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The 5th Annual Fake News Awards!

Corbett • 01/29/2022

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You’ve been waiting for it all year. So stop waiting. It’s here! The 5th Annual Fake News Awards! Bringing you the worst in dinosaur media lies, smears and outright fiction from the past year. Join your host Bent Krockman for a whirlwind tour of fake photos, fake fact checks, fake politicians and of course the fake story of the year. Also, stay tuned for a musical performance by the new pop hit supergroup, KABAAL . . . and a word from our corporate sponsor!

Watch on Archive / BitChute / Minds / Odysee or Download the mp4

For those with limited bandwidth, CLICK HERE to download a smaller, lower file size version of this episode.

For those interested in audio quality, CLICK HERE for the highest-quality version of this episode (WARNING: very large download).

Fakest Photo or Video of the Year

AND THE RUNNERS-UP ARE:

The photoshopped photo from Norwegian newspaper Sunnmørsposten of a “masked” Olav Mestad, the chief medical officer of Ålesund, who was in fact maskless

Biden “driving” an electric F-150

Fake videos of the Kabul evacuation, including a video of a man allegedly hanging out on the engine of a departing plane (although massive props to the Vietnamese graphic designer who originally posted the video, including a whole series of such fakes)

AND THE LOSER IS…

“Gunshot Victims Left Waiting as Horse Dewormer Overdoses Overwhelm Oklahoma Hospitals, Doctor Says” a September 2021 article from Rolling Stone that manages a rare triple play: not only is all of the information presented in the story factually incorrect, and not only did they fail to retract the story when it was debunked (instead opting for the lying “update”), but even the picture they used to illustrate the article was fake news!

See “The Media Fell for a Viral Hoax About Ivermectin Overdoses Straining Rural Hospitals” for more on this truly galling display of faux jounalism.

Fakest Politician or Health Official

AND THE RUNNERS-UP ARE:

AOC showing up maskless among a sea of masked servants in a “tax the rich” dress to the $35,000 a ticket Met Gala, a dress designed by a tax evader

Justin Trudeau for “anti-vaxxers are racist misogynists”

Trump for calling the Warp Speed MAGA jabs his “greatest achievement” and bragging that “I’m boosted”

AND THE LOSER IS…

Fauci for “attacks on me are attacks on science.”

Is this real life? Did he actually just say that? That is straight up, comic book, Palpatine-level “I am the Senate!” energy right there.

See my episode on Science Says! for a point-by-point deconstruction of this fundamentally anti-scientific idea and read The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for a point-by-point takedown of Fauci’s entire career.

Fakest Fact Check of the Year

AND THE RUNNERS-UP ARE:

PolitiFact for their “Pants on Fire” “debunking” of the laboratory origins of SARS-COV-2 . . . which they later had to update with a note to say that since the “experts” they relied on for their “fact check” had changed their mind, they were “removing this fact-check from our database pending a more thorough review” (…we’re still waiting, Poynter!)

CTV News for No, COVID-19 vaccines do not violate the Nuremberg Code, which incorrectly states that the COVID vaccines are “long past the experimental stage”

IFLScience (a website with a checkered history of stealing other people’s work, for “Fact Check: Will We Be Microchipped With Vaccine Passports?”  which uses the very real story of how a Swedish company has devloped a mircrochip that can showcase your vaccine passport status to argue that it’s a “public relations nightmare for scientists and a gift to anti-vaxxers,” who are obviously still crazy even when they are demonstrably right.

AND THE LOSER IS…

ALL OF THEM! That’s right, in a bombshell story late last year Facebook admitted that ‘fact checks’ are nothing more than opinion

Fakest Climate Change Story

AND THE RUNNERS-UP ARE:

The Lancet for “The 2021 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: code red for a healthy future” which was immediately picked up and regurgitated by the lying corporate media despite the fact that its central assertion that rising temperatures are leading to rising death tolls is directly contradicted by the published research demonstrating that deaths caused by non-optimum temperatures are declining by tens of thousands of people each year.

The Victoria Times-Colonist for “B.C. doctor clinically diagnoses patient as suffering from ‘climate change’
,” in which they fall for the transparent publicity stunt of Dr. Kyle Merritt of Kootenay Lake Hospital in Nelson, B.C. who clinically diagnosed a patient with diabetes and heart failure with “climate change.” Not only did the Times-Colonist “reporter” not seek any alternative viewpoint to Dr. Merritt’s nonsensical non-diagnosis, it neglected to inform its readers of University of Washington meteorologist Cliff Mass’ exhaustively documented work showing that the “Great Northwest Heatwave” last summer was not climate change but merely weather (because, as we all know, Weather is not Climate!…except when it suits the narrative).

The usual gaggle of climate hypocrites who flew their private jets to the COP26 conference in Scotland to lecture the little people about how they need to reduce their carbon footprint

AND THE LOSER IS…

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero for their scheme to get the world’s population on board with the creation of a $130 trillion investment trough to be stewarded over by the organized crime syndicate of crooks, criminals, con artists and eugenicists in international finance in the name of “saving the earth!”

For more on this supergroup of evildoers, see:

Whitney Webb Exposes How Green Finance is Monopolizing the Planet

Absolute Zero: The Global Agenda Revealed

Welcome to the New Economy

FAKE NEWS STORY OF THE YEAR

“100% safe and effective!”

Because we HAVE to go with a single story, we’ll give this dino to … ohhh, I dunno …

Rachel Maddow for “the vaccines will get us to the end of this.”

. . . but to be fair, she wasn’t the only one spreading that fake news.

Of course, none of this was surprising to anyone who was paying attention. Viewers of The Future of Vaccines already knew the truth about these non-vaccines way back in December of 2020.

To be sure, there are any number of ancillary fake news stories that deserve to share in this award:

Like the NBC opinion piece, “The Covid vaccine is safe, whatever anti-vaxxers say. Here’s why we can trust it,” which dovetails with the Milken Institute talk on a “universal flu vaccine” that took place in October of 2019 and featured Tony Fauci and Rick Bright discussing the need for a crisis to speed up development of mRNA vaccines (2019). (More on that aspect of the scam from the Unlimited Hangout series on Moderna: Part I and Part II.)

