Keir Starmer Is Self-Isolating Now. I Call Bullshit
By Richie Allen | July 21, 2021
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has gone home to self-isolate this afternoon. The media has been told that one of his children has tested positive for covid.
According to the BBC:
A statement from his office said one of his children tested positive at lunchtime, but Sir Keir was doing daily tests and tested negative this morning.
Sir Keir was in the House of Commons for PMQs earlier. The PM and chancellor are also self-isolating after contact with the health secretary who tested positive.
This is the fourth time Sir Keir has had to self-isolate since the pandemic began. His spokesman said his family will also be self-isolating.
I’ve no proof whatsoever, but I call bullshit. The media has spent much of the past 48 hours discussing the NHS app and “pingdemic.” Millions of people have been pinged by the app and told to go home and isolate. It’s led to total chaos.
Business owners are tearing their hair out as staff shortages threaten the post-lockdown economic bounce. There are widespread reports that millions of younger people are deleting the app from their phones. Nobody wants to be forced into isolation, especially at this time of year.
The managers of the scamdemic, the entire political class and the media, are horrified that so many are deleting the wretched app. Maybe Johnson, Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Labour leader Keir Starmer have been sent to self-isolate to set an example.
You’d be well within your rights to ask me why. Because chaos is their desired outcome. They want to destroy the economy and cause a shortage of food and other products. They want to bankrupt businesses. They want to bankrupt you. Chaos is the plan.
Ordo Ab Chao. Order out of chaos. All roads lead to The World Economic Forum’s Great Reset. The people will only accept it when their worlds are turned upside-down.
The public is being manipulated 24/7 by the political class and the media working in tandem. They want you in a perpetual state of agitation and confusion. You become even more suggestible while in that low vibrational state.
There’s no covid now. There’s no threat if there ever was one. People should not be taking instructions from their phones to drop everything and rush home to isolate. It’s tyranny. People seem to be wising up to it and ditching the app. It’s about bloody time.
How convenient then, that the PM and the leader of the opposition party should be pinged and sent home, while at the same time the media is attacking anyone who suggests it’s time to move on and get on with our lives.
The BBC vs Donald Trump
By Freddie Attenborough | The Daily Sceptic | July 19, 2021
In March 2021, the BBC reported that one of their investigative teams had, “Been tracking the human toll of coronavirus misinformation”. During this investigation they claimed to have found links to “assaults, arsons and deaths”. Worryingly, experts also told them that, “The potential for indirect harm caused by rumours, conspiracy theories and bad health information could be much worse”. Sounds like an interesting investigation, doesn’t it? Public service output at its finest, you might think. Just the kind of article we’d all like to read.
Alas. Not quite.
The problem with the BBC is that it simply can’t help itself. Having teed an ostensibly interesting story up in this open, investigatory journalistic type of way, its authors then proceed to devote a good-ish chunk of what follows to that most favourite of all BBC pastimes, namely, implicating Donald Trump in the act of mass murder. As with the butterfly so beloved of chaos theory (you know the one: that little blighter who’s always flapping his wings and causing tsunamis to crash into the coast of Bangladesh) no sooner have the BBC shown us Trump tweeting about the FDA’s preliminary research into hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic against Covid than the magic of non-deterministic linear physics kicks in and people all over Nigeria and Vietnam suddenly start mopping up the old bleach-based products like vacuum cleaners.
In the end, then, the only interesting thing about this article is the way it reminds us just how little time and attention the BBC have paid to exploring the link that surely must exist between Covid ‘misinformation’ (as they themselves insist on calling it) and the huge rise in cases of psychosomatic disorder – health anxiety in particular – that we’ve witnessed in the UK since the dawn of the Age of Lockdown (2020-present). Let me explain what I mean.
And to do so, let me start by asking a question: what might disinformation likely to precipitate new, or to heighten existing, levels of anxiety amongst those suffering from psychosomatic disorders look like? How, in other words, might we define such a thing? Well, perhaps we might say that it would be information that unduly exaggerated the risks associated with Covid. Perhaps we might go further and say that it would represent the risks associated with Covid in a highly misleading and/or a sensationalist way. Come to think of it, perhaps we might end up concluding that it would look rather like the BBC’s recent article, ‘Long COVID funding to unearth new treatments.’ Below is the thumbnail picture accompanying the piece.
As you can see, it depicts two masked patients, chaperoned by two masked nurses, who look unmistakably like they’re having to learn how to walk again. (And by the way, anyone who’s going to counter that it could just as plausibly be a depiction of two patients being tested for, say, oxygen carrying capacity or pulse rate during recovery from a respiratory illness like Covid would need to explain to me why it is that neither patient is shown to be wearing any tracking/monitoring equipment, and, in addition, why neither nurse is shown to be holding/studying any data monitors). The male patient in the foreground of the image looks particularly unsteady on his feet, relying heavily on the metal frame surrounding him for bodily support. One of the masked nurses stands next to him, watching his legs and feet intently, presumably scanning for any warning signs of imminent collapse or a stumble. Her right arm is stretching out towards him, and no doubt a guiding/supportive hand is resting on the patient’s shoulder. Just behind the male patient, you can also see the lower half of the wheelchair in which he will have been brought from his hospital ward and into this rehabilitation class.
But if that’s what it shows, then what kind of patient might actually need rehabilitation of this kind; rehabilitation, that is, in which patients are having to learn how to walk again? It’s the type of thing that you’d imagine is normally reserved for patients needing post-surgery rehabilitation; patients who’ve suffered spinal cord injuries, neurological disorders, car-crashes, amputations and the like. That’s big league, serious stuff. We’re essentially talking about a type of rehabilitative treatment for people who’re on the cusp of, or who’re already suffering from, life-changing injuries/illnesses.
So is this the type of treatment that people suffering from Long Covid are likely to need? I ask because as we’ve already established, it’s the type of treatment that’s depicted in the image the BBC have attached to an article entitled, “Long Covid funding to unearth new treatments” the first paragraph of which reads: “Thousands of people with ‘long Covid’ could benefit from the funding of 15 new studies of the condition, its causes and potential treatments”. To help us on the way towards answering this question, here’s what the NHS guide to the symptoms currently associated with ‘Long Covid’ has to say for itself:
Common Long Covid symptoms include:
- extreme tiredness (fatigue)
- shortness of breath
- chest pain or tightness
- problems with memory and concentration (‘brain fog’)
- difficulty sleeping (insomnia)
- heart palpitations
- dizziness
- pins and needles
- joint pain
- depression and anxiety
- tinnitus, earaches
- feeling sick, diarrhoea, stomach aches, loss of appetite
- a high temperature, cough, headaches, sore throat, changes to sense of smell or taste
- rashes
Now I’m no doctor, admittedly, but I’m not entirely satisfied that a programme of rehabilitative walking usually reserved for wheelchair bound patients in post-surgery recovery is going to prove particularly efficacious when it comes to the treatment of long Covid patients with earache, diarrhoea and changes of smell or taste. In fact, I’m not satisfied at all.
