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Experts Linking Covid To Every Medical Condition Ever Diagnosed

By Richie Allen | March 9, 2021

Add Diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, and eye damage to the ever expanding list of medical complaints that so-called experts are linking to coronavirus.

Don’t forget brain damage, lung damage, psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis. Covid is the virus that keeps on giving. Professor Francesco Rubino, an expert on type 1 diabetes, based at King’s College London told The Daily Mail :

“We started to become very concerned about diabetes within the first couple of months of the pandemic, when we began to get reports from around the world of an increase in cases among hospitalised Covid patients.

These were patients in whom diabetes suddenly developed at the same time as they were sick with Covid.”

The link is tenuous. In a study published by the journal Diabetes Care, 0nly 5 children out of 30 who were diagnosed with diabetes, had coronavirus. Karen Logan, a clinical nurse specialising in diabetes, admitted that a proper controlled study is needed to prove causation.

But that doesn’t matter. Government scientists are appearing on UK media this morning warning of the terrors of “Long Covid.” Presenters just nod along as professors list all manner of ailments thought to be linked to the virus.

I never know whether to laugh or cry when after listing all of these terrifying diseases, the experts finish by saying, “more research is needed.” God help me. My kingdom for just one (w)anchor to say “You mean you’ve just made all of that up? Why are you scaremongering?” I can dream.

According to today’s Mail Online :

Thousands are already thought to be afflicted by so-called ‘long Covid’ — symptoms such as fatigue, breathlessness, chest pain, muscle aches, pounding heart and depression that persist for weeks or even months after the initial infection.

Now it seems the virus may also be capable of sparking serious and potentially incurable autoimmune conditions — where the body’s immune system attacks tissues, causing not just type 1 diabetes but the skin condition psoriasis and the joint disease rheumatoid arthritis, for example.

Meanwhile, emerging evidence points to lasting, potentially even permanent, harm to the hearts, kidneys and even the eyes of some Covid patients.

Emerging evidence? This is ridiculous. Using this logic it’s easy to see how they are doing it. If someone tests positive for covid and has an ingrowing toenail, you could conceivably claim that there is emerging evidence linking ingrowing toenails to covid. It’s laughable.

But I seem to be the only one laughing. I’m surrounded by people who are lapping it up. People haven’t suspended their disbelief, they’ve flushed it down the toilet.

In France recently, a woman was found running naked in a basement. She told paramedics that voices told her to do it. I swear to God, they linked her behaviour to coronavirus. Did the French say “pull the other one?” No! It was reported with a straight face.

In my opinion, these preposterous “Long Covid” stories are designed to scare people into having the jab and the jabs to come this Autumn. Uptake is a real problem for the government.

Hundreds of thousands of NHS workers have said they won’t have a jab. Under-40’s are far less likely to have it too. The propagandists are upping the ante.

March 9, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

WAPO Opens “Domestic Terrorist” Campaign Against Those Who Refuse the Experimental COVID Vaccines

By Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | March 8, 2021

And so it begins.

Those of us who have been exposing the corruption in Big Pharma, and especially in the vaccine industry, for more than a decade now, knew this day was coming.

It’s been coming for a long time now, but the COVID Plandemic has shifted medical tyranny into high gear, primarily because this time around the masses have complied with the medical tyrants and, so far, voluntarily surrendered their rights all in the name of “public safety.”

Very soon now, the supply of experimental COVID vaccines will exceed the demand for those who have been lining up and begging to be injected with who-knows-what to fight the unseen enemy, the dreaded Coronavirus, and then it will be time to deal with the “vaccine resistant” who are perceived as a threat to public health.

Domestic Terrorists. That’s the new label for those who dare to question the new experimental COVID injections.

And who else should Big Pharma and their media anoint to start this new campaign, but California Senator Dr. Richard Pan?

Richard Pan is a pediatrician-turned-politician who has spearheaded California’s descent into medical tyranny, since 2015, when he wrote bill SB277 to remove all religious exemptions to childhood vaccines in the State of California, despite widespread public opposition by parents, doctors, lawyers, and educators.

Dr. Pan has a long history of lying to his constituents and selling them out to Big Pharma.

Not being content with spearheading the movement to remove religious exemptions to childhood vaccines in 2015, in 2019 he spearheaded an effort to remove the medical exemptions also, by going after California doctors who were writing medical exemptions to childhood vaccines as well. See:

Senator-Doctor Wants California to Eliminate Doctor’s Medical Exemptions to Vaccines

Today, if you live in California, it is nearly impossible to get any exemptions to childhood vaccines, which has driven many families out of California, and those that remain who want to protect their children from vaccines must home-educate their children and keep them out of the system (a good thing to do in ANY state!).

So it did not surprise me at all last week when an “Opinion” piece published in Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post titled: Opinion: Anti-vaccine extremism is akin to domestic terrorism, was written by none other than the California Big Pharma spokesperson, Richard Pan.

I have probably written a couple of dozen of articles on Senator Pan over the years, so if you want to learn more about him, click here.

Kit Knightly, writing for OffGuardian, also picked up on this, relating it back to the January 6th “insurrection” and a way to enact new legislation on “domestic terrorism.”

CALLED IT: WaPo calls anti-vaxxers “domestic terrorists”

By Kit Knightly  | Off-Guardian | March 8, 2021

BACK IN JANUARY I WROTE ABOUT HOW THE CAPITOL HILL “INSURECTION” WAS LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR BIDEN’S ADMINISTRATION TO INTRODUCE A MUCH-TALKED-ABOUT NEW “DOMESTIC TERRORISM” LAW.

The piece speculated that any definition of “domestic terrorism” will be very loose, and include essentially anybody the state finds problematic. Including those who spread “anti-vaccine misinformation” [emphasis added]:

What will “Domestic Terrorism” mean in this law? The answer to that is pretty much always “whatever they want it to mean.”

It will probably be tied into the Covid “pandemic” in some way, too. After all, what is discouraging people from taking vaccines if not the very definition of “terrorism”, right?