Also, there was the fake news narrative about the  “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” That propaganda fairy tale has been utterly smashed over the past year by Ryan Cristian of The Last American Vagabond, who has amply demonstrated that the truth is the polar opposite. In fact, there is a pandemic of the injected.

Then there are the “mystery heart attack” stories, like “Mystery rise in heart attacks from blocked arteries,” which miraculously fails to even mention the word “vaccine” despite the fact that the experimental mRNA injection are scientifically proven to “dramatically increase inflammation on the endothelium and T cell infiltration of cardiac muscle” and “Up to 300,000 people facing heart-related illnesses due to post-pandemic stress disorder, warn physicians,” which cites “two London physicians” claiming (without evidence) that “as many as three million people in Britain are already suffering from Post-Pandemic Stress Disorder” before bizarrely pivoting into the one and only health condition they attribute to the disorder: heart related problems . . . without ever once mentioning (you guessed it!) the scientifically-proven link between the experimental COVID injections and the increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis among otherwise healthy young men. (And that’s not even mentioning the 278% increase in heart attack deaths among soccer players this past year.)

There’s also Brianne Dressen and all the other people with life-altering injuries from the injections who have been censored, suppressed and marginalized over and over this past year.

And then there’s the Noam Chomskys of the world saying that the unvaxxed will have to be segregated from society and starve to death if necessary and the Neil Youngs of the world clamouring for the suppression of information on this subject.

Truly, many many people have contributed to this, the fakest story of the year (if not the century) and the largest ongoing uncontrolled medical experiment in the history of the human species.

January 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Reuters has finally dropped the misleading ‘Houthi rebels’ narrative

By Omar Ahmed | MEMO | January 28, 2022

After several years in being at the forefront of Western mainstream media’s coverage of the war on Yemen, describing it as being between the Saudi-led coalition and the “Iranian-backed Houthi rebels”, the news agency Reuters appears to have stopped using this phrase, and even ceased referring to the Houthis as “rebels” altogether.

With the exception of some image captions, the last time the news agency used the phrase in a body of text was as recent as a month ago, with subsequent articles now referring to the group as the Iran-aligned “Houthi movement“(formally the Ansar Allah). Though they have on occasion previously referred to the group as such, throughout the course of the seven-year war the dominant narrative has been that of troublesome “rebels”. Reuters, of course, is not alone in this regard as a plethora of news sites and agencies continue with this slant, including the Associated Press. Leading news services such as Reuters influence other news organisations and therefore how we perceive events, in effect acting as “wholesale news providers”.

While this slight editorial amendment may not seem like that much of a big deal, for those of us who have been monitoring the developments of the conflict over the years, including its coverage in the media, this is quite a significant step forward in how members of the international community perceive and understand the war in Yemen. Crucially, this also could be a nod towards the eventual recognition of the Houthi-led National Salvation Government (NSG), which has been the de facto revolutionary government for most of the densely populated north of the country since it was established in 2016.

The shift away from the framing of the Ansar Allah movement as a rag-tag bunch of rebels is important, because contrary to what has often been stated, the conflict wasn’t sparked by the mere seizing of the capital Sanaa by Houthi militiamen alone in 2014. They had the support of most of Yemen’s armed forces – once long-time former foes following six round of wars since 2004 when the Houthis were indeed a rebel faction. Many of these armed forces were loyalists to the late President Ali Abdullah Saleh and have remained in this alliance despite Saleh’s demise at the hands of Houthis over attempts to return to the Saudi fold.

This event, the fall of Sanaa, is referred locally and popularly at least in the north, as the September 21 Revolution and itself was ignited by the failures of the so-called Gulf Initiative whereby President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi was to serve as an interim leader for two years (which was extended to the present after he won an uncontested election), and the fateful decision by Hadi to cut fuel subsidies, which the Houthis and other oppositionists united against in mass protests.

This was actually the region’s sole genuine “revolution” in so far as post-Arab Spring political upheavals are concerned, despite being incomplete and not supported in the south, which has its own complex history and political aspirations. The potent mix of military support and alliances with the majority faction of political elites of the old order belonging to Saleh’s former ruling General People’s Congress (GPC) party has helped explain and maintain the Houthis’ hold on power over the capital and elsewhere in the north, with most of the media attention focused on an exaggerated role of Iran, which recognises and supports the NSG authorities.

However the fact that Yemeni armed forces are fighting against the Saudi-led coalition and its disparate mercenary and militia forces on the ground is more often than not overlooked or omitted from reports by press agencies who tend to simplify the conflict as being one between the Saudi-led coalition – which was called upon by the Saudi-based, exiled President Hadi – against an Iranian-backed rebel group. While it could be that the average consumer of these reports are not looking for in-depth, political analysis, which of course can be found elsewhere, it certainly doesn’t help in our comprehension of who is who, and therefore obscures the political reality and helps prolong the conflict.

The obfuscation caused by painting the joint military and Houthi “popular committees” forces as mere “Houthi rebels” in the mainstream media is an issue I have raised and have written about on several occasions since writing for MEMO and it is promising to finally see this being corrected.

What really caught my attention recently on this change, was a Reuters explainer piece on the war in Yemen, which has also been republished on the MEMO site. It states: “In late 2014, the Houthis seized Sana’a with help from pro-Saleh army units, initially forcing Hadi to share power, then arresting him in early 2015”, which as far as I’m aware is the perhaps the closest the agency has come to acknowledging the Yemeni military’s role in the revolution.

It has only been a month since Reuters has dropped the “Houthi rebels” trope and is still early days, but there is a chance that discontinuing this unhelpful and inaccurate narrative will be replicated in other news sites and international organisations. The recent retaliatory attacks against coalition partner the UAE – an important global hub, by Yemen’s Houthi-aligned armed forces, has brought the world’s attention back onto the movement and their increasingly sophisticated military capabilities. They are clearly being taken more seriously, with further warnings that the Dubai Expo could be targeted if the Emiratis continue their war efforts against Yemen, which includes occupying Socotra and backing the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC). Strategically and a major escalation for the Houthis, the UAE is also supporting the formidable Giants Brigade forces who have been undermining the Houthi advance onto Marib city, the last pro-Hadi stronghold in the north.