Indeed it rather seems to me that the BBC’s choice of image, when considered as an accompaniment to this particular article, might justifiably be described as misinformation; that is, as information that unduly exaggerates the risks associated with long Covid in a highly misleading or a sensationalist way.
By the way, do you like my definition of misinformation? Thanks. Perhaps it might interest you, then, to know it’s culled from the BBC’s own editorial guidelines. Specifically, therein we find “Section 3, Accuracy”, and, more particularly, “Sub-section 3.3.24”, which states that, “Reconstructions [which this image undeniably is] are when events are quite explicitly re-staged”, and that in order to abide by the BBC’s editorial guidelines, “They should normally be based on a substantial and verifiable body of evidence… [and they] should not overdramatise in a misleading or sensationalist way”.
On this basis, then, is it not the case that the BBC’s own reality-check team, that bastion of fairness and impartiality in a world gone wrong, should hold the organisation to account for spreading long Covid misinformation? Is it not an article that exaggerates and sensationalises the effects of long Covid? Further, is it not likely to generate additional, or indeed to heighten existing cases of, psychosomatic health disorders in the U.K.?
I guess if you’re the type of person who’s already suffering from heightened worry about your health, about lockdown, about physical contact with others, about viruses, about disease; I guess if you surf the web but never really read anything carefully; if you scan the thumbnails on the BBC’s news homepage but never click through to the articles; if you look at an article’s opening image and then only scan the first two or three paragraphs of text thereafter… then I guess, absolutely, it might indeed be considered ‘misinformation.’
“But isn’t this all just a little pedantic?” I hear you ask. “A bit nit-picky?” Oh, absolutely. And doesn’t it feel good to be playing the BBC at their own game for a change. So good, in fact, that you really must forgive me. I’m enjoying myself so much that I’m going to continue to be pedantic for a little while yet.
Because you see I guess, too, that if you’re prone to experiencing psychosomatic disorders of one kind of another, if you’re already well-known to your local GP surgery and A&E, then it might panic you quite a bit to think that the image the BBC have chosen to use here depicts a fate that might lie in store for you too if you ever contracted Covid and then experienced Long Covid. I guess too that if you’re that way inclined, then you might even feel you needed to take the vaccine, any vaccine, right this minute, no questions asked, jab jab jab, please, put it in me doctor, oh God, put it in me… and to hell with any kind of informed consent.
Jabbed or not, if you’re that way inclined then I guess you might nevertheless see that picture, that image of the Long Covid patient struggling to walk in the BBC’s article, and then, at some point later, get around to thinking that you’re experiencing the symptoms of Long Covid, that you’re really ill, that you’re dying, that you’re in need of immediate and very urgent medical attention, that you’ve got to go to A&E immediately because you might end up in a wheelchair unable to walk; I guess, too, that you might see that picture and then end up yo-yo-ing in and out of the healthcare system for the rest of your life, costing the taxpayer money, wasting valuable medical time, worrying that there’s a direct line of causality that “the science” has established between you coughing, you sneezing and you ending up in hospital needing a wheelchair to get you to your rehabilitative walking therapy sessions.
It’s strange, isn’t it? I mean, the BBC is normally so keen, so eager, to castigate others for disseminating what they’ve decreed to be Covid misinformation capable of causing or exacerbating existing physical disorders. Yet in the case of psychosomatic disorders – i.e. panic, hyperventilating, health anxiety, generalised anxiety, hypertension, depression, chills, gastrointestinal disturbances – they’re curiously reluctant to take up those same sanctimonious ‘fact-checking’ cudgels.
It’s a reluctance that matters, though, isn’t it? The sad and unfortunate thing about psychosomatic disorders is that those suffering from them are more likely than almost any other group in society to place unnecessary pressure on the NHS. After all, if you’re worried that you’re seriously unwell and/or in imminent danger of dying, where’s the first place you’re going to go? That’s right: a primary or secondary healthcare provider. The problem, of course, is that people who suffer from those types of disorders are neither seriously ill nor in imminent danger of dying. What they ‘are’ is suffering from severe anxiety. That’s not nothing, of course; but it’s hardly first responder or A&E type stuff, is it?
That this might constitute a problem during a global pandemic of a mild respiratory illness in which we’ve all been told to put our lives, businesses, careers on hold because the NHS is under massive existential pressure, seems obvious. If the NHS is already clogged up with respiratory tract illness and you then go and add a whole bunch of psychosomatic patients to the mix… well, you’ve got a problem, haven’t you? You’d think the BBC would care about that sort of thing, particularly given the pious, reverent tone it normally adopts when it’s representing the NHS. You’d think they’d want to provide balanced, calm, rational reportage of what was going on; reportage that was clear about the extremely low risk Covid poses to the vast majority of people in this country.
I wonder. Could it be that if we were to widen the scope of the concept of ‘misinformation’ to include not only information capable of causing physical harm, but also that likely to cause psychosomatic harm, we’d be forced to conclude that the BBC, with all its Covid exaggerations, its hyperbole, its uncritical, unreflexive treatment of “the science” handed down to it by SAGE, its failure to hold the Government to account, to approach statistics sceptically, to put case numbers into perspective, its obsession with filming death porn reports from inside hospitals (etc etc)… if we were to consider all of that as misinformation too, might we not end up concluding that the BBC has done as much damage to the psychological health and wellbeing of the nation it purports to inform, educate and entertain as Donald Trump ever did with his tweety-tweety chit-chat about preliminary research into hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic against Covid? I wonder indeed.
Dr Freddie Attenborough is a former academic. You can see his substack account here.
RUSSIAGATE: Luke Harding’s Hard Sell
By Joe Lauria | Consortium News | July 17, 2021
Luke Harding of The Guardian on Thursday came out with a new story that looks at first glance like an attempt to rescue the Russiagate story and the reputations of Harding and U.S. intelligence.
The headline reads, “Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House” with the subhead: “Exclusive: Documents suggest Russia launched secret multi-agency effort to interfere in US democracy.”