It took less than two months for the mainstream media to prove OffG right. Just last week the Washington Post ran an op-ed piece by California State Senator Richard Pam headlined:

Anti-vaccine extremism is akin to domestic terrorism

The article goes on to insist that “Laws need to be strengthened” to protect people administering vaccines from being “harassed”. That “Social media companies should not be complicit in this dangerous movement”, and caps it all off with glorious jingoism:

Getting vaccinated is a patriotic act. So is speaking up to support public health efforts. Let’s not allow extremism, division or fear to slow the efforts to end this deadly chapter in our nation’s history.

The message is clear: anyone who questions vaccination, especially the Covid “vaccine”, is a threat to public health and national security. A terrorist.

The WaPo is the first mainstream outlet to make the parallel so blatantly, but they almost certainly won’t be the last.

Be on the lookout for other examples. They’ll probably start building up this narrative quite fast.

And we can likely expect a new false-flag.

Something along the lines of a “lone wolf extremist” who was “radicalised online” by “militant anti-vaxxers” and then allegedly does something crazy like mail Bill Gates a suitcase full of home-made explosives or drives a tanker truck into a vaccination centre.

Of course, that will mean we need to start shutting down and censoring “vaccine misinformation” which is “encouraging violence” and “damaging public health”.

It’s all very predictable at this point.

March 8, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 1 Comment

Hopkins: “Covid Variants & Flu Return Means Tough Autumn Ahead”

By Richie Allen | March 8, 2021

Public Health England’s Dr. Susan Hopkins warned yesterday, that coronavirus variants and the return of the flu, may lead to a difficult Autumn. The SAGE member was speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

Hopkins claimed that the population may have less immunity to traditional respiratory illnesses like the flu because coronavirus has been the only game in town this past year. She told Marr:

“Six months away is a long time. We have to prepare for a hard winter, not only with coronavirus, but we’ve had a year of almost no respiratory viruses of any other type. That means potentially the population immunity to that is less. So we could see surges in flu, we could see surges in other respiratory viruses and other respiratory pathogens.”

Did the intrepid Andrew Marr ask her how is it possible that we have had “no respiratory diseases of any other type” in the last year? Of course not. Marr isn’t a journalist. He’s a propagandist.

Hopkins went on:

“It’s really important that we’re prepared from the NHS point of view, from public health and contact tracing, that we have everything ready to prepare for a difficult autumn.”

A nodding dog would have done a better job than Marr. He really is hopeless. Susan Hopkins was there for the taking. By the time I’d finished with her, she wouldn’t watch television ever again, let alone appear on it.

Is Hopkins and the government getting their retaliation in first here? Are they anticipating a surge in respiratory infections caused by the mRNA gene therapy drugs? It’s very possible. I can’t say as I am not qualified to do so, but some very learned men and women have mooted that possibility.

The “vaccines” are already causing real harm. See http://www.vernoncoleman.org for an up to date list of adverse events caused by the covid jabs.

It is preposterous and insulting, that a government scientist can go on national television and claim that we have had nothing but Covid for a year. No flu, no chest infections, no bronchitis, nada, niente, zilch. How could Marr not ask her if everything else was simply being misdiagnosed as coronavirus?

The hoax hangs by a thread. It could be all over in a day, if Marr or Laura Kuenssberg had the courage to end it.

March 8, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Nicaraguan Coffee Farmers Are Thriving, Contrary To Claims

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | March 8, 2021

You would think that a publication calling itself Christian would actually place a premium on telling the truth. Sadly it is only propaganda that matters to the Christian Science Monitor :

image

Jinotega, Nicaragua

Maria Gonzalez knows that growing coffee in Nicaragua’s northern mountains – as she has done since she was a little girl – gets harder and harder each year.

Rising temperatures are spoiling harvests when berries ripen too fast and a coffee leaf disease wiped out about half of the region’s crop between 2012 and 2014, killing most of Ms. Gonzalez’s plants.

Just as her new plants were starting to flourish, whipping winds and torrential rains from hurricanes Eta and Iota last November uprooted the bushes and shook the unripe berries to the ground.

With an initial hard few years now stretching into a decade, coffee farmers like Ms. Gonzalez face a tough decision: stay loyal to their coffee crop or find a new way to survive.

“I’m experimenting with a lot of things because if I see that one is doing better, I’ll stick with that,” she said. “And if not, we’ll be there fighting for our coffee.”

A coffee picker carries sacks of coffee cherries at a plantation in the Nogales farm in Jinotega, Nicaragua January 7, 2016.

Soaring temperatures in Central America due to climate change are forcing farmers to pull up coffee trees and replace them with cocoa, spurring a revival in the cultivation of a crop once so essential to the region’s economy.

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2021/0302/How-Nicaraguan-coffee-farmers-are-adapting-to-climate-change

This article could hardly be further from the truth.

Coffee production in Nicaragua has been rocketing in recent years, and is double what it was a couple of decades ago:

chart-1

Nicaragua Coffee Production 1961-2019
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare

Of course, there are inevitably years when harvests are poor, but the decline in output between 2012 and 2014 was no greater than many other years since 1961.

It is estimated that harvest losses from the two hurricanes, which frequently hit Nicaragua, will be between 10% and 15%., taking output back to 2017 levels. Again, drops of this magnitude are commonplace in Nicaragua.

And far from the Jinotega region being particularly vulnerable as claimed, it is recognised as the best in a country noted for the quality of its coffee:

image

https://enjoyjava.com/nicaraguan-coffee/#:~:text=%20Here%20are%20the%20major%20coffee-producing%20regions%2C%20as,fruity%20notes%20and%20expected%20flavor%20profile…%20More%20

The simple fact is that coffee plantations are thriving in Nicaragua.

Shame on the Christian Science Monitor for peddling lies.

March 8, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

SKY News Pressures Waterstones & Amazon To Ban Anti-vaccine Books

By Richie Allen | March 5, 2021

SKY News is pressuring booksellers to stop selling books written by medical experts. In a segment running hourly today, SKY claims that Waterstones, Amazon and Foyles are selling books which contain anti-vaccine medical misinformation.

The report references a book written by Dr. Vernon Coleman entitled; Anyone Who Tells You Vaccines Are Safe And Effective Is Lying.

