Three years ago this week, the Western media blazed with headlines of a shocking “massacre” allegedly carried out by Russian military forces in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.
It was alleged that Russian soldiers murdered hundreds of civilians in cold blood, execution-style, and left their corpses strewn on the streets.
Bizarrely, no exact number of victims has ever been accounted for by the Ukrainian authorities. They claim there were over 400 victims. But there are no forensic reports, no names, no addresses. And curiously, the Western governments and their media have not bothered to call for a proper investigation or to question jarring discrepancies. The West complacently relied on the Kiev regime’s claims and amplified them without question, a one-sided practice that has been typical over the last three years.
No plausible explanation was given by the Ukrainian regime or the Western media as to why Russian forces would perpetrate such heinous violations. It was implicitly taken as proof of Russian “barbarity” and “unprovoked aggression against Ukraine.” The then U.S. President Joe Biden said the atrocity reaffirmed his claims that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was a war criminal.
Three years later, there is an eerie silence among Western governments and the media. Given the anniversary of such an ostensibly shocking event, one would expect many statements, reports, and commentaries to commemorate it.
Moreover, it was Russia this week that convened a meeting at the UN Security Council to demand a thorough and impartial investigation into the incident. As Russian envoy Dmitry Polyanskiy pointed out in his presentation, Western media and governments have steadfastly ignored asking questions about the event in Bucha despite their initial dramatic allegations of Russian culpability.
The United Nations secretariat has also shown an awkward and shameful reluctance to respond to repeated Russian calls for a full investigation into the alleged war crime in Bucha.
The Western silence over Bucha is indicative that the incident was much more significant and sinister than their initial reports claimed three years ago.
Isn’t it strange that the alleged perpetrator of mass murder is the one who is calling for a proper investigation?
Western silence reminiscent of Nord Stream sabotage
This is reminiscent of the Nord Stream gas pipeline sabotage that occurred in September 2022. The United States is implicated in that war crime, but Western media and governments have refused to hold any serious accounting of the Baltic Sea explosions and have likewise rebuffed Russia’s calls for an independent investigation.
Perversely, Denmark, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the UNSC, denounced Russia for disinformation over Bucha. Denmark said it would not dignify Russia’s statements by giving a considered response. That sounds like an excuse to stonewall a genuine discussion of the evidence. Similar to the way Denmark and other European states have ignored the Nord Stream crime.
The refusal to investigate the Bucha matter is an indirect admission that the official Western narrative is false. Indeed, an earnest consideration of objective circumstances shows the Western media distorted the events, either wittingly or unwittingly.
A brief recap of the circumstances is that Western media started reporting on April 4-6 the finding of bodies on the streets of Bucha several days after Russian forces had withdrawn from the town on March 30 (as part of a peace deal being negotiated at the time between Russia and Ukraine). It was evident from the images published that the victims had been killed in the previous 24-48 hours.
Incongruously, however, the Mayor of Bucha, Anatoly Fedoruk, posted a video on March 31 happily proclaiming that all Russian military had left. His footage did not show any corpses on the streets. Residents of the town, with a population of less than 40,000, also did not mention any mass killings by Russian forces. If hundreds of people had been gunned down and left on the road, wouldn’t someone have noticed such a horror and urgently called for international attention as soon as Russian forces had departed?
As Polyanskiy, the Russian diplomat, noted in his statement to the UNSC this week, Ukrainian commandos and military police who entered Bucha on April 1 and 2 posted videos of themselves threatening to shoot civilians that they perceived as supportive of Russia.
Witness to fabricated atrocity
A crucial witness to the events was French journalist Adrien Bocquet, who arrived in Bucha at the same time the Ukrainian military was entering it. He was accompanying medical volunteers from Canada and Lebanon. Bocquet testified to the UNSC meeting this week that he witnessed Ukrainian soldiers unloading corpses from a lorry and tying their hands with white ribbons to signify that the victims were pro-Russian. Bocquet says that he has been vilified in the French media as a liar over his claims. He has also received death threats.
The Western media claims that Russia carried out mass killings in Bucha are riddled with anomalies that are begging for an independent investigation. As the news was breaking around April 4-6 three years ago, The New York Times and others published satellite images purporting to show bodies executed in Bucha from March 11 onwards when the Russian military was occupying the town. However, how was it that the corpses recovered were all freshly deceased, showing no signs of decay as would have been the case according to the timeline reported in the Western media?
It seems obvious to anyone with an open mind that the executions were fabricated by Ukrainian forces to blame Russia in a false-flag provocation. In other words, the NATO-backed military is implicated as the perpetrators of mass murder. And the Western media are complicit in propagating false propaganda to discredit Russia and cover up for the culprits.
It is certainly damning that not only has a proper investigation of the Bucha “massacre” not been conducted, the NATO and European Union-backed Kiev regime has not released the names of the victims. A proper forensic investigation would have provided details on the date of death and the circumstances.
Would the Ukrainian military carry out such violations?
There seems little doubt that the NeoNazi paramilitary units that make up the Ukrainian forces are more than capable and willing to carry out such atrocities. They have no scruples about murdering civilians, especially for propaganda purposes to gain more NATO weaponry and funding from Western states.