Harding’s report says that during a Jan. 22, 2016 closed session of the Russian national security council, President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian spies to back a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump for the White House to “help secure Moscow’s strategic objectives, among them ‘social turmoil’ in the US.”
“Russia’s three spy agencies were ordered to find practical ways to support Trump, in a decree appearing to bear Putin’s signature,” Harding writes. “A report prepared by Putin’s expert department recommended Moscow use ‘all possible force’ to ensure a Trump victory.”
The article, starting with the headline, is littered with the use of qualifiers such as “appears,” “suggests,” “apparent,” and “seems.” Such qualifiers tell the reader that even the newspaper is not sure whether to believe its own story.
Quoting from what he says is an authentic document marked “secret,” Harding writes that there is “apparent confirmation” that the Kremlin had dirt on Trump it could use to blackmail him, gathered during earlier Trump “‘non-official visits to Russian Federation territory.’”
This would seem to confirm a central part of the so-called Steele dossier, which Harding hawked in his bestselling book Collusion.
Harding’s newest story though says nothing about the involvement of Trump operatives with this Kremlin plot, as that was unfounded by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
Harding also suggests that the documents that came into his possession provides evidence of a Russian hack of Democratic National Committee computers.
Harding at the Nordic Media Festival, 2018. (Thor Brødreskift / Nordiske Mediedager/ Wikimedia Commons)
He writes:
“After the meeting, according to a separate leaked document, Putin issued a decree setting up a new and secret interdepartmental commission. Its urgent task was to realise the goals set out in the ‘special part’ of document No 32-04 \ vd. …
The defence minister was instructed to coordinate the work of subdivisions and services. [Sergei] Shoigu was also responsible for collecting and systematising necessary information and for “preparing measures to act on the information environment of the object” – a command, it seems, to hack sensitive American cyber-targets identified by the SVR. …
The papers appear to set out a route map for what actually happened in 2016.
A matter of weeks after the security council meeting, GRU hackers raided the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and subsequently released thousands of private emails in an attempt to hurt Clinton’s election campaign.”
These documents would perfectly confirm the story put out by U.S. intelligence and an eager Democratic media: that Russia’s defense intelligence agency GRU hacked the DNC and Russia leaked DNC emails to damage Hillary Clinton.
Except that Shawn Henry, the head of the company CrowdStrike hired by the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign (while keeping the FBI away) to examine the DNC servers declared under oath to the House Intelligence Committee that no evidence of a hack was discovered. “It appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left,” Henry told the committee.
WikiLeaks, which Harding doesn’t mention, has also denied getting the DNC material from Russia that Harding says was released by Moscow. And Harding ignores the true contents of the emails.
Dmitri Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, told The Guardian the story was “great pulp fiction.”
Let’s look at the motives of the players involved in this story.
Harding’s Motives
Henry’s denial of a hack and Mueller’s inability to prove Collusion, embarrassed Harding after he staked his reputation on his bestseller of that name. The book is essentially the story of Christopher Steele, the ex-MI6 agent, who was paid by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to come up with opposition research against Trump.
Harding, like the Democratic media establishment, mistook opposition research, a mix of fact and fiction to smear a political opponent, for an intelligence document paid for by taxpayers, presumably in the interests of protecting the country rather than a political candidate. Of course, the FBI and the CIA sold it to the media as such to undermine the other candidate.
Harding has had a major omelet on his face after the Russiagate tale was ultimately exposed as opposition research paid for by the Democrats, who elevated it to a new Pearl Harbor.
Now I will engage in qualifiers here but it seems Harding is desperate to find anything that might rescue the story and his reputation. That’s a vulnerable position to be in, easily exploited by intelligence operatives, the way he was exploited with the original story.
An earlier attempt by Harding at rescuing himself was the disastrous piece he wrote for The Guardian that Paul Manafort, briefly Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, had visited Julian Assange at the Ecuador Embassy in London. It blew up in Harding’s face though his paper has never pulled the story.
U.S. Intelligence Motives
Members of the U.S. intelligence community were staring at possible prosecution in the investigation run by U.S. Attorney John Durham for their role in pushing the opposition research as truth, leading, among other things, to a doctored FBI report to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor a Trump campaign worker.
The Steele dossier became the basis for other shenanigans by U.S. intelligence. Though in the end there were no indictments, the reputation of especially the FBI took a hit.
Leaking a story now that it was all true, after all, might do wonders to restore its standing among wide sections of the U.S. public who lost faith in the bureau over Russiagate.
A Kremlin Leakers’ Motives
Harding writes in a cryptic way about how he got hold of these materials. He says the story is based on “what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.” As they were marked “secret,” and supposedly came from Putin’s innermost circle, as Harding says, it stands to reason that few people in the Russian government would have had access to them outside of that circle.
We are being asked to believe that someone closest to Putin leaked these documents either directly to Harding or to U.S. or British intelligence who then passed it on to Harding. (Harding calling it a leak would rule out that they were obtained through a Western intelligence hack.)
It can’t be dismissed that U.S. intelligence may have an active mole inside the Kremlin. But one must ask would that mole — if he or she exists — risk their freedom by leaking documents that have absolutely no current strategic or even political significance, rather than, say, classified information about Russian troop movements and military intentions?
The only interests this leak serves — if it was a leak — are those of Harding and U.S. intelligence, who were hung out to dry by the collapse of the Russiagate narrative.
Evaluating the Story
Harding is clearly reporting from Russian-language documents, snapshots of which are reproduced in The Guardian article. He writes that these documents were shown to “independent experts” who said they “appear” to be “genuine.” Harding does not reveal who these experts are.
To evaluate the credibility of Harding’s story would require knowing how he got the documents, not the names of the person or persons who gave them to him, but the interests they represent. He is especially vague about this.
Harding writes:
“Western intelligence agencies are understood to have been aware of the documents for some months and to have carefully examined them. The papers, seen by the Guardian, seem to represent a serious and highly unusual leak from within the Kremlin.”
If they were handed to Harding by U.S. or British intelligence who had them for months, the idea that these are the products of spycraft cannot be dismissed. Crafting what looks like classified evidence from an adversarial power and then leaking it to friendly press has long been in the arsenal of intelligence agencies the world over.
It is unlikely we will ever know how Harding came into possession of these documents or who the experts are who said they “seem” genuine.