This all contributes to the renewed interest in the Houthis, who they are and where they stand in this war. As the NSG wields the most power and authority in the country, and most of the armed forces are fighting with the Houthis against foreign aggressors amid continued war crimes and a humanitarian crisis, it becomes more imperative than ever for the world to be more informed and at least get a better idea of the conflict. Moving on from the idea that this is a war against a group of rebels is a start in the right direction, albeit long overdue.

January 28, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Justin Trudeau Ducks the Great Trucker Revolt

BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | JANUARY 27, 2022

The resistance reveals itself always in unexpected ways. As I type, thousands of truckers (numbers are in flux and are in dispute) are part of a 50-mile-long convoy in Canada, headed to the capital city of Ottawa in protest against an egregious vaccine mandate imposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They will be joined upon arrival by vast numbers of protestors who are defying the restrictions, closures, and mandates of the last nearly two years.

The triple-vaccinated Trudeau, meanwhile, has decided that he has to go into deep hiding because he was exposed to Covid. A clean, ruling-class, fit, and fashionable lefty like him cannot be expected to face such a pathogen directly. As a member of the vanguard of the lockdown elite, he must never take risks (however small) and must keep himself safe. It is merely a matter of coincidence that he will be locked away in hiding as the truckers arrive together with hundreds of thousands of citizens who are fed up with being treated like lab rats.

Previously, Trudeau had said nearly two years ago that the truckers were heroes. On March 31, 2020, he tweeted: “While many of us are working from home, there are others who aren’t able to do that – like the truck drivers who are working day and night to make sure our shelves are stocked. So when you can, please #ThankATrucker for everything they’re doing and help them however you can.”

It’s true. Like many “essential workers” in the US, these truckers bravely faced the virus and many already gained natural immunity, which Canadian law does not recognize. Trudeau decided that they needed to be forced to get the vaccine anyway. Keep in mind: these are the people who get food to the stores, packages to homes, and all products that keep life moving. If they don’t drive, the people don’t eat. It’s that simple.

Few events in modern times have revealed the vast chasm that exists between the ruled and rulers, especially as it pertains to class. For nearly two years, the professional class has experienced a completely different reality than the working class. In the US, this only began to change once the highly vaccinated Zoom class got Covid anyway. Only then did we start seeing articles about how there is no shame in getting sick. It appears that in many countries, the working class that was forced into early confrontation with the virus are saying that they aren’t going to take it anymore (and many are playing that song to make the point).

It’s a massive workers’ strike but not the kind of communist dreams. This is a “working class” movement that stands squarely for freedom against all the impositions of the last two years, which were imposed by an overclass with almost no consultation from legislatures. Canada has had some of the worst, much to the shock of its citizens. The convoy is an enormous show of power concerning who really keeps the country running.

The convoy is being joined by truckers from all over the US too, rising up in solidarity. This is easily the most meaningful and impactful protest to emerge in North America. It is being joined by as many as half a million Canadian citizens, who overwhelmingly support this protest, as one can observe from the cheers on the highway along the way. Indeed, it’s likely to break the record for the largest trucker convoy in history, as well as the most loved.

Trudeau, meanwhile, has dismissed the whole thing as a “small fringe” of extremists and says it means nothing to him and will change nothing. This is because, he says, these truckers hold “unacceptable views.”

This is setting up to be one of the most significant clashes in the world in the great battle between freedom and those governments have set out to crush it.

Meanwhile, I’m looking now for information on this in the mainstream media. It is almost nonexistent outside social media. Fox is covering some of it but that’s about it. The Epoch Times is a wonderful exception, as we’ve come to expect in recent months. It’s not being covered in any depth in Canadian papers and TV. All the usual subjects in the US have completely ignored this mighty movement. It’s almost like these venues have created an alternate version of reality, one that denies the astonishing reality that anyone can see outside the window.

Yes, I know that we have all come to expect that the corporate media will not cover what actually matters, and much of what it does cover it does only with a strong bias toward narratives crafted by ruling elites. Even so, it seems to stretch credulity beyond any plausible extent for the major media to pretend that this isn’t happening. It is and it has massive implications for the present and the future.

This is not really or just about vaccine mandates. It’s about what they represent: government taking possession of our lives. If they can force you to get an injection in your arm over which you have doubts, all bets for freedom are off. There must be evidence that you complied. The phone app is next, which gets tied to your bank account and your job and your access to communications and your ability to pay your rent or mortgage. It means eventually 100% government control over the whole of life. The technology already exists. Everything going on now with these passports is driving to this point.

This is why the truckers are striking this way. It is an act of bravery but also of desperation. Once the tyranny of health passports arrives, there will be no escape. The window of opportunity to do something about this will have closed. So this is the moment. There might not be another one. Something needs to be done to fight for human rights and freedom, and put in place systems that make lockdowns and mandates impossible in the future.

This is the largest and latest example of the revolt and one that could make the biggest difference yet. But it is only one sign among many that the ruling elites in most countries have overplayed their hand. They have arrogantly imposed their plans for everyone else based on the opinions of only a few and without real consultation with experts with differences of opinion or with the people whose lives have been profoundly affected by the pandemic response.

In the US the revolt is taking many forms. There was the rally in DC this past weekend. It was impressive. Also the latest polls on political alliances show that the Democrats have lost a major part of their base. Virginia right now points to where this is headed. The party lost vast amounts of its political power in elections last year and now Republicans rule the state with great popularity.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at Biden’s latest poll numbers. I almost cannot believe my eyes. We are talking about an overall 14-point split between approve and disapprove. If this is an indication of what happens to the pro-lockdown political elite, it stands to reason that Trudeau should be worried.

In the Vietnam War, many Americans fled the draft by going to the safe haven on the northern border. That’s one way that Canada had earned its long reputation for being delightfully normal, peaceful, and mercifully boring. Pandemic policies in Canada changed that, with some of the longest-lasting stringencies in the world.

No one asked the workers. Now they are rising up. Nor does it matter that 90% of the Canadian public is vaccinated. Possessing that status alone does not mean that people no longer feel resentment for being forced to accept what they do not believe they needed and did not want in the first place. The vaccinated do not automatically give up their longing to be free and to have their human rights recognized.