Atrocities standard practice by NeoNazis in Kursk and Donbass
As Russian forces push the Ukrainian militants and their NATO mercenaries out of the Kursk and Donbass territories, it has become apparent from numerous eye-witness testimonies and forensic examinations that civilians have been subjected to sadistic terrorism and wanton murder. The systematic war crimes committed by the Kiev regime are sickening in their depravity. Families have been attacked in their homes, families shot at while fleeing in cars, and pregnant women murdered. Atrocities include beheadings.
What happened in Bucha three years ago is a macabre and obscene disregard for human life and international law. But similar crimes have been repeated in other towns and villages that the NATO-backed Ukrainian forces have occupied.
The Western media cannot admit the truth about what happened in Bucha because that would unravel the whole false narrative about the nature of the Kiev regime, how it came to power in a NATO-backed coup in 2014 against an elected president, and how it conducted a campaign of terror against ethnic Russian communities for eight years after 2014 that culminated in Russia’s military intervention on February 24, 2022, to put it to an end. This was not an unprovoked aggression by Russia as Western media and governments endlessly repeat in mantra. It was a proxy war provoked by the United States, Britain and other NATO members to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia using NeoNazi Ukrainian paramilitaries weaponized by Western taxpayers.
Only now are Western media coyly admitting that the conflict in Ukraine is a proxy war. The truth about the depth of Western culpability is still obscured. The Bucha false-flag atrocity, if fully understood, would reveal the vile extent of Western involvement and responsibility for the three-year war in Ukraine, a war that still threatens to spiral out of control into a nuclear world war. That’s why the truth about Bucha has to be firmly denied by the Western media. The criminal responsibility of American, Canadian, British, and other European governments for this proxy war is damning.
Britain’s nefarious role in false flag
Russian envoy Dmitry Polyanskiy told the UNSC meeting this week: “Today, it is also crystal clear that the so-called ‘Bucha massacre’ was a monstrous provocation staged by Kiev and its British backers to thwart peace, perpetuate the conflict, and pressure other Western allies into supplying weapons to Ukraine.”
Note that the envoy singled out “British backers” among the NATO sponsors of the Kiev regime. The significance of this is that Britain’s military intelligence MI6 has been the main player in colluding with the NeoNazi Ukrainian death squads – perhaps more than the American CIA.
When the “massacre” was first reported three years ago, the Russian Federation immediately called for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the incident.
The UNSC refused to table a discussion as requested by Russia. The rotating presidency of the Security Council was then held by Britain.
Furthermore, days before the Bucha provocation, Russian and Ukrainian delegates were on the verge of finalizing a peace settlement to the conflict in talks that were being held in Turkey. Hence, the Russian military withdrew from Bucha and other northern towns as a gesture of goodwill.
After the Western media reported the “shocking” alleged Russian atrocities in Bucha, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kiev in a “surprise visit” and convinced the regime to scuttle the peace talks with Russia and to continue fighting, along with promises of increased military support from NATO. In an act evoking his hero Winston Churchill, Johnson declared that Ukraine would fight on to win against Russia. He cited the “Bucha massacre” as justification for NATO’s plucky defiance.
The war could have ended three years ago, sparing the lives of one million Ukrainian soldiers. The Bucha false-flag massacre ensured that a potential peace settlement was sabotaged. One vile crime led to another.
Cui Bono? It is glaringly obvious. Hence, the Western media obediently conceal the crime.
During the recent wildfires in Los Angeles, the media briefly latched on to a study which apparently blamed climate change for making the blazes more likely to occur and also more intense. But is that really what the study says? Let’s take a look.
Dr Peter Ridd has been researching the Great Barrier Reef since 1984, has invented a range of advanced scientific instrumentation, and written over 100 scientific publications.
Since being fired by James Cook University for raising concerns about science quality assurance issues, Peter Ridd receives no payment for any of the work he does.
Cuts in funding for programs run by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are “Setting the Stage for Disease Outbreaks,” according to a report last week in The New York Times.
In interviews with the Times, current and former USAID officials, members of health organizations and experts in infectious diseases described a world “made more perilous” following the Trump administration’s recent cuts to the agency.
However, biosafety expert Richard H. Ebright, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and chemical biology and lab director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University, said the Times got it backwards.
In an exclusive interview today with The Defender, Ebright shared facts not mentioned in the Times article that he said contradicts the Times’ reporting.
“The facts of the matter are that USAID’s and other agencies’ support for overseas labs and reckless overseas research has been setting the stage for disease outbreaks. Ending this insanity will set the stage for reducing disease outbreaks.”
Ebright is on the leadership team of Biosafety Now, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that “advocates for reducing numbers of high-level biocontainment laboratories and for strengthening biosafety, biosecurity, and biorisk management for research on pathogens.”
He has testified at U.S. House and Senate hearings on biosafety, biosecurity and biorisk management, according to Rutgers University.
Children’s Health Defense CEO Mary Holland said, “Dr. Ebright is spot on — lessening the U.S. role in funding ‘pandemic preparedness’ will reduce outbreaks, not increase them.”