But the purpose of this piece may have already been achieved.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former UN correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London and began his professional career as a stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com
Rotten To The Core
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT | JULY 18, 2021
There has been a longstanding concern about blatant bias at the BBC, not least in matters of climate change. This certainly dates back at least to January 2006, when they held a seminar of “top scientific experts” to advise them on climate change. The BBC fought tooth and nail to conceal the identity of these experts, but it was subsequently discovered that they were not experts at all, but the usual collection of green lobbyists.
Ever since, the BBC’s coverage of global warming has been woefully one sided and at times inaccurate,
This year they have been publishing a monthly feature, Then and Now, purportedly showing how climate has been changing in a warming world.
One article looked at the recent drought in California, while another claimed that the Victoria Falls had dried up. Both implied that climate change was to blame, with the usual weasel words that while one weather event cannot be linked to climate change, “scientists” say that such events are likely to get worse with global warming.
However both stories omitted crucial information, which would have shown such claims to be nonsensical and untruthful.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56902340
California, for instance, has had droughts in the 20thC every bit as bad as the current one. Moreover the official data clearly shows megadroughts there were much worse for much of the last thousand years or so. In short, California is a land of drought. The modest amount of warming there since the Little Ice Age has altered nothing.
The BBC claims about the Victoria Falls were even more absurd. For a start, the Falls did not run dry; every dry season lake levels drop. As the Zambian side is at a higher elevation, the Falls there dry up, while continuing at the other end. This happens every year, but the BBC deceitfully misled readers by showing a split image comparing Jan 2019 with Dec 2019. In January every year water levels rise sharply, and Jan 2020 was no exception.
It is certainly true that there was a drought in the region in 2019, and water levels were lower than average. But the Zambesi River Authority say that there have been six occasions since 1914 when water levels were lower, the worst being in 1995.
Just as with California, the BBC have picked on a drought, but ignored all of the data showing that they are both natural events, with no evidence that droughts are getting more severe or common.
This sort of misreporting of the Victoria Falls is of extreme concern to Zambia’s tourist industry and local businesses, who are naturally worried that tourists may stop visiting if they think the Falls are no longer there.
Which brings us to the point of the story. I complained to the BBC that both stories were grossly misleading and omitted crucial information.
Complaints to the BBC go through three stages. The first response appears to be written by the office junior, who tries to fob you off with a few bland statements.
If you are unhappy, you can resubmit the complaint, which usually gets the same response, though dressed up in sciency sounding language.
Finally you can appeal to the Executive Complaints Unit.
As is usually the case, I effectively received the same reply at all three stages, viz:
- There was a drought
- “Scientists say” climate change is making droughts worse
None of the replies actually addressed my complaint, that the actual data shows droughts are not unusual or getting worse at either location.
The real issue here of course is that the BBC Complaints Dept is all in house, even the ECU. In effect the BBC is marking its own homework.
In theory it is possible to appeal to OFCOM. In practice however they have no obligation to investigate, and would only consider doing so for substantive cases.
Clearly BBC bias will never be addressed until they are subject to a fully independent process, just as the press is.
In the meantime, if Tim Davie is serious about cleaning the stables, he should start by taking his axe to the bloated, fourteen strong Environmental Dept, which is now clearly out of control.
Instances of bias and misinformation, such as these two, are now commonplace in their output, and they seem to believe that they don’t even have to pay lip service to editorial guidelines anymore.
Western media use images of PRO-government rally, protest in Miami to illustrate Cuban unrest as Havana warns of ‘soft coup’
The Guardian and a number of other Western news agencies used erroneously captioned photos of a pro-government protest in Havana, Cuba, presenting it as an opposition rally instead.
© TheGuardian.com / screenshot
RT | July 14, 2021
Several Western news outlets have used an erroneously captioned photo showing a pro-government rally in Cuba, deeming it an opposition protest, while CNN opted for an image of a Miami demonstration instead, raising eyebrows.
Captured by Associated Press photographer Eliana Aponte during a demonstration in support of the government in the Cuban capital on Sunday, the photo has made the rounds in the Western corporate press as unrest grips the Caribbean nation. However, multiple outlets have incorrectly described the image as an “anti-government protest,” including the Guardian, Fox News, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Washington Times and Voice of America. The latter outlet, the US-government funded VOA, committed the error on two separate occasions.
GrayZone journalist Ben Norton and Alan MacLeod of MintPress News were among the first to note the error, sharing screenshots of several examples. MacLeod suggested the outlets may have simply “copied and pasted” the AP’s original photo caption, replicating the error across multiple agencies.
Both journalists pointed out the red-and-black flags hoisted by demonstrators in the photo, which read “26 Julio,” a reference to Fidel Castro’s 26th of July movement. The organization played a major role in the Cuban Revolution and later formed into a political party, with the two-colored flag becoming a common symbol of support for Cuba’s communist government.
Of the six news outlets cited above, only the Guardian had issued a correction at the time of writing, stating that it amended its story because the “original agency caption on the image… incorrectly described them as anti-government protesters. They were actually supporters of the government.”
The AP image is not the only photo to be misrepresented in Western media coverage. On its Instagram page, CNN also strongly implied that another photo showed Cuban protesters, with its caption reading, in part, “Thousands of Cubans protested a lack of food and medicine.” The image in question was taken by an AFP photographer, and a search through the agency’s photo gallery shows the rally was actually held in Miami, Florida. CNN appears to have omitted the first portion of the AFP caption, which made clear the protest was based in the US.
The photo mix-ups in corporate media have been compounded by a wave of false and misleading posts by observers online, with many users sharing photos of gatherings in Egypt, Spain and Argentina while claiming they depict unrest in Cuba – some racking up thousands of shares.
The anti-state protests kicked off in earnest on Sunday, seeing large crowds of demonstrators take to the streets in Havana and elsewhere to demand urgent action on food, medicine and power shortages. The government, however, claims the rallies are fueled by hostile foreign powers, namely Washington, and involve only a small number of ‘counter-revolutionaries’. President Miguel Diaz-Canal said US sanctions were to blame, arguing that Washington’s “policy of economic suffocation” aimed to “provoke social unrest” in Cuba.
Diaz-Canal also alleged that a “campaign against the Cuban revolution” had kicked off on social media platforms, saying they are “drawing on the problems and shortages we are living.” According to internet monitoring firm NetBlocks, Cuba’s state-run web provider ETECSA has moved to restrict access to certain sites and apps since the bout of unrest erupted on Sunday.
The head of the Cuban Communist Party’s ideological department, Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, also claimed that the country is experiencing an attempt at a “color revolution” or a “soft coup,” drawing a comparison to a failed US-backed uprising in Venezuela back in 2019.
