Because Greenland really needs more ice
Climate Discussion Nexus | September 25, 2019
“SPECIAL REPORT: As their home melts, Greenlanders confront the fallout of climate change” shrieks NBC in a Sept. 17 email teaser (not available online) that warns that “Greenland is ‘ground zero’ for global warming, a place where the effects of rising temperatures and melting ice could have the most dire consequences. The shorter winters and longer summers have opened new waterways for fishing and tourism — but they’ve also endangered hunting, dogsledding and other traditional ways of life for the island’s 55,000 residents.” Oh really? Then why do long-term temperature records for Greenland show almost no warming in the last 60 years, or the last hundred?
There’s a famous story in Plutarch about Philip of Macedon the Great sending an ultimatum to the Spartans to surrender because “If I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city” to which the Spartans replied simply “If”. And NBC’s casual use of “As” in the phrase “As their home melts,” not even as a premise to be explored but as an assumption to be swallowed untasted, we reply that if their home is not melting, nothing you say about what happens as it does tells us anything except that you are either gullible or zealots.
The NBC story to which the teaser links of course draws on the wisdom of the ancestors about the dramatic unpleasant changes, including one elder who said a thunderstorm was scary because in the good old days “We maybe hear some thunder one time in 30 years.” NBC did not delve into the question of whether in fact Greenland gets a thunderstorm every three decades.
Instead reporter Denise Chow breathlessly recounted being stuck near a glacier when the helicopter didn’t arrive and recalling with relief that fellow scientist David Holland had brought “a shotgun – just in case he needed to fend off polar bears.” Hmmm. Not so much threatened as threatening, are they?
As it happens, the bears stayed away and Chow ended up having a lovely night camping in exotic Arctic scenery before a chopper whisked them away the next day and “I found myself missing the peace, solitude and absolute splendor of Helheim Glacier.” But it was still terrifying because the Helheim glacier is melting rapidly and “Holland’s team is trying to understand what’s driving the staggering ice melt. This summer alone, an estimated 440 billion tons of ice has been lost from Greenland’s ice sheet — and some scientists say it could be more.”
We know what’s driving the main melt. It’s called summer. It happens every year and then the ice sheet grows again in winter. As for the glacier, well, many are retreating, including in Alaska, due to the natural temperature rebound from the Little Ice Age that saw them shrink dramatically before 1900.
Perhaps these journalists are seeing what they expect to see and their editors want them to see not what is actually there. NBC also sent star anchor Lester Holt “to Alaska – where he spent part of his childhood — to get a personal perspective of a climate in crisis. Scientists are warning that rising temperatures are having a significant impact on the state – including melting glaciers – which contributes to rising sea levels and warming oceans.” And Al Roker to Greenland to study… wait for it… “its record melt and heat wave.” Which he duly found, even though the data suggest that the widespread post-Victorian temperature rebound seems largely to have passed Greenland by. As we noted in August, its ice cap is about the same size today it was in 1850, and Greenland as a whole appears to have been cooling gently since the 1920s. Awkward.
Chow also failed for some reason to camp by Greenland’s Jakobshavn glacier that has recently baffled scientists by growing instead of shrinking. Instead she had an excellent adventure and filed the usual story.
Lavrov responds to Pelosi claim Russia ‘had a hand’ in Trump-Zelensky impeachment scandal
RT | September 27, 2019
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claims that Russia was involved in the Trump-Zelensky phone conversation scandal as “obvious paranoia” and yet another “deadly sin” to pin on Moscow.
“Russia’s been accused of all the deadly sins, and then some,” Lavrov said at a press conference at the UN General Assembly on Friday, addressing a question about Pelosi’s claims that his country was somehow involved in the alleged quid pro quo between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“It’s paranoia, and I think it’s obvious to everyone.”
In an interview with MSNBC that aired earlier on Friday, Pelosi had claimed that Russia “has a hand in” what she referred to as Trump’s “shakedown” of the Ukrainian president during a telephone conversation back in July – released this week by the White House – as well as the subsequent “cover-up of the cover-up.”
Trump is “undermining our national security” by withholding military aid from Ukraine, she insisted, and “violated the constitution by overriding an act of Congress.”
The Democrats claim that Trump threatened to withhold military aid unless Ukraine restarted a corruption probe into the gas company that employed Hunter Biden, the son of then-vice president and current Democratic front-runner Joe Biden.
Pelosi launched an impeachment inquiry on Tuesday while admitting she had not read a transcript of the fateful call between the two leaders. She nevertheless accused Trump of betraying his oath of office, national security, and “the integrity of our elections.”
The call transcript, released the following morning, did not include any discussion of military aid, and mentioned the Biden investigation only in passing – a subject that was broached by Zelensky, not Trump.
Claim Russia caused Brexit crumbles as probe into Leave.EU funding finds no evidence of wrongdoing
A Brexit-themed billboard depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin. © AFP / Daniel SORABJI
RT | September 25, 2019
An investigation into Arron Banks, a backer of a pro-Brexit campaign, found no evidence that the money for it came from a third party. The political establishment claimed he was illegally pouring Russian funds into the endeavor.
The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) announced it has shut down investigation into Banks after finding no evidence he broke the law in loaning £8 million ($10 million) to his own pro-Brexit campaign Leave. EU ahead of the 2016 referendum. The loan came from the company Rock Holdings Ltd, owned by Banks, and went to Better for the Country Ltd, which managed the campaign.
The Electoral Commission referred the case to the NCA last year, saying it suspected a third party was the original source of the money. In a public statement on Tuesday, the NCA said it found “no evidence that any criminal offences have been committed” by Banks. Likewise, no evidence was found that he “received funding from any third party to fund the loans, or that he acted as an agent on behalf of a third party.”
The third party was presumed to be the government of Russia, which many Remainers accuse of boosting their Leaver opponents financially and with clandestine activities on social media. This notion may, for some, ease the pain caused by the cringeworthy way the UK is now parting ways with the EU, but it has a few problems in terms of actual evidence.
The NCA’s announcement is the second blow to the narrative in as many weeks. Earlier, the Metropolitan Police said they will take no further action against Banks and Leave.EU over alleged spending offences. That probe was also launched at the request of the Electoral Commission and found “some technical breaches of electoral law” but “insufficient evidence to justify any further criminal investigation,” the statement said.
Banks, who said he was being targeted by a biased Electoral Commission and pro-Remain politicians and journalists in a smear campaign, is now able to take a victory lap. “Victory is sweet .. poor little remainer!” he tweeted in response to one of his critics sharing the news. Banks also threatened the commission with a £10 million lawsuit for damaging his reputation.
Nigel Farage, who was Banks’ partner in the Leave.EU campaign, said “heads must roll” for the mistreatment of the businessman, and that the commission should be first in line for the chopping block.
The commission lamented the NCA’s decision, saying it demonstrated an “apparent weakness of the law” that “allows overseas funds into UK politics.” Which apparently means they think that the problem was that investigators didn’t search hard enough, not that there was nothing there to find.
Hunting for the Kremlin’s shadow behind domestic troubles is a popular activity these days, especially since the consequences are insignificant for those involved when they are eventually proven wrong.
Another Day, Another Scandal. What the ‘Trump-Ukraine Collusion’ Is Really About
By Daniel Lazare | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 25, 2019
This is soooooo boring.
For nearly a week, Washington has been consumed by reports that Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden.
