Who To Believe About Venezuela’s Election? Firsthand Observation or PBS Newshour?
By Rick Sterling | Venezuelanalysis | January 5, 2021
In early December I traveled to Venezuela to be an election observer at their national assembly election. I was part of a group of eight persons from Canada and US organized by CodePink. There were about two hundred international observers in total, including the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts. I have previously been an official election observer in Honduras and was an unofficial observer at the 2015 Venezuela national assembly election.
Meeting Opposition Leaders
Before the election, our small group met eight leaders of the Democratic Alliance. This is the major opposition coalition. Pedro Jose Rojas of Accion Democratica said the US sanctions are not doing what is claimed; they are hurting average citizens. Bruno Gallo of Avanca Progressista said Venezuela needs negotiation not confrontation. Juan Carlos Alvarado of the Christian Democratic Party said Venezuelans have been “victims of politics” and that dialogue and flexibility are needed. Several leaders spoke about the importance of the national assembly and the road to change is through voting not violence. Several leaders expressed the wish for better relations with the US; another one said Venezuelan sovereignty needs to be respected. The common request was to end US sanctions and interference in Venezuelan politics.
We visited the factory where voting machines were assembled, tested and certified. The staff was openly proud of their work. In March this year, nearly all the pre-existing voting computers were destroyed in a massive fire at the main election warehouse. There were calls to delay the December election. But in six months, forty thousand new computers were ordered, built, assembled, tested and certified for the December election.
The Election Process
On election day, Sunday December 6, we visited many different elections sites. Typically, the election voting takes place at a school, with five or ten classrooms designated as “mesas”. Each voter goes to his or her designated classroom / “mesa”.
The voting process was quick and efficient, with bio-safety sanitation at each step. The first step is to show your identity card and prove your identity with fingerprint recognition. Step 2 was to make your voting choices at the touchscreen computer and receive a paper receipt. Step 3 is to verify the receipt matches your voting choice and deposit the receipt in a ballot box. The fourth and final step is to sign and put your fingerprint on the voting registry. The entire voting process took about 3 minutes.
At the end of the voting day, we observed the process of tabulating the votes. At each “mesa”, with observers from other parties present, the paper receipts were recorded one by one. At the end, the results were compared to the digital count. Voting results were then transmitted to the headquarters for overall tabulation.
Election results were announced by the Council for National Election (CNE) which manages the entire process. CNE leaders are not permitted to be members of any party and the CNE leadership was recently changed at the request of the opposition. In our discussion with leading opposition members, they complained about incumbent party advantages but acknowledged the election process is free, fair and honest.
PBS Newshour Special
With this firsthand experience, on December 29 I watched a PBS Newshour segment about the Venezuela election and overall situation. PBS reporter Marcia Biggs said, “Maduro’s party essentially ran unopposed in this month’s election.” As noted above, this is untrue.
In fact, there were 107 parties and over 14,000 individuals competing in the December 6 election for 277 national assembly seats. While 8 parties were in alliance with the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), there were over 90 opposition parties. The strongest opposition coalition was the Democratic Alliance comprising 7 opposition parties. The Democratic Alliance won 1.1 million votes or 18% of the vote. The LEFT opposition to the PSUV, under the banner of the Communist Party of Venezuela, received 168 thousand votes.
Reporter Marcia Biggs claimed that “politics permeates everything in Venezuela and can determine whether you support Maduro and eat or go hungry.” This claim is based on a campaign statement by PSUV Vice President Diosdado Cabello encouraging people to vote. He jokingly said that women are in the forefront and can say to their family, “No vote, no food.” Video of him making the statement is here. This statement has been distorted out of all meaning and context.
The PBS story showed a fistfight in the national assembly, implying that it was the Venezuelan government. But, as reported in the “Juan Guaido surreal regime change reality show”, the fight was between competing factions of the Venezuelan opposition.
When they showed Juan Guaido climbing over a fence, that was a publicity stunt to distract from the important news that Luis Parra was elected Speaker of the national assembly one year ago. That was embarrassing because Guaido’s claim to be “interim president” was based on his being Speaker.
Election turnout was lower than usual at 31% but one needs to account for the election taking place despite covid19 with no mail-in voting. Also, millions of registered voters have had to leave the country due to economic hardship. Also, transportation is difficult due to gasoline scarcity. This was a national assembly election, equivalent to a US mid-term election, which gets lower turnout. Note that 95% of voting eligible Venezuelans are registered voters compared to just 67% in the USA. Thus a turnout of 50% registered voters in the US equates to 33% of eligible voters.
US Meddling in Venezuela
The star of the 7-minute PBS story is Roberto Patino, the Venezuelan director of a food distribution charity. The report neglects to mention that Patino is associated with a major US foreign policy institution. He is a Millennium Leadership fellow and “expert” at the neoliberal Atlantic Council where the “regime change” goals against Venezuela are clear. His food charity “Alimenta la Solidaridad” is allied with the “Rescue Venezuela” funded by the US with the apparent goal of undermining the Venezuelan government and promoting “interim president Juan Guaido”.
Roberto Patino says the Venezuelan government is “very paranoid and they see conspiracies all over.” Paranoia is a mental condition where there is fear of imaginary threats. But US threats and aggression against Venezuela are not imaginary; they are very real:
In 2002 the US supported the kidnapping and coup against the popular and elected President Hugo Chavez. The years have gone by but US hostility persists.
