Kremlin responds to Vance’s comment on troops for Ukraine statement
RT | February 15, 2025
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.
BBC Rides to the Rescue as Scientists Inconveniently Find the Gulf Stream Isn’t Getting Weaker

By Chris Morrison | The Daily Sceptic | February 6, 2025
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.
BBC’s Fake Wildfire Claims
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | January 30, 2025
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:
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The same applies to the South Coast Drainage Division, which includes Los Angeles:
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https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/national/time-series
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.
https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/how-much-did-increasing-climate-whiplash
Of course, studies like Swain’s are not intended to be serious science; they are written to generate headlines.
And the climate industry is now highly organised to ensure that theses fake studies are disseminated worldwide via a corrupt media.
Audit USAID… Then Shut it Down!
By Ron Paul | February 3, 2025
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.
The CIA Report: Why a Low Confidence Finding is the Height of Hypocrisy
By Jonathan Turley | January 27, 2025
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.”
Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik decried an event associated with Bhattacharya, writing that “we’re living in an upside-down world” because Stanford University allowed dissenting scientists to speak at a scientific forum. Hiltzik also wrote a column titled “The COVID lab leak claim isn’t just an attack on science, but a threat to public health.”
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.
Climate Bombshell: New Evidence Reveals 30 Year Global Drop in Hurricane Frequency and Power
By Chris Morrison | The Daily Sceptic | January 4, 2025
Last month a small but powerful cyclone named Chido made landfall in Mayotte before sweeping into Mozambique, causing considerable damage and leading to the loss of around 100 lives. Days after the tragedy, the Green Blob-funded Carbon Brief noted that scientists have “long suggested” that climate change is making cyclones worse in the region, while Blob-funded World Weather Attribution (WWA) at Imperial College London made a near-instant and curiously precise estimate that a Chido-like cyclone was about 40% more likely to happen in 2024 than during the pre-industrial age. Not to be outdone, Green Blob-funded cheerleader the Guardian chipped in with the obligatory “cyclones are getting worse because of the climate emergency”. Almost unnoticed, it seems, among all the Net Zero dooming and grooming was a science paper published during December by Nature that found no increase in the destructive power of cyclones – the generic term for typhoons and hurricanes – in any ocean basin over the last 30 years. In the South Indian basin, the location of cyclone Chido, there was a dramatic decrease in both frequency and duration in recent times.
Reality rarely gets much of a look-in these days when fanatical Net Zero activism is afoot, but the paper, written by a group of Chinese meteorologists, makes its case by considering the facts and the data. The scientists apply a “power dissipation index” (PDI) which they consider superior to single measure indicators since it combines storm intensity, duration and frequency. The graphs below show the cumulative index for tropical cyclones across all ocean basins along with a global indication.

Downward trends in the cumulative PDI can be seen in a number of Pacific regions, while the trend holds steady in the North Atlantic. The southern Indian ocean downward trend is particularly pronounced while the overall global line is also heading in a similar direction.
So why does all this scientific twaddle get written by the green activists in mainstream media? Much of it arises from the new pseudoscience that claims it can tie individual weather events to human-caused climate change. Press releases peddling climate Armageddon are issued days after a natural disaster and are eagerly reprinted by activist journalists promoting the Net Zero fantasy. The distinguished science writer Roger Pielke Jr. is a fierce critic of this new pseudoscience, which he calls weather attribution alchemy. In a recent Substack post in the aftermath of Chido, he noted that the WWA at Imperial College simply assumes the conclusion that it seeks to prove by accepting that every storm is made stronger because of warmer oceans. Using this explanation, continues Pielke, it is straightforward to conclude that the storm was made more likely due to climate change. Or as Imperial states: “The difference in the storm intensity and likelihood of this storm intensity between the counterfactual climate and today’s climate can be attributed to climate change.”
As the new Chinese paper shows, the matter is not quite so simple. Pielke notes that tropical storms encounter numerous environmental influences such as vertical wind shear and storm-induced ocean surface cooling, even when they remain over warmer waters. “Such complexities mean that simple storyline attribution – warmer oceans predictably mean stronger storms – is inappropriate when used to characterise the behaviour of individual storms,” he argues. Pielke also comes down hard on the statistical evidence backing the WWA claims. Even if storms such as Chido were more likely in the future, it would take a very long time to detect a significant change using the threshold 90% confidence set down by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). And by very long time, he means thousands of years.