The book has received hundreds of 5-star reviews on Amazon’s website. Dr. Vernon Coleman is a medical expert.

His books have topped best-seller lists around the world and he was a national newspaper columnist for many years. SKY asked the booksellers to explain why they were not “providing annotations” to suggest that Vernon’s book contains disputed claims.

SKY’s report doesn’t provide a single example of a “disputed claim” in Dr. Vernon Coleman’s book.

Labour’s shadow health minister Alex Norris appears in the segment. He says that “getting the population vaccinated is a massive priority” and that he hopes “retailers would act responsibly and have a look at whether they want to be associated with such products.”

The reporter doesn’t ask Norris if he even read Vernon Coleman’s book, even though he is calling for a so-called “health warning” to be slapped on it.

This is propaganda, not news. SKY doesn’t report the news anymore, it manufactures it. It’s important to understand this. SKY is not following up concerns by parents, teachers or other doctors. SKY created this story.

A reporter at SKY News, took screenshots of the covers of books written by Dr. Vernon Coleman and Dr Joseph Mercola. He/she then forwarded the screenshots to Alex Norris in an email and asked him to respond. Norris has not read any of the books, but that doesn’t matter. He says that something must be done about them and the reporter has a story.

Look at how it appears on the SKY News website. The opening paragraph reads:

Anti-vaccination books are being sold on Amazon and the websites of Waterstones and Foyles – amid calls for warnings on items to combat the spread of misinformation.

That’s disingenuous in the extreme. The “calls for warnings” were manufactured by SKY’s reporter. It’s wretched and it’s anti-journalism, but sadly it’s all too common.

Every claim made by Dr. Vernon Coleman in his book Anyone Who Tells You Vaccines Are Safe And Effective Is Lying is backed up by hard evidence. I can say that because I’ve actually read it. I can’t speak for Mercola’s book or the others mentioned in SKY’s hit-piece because I haven’t read them.

A national news channel is promoting book burning and dressing it up as news. It’s seeking to discredit medical experts by throwing around terms like misinformation and disputed claims, without referencing a single paragraph from the books in question.

SKY is banking on it’s viewers being too lazy to ask for the evidence or to know the difference between news reporting and news manufacturing.

For more on Dr. Vernon Coleman visit http://www.vernoncoleman.com

March 7, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 1 Comment

Russian Disinformation to Undermine US Mass-Jabbing for Covid?

By Stephen Lendman | March 7, 2021

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal cited an unnamed State Department Global Engagement Center official, saying Russian intelligence is trying to undermine confidence in US mass-jabbing for covid.

No evidence was cited like virtually always when Russia and other invented US enemies are accused of things they had nothing to do with.

Russia aside, there’s nothing remotely safe and effective about rushed to market, inadequately tested, experimental Pfizer and Moderna mRNA technology.

The same goes for J & J covid vaccine and AstraZeneca’s entry in Europe.

They’re all unapproved, granted emergency use authorization when no emergency exists.

Less than two months after mass-jabbing began, countless thousands suffered serious adverse events including deaths.

No one should be a mass-jabbing guinea pig for Pharma.

No one should risk their health and well-being so Pfizer, Moderna, and now Johnson & Johnson can cash in big on a bonanza of profits at the expense of individuals duped to believe they’ll be protected from what’s too hazardous to touch.

According to State Department disinformation, New Eastern Outlook, Oriental Review, News Front, and Rebel Inside truth-telling about mass-jabbing hazards is Russian propaganda.

According to the unnamed US official, “Russian intelligence services bear direct responsibility for using these four platforms to spread propaganda and lies (sic),” adding:

“We can say these outlets are directly linked to Russian intelligence services (sic).”

“They’re all foreign-owned, based outside of the United States.”

“They vary a lot in their reach, their tone, their audience, but they’re all part of the Russian propaganda and disinformation ecosystem (sic).”

According to the neocon/Russophobic Alliance for Securing Democracy that’s militantly hostile to the notion everywhere:

“The emphasis on denigrating Pfizer is likely due to its status as the first vaccine besides Sputnik V to see mass use, resulting in a greater potential threat to Sputnik’s market dominance.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov debunked the above fake news, saying:

“It’s nonsense. Russian special services have nothing to do with any criticism against vaccines.

“If we treat every negative publication against the Sputnik V vaccine as a result of efforts by American special services, then we will go crazy because we see it every day, every hour and in every Anglo-Saxon media.”

The Journal explained that the unnamed US official “didn’t provide specific evidence linking the publications to Russian intelligence” — because none exists like time and again earlier when phony accusations are made.

Unlike US rushed to market experimental drugs for mass-jabbing, introduction of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine last summer followed over 20 years of vaccine research, according to Sechenov University’s Institute for Translational Medicine and Biotechnology director Vadim Tarasov.

Technology used to develop Sputnik V is based upon adenovirus, the common cold.

Tarasov explained that the vaccine may not entirely stop covid from spreading. It’ll make symptoms milder, he said, adding:

“We can really talk about a breakthrough as our country has shown itself to be one of the leaders in the global pharmaceutical industry due to the fact that it has retained and developed new competencies in drug development.”

There’s no ambiguity about the health hazards of experimental US drugs for mass-jabbing.

Using them as directed risks serious self-inflicted harm or death — why it’s crucial to avoid them.

March 7, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | 1 Comment

Russia calls on OPCW to unveil truth behind alleged 2018 chemical attack in Syria’s Douma

Press TV – March 7, 2021

Russia has called on the global chemical weapons watchdog, OPCW, to conduct an impartial and reliable investigation into an alleged chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma near the capital Damascus on April 7, 2018.

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OPCW, Alexander Shulgin underlined the need for launching a transparent technical inquiry aimed at clarifying the actual course of events in Douma in 2018,  Syria’s official news agency SANA reported on Sunday.

“Successful work at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will be impossible until trustworthy circumstances behind the incident in the Syrian town of Douma in April 2018 are established,” the Russian official said.

Shulgin added that this sad page could be over and an international dialogue could be built at the OPCW only after receiving reliable conclusions on the issue.