- In August 2018 there was a drone assassination attempt on the Venezuelan President.
- In January 2019 the US declared that it would not recognize the elected President Maduro and instead recognized Juan Guaido as “interim president”. His background is described in the article “The Making of Juan Guaido: How the US regime change laboratory created Venezuela’s coup leader”
- In February 2019 President Trump threatened military intervention against Venezuela.
- In March 2019, there was massive power blackout caused by sabotage of the electrical grid, with probable US involvement.
- In May 2020, two former US Special Forces soldiers and other mercenaries were arrested in a failed attempt to overthrow President Maduro.
- In June 2020, the US Navy warship Nitze began provocative “freedom of navigation” patrols along the Venezuelan coast.
- In August 2020, the US seized four ships carrying much needed gasoline to Venezuela.
- In September 2020, in a attempt to undermine the Venezuelan election, the US imposed sanctions on political leaders who planned to participate.
- The US 2021 stimulus bill includes $33 Million for “democracy programs for Venezuela”.
Based on the past twenty years, Venezuela’s government has good reason to be on guard against US threats, meddling and intervention. The PBS program ignores this history.
Another hero of the show is the exiled politician Leopoldo Lopez. He was imprisoned in 2014 for instigating street violence known as “guarimbas” which led to the deaths of 43 people.
Like Patino, Lopez is from the Venezuelan elite, studied in the US and has major public relations support in the US. Like Guaido, Leopoldo Lopez is more popular in Washington than his home country.
Will the US respect Venezuelan sovereignty?
If the PBS Newshour reporters had not been so biased, they would have interviewed members of the moderate opposition in Venezuela. Viewers could have heard Democratic Alliance leaders explain why they participated in the election, why they are critical of US economic sanctions and US interference in their domestic affairs. That would have been educational for viewers.
On January 5, the newly elected national assembly will commence in Venezuela. The fig leaf pretense of Juan Guaido as “interim president” of Venezuela will be removed because he is no longer in the national assembly. In fact, he was removed as speaker of the national assembly one year ago.
But viewers of the PBS special did not learn this. Instead, they received a biased report ignoring the moderate opposition and promoting a few US supported elites. The report ignores or denigrates the efforts of millions of Venezuelans who carried out and participated in an election which compares favorably with the election process in the US. You would never know it from PBS, and you might not believe it, unless you saw it with your own eyes.
Rick Sterling is an investigate journalist based in the SF Bay Area of California. He can be contacted at rsterling1@protonmail.com.
HHS Launches $250M Propaganda Campaign to Convince People to Take Experimental COVID Vaccines as Current Doses Sit Unused

By Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | January 4, 2021
Reporter Zachary Stieber of the Epoch Times is reporting today that President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed program for distributing COVID experimental vaccines is lagging way behind schedule.
Operation Warp Speed’s chief scientific adviser on Monday defended the federal government’s rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, but acknowledged there is a “lag” in getting the vaccines administered.
Officials with President Donald Trump’s administration said late last year that 20 million Americans would be vaccinated by the end of 2020. Instead, under 3 million people received vaccinations, out of some 12 million doses distributed to states, as of Dec. 30.
Moncef Slaoui, the operation’s adviser, said on CNN’s “New Day” that “nothing has gone wrong.” He was then played a snippet of what he said last year, when he said officials expected 40 million doses to be shipped and 20 million Americans to be vaccinated by the time 2021 hit.
“So obviously, I did say that, and, you know, that was our hope,” Slaoui said.
The operation, a federal government effort, distributes vaccine doses to states, which are then in charge of administering them.
According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracker, most states haven’t come close to administering half of the doses they’ve received.
So why haven’t states “come close to administering half of the doses they’ve received”?
Surgeon General Jerome Adams said the delay in vaccinations stems from states not being fast enough to administer them, and hesitancy among a broad swath of the public in getting the new vaccines.
Read the full article at The Epoch Times.
America Divided Between those Who Watch and Read the Pharma-funded Corporate Media, and Those who Do Not
So what is the U.S. Government and Big Pharma going to do about all these unused experimental vaccines that Americans don’t want to take?
They are going to do the same thing they have been doing for decades: They are going to lie to the American people by giving the media $250 MILLION to produce propaganda using the “appeal to authority” technique by having “doctors” tell you how safe the vaccine is, and that it is your duty to get the vaccine for the good of humanity.
As FiercePharma reports:
Half of Americans remain skeptical about COVID-19 vaccines. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) calls that group the “movable middle,” and it plans to spend $250 million to convince them otherwise.
The first phase of the campaign, already underway in December, is an online video and radio effort to prep the market. The bulk of the effort aimed at promoting vaccinations—the “Building Vaccine Confidence” campaign—will officially kick off in late January in a bid to convince people to get the vaccine when it’s their turn.
The plans from HHS and the contracted Washington, D.C., consultancy Fors Marsh Group include paid and unpaid media elements. National and local TV, radio, print and social media buys will run concurrently with co-marketing partnership efforts with a variety of associations, nonprofits and corporations, including Google, with which HHS is currently in discussions. (Source.)
So who is the Liar in Chief that will be first up to convince the American public they should risk an experimental vaccine?
The man who has admitted to lying about herd immunity to try and trick people into getting the COVID vaccine for the “greater good,” Anthony Fauci.
