motive for killing Americans.
Furthermore, it’s not as if the Taliban needed to be incentivised to fight America. They were already killing as many Americans as they were able to. Paying them to do what they were doing already would have been odd, to say the least.
Now, Ms. Psaki admits what people have long since suspected: that the accusation against Russia is not well-founded. But anyone with any sense realized that from the get-go. Why, then, did The New York Times report it?
The Times’ explanation is that the story was true. It didn’t say that the accusation was accurate; it merely reported the accusation. In an article on Thursday, Times reporter Charlie Savage notes that the newspaper had stated that the CIA had only “medium” confidence in the story and the NSA had “low” confidence. It had also reported that the Afghan prisoners who recounted the story hadn’t actually been present when the alleged meetings with Russians took place. In other words, The New York Times’ reporting was accurate.
Maybe so, but that begs a question – why report a story that makes an extremely explosive allegation if you’re not at all confident that the accusation is true? Isn’t there some responsibility to hold off from repeating libelous claims until such time as you can substantiate them?
Apparently not. It seems as if the Times wanted to believe the story. It “looked a certain way,” to use Dean Baquet’s phrase. Which in turn begs another question. Why did it look that way to the Times?
The obvious answer is that it fitted the political needs of the moment. For the real target of the Russian bounty story was never Russia but Trump. Its purpose was to show that the president had in some way betrayed America’s soldiers by continuing to talk to Russia even though he had evidence that the Russians were killing Americans.
The speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, thus remarked, “The administration’s disturbing silence and inaction endanger the lives of our troops and our coalition partners.”Meanwhile, then presidential candidate and now president, Joe Biden, responded to the story by saying that Trump’s “entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, but this is beyond the pale. It’s a betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation to protect and equip our troops when we send them into harm’s way. It’s a betrayal of every single American family with a loved one serving in Afghanistan or anywhere overseas.”
Russia, in other words, was merely a pawn in an internal American political struggle. Sadly, though, this is far from an isolated incident. Furthermore, the Democratic Party and its backers in the USA have now become so habituated to spreading dubious stories about Russia that they seem to be unable to stop, even though the original political motivation has vanished. The Russian bounty wasn’t the first “false story” to appear, and it won’t be the last.
Paul Robinson is a professor at the University of Ottawa. He writes about Russian and Soviet history, military history, and military ethics, and is the author of the Irrussianality blog.
WaPo-Style Fake News Russia Bashing
By Stephen Lendman | April 20, 2021
Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post provides propaganda services for Washington’s intelligence community.
Like other establishment media, the broadsheet is militantly hostile toward nations unwilling to sacrifice their sovereign rights to US interests.
Relentless Putin bashing reflects his model leadership and prominence on the world stage — in stark contrast to pygmy US and other Western counterparts.
According to neocon WaPo editors, UN Charter-breaching Biden regime sanctions on Russia weren’t tough enough.
Imposed for invented reasons as part of longstanding US Russia bashing, WaPo claimed “punches were pulled (sic).”
International investors can still buy Russian bonds unobstructed, the broadsheet complained, adding:
Russian energy and mineral enterprises weren’t sanctioned.
A typical litany of Big Lies followed.
WaPo falsely accused Moscow of paying bounties to kill US forces in Afghanistan — citing no evidence because there is none.
Defying reality, the broadsheet falsely claimed that Russia “sponsored… attacks that seriously injured US officials in Moscow, Havana and China” — again no evidence cited.
Fake news accusations of Russian “aggression” persist — how hegemon USA and its partners operate.
The Russian Federation never attacked or threatened other nations.
Under Putin, the Kremlin prioritizes peace, stability, cooperative relations with other countries, and compliance with international law – worlds apart from how the US and its imperial partners in high crimes operate.
In response to years of US-orchestrated Kiev aggression against Donbass, WaPO falsely accused Moscow of US-led high crimes of war and against humanity.
Calling for more illegal sanctions on Russia, perhaps its editors won’t be satisfied unless US hardliners launch WW III.
Separately, WaPo ignored US war on humanity at home and abroad while falsely accusing Russia of “crush(ing) opposition” elements.
Falsely accusing China of spying on and repressing Uyghur Muslins, WaPo defied reality by claiming Russia operates the same way against targeted individuals.
It lied claiming Putin amassed billions of dollars of hidden wealth.
It lied saying he heaps “extravagances” on political allies.
It lied accusing him of poisoning political nobody Navalny.