The resistance to tyranny in our times is taking many unexpected forms. There will be many confrontations on the way, and there is still a very long way to go. At some point, and no one knows when or how, something has to give.

January 27, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

The Covid evidence dismissed by the BBC as ‘conspiracy-laden’

By Sally Beck | TCW Defending Freedom | January 27, 2022

ALLEGED evidence of negligence in handling the Covid vaccination rollout by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) submitted to the Metropolitan Police has been dismissed by the BBC as a ‘conspiracy-laden criminal complaint’.

The BBC further claim that the four-hour oral testimony given to officers at Hammersmith and Fulham Police Station by three legal and one medical professional alleged ‘genocide’ and ‘depopulation’.

‘This is not true,’ said Philip Hyland, the lawyer whose testimony police heard. ‘I was quite careful not to say genocide and depopulation. I said negligence, misfeasance, corporate manslaughter and misconduct in a public office, but not genocide or depopulation.’

On January 7, the BBC published an article headlined ‘Anti-vax protests: “Sovereign citizens” fight UK Covid vaccine rollout’. It said: ‘Conspiracy-laden criminal complaints have recently been filed with the police in the UK and also the International Criminal Court, alleging ‘genocide’ and ‘depopulation’ via vaccinations.’

On January 18, Mr Hyland wrote to Alistair Coleman, one of two journalists – Shayan Sardarizadeh was the second – who co-authored the piece, complaining that they had failed to check details of the complaint with the Met Police or with him. ‘This breaches standard journalistic practice,’ he said via email. The BBC’s own editorial guidelines are clear that he should have been given his ‘right to reply’.

The complaint to the ICC was nothing to do with Mr Hyland and was submitted by Hannah Rose Law. It does mention genocide and depopulation, but Mr Hyland’s concern is with the MHRA. He said: ‘They have failed to follow up vaccine concerns. They have also failed to withdraw bad batches [known in the trade as “hot lots”] of vaccines when there are known issues with several. But I did not accuse them of murder, conspiracy to murder, genocide, gross negligence manslaughter, or crimes against humanity as stated in a ‘Public Announcement’ shared on social media on January 7.’

It was December 20, 2021, when he presented his evidence, with solicitor Lois Bayliss, of Broad Yorkshire Law, Dr Sam White, a former partner from a Hampshire GPs’ practice, and former police officer Mark Sexton. They were given a crime number by the Met, 6029679/21, to show that the police are taking it seriously and intend to investigate.

Despite this, Reuters fact checkers say the Met have not opened a criminal investigation. They give the impression that the police are not looking at evidence, which is misleading. The police are reviewing all testimonies and documents and will assess the strength of evidence for any potential case. It is then up to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to decide whether that evidence is strong enough to make arrests and take the case to trial.

Mr Hyland said that his oral evidence was received by ‘a young, intelligent officer, PC Irvine. I gave a four-hour oral statement. PC Irvine asked intelligent questions and he was already aware of much that we were talking about. None of it was a surprise; none of it was new. He wasn’t shocked.

‘He was young, bright and a good listener. He grasped what we told him. I couldn’t fault him.’

He then provided a secure portal for the team to upload evidence, and case developments are being overseen by Detective Sergeant Mallett.

Ms Bayliss has been gathering witness statements from those who allege they are vaccine-injured, and from potential expert witnesses in the US and the UK. She said: ‘We have subsequently uploaded 103 statements regarding vaccine associated deaths and injury, and 13 from identifiable whistleblowers, medical experts and scientists.’

To build his case, Mr Hyland investigated our medicines regulatory authority, specifically the alleged negligence of June Raine, chief executive of the MHRA. He said: ‘The charge against the MHRA is that they negligently conducted themselves and have caused British citizens real harm and suffering.

‘They have failed to act on any of the Yellow Card reports they have received. There are currently 2,000 deaths reported and 500,000 adverse events. They should have stopped the programme before the deaths reached 100 and launched a thorough investigation.’

The Yellow Card data show that 1 in 120 people have reported an event they considered serious enough to spend 40 minutes filling out a Yellow Card form. ‘This may be just the tip of the iceberg,’ said Ms Bayliss, ‘as the MHRA admit they receive information from around 10 per cent of those damaged.’

The figure is low because some doctors find they cannot access the Yellow Card scheme from their hospital computers, while others do not know about it. Members of the public are generally not informed about Yellow Card and most who complain to their GP that they think they have suffered a serious adverse event are told that the vaccine is an unlikely cause and their symptoms are put down to ‘coincidence’, as the Royal College of General Practitioners has not issued them with any advice.

If the coincidence theory held water, you would expect an even spread of reports across the three vaccinations used in Britain. We have Pfizer-BioNTech’s experimental mRNA jab introduced in December 2020, and Oxford/AstraZeneca’s more traditional one which has been available since January 2021. Plus the new kid on the block, Moderna’s mRNA jab introduced in April 2021.

Although we began using it four months after Pfizer and three months after AstraZeneca, Moderna is clocking up 50 per cent more Yellow Cards than AZ, who have 60 per cent more reported injuries than Pfizer.

Oxford/AstraZeneca has been received by 24.9million people and the Yellow Card scheme shows that 1 in 103 have been impacted, while Pfizer-BioNTech’s has been received by 25.3million people and Yellow Card shows that 1 in 162 people have been impacted.

Moderna has been given to 1.6million people and its Yellow Card reporting rate shows that 1 in 50 people have been impacted. On average, 1 in 120 people have suffered an adverse reaction.

‘In our view, we have enough evidence to show gross negligence,’ said Mr Hyland. ‘It is clear that the MHRA have failed to follow up concerns about vaccine injury and they failed to withdraw harmful batches when they knew about the issues.

‘They also exaggerated the risk of Covid by failing to distinguish the difference between dying with Covid, which is when someone has other illnesses, or of Covid, which is when the patient has no other illnesses.’

Covid-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has a low fatality rate: less than one per cent of those who contract it. The Office of National Statistics has revealed under a Freedom of Information request that only 13,597 deaths in England and Wales out of 140,000 attributed to Covid were caused by Covid alone. The bulk of deaths were of people with comorbidities.

‘New evidence is coming in all the time,’ said Mr Hyland, ‘including from those who have suffered psychological harm caused by the mandates.