As FiercePharma reports, this is a risky “double-edge” sword approach, since Fauci is so polarizing. People either love him, or hate him, and that reflects the division within America today among those who consume the pharma-funded corporate media and their watch dogs, Big Tech, and those who do not, but make the extra effort to research the truth for themselves.
The Ad Council video leads with Anthony Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who says: “My primary message to healthcare professionals is please get vaccinated. It’s important to protect yourselves, to protect your family, but as important symbolically as healthcare providers to show confidence in the vaccine so that other people in this country follow suit and get vaccinated.”
It’s a likely to be a tough sell. Even HHS’ own data point to that. In pre-campaign surveys asking a wide cross-section of people whose advice they would trust to get a vaccine, HHS said half claimed they would get a vaccine if Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said to do so, while the other half said they specifically wouldn’t get a vaccine if told by Fauci and the CDC. (Source.)
Here is the first video produced by the Ad Council on YouTube. It is geared towards healthcare professionals, of whom up to 60% are refusing the vaccine.
After Anthony Fauci makes an appeal to guilt for healthcare workers, it is no accident that the doctors and nurses who speak next represent the next segments of society that the Globalists are targeting with these experimental vaccines: Blacks, Asians, and Latinos.
As FiercePharma reports:
The Fors Marsh strategy includes a plan to “heavy-up in vulnerable communities” of people disproportionately affected by COVID-19, including senior citizens with comorbid conditions, front-line workers and Black, American Indian and Alaska Native, Hispanic and American Pacific Islander populations. (Source.)
Here is a list of the lies that are being told to the American people through this video:
LIE #1: “It’s important to note that none of these vaccines can give you COVID19 since they only express a protein from the virus that allows your body’s immune system to generate antibodies.”
FALSE. The fact is, the COVID19 SARS virus has never been fully identified, and the PCR test to test for COVID19 is inaccurate. Even if what they say is true about there not being a COVID19 virus in the vaccine, since they can only at this point identify fragments from the faulty PCR test, who is to say that a “protein” from the virus that affects the body’s immune system would not produce symptoms of COVID19 and test positive?
Also, in Israel, which at the time of publication of this article has had the largest amount of people vaccinated with the experimental COVID vaccines, has reported that 240 people have come down with COVID right after being vaccinated. See:
So to say that “none of these vaccines can give you COVID19” is scientifically inaccurate, because the truth is these vaccines have not been studied long enough, and we just do not know.
LIE #2: “Because vaccines are given to millions of healthy people to prevent serious diseases, they’re held to very high safety standards. Both the FDA and the CDC have to ensure the safety and efficacy of the vaccines before they are recommended for use in the United States. The COVID19 vaccine, just like all others, are undergoing a rigorous process...”
FALSE. The COVID19 vaccines are NOT approved by the FDA like every other vaccine currently in the market, and the typical time it takes to bring a vaccine to market is 5-7 years. (Source.)
The experimental COVID vaccines should NOT be compared to vaccines that have full FDA approval, but to other times a vaccine was rushed to market under emergency use authorization, and the last time that happened was in 1976 with the Swine Flu “epidemic.”
But the “epidemic” never panned out. Only one death and 13 cases were attributed to the Swine Flu, while 25 people died from the vaccine and another 500 or so developed Guillain-Barre syndrome. The vaccine was withdrawn from the market after 10 weeks. See:
LIE #3: “So far, we haven’t seen any trends of serious side effects.”
FALSE. They are trying to be clever by using the word “trends” so that specific cases of serious side effects, including DEATH, can be excused as “abnormal” or not a result of the vaccine.
But they got caught in their own lie here, as even the FDA has stated that they are investigating why so many people are experiencing anaphylactic shock after receiving the vaccine, focusing on the polyethylene glycol component of the vaccine. (Source.)
Not to mention that several people have now died after receiving the experimental vaccines, including one healthcare worker in Portugal, and apparently Nurse Tiffany Dover from Tennessee as well.
There were deaths in the vaccine trials as well, before the FDA EUA was issued. (Source.)
Facts About the Experimental COVID Vaccines they Do NOT Tell You
In addition to their lies, the people in this video are failing to give full disclosure about all the facts regarding these experimental COVD vaccines.
1. These vaccines are NOT approved by the FDA.
This is stated multiple times in the vaccine guidelines that are supposed to be given to everyone. Therefore, it is illegal to require anyone to take them. They are 100% voluntary, because you are basically participating in the last part of their vaccine trials in order to get FDA approval.
2. Emergency Use Authorization was issued by the FDA illegally, because other therapeutics to treat COVID19 are available.
Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin are two older drugs already approved by the FDA that tens of thousands of doctors have used successfully to treat and cure COVID19.
In addition, the experimental COVID19 vaccines used the faulty PCR test in their trials, and therefore should never have been approved until accurate testing was used. An Administrative Stay of Action was filed against the FDA, but they simply ignored it. See:
3. Warnings of Potential Infertility due to These Experimental Vaccines are NOT Being Issued by the FDA
The UK guidelines for the Pfizer vaccine warn of potential infertility of women and also do NOT recommend pregnant women receive the vaccine, while neither warnings are issued for the same vaccine for Americans. See:
Unlike UK, U.S. FDA Allows Pregnant and Nursing Women to Receive Experimental Pfizer COVID Vaccine
Also, the University of Miami is investigating the effects of the COVID-19 vaccines on male fertility. See:
Study investigates effects of COVID-19 vaccine on male fertility
The other thing that the U.S. Government and Big Pharma never disclose, is the revolving door between both. Former FDA Chief Scott Gottlieb, for example, now sits on the Board of Directors for Pfizer. See:
Former FDA Director Gottlieb Now Pfizer Board Member Secures $1.95 BILLION for COVID Vaccine
The CDC, FDA, and HHS have become primarily marketing branches of Big Pharma.