The furor began on Wednesday, Sept. 18, when the Washington Post disclosed that Trump had said something to an unknown foreign leader that “was so alarming that a US intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community.” Two days later, the Wall Street Journal reported that the foreign leader was Zelensky and that Trump had asked him “about eight times” in the course of a single phone conversation to look into allegations that then-Vice President Biden had pushed for the removal of a public prosecutor investigating a Ukrainian company that employed his son, Hunter. A day after that, Biden complained that Trump was trying to “smear me,” while on Sunday, Adam Schiff, Democratic chairman of the House intelligence committee, declared that Trump might be guilty of “the most profound violation of the presidential oath of office … during just about any presidency.”
From initial report to America’s greatest scandal ever in just four days – surely this was some sort of Washington speed record. Since the moment Trump was elected, Democrats have been searching for “the Big One,” as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd put it, the scandal “that’s going to finally bring Donald Trump down” – and now at last they found it.
Of course, Democrats said the same about Russiagate, the scandal that dominated headlines for two and a half years but fizzled when special prosecutor Robert Mueller said he was unable to come up with evidence “that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.” But now that Trump stood accused of conspiring or coordinating with the Ukrainian government – or at least trying to – surely the Big One was finally at hand.
But it’s not. One reason is that there’s no sign of a quid pro quo. The Washington Post suggested in its initial report that the purpose of the July 25 phone call was to “manipulate the Ukrainian government into helping Trump’s reelection campaign.” The means, supposedly, was $250 million in military aid that he was threatening to withhold if the Ukraine failed to cooperate. But the Wall Street Journal’s source specifically denied that Trump had threatened a cut-off while the New York Times reported that a decision to end military aid – subsequently revoked – had actually occurred weeks earlier.
Another reason for skepticism is that charges of a smear job are clearly misplaced. If anyone’s activities are suspicious, it’s Biden’s, and Trump can hardly be blamed for wanting to get to the bottom of them.
To briefly recap: in February 2014, a US-backed coup spearheaded by ultra-rightists sent Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing and installed billionaire Petro Poroshenko in his place. This was bad news for a wealthy Yanukovych supporter named Mykola Zlochevsky who was widely accused of corruption and was in danger of losing all or some of his holdings. In an attempt to smooth things over with the Americans, Zlochevsky appointed Hunter Biden to a lucrative post with Burisma Holdings, a natural-gas company he founded in 2002. Hunter had just been discharged from the US Navy after testing positive for cocaine. He had no experience in the natural-gas business and knew nothing about the Ukraine. But he got the job anyway along with a salary of $50,000 a month.
But when the Ukrainian prosecutor general launched an investigation into Burisma, the Obama administration demanded that Viktor Shokin, the man who took over the office a year later, be removed. Indeed, Biden bragged that he threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees during a visit to Kiev if Poroshenko didn’t do as he was told.
“I said, ‘We’re leaving in six hours,’” he said last year. “If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.”
If anyone’s guilty of a quid pro quo, it would seem to be Biden.
Questions remain. Washington says it wanted Shokin removed because he was impeding the Ukraine’s anti-corruption drive and that it pushed for someone more vigorous even though the results for Burisma might have been negative. But the New York Times says the company was pleased by Shokin’s dismissal, and that a year later it was able to reach an amicable settlement with his successor. Hunter Biden’s job was safe.
Still, profiting off a family connection in this manner is plainly corrupt, and Biden is obviously attempting to deflect attention from his own misdeeds by screaming about Trump. The upshot is yet another tedious pseudo-scandal in which Democrats will only succeed in embarrassing themselves.
Explaining CIA’s ‘Agent Smolenkov’
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 16, 2019
The saga of daring escape by a supposed Russian CIA agent from the Kremlin’s clutches and then the added twist of a security-risk American president putting the agent’s life in danger does indeed sound like a pulp fiction novel, as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov put it.
How to explain this sensational story? “Opportunism” is one word that comes to mind.
The news media who pushed the story, CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post, are vehemently “anti-Trump”. Any chance to damage this president and they grab it.
Also, perhaps more importantly, these media are desperate to salvage their shot-through journalistic credibility since the “Russiagate” narrative they had earnestly propagated died a death, after the two-year Mueller circus finally left town empty-handed.
This damage to supposed bastions of US journalism cannot be overstated. More than two years of spinning speculation-cum-reporting about Russian collusion with Trump and/or interference in US politics has produced not a crumb of substantive fact. That means those media responsible for the “Russiagate” nonsense have forfeited that precious quality – credibility. They no longer deserve to be categorized as news services, and are more appropriately now listed as fiction peddlers.
So when they got the chance to seemingly resurrect their buried “Russiagate” yarn with this latest fable about agent Oleg Smolenkov being exfiltrated from Russia to the US, they leapt at it because their equally buried reputations are also at stake.
As far as we can tell, an anonymous intelligence source started the ball rolling. The source is likely to be former CIA chief John Brennan or former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Both are hangouts for the anti-Trump media since they lost their intel jobs at the beginning of 2017, and both are believed to have seeded the “Russiagate” narrative in 2016 from before Trump was elected.
Notably, the current CIA assessment of the latest US media reporting on the exfiltrated spy is that the reporting is “false” and “misguided”. In particular, the CNN spin that the agent (Smolenkov) had to be extricated from Russia in 2017 because Langley feared that Trump may have endangered the supposed Kremlin mole when he hosted Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in the White House in May 2017.
Also of note is the dismissive response from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who rubbished the reports. He was head of the CIA during 2017. (Admittedly, Pompeo is a self-confessed liar.)
According to CNN, NY Times and Washington Post, the former spy in the Kremlin, named as Oleg Smolenkov by subsequent Russian media reporting, was a top mole with direct access to President Vladimir Putin. It is claimed that Smolenkov confirmed allegations about a Putin-directed plot to interfere in US presidential elections. The agent is said to have also confirmed that Putin (allegedly) ordered the hacking of the Democratic party’s central database to obtain scandalous material on Hillary Clinton which was then fed to the Wikileaks whistleblower site for the purpose of scuttling her bid for the presidency in November 2016, thus favoring Trump.
Smolenkov was allegedly providing this information on a purported Kremlin interference campaign in 2016.
The US media claim Smolenkov was exfiltrated from Russia by the CIA in June 2017 – out of concern for his safety, which CNN reported was being jeopardized by President Trump due to his implied compromised relations with Putin. Smolenkov and his family disappeared while on a holiday in Montenegro in June 2017.
After the story broke earlier this week about the exfiltrated Kremlin mole, subsequent media reporting tracked down Oleg Smolenkov and his wife living in a $1-million-dollar mansion in Stafford, Virginia. Curiously, public records showed the house purchase was in their names, which seems odd for a supposed top-level spy, who had apparently committed extreme betrayal against the Kremlin, to be living openly. The family apparently fled the house to unknown whereabouts on September 9 after the story about his alleged spy role broke this week.
Who is Oleg Smolenkov? The Kremlin said this week that he previously worked in the presidential administration, but he was sacked “several years ago”. He did not have direct access to President Putin’s office, according to the Kremlin. For his part, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov says he never heard of the man before, never mind ever having met him.
It is understood that Smolenkov previously worked in the Russian embassy in Washington under ambassador Yuri Ushakov (1999-2008). Smolenkov reportedly continued working for Ushakov when the diplomat returned to Moscow after his ambassadorial tenure in the US.