Washington, for its part, has offered rhetorical backing to the protesters, with State Department spokesman Ned Price telling reporters on Tuesday that the government is looking at ways to “support the Cuban people,” though he did not elaborate.
Havana has so far offered few details on the number of arrests made or injuries sustained during the protests, though the Cuban Interior Ministry confirmed that the first death occurred during an anti-government action on Monday. Opposition groups, meanwhile, have alleged that a spate of arrests has targeted protesters, journalists and other activists.
Iran Unjustifiably Blamed for Another False Flag Attack?
By Stephen Lendman | July 4, 2021
Unlike repeated US-dominated NATO and Israeli rule of law breaches, Iran fully complies with its international obligations.
Yet time and again it’s falsely accused of things it had nothing to do with, including attacks on Israeli vessels — despite no evidence of its involvement.
In stark contrast, international outlaw Israel attacked Iranian cargo ships numerous times.
In March, the WSJ reported that Israel targeted at least 12 Iranian cargo ships in international waters.
It cyber-attacked its nuclear facilities, accountability for its criminal actions never forthcoming.
On July 3, Lebanese al-Mayadeen television reported the following:
Citing unnamed “reliable sources,” its report said “a fire erupted in an Israeli cargo ship in the northern Indian Ocean,” adding:
“(T)he…merchant ship was hit by an unknown weapon.”
It “was anchored in the port of Jeddah before moving towards the Emirati coast.”
“(N)o one has claimed responsibility for this targeting so far.”
“(T)he incident c(ame) a day after news of an Israeli drone attack west of Tehran.”
On June 23, Iranian media reported a drone attack on a city of Karaj building.
Since its 1979 liberating revolution from US/UK-installed fascist tyranny, US, Western and Israeli regimes have waged forever war on Iran by other means — wanting its government toppled, the nation weakened, partitioned and transformed into a pro-Western vassal state.
Was Saturday’s incident involving a formerly Israeli-owned vessel staged by the Bennett regime as part of its aim to kill the JCPOA nuclear deal — by once again falsely blaming Iran for what no evidence points to its involvement?
Was the incident a joint US/Israeli false flag to blame Iran like many times before unjustifiably?
Israeli political and military dark forces have been pressuring their Biden regime counterparts not to rejoin the landmark agreement as affirmed by Security Council Res. 2231, making it binding international law.
Ideally, they want the deal killed altogether. At minimum, they want it revised to include unacceptable provisions no responsible government would accept.
Saturday’s incident targeted the Liberian-flagged CSAV Tyndall cargo ship.
Haaretz said the vessel was “previously under Israeli ownership,” the attack “causing only mild damage and no casualties.”
Like time and again unjustifiably, Bennett regime officials blamed Iran for what happened, despite no evidence suggesting it.
No Israeli nationals were on board.
Formally owned by London-based Zodiac Maritime Ltd, a company source said the vessel was sold several months earlier.
No one claimed responsibility for the incident. The Jerusalem Post reported the following:
“On Friday, IDF chief of staff Gen. Aviv Kohavi hinted at an Israeli covert operation against Iran at the graduation of the IDF officers course at the Bahad 1 base,” quoting him, saying:
“Anyone who tries to harm the state of Israel (sic) knows that any offensive enemy activity (sic), near or far, will be answered with a significant, overt or covert response.”
The hostile-to-Iran NYT implied its responsibility for the Saturday incident.
Citing no evidence because there is none, it dubiously suggested what happened was “latest tit-for-tat (sic) in a shadowy regional conflict between Israel and Iran,” adding:
The vessel “was believed to have come under assault by an Iranian drone or naval commandos (sic),” citing an unnamed Israeli source with no credibility.
The Times falsely accused Iran of earlier attacks on Israeli-owned ships despite no evidence suggesting it.
On June 1, US intelligence dubiously warned of a possible Iranian attack.
Was it issued ahead of a planned US and/or Israeli false flag on Saturday to once again blame Iran for what it had nothing to do with?
Contact Stephen Lendman at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
U.N. Rejects Its Own Data to Claim ‘Climate Change’ Threatens Mass Starvation in Madagascar
Mainstream Media is Onboard with the Lie
By H. Sterling Burnett | ClimateRealism | June 24, 2021
A recent search of Google News for the term ‘climate change’ turns up a number of stories in the mainstream media promoting the United Nations (UN) World Food Programme saying climate change is causing a drought in Madagascar that threatens more than one million people with starvation.
Linking climate change to a temporary weather event, which this drought is, equates to a false comparison.
Also, the U.N.’s own data show Madagascar has been setting records in recent decades for crop production, so any food supply shortages are due to political or economic factors not declining crop production.
A story titled “Climate change has pushed a million people in Madagascar to the ‘edge of starvation,’ UN says,” by CNN is typical of the mainstream media’s uncritical coverage of the UN’s claims.
“Climate change is the driving force of a developing food crisis in southern Madagascar, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has warned,” writes CNN.
“The African island has been plagued with back-to-back droughts — its worst in four decades — which have pushed 1.14 million people ‘right to the very edge of starvation,’ said WFP executive director David Beasley in a news release Wednesday.”
The UN and CNN should check their premises and data. History shows back to back droughts are not unprecedented in Madagascar’s history.
Indeed, CNN’s own coverage notes the current drought is the worst in forty years. Forty years ago, during Madagascar’s last major drought, scientists were warning of a coming ice age, not global warming.
Peer-reviewed research shows Madagascar’s large megafauna declined sharply, with many species going extinct during previously extended droughts.
Research indicates Madagascar suffered extended droughts nearly 6,000 and again nearly 1,000 years ago.
A drought, approximately 950 years before the present, triggered a large transformation in vegetation, an increase in wildfires, and a sharp decline in the island’s megafauna.
It may be true that some people in Madagascar face potential starvation, but contrary to UN Food Programme’s claims it can’t be due to more than a very recent decline in food supplies, because data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization show Madagascar’s food production has set repeated records since 1980, as seen in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1. Primary crops in Madagascar, all available years. Graph created from the FAO Website. Source
Rice, cassava, and sweet potatoes are three of Madagascar’s staple crops. Each has set multiple records for production over the past few decades. Between 1980 and 2019, the last year for which the FAO has records for Madagascar:
- Rice production increased by approximately 101 percent.
- Cassava production grew by slightly more than 73 percent.
- Sweet potato production increased by more than 198 percent.
The FAO reports Madagascar also saw its fresh vegetable production grow 63 percent between 1980 and 2019.