Moscow has for months cited dissent by two former OPCW employees who leaked a document and an email as evidence that the OPCW doctored the conclusions of a report which found that a toxic chemical containing chlorine was used in a 2018 attack near Damascus.

According to the Russian official, the results which the two inspectors have reached and the violations they have uncovered have undermined the Western allegations.

In late 2019, whistleblowing website WikiLeaks published several batches of documents suggesting that the OPCW may have intentionally doctored its findings, notably avoiding revelations which may point to terrorists having been behind the alleged chemical attack.

One of the published documents showed Sebastien Braha, chief of cabinet at the OPCW, had ordered in an email that “all traces” of a report from Henderson be erased from the body’s registries.

Ian Henderson had found out that the gas cylinders at the site of the Douma incident had been placed there manually most likely by militants given that the area was not controlled by Damascus at the time.

Following the suspected chemical attack, Western countries were quick to blame it on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On April 14, 2018, the US, Britain and France launched a coordinated missile attack against sites and research facilities near Damascus and Homs with the purported goal of paralyzing the Syrian government’s capability to produce chemicals.

Damascus, however, said that no chemical attack had happened and that the incident had been staged by foreign intelligence agencies to pressure the government in the face of army advances against militants back then.

The OPCW concluded that chlorine had most likely been used in the attack. However, Syria and Russia both rejected the findings, saying they believed the incident had been staged by the White Helmets, a group which claims to be a humanitarian NGO but has long been accused of working with anti-Damascus militants and staging false-flag gas attacks.

The Syrian government also surrendered its stockpiles of chemical weapons in 2014 to a joint mission led by the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which oversaw the destruction of the weaponry. However, Western governments and their allies have never stopped pointing the finger at Damascus whenever an apparent chemical attack has taken place.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The Syrian government says the Israeli regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri terrorist groups that are wreaking havoc in the country.

Syrian government forces have taken back many areas once controlled by the terrorist groups.

Russia on Wednesday also called for not politicizing and exploiting the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Syria.

The IAEA in recent years has been investigating US claims that Syria allegedly tried to build a secret nuclear reactor at a remote desert site in Dayr al-Zawr in 2007, which no longer exists.

Syria and some other regional countries have time and again denounced the US and its Western allies for helping Israel develop its nuclear facilities and adopting double-standards on the issue of non-proliferation policies when it comes to Israel.

March 7, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

The curious case of a CIA contractor accused of terrorism in Venezuela who claims he was on a boating holiday

By Tom Secker | RT | March 7, 2021

This week, from the disturbing CIA operations file, comes the case of Matthew John Heath, an American and former Marine accused of sabotage, terrorism, trafficking illegal weapons and conspiracy.

You could be forgiven for thinking that an ex-Marine going on trial for terrorism charges in Venezuela might meet with the sort of US media coverage that the Amanda Knox story attained, but the start of Heath’s trial has warranted barely a whisper.

Heath was arrested last September alongside six Venezuelans, including some military personnel. The gang were apparently planning attacks on oil refineries, a major bridge and possibly military installations, and were caught at a roadblock with bricks of American currency, high explosives, a satellite phone and a grenade launcher.

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has accused Heath of being a spy and terrorist working for the US government, while his family maintains his innocence. One of several letters smuggled out of prison and sent to Heath’s relatives reads, “Don’t WORRY! Han Solo always wins!” His family have opined that he was either simply an American in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that the evidence was planted in order to frame him.

Seeking leverage or deafening silence?

So, what are we to make of this? Sean McFate of Georgetown University suggested that “A soldier like Heath, whether or not he’s guilty, is very attractive to authoritarian leaders like Maduro seeking leverage with the US.”

But the US government has had little or no contact with Heath, hasn’t moved to negotiate his release, and there is no sign of Maduro using ‘Han Solo’ as leverage, either with the Trump administration or with the new Biden White House.

Instead, the deafening silence of US officials and major media in response to Heath going on trial suggests that they want to keep a lid on the situation. This is likely due to the implication that this self-styled pilot of the Millennium Falcon was working as part of an ongoing disruption campaign being waged against Venezuela by the CIA.

Investigative journalist Alan Macleod pursued this angle in a recent expose, noting Heath’s widely reported background working not just for Marine Corps intelligence but also for the CIA, before he joined MVM – an intelligence services firm who contract almost exclusively for the US government.

Macleod’s article highlights, “Although MVM is technically a private company, it was founded by three former Secret Service agents and continues to work closely with Washington… The only clients listed on its website are American government agencies. “Need a secret agent?” begins its description of the company.”

The Bay of Piglets: Recycling the Cuba playbook

In May 2020, two former Green Berets led an amphibious assault on Venezuela with the aim of storming the presidential palace and installing Juan Guaido – the US’s preferred puppet leader of the country – as the new president. As Macleod points out, this event was quickly dubbed the ‘Bay of Piglets’ – a reference to the CIA botched coup attempt against the Castro government in Cuba in 1961.

In an interview with RT, he added, “That this could occur without at least the knowledge of the State Department seems unlikely, at best.”

Following the Bay of Pigs, the CIA embarked on an extensive program of black operations designed to destabilise the Castro government. One memo, titled ‘Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba’, details a string of ideas including industrial and military sabotage, economic warfare, and spreading misinformation and disinformation.

Operations were carried out to “create unrest and dissension among the Cuban people” and to encourage the view that Castro’s “value to the revolutionary cause has diminished to the point that plans are being made for his removal.” Plans were even made, under the codename Operation Dirty Trick, so that if the first manned spaceflight were to fail, they would manufacture evidence to “provide irrevocable proof… that the fault lies with the Communists.”

Fast forward to today, and it appears that the CIA have simply recycled their 60s playbook and used it as a manual for targeting the Venezuelan government and people. In between regular failed coup attempts, the US government is deploying regular economic warfare, sabotage and disinformation tactics to try to erode domestic support for Maduro and ‘soften’ the country’s resistance to the corporate empire.

Macleod summarised, “For two decades now, there has not been a day that has gone by that the US government was not working in some way to overthrow the government of Venezuela. They have tried organizing coups and protest movements as well as longer term strategies like funding political and social organizations, as well as levying sanctions on the country. There have also been many mysterious incidents in Venezuela that the government alleges were the work of unknown saboteurs.”