“Perhaps that is why assumptions are favoured over evidence,” suggests Pielke.
There were plenty of assumptions on display in a now routine end-of-year weather report from the BBC headed: ‘A year of extreme weather that challenged billions.‘ Written by Esme Stallard, it claims that record-breaking heat brought extreme weather including hurricanes and month-long droughts. Pride of place is given to Dr. Friederike Otto, lead of WWA and Senior Lecturer in Climate Science at Imperial, who claimed: “We are living in a dangerous new era – extreme weather caused unrelenting suffering.” “The impacts of fossil fuel warming has never been clear or more devastating than in 2024,” she added.
The redoubtable Paul Homewood is unimpressed with Stallard’s opening line about increasing extreme weather and has filed a complaint with the BBC. Stallard goes on to list a handful of random events, “but fails to provide any evidence that these are anything other than natural events which happen all the time”, states Homewood. “Nor is any evidence provided that such events have been getting more frequent or extreme over time,” he adds.
The BBC story highlighted typhoons in the Philippines as well as hurricane Beryl and stated that such events may be increasing in intensity due to climate change. Official data do not show any evidence of them becoming more powerful over time, notes Homewood. Much play was made of a recent drought in the Amazon, but Homewood points out that the World Bank Climate Portal reveals that rainfall has increased in the area by 5% over the last 30 years. Throughout the report, observes Homewood, the BBC bases its claims on weather attribution computer models. “However, computer models are not evidence, and can be manipulated to provide whatever results are desired. That is why they are widely derided by the wider scientific community,” he states.
For Roger Pielke, extreme weather attributions are “puzzling”. The most charitable explanation for their proliferation is that there is a demand for them, including from many in the media. The demand will be filled by someone, he concludes. “A less charitable explanation is that there is a systematic effort underway to contest and undermine actual climate science, including the assessments of the IPCC, in order to present a picture of reality that is simply false in support of climate advocacy. We might call that pseudo-scientific gaslighting,” he suggests.
Manufacturing Dissent
By Joshua Stylman | November 17, 2024
As I often do on Sunday mornings, I was drinking my coffee and scrolling through my news feed when I noticed something striking. Maybe it’s my algorithm, but the content was flooded with an unusual amount of vitriol directed at Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s nomination as HHS Secretary. The coordinated messaging was impossible to miss—talking heads across networks uniformly labeling him a “conspiracy theorist” and “danger to public health,” never once addressing his actual positions. The media’s concerted attacks on Kennedy reveal more than just their opinion of his nomination—they expose a deeper crisis of credibility within institutions that once commanded public trust.
The Credibility Paradox
The irony of who led these attacks wasn’t lost on me—these were largely the same voices who championed our most destructive pandemic policies. As Jeffrey Tucker aptly noted on X this morning:

The Coordinated Response
This hypocrisy becomes even more glaring in the New York Times’ recent coverage, where dismissive rhetoric consistently replaces substantive engagement. In one piece, they acknowledge troubling trends in children’s health while dismissively declaring “vaccines and fluoride are not the cause” without engaging his evidence. In another, Zeynep Tufekci—who notably advocated for some of the most draconian Covid measures—warns that Kennedy could “destroy one of civilization’s best achievements,” painting apocalyptic scenarios while sidestepping his actual policy positions.
Meanwhile, their political desk speculates about how his stance on Big Food might “alienate his GOP allies.” Each piece approaches from a different angle, but the pattern is clear: coordinated messaging aimed at undermining his credibility before he can assume institutional authority.

The Echo Chamber Effect
You can almost hear the editorial conveyor belt opening as senior editors craft the day’s approved reality for their audience. The consistent tone across pieces reveals less independent analysis than a familiar pattern—mockingbird media still in action. As I detailed in How The Information Factory Evolved, this assembly-line approach to reality manufacturing has become increasingly visible to anyone paying attention.
What these gatekeepers fail to grasp is that this smug dismissiveness, this refusal to engage with substantive arguments, is precisely what fuels growing public skepticism. Their panic seems to grow in direct proportion to Kennedy’s proximity to real power. This orchestrated dismissal is more than a journalistic flaw—it reflects a larger institutional dilemma, one that becomes unavoidable as Kennedy gains traction.