Here is where we may speculate that Smolenkov was recruited by the CIA during his diplomatic assignment in the US. But we assume that the Kremlin’s assessment is correct; he did not have a senior position or access to Putin’s office. By contrast, the US media are claiming Smolenkov was “one of the CIA’s most valuable assets” in the Kremlin and that he was providing confirmatory information that Putin was (allegedly) running an interference campaign to subvert the US presidential elections.
The discerning detail as to the truth of the imbroglio is revealed by the US media claims that Smolenkov corroborated the alleged hacking into the Democratic party database in 2016. However, that specific allegation has been disproven by several top hacker experts, notably William Binney who was formerly technical head at the US National Security Agency. There was no hacking. The damaging information on Hillary Clinton was leaked by a Democratic party insider, possibly Seth Rich, who soon after was shot dead by an unknown attacker. In short, the entire narrative about the Kremlin hacking into the Democratic party is a fiction. The premise to “Russiagate” is baseless.
Thus, if Smolenkov is peddling fiction to his former handlers in the CIA, that means he has no credibility as a “top mole”.
Again, opportunism is the key. Somebody came up with a lurid story about “Russian interference” in US democracy and “collusion” with Trump. Maybe it was Smolenkov who saw an opportunity to win a big pay day from his CIA patrons by flogging them a blockbuster. Or maybe, Brennan and Clapper (known liars in the public record) dreamt up a scheme of Kremlin malignancy to benefit Trump, and if that could be tied to Trump then his election would be discredited and nullified. But what they needed was a “Kremlin source” to “corroborate” their readymade story of “Russian interference”. Step forward Oleg Smolenkov – fired and out of work – to do the needfed “corroboration” and in return he gets a new life for himself and family with a mansion in a leafy Virginian suburb.
CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, Brennan and Clapper are so much damaged goods from past failure of “Russiagate” fabrications, they find an opportunity to salvage their disgraced names by outing the hapless Smolenkov at this juncture.
That then raises the grave question of why he was permitted to live openly in his own name?
There is a sinister similarity here to the Sergei Skripal case in England. Is Smolenkov being set up for a hit which can then be conveniently blamed on Russia as “revenge” by the Russophobic, anti-Trump, deep state US media?
9/11: You Weren’t Stupid, Mr. Brown!
CNN’s brief shining moment on September 11, 2001
By Graeme MacQueen | OffGuardian | September 11, 2019
Aaron Brown, news anchor during most of CNN’s coverage on September 11, 2001, was interviewed on the 15th anniversary of the event. He said in that interview that he had felt “profoundly stupid” when he was reporting the destruction of the first Tower (the South Tower) on that morning.
I… I will tell you… that a million things had been running through my mind about what might happen. About the effect of a jet plane hitting people above where the impact was, what might be going on in those buildings. And it just never occurred to me that they’d come down. And I thought… it’s the only time I thought, maybe you just don’t have what it takes to do a story like this. Because it just had never occurred to me.” (CNN, Sept. 11, 2016, interviewer Brian Stelter)
Is it not remarkable that Brown was made to feel stupid, and to feel inadequate as a news anchor, during the precise moments of his coverage of that day when his senses and his mind were fully engaged and on the right track?
Shortly after 9:59 a.m. Brown had been standing on a roof in New York City about 30 blocks from the World Trade Center. He was looking directly at the South Tower as it was destroyed. He was not just a journalist and not just a news anchor: he was an eyewitness.
He immediately interrupted a journalist who was reporting live about the Pentagon:
Wow! Jamie. Jamie, I need you to stop for a second. There has just been a huge explosion…we can see a billowing smoke rising… and I can’t… I’ll tell you that I can’t see that second Tower. But there was a cascade of sparks and fire and now this… it looks almost like a mushroom cloud, explosion, this huge, billowing smoke in the second Tower…” (9:59:07 a.m.)
Having reported honestly what he saw with his own eyes, Brown next did exactly what he should have done as a responsible news anchor. He let his audience know that while he did not know what had happened it was clear that there were two hypotheses in play, the explosion hypothesis and the structural failure hypothesis. And then he went to his reporters on the scene, as well as to authorities, to try and sort out which hypothesis was correct.
Here are examples of his setting forth—after the first building was destroyed and again after the second was destroyed—the rival hypotheses:
and then just in the last several minutes there has been a second explosion or, at least, perhaps not an explosion, perhaps part of the building simply collapsed. And that’s what we saw and that’s what we’re looking at.” (10:03:47)
…
This is just a few minutes ago…we don’t know if…something happened, another explosion, or if the building was so weakened…it just collapsed.” (10:04:36 a.m.)
…
we believe now that we can say that both, that portions of both Towers of the World Trade Centre, have collapsed. Whether there were second explosions, that is to say, explosions other than the planes hitting them, that caused this to happen we cannot tell you.” (10:29:21 a.m.)
…
Our reporters in the area say they heard loud noises when that happened. It is unclear to them and to us whether those were explosions going on in the building or if that was simply the sound of the collapse of the buildings as they collapsed, making these huge noises as they came down.” (11:17:45 a.m.)
Brown’s honest reporting of his perceptions was balanced repeatedly by his caution. Here is an example:
it almost looks… it almost looks like one of those implosions of buildings that you see except there is nothing controlled about this…this is devastation.” (10:53:10 a.m.)
His next move, having set forth the two hypotheses, was to ask his reporters on the scene, who were choking on pulverized debris and witnessing gruesome scenes, what they perceived.
Reporter Brian Palmer said honestly that he was not in a position to resolve the issue.
Brown: Was there… Brian, did it sound like there was an explosion before the second collapse, or was the noise the collapse itself?” (10:41:08 a.m.)
Palmer: “Well, from our distance… I was not able to distinguish between an explosion and the collapse. We were several hundred yards away. But we clearly saw the building come down. I heard your report of a fourth explosion: I can’t confirm that. But we heard some “boom” and then the building fold in on itself.”
Two others were more definite about what they perceived.
Brown: Rose, whadya got? (10:29:43 a.m.)
Rose Arce: I’m about a block away. And there were several people that were hanging out the windows right below where the plane crashed, when suddenly you saw the top of the building start to shake, and people began leaping from the windows in the north side of the building. You saw two people at first plummet and then a third one, and then the entire top of the building just blew up…
Brown: Who do we have on the phone, guys? Just help me out here. Patty, are you there? (10:57:51 a.m.)
Patty: Yes, I am here.
Brown: Whaddya got?
Patty: About an hour ago I was on the corner of Broadway and Park Place—that’s about a thousand yards from the World Trade Center—when the first Tower collapsed. It was a massive explosion. At the time the police were trying desperately to evacuate people from the area. When that explosion occurred it was like a scene out of a horror film.
As can be seen, the explosion hypothesis was flourishing. Even the news caption at the bottom of the screen shortly after the destruction of the South Tower (10:03:12 a.m.) is striking to read today:
“THIRD EXPLOSION SHATTERS WORLD TRADE CENTER IN NEW YORK”
After checking with his reporters, Brown continued to explore his hypotheses, this time by consulting authorities. This was where he was led astray. “Authorities” are less securely tied to evidence than witnesses and may, in fact, be implicated in high level deception.
First Brown consulted a political authority. He got the Mayor of New York City on the line.
Brown: Sir, do you believe that… was there another set of explosions that caused the buildings to collapse, or was it the structural damage caused by the planes?” (12:31:45 p.m.)