Madagascar’s current drought is hardly unique and as dire as the present food shortage its people face may be, there is no evidence supposed human-caused climate change is to blame.
Indeed, during the era of global warming, Madagascar’s food production, like food production for the world as a whole, has increased significantly.
Research shows at least part of the recent increase in food production is due to the fertilization effect from increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human fossil fuel use.
In a fervor to link the current drought and associated food shortages to climate change, the UN and CNN forgot a basic fact, weather is not climate and temporary weather conditions, such as back-to-back drought years, don’t necessarily reflect a changing climate.
The UN Food Programme should check its own data before it promotes climate alarm to the media.
Also, media outlets, like CNN, should be more skeptical of alarming climate change-related claims about drought and food production, which readily available data refute.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is managing editor of Environment & Climate News and a research fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute.
Russian foreign ministry mocks ‘discovery’ of docs linked to UK navy’s Crimea incursion
RT | June 27, 2021
Sunday’s emergence of “highly-classified” documents linked to British warship’s incursion into Russian waters near Crimea, days after it occurred, amounts to a “bunch of lies” to cover it up, Russia’s foreign ministry has said.
The 50-page dossier related to the Black Sea cruise of the HMS Defender is said to have been found by a passer-by in a heap of trash behind a bus stop in Kent on Tuesday morning. The discovery, supposedly made right before the Wednesday incident when the UK destroyer sailed into Russian waters near Crimea, was publicized by London’s state broadcaster BBC, on Sunday.
The miraculous find, however, was deemed rather hard-to-believe by Russian officials. Russian FM spokeswoman Maria Zakharova took to Telegram to mock the whole affair, suggesting the sudden emergence of the documents looked like a clumsy cover-up attempt.
“In reality, London has demonstrated yet another provocative action followed by a bunch of lies to cover it up. 007 agents are not what they used to be.”
Apparently, the goldmine bus stops with highly-sensitive documents laying around should be the target for the persistent paranoia exhibited by many in the UK, instead of elusive, omnipotent ‘Russian hackers,’ Zakharova suggested.
“Now, here’s a question to the British Parliament: who needs ‘Russian hackers’ if there are British bus stops?” she asked.
The haul of documents, which supposedly emerged from the office of a senior Ministry of Defence official, reportedly described the mission of the destroyer as an “innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters.” The military strategists insisted they had a “strong, legitimate narrative” for the whole stunt, while reporters aboard the ship would have provided “independent verification” for it. Some officials, however, raised concerns about a possible “welcome party” to be thrown by Russia, the documents show. Avoiding the waters around Crimea, however, would be deemed to be too weak, as it would presumably give Moscow an opportunity to say the UK ship had run away.
The HMS Defender invaded Russian territorial waters off Crimea on Wednesday, triggering a response from the country’s military, which dispatched two patrol ships and warplanes to warn it off. The ship ultimately had to leave after warning shots were fired at it. The UK military was quick to deny the shooting, claiming it was a part of a planned exercise, while the destroyer merely conducted the aforementioned “innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters in accordance with international law.”
The damage-control attempts left the UK military red-faced again, as a video showing Russian vessels repeatedly warning and then firing warning shots at the direction of the destroyer emerged shortly after.
BBC Victoria Falls Complaint Escalated
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | June 10, 2021
You will recall the BBC’s fake news story of how the Victoria Falls was drying up due to climate change:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56902340
I submitted this short complaint at the time:
I have now received this response:
In short, they are just saying “Look, there was a drought, so go away!”
You will have noticed that they have not actually answered any of the points I made.
Needless to say, I have now resubmitted my complaint, as follows:
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for your response, but it does not address my complaint.
You state that there was a drought in the region 2019, but this is not in dispute. According to the Zimbabwe Tourism Office in December 2019:
Historical data provided by the Zambezi River Authority, who monitors the water level flows in the region daily, provide evidence that the annual mean water levels of the river have in fact been lower in at least six prior examples of a period spanning 1914 to the current date period.
Whilst Zimbabwe has indeed experienced an extensive drought over the course of this year, the water levels of the Zambezi and indeed the flow levels over Victoria Falls, have remained above those recorded over the drought period of 95 / 96.
https://www.zimbabwetourism.net/news-update-on-the-state-of-vic-falls/
In other words, such droughts are common, and the 2019 one was not as bad as that of 1995/96. They are normal meteorological events, and nothing to do with climate change, as you claim.
To recap, your report states:
In our monthly feature, Then and Now, we reveal some of the ways that planet Earth has been changing against the backdrop of a warming world. Here, we look at the effects of global heating on Victoria Falls,
In 2019, however, Victoria Falls was silenced. In a drought described as the worst in a century, the flow of the Zambezi was reduced to a relative trickle and the Falls ran dry.
A single extreme weather event cannot, in isolation, be viewed as a consequence of climate change.
But the region is recording a sequence of extreme droughts that reflect what climate modellers have predicted will occur as a result of an increase in greenhouse gases in the world’s atmosphere as a result of human activity.
As already noted, there was nothing unusual about the 2019 drought, nor have you provided any evidence that extreme droughts are increasing in the region. The predictions of computer modellers are therefore irrelevant.
It is therefore misleading and inaccurate to claim that this perfectly common event is an “effect of global heating”.
Also your claim that it was the worst drought in a century is also false, as we know 1995/96 was much worse.
Moreover you grossly mislead readers with your image of the Falls supposedly drying up. This is something that happens every year between October and December.
Again according to Zimbabwe Tourism:
The seasonal rise and fall of the Zambezi River changes the look of Victoria Falls on a daily basis. The western side of the falls is lower than the eastern side and therefore carries the most water all year round. This fluctuation is less noticeable at Devil’s cataract and the Main Falls. From Livingstone Islands onwards, this ebb and flow becomes more apparent and at low water, this portion of the Falls dries up almost completely.
https://www.zimbabwetourism.net/news-update-on-the-state-of-vic-falls/
Although water levels are low during dry season, it is inaccurate for you to claim:
The flow of the Zambezi was reduced to a relative trickle and the Falls ran dry
There was still plentiful water at the time of year, it is simply that the eastern end is at a higher elevation that the water stops flowing over.
Worse still your image contrasts January 2019 with December 2018, with the caption “how the falls have changed over time”. But the two months are totally different in terms of water levels. As already noted, December always sees low lake levels, coinciding with the dry rock face you show.