Holland, who receives the print version of the Times, said the March 7 article appeared on today’s front page under the headline, “Deepening Peril of Disease As Trump Cuts Foreign Aid.”
According to Holland, the Times’ core message to readers was “be afraid.”
“The article assumes that cuts to USAID funding means that disease outbreaks will increase — while the reality is likely the opposite,” she said. “USAID has been funding ‘gain-of-function’ or bioweapons research overseas for decades, leading to undisputed lab leaks and outbreaks.”
Gain-of-function research involves experimentation to “increase the transmissibility and/or virulence of pathogens,” according to a 2016 peer-reviewed paper in Science and Engineering Ethics.
U.S. agencies spent billions constructing ‘unneeded and unsafe labs overseas’
Ebright said he found it “ironic” that the opening first line in the Times’ article mentioned “dangerous pathogens left unsecured at labs across Africa.”
He said:
“The main reason there are dangerous pathogens left unsecured at labs across Africa, and in Asia and Latin America, is that U.S. agencies — particularly USAID, DTRA, BTRP, NIH Fogarty Center, and NIH NIAID — have spent billions of dollars over the last two decades to construct unneeded and unsafe labs overseas, and to fund unneeded and reckless research on discovering and enhancing new dangerous pathogens in labs overseas.”
According to Ebright, USAID gave $60 million to the “now-debarred criminal NGO EcoHealth Alliance” to discover new dangerous pathogens, according to USAspending.gov.
EcoHealth used those funds “to conduct the wantonly reckless research in Wuhan on SARS coronaviruses that caused COVID-19, killing 20 million and costing $25 trillion,” Ebright said.
Ebright also said that USAID gave over $200 million to EcoHealth and its partners in Project PREDICT to discover new bioweapons agents overseas, according to USAspending.gov.
“Prior to the emergence of COVID-19,” Ebright said, “USAID was planning to launch a 6-fold-expanded, $1.2 billion megaproject, the Global Virome Project, for EcoHealth and its partners to discover even more new bioweapons agents overseas.”
The Global Virome Project was designed to discover and catalog thousands of novel viruses that could spill over in nature or pose global biosecurity risks — estimated to be 500,000 viruses or more.
Gain-of-function research has ‘no civilian application’
Ebright has been a vocal critic of gain-of-function research.
In June 2024, he testified before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the origins of COVID-19.
During the committee hearing, Ebright said his extensive research and gathering of documents pointed toward a lab leak.
He also said gain-of-function research on potentially dangerous pathogens — like the experiments underway at the Wuhan lab in China when COVID-19 emerged — “has no civilian application” but is easy for researchers to do and make money doing.
“Researchers undertake it because it is fast, it is easy, it requires no specialized equipment or skills, and it was prioritized for funding and has been prioritized for publication by scientific journals,” Ebright said.
“These are major incentives to researchers worldwide, in China and in the U.S.,” he pointed out.
Gain-of-function research is largely unregulated, according to Ebright, who said there needs to be an independent agency that oversees and imposes “regulation on this scientific community that has successfully resisted and obstructed regulation for two decades.”
America is currently negotiating with Russia and it seems both sides are largely content with how things are progressing. It can be argued that Moscow is cautiously optimistic, but that’s hardly surprising given the fact that the previous administration was effectively waging a war against it. On February 27, Russian and American delegations concluded their six-hour meeting in Istanbul. This is the second round of peace talks after the previous one in Riyadh.
Expectedly, this meeting also excluded the participation of the EU/NATO and the Kiev regime. The talks included much more than Ukraine and have been focused on fully restoring diplomatic ties between the US and Russia. On the same day, President Vladimir Putin praised this as a positive development in a meeting with the representatives of the Federal Security Service (FSB).
“We all see how rapidly the world is changing, the situation in the world. In this regard, I would like to note that the first contacts with the new US administration inspire certain hopes,” he said, adding: “There is a mutual dedication to work towards restoring interstate relations and gradually resolving the enormous volume of accumulated systemic and strategic problems in the global architecture.”
Putin stressed that these issues provoked both the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict and other crises around the world. Other top-ranking Russian officials also demonstrated cautious optimism, but reiterated that the Kremlin will achieve all state goals and that this is non-negotiable. However, presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow doesn’t see any immediate breakthroughs in the ongoing talks.
“No one expects easy or quick solutions – the problem is too complex and has been neglected for too long. However, if both countries maintain their political will and willingness to listen to each other, I believe we will be able to navigate this working process,” he said, adding: “There is no need to jump ahead. Information on the outcome of the negotiations will be provided in due course.”
The same can be said for Starmer whose meeting with Trump also seemed “mildly unpleasant”, but still resulted in the latter toning down his usually unrestrained rhetoric on the Neo-Nazi junta’s frontman. Trump is certainly aware that the EU/NATO need him, as evidenced by his comments on the UK’s ability to “take on Russia by itself”, resulting in a sour smirk on Starmer’s face.