The Institutional Trap
The Times faces an emerging dilemma: at some point, they’ll need to address the substance of Kennedy’s arguments rather than rely on dismissive characterizations—especially if he assumes control of America’s health apparatus. Just this morning, MSNBC anchors were literally shouting that “Kennedy is going to get people killed”—yet another example of using melodramatics and fear instead of engaging with his actual positions. Their reflexive ridicule strategy backfires precisely because it avoids engaging with the evidence and concerns that resonate with parents and citizens across political lines. Each attempt to maintain narrative control through authority rather than evidence accelerates institutional credibility collapse.
Beyond Kennedy: Redrawing Political Lines
The NYT’s analysis about Kennedy potentially alienating GOP allies particularly highlights their fundamental misunderstanding of the shifting political landscape. As a lifelong Democrat who still champions many traditional progressive values, Kennedy transcends conventional political boundaries. His message—”We have to love our children more than we hate each other”—resonates precisely because anyone who dismisses this crusade to restore American vitality as mere political theater is blind to the groundswell of people who’ve grown tired of watching their communities crumble under the weight of manufactured decline.
This isn’t just about Kennedy—it’s about the media’s inability to address the legitimate concerns of a disillusioned public. When institutions refuse to engage with dissenting voices, they deepen mistrust and fracture the shared foundation necessary for democratic discourse. While RFK, Jr.’s message has resonated across political boundaries, the media’s inability to address core issues—like regulatory failures—reveals just how out of touch they’ve become.
The Art of Missing the Point
Consider this fact-check from the same article: The Times attempts to discredit Kennedy’s Fruit Loops example, but inadvertently confirms his central point: ingredients banned in European markets are indeed permitted in American products. By focusing on semantic precision instead of the broader issue—why US regulators allow unsafe ingredients—the media deflects from substantive debates.

Senator Elizabeth Warren declared this week: “RFK Jr. poses a danger to public health, scientific research, medicine, and health care coverage for millions. He wants to stop parents from protecting their babies from measles and his ideas would welcome the return of polio.” Yet this alarmist framing dodges the simple question Kennedy actually raises: Why wouldn’t you want proper safety testing for chemicals we’re expected to inject into our children’s bodies? The silence in response to this basic inquiry speaks volumes about institutional priorities—and their fear of someone with the power to demand answers.
A Referendum on Manufacturing Consent
Say what you want about Trump, but his “fake news” remarks struck a chord that resonates deeper with each passing day. People who once scoffed at these claims are now watching with eyes wide open as coordinated narratives unfold across media platforms. The gaslighting has become too obvious to ignore. As I explored in We Didn’t Change, The Democratic Party Did, this awakening transcends traditional political boundaries. Americans across the spectrum are tired of being told not to believe their own eyes, whether it’s about pandemic policies, economic realities, or the suppression of dissenting voices.
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
It was their final, most essential command.”
–George Orwell, 1984
The Moment of Truth
With Kennedy potentially overseeing America’s health infrastructure, media institutions face a crucial inflection point. Fear campaigns and ad hominem attacks won’t suffice when his policy positions require serious examination. The machinery of coordinated dismissal—visible in identical talking points across networks—reveals more about institutional allegiance than journalistic integrity.
This moment demands something different. When Kennedy raises questions about pharmaceutical safety testing or environmental toxins—issues that resonate with families across political lines—substantive debate must replace reflexive ridicule. His actual positions, heard directly rather than through media filters, often align with common-sense concerns about corporate influence on public health policy.
This institutional pattern of manufactured authority connects directly to themes I explored in Fiat Everything earlier this week—systems built on decree rather than demonstrated value. They don’t sell weapons—they sell fear. The same forces that control monetary policy now seek to dictate public health discourse.
Breaking the Machine
The solution won’t come from institutional gatekeepers (that’s what got us here) but direct examination. We all need to:
- Listen to Kennedy’s complete speeches rather than edited soundbites
- Read his policy positions rather than media characterizations
- Examine the evidence he cites rather than fact-checker summaries
- Consider why certain questions about public health policy are deemed off-limits
I’m not suggesting we accept every contrarian position, but rather that institutional credibility must be earned through rigorous analysis rather than assumed through authority. Until then, coverage like these recent Times pieces will continue to exemplify the very institutional failures that fuel the movements they seek to discredit. As Kennedy approaches real institutional power, expect these attacks to intensify—a clear signal of just how much the guardians of our manufactured consensus have to lose.