Giuliani: I don’t, I don’t know, I, uh, I, uh… I, I saw the first collapse and heard the second ‘cause I was in a building when the second took place. I think it was structural but I cannot be sure.”
Later in the afternoon Giuliani got his script right and was more definite in ruling out explosions. But, of course, Giuliani had no right to pronounce on the science of building destruction. Brown should have persisted in his questioning.
Finally, Brown brought in an engineer, Jim DeStefano–associated, we were told, with the National Council of Structural Engineers. DeStefano’s brief comments put an end to Brown’s explosion hypothesis and rendered CNN’s news coverage safe for public consumption.
Brown: Jim De Stefano is a structural engineer. He knows about big buildings and what happens in these sort of catastrophic moments. He joins us from Deerfield, Connecticut on the phone. Jim, the plane hits… what… and I hope this isn’t a terribly oversimplified question, but what happens to the building itself? (04:20:45 p.m.)
DeStefano: … It’s a tremendous impact that’s applied to the building when a collision like this occurs. And it’s clear that that impact was sufficient to do damage to the columns and the bracing system supporting the building. That coupled with the fire raging and the high temperatures softening the structural steel then precipitated a destabilization of the columns and clearly the columns buckled at the lower floors causing the building to collapse.
I am not in a position to call DeStefano a fake or to claim he was reading from a script given to him by others, but I am prepared to say he was extremely irresponsible. He did not say “here is one hypothesis.” He said, in effect, “this is what happened.” He was in no position to make this claim. There had been no photographic or video analysis of the building destruction, no analysis of the remains of the WTC, no cataloguing of eyewitnesses, nor any of the other methods of evidence gathering. He was shooting in the dark. He was silencing a journalist who was sincerely trying to discover the truth. As we have known for years now, DeStefano not only could have been wrong: he was wrong.*
And let us remember that the entire War on Terror, with its suffering and oppression, has depended on this false structural failure hypothesis. No structural failure hypothesis, no guilty Muslim fanatics. No guilty Muslim fanatics, no War on Terror.
Some readers will feel I am too generous with Brown and with CNN. But I am not interested in portraying them as broadly “dissident” or as on the political Left. I am simply interested in calling things as I see them and giving credit where credit is due. Anyone who wants a contrast to Brown’s performance is free to watch the work of Fox News anchor, Jon Scott, on September 11, 2001. The same confidence that allowed him to name Bin Laden as a suspect 42 seconds after the impact of the second plane allowed him to proclaim the structural failure hypothesis directly after the destruction of the South Tower. He persisted even when his reporters in the field clearly spoke of explosions.
David Lee Miller reported:
we heard a very loud blast, an explosion. We looked up, and the building literally began to collapse before us…” (10:01:17 a.m.)
Rick Leventhal said:
The FBI is here, as you can see. They had roped this area off. They were taking photographs and securing this area just prior to that huge explosion that we all heard and felt.” (10:06:39 a.m.)
News anchor Scott was troubled by none of this. He overrode, silenced and patronized Fox reporters. At no point did he even acknowledge the existence of a second reasonable hypothesis for the Trade Center destruction.
Of course, it is true that by the end of the day of September 11, 2001 CNN and Fox were singing from the same hymnbook. But I believe we ought to acknowledge Brown’s brief, shining moment and consider what might happen if journalists found their courage and trusted their senses and their minds.
Sources:
Same-day coverage by CNN and Fox for September 11, 2001 has been sporadically available on the Internet. My notes are from my own previously downloaded files. Times should be accurate to within two seconds.
Notes
*Many works have appeared over the years refuting the account of the destruction of the World Trade Center Towers released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). But special note should be taken of two sources:
Ted Walter, Beyond Misinformation: What Science Says About the Destruction of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2, and 7. Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, 2015.
https://www.ae911truth.org/images/BeyondMisinfo/Beyond-Misinformation-2015.pdf
Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, First Amended Grand Jury Petition, filed July 30, 2018 at the office of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, N.Y.
https://www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org/lc-doj-first-amended-grand-jury-petition/
In addition, a recent academic report on the related destruction of World Trade Center 7 destroys whatever confidence we might have in NIST’s accounts:
J. L. Hulsey, et al, A Structural Reevaluation of the Collapse of World Trade Center 7 (draft), University of Alaska Fairbanks, Sept. 2019.
https://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50694/signup_page/uaf-wtc7-draft-report?killorg=True&loggedOut=True
‘Pulp fiction’: Kremlin says alleged CIA mole was a minor official with no access to Putin
RT | September 10, 2019
A former official identified in media reports as a CIA asset in Russia worked in the presidential administration but never had access to Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin has claimed, adding that the man was fired several years ago.
US media reported on Monday that US intelligence carried out an operation in 2017 to extract a high-level Russian official who had worked as an informant for the CIA.
The incendiary claim has triggered a race to identify the alleged spy. Kommersant, a Russian daily, reported on Tuesday that the official may have been a man named Oleg Smolenkov.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Smolenkov worked in the government, but said he did not hold a senior position and was fired in 2016 or 2017.
“Indeed, Smolenkov used to work in the presidential administration, but was fired several years ago,” Peskov said. He added that the alleged spy was not a high-ranking official personally appointed by Putin.
He said that the Kremlin was unaware of Smolenkov’s whereabouts, and that the government could only confirm that a man by that name once worked for the administration but was later laid off.
Peskov was openly critical of the US media’s faith in the evidence-deficient story, describing their breathless reports as resembling something more suitable for Hollywood.
“All this speculation in the US media about who urgently extracted who and who saved who from who, that’s all, as you understand, more of a pulp fiction kind of genre.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also weighed in on the sensational story, stating that he had never met Smolenkov or followed his career or movements. Western media reports portray the alleged mole as a senior official who enjoyed direct access to Putin.
Earlier, both the White House and the CIA denied the media reports.
The CNN exclusive claims that the CIA asset was secretly ferried out of Russia amid fears that his identity could be compromised by US President Donald Trump’s alleged chummy relationship with Moscow. Some have speculated that the story was manufactured to smear the American president.
Science Goes Up In Rainforest Smoke
By Dr. David Whitehouse | August 29, 2019
The idea that the Amazon rainforest is the lungs of the world is so embedded in our minds that few questioned its widespread use when news about fires in the Amazon was reported this summer.
The idea is everywhere—so it’s obviously true. Trees absorb carbon dioxide (bad), don’t they, and give off oxygen (good), and there are billions of trees in the Amazon, so surely it makes sense.
Responding to the fires in the Amazon the Pope has said that the “Lungs of the forest are vital for the planet.”
Emmanuel Macron tweeted, “The Amazon rainforest – the lungs which produce 20% of the planet’s oxygen – is on fire.”
Leonardo DiCaprio has almost 3 million likes for his Instagram posting saying, “The lungs of the Earth are in flames.”
Christiano Ronaldo tweeted that The Amazon Rainforest produces more than 20% of the world’s oxygen,” adding #prayforamazonia
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas says “It’s the lungs of the Earth…which provides 20% of our oxygen.”
Barry Gardiner Shadow Minister for International Climate Change tweeted he couldn’t agree with Macron more.
Lib Dem MEP’s say the lungs of our planet are literally burning.
Even Donald Tusk, the President of the European Commission tweeted about “…the destruction of the green lungs of Planet Earth.”
The Rainforest Alliance said, “The lungs of the world are in flames.”