The Corporate Media is Owned by Big Pharma
While in years past the primary advertisers funding the corporate media were Wall Street conglomerates heavily invested in tobacco and the oil industry, today it is Big Pharma.
See:
Protecting their financial interest in the pharmaceutical trade is Big Tech, as now even Google is a pharmaceutical company, and they filter their search results to censor anything that challenges pharmaceutical products like vaccines. See:
And now, the U.S. Government is going to give the corporate media and Big Tech a quarter of a million dollars to try and brainwash you into getting the unapproved experimental COVID vaccine, which is a mere drop in the bucket of the $TRILLIONS of American wealth that has been transferred to Big Pharma in 2020 all in the name of the “pandemic.”
Don’t be fooled by their lies! Turn off your TVs and stop watching these Hollywood-style actors and actresses posing as journalists spew forth this dangerous propaganda.
UAE rejects ‘wholly false’ reports of foiling Iranian attack against Israeli visitors
Press TV | January 5, 2021
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has vigorously rejected Israeli media reports that its security services arrested a number of Iranians purportedly conspiring to carry out an attack against Israeli tourists visiting the Persian Gulf country.
“The Government of the United Arab Emirates has denied media reports circulating today regarding the foiling of an alleged attack in Dubai,” it said in a statement on Monday.
The Emirati government described the rumors as “wholly false” and urged accuracy in reporting.
It also called upon the public and media outlets “to refer to official sources for information and to avoid circulating unverified reports.”
On Sunday night, Israel’s Hebrew-language broadcaster Channel 12 alleged that Emirati intelligence authorities had arrested a number of Iranians in Dubai and Abu Dhabi over the previous few days on suspicion that they planned to carry out an attack against Israelis.
Thousands of Israelis have traveled to the UAE after Israel’s cabinet ratified a mutual visa exemption agreement with the Arab country on November 22 last year. The UAE had earlier that month given its final okay to the agreement, which was signed after the two sides normalized ties.
The latest reports appear to be yet another attempt by Israeli news outlets to set off a media frenzy following Iran’s pledge to exact revenge for the assassination of one of its most senior nuclear scientists by suspected Tel Aviv-tied terrorists late last year.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the head of the Iranian Defense Ministry’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, was targeted in a multi-pronged terrorist near Tehran on November 27.
Iran says it has substantive evidence that the Tel Aviv regime has been behind the terror attack and vowed to take revenge, but it has repeatedly clarified that, unlike Israel and the US, assassinations and targeted killings have no place on its political agenda.
The Israeli report also comes at a time of heightened tensions between the US and Iran as the latter marked the first anniversary of the assassination of its top anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani by the American military in Iraq in January, 2020.
Washington has once again stepped up its campaign of military threats against Iran through deployments of warships and bombers to the Middle East under the pretext that the Islamic Republic may be seeking revenge.
Ignore Fake News, Says Fake News BBC!
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | January 4, 2021
The problem posed by disinformation online is increasingly serious, the BBC’s director general has said.
Tim Davie told the Radio Times: “Traditional journalism has been playing catchup in the disinformation world.”
He added that 2020 has repeatedly highlighted the dangers of the internet as conspiracy theories about coronavirus and the US election were circulated online.
“News sources such as the BBC need to work harder than ever to expose fake news and separate fact from fiction,” he said. “We need to take care that trusted news is not blown off course by claims that are unfounded, however widespread they become.
“And we need to recognise that we are up against the well-funded, state-backed actors who see news as an extension of state influence and a tool for disrupting our societies and democracies.”
Davie said he was proud of the BBC’s effort to “stand up for integrity in news and fight disinformation on the frontline”.
Could this be the same BBC, who rely on Greenpeace for their climate change reports?
Is it the same BBC, which has just broadcast a woefully one-sided indoctrination programme, masquerading as a “Royal Institution Christmas Lecture”?
Or which trumpeted Christian Aid’s mendacious report on extreme weather, without the slightest attempt to check or challenge it?
Or broadcast a Panorama documentary on UK extreme weather, that was so misleading it should have carried a warning label?
All these instances have occurred in just the last month, and many more examples can be found over the years of outright lies, misinformation, omission of relevant facts, bias and a stubborn refusal to report the views of those experts who don’t agree with the BBC’s climate agenda.
And that’s before we even get started on the BBC’s political and anti-Brexit bias.
What Mr Davie is really saying, of course, is that we must all get our “news” from the BBC, and ignore other sources in case we discover the true facts.
Cybersecurity group admits SolarWinds hack came from within the US, but doubles down on blaming Russia
RT | January 4, 2021
Internet security firm FireEye has revealed the enormous SolarWinds hack that left upwards of 250 agencies and businesses unprotected for weeks was launched from inside the US – but that hasn’t stopped them from blaming Moscow.
The mega-hack, which affected 250 networks including US government agencies, went undetected by Washington’s security systems because it originated within the US, FireEye told the New York Times. But while one might expect this revelation to pour cold water on the metastasizing, baseless claims that Russia was responsible for the intrusion, speculation about the country’s role has only increased.