Fabricated: Video showing release of women from Sednaya jail in Syria
Press TV – December 28, 2024
A new investigation has revealed that a viral video showing women and children allegedly being released from Syria’s Sednaya prison after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad was fabricated.
In a post on X on Saturday, the Syrian fact-checking group Verify-Sy said the circulated footage, videos, and images documenting the moment women and girls were allegedly released were filmed at the “Dafa” organization, a children’s charity located in the Kafr Sousa neighborhood south of Damascus, and not Sednaya jail.
Verify-Sy went on to say that its extensive probe revealed that the claim is false, adding that the viral video conceals various details, including a suspected case of theft and vandalism, which need to be investigated by the relevant authorities.
The video footage circulating on social media platforms such as Facebook, X, and TikTok, along with several Arabic and international media outlets, such as Syria TV and Al Arabiya, showed a man ordering a group of girls and women to return to their homes, while a woman says, “These girls are in my charge,” which raises doubts about the real location.
Meanwhile, Fidaa Daqouri, Chairwoman of the Dafa Organization has clarified to Verify-Sy that on the night of the Assad government’s fall, the organization was attacked by a group of armed civilians, who identified themselves as “rebels.”
She also said the attackers stole buses belonging to the organization, as well as batteries, and forced everyone present to leave the building, adding that they also raided a juvenile detention center on the same street and some nearby institutes.
Daqouri also called on Syria’s de facto new ruler to investigate the incident and hold those who attacked the center accountable, while denouncing as “unacceptable” the misleading spread of this video by media outlets, falsely identifying the location as Sednaya prison.
In order to verify the videos, images, and stories, the Verify-Sy team contacted Diab Sarya, co-founder and director of the Sednaya Prison Detainees Association. He confirmed that Sednaya is “a military prison designated for holding men only.”
He said all circulated stories about secret prisons, hidden floors, or coded doors are fabricated and have no basis in reality.
Militants, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), took control of Damascus on December 8 and declared an end to Assad’s rule in a surprise offensive that was launched from their stronghold in northwestern Syria, reaching the capital in less than two weeks.
Since then, a wave of propaganda surrounding the prisoners in Sednaya Prison has proliferated across the internet.
They must have their Srebrenica in Syria…
By Stephen Karganovic | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 25, 2024
Following the abrupt and mysterious change of circumstances in Syria, the collective West propaganda machinery went into overdrive to pillory the previous government for a variety of heinous offences, real and imagined. The largely invented horror stories publicised after 8 December are shaped by an unmistakably political agenda. They serve as a cynical alibi for the utter devastation wrought upon Syria by terrorist, head-chopping gangs trained, financed, and unleashed by the very regional and ultramarine powers which are engaged in the spreading of those falsehoods.
Attentive readers will recall numerous false flags and horror porn mantras about “Assad killing his own people” that resonated throughout the decade and a half long assault on Syria. Most were quickly discredited as nasty fabrications. But, of course, the purpose of propaganda is not to demonstrate facts but to influence perceptions and create indelible subliminal impressions. In this infamous category, the alleged Ghouta chemical weapon attack on Syrian civilians, falsely attributed to the Assad government and subsequently debunked, is a salient example. The fabricated incident was thoroughly investigated and ultimately found to be devoid of substance, but attesting to the power of professionally conducted disinformation even many years after discreditation Ghouta remains a vibrant propaganda meme firmly embedded in the public mind as an atrocity typifying the malevolence of the “Assad regime.”
No sooner did the rebranded Al Qaeda terrorists march into Damascus than, as if on cue, on 9 December the collective West media initiated an aggressive attempt to shift public attention away from the victorious radical thugs and their sordid past. Saydnaya Prison, previously (if we disregard a 2017 Amnesty International mention) a virtually unknown venue now unveiled as the “Assad regime slaughterhouse,” suddenly was thrust into the limelight in a sensationalistic narrative that was absurd on its face. It was alleged by the BBC, a known source of trustworthy information, that Saydnaya was a horrific dungeon consisting of multiple underground levels, each independently secured by electronic doors. Within this prison complex, it was further alleged, “more than 100,000 detainees who can be seen on CCTV monitors” were trapped and dying without food or water and choking from lack of ventilation, abandoned by sadistic Assad guards who, when fleeing the premises, malevolently absconded with the codes required to open the electronic door systems.