Friends of the Earth want a deal to stop the fires adding: “They need to say ‘we won’t do a deal with you if you are effectively condoning burning the lungs of the world’.”
WWF says the Amazon is popularly known as the lungs of the world.
DiCaprio’s Earth Alliance has formed an emergency Amazon Forest Fund with an initial commitment of $5 million to focus critical resources on the key protections needed to maintain the ‘lungs of the planet.’
However, as the saying goes, it’s not that simple – things never are in science. Check where the figure comes from (and it’s actually not that straightforward to do) and you will find that it’s not that simple. It’s actually wrong.
Geology’s Gift
The Amazon rainforest is not the lungs of the world and they do not produce 20% of the world’s oxygen as is so often said.
The Amazon rainforest is a vast, vital wonder, full of biodiversity and photosynthesizing plants producing 9% of the world’s photosynthetic output but, here is the key figure, 0% of its net output.
You could destroy all of the world’s forests and it would hardly affect our oxygen supply.
In fact, you could destroy every living thing on Earth and still not dent it because our atmosphere of 20.9% oxygen is the gift of geologic time, slow to build up and we have enough to last millions of years.
Yet this idea about the world’s lungs and of atmospheric oxygen needing to be refreshed and replenished—ideas unsupported by science—is everywhere.
Surely journalists would act differently from advocacy groups, celebrities, and politicians and check this fact before writing and broadcasting about it.
After all, journalists, especially science and environment journalists who are experts in their field, always check figures and statistics? Oh no, they don’t.
Just Google the phrase to see how many time it is repeated, by the BBC, the New York Times, CNN, The Australian, to name a few.
ITN, in particular, has risen above much of the other coverage with its over-the-top reporting. They say the Amazon is burning on a scale never seen before (nonsense). That the Amazon can never be replaced (nonsense), and that Nature is being killed (Oh come off it)!
Who Spoke Up?
If journalists, as well as politicians, celebrities, presidents and the Pope, can so easily slip into such scientific myth and get the facts so wrong, what credibility do they have on other issues of climate science?
Where are their science advisors? Surely they should make this mistake only once before being given proper advice.
Or is it that if any of them goes against the trend they fear the condemnation? This is not the way to tackle the important environmental issues we face.
Look how much we had to go through for science to wrench our minds free of what is “obviously true” and seek proof. Is climate science, or at least the public side of it, immune from normal scientific standards?
And where are the high-profile “public” scientists setting the record straight, highlighting that the Amazon rainforests are not the lungs of the world?
Blowing smoke over the Amazon – a strange story
or how to flip an average into a record without changing the data
By Catte Black – OffGuardian – August 28, 2019
My original article about the media presentation of the 2019 Amazon Rain Forest burning season produced a good deal more controversy than any of us anticipated. I don’t know how many times in the past four days OffG admins and editors have had to say “no, we aren’t claiming deforestation is a good idea”, but it’s been a few.
We also received our first DDoS attack in a couple of months the day after it was published. So, even the hackers were pissed off at us.
Surprising as it may be to those who favor knee jerk spontaneity over reading and reflection, I don’t think deforestation is a non-issue.
Which is why I said so in my previous article. And why OffG has repeated it numerous times since on our Twitter feed.
But let’s expand.
And put it in emphasis.
I, along with most other non-crazy people, believe the total or almost total destruction of the Amazon rain forest in order to build mahogany end tables or provide McDonald’s with cheap beef would be a crime of unprecedented dimensions.
(Maybe someone would like to cut and paste this as an automated tweet in response to anyone else who says “oh wow dude, so if you were on the Titanic you’d be like “what, there’s no problem?”)
I just also happen to think the importance of the subject doesn’t make buying into media memes about it, or lying about the data, somehow ok.
I don’t think it justifies hysteria, or uninformed rants from people who think indignation is a legitimate substitute for research data (“look how ANGRY I am, if this doesn’t fix things, nothing will!”).
I think that is –
a) often colonialist and patronizing, assuming the issue is so simple your massive western brain can grasp it simply by semi-digesting a couple of headlines over your cornflakes (“oh my God Janice, the Amazon is burning down, send that charity the Guardian are recommending some money and pass the milk”)
b) counter-productive, if not devastatingly destructive.
I’m not sure when the notion gained currency that exaggeration, lies and distortion were somehow appropriate if the event being lied about/exaggerated was “urgent” or “serious” enough, but it’s an idea antithetical to reason and truth.
The corollary also expressed, that demanding factual accuracy about such events is equivalent to denying their importance is equally, if not more disturbing.
It’s a mindset that invites manipulation and uncritical acceptance of authoritarian-inspired panic memes
But I’ll talk more about that another time. This is a follow up to the original article from August 23. There have been some interesting developments in the last few days and I think we should note them.
Firstly, as has been observed BTL on the original article, the three sources we cited underwent quite extensive revisions very shortly after our article was published.
Science20.com is the most noteworthy of these. On August 24, the day after we published our piece, the article we cited was completely re-written, presumably by its original author, identified as Robert Walker. In fact the changes implemented are so bizarre I want to look at them in some detail.
Here’s the original version we cited, now preserved only as an archive. This is the first part of the text:
NASA Say The Amazon Is Burning At Below Average Rates – Yet Many News Stories Say Record Rates???
Short summary: we have had wild fires for many years now in the Amazon, even in the tropical rainforest – mainly started by humans for forest clearing and ranching. It is not enough to impact significantly on the Paris agreement pledges yet though it is important in the long term if this continues for decades.
This image is beign shared with captions such as “The Amazon is burning at record rates – and deforestation is to blame”. NASA’s caption is that it is burning at less than average rates. Bit of a big difference there.
It shows smoke from fires in the Amazon region on 13th August 2019. These are not necessarily all forest fires. Some of these will be fires in pasture to stimulate new growth for the cattle.
So, go to the Global Fire Emissions Database. and this is what you see:
The green line for 2019 there is a bit hard to make out, so here is a zoom in, as you can see it is way below the top line which is for 2005, with only a few data points, and is also below the 2003 line.
The BBC is misreporting it as a “record”
Big difference between (sic) “record” and “Less than average”. By “record” all they mean is that there are more than for 2018. It’s also greater than for 2017, but less than for 2016. That is not how the word “record” is normally understood. (OffG emphasis)
The ranchers use fire for forest clearing, “slash and burn agriculture” as it is called. That is because it is much easier to convert forest into grassland by burning it than to do it by felling the trees. Once it is cut, the way they manage the pastures is to re-burn them every few years to clear out the brush and to get the grass to re-sprout.
So not all the fires you see are virgin forest. Many are controlled grassland fires, to get the grass to re-sprout. We do something similar in the UK where they do controlled burning of heather (muir burn) for grouse, sheep and deer. However, some of those fires get out of control (same sometimes happens for our moor fires) and burn the nearby forest at the forest edges.
So, not all the forest fires are deliberate clearing.
Also we do not risk losing the Amazon as a whole. That is something they used to think a few years back, but the research has moved on. A large part of the Amazon rainforest will remain through to 2100 even with high emissions – they survived the previous glacial minimum when it was warmer.
We do not need them for oxygen. This is just an urban myth. We have enough oxygen in the atmosphere already for thousands of years even if all the plants magically stopped producing oxygen.
The burnt areas do not become desert, but rather, regrow quickly as lower mass drier forests which given enough time over many decades and perhaps centuries would restore to tropical rainforest again – but in a warmer world some of them will turn to savannah with scattered trees, a habitat known as the Cerrada.