The western media establishment has remained largely silent about the latest development in the SolarWinds saga, perhaps embarrassed to blame a foreign country for one’s own inability to safeguard clients’ data. Indeed, the US agencies supposedly tasked with detecting and preventing such attacks – the National Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Pentagon’s Cyber Command – all missed the breach. Instead, it took FireEye, a firm that even the AP admits specializes in pinning American security fails on the Kremlin, to uncover the sprawling security snafu.
FireEye allegedly discovered the vulnerability only after those “state actors” broke into its own network to steal security tools, and the Times acknowledged the company has “a history of lackluster security for its products.” However, the same outlet’s coverage suggests such a breach could only have been accomplished with high-level hacking tools backed by a state.
Even the usual Russia hawks were baffled at why the Kremlin would go through all the trouble of infiltrating stateside servers only to – as far as experts can tell – take nothing and leave the system itself intact. “We still don’t know what Russia’s strategic objectives were,” former DHS official Suzanne Spaulding told the New York Times on Sunday – apparently unwilling to consider the heretical notion that Russia might not be the culprit.
Despite the media’s decision to take the “Russia did it” narrative and run with it, FireEye itself has shied away from explicitly pinning the attack on the Kremlin, instead merely claiming it was a government-backed hack. The Associated Press, however, stepped in to fill the blanks, declaring “industry experts” had said it “bore the hallmarks of Russian tradecraft.”
One of those “experts”, Dmitri Alperovitch, was the CEO of CrowdStrike, which famously accused Russia of hacking the Democratic National Committee and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. Even though the software used to pull off those hacks was widely available and the firm itself could only muster “low to medium” confidence regarding a supposed link to the Russian government, that didn’t stop the company from presenting its conclusions as if set in stone. CrowdStrike claimed last week that it was also targeted for hacking by the latest group of “Russians,” but claimed that unlike FireEye, it had withstood the infiltration attempt.
Navalny and Handlers Lose the Plot… He Is a Convicted Felon on Probation
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 2, 2021
Russia’s federal prison authorities were right to jolt Alexei Navalny this week by warning him to return immediately from Germany or else face a suspended sentence being made into jail time.
The “professional” opposition activist claims to be convalescing in Germany after he was allegedly poisoned by a Soviet-era nerve agent in August. Western news media dutifully repeat the claim that Navalny is “recuperating” in Germany after having survived an assassination plot by Kremlin agents. Navalny has personally accused Russia’s President Vladimir Putin of ordering the alleged hit.
Last week, a team of medics from the Berlin hospital where Navalny had been staying published a paper in The Lancet medical journal in which they claimed he had been poisoned with Novichok nerve agent. Their findings are dubious because the medics acknowledged the involvement of German military intelligence laboratories in conducting their analysis.
But one thing the German doctors did let slip was that a 55-day follow-up check on Navalny ascertained that he had made a “near-complete recovery”.
The Russian dissident figure was flown to Berlin on August 22, two days after he was treated in a hospital in Omsk, Russia. Thus, the German medical team are indicating – no doubt inadvertently – that Navalny’s health recovered nearly two months ago, if not before that.
That means there is no medical reason why he should remain at large in Germany. His claims of “convalescing” and the Western media’s indulgence of those claims are false, if the German doctors are correct about his “recovery”.
Despite Navalny’s arrogant disdain for Russian state laws, he is nevertheless answerable to those authorities as a citizen. While in Germany he was on probation for a suspended jail sentence concerning a fraud conviction in 2014. His so-called Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has a checkered history of shady financing, from allegations of foreign funding by the U.S. State Department to charges of embezzling millions of dollars. Ironically, the blogger and media activist produces slick programs accusing the Russian government of corruption.
In any case, under the laws of the Russian Federation, the 44-year-old Navalny was on probation during the past four months of his stay in Germany. For the last two months, he is in good health, according to his German doctors. So there are no grounds for why he should abscond from Russian territory and evade the laws for which he is answerable.
Not only is Navalny living as if he above the law, he has also shown flagrant contempt for the Russian authorities.
Last week, he published a video on his website claiming that he had pranked a named member of Russia’s security service, the FSB, into admitting that agents had poisoned him while he was visiting the Siberian city of Tomsk on August 20. He was later flown in an emergency to Omsk where he was treated after having apparently fallen ill onboard a flight to Moscow.
The FSB dismissed Navalny’s prank telephone claim as a “deep fake”. The Russian doctors who treated him in Omsk – and who probably saved his life – have repeatedly stated that their tests showed there was no poison in Navalny’s body, and specifically no traces of nerve agent. They said his illness was due to a metabolic disorder. Perhaps self-induced as a ruse to later transfer to Germany?
The transcript of Navalny’s purported prank call to the FSB agent reads like a comic set-up. Posing as a senior member of Russia’s national security council, Navalny affects to bully the supposed agent as if he is a pathetic stooge.
A telling segment is where the self-styled super sleuth fishes for compliments about his own character from the purported FSB man, betraying the narcissism of a megalomaniac.
Again, incredibly, we are expected to believe that someone who had a near-death experience with a lethal nerve poison and who is “convalescing” still in Germany somehow managed to find the energy and mental reserves to pull off a daring 45-minute telephone sting.