‘The alleged criminality that appears to have gone on is like nothing we have ever seen before and has resulted in people being injured, some permanently, and dying. There were safe treatments which were ignored by the MHRA but there must have been heavy political pressure to authorise the vaccine as the Prime Minister had pre-ordered millions of doses.

‘History will show this to be one of the world’s biggest-ever scandals.’

We contacted the two BBC journalists for comment but they did not respond.

January 27, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy suggests Joe Rogan should be censored

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | January 27, 2022

The US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has suggested that Big Tech platforms should censor even more COVID “misinformation” on social media.

Speaking on MSNBC, Murthy said that online platforms have a role to play when it comes to censoring “misinformation” and ensuring that the public gets “accurate” information.

Murthy made the comments on MSNBC when host Mika Brzezinski pushed for a comment on the “best ways to push back on misinformation about COVID that continues to be aggressively pushed, whether it be Joe Rogan’s podcast or all over Facebook.”

“We can have the best science available, we can have the best public health expertise available. It won’t help people if they don’t have access to accurate information,” Murthy responded. “People have the right to make their own decisions, but they also have the right to have accurate information to make that decision with.”

Murthy added that Big Tech giants have an “important role to play” as they are the “predominant places where we’re seeing misinformation spread.”

“This [is] not just about what the government can do,” he went on to say. “This is about companies and individuals recognizing that the only way we get past misinformation is if we are careful about what we say and use the power that we have to limit the spread of misinformation.”

January 27, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, at Least Not on Mainstream Media

By Madhava Setty, M.D. | The Defender | January 26, 2022

More than 30,000 people gathered Sunday near the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in our nation’s capital to protest COVID vaccine mandates.

Attendees were treated to nearly four hours of impassioned, poignant and uncensored speeches from more than 20 speakers who helped spearhead the movement for medical freedom.

Rather than attempting to summarize their commentary on the purported safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines, departures from accepted practices of informed consent around medical intervention and rapid erosion of the patient/doctor relationship from Big Pharma interference, I will instead list some pearls that might easily get overlooked but should not go forgotten.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Children’s Health Defense chairman and chief legal counsel, elucidated the single most important point of Pfizer’s six-month trial data.

He explained that more participants died in the vaccine group compared to placebo group, and one vaccine recipient perished from COVID during this period compared to two in the placebo group — hence Pfizer can claim its product provides 100% efficacy against COVID death.

But at what cost?

Four times as many people died of cardiac arrest in the vaccine group than placebo. We can thus conclude the risk of dying from a cardiac arrest is 300% greater if you get vaccinated — a fact that goes unacknowledged by our medical authorities and legacy media.

Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) spokesperson and board-certified critical care physician Dr. Pierre Kory expressed his frustration in trying to publish rigorous peer-reviewed data on the undeniable efficacy of the early COVID treatment protocol FLCCC formulated during the desperate early days of the pandemic.

This led him to emphatically conclude, “Every policy out of our agencies has been written by the pharmaceutical industry … It’s a war. A war on repurposed drugs.”

Dr. Robert Malone, in his typically measured fashion, reminded us that our authorities and vaccine manufacturers have nearly 100% indemnity from vaccine-related injury and that it is our job to protect our kids, not theirs.

Unfortunately, the magnitude of vaccine risks is yet unknown. Still, “If there is risk,” Malone said, “there must be choice.”

Steve Kirsch took the podium two hours into the program and recounted his introduction into the vaccine-hesitant sphere and described the abject refusal of any authority to answer a single one of his questions.

However, Kirsch’s biggest point was not his attack on tightlipped and avoidant medical authorities.

Kirsch offered a very reasonable counterargument to the mainstream push to accept these vaccinations out of a moral obligation to our community. Do we in fact have an obligation to others that can be mandated? On what moral grounds can this be enforced?

Kirsch said:

“Nobody has the right to mandate that I must risk my life to save other people that I don’t know. It’s unethical and immoral. I will not voluntarily choose to deprive my kids of their father.”

These points are important for every person in the world to consider, regardless of which side of the vaccine debate you are on.

Of course, these sentiments predictably resonated with those in attendance. But is that good enough? Will vaccine mandate proponents ever have the opportunity to hear this perspective?

Perhaps not.

One needs only to listen to how legacy media covered the rally. In this three-minute clip — “Anti-Vaccine Mandate Protests During Omicron Surge” — NBC News gave its viewers a glimpse of what this event signified.

The reporter said:

“Thousands rallying on the National Mall for the ‘Defeat the Mandates’ protest featuring some of the nation’s most prominent anti-vaxxers…”

Then the camera immediately cuts to protesters complaining:

“… we tried to get a burger last night but couldn’t because we didn’t have a proof-of-vaccine card.”

Are these really the most prominent spokespersons of the movement explaining why mandates are not just scientifically unfounded but unethical?

Another protester stated on camera he is not “anti-vax” but chooses not to get the jab because these vaccines are experimental. However, the NBC News reporters said, “That’s not true, COVID vaccines are fully approved, more scrutinized than any vaccine in history…”

Of the three COVID vaccines currently authorized for emergency use, only the Pfizer Comirnaty formulation has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

However, that formulation has not been made available in this country. There isn’t a single person in this country who has been inoculated with a fully approved COVID vaccine. (Consider yourselves fact-checked, NBC News.)

The idea COVID vaccines have been “more scrutinized than any vaccine in history” is a frank lie. The vaccine trials were rushed, poorly designed, offered no meaningful age stratification and used a participant pool that was younger and healthier than those who succumb to serious COVID.

The trials effectively ended several months after they began when the participants were unblinded and offered the vaccine, making any long-term efficacy or safety comparisons impossible.

Moreover, federal agencies responsible for scrutinizing the vaccines have done just the opposite, allowing serious, life-threatening and fatal adverse events to go unacknowledged and uninvestigated.

Despite the magnitude of expert opinion on hand, NBC News chose not to seek it. NBC did not interview one of the physicians, scientists, healthcare advocates or vaccine-injured who spoke at the rally.

A free press, dedicated to balanced reporting and an intrepid pursuit of the facts is our only guardian against tyranny. It is their job to pose difficult questions and demand answers. It is their job to give a voice to the dissenter and the whistleblower.