A blank space in a book

If Heath, a.k.a. ‘Han Solo’, was indeed working as part of a CIA black operation, which seems likely given the evidence compiled by MacLeod and the general pattern of events in Venezuela in recent years, then he is probably a NOC – a non-official cover operative.

As outlined by Al Pacino’s character in the film ‘The Recruit’ – which was originally written by the CIA’s Hollywood liaison – most CIA officers working out of embassies around the world enjoy official cover and diplomatic immunity, but some become NOCs.

Pacino’s character says: “The NOC is the truest practitioner of espionage – always out there, always alone, unprotected. If you are caught, you will most likely be tortured, shot, and/or hanged. And here’s the best part – no one will ever hear about it. You will become a star on a wall, a blank space in a book.”

Macleod commented on the increased contracting out of NOC activities, saying, “Much of Washington’s actual dirty work has been outsourced to third parties, however, through organizations like USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and the NED (National Endowment for Democracy).”

Back in the bad old days in Cuba, NOCs and other disposable assets came in the form of Cuban exiles and mafia lieutenants, but today, proxy war has been corporatised and NOCs work for three letter abbreviations like MVM, blowing up bridges and firing grenades at oil refiners. Or at least, trying to.

The world’s weirdest holiday?

The CIA has remained predictably silent about Heath, while the State Department’s only comment on the case came in the form of a tweet by a spokesman asking for a fair trial.

Neither the Trump nor Biden White Houses have had anything to say about Heath, suggesting that there is an official policy of not commenting on this politically controversial case.

If Heath is, as he claims, an innocent civilian with a military record and a penchant for ‘Star Wars’, who went to Venezuela during a global pandemic to gain“more boating experience,” then the State Department would be advocating for him. If this were the travesty of justice that Heath will no doubt make out it is when the trial moves to the defence phase, then the US media should be screaming blue murder.

Instead, the American government and major media response to this innocent man on the world’s weirdest holiday has been to politely ignore him, as though getting caught with high explosives, surveillance photos and machine guns is regular behaviour for Americans on nautical vacations.

Han Solo: A Matthew Heath story

As Joshua Goodman, an American journalist, observed, “Heath’s reputation for discretion, background in signals intelligence for the Marines and past work as a US government contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan seemed straight out of a Tom Clancy novel.”

The Clancy parallels are apt, especially given the latest adaptation of his work – Amazon’s ‘Jack Ryan’ – focused its entire second season on glamourising an off-the-books CIA coup against the Venezuelan government, including storming the presidential palace. The show, which is supported by both the CIA and the Pentagon, went to great efforts to project Venezuela back into the public consciousness as a desperate threat to US national security and in need of extreme prejudice.

Macleod commented, “Unfortunately, many of the plot lines of shows like Jack Ryan have a tendency to come true. This is because the writers are in close contact with government agents who help them craft realistic scenarios for their plots based on actual events or plans.”

Despite this, I wouldn’t expect ‘Han Solo: A Matthew Heath Story’ to be coming to a theatre near you anytime soon.

Tom Secker is a British-based investigative journalist, author and podcaster. You can follow his work via his Spy Culture site and his podcast ClandesTime.

March 7, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Believing in impossible things – and COVID19

By Dr. Malcolm Kendrick | March 6, 2021

“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

1: ‘The Concept of Coronavirus Herd Immunity Is Deadly and Dangerous’ https://www.self.com/story/coronavirus-herd-immunity

Since COVID19 first hurtled over the horizon, before landing upon us all with great force, I find that I have been asked to believe in many impossible things. First, I was told that attempting to create herd immunity was not achievable. It would also be extremely dangerous and would inevitably result in many hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.

Then the vaccines arrived at fantastical speed and I was told that mass vaccination, by creating herd immunity, would be the factor that would allow us to conquer COVID19 and return to normal life. I am not entirely sure which of these things is impossible, but one of them must be.

2: ‘Vaccines, on the other hand, are believed to induce stronger and longer lasting immunity.’ https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/does-the-vaccine-give-better-protection-than-having-fought-off-the-virus_uk_601c0663c5b62bf30754c563

I was then told the vaccine would provide greater immunity than being infected with COVID19. Which was interesting. I am not sure if this is actually impossible, but it seemed unlikely that anyone could make such statements after about three hundred people had actually been studied, and just two months had passed.

At the time I was aware of two people proven to have been re-infected with COVID19, out of about ten million cases. So, getting infected certainly seemed to provide a pretty good degree of immunity. A re-infection rate of 0.00005%

I also know that vaccinations can only ever really create an attenuated response. Whereas a full-blown infection triggers a full-blown immune response. So, I think it is pretty close to impossible that vaccination can provide greater protection than that from getting the actual disease. Which is why I think it is utterly bonkers we are actually vaccinating people who have circulating antibodies in their blood.

3: ‘Universal mask use could save 130,000 U.S. lives by the end of February, new study estimates.’ https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/23/universal-mask-use-could-save-130000-lives-by-the-end-of-february-new-modeling-study-says/

I am also being asked to believe that face masks are essential to stop the spread of COVID19 and prevent millions of deaths worldwide. The use of masks to prevent viral spread is something I actually researched in depth before COVID19 arrived (for various reasons), as did the WHO. They looked at non-pharmaceutical interventions for prevention of influenza, and produced a hefty report, which covered the use of masks.

Yes, I agree, influenza is not exactly the same as COVID19. But it is pretty much the same size of virus, and it is thought to spread in much the same way. Anyway, the WHO reported their views on masks in 2019, using data from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) – the gold standard.

‘Ten RCTs were included in the meta-analysis, and there was no evidence that facemasks are effective in reducing transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.’ https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf?ua=1

Since then, there has only been one RCT done on COVID19 transmission, in Denmark. It did not find any significant benefit from masks in reducing spread. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/

Never has a trial been subjected to such immediate and hostile reporting. Fact-checkers (whoever exactly they might be, or what understanding they have of medical research) immediately attacked it. One such, called PolitiFact, made the following judgement, which amused me.