If Navalny is fit enough to participate in such practical jokes – regardless of their credibility – then he is surely fit enough to abide by Russian laws and respect his probation terms. As the Russian Federal Prison Service stated this week: “The convicted man is not fulfilling all of the obligations placed on him by the court, and is evading the supervision of the Criminal Inspectorate.”
One gets the unerring impression that Navalny and his foreign handlers have become so self-intoxicated with hubris that they are blind to their own absurd implausibilities.
Why was he permitted to fly by air ambulance to Berlin in the first place if the Russian authorities had evil designs against him?
While there, as a guest of the German government, Navalny has wildly accused President Putin of ordering his alleged assassination. The European governments have subsequently and rashly imposed sanctions on Russia in support of Navalny’s unfounded claims. Then we have the media activist mounting further provocations parlayed into even more outlandish accusations against President Putin and the Kremlin.
All the while there has been no evidence of poisoning presented to support these claims, other than unverifiable assertions by German doctors working with German military intelligence labs, as well as two other NATO laboratories and the Organization for the Prohibition on Chemical Weapons. All of them including the OPCW (the latter compromised over complicity in NATO false-flag provocations in Syria) have refused to share their analytical data and samples with Russia, and yet they are demanding that Moscow launch a criminal investigation into the Navalny case.
The abdication by European governments of due process and of respect for Russian state laws, its government, and its president is astounding. They are indulging a foreign-sponsored gadfly as if he is the sovereign representative of the Russian Federation.
Navalny and his foreign allies have lost the plot in their own telling of an alleged assassination plot.
First things first: he is a convicted felon who is answerable to Russian law. Pushing false flags and slanderous falsehoods from abroad with the intent of damaging Russia’s sovereignty is an abuse of his rights.
Arrogant and overindulged Navalny is patently incapable of even understanding his obligations under law as a Russian citizen. He evidently feels above the law, like many of his Western backers. That’s why Russia is right to tell him to put up or shut up.
To Promote Climate Alarm, Good News Is Regularly Portrayed as a Disaster
By H. Sterling Burnett | Watts Up With that? | January 1, 2021
Dishonesty has seemingly become the hallmark of reporting on climate research. In 2020, the dishonesty reached new heights as multiple studies which actually presented (or that could have presented) good news, were portrayed by the researchers involved and media hacks covering them as if they showed purported human-caused climate change was causing various disasters. The truth is, time and again, the data—often including data provided by the studies—refutes the claimed climate disaster, instead showing the environment getting better. Below I’ll deconstruct a few examples of this fearmongering habit.
Recently, The Guardian and other media outlets have claimed an updated atlas of bird habitats shows global warming is “pushing” birds further north. The Guardian’s story would lead one to believe birds en masse are being forced out of shrinking natural habitats into unsuitable locations by climate change. This is not true. As The Heartland Institute’s President James Taylor wrote in a Climate Realism post responding to The Guardian’s article, the atlas itself tells a completely different story.
“Rather than ‘pushing’ birds out of their normal ranges and forcing them north, birds are benefiting from a warming climate by expanding their overall ranges—thriving in new, northern regions while still flourishing in southern regions as well. The result of climate change is not a negative ‘pushing’ of birds out of their habitat, but rather birds enjoying larger habitat ranges, while adding to biological diversity in their new ranges.”
Indeed, despite the misleading, alarm-raising, title of the story, “Atlas reveals birds pushed further north amid climate crisis,” if you dig deeper into the story, The Guardian admitted the atlas records: “Overall, 35 percent of birds increased their breeding range, 25 percent contracted their breeding range and the rest did not show any change, or the trend is unknown.” This is good news since, as the newspaper acknowledged, according to the atlas, “Generally, if a species is present in more areas it is less likely to go extinct.”
Another scary, but demonstrably untrue, climate-alarm narrative pushed this year came in the form of dozens, if not hundreds, of stories asserting climate change (supposedly of human origin) is responsible for an increase in the number and severity of both hurricanes and wildfires. An example of this flawed analysis/bad-reporting combo can be seen in a story published by Bloomberg titled, “Climate Change Led to Record Insurance Payouts in 2020.”
Bloomberg writes, “Christian Aid, the relief arm of 41 churches in the U.K. and Ireland, ranked the 15 most destructive climate disasters of the year based on insurance losses.” Christian Aid’s study, which The Guardian also covered as if it were divinely inspired revealed truth, claims the world’s 10 costliest weather disasters of 2020 alone accrued $150 billion in damages, with the total figure for all climate change related disasters setting new records in 2020. In particular, Christian Aid’s study blamed climate-change-exacerbated wildfires and hurricanes for the increased damages and higher insurance payouts. Lo and behold, once again, real-world data on wildfires and hurricanes tells a different story, but the good news was ignored.
Concerning wildfires, long-term data show the number of and acreage consumed by wildfires has declined dramatically over the past century. Just looking at 2020, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service reports “that 2020 was one of the lowest years for active fires globally.”
Indeed, NASA reports on a recent study in Science which found, “[g]lobally, the total acreage burned by fires each year declined by 24 percent between 1998 and 2015. In total, the global amount of area burned annually has declined by more than 540,000 square miles, from 1.9 million square miles in the early part of last century to 1.4 million square miles today.”