This is why Del Bigtree’s finale was so salient. Bigtree got large reactions from the crowd when he drew upon Lincoln’s words and Bible quotations, framing the issue as a struggle between good and evil and leading the crowd in a chant for freedom. His comments will likely draw criticism from mainstream pundits that continue to frame the anti-mandate movement as one that is based in ideology and not science.

But it was his admonishment of the mainstream media that will reverberate most in the weeks and months ahead.

Bigtree said:

“For those of you who are standing here quietly today, I know who you are. I know you work for The New York Times. I know you work for the Washington Post and you are here trying to support us quietly… You should have written about us. You should have told the truth!”

The revolution will not be televised. At least not on NBC News.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

January 27, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Live and Unplugged – True Covid History given to Irish Nurses Group!

Ivor Cummins | January 26, 2022

My recent talk to Irish Nurses and Mother’s Group – no punches pulled – please share!

NOTE: My extensive research and interviewing / video/sound editing and much more does require support – please consider helping if you can with monthly donation to support me directly, or one-off payment: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=69ZSTYXBMCN3W

– alternatively join up with my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IvorCummins

January 27, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Satellite Images of Russia – A Puzzlement

By Walrus | Turcopolier | January 26, 2022

The Australian ABC has today posted an article syndicated from AP entitled “Here’s what sanctions the US could impose on Russia if it invades Ukraine”

This suggests, charmingly, that among other targets for sanctions, President Putins alleged partner might be a suitable victim.

However while Alina Kabaeva is most attractive, that is not the image that quite caught my eye.

This one: “A satellite image of a Russian troop build-up at Klimovo, Russia, 13 kilometres north of the Russia-Ukraine border.(Supplied: Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies)”

Google suggests this is one of a series referenced by a Radio Free Europe article “Military Buildup: New Images Capture Russian Armor Massing Near Ukraine”:

This provides helpful images of the aforesaid build up. With reference to these images, taken on January 19 2022, an amateur makes the following comments:

Image 1 – A full vehicle park at Yelnya, 150 miles from Ukraine. Two of the tanks have been running engines, they are the ones not covered by snow the rest are dead cold. What would one expect for daily vehicle checks for an active unit? Yelnya is an established base for at least seven years.

Image 2 and image 5 show an equipment store at Klimovo, some 30 kilometers from the Ukraine border. the comment on image 5 states: “Military equipment massed (I love that emotive word) at the Klimovo storage facility on January 19. Older imagery from Google Maps of the same location shows a fraction of the military vehicles present.“

This links to a google image of an empty facility which PROVES that massing has occurred.

There is just one problem; inspection of that location with Google Earth Pro shows that the ’empty” image date is 9/13/2014! Eight years ago.

I cannot comment on the other images, but I’m puzzled by what I’m seeing and how it supports the idea of a massive build up.

Could others please examine these images?

January 26, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

What The Climate Scare And Pandemic Fearmongering Have In Common

Issues & Insights | January 7, 2022

Climate alarmists have said it’s necessary to ratchet up the fear about global warming to get the public’s attention. It’s the same story with the coronavirus outbreak. Authorities wanted to strike fear in the people, so they exaggerated the lethality of a virus deadly to only a narrow demographic segment.

Compare and contrast:

Global warming, 1988. “​​We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have,” about global warming, said Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider. (In the interest of full disclosure, the entire quotation ends with Schneider saying “each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” We’re leaving it up to readers to decide if he was advocating dishonesty to further the narrative or telling researchers and activists to cool it with the deceptive rhetoric. Either way, someone was pushing the agitprop.)

Pandemic, 2020. Britain’s ​​Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavior warned “that ministers needed to increase ‘the perceived level of personal threat’ from Covid-19 because ‘a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened,’” the London Telegraph reported last year in its coverage of “A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponized fear during the Covid-19 pandemic,” by Laura Dodsworth.

Global warming, 2014. The academics who wrote a paper published in ​​the American Journal of Agricultural Economics said their article “provides a rationale for” the tendency of “news media and some pro-environmental organizations” to ​​accentuate or even exaggerate “the damage caused by climate change.”

“​​We find,” they wrote, “that the information manipulation has an instrumental value.”

Pandemic, 2020. The Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavior recommends the perception of fear regarding the coronavirus needed to “be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.”

Global warming, circa 2001. University of Alabama in Huntsville climatologist John Christy, lead author on the 2001 United Nations’ climate report, had lunch with three European colleagues who talked about “how they were trying to make the report so dramatic that the United States would just have to sign that Kyoto Protocol.”

Pandemic, 2021. The New York Times’ “overblown” warnings “must be viewed in context of the Gray Lady’s wider lock-down-the-world agenda,” says the New York Post’s Steve Cuozzo. “The paper rarely reports unqualified hopeful news about taming the virus.”

Global Warming, 2004. NASA scientist James Hansen, who is the godfather of climate alarmists, wrote in Scientific American, that an “emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue.” In the next sentence, he added that, “now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate-forcing scenarios consistent with what is realistic under current conditions.” So objective science was not good enough to advance the narrative, then it was?

Pandemic, 2021. “I did a simple Google search of ‘recent coronavirus news reports,’” says psychologist Ilisa Kaufman in Psychology Today. “The first random five headlines had the words, ‘death toll rising,’ ‘new infections,’ and ‘thousands of COVID cases, hundreds of deaths.’ Those were the first five. Also, it is May of 2021, a full 14 months since the beginning of the pandemic. Absolutely nothing reassuring, hopeful, or non-alarming.” She goes on to suggest “some ways to help correct or prevent mental health consequences from the ‘fear porn’ industry.”

We’re not fully convinced the lockdowns were conspiratorial dry runs to accustom the world to future restrictions handed down under the guise of “fighting” global warming. But as we said when the lockdowns were still relatively new, “observant and cunning politicians have gone to school” and were thinking over the possibility they could “use the pretext of a climate emergency to control Americans and break the back of capitalism.”

The ingredients are all present. A teen activist whose name isn’t Greta Thunberg has put down on paper what many are thinking when she wrote “if we can shut the world down to stop a virus, that also means it is possible to do the same for climate change.” It’s the sort of superficial statement that earns her points from a puerile media, ever-mugging politicians, and the adults among us who haven’t outgrown their insecure high school aspirations to be popular. And an idea many will run with.