“Social media posts claim, “The first randomized controlled trial of more than 6,000 individuals to assess the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection.”

The study concluded that wearing masks did not offer a very high level of personal protection to mask wearers in communities where wearing masks was not common practice. The study noted, however, that the data suggested masks provided some degree of self-protection.

We rate this claim Mostly Falsehttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/

So, according to PolitiFact, masks provided self-protection, but not personal protection. An interesting concept. Note to self, try to find out the difference between these two things.

In fact, this was just one of hundreds of critical articles, with self-anointed fact checkers clearly desperate to pull it to pieces. Yes, we have now entered a world when political fact checkers feel free to attack and contradict the findings of scientific papers, using such scientific terms as ‘Mostly false.’ Maybe they should have called it ‘very unique’ at the same time. Or, like the curate’s egg, that was good in parts.

Ignoring the modern-day Spanish Inquisition, and their ill-informed criticisms, I will simply call this study. More evidence that face masks don’t work. Perhaps someone will come along with a study proving that face masks work. So far … nada. Another impossible thing.

4: As of the 2nd March 2021 there have been 122,953 deaths from COVID19 in the UK.

Unlike many people I have actually written COVID19 on death certificates. Mostly they have been educated guesses. On at least five of them, early last year, there had been no positive swab to go on. So, I was just going on probable symptoms. As were many other doctors at the time.

Which means that you can take five off that number for starters. Although, of course, once written, that is very much, that … when it comes to death certificates. In fact, early on in the pandemic, we were probably underdiagnosing as often as over diagnosing deaths from COVID19. Although no-one will ever know. With no positive swab – and few swabs were being done – and almost no post-mortems – you were simply guessing.

As for now … NOW we have the very strange concept that any death within twenty-eight days of a positive COVID19 swab is recorded as a COVID19 death. Simultaneously, I am told that if I have a positive test at work, and then take some time off work (I can never remember the latest guidance). I am not to have another swab for ninety days.

How so? Because it now seems (I actually knew this a long time ago), that swabs can remain positive for months after the infection has been and gone [or was maybe never there to begin with]. Or to put this another way, you can have a positive swab long after you have been infected – and recovered. There are just some bits of virus up your nose that can be magnified, through the wonders of the PCR test, into a positive result.

Which means that an elderly person, infected months ago, can be admitted to hospital for any reason whatsoever. The they can have a positive swab – everyone is swabbed. Then they can die, from whatever it was they were admitted for in the first place. Then, they will be recorded as a COVID19 death.

In truth, this is just the start of impossible things when it comes to the number of COVID19 deaths. Do not get me started on PCR cycle numbers, and false positives. We would be here all day.

Equally, how many people have truly died of COVID19, instead of simply with COVID19? If I painted a blue circle on your forehead, then you died, I would not say that you died of a blue circle painted on your forehead. I would say that you died with a blue circle painted on your forehead.

5: The Swedish COVID-19 Response Is a Disaster. It Shouldn’t Be a Model for the Rest of the World

This was actually the headline title from an article in TIME magazine. The article went on to state that ‘The Swedish way has yielded little but death and misery. And this situation has not been honestly portrayed to the Swedish people or to the rest of the world.’  https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/

Death and misery. Hmmmm, I might make this the title of my next book. Bound to be a best seller.

Yes, Sweden has been attacked from all sides with terrific venom, for holding out against imposing severe lockdown. How dare they… follow the WHO’s initial advice. That everyone else ignored.

So, have they done well with regard to COVID19 deaths? Not particularly. Have they done badly? Not particularly. On Worldometer they rank twenty fourth highest for deaths per million of the population. Which is pretty much bang on average for Western Europe.

One reason why they might not have appeared to do better is that, in the year 2019, they had their lowest rate of death for at least ten years. Three and a half thousand less in total than in 2018 https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ . In Norway, a country  used to beat Sweden with, due to their very low COVID19 deaths there was no difference in death rate between 2018 and 2019. To be blunt, the elderly population in Sweden had some catching up to do.

Once you factor this in, the much-lauded difference in deaths, between Norway and Sweden, kind of disappears.

‘Our study shows that all-cause mortality was largely unchanged during the epidemic as compared to the previous four years in Norway and Sweden, two countries which employed very different strategies against the epidemic. Excess mortality from COVID-19 may be less pronounced than previously perceived in Sweden, and mortality displacement might explain part of the observed findings.’ https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.11.20229708v1.full

In absolute figures. Sweden had

  • 92,185 deaths in 2018
  • 88,766 deaths in 2019
  • 97,941 deaths in 2020

A drop, then a rebound. Perhaps another way to look at the figures is to compare 2020 with a bad Swedish year in the past. In 2012, 91,938 people died. However, the population was lower at 9.5 million vs 10.2 million. So:

  • The absolute death rate in 2012 was 0.957%.
  • The absolute death rate in 2020 was 0.969%.

The difference between 2012 and 2020 is 0.012%. That is 120 extra deaths per million of the population, which is 1,224 people in population of 10.2 million. The statistics tell us that twelve thousand people died from COVID19 in Sweden. Maybe you can make all that add up. Frankly, I find it impossible.

6: Lockdowns have worked.

Before COVID19 came along, no country had ever attempted a lockdown – ever. So, no-one had any idea if such a thing could possibly work. There was no evidence, from anywhere, to support its use.

It was the Chinese who started it, and who claimed great success for their jackboot lockdown tactics. Well, they convinced me… not. Frankly, if I had to choose a country from which to obtain high quality, unbiased information, about anything, China would not feature in my top one hundred and ninety-four countries

But there you go, lockdown worked under the control of the kind and caring CCP. Hoorah, cheering all round, and the first person to stop cheering gets shot. Well, we don’t want any damned nay-sayers, do we? After that, according to almost everything I have read, everywhere, it worked for everyone else too. Remarkable.

Yes, it is certainly true you can find countries that locked down, closed their borders, and kept the rates low. That, however, is not proof of anything at all. The scientific method requires a little more rigour than this.