However, while Trump’s exchange with both Macron and Starmer was unpleasant, he still seems rather ambivalent. At one moment, he’s calling for “the killing to stop”, but praising “American weapons and good Ukrainian soldiers” in another, stressing that his decision to supply the “Javelin” ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles) was supposedly “instrumental”. It should be noted this is another myth that even the endemically and pathologically Russophobic UK recently admitted, pointing out that these weapons are so useless that the Kiev regime troops are abandoning them en masse, resulting in the Russian military now possessing more “Javelins” than the British Army itself. Trump’s ambivalence could certainly be attributed to an attempt of strengthening his negotiating position, but his unpredictability makes it difficult to rely on much of what he says.
Just like the last time, the mainstream propaganda machine is quoting “South Korean intelligence” that allegedly said that “at least 1,000 more North Korean troops have been sent – with some regional media reports saying 3,000 – though the exact number is unknown”. These reports insist that “South Korean intelligence also said other North Korean troops have been re-deployed to frontlines in the western Kursk region after initial reports they had withdrawn from frontline areas in January”.
Hamas has rejected a report by the American daily newspaper The New York Times that has misrepresented recent remarks by a senior official of the Palestinian resistance movement, emphasizing that the comments are “inaccurate” and “taken out of context.”
In a statement released on Monday, the Gaza-based group said the interview conducted with Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior member of its political bureau, and published several days ago did not contain the full content of the answers, and his exact remarks were quoted out of context.
Hamas stressed that the published interview did not include the true remarks made by Abu Marzouk, and did not convey the true meaning of what he had said.
On Monday, The New York Times ran an article titled: “Hamas Official Expresses Reservations About Oct. 7 Attack on Israel” claiming that Abu Marzouk voiced doubts regarding the October 7 attack.
According to the article, Abu Marzouk admitted he would not have endorsed the assault had he been aware of the destruction it would cause in Gaza.
Hamas in its statement stated that Abu Marzouk confirmed that the large-scale surprise attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, against the usurping Tel Aviv regime on October 7, 2023, reflected the Palestinian people’s right to resistance and their rejection of Israel’s siege, occupation, and settlement expansion activities.
Abu Marzouk also emphasized that the criminal Israeli regime had committed appalling war crimes and genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Abu Marzouk told the New York Times that Hamas would not give up its positions and Palestinian people’s right to use all forms of resistance, including armed resistance, to fight off the Israeli occupation and liberate their land.
“The resistance weapon belongs to our people and its purpose is to protect our people and our holy sites, so it is not permissible to drop or surrender it as long as the [Israeli] occupation exists on our land,” the high-ranking Hamas official told the newspaper.
Backed by the United States and its Western allies, Israel launched the war on Gaza, after Hamas and other Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movements carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the Israeli regime in response to its decades-long campaign of oppression against Palestinians.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has led to the killing of at least 48,346 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injury of 111,759 others since early October 2023.
A ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement went into effect in Gaza on January 19, halting Israel’s aggressive campaign against the coastal region.
A recent Politico article, “Climate change threatens EU’s survival, German security report warns,” claims that “global warming will exacerbate conflicts, hunger, and migration worldwide, with growing risks for Europe.” Evidence undermines these claims. In reality, the world is not suffering destabilization due to climate change, but European populations are far more likely to suffer from climate policy, as Politico briefly mentions.
Politico reports on a “landmark” political report from the German federal intelligence service (BND) that attempts to assess “the dangers climate change poses to German and European security over the next 15 years.” The report concludes that “climate change’s destabilizing effects will drive up migration and food prices, threatening economic and political upheaval,” and “the unequal impact of rising temperatures in the EU — with southern countries hit worse than others — risks tearing the bloc apart.”
Politico goes on to claim that as global average temperature rises, “so do the frequency, severity and intensity of flood-triggering extreme rainfall, deadly heat waves, harvest-destroying droughts and the conditions that allow wildfires to spread easily.”
These claims are false, as available data proves.
While rainfall has modestly increased over northern latitudes that contain the European Union member states, extreme rainfall that causes flooding has not. Claims that recent flooding events were “supercharged” or worsened by climate change are pure speculation based on attribution modelling. Data and historical records of flood frequency and severity debunk claims of unprecedented flooding. Recent flooding in Spain, for instance, was blamed on climate change by attribution groups, but the storm that hit Spain was consistent with a long history of similar storms that are not becoming more severe or frequent. In the Climate Realism post, “Flooding Facts Drowned by Climate Hysteria: The BBC Ignores Spain’s Weather History,” meteorologist Anthony Watts and H. Sterling Burnett describe the history of the region struck by the floods:
Valencia, which sits along and at the mouth of the Turia River on the Mediterranean Sea, suffered similar flooding, for example, in 1897, 1957, and 1996, 127, 67, and 28 years of warming ago, respectively, when temperatures were cooler than at present.
…
As Caroline Angus’ account of the 1957 Valencia flood reveals, these conditions are neither new nor unprecedented. The BBC’s focus on “climate change” and a warmer atmosphere as the primary cause of the recent flooding ignores the atmospheric mechanics behind these storms and downplays the recurrent pattern of similar natural events.
Likewise, Climate Realism debunked other regional European flooding events, here.