The chilling fact there is much to be afraid of – not of a falling sky or a virus that we hope is on the wane, but of those eager to stir up dread and anxiety so they exercise the raw power they covet.

January 24, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Guardian: ANTI-VAXXERS ARE JOINING RACIST MILITIAS

OffGuardian | January 23, 2022

This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.

1. “ANTI-VAXXERS ARE JOINING RACIST MILITIAS”

We’ve covered the increasing demonisation of the “anti-vaxxers” regularly for over a year now. Ever since Joe Biden announced his new “domestic terrorism bill”, it was obvious that “Anti-vaxxers” were going to be re-branded as some kind of violent threat to democracy (and they were).

Now it’s happening in the UK too, with a story being published warning that “anti-vaxxers” are becoming more militant and there are fears they will “evolve towards US-style militias”, according to the Guardian.

The article references nameless “counter terrorism” officials and anonymous “Whitehall sources”, who warn that…

Latest intelligence assessments describe the anti-vaxxer movement as ostensibly a conveyor belt, delivering fresh recruits to extremist groups, including racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist organisations.

So there you have it, being anti-Covid “vaccines” is a gateway protest. Before you know it you’ll be shaving your head and sieg hieling all over the place.

Absolutely pathetic propaganda, and hopefully not an early warning sign of legislation to come.

2. “WHAT IF DEMOCRACY AND CLIMATE MITIGATION ARE INCOMPATIBLE?”

OK, this is from two weeks ago, but it’s too important to skip. The title says it all, Foreign Policy is genuinely wondering if climate change is too much of a threat to let democracy stand in the way of fighting it.

It’s a long read, soaked to the bone in double-talk and built on some very shaky assumptions, but there’s some good material on there…

Democracy works by compromise, but climate change is precisely the type of problem that seems not to allow for it. As the clock on those climate timelines continues to tick, this structural mismatch is becoming increasingly exposed. And as a result, those concerned by climate change—some already with political power, others grasping for it—are now searching for, and finding, new ways of closing the gap between politics and science, by any means necessary.

It warns in the opening section, before concluding…

… democracy, in its current form, is not necessarily the path to a solution. It might, instead, be part of the problem.

It’s not hard to see where this is going. We warned, several times, that we would be moving on from Covid to climate, and that “climate lockdowns” were a very real possibility. This kind of talk is setting the groundwork for that movement.

3. ‘MORE PEOPLE IS THE LAST THING THIS PLANET NEEDS’

Another from the Guardian, this time interviewing all the hip and happening young men who are “getting vasectomies to save the world”

It’s about the climate. Again.

Apparently, there are already too many people (that’s not true, but whatever), and so young men are getting the snip. Bravely preventing placing the burden of climate catastrophe onto the next generation… by making sure there isn’t one.

One of the (anonymous, and therefore potentially made-up) interviewees went right out cut his balls off the week Donald Trump was elected. That’ll show ’em.

But wait… It’s not just about climate, it’s also about feminism.

Specifically, it’s about correcting the “gender imbalance” traditionally associated with birth control:

Vasectomies address the gender imbalance that still accompanies the choice and practice of birth control. They come with less risk than more invasive and less reliable methods of female contraception, including sterilisation and the coil.

They are genuinely arguing that making yourself sterile forever is less risky and less invasive than having a completely 100% reversible IUD inserted.

Then they start bemoaning that vasectomies can be “hard to come by, especially for younger, childless men“. NHS GPs are apparently reticent to simply sterilise perfectly healthy young men for no good reason:

While there are no laws on the age at which men in the UK can get a vasectomy, the NHS advises that they may be more likely to be accepted if they are older than 30 and have children. “Your GP can refuse to carry out the procedure … if they don’t believe it’s in your best interests,”

Not only that, but the NHS has cut funding to for vasectomies, and perhaps as a result of this, vasectomy numbers are down nationwide. The Guardian want us to think this is a bad thing, but considering the UK’s birth rate has been falling for decades, it might not be.

Nevertheless, there is hope that “world vasectomy day”, and its links to the fight against climate change, will help “burnish” the vasectomy’s progressive image.

The story ends with inspiring words from one of the voluntarily snipped…

“A lot of people are happy to point and say: ‘That’s wrong,’ or film it on their phone… I look at the world and say: ‘That’s not right; I’m going to try to do something about it.’”

A wonderful attitude. I hope he can pass that wisdom on to his children and his children’s children.

… oh, wait.

BONUS: (NEW) HELLHOLE OF THE WEEK

Not Australia this time, well done guys.

This time it’s New Zealand, where Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has just put in place strict new rules to “combat” the spread of Omicron.

Starting today, the whole of the country will move into the red on New Zealand’s “traffic light” system, meaning mandatory masks, lockdowns for the unvaccinated and an increased self-isolation period of 24 days.

How many cases prompted this decision? Nine.

Nine Covid cases in Motueka are confirmed to have the Omicron variant, prompting the decision, Ardern said.

Australia has been pretty aggressive in the game of “anything you can do, I can do worse” they have going with both New Zealand and Canada, so expect a move from them sometime this week.

IT’S NOT ALL BAD…

Yesterday marked 2022’s first “Worldwide Freedom Rally”, with marches taking place all over the world, from London to Bern, to Vancouver to Warsaw to Liverpool to Genoa.

Bilbao, Graz, Brisbane. The list goes on and on and on.

Huge crowds turned out in Toronto… Stockholm… and Sydney.

In London NHS staff threw down their uniforms in front of Downing Street.

These are the people who they want to classify as domestic terrorists and militias.

Also, someone also sent us this sign, which is our new favourite:

All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention that the world’s ten richest men have doubled their fortunes during the pandemic or the Fed’s report on a digital dollar.

January 23, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Environmentalism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

An Amateur Look At “Russian Build Up” Photographic Evidence

By Walrus | Turcopolier | January 22, 2022

Western Media talk knowledgeably about a “Russian Build Up on the Border with Ukraine”. These stories are often accompanied by one of two satellite images which purport to show evidence of the same.