According to Lonely Planet:
Every single year the Eastern Cataract of the Victoria Falls exposes a dry rock face, normally between the months of October to December,” explains Wilma Griffith, a marketing executive at the Wild Horizons Lookout Café, a restaurant overlooking the Batoka Gorge. “Historical figures show that on or around 14 November the river is at its lowest and then gradually starts to rise again around 14 December, once the localised rains start having an impact on the Zambezi.”
November and December are the end of spring and the beginning of summer in the southern hemisphere, but it can take time for the post-winter rainfall in the DRC and Angola to travel downstream to Victoria Falls, and eventually to in the Indian Ocean.
https://www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/victoria-falls-drought-climate-change
By January the heavy spring rains upstream lead to a large rise in lake levels, as the chart below from the Zambezi River Authority shows:
http://www.zambezira.org/hydrology/river-flows
The correct comparison should have been between December 2018 and December 2019. Instead your readers are left with the false impression that the drying up from January 2019 and December 2019 was not a natural event that occurs every year, but something to do with climate change.
To summarise:
- You have claimed that the “drying up” of the Victoria Falls in December 2019 was the effect of “global heating”.
- You also erroneously claim that the 2019 drought was the worst in a century
- You dishonestly publish a flagrantly misleading comparison of photos of the Falls, comparing the dry season in December 2019 with the wet season in January 2019.
But you fail to disclose:
- There have been many worse droughts there in the past
- The drought of 1995/96 was much worse
- The aforesaid “drying up” is a normal annual event, which occurs every dry season because the eastern side of the falls is at a higher elevation, and not because the river dries up to a trickle.
- The Falls were back in full spate by January 2020, just as they are every year as a result of spring rainfall, and just as they were a year previously.
There is no evidence whatsoever that climate change, which you ludicrously label global heating, has had any impact whatsoever on the Victoria Falls.
Yet Another Media Tale — Trump Tear-Gassed Protesters For a Church Photo Op — Collapses
CNN with Anderson Cooper and Jim Acosta, June 1, 2020
By Glenn Greenwald | June 9, 2021
For more than a year, it has been consecrated media fact that former President Donald Trump and his White House, on June 1 of last year, directed the U.S. Park Police to use tear gas against peaceful Lafayette Park protesters, all to enable a Trump photo-op in front of St. John’s Church. That this happened was never presented as a possibility or likelihood but as indisputable truth. And it provoked weeks of unmitigated media outrage, presented as one of the most egregious assaults on the democratic order in decades.
This tale was so pervasive in the media landscape that it would be impossible for any one article to compile all the examples. “Peaceful Protesters Tear-Gassed To Clear Way For Trump Church Photo-Op,” read the NPR headline on June 1. The New York Times ran with: “Protesters Dispersed With Tear Gas So Trump Could Pose at Church.” CNN devoted multiple segments to venting indignation while the on-screen graphic declared: “Peaceful Protesters Near White House Tear-Gassed, Shot With Rubber Bullets So Trump Can Have Church Photo Op.”
ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos “reported” that “the administration asked police to clear peaceful protesters from the park across the White House so that the President could stage a photo op.” The Intercept published an article stating that “federal police used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear protesters from Lafayette Square in front of the White House,” all to feature a video where the first interviewee said: “to me, the way our military and police have behaved toward the protesters at the instruction of President Trump has almost been Nazi-like.” Nazi-like. This was repeated by virtually every major corporate outlet:
This was the scene outside of the White House on Monday as police used tear gas and flash grenades to clear out peaceful protesters so President Trump could visit the nearby St. John’s Church, where there was a parish house basement fire Sunday night nyti.ms/2MhSGOQ
At a June 2 Press Conference, then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) proclaimed with anger: “last night I watched as President Trump, having gassed peaceful protesters just so he could do this photo op, then he went on to teargas priests who were helping protesters in Lafayette Park.” Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi exclaimed: “What is this, a banana republic?,” when asked about NBC News’ report that “security forces used tear gas and flash-bangs against a crowd of peaceful demonstrators to clear the area for the president.”
There were some denials of this narrative at the time, largely confined to right-wing media. ABC News mocked “hosts on Fox News, one of the president’s preferred news media outlets, [who] have spent the days since the controversial photo op shifting defenses to fit the president’s narrative.” Meanwhile, The Federalist‘s Mollie Hemingway — in an article retweeted by Trump as a “must read” — cited sources to assert that the entire media narrative was false because force was to clear the Park not to enable Trump’s photo op but rather “because [protesters] had climbed on top of a structure in Lafayette Park that had been burned the prior night” and the Park Police decided to build a barrier to protect it.
But as usual, the self-proclaimed Superior Liberal Truth Squad instantly declared them to be lying. The Washington Post‘s “fact-checker,” Phillip Bump, mocked denials from Trump supporters and right-wing reporters such as Hemingway, proclaiming that a recent statement from the Park Police “brings the debate to a close,” as it proves “the deployment of security forces using weapons and irritants to clear a peaceful protest so that the president could have a photo op.”
All of this came crashing down on their heads on Wednesday afternoon. The independent Inspector General of the Interior Department, Mark Lee Greenblatt, issued his office’s findings after a long investigation into “the actions of the U.S. Park Police (USPP) to disperse protesters in and around Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2020.” Greenblatt has been around Washington for a long time, occupying numerous key positions in the Obama administration, including investigative counsel at the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General and Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at Obama’s Commerce Department.
The letter released by Greenblatt’s office accompanying the report makes clear how far-reaching the investigation was:
Over the course of this review, our career investigative staff conducted extensive witness interviews, reviewed video footage from numerous vantage points, listened to radio transmissions from multiple law enforcement entities, and examined evidence including emails, text messages, telephone records, procurement documents, and other related materials. This report presents a thorough, independent examination of that evidence to assess the USPP’s decision making and operations, including a detailed timeline of relevant actions and an analysis of whether the USPP’s actions complied with governing policies.
The IG’s conclusion could not be clearer: the media narrative was false from start to finish. Namely, he said, “the evidence did not support a finding that the [U.S. Park Police] cleared the park on June 1, 2020, so that then President Trump could enter the park.” Instead — exactly as Hemingway’s widely-mocked-by-liberal-outlets article reported — “the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow a contractor to safely install anti-scale fencing in response to destruction of Federal property and injury to officers that occurred on May 30 and May 31.” Crucially, “ the evidence established that relevant USPP officials had made those decisions and had begun implementing the operational plan several hours before they knew of a potential Presidential visit to the park, which occurred later that day.”