Heatwaves and drought are likewise not getting worse, and contra Politico and the German report’s claims, crop production is not declining in Europe due to those conditions, as pointed out in numerous Climate Realism posts, here, here, and here, for example. Wildfires are also on the decline globally.
Interestingly, Politico and the German report do admit that government response to climate alarmism may also cause tension. Politico reports that policies meant to address climate change “will cause tensions, noting that carbon pricing — the backbone of EU climate efforts — disproportionately affects poorer households.” This fact should be obvious to anyone. Carbon pricing does not bother the elites, who can afford higher energy prices.
Politico and the report authors also warn “the cost of decarbonization and its (perceived) unfair distribution … provide space for populism, right-wing and left-wing extremism, and disinformation campaigns[.]”
That claim should be taken further, it already has caused tensions, and has contributed to a growing threat to European food supplies, resulting in frequent mass protests in multiple countries by farmers. Not only that, but its not a perception that the distribution of the costs is unfair, it is a fact. Looking beyond carbon taxes, the push for electric vehicles is a subsidy for a luxury product that most cannot afford. London’s “ultra low emission zones” (ULEZ) are basically a tax on the poor who cannot afford to purchase new electric or low emitting hybrids.
What is true for Europe with regards to crop production is also true for other major crop producing parts of the world, and so climate change is not driving or likely to drive mass migration that could destabilize Europe. Climate Realism has debunked claims that climate change was causing mass emigration in multiple posts, here, here, and here, for instance.
If Politico and German leaders are worried about “populism” and right leaning sympathies rising in their nations due to concerns about mass immigration from unstable parts of the world, then perhaps they could impose restrictions on immigration, no need to blame climate change.
It’s shameful that Politico and the German government are downplaying the harm that the unnecessary, unjustified, climate policies which they have supported have had on Europeans. Extreme weather is not getting worse, but the impacts of government overreach and taxation in the name of climate change are.
Wildfire activity in southern Europe was below average last year, according to the latest data from the EU. The trend is clearly downwards since 1980, contrary to the disinformation spewed by the establishment media.
The BBC’s Matt McGrath, for instance, recently claimed that a warmer world increased the chances of devastating wildfires occurring, while the Guardian’s Damien Carrington also falsely stated that “globally, scientists agree that climate change is increasing the global risk of wildfires starting and spreading”.
Last summer the BBC went into full propaganda mode over some fires in Greece, even though the burnt area was actually below average:
And in December, a BBC World Service broadcast falsely claimed that a warmer earth was making “deadly fires in Spain and Greece increasingly common”.
The Kremlin has acknowledged that US Vice President J.D. Vance did not threaten the deployment of US troops to Ukraine during his interview with The Wall Street Journal. He has accused the newspaper of misrepresenting his words about what leverage Washington can use in peace talks with Moscow.
“Yes, we have taken note,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS on Saturday.
In a summary of an article on Thursday titled “Vance Wields Threat of Sanctions, Military Action to Push Putin Into Ukraine Deal” the paper stated that the vice president had pledged to impose sanctions and possibly intervene with troops if Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected a peace deal guaranteeing Ukraine’s independence.
Vance’s communications director, William Martin, criticized the article, calling it “pure fake news,” posting a transcript of the vice president’s interview with the newspaper and argued that he had not made any threats. In the transcript, Vance had said that Trump would consider a wide range of options in discussions with Russia and Ukraine. He mentioned that “economic tools of leverage” and “military tools of leverage” exist but did not specify any actions.
“There’s a whole host of things that we could do. But fundamentally, I think the president wants to have a productive negotiation, both with Putin and with [Vladimir] Zelensky,” the transcript read.
“As we’ve always said, American troops should never be put into harm’s way where it doesn’t advance American interests and security,” Vance wrote on X. “The fact that the WSJ twisted my words in the way they did for this story is absurd, but not surprising,” he added.
The Kremlin sought clarification regarding Vance’s comments following the initial report. Peskov told reporters on Friday that the remarks were new to Moscow. “We have not heard such statements before,” he said.
The Wall Street Journal’s report has since received a community note on X, which states: “JD Vance made no explicit pledge to either sanctions or military actions.” The note links to Martin’s post containing the transcript.
Last month a group of scientists published a paper in Nature stating that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) had shown no decline in strength since the 1960s. Helped by publicity in the Daily Sceptic, the story went viral on social media, although it was largely ignored in narrative-driven mainstream publications. The collapse of the Gulf Stream, a key component of the AMOC, is an important ‘tipping point’ story used to induce mass climate psychosis and make it easier to impose the Net Zero fantasy on increasingly resentful and questioning populations. Obviously, reinforcements to back up such an important weaponised scare needed to be rushed to the front and the BBC has risen to the challenge. The AMOC “appears to be getting weaker” state BBC activists Simon King and Mark Poynting. Their long article is a classic of its kind in trying to deflect scientific findings that blow holes in the ‘settled’ narrative.