The first of these, as used by Politico, correctly identifies the location of this vehicle park as Yelnya. However the image is cropped so you cannot see the extensive barracks and infrastructure which identify this as a permanent military base constructed no later than 2016. Furthermore Politico defines “near” the Ukraine border as within 150 miles for that is Yelnyas distance from it.

The second image used is located at Soloti – again the image is cropped so the extensive permanent barracks and infrastructure are excluded. This base is about 30km from the Ukraine border but it has been there since 2005!

Details of the formations based at these locations are available here:

https://www.gfsis.org/maps/russian-military-forces

I have not included details of the sizes of the ammunition dumps that would be required to support any “invasion” of Ukraine. They would stick out a mile but are invisible today.

IMO, the “Russian Build Up” story is rubbish.

January 23, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Secret of ‘microwave weapons’ targeting US diplomats revealed

By Paul Robinson | RT | January 23, 2022

US diplomats and security officials suffering from a spate of unexplained health problems were victims of Russian microwave weapons, we were told time and time again. But now the CIA admits Moscow wasn’t actually behind “Havana Syndrome.” The story fits a disturbingly familiar pattern of misinformation.

With each passing week, the list of discredited allegations against Russia grows and grows. Time and time again, Western governments and the media have sprung into action to inform us of some new evil plot, only to backpedal later when it became clear that there was nothing to it.

Take, for instance, the multi-year saga that was Russiagate, built on the idea that Donald Trump was a Russian agent. There are still some believers, but for the most part people lost interest once it became clear that it was a load of baloney and that the “Steele Dossier” that sparked it off wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

Then there were the claims that Russia was arming the Taliban, that it had inserted malware into the Vermont electrical grid, that it had bankrolled Brexit via British businessman Arron Banks, and so on. All are now discredited.

Yet the allegations keep on coming. A case in point is the story of Havana Syndrome, which was in the news again this week. For those of you who have missed it, Havana Syndrome is the name given to mysterious symptoms experienced by hundreds of American diplomats and CIA agents around the world, including “headaches, fatigue, hearing and vision loss, severe and debilitating cognitive impairment, tinnitus, brain fog, vertigo, and loss of motor control.”

Such a wide set of symptoms casts immediate doubt on whether there is a single cause. Nevertheless, speculation soon ran rife that they were all examples of a single “syndrome,” and that American diplomats were being targeted by some sort of unknown microwave emitter designed to fry peoples’ brains.

After examining four possible causes of Havana Syndrome – infection, chemicals, psychological factors, and microwave energy – a US government report concluded that “directed pulse RF [radio frequency] energy… appears to be the most plausible mechanism.” Havana Syndrome was “real, and it is serious,” remarked CIA Director William Burns, adding that there was a “very strong possibility” that it was the result of intentional actions.

Who might be doing such a thing? In public, US government officials avoided naming names, admitting that they lacked the evidence to do so. In private, however, the finger was pointed firmly at the Russian Federation, a charge rapidly amplified by the international media.

Thus the New York Times reported that officials “familiar with the report” mentioned above said that the country behind the “attacks” was Russia. CIA veteran Lewis Regenstein claimed that Russian/Soviet attacks of this sort had been going on since the 1950s, penning an article for the Washington Times headlined “68 years of Russian microwave radiation attacks on Americans with impunity.” “Russians use ‘secret microwave weapon’ to target American spies across the globe,” claimed The Sun. And so on. The media had made its mind up – Russia was to blame.

Why the Russian secret services might be doing this has never been explained, with some experts speculating that Havana Syndrome was the result of deliberate attacks, and others believing that the harm to humans was an unintended side effect of some scanning machine designed to extract intelligence from diplomats’ electronic devices. Either way, the Russians were responsible, even though not the slightest jot of evidence in support of this thesis has ever been publicly produced.

It didn’t take long, though, for skeptics to come up with other theories. One was that the syndrome was caused by the loud noise made by crickets. Support for this theory later came in a report commissioned by the US State Department that concluded crickets were the most likely culprits in 21 recorded cases.

Late last year, another theory emerged. Havana Syndrome was “a mass psychogenic illness,” a group of US scientists decided. It was, they said, an example of the “nocebo effect,” the opposite of the placebo effect. In this, expectations of something negative happening to one’s health causes something negative to happen. After the initial incident in Cuba, US diplomats were told to look out for “anomalous health” issues, and as a result they started feeling them. In effect, it was all in their heads.

Whatever the truth, the story of Russian microwave weapons continued to gain traction. But it now seems that even the CIA is having doubts. According to reports this Thursday,

“In a new intelligence assessment, the CIA has ruled out that the mysterious symptoms known as Havana Syndrome are the result of a sustained global campaign by a hostile power aimed at hundreds of US diplomats and spies, six people briefed on the matter told NBC News.

In about two dozen cases, the agency cannot rule out foreign involvement, including many of the cases that originated at the US Embassy in Havana beginning in 2016. Another group of cases is considered unresolved. But in hundreds of other cases of possible symptoms, the agency has found plausible alternative explanations, the sources said.

The idea that widespread brain injury symptoms have been caused by Russia or another foreign power targeting Americans around the world, either to harm them or to collect intelligence, has been deemed unfounded, the sources said.”

Oh dear! How embarrassing. For sure, there are still a few cases in which the cause of illness remains unknown and so foreign involvement “cannot be ruled out.” But that is hardly evidence for ruling it in. This latest assessment knocks the “Russia done it” narrative for six.

In short, once again we found that we’ve been fed a tissue of lies. By now, we should hardly be surprised, but the whole affair speaks to the credulity of much of our political and media establishment, and to the need for a much more cautious and evidence-based approach to allegations of wrongdoing.

It’s common nowadays to complain of the public’s lack of trust in traditional political and media institutions. One of the reasons for this is that people have become skeptical of the old “gatekeepers” of the truth due to their tendency to shout wolf at every available opportunity. If people believe disinformation coming from newer sources, it’s because they’ve become disenchanted by the misinformation coming from the old ones. The latter are under threat, but they have only themselves to blame.

Paul Robinson is a professor at the University of Ottawa. He writes about Russian and Soviet history, military history and military ethics, and is author of the Irrussianality blog.

January 23, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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