The detailed IG report elaborated on the timeline even more extensively. It was “on the morning of June 1” when “the Secret Service procured anti-scale fencing to establish a more secure perimeter around Lafayette Park that was to be delivered and installed that same day.” The agencies had “determined that it was necessary to clear protesters from the area in and around the park to enable the contractor’s employees to safely install the fence.” Indeed, “we found that by approximately 10 a.m. on June 1, the USPP had already begun developing a plan to clear protesters from the area to enable the contractor to safely install the anti-scale fence” — many hours before Trump decided to go.
The clearing of the Park, said the IG Report, had nothing to do with Trump or his intended visit to the Church; in fact, those responsible for doing this did not have any knowledge of Trump’s intentions:
The evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow the contractor to safely install the anti-scale fencing in response to destruction of property and injury to officers occurring on May 30 and 31. Further, the evidence showed that the USPP did not know about the President’s potential movement until mid- to late afternoon on June 1—hours after it had begun developing its operational plan and the fencing contractor had arrived in the park.
Beyond that, planning for that operation began at least two days before Trump decided to visit the church. “The fencing contractor told us and emails we reviewed confirmed that on May 30, the assistant division chief of the Secret Service’s Procurement Division discussed with the contractor how quickly the contractor could deliver anti-scale fencing to Lafayette Park,” the Report found.
Plans for the fence were finalized at least the day prior to Trump’s walk: “the fencing contractor’s project manager told us that she learned on May 31 that the Secret Service had contacted the fencing contractor about an anti-scale fence.” And while Attorney General William Barr did visit the Park shortly before Trump’s walk and saw what he viewed as unruly protesters, causing him to ask Park Police commanders whether they would still be there when Trump arrived, the order to clear the Park had been given well before that and was unrelated to Trump or to Barr: there is “no evidence that the Attorney General’s visit to Lafayette Park at 6:10 p.m. caused the USPP to alter its plans to clear the park.”
Indeed, none of the key decision-makers had any idea Trump was coming when they implemented plans to clear the Park:
The USPP operations commander, the USPP incident commander, and the USPP acting chief of police told us they did not know the President planned to make a speech in the Rose Garden that evening. The USPP incident commander told us he was never informed of the President’s specific plans or when the President planned to come out of the White House. He said, “It was just a, ‘Hey, here he comes.’ And all of a sudden I turn around and there’s the entourage.”
The USPP acting chief of police also told us he did not know about the President’s plans to visit St. John’s Church and that the USPP incident commander told him the President might come to the park to assess the damage at an unspecified time. The USPP acting chief of police and the USPP incident commander told us this information had no impact on their operational plan, and both denied that the President’s potential visit to the park influenced the USPP’s decision to clear Lafayette Park and the surrounding areas. Numerous other USPP captains and lieutenants and the ACPD civil disturbance unit commanders also told us they received no information suggesting that the USPP cleared the area to facilitate the President’s visit to St. John’s Church. The DCNG major we interviewed told us that his USPP liaison appeared as surprised as he was when the President visited Lafayette Park, stating, “We [were] both kind of equally shocked.”
Of the dozens of people who participated in the investigation, “no one we interviewed stated that the USPP cleared the park because of a potential visit by the President or that the USPP altered the timeline to accommodate the President’s movement.”
In sum, the media claims that were repeated over and over and over as proven fact — and even confirmed by “fact-checkers” — were completely false. Watch how easily and often and aggressively and readily they just spread lies, this one courtesy of CNN‘s Erin Burnett and Don Lemon:
With the issuance of this independent debunking of their claims, the journalists who spread this latest lie have started to come to terms with what they did — yet again. “A narrative we thought we knew is not the reality,” NBC News’ chief CIA Disinformation Agent Ken Dilanian awkwardly acknowledged on Meet the Press Daily. Shortly before publication of this article, Politico begrudgingly admitted that while “the department’s Park Police failed to give Black Lives Matter demonstrators proper warning before it cleared them from Lafayette Park,” their primary media claim was untrue: “its actions were unrelated to President Donald Trump’s photo-op appearance at a nearby church.” Time will tell how readily others who spread this lie will account for how they — yet again — got this story so wrong.
Over and over we see the central truth: the corporate outlets that most loudly and shrilly denounce “disinformation” — to the point of demanding online censorship and de-platforming in the name of combating it — are, in fact, the ones who spread disinformation most frequently and destructively. It is hard to count how many times they have spread major fake stories in the Trump years. For that reason, they have nobody but themselves to blame for the utter collapse in trust and faith on the part of the public, which has rightfully concluded they cannot and should not be believed.
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Trita Parsi: Israel Set a Trap for Total War in the Region
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Zionism’s Violent Legacy
By Donald Neff | Washington Report On Middle East Affairs | January 1996
On January 4, 1948, Jewish terrorists drove a truck loaded with explosives into the center of the all Arab city of Jaffa and detonated it, killing 26 and wounding around 100 Palestinian men, women and children.[1] The attack was the work of the Irgun Zvai Leumi – the “National Military Organization,” also known by the Hebrew letters Etzel – the largest Jewish terrorist group in Palestine. The Irgun was headed by Revisionist Zionist Menachem Begin and had been killing and maiming Arabs, Britons and even Jews for the previous ten years in its efforts to establish a Jewish state.
This terror campaign meant that at the core of Revisionist Zionism there existed a philosophical embrace of violence. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Trita Parsi: Israel Set a Trap for Total War in the Region
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- US ‘one-sided dictation’ not Iran’s beliefs makes rational talks impossible: Baghaei
- Iran’s Next Strike May Not Explode. It Could Shut You Down /Col Doug Macgregor
- Iran: US political targets legitimate if assassinations return
- Iraq shuts key border crossing with Iran under US pressure: Report
- Undersea Internet cables could be targeted in retaliation for attacks on Iran: IRGC deputy chief
- If Americans Knew
- The Israel Lobby’s Changing Fortunes
- AIPAC has become such a political liability that it’s shifting to a more “nimble” approach to buying politicians
- At least 160 Israeli settler attacks in 2 weeks
- Will Gaza’s Ancient Christian Community Disappear Forever?
- Israel’s vision of regional security rests on keeping Arab states weak
- Heidi Levine recounts how Palestinian youths helped save her in settler attack
- DAILY UPDATE: Latest essential news on Palestine, Israel, & region
- Trump’s Intensifying Sabotage of the ICC, for Israel’s Sake
- Israeli military detain US and UK volunteers in West Bank including Democratic NY politician Brad Lander
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- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