This is another article I’m writing to support people we help in the Facebook Doomsday Debunked group, that find us because they get scared, sometimes to the point of feeling suicidal about it, by such stories.
Do share this with your friends if you find it useful, as they may be panicking too.
This original version of the article is at pains to make certain things clear:
- it calls the media to task for describing the burning as “record”
- it says the Amazon as a whole is not under threat
- it says the Amazon is not needed for oxygen, and this is just an ‘urban myth’
- it says the burned areas do not become desert
- it asks readers to share the article with friends who may be panicking unnecessarily
But then, on August 24, Walker apparently had a complete change of heart, decided panicking might be a good idea after all, took down the above version, and replaced it with this one.
Is Amazon Rainforest Burning At Record Rates? What Is The Way Forward?
Short summary: we have had wild fires for many years now in the Amazon, even in the tropical rainforest – mainly started by humans for forest clearing and ranching. It is not enough to impact significantly on the Paris agreement pledges yet, though it is important in the long term if this continues for decades. It does of course have major and immediate impacts on forest residents, nature services and the biodiversity in Brazil.
This image is being shared widely, for instance in National Geographic’s “The Amazon is burning at record rates – and deforestation is to blame”. Similarly, the BBC is reporting it as ‘Record number of fires’ in Brazilian rainforest.
Yet, NASA’s own description for this photo says that it is burning at close to the average for the last 15 years. So, what is going on here?It turns out that the earlier 13th August [the date is an error, the article was from August 16, and updated August 22 – OffG] article gives the number of fires since 1st January but they use 1st May as the start date for the August 19 update.
There’s been a rapid increase of fires in the second half of August still continuing as of 24th August. it was at average levels or below average through to early August but had a huge uptick and is now close to the 2016 levels from 1st January and if it continues likely crosses them soon. But if you count from 1st May it is already way above recent previous years and close to rates last seen over a decade ago.
The new fires are more intense, near roads and show all the signs of being deliberate fires for deforestation. In addition, local farmers in Para district organized a “day of fire” on August 10th to show to Bolsonaro that they are ready to work and that they need to use fire to do so. So there is a clear link here. Bolsonaro however, in response to pressure internationally and also locally within Brazil has responded instead by sending in the army to stop the fires and he says that it is his duty to protect the Amazon. He also said clearly that these fires are illegal. There is also an investigation underway into the “day of fire”.
If they can stop the illegal fires this could make a big difference to deforestation figures for this year and indeed future years. There are more sustainable ways to increase the productivity of Brazil using existing land without impacting on the forest…
APOLOGIES – UPDATE FROM NASA FROM 19TH AUGUST – THEY NOW CONFIRM INPE INSTEAD OF SAYING IT IS BELOW AVERAGE
Previous version of this article was mistaken. I have made a copy on my website here (the comments on this article are based on that earlier version):
He then goes on to add some stuff about Trump and the G7, which isn’t in the first version. But then, after paragraphs of this interpolation, he reverts, way down the page, to many of his original non-panic points (scroll down and you will see what I mean).
This is very odd editing and the result is a car crash of clearly conflicting intentions. It’s not that the new text is revising the data or denying the claims it previously made. In fact it does not do this at all. Instead it uses a frenzied avalanche of words and non sequitur to give the impression it’s denying the claims, while it ends up actually re-affirming them elsewhere on the page.
In so doing, it replaces the cogent data points and arguments it previously used with the same vague claims of loosely-defined exceptionality you can read in the MSM, that imply a weight of ‘record’ significance but never say what that significance actually is. Such as:
It turns out that the earlier 13th August article gives the number of fires since 1st January but they use 1st May as the start date for the August 19 update.
This is presented as if it were an explanation of why NASA was claiming the fires were average at the same time the mass media were hyping “record” fires. But it’s obviously no such thing, as I go into further on.
And this:
The new fires are more intense, near roads and show all the signs of being deliberate fires for deforestation.
Maybe so, but since they are still well within the 15 year average, what difference does this make in any environmental sense? None is the obvious answer. Certainly neither Walker nor anyone else citing these points attempt to suggest any.
Further down the page it still has an approximation of the sections quoted above that attempt to debunk the alleged myths about the Amazon being essential for oxygen-production etc, though the wording has been toned down. It carries the same videos that try to put forest fires in a historical perspective (worth watching if you have the time).
On the question of the comparative amount of burning, the first version says:
By “record” all they mean is that there are more than for 2018. It’s also greater than for 2017, but less than for 2016. That is not how the word “record” is normally understood.
The new version says:
it was at average levels or below average through to early August but had a huge uptick and is now close to the 2016 levels from 1st January and if it continues likely crosses them soon
This is the same information, just the spin has been changed. And this is confirmed by the fact the same 17-year graphs that appear in the first version, showing 2019 to be an average burn year are re-posted in this version, just further down the page and with a rider added drawing attention to the ‘sudden’ rise in August.
Prominently displayed in the new version are four graphs from globalfiredata.org, the other website we referenced in our original piece. This website had also been updated August 24, and the graphs added.
As we can see the thick black lines showing burning activity for 2019 are highly striking and certainly appear to support the media contention that 2019 is “record-breaking,” and eliminate all the doubts previously being expressed.
But on closer inspection, they have simply been constructed to make the 2019 burning look as “record” as the headlines were already claiming.
To achieve this two things have been done to the data.
1) the earlier years that are included in the other graphs from the same source, and which all had much higher burn rates than anything more recent, have been eliminated from these new graphs. The rather thin rationale for doing this is the VIIR/MODIS measure only goes back to 2012.
2) They start the sample in May rather than in January. No rationale is given for this at all, and it’s hard to see any beyond the fact that excluding the earlier months is the only way to make 2019 stand out as being “record” in line with media claims.
NASA’s website has made a similar journey over the same period.
This article, which we originally quoted, still says the burn activity in the Amazon is “close to average” and explains that a lot of farmers burn their land in the dry season.
As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years. (The Amazon spreads across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and parts of other countries.) Though activity appears to be above average in the states of Amazonas and Rondônia, it has so far appeared below average in Mato Grosso and Pará, according to estimates from the Global Fire Emissions Database, a research project that compiles and analyzes NASA data
This one, referenced by Walker and published just before his revised piece, might superficially appear to contradict the above claim, but – in a similar fashion to Walker’s piece – actually doesn’t if you look closely:
MODIS active fire detections in 2019 are higher across the Brazilian Amazon than in any year since 2010. The state of Amazonas is on track for record fire activity in 2019.
What NASA has done here in order to be able to claim a ‘record’ where previously there was an ‘average’ is simply switch from a fifteen-year analysis in the first article, to a nine-year one in the second. As I already pointed out above in relation to the revised graphs, this removes all the years of major burning this century and instantly shifts 2019 much further up toward the top of any comparative table.
Note also that NASA’s claim is not really true. Even within these somewhat distorted parameters 2019 is NOT higher than any year since 2010. As of today (August 27) 2016 is still just higher in total activity, and of course the earlier years of the 21st century were much higher again, but have been eliminated, apparently just for the purpose of making 2019 look a bit more “record-breaking”.
What we have here, in both the Sceince20.com article and in NASA’s ‘update’, is interpretation-manipulation being passed off as data-update. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion this is a direct attempt to make their pages fall in line with the current media hysteria.