In fact, the main thing that scientific rigour requires is that you specifically do not go around looking for facts that support your hypothesis. Because that, I am afraid, is the exact opposite of science. What you need to do, instead, is to go around looking for facts that disprove your hypothesis. This is what Karl Popper called falsification.

For example, my hypothesis is that “all swans are white”. I seek, and find, only white swans. So, this makes my hypothesis is correct? No. What science requires you do is to hunt tirelessly for black swans. If you never find one, fine. However, you need to be aware that the moment you do, your hypothesis has just been disproven. In real life things are very rarely as simple as this, but that is the basic principle.

However, with lockdown (and I recognise that no two countries locked down in the same way) the hypothesis is that countries which did not lockdown will have higher rate of death for COVID19 than those that did.

So, let us look, first, at the countries with the highest rate of COVID19. Excluding very small countries e.g., San Marino, or Gibraltar, we have, in descending order of deaths per million of the population https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ .

  • Czechia
  • Belgium
  • Slovenia
  • UK
  • Italy
  • Montenegro
  • Portugal
  • USA
  • Hungary
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • North Macedonia
  • Bulgaria
  • Spain
  • Mexico
  • Peru
  • Croatia
  • Slovakia
  • Panama
  • France

Every single country in this list carried out fairly strict lockdowns. The UK, apparently, has the strictest lockdown in the world, this winter.

Four countries that have been roundly criticized for having far less restrictive lockdowns are: Sweden, Japan, Belarus and Nicaragua (Realistically there are others, in poorer countries, where lockdowns have not happened – because they can’t afford it)

In these four ‘non-lockdowns’ countries, the death rate is, on average 391 per million.

In the top twenty ‘lockdown’ countries, the death rate is, on average 1,520 per million.

The only non-lockdown country in the top ninety for death rates is Sweden. It comes just below France, at number twenty-four.

Now, if the difference between lockdown and non-lockdown countries were ten per cent, or even fifty per cent, I would fully accept that there are many other variables that could explain such finding away. Although, of course, we should really look at a higher rate in the non-lockdown countries, not a lower rate.

Yet although this evidence is out there, I am being asked to believe that lockdowns work. At least the WHO agrees with me on this impossible thing. As Dr David Nabarro, the WHO special envoy on COVID19 said:

“We really do appeal to all world leaders, stop using lockdown as your primary method of control,” he said.

“Lockdowns have just one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-12/world-health-organization-coronavirus-lockdown-advice/12753688

Lockdowns, according to the WHO, in unguarded moments, have just one consequence. They make poor people an awful lot poorer.

‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If this is granted all else follows.’

March 6, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | 4 Comments

How the US and Great Britain Instigate Coups Nowadays

By Vladimir Danilov – New Eastern Outlook – 06.03.2021

Recently, the United States and Britain, actively using the propaganda tools that they possess, have increasingly begun to accuse Russia and China of interfering in their domestic affairs and election campaigns, and of effectively preparing coups in these countries. However, apart from making proclamatory statements, neither Washington nor London has presented any facts or documents that confirm these accusations, nor can they present them, since these accusations are false.

Along with that, documented information about complicity on the part of United States and Britain in various coups that were being set up has begun to appear more frequently in publicly accessible reports in various media outlets.

For example, according to the recent publication in the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung, UN investigators found out that in 2019 elite fighters from the American Erik Prince’s private military company Blackwater, infamous for their actions during the American occupation of Iraq and several other states, had to take action twice to eliminate the Government of National Accord, which is recognized by the international community. But this “Project Opus” failed…

A group of UN experts studying violations of the UN arms embargo against Libya learned that in the Libyan war in recent years there has been a second, secret front to directly get rid of officials and commanders of the Government of National Accord that rules in Tripoli. “Project Opus” specifically called for delivering 20 elite Blackwater fighters to sites near Tripoli in June 2019 to conduct operations. The officers contacted by the German newspaper in Benghazi confirmed the arrival of 20 fighters from England and South Africa, and one American, in June 2019. The second group, consisting of snipers and fighters trained to fight behind enemy lines, flew to Benghazi in April 2020 and then headed off to the front near Tripoli. On April 24, 2020, 13 French citizens reached the Libyan-Tunisian border and presented themselves as diplomats to the Tunisian border guards, even though they carried heavy weapons. They were arrested, but under diplomatic pressure from Paris they were allowed to leave for Tunisia.

In early May 2020, the world media exploded with reports: another attempt at a military invasion of Venezuela was thwarted, Washington’s mercenaries were captured by the Venezuelan authorities, the United States wanted to repeat the operation in Cochinos Bay (the so-called attempt by the US Central Intelligence Agency to land Cuban emigrants in the Bay of Pigs, something which was aimed at overthrowing Fidel Castro). It is worth remembering how on May 3 mercenaries from the American private military company Silvercorp tried to land on the coast of Venezuela near the city of La Guaira, which is located just 32 kilometers from Caracas. Sixty armed, well-equipped militants with satellite phones and fake documents planned to reach the capital and capture the Venezuelan president for his subsequent transfer to the United States. Two of those arrested, Airan Berry and Luke Denman, were US citizens that had served in Afghanistan and Iraq. On May 4, American media interviewed the former US special forces fighter and the head of the Silvercorp PMC, Jordan Goodrow, who trained these fighters in Colombia. Goodrow declared that the goal of “Operation Gideon” was to organize raids into Venezuela to fight “the regime”. The former special forces soldier showed an eight-page $213 million contract signed in October 2019 by Washington-backed self-proclaimed Venezuelan “president” Juan Guaido and Donald Trump’s political advisers. On March 23, the Colombian authorities confiscated an entire arsenal on their territory that was specifically meant for the mercenaries. The mercenaries were equipped fairly well.

The Washington Post also published a document according to which members of the Venezuelan opposition, following negotiations, in October 2019 entered into a deal with the American private military company Silvercorp, located in Florida. The PMC employees were supposed to infiltrate the territory of Venezuela to overthrow the country’s legitimate president, Nicolas Maduro.