In the Nature paper, three scientists working out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution stated that they came to their conclusion showing the stability of the AMOC after examining heat transfers between the sea and the atmosphere. It was noted that the AMOC had not weakened from 1963 to 2017, “although substantial variability exists at all latitudes”. This variability is the basis for much of the Gulf Stream fear-mongering. The BBC notes that the presence of larger grains of sediment on the ocean floor suggests the existence of stronger currents, pointing to a “cold blob” in the Atlantic that appears to have cooled of late. Thin pickings, it might be thought, to run an article titled ‘Could the UK actually get colder with global warming?’ The Woods Hole scientists note that records “are not long enough to differentiate between low frequency variability and long-term trends”.
The Nature story is not the only recent scientific finding that suggests the Day After Tomorrow alarm about the AMOC is a tad overdone. In 2023, Georgina Rannard of the BBC reported that “scientists say” a weakening Gulf Stream could collapse as early as 2025. There was no later reporting, needless to say, of subsequent work from a group of scientists at the US weather service NOAA that discovered the huge flow of Gulf Stream tropical water through the Florida Straits had remained “remarkably stable” for over 40 years.
Of course the BBC, along with most of the legacy media, has form as long as your arm when it comes to producing deflective copy seemingly designed to head off inconvenient scientific findings. The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is the largest and best observed collection of tropical coral in the world. Any sign of ill health is a boon for green propogandists who argue that warming measured in tenths of a degree centigrade will destroy an organism that has survived for millions of years in temperatures between 24-32°C. For the last three years, coral on the GBR has hit recent record levels with scarcely a mention in mainstream media. Days before last year’s record was announced, the places where journalism goes to die were full of stories from a paper that conveniently noted climate change posed an “existential threat” to the reef. “The science tells us that the GBR is in danger and we should be guided by the science,” Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong told Victoria Gill of BBC News. Professor McGregor’s statement was an opinion readily broadcast by the BBC, a courtesy that does not appear to have been extended to the fact that coral on the GBR was at its highest level since detailed observations began.
It beggars belief that the BBC and all its fellow alarmists can run this stuff with a straight face knowing that crucial scientific information is missing from their reports. Important findings from reputable sources emerge about the current stability of the Gulf Stream and the response is to blow more smoke around that raises wholly unnecessary fears.
The main concern is that the AMOC “could suddenly switch off”, state King and Poynting. To back up their statement and provide the inevitable political message they note the comment of Matthew England, Professor of Oceanography at the University of South Wales: “We’re playing a bit of a Russian roulette game. The more we stack up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the more we warm the system, the more chance we have of an AMOC slowdown and collapse.” Now look what you plebs have done with your steak chomping, gas-guzzling central heating and naff holidays in Benidorm, is an unpleasant subtext here.
Of course, keen and dedicated followers of climate alarmists will note a master craftsman at work. In 2023, aided by 35 million computer hours and using an improbable rise in temperature of up to 4°C in less than 80 years, Professor Matthews suggested that there was a dramatic slowdown in deep Antarctica ocean currents. Melting Antarctica ice could lead to a 40% slowdown in just 30 years. The fact that Antarctica has barely warmed in 70 years is ignored.
Who needs Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters when we have the BBC.
The climate establishment are going to great lengths to blame the Los Angeles fires on global warming.
One attempt has already bitten the dust, with claims of increasing winter droughts contradicted by the real world data.
So another team of so-called scientists have come up with an even more ridiculous idea – that it is now both to wet and too dry in California.
The BBC report:
Climate change has made the grasses and shrubs that are fuelling the Los Angeles fires more vulnerable to burning, scientists say.
Rapid swings between dry and wet conditions in the region in recent years have created a massive amount of tinder-dry vegetation that is ready to ignite.
Decades of drought in California were followed by extremely heavy rainfall for two years in 2022 and 2023, but that then flipped again to very dry conditions in the autumn and winter of 2024.
“Scientists” say in a new study, external that climate change has boosted what they call these “whiplash” conditions globally by 31-66% since the middle of the 20th Century.
“This whiplash sequence in California has increased fire risk twofold,” said lead author Daniel Swain from UCLA.
“First, by greatly increasing the growth of flammable grass and brush in the months leading up to fire season, and then by drying it out to exceptionally high levels with the extreme dryness and warmth that followed.”
Once again though the actual data shows the new study to be just as fake as the previous one. Most of California’s rain comes in the winter half, October to March; the last two years have been wetter than average, but no more so than many other years on record:
The same applies to the South Coast Drainage Division, which includes Los Angeles:
Neither is there any evidence of bigger swings from year to year.
Patrick Brown of the Breakthrough Institute has written a full scientific rebuttal here, which demolishes this latest fake science.
This is his summary:
Summary
So, let’s recap. At the annual timescale that is most relevant to the Los Angeles fires…
Figure 1: There is no clear increase in overall whiplash occurrence or wet-to-dry whiplash occurrence in Los Angeles in the premiere observational dataset (ERA5) using data directly from Swain et al. (2025).
Figure 2: There is no clear increase in overall whiplash occurrence or wet-to-dry whiplash occurrence over southern California in the premiere observational dataset (ERA5) using data directly from Swain et al. (2025).
Figure 3: There is a long-term decrease in whiplash events globally over land (where it matters) in the premiere observational dataset (ERA5) using data directly from Swain et al. (2025).