Looking at the wider issue, it’s pretty clear an orchestrated campaign to create unique panic and fear about the Amazon forest fires was initiated, not because the 2019 fires were uniquely dangerous, but because public fear was perceived as useful for promoting an agenda.
What agenda? I think it’s too early to get a comprehensive answer there. Many straws blowing in the wind. It’s been suggested Bolsonaro, the new imperial puppet, may have been proving a little antsy and required pulling into line. Or that it’s a concealed attempt at strengthening his position while appearing to attack it.
There’s this little straw in the wind that shouldn’t be ignored:
#Brazil is clearly unable to be caretaker of the #Amazon rainforest as shown by the #AmazonFire. Given the ecological, medicinal and climate importance to our entire species, perhaps it’s time to place part of the Amazon rainforest under international treaty similar to Antarctica pic.twitter.com/OiLsw5hlkZ
— Matthew VanDyke (@Matt_VanDyke) August 26, 2019
An “international treaty” would certainly be a nice cover for exploitation of the Amazon’s riches. It can’t be discounted as one possible motive for fomenting a fake crisis where only an endemic problem exists.
Or this:
We have a crisis. We have a new tipping point. We have the UN climate action summit around the corner. We have a villain. Our heroine arrives in NYC soon. #NewDealForNature
The #BehaviouralEconomics of hatred. https://t.co/jleIN4m1ip
— Cory Morningstar (@elleprovocateur) August 27, 2019
Only the markets can save us.
Certification schemes. Green Bonds. A “New Deal For Nature”. We need momentum. We need that “Paris moment”. pic.twitter.com/2isJlyrFyP
— Cory Morningstar (@elleprovocateur) August 27, 2019
Or this:
The media focus on the burning #Amazon rather than Siberia’s boreal forest ‘aims to allow Europeans to control the Amazon, its minerals, its pharmaceutical treasures & its precious woods. Its purpose is to distort the problem b4 providing a false solution’https://t.co/T2OFtZgbsI
— Robin Monotti Graziadei (@robinmonotti) August 27, 2019
There are no shortage of possibilities once the question “cui bono?” is asked.
If that question isn’t asked, if it’s outlawed as “unhelpful” or “conspiratorial”, we can become trapped in a refusal to interrogate. And that can lead to disaster.
Too many of us become utterly trusting as soon as our hot button subjects are on the front pages. People who know the media is utterly corrupt can still switch off their critical thinking when it starts to venture any opinion they can agree with.
Commentators who deride the absurd media lies about the Skripals or Corbyn or Syria or Russia still share the Environment page of the BBC or the Guardian, as if somehow honesty and integrity are guaranteed there.
George Monbiot, serial liar and lunatic when it comes to Syria or western foreign policy, is trusted to be an honest broker when he talks about climate change or veganism, or saving the whales.
It’s too easy for any one of us to tell ourselves the mainstream journalist who is saying what we want to hear must have a good and honest reason for saying it.
It’s so comforting to just shut off the critical awareness and drift on the cloud of manufactured ‘popular opinion’. Seductive to be in the majority for once. Reassuring to have someone do the thinking for us so we can, just for a bit, ride easy in their wake.
But the problem is then we end up signing up for Avaaz. Or cheering on the invasion of Iraq – because of those scary WMDs, or thinking thank goodness the G7 are going to do something about those terrifying “record” Amazon fires.
Because we forgot that the mass media and the body politic serve the super-rich, the financial institutions, the intelligence agencies and no one else.
And they always lie, because they always need to hide that simple fact.
*PS – I STILL don’t support the destruction of the rain forests.
Catte Black, OffG co-founding editor. Writer. Opinionated polemicist.
Amazon Burning? – well maybe not so much
Statistics indicate this is an average year for wildfires, so why the above-average hysteria?
By Catte Black – OffGuardian – August 23, 2019
Today on Twitter OffG stepped into the current panic-inferno and thick forest of screaming hashtags that is the “Amazon Forest Fire Crisis.” The results were thought-provoking.
The mainstream media message is very simple. There are “record” numbers of forest fires currently in the Amazon basin. It’s mostly Bolsonaro’s fault. The G7 – soon to be assembling – needs to act. (Business Insider and The Guardian are also both very keen we send money to some rainforest charities)
Now, I’m not a fan of Bolsonaro personally, and that goes for all of us at OffG. I’m equally very supportive of preserving the rain forests and wild spaces of the earth. So, the broad sweep of the message is something I’m inclined to be sympathetic toward.
But something isn’t sitting right. This is the mainstream media in full and united chorus, flooding the news space with this one single message. This means there’s a fairly major agenda, and it’s unlikely to be saving the Amazon for all the little future babies.
So, we thought we’d take a deeper look and tweeted this:
How unusual/unnatural are these fires? What percentage burns naturally every year? Be nice to have data rather than hysteria. https://t.co/BDi95EXCiu
— OffGuardian (@OffGuardian0) August 23, 2019
Three people immediately unfollowed us. A couple of others responded. Here’s one:
“Hysteria?” You are being irresponsible and lazy. “Fires in the Amazon have surged 83% so far this year compared with the same period a year earlier, environmentalists blamed the sharp rise on farmers setting the forest alight to clear land for pasture” https://t.co/USit1oOL8p pic.twitter.com/pLPibygyp0
— Representative Press (@RepPress) August 23, 2019
We replied to RP with the following:
Yes, hysteria. What’s the annual variation? How do these fires compare with a 10 year average? A 50 year average? Asking for data is NEVER irresponsible. Demonising it as ‘lazy’ may well be however. Please note we aren’t claiming this isn’t a problem, just asking for context
— OffGuardian (@OffGuardian0) August 23, 2019
RP’s hostility only increased, and they retweeted the same basic claim again, apparently in the belief it was new and revelatory and an answer to our questions:
Are you incapable of doing research and of applying basic logic? You think the sharp rise in farmers setting fires is “made up?” I found this info in seconds: https://t.co/e11v2RH84r pic.twitter.com/o6RP5K83mL
— Representative Press (@RepPress) August 23, 2019
In fairness, we also got some positive response, most notably from the always rational Robin Monotti Graziadei. We recommend taking time to read the whole thread.
During the Medieval Climate Anomaly, the period most similar to recent decades, warm & dry climatic conditions resulted in peak forest burning, but severe fires favored less-flammable deciduous vegetation, such that fire frequency remained stationary:https://t.co/wTkIgCQm5h
— Robin Monotti Graziadei (@robinmonotti) August 23, 2019
Someone else then sent us a link to this article at Science20.com
In this article you can find a quote from the Earth Observatory , which up until August 22 read as follows:
As of August 16, 2019, satellite observations indicated that total fire activity in the Amazon basin was slightly below average in comparison to the past 15 years. Though activity has been above average in Amazonas and to a lesser extent in Rondônia, it has been below average in Mato Grosso and Pará, according to the Global Fire Emissions Database”
(SIDEBAR: this text was changed on Aug 22 and now reads, significantly “As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years.”, although the data on which this conclusion is based has not apparently changed. You can check the archived version for proof of the edit.)
On the same site (science20.com) you can also find this graph of “cumulative monthly fire data” for the Amazon basin (the original is at from GlobalFireData.org):
This clearly indicates that the current amount of burning in the Amazon basin in 2019 (the green line) is, as NASA originally said,somewhat below the average, and well below the previous extremes for the region.