Wildfires have declined sharply over the course of the past century in the United States, as well. As reported in Climate at a Glance: Wildfires, long-term data from the U.S. National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) show wildfires have declined in number and severity since the early 1900s. Assessing data on U.S. wildfires from as far back as 1926, NIFC reports the numbers of acres burned is far less now than it was throughout the early 20th century, with the current acres burned running just one-fourth to one-fifth of the amount of land that typically burned in the 1930s.
Data on hurricanes is equally clear and compelling: Despite 2020’s busy hurricane season, contrary to The Guardian’s claims—and as reported in an earlier Climate Realism article—it is quite possible 2020 did not set a record for Atlantic hurricanes. Before 1950, hurricane tracking was relatively primitive and sparse and it was uncommon to name a storm unless it made landfall somewhere.
In addition, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports there is, “only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences.” And data from the National Hurricane Center (NHC), as Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes notes, show that “The United States recently went more than a decade (2005 through 2017) without a major hurricane measuring Category 3 or higher, which is the longest such period in recorded history. The United States also recently experienced the fewest number of hurricane strikes in any eight-year period (2009 through 2017) in recorded history.”
The Christian Aid study focuses on the possibly record-breaking costs of 2020’s weather related natural disasters. But in doing so it ignores what Bjorn Lomborg refers to in his book, False Alarm, as the “expanding bulls-eye effect.” The increased costs of natural disasters in recent decades is due to communities increasingly expanding into areas historically prone to natural disasters—such as flood plains, forests, and coastal areas, erecting increasingly expensive structures and infrastructure there. As a result, when extreme weather events strike, more and more expensive property is destroyed. Accordingly, the increasing costs of natural disasters stem not from human-caused climate change, but is rather a directly measurable anthropogenic factor: the rise in the number and value of assets placed in the bullseye as a result of demographic shifts in where people live and the lifestyles they pursue.
Another important “good news” story, climate alarmists tried to portray as a tragedy in 2020 can be found in the numerous news stories covering a World Bank report which claims water scarcity in the Middle East—caused by human induced climate change—threatens crop production. Once again, the authors of the World Bank report and the leftist media outlets publicizing it couldn’t be bothered to check the actual data. If they had done so, they would have found crop production in the Middle Eastern countries discussed in the report was booming, in large part due to the carbon dioxide fertilization effect.
The World Bank asserts water scarcity caused by climate change will reduce farm production in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey, in particular. In point of fact, data show that, despite considerable political turmoil and ongoing conflicts in the region, the naturally arid Middle East has seen its crop production grow as the earth has modestly warmed.
Data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization show during the period of modest warming since 1989:
· Cereal crop production in Iraq increased 91 percent, even as the acreage being harvested fell 5 percent.
· Cereal crop production in Iran increased 187 percent, while the acreage harvested increased by just 2.6 percent.
· Cereal Crop production in Jordan increased 15 percent, even as the acreage harvested declined 30 percent.
· Cereal Crop production in Lebanon increased 115 percent, while acreage harvested increased 30 percent.
· Cereal Crop production in Syria increased 22 percent, even as acreage harvested declined 66 percent.
· Cereal Crop production in Turkey increased 46 percent, even though acreage harvested declined 19 percent.
That Middle Eastern countries have increased crop production—even as many of them have been embroiled in internal political strife, outright civil warfare, and external conflicts—is clearly good news. It is not evidence of a climate crisis.
Global warming lengthens growing seasons, reduces frost events, and makes more land suitable for crop production. Also, carbon dioxide is an aerial fertilizer for plant life. In addition, crops use water more efficiently under conditions of higher carbon dioxide, losing less water through transpiration. The latter fact should have allayed the World Bank’s concern about climate change-induced water shortages leading to crop failure.
Sadly, for claim after claim, power hungry bureaucrats and leftist mainstream media organizations embrace unsubstantiated speculations that various climate disasters are occurring—while ignoring facts indicating no such climate catastrophes are in the offing. I can only speculate they do this because good news does not encourage a stampede towards authoritarian climate change policies giving elites control over businesses and peoples’ lives.
SOURCES: Climate Realism; The Guardian; Phys.org; Climate Realism; World Bank; Bloomberg; Food and Agriculture Organization
Emergency Hospitals Dismantled Despite Claim Hospitalisations Worse Than ‘First Wave’
The hospitals have been almost completely empty for the duration of the health crisis

By Steve Watson | Summit News | December 29, 2020
A report has confirmed that emergency hospitals in the UK are being dismantled and removed, despite government claims that hospitalisations from coronavirus have hit a level HIGHER than they were during the first wave of the pandemic back in March and April.
The reports in the Daily Mail and the London Telegraph note that the facilities, known as ‘Nightingale hospitals’, set up at huge conference centres and other warehouse spaces are “being quietly taken apart” because there are not enough staff to run them.
Despite the seven facilities throughout the UK costing as much as £220million to set up and equip, the hospitals have been almost completely empty for the duration of the health crisis.
Indeed, just 57 Covid-19 patients were admitted to NHS Nightingale London between April and the start of May, according to Department of Health records. The facility was then put back into ‘standby’, and left empty.
The report states that the ExCeL Centre, which hosts the London facility, has confirmed that 90 per cent of the hospital has already been removed, including stripping 4000 beds and hundreds of additional of ventilators.
Videos of the facilities being dismantled first surfaced in the Summer:
The government has repeatedly pushed the narrative that the lockdowns have been necessary to ‘protect the NHS’, yet now it is taking apart the hospitals it says were set up to alleviate the strain.