It lied claiming he persecutes protesters and activists.
It lied accusing democratic Russia of being authoritarian, calling Putin a dictator.
Compared to low approval ratings for US leaders and Congress, nearly two-thirds of Russians approve of Putin’s leadership.
According to Statista Research on February 25, “65 percent of Russians approved of activities of Russian president Vladimir Putin.”
Biden’s approval rating hovers around 50, almost entirely from undemocratic Dem support.
Mind-manipulated Americans don’t understand how badly they’re harmed by US policymakers until they’re bitten hard on their backsides.
Even then, it takes multiple abusive practices for them to realize that dominant US hardliners are their enemies, not allies.
State-sponsored repression and other forms of abuse are longstanding US practices, notably against its most vulnerable people, as well as against targeted individuals of the wrong race, ethnicity, and/or nationality.
In stark contrast to long ago US/Western abandonment of international law, Russia scrupulously abides by its principles.
On all things related to truth and full-disclosure, the US, its hegemonic partners and press agent media stick exclusively to the fabricated official narrative.
On all things related to nations from from US control, both right wings of its war party target them for regime change — wars by hot and/or other means their favored strategies.
On issues mattering most, the US and its hegemonic partners consistently breach the rule of law, operating by their own rules exclusively.
Instead of straight talk, US-led Western officials and their press agent media feature managed news misinformation and disinformation exclusively — truth and full disclosure nowhere in sight.
The Media Lied Repeatedly About Officer Brian Sicknick’s Death. And They Just Got Caught.
Nancy Pelosi at a congressional tribute to the late Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick who lies in honor in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 3, 2021. (Photo by Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images)
By Glenn Greenwald | April 19, 2021
It was crucial for liberal sectors of the media to invent and disseminate a harrowing lie about how Officer Brian Sicknick died. That is because he is the only one they could claim was killed by pro-Trump protesters at the January 6 riot at the Capitol.
So The New York Times on January 8 published an emotionally gut-wrenching complete fiction that never had any evidence — that Officer Sicknick’s skull was savagely bashed in with a fire extinguisher by a pro-Trump mob until he died — and, just like the now-discredited Russian bounty story also unveiled by that same paper, cable outlets and other media platforms repeated this lie over and over in the most emotionally manipulative way possible. Just watch a part of what they did and how:
As I detailed over and over when examining this story, there were so many reasons to doubt this storyline from the start. Nobody on the record claimed it happened. The autopsy found no blunt trauma to the head. Sicknick’s own family kept urging the press to stop spreading this story because he called them the night of January 6 and told them he was fine — obviously inconsistent with the media’s claim that he died by having his skull bashed in — and his own mother kept saying that she believed he died of a stroke.
But the gruesome story of Sicknick’s “murder” was too valuable to allow any questioning. It was weaponized over and over to depict the pro-Trump mob not as just violent but barbaric and murderous, because if Sicknick weren’t murdered by them, then nobody was (without Sicknick, the only ones killed were four pro-Trump supporters: two who died of a heart attack, one from an amphetamine overdose, and the other, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot point blank in the neck by Capitol Police despite being unarmed). So crucial was this fairy tale about Sicknick that it made its way into the official record of President Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, and they had Joe Biden himself recite from the script, even as clear facts mounted proving it was untrue.
Articles on this Substack, Feb. 16, 2021 and Mar. 5, 2021
Because of its centrality to the media narrative and agenda, anyone who tried to point out the serious factual deficiencies in this story — in other words, people trying to be journalists — were smeared by Democratic Party loyalists who pretend to be journalists as “Sicknick Truthers,” white nationalist sympathizers, and supporters of insurrection.
For the crime of trying to determine the factual truth of what happened, my character was constantly impugned by these propagandistic worms, as was anyone else’s who tried to tell the truth about Sicknick’s tragic death. Because one of the first people to highlight the journalistic truth here was former Trump official Darren Beattie of Revolver News and one of the few people on television willing to host doubts about the official story was Tucker Carlson, any doubts about the false Sicknick story — no matter how well-grounded in truth, facts, reason and evidence — were cast as fascism and white supremacy, and those raising questions smeared as “truthers”: the usual dreary liberal insults for trying to coerce people into submitting to their lies:
Because the truth usually prevails, at least ultimately, their lies, yet again, all came crashing down on their heads on Monday. The District of Columbia’s chief medical examiner earlier this morning issued his official ruling in the Sicknick case, and it was so definitive that The Washington Post — one of the media outlets that had pushed the multiple falsehoods — did not even bother to try to mask or mitigate the stark conclusion it revealed:
The first line tells much of the story: “Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick suffered two strokes and died of natural causes a day after he confronted rioters at the Jan. 6 insurrection, the District’s chief medical examiner has ruled.” Using understatement, the paper added: “The ruling, released Monday, likely will make it difficult for prosecutors to pursue homicide charges in the officer’s death.”