This will be why, when you look close, the media articles are artfully talking about the number of fires, rather than the area of burning. There may well be more fires (or maybe that’s just been made up like so much else), but that’s a statistic without meaning if the total area covered is actually less than a fifteen-year average.
Now, we’re not about to take NASA as a final authority on this any more than any other single source. But given the amount of emphasis being put by the screaming media on how “unprecedented” the current burning is, and how deceptive this might turn out to be, it seemed important to us that this data was at least discussed. So we tweeted a ref to it.
Given the fact NASA has said the current total burning in the Amazon basin is slightly BELOW a 15 year average, we need to ask what the current media hysteria is aimed at achieving. https://t.co/BDi95EG1qW
— OffGuardian (@OffGuardian0) August 23, 2019
This was one response:
you can breath stats if you wish, I prefer oxygen!
Most stats are manipulated or self serving anyway!https://t.co/ZtH5IEXi2x— 💧truth-seeker (@very_grem) August 23, 2019
Here is another. Visit our timeline for more.
NASA = America = Trump = The far-right.
— Roy Underwood (@TannersCross) August 23, 2019
It turns out the messy truth behind the blaring headlines is – yes, the Amazon is burning but not as much as in many recent times, and while Bolsonaro is not a nice man accusing him of burning the world down is probably a bit premature.
To be fair a few people shared or retweeted this information. But they were very few. Most simply ignored it, intent, like Greenwald and Media Lens, Naomi Klein et al in joining chorus with the shrieking mainstream doom-sirens.
Bolsonaro is simultaneously denying the severity of the Amazon crisis and, worse, recklessly claiming environmental groups started them, because he knows the world recognizes he’s to blame. He can’t escape that responsibility, as @davidmirandario said today in Congress [English]: pic.twitter.com/CAiWKsUCEp
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 23, 2019
‘The French and German leaders say the record number of fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is an international crisis which must be discussed at this weekend’s G7 summit.’https://t.co/aiwzg8lJST
— Media Lens (@medialens) August 23, 2019
The world is on fire and in country after country the arsonists are ascending to the highest office. This is utter madness. We need a global #GreenNewDeal. We all need to ask ourselves: who do we trust to lead that and how will we help them? https://t.co/6gYXI1cwUG
— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) August 22, 2019
Make a note of that #GreenNewDeal hashtag. We’ll be seeing a lot of that in the next week or so.
Before the inevitable “oh so you don’t care if all the possums DIE” type comments BTL, let’s make it ultra-clear, this isn’t about disparaging environmentalism or claiming it’s fine for the Amazon to burn (though actually it is, up to a point, and is an important part of the forest’s life cycle).
It’s about the fact so many of us – even many who think of themselves as sophisticated analysts – are still as much in the grip of authoritarian story-telling as our ancestors were when they heard tales of heaven and hell and believed them.
Thank goodness for a few lone voices of sanity, like Robin again:
Media are ignoring data in order to sell the Green New Deal scam https://t.co/KJX767XS2C
— Robin Monotti Graziadei (@robinmonotti) August 23, 2019
Hmmm… is that Green New Deal the reason why this apparently fairly average year of burning has been morphed by the power of lies into the latest doomsday meme? Why exactly would so many corporate news outlets be so keen to sell us that?
Oh who cares, right? It’s hard. Memes are easy. Did you know that the Amazon produces 20% of our Oxygen? No, because it doesn’t. But that’s not stopping everyone repeating it.
A few cyberwarfare-generated hashtags, a few (sometimes misattributed) images and there is a mass belief-system unfolding before our eyes. Uncritical, rabid, rancid with fear, demanding solutions.
Just in time for the G7 summit – where I’m sure a Green New Deal “solution” will emerge right on cue, to universal cheers and a few more hashtags handed down to the proles to be spread about in the name of “standing up to the 1%”.
We have to do better, guys, or it’s over. We’re done.
Catte Black, OffG co-founding editor. Writer. Opinionated polemicist.
Fake News and Fires in the Amazon
Media outlets are supposed to be more reliable than your brother-in-law, but that seems less true every day.
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | August 28, 2019
Politicians and government officials like to talk as though it’s possible to stamp out fake news. It isn’t.
Fake news is as old as humanity. After Aristotle incorrectly claimed women had fewer teeth than men, generations of highly educated people believed it.
Rajendra Pachauri was called “the UN’s top climate scientist” by the BBC – and a “Nobel laureate” by the New York Academy of Sciences magazine. Neither statement was true.
Pachauri’s doctorate wasn’t in climatology, but in industrial engineering and economics. And the fact that he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the UN organization he chaired doesn’t make him or any other person affiliated with that organization a Nobel laureate.
Published in 2008 and 2009, these inaccurate statements have never been corrected. In other words, we’re surrounded by fake news. And always will be. Humans are frequently mistaken. Organizations, as well as individuals, post things on the Internet before double-checking.
While media outlets are supposed to be more reliable than your brother-in-law, that seems less true every day. Over the past week, people have shared a CNN headline on Facebook that declares: “The Amazon rainforest is burning at a record rate” (see the screengrab from my own Facebook feed, at the top of this post).
If you click through to the CNN website, you’ll find a few extra words: “… research center says.” But the primary statement is misleading. Which means that millions have been alarmed unnecessarily – including a lovely, smart, young mother of my acquaintance.
Over at the website of National Geographic, a headline falsely declares: Brazil’s Amazon is burning at record rates – and deforestation is to blame. The second half of that assertion is vigorously disputed here.
On Twitter, the President of France used an image taken by a photographer who’s been dead for 16 years to represent the current situation. Let me just emphasize that point: the head of a G7 country is spreading fake news about events unfolding on another continent.
That doesn’t, for one minute, mean anyone should have the power to shut him down. Not Twitter, Facebook, the EU, the UN, or anyone in his own government.
Like it or not, we’re stuck with fake news. Our best defense is to read widely and maintain a high level of skepticism. On this question, here’s some counterbalance to the recent tsunami of alarmism:
Why Everything They Say About The Amazon, Including That It’s The ‘Lungs Of The World,’ Is Wrong
Amazon fires: how celebrities are spreading disinformation
Is Amazon Rainforest Burning At Record Rates? What Is The Way Forward?
Lies, Damn Lies, And Rainforest Fear-Mongering
Annual Amazon farmland burn sets records for international outrage
Amazon fires: What about Bolivia?
Stop Sharing Those Viral Photos of the Amazon Burning
The Three Most Viral Photos of the Amazon Fire Are Fake. Here Are Some Real Ones to Share.
What Satellite Imagery Tells Us About the Amazon Rain Forest Fires
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Stanislav Krapivnik: Russia-Iran Cooperation & Escalation in Ukraine
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Are the Jews indigenous to Palestine?
By David Miller | Al Mayadeen | August 3, 2022
There is a rising tide of claims from apologists for the crimes of Zionism that they have been misunderstood. Palestinians might be indigenous to Palestine, but the Jews definitely are. What is called the ‘Israel-Palestine’ conflict, they say, is competition over the same small piece of land by two rival groups of indigenous people. But are the Jews indigenous to the Levant? And what are the consequences of the argument?
In fact, most of the power structure of the Zionist state is dominated by Ashkenazi Jews who have no ancestral link to Palestine. Overall despite very significant financial and infrastructural contributions from Western European countries (especially the US, UK and France, for example via the Rothschild family), Eastern European Ashkenazim have been at the centre of the Zionist power structure since the early years of the 20th Century. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Are the Jews indigenous to Palestine?
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