Figure 5: There is no increase in the variability (standard deviation) of annual SPEI either for all months or centered on January) in the Los Angeles grid point using the pre-existing standard SPEI dataset.
Figure 6: There has been a decrease in the variability (standard deviation) of SPEI over global land since the 1980s using the pre-existing standard SPEI dataset.
Figure 7: There is no agreement on the direction of change (if any) in annual precipitation variability (standard deviation) over the Los Angeles area across eight different precipitation datasets.
Figures 8 and 9: There is no agreement on the direction of change (if any) in annual precipitation variability (standard deviation) globally across eight different precipitation datasets.
While “climate whiplash events” may be increasing in frequency under most of the very specific, selected definitions used and datasets investigated in Swain et al. (2025), the general idea that annual precipitation (or more generally, the water cycle, which includes evaporation) is becoming dramatically more variable is not supported when a broader set of datasets and definitions are used.
Would a reader of Swain et al. (2025), or especially its coverage, have any idea about the weakness of its broader conclusions or the lack of robustness of its results to different definitions and datasets? Almost certainly not, and I contend that this is a major problem for public understanding and trust in climate science.
Why don’t we see a robust increase in water cycle variability given the strong theory underpinning “wet gets wetter, dry gets drier”? For one thing, the theoretical size of the effect is known to be quite small relative to natural, unforced variability, making it inherently difficult to detect. For example, we see in Figure 7 above that year-to-year rainfall in Los Angeles naturally varies by as much as 300%, yet the signal we are looking for is one to two orders of magnitude less than this. It is also apparently the case that observational uncertainty is larger than the signal (or there would not be such disagreement between datasets). Physically, perhaps increasing mean precipitation is offsetting the increase in calculated evaporation in the SPEI index, reducing its variability. Maybe reduced temperature variability (via arctic amplification) is reducing calculated evaporation variability.
I don’t know the full answer, but these would be great research questions to identify and outline in a Nature review like Swain et al. (2025). Unfortunately, Swain et al. (2025) missed this opportunity because the paper seemed so focused on assembling evidence in favor of increasing water cycle variability that contradictory evidence was never presented or seriously grappled with.
My main discomfort with Swain et al. (2025) and its rollout is that it appears that the primary goal was to create and disseminate the “climate whiplash” meme rather than conduct a truly rigorous evaluation of the evidence, including countervailing evidence. Ultimately, this makes the research a much larger advance in marketing than an advance in science.
As of this writing, when you attempt to access the US Agency for International Development (USAID) website or social media pages you are informed that, “This site can’t be reached.” The media reports that the new Trump Administration has not only frozen USAID activities but may be planning on bringing it back under control of the US State Department. Other reports, including statements by Elon Musk, suggest that it will be closed completely.
If true, the closing of USAID may be one of the most significant changes President Trump has made among many dramatic actions in his first couple of weeks in office. Many Americans may still have the idea that USAID is a government agency delivering relief at disaster sites overseas. They may still remember the bags of rice or grain with the USAID logo on them. But that is not USAID.
USAID is a key component of the US government’s “regime change” operations worldwide. USAID spends billions of dollars every year propping up “NGOs” overseas that function as shadow governments, eating away at elected governments that the US interventionists want to overthrow. Behind most US foreign policy disasters overseas you will see the fingerprints of USAID. From Ukraine to Georgia and far beyond, USAID is meddling in the internal affairs of foreign countries – something that would infuriate Americans if it was happening to us.
When President Trump ordered a 90 day pause in USAID activities, we quickly learned just how pernicious the agency really is. The US media reported that Ukrainian press outlets were scrambling to keep their doors open when the US dollars stopped flowing. It is reported that 90 percent of the media outlets are funded by the US government!
This means that there is virtually no independent media in Ukraine, only fake news outlets willing to toe the US Administration’s propaganda line. Does anyone think these wholly US-funded “news” outlets would ever publish a story that the US government did not want published?
This is plainly immoral, but it is also dangerous. Most US mainstream media stories about Ukraine have their origins in the “reporting” of the local media. From battlefield news to casualties to the state of the Ukrainian military, the “news” from Ukraine is being written by US government-backed media outlets and then picked up by US and other western media. It is a closed propaganda loop that not only propagandizes the US citizen but also feeds false information into US government outlets – such as Congress – that rely on mainstream US media reporting for their news on Ukraine.
No wonder so many in Washington continue to support this hopeless war!
But USAID is not just in the business of disinformation. Elon Musk recently re-posted a New York Post article on X reporting that USAID funneled $53 million to EcoHealth Alliance to support gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab! Did USAID help fund COVID? Americans have a right to know.
In natural catastrophes overseas Americans have shown themselves to be extremely generous. Private volunteer assistance organizations can more effectively assist victims of disasters worldwide.
USAID needs a full and transparent audit. Americans deserve to know exactly what is being done in their name overseas. Then the agency needs to be shuttered completely, and its employees sent home. That would go a long way toward making America great again.