Left unexplained is how over the years the logistical operation necessary to sustain a prison facility the size of a moderate sized town escaped the notice of aerial surveillance platforms that were observing every inch of Syrian territory for the duration of the conflict. How was it possible after regime change to analyse CCTV monitor data in just a single day in order to reach the conclusion that “over 100,000 prisoners” were trapped inside? And if those CCTV data had indeed been sifted through why have they not been shown to the international public to corroborate beyond doubt the emerging human tragedy of such mind-boggling proportions? Are the electronic portals to the underground cell complexes so impregnable that they may be opened only by the use of the unavailable codes in the guards’ possession, or might there be other means of forcing them and liberating the endangered prisoners?
The latest news on this topic is that “Syria rebels [are] unable to open Assad’s Sednaya ‘Red Cells’ where prisoners are ‘choking to death’.” The problem is that this news item is dated 9 December, but now it is over two weeks later. Since 9 December there has been no follow-up, no updates on how successful the rescuers may have been in opening the electronic doors and gaining access to those trapped inside. In fact, the distressing Saydnaya story has since been obliterated completely from the Western media news radar screen, as abruptly as it appeared. Now that the shocking and unsubstantiated allegations have had their psychological effect on the public mind a complete blackout prevails.
But what has propaganda got to do with logic and coherence?
However after the sensational allegations that have been made, what actually did or did not happen in Saydnaya is important and must be ascertained lest the international public be played for fools. It may reasonably be assumed that after more than two weeks without food, water, or ventilation, by now the vast majority of the wretched prisoners, extravagantly claimed to number over 100,000, should be dead. The stench of their decomposing bodies should be unbearable in a wide radius around the prison complex, perhaps reaching even as far as liberated Damascus, which is 30 kilometres away. It makes no sense to suddenly impose silence over a potential atrocity of such an appalling nature and magnitude which in the eyes of the entire world would irrefutably convict the “Assad regime,” whilst exonerating the collective West from complicity in the crimes of its proxies and in Syria’s callous destruction.
It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Saydnaya affair was conceived as but an overture for a larger propaganda operation that is to follow, to fabricate a Syrian Srebrenica. Besides lending credence to the long list of false flag allegations and outright lies upon which the collective West’s intervention in Syria was based, now crowned with the apparent victory of the terrorists they sponsored, the impending Syrian Srebrenica operation is designed also to diminish Russia’s stature for supposedly sheltering a “perpetrator of genocide.”
As has been reported, the propaganda props, one by one, are meticulously being put in place. Photographs of vast empty spaces are being represented as “killing fields” where allegedly hundreds of thousands of Assad’s victims lie buried. Individuals claiming to have taken part in the mass burials are brought forth to embellish the photographic images with well-rehearsed spin.
We have yet to see however a single disinterred body, not to speak of being shown reliable evidence regarding the time, cause, and manner of death. And even the scant information that is provided is conditioned by weasel words that hundreds of thousands of bodies of Assad regime victims “could be buried in a mass grave east of Damascus.” They could be, but then also perhaps not. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, of which at present there is none. Bare assertions are insufficient.
A dependable indication of how the problem of missing bodies will be solved, and that the fix is already in, is the casual announcement that the task of investigating Syria’s “killing fields” will be entrusted to the notorious White Helmets. They are a fake civil defence outfit set up by British intelligence early in the conflict to pose as a humanitarian organisation. There is an exact parallel between the announced plan and the way that, in the 1990s and early 2000s, Srebrenica forensic issues were handled in order to provide the Hague Tribunal with fake evidence of “genocide.” The International Commission on Missing Persons [ICMP] which did the job then was founded specifically for that purpose in 1996 under the tight control of leading NATO powers, and with the proviso that the chairman of ICMP must always be a U.S. citizen nominated by the State Department. ICMP performed the tasks assigned to it with flying colours, having fabricated in its laboratories much of the Srebrenica “genocide” evidence for the use of the Hague Tribunal.
The White Helmets, founded by MI6 operative James Le Mesurier, will undoubtedly acquit themselves equally well in performing a similarly dishonourable task.