This definitive finding from the medical examiner not only rids us of the Fire Extinguisher lie but also the second theory to which these media outlets resorted once they had to face the reality that they spent weeks spreading an outright lie (needless to say, they provided no real accountability or even acknowledgement for the fact that they did spread that Fire Extinguisher tale, instead just seamlessly moving to their next evidence-free claim). They changed their story to claim that pro-Trump protesters still murdered Sicknick, not with a fire extinguisher but with bear spray, which video shows at least one protester using in his vicinity.
Clockwise: Tweet of Associated Press, Jan. 29; Tweet of NBC’s Richard Engel, Jan. 9; Tweet of the Lincoln Project’s Fred Willman, Jan. 29; Tweet of The New York Times’ Nicholas Kirstof, Jan. 9
The problem with that theory is that bear spray is not usually fatal, and the medical examiner’s findings ruled out the possibility that this is what caused his death:
In an interview with The Washington Post, Francisco J. Diaz, the medical examiner, said the autopsy found no evidence the 42-year-old officer suffered an allergic reaction to chemical irritants, which Diaz said would have caused Sicknick’s throat to quickly seize. Diaz also said there was no evidence of internal or external injuries…
Diaz said Sicknick suffered two strokes at the base of the brain stem caused by a clot in an artery that supplies blood to that area of the body. Diaz said he could not comment on whether Sicknick had a preexisting medical condition, citing privacy laws.
So there goes that second fairy tale. The Post did note the medical examiner’s observation regarding Sicknick’s participation in defending the Capitol that day that “all that transpired played a role in his condition.” That of course is true: just as it is true for the two pro-Trump supporters who had heart attacks that day and the other pro-Trump supporter who died from too much amphetamine in her system, having a stressful encounter as a police officer likely played a role in why someone would have two strokes the following day. But police officers are trained for stressful encounters, and that obviously is a far cry from being able to claim that any pro-Trump supporter murdered Sicknick.
I’ll have much more on this story as it unfolds. A significant amount of media accountability is warranted. But you’re seeing why there is so much resentment and so many attacks on platforms like this one that permit journalists to report and analyze facts and dissect media narratives without being constrained by liberal orthodoxies and pieties and while remaining immune from liberal pressure tactics: it’s one of the few ways that real dissent to their lies and propaganda can be aired.
The New York Times, in a now-”updated” article, Jan. 8, 2021
Truth matters. Noble lies are never justified no matter the cause, especially in journalism. But these employees of corporate media outlets have been taught the exact opposite model: that their primary obligation is to please and flatter the partisan agenda and political sensibilities of their audience even if it means lying or recklessly spreading unproven theories to do it. That is their profit model. And they have trained their audiences to want and expect this and that is why they never feel compelled to engage in any self-critique or accountability when they get caught doing this: their audiences want to be lied to — they are grateful for it — and would prefer that they not admit they did it so that their partisan interests will not be undermined.
What is most depressing about this entire spectacle is that, this time, they exploited the tragic death of a young man to achieve their tawdry goals. They never cared in the slightest about Officer Brian Sicknick. They had just spent months glorifying a protest movement whose core view is that police officers are inherently racist and abusive. He had just become their toy, to be played with and exploited in order to depict the January 6 protest as a murderous orgy carried out by savages so primitive and inhuman that they were willing to fatally bash in the skull of a helpless person or spray them with deadly gases until they choked to death on their own lung fluids. None if it was true, but that did not matter — and it still does not to them — because truth, as always, has nothing to do with their actual function. If anything, truth is an impediment to it.
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Book Review
The Voters’ Self-Induced Matrix
By Jeb Smith | The Libertarian Institute | April 20, 2026
In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality.
Rose says these illusions “have become a defining feature of our modern society.” In other words, the collectivist mindset is a great conduit for spreading illusions; thus, it is the politician’s favored form of governance.
Rose points to studies in psychology and neuroscience showing we delude ourselves into believing what the majority does, even if it is not what we desire or know to be accurate. … continue
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