Every modern president seems to promise transparency during their campaigns, but few ever seem to get around to it. Once in power, the value of being opaque becomes evident. We will have to wait to see if President Donald Trump will fulfill his pledges, but so far this is proving the cellophane administration. Putting aside his constant press gaggles and conferences, the Administration has ordered wholesale disclosures of long-withheld files from everything from the JFK investigation to, most recently, the CIA COVID origins report. That report is particularly stinging for both the Biden Administration and its media allies.
Newly-confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe released the report, which details how it views the lab theory as the most likely explanation for the virus. Expressing “low confidence,” the agency still favored that theory over the natural origins theory, which was treated as sacrosanct by the media and favored by figures like Anthony Fauci. (Other recent reports have contradicted the equally orthodox view on the closing of schools, showing no material benefit in terms of slowing the transmission of COVID).
Even a low-confidence finding shows the height of hypocrisy in Washington where politicians and pundits savaged any scientist who even suggested the possibility that the virus was man-made and likely originated in the Wuhan lab near the site of the outbreak.
This follows a recent disclosure in the Wall Street Journal of a report on how the Biden administration may have suppressed dissenting views supporting the lab theory on the origin of the COVID-19 virus. Not only were the FBI and its top experts excluded from a critical briefing of President Biden, but government scientists were reportedly warned that they were “off the reservation” in supporting the lab theory.
As previously discussed, many journalists used the rejection of the lab theory to paint Trump as a bigot. By the time Biden became president, not only were certain government officials heavily invested in the zoonotic or natural origin theory, but so were many in the media.
Reporters used opposition to the lab theory as another opportunity to pound their chests and signal their virtue.
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace mocked Trump and others for spreading one of his favorite “conspiracy theories.” MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt insisted that “we know it’s been debunked that this virus was manmade or modified,”
MSNBC’s Joy Reid also called the lab leak theory “debunked bunkum,” while CNN reporter Drew Griffin criticized spreading the “widely debunked” theory. CNN host Fareed Zakaria told viewers that “the far right has now found its own virus conspiracy theory” in the lab leak.
NBC News’s Janis Mackey Frayer described it as the “heart of conspiracy theories.”
The Washington Post was particularly dogmatic. When Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) raised the theory, he was chastised for “repeat[ing] a fringe theory suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.”
Likewise, after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) mentioned the lab theory, Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler mocked him: “I fear @tedcruz missed the scientific animation in the video that shows how it is virtually impossible for this virus jump from the lab. Or the many interviews with actual scientists. We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves.”
As these efforts failed and more information emerged supporting the lab theory, many media figures just looked at their shoes and shrugged. Others became more ardent. In 2021, New York Times science and health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was still calling on reporters not to mention the “racist” lab theory.
In Kessler’s case, he wrote that the lab theory was “suddenly credible” as if it had sprung from the head of Zeus rather than having been supported for years by scientists, many of whom had been canceled and banned.
As these figures were attacking reports, Biden officials were sitting on these reports. Figures like Fauci did nothing to support those academics being canceled or censored for raising the theory.
The very figures claiming to battle “disinformation” were suppressing opposing views that have now been vindicated as credible. It was not only the lab theory. In my recent book, I discuss how signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration were fired or disciplined by their schools or associations for questioning COVID-19 policies.
The suppression of the lab theory proves the ultimate fallacy of censorship. Throughout history, censorship has never succeeded. It has never stopped a single idea or a movement. It has a perfect failure rate. Ideas, like water, have a way of finding their way out in time.
Yet, as the last few years have shown, it does succeed in imposing costs on those with dissenting views. For years, figures like Bhattacharya (who was recently awarded the prestigious Intellectual Freedom Award by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters) were hounded and marginalized.
Others opposed Bhattacharya’s right to offer his scientific views, even under oath. For example, in one hearing, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) expressed disgust that Bhattacharya was even allowed to testify as “a purveyor of COVID-19 misinformation.”
One of the saddest aspects of this story is that many of these figures in government, academia and the media were not necessarily trying to shield China. Some were motivated by their investment in the narrative while others were drawn by the political and personal benefits that came from joining the mob against a minority of scientists.
The CIA report does not resolve this debate, but it shows that there is a legitimate debate despite the overwhelming message of the media and the attacks on scientists. Of course, the same media and political figures responsible for this culture of intimidation have simply moved on. The value of an alliance with the media is that such embarrassing contradictions are not reported. At most, these figures shrug and turn to the next subject for groupthink and mob action.
An Italian private intelligence firm that allegedly hacked government databases to collect information on thousands of prominent people, including politicians, entrepreneurs, and celebrities, is accused of working for Israeli intelligence and the Vatican, media reported on 30 October.
Police wiretaps leaked to Italian media show that Equalize, which employs former members of Italian intelligence, is accused of breaching the servers of government ministries and the police between 2019 and 2024 to collect information.
Yedioth Ahronothreported that Equalize allegedly collected numerous classified files that contain sensitive information about prominent Italians to sell to clients – including major companies and law firms seeking information to gain an advantage over competitors, win court cases, or for blackmail and extortion.
Prime Minister Meloni described the alleged scheme as “unacceptable” and “a threat to democracy.” … continue
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