It has been claimed that a third of major hospital trusts in England are now experiencing more Covid-19 patients than at the peak of the first wave. In the East and South West, more than half of all hospitals say they have more patients now than earlier in the year.
National Health Service data claims that over 20,000 beds are now occupied by COVID patients, up from 17,700 recorded last week, and surpassing the almost 19,000 recorded in mid April.
Throughout the crisis, we have been told that hospitals are on the brink of being overwhelmed, yet reports have continued to emerge suggesting that hospitals are up to four times emptier than usual.
Despite the claims that there are not enough NHS staff to man the facilities, there has been a resurgence of nurses posting dancing tik-tok videos:
France Accused of ‘Hysteria Over COVID Variant’ After Nearly 15,000 Truckers Tested Negative
21st Century Wire | December 29, 2020
Before Christmas, sensational reports of a new COVID “variant” in the UK prompted European neighbors France, Netherlands and Belgium – to close their international borders for fear of a dangerous new viral wave. As a result, ferries were unable to leave the Port of Dover until Christmas morning, with some 6,000 hauliers remaining in Kent over the subsequent days, and with many spending Christmas Day and Boxing Day parked, waiting to cross the English Channel. What was all the fuss about? Is there really a new “mutant strain” which UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock claims is still ravaging through the British Isles?
As part of this bio-security theatre, military personnel were then deployed to Kent, including a massive cohort of 1100 British troops, 30 French firefighters, and 60 Polish soldiers – all to supposedly to provide aid and services to the drivers, and to “speed up testing to 600 per hour” carried out at nearby Manston airfield.
As it turns out, all of this was completely unnecessary.
UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps tweeted: “Update on Kent lorry situation: 15,526 #Coronavirus tests now carried out. Just 36 positive results, which are being verified (0.23%). Manston now empty and lorries should no longer head there please.”
What the Government and Mainstream Media will not tell the public is that if the highly dubious PCR Testing was used, then that tiny reported number of 36 ‘positive cases’ could have easily fallen within the margin of false positive errors – meaning all 15,000 plus drivers may have been ‘COVID free’ – an incredible but very telling data point – all but proving that the virus is likely to be severely over-hyped right now in the UK.
As 21WIRE already reported last week, Hancock’s claims of a new ‘dangerous and more transmissible’ virus were totally unfounded and based on sloppy science from the UK government’s NERVTAG science advisory committee.
Because of the near nonexistent COVID cases within this giant trucker sample, critics are now railing against France and other European countries for panicking and closing their borders based on irrational fear of an non-existent “mutant strain” of COVID-19. But the UK authorities have no business pointing the finger at anyone….
MSN reported on Dec 25th…
The French authorities slapped restrictions on hauliers crossing the Channel following the [alleged] emergence of the VUi202012/01 coronavirus mutation which is believed to spread faster than other strains.
The UK and France agreed to a testing regime to allow trucks to start flowing again on the Dover-Calais link.
The Standard has been told that out of the first 1,500 tests none came back positive.
A Whitehall source criticised the “over hasty” action by the French authorities, adding: “All of this trouble – there have been 1,500 tests – no positives.”
The EU’s Transport Commissioner Adina VÄlean criticised Emmanuel Macron’s government over the weekend’s freight ban.
She tweeted: “I am pleased that at this moment, we have trucks slowly crossing the Channel, and I want to thank UK authorities that they started testing the drivers at a capacity of 300 tests per hour.
“I deplore that France went against our recommendations and brought us back to the situation we were in in March when the supply chains were interrupted.”
Mind you, that’s more than a bit rich for anyone in the UK Government-Media Complex to accuse France of over-reacting – when it was Matt Hancock and the fawning mainstream press who for weeks shamelessly pumped-out incessant fear-based claims of an allege COVID “mutant strain” – absent of any actual evidence to back-up their wild assertions. Lesson learned?
SEE MORE:
UK ‘Variant Fears’ Are Over-Hyped Says Leading US Microbiologist
BBC News Report Warning About “Fake News” Contains Fake News
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | December 28, 2020
An alarmist BBC News report warning about the dangers of “fake news” contained a claim which was itself a glaring example of fake news.
The article, entitled ‘The casualties of this year’s viral conspiracy theories,’ ominously warned that conspiracy theories were “destroying relationships and endangering lives.”
Prime amongst them according to Marianna Spring, the BBC’s “specialist disinformation reporter,” were a “flurry of online falsehoods about coronavirus.”
“We catalogued mass poisonings and overdoses of hydroxychloroquine – a drug that world leaders like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro falsely claimed cures or prevents COVID-19,” wrote Spring.
However, as LockdownSkeptics points out, the claim that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t cure or prevent COVID-19 or that it is a poison is itself completely fake news.
“I’m afraid that doesn’t pass the fact-checking test, Ms Spring. Over 200 studies have shown HCQ is an effective treatment for Covid. Trump and Bolsonaro may have exaggerated the preventative and curative properties of HCQ, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely ineffective and anyone taking it is likely to poison themselves. On the contrary, it’s almost certainly no more dangerous than any of the Covid vaccines.”
Despite the efficacy of the drug, hydroxychloroquine has been demonized by the mainstream media from the beginning, partly as a way of preventing Trump from claiming success in fighting COVID and partly because it would have reduced the urgency for a vaccine, which is set to be used as a reason to restrict people’s mobility and travel rights.