These events in Venezuela were recently well assessed by Bloomberg :

“One would hope that the Central Intelligence Agency could do better than a farcical scheme that was disowned by the Venezuelan opposition, penetrated by regime security forces and disrupted as soon as it began. Yet this trivial episode invites us to think seriously about the role of covert intervention and regime change in US policy.”

Exposing these subversive activities by Blackwater and other US and British mercenaries shows that they are usually committed by former military personnel and criminals involved in a wide variety of activities around the world. They act as bodyguards, protecting people and businesses in “hot spots” (like oil-producing areas off the coast of Nigeria and Sudan), as well as convoys and freight shipments in war zones, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since from the very beginning of hostilities in the region both public opinion in the United States and Democrats in Congress viewed sending their own soldiers to hot spots extremely unfavorably, they had to look for replacements elsewhere.

American wars in the beginning of the 21st century have become a real gold mine for these organizations, which have turned from bands of thugs that toppled shaky “cannibalistic” regimes in Africa during the Cold War into real international corporations. They represent a significant benefit for the United States and its Western allies leading the war, since they consist of veterans that are already experienced – military professionals who have not found a niche for themselves in civilian life. In addition, these organizations are considered private enterprises, and therefore are not accountable to Congress, so the losses these soldiers incur are not included in the total number of casualties for a country’s conventional army, which makes it possible to give a more favorable representation of the situation in a war zone at home. Public opinion in the United States has long called for rejecting the services these companies provide, and reinforcing transparency in their activities. The UN has repeatedly raised the issue of revising the definition of “mercenary”, and banning organizations like Blackwater, over the past several years – but so far it has not yet achieved any significant results.

Besides these examples of Washington’s attempts to instigate a military coup in other countries, nowadays a number of documents have been raised for public review related to the period of the height of the US intervention in Syria in 2014, when Assad’s forces were growing weaker and Damascus was under the threat of capture by Islamists that the West nurtured and supported. For example, the Middle East Eye agency has shown quite convincingly – and with documentary evidence – how during a British-supported operation called Sarkha (Scream), the media tried to turn the Alawites against Assad, and by doing so accomplish a coup in Syria. The publication gives official documents that attest to the social media “protest movement” that was actually created under the authority of the British government.  The very same scenario for Operation Sarkha was developed by the American company Pechter Polls of Princeton (New Jersey, USA), which was working under a contract with the British government. The contract for subversive work in Syria was initially administered by the Military Strategic Effects department at the UK Department of Defense, and then by the British government-run The Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, whose objective is to

“resolve conflicts that threaten the Great Britain’s interests.” The project’s budget was £600,000 ($746,000) per year. The published documents indicate that the goal of the operations was “supporting the activities of the Syrian opposition media to reach an audience in Syria… Platforms for this work were created jointly by the UK, USA, and Canada to strengthen popular resentment toward the Assad regime.”

In another issue of the Middle East Eye, documents obtained by the publication show how British contractors hired Syrian citizens who were journalists to promote “moderate opposition” – often without their knowledge. Contracts with these mercenaries were entered into by the British Foreign Office, and were managed by the country’s Ministry of Defense, sometimes by military intelligence officers, paying small amounts of money to the contractors.

After getting to know everything indicated above, the question naturally arises: who exactly is really interfering in the affairs of other states? And how objective is the propaganda coming from Washington and London, as well as their foreign policy as a whole?

March 6, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , , , | 1 Comment

As the Insurrection Narrative Crumbles, Democrats Cling to it More Desperately Than Ever

Pelosi: We Need to Protect the Capitol from ‘All the President’s Men out There’
By Glenn Greenwald | March 5, 2021

Twice in the last six weeks, warnings were issued about imminent, grave threats to public safety posed by the same type of right-wing extremists who rioted at the Capitol on January 6. And both times, these warnings ushered in severe security measures only to prove utterly baseless.

First we had the hysteria over the violence we were told was likely to occur at numerous state capitols on Inauguration Day. “Law enforcement and state officials are on high alert for potentially violent protests in the lead-up to Inauguration Day, with some state capitols boarded up and others temporarily closed ahead of Wednesday’s ceremony,” announced CNN. In an even scarier formulation, NPR intoned that “the FBI is warning of protests and potential violence in all 50 state capitals ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.”

The resulting clampdowns were as extreme as the dire warnings. Washington, D.C. was militarized more than at any point since the 9/11 attack. The military was highly visible on the streets. And, described The Washington Post, “state capitols nationwide locked down, with windows boarded up, National Guard troops deployed and states of emergency preemptively declared as authorities braced for potential violence Sunday mimicking the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of pro-Trump rioters.” All of this, said the paper, “reflected the anxious state of the country ahead of planned demonstrations.”

But none of that happened — not even close. The Washington Post acknowledged three weeks later:

Despite warnings of violent plots around Inauguration Day, only a smattering of right-wing protesters appeared at the nation’s statehouses. In Tallahassee, just five armed men wearing the garb of the boogaloo movement — a loose collection of anti-government groups that say the country is heading for civil war — showed up. Police and National Guard personnel mostly ignored them.

All over the country it was the same story. “But at the moment that Biden was taking the oath of office in Washington, the total number of protesters on the Capitol grounds in Topeka stood at five — two men supporting Trump and two men and a boy ridin’ with Biden,” reported The Wichita Eagle (“With Kansas Capitol in lockdown mode, Inauguration Day protest fizzles). “The protests fizzled out after not many people showed up,” reported the local Florida affiliate in Tallahassee. “The large security efforts dwarfed the protests that materialized by Wednesday evening,” said CNN, as “state capitols and other cities remained largely calm.”

Indeed, the only politically-motivated violence on Inauguration Day was carried out by Antifa and anarchist groups in Portland and Seattle, which caused some minor property damage as part of anti-Biden protests while they “scuffled with police.” CNN, which spent a full week excitedly hyping the likely violence coming to state capitols by right-wing Trump supporters, was forced to acknowledge in its article about their non-existence that “one exception was Portland, where left-wing protesters damaged the Democratic Party of Oregon building during one of several planned demonstrations.”

Completely undeterred by that debacle, Democrats and their media spokespeople returned with a new set of frightening warnings for this week. The date of March 4 has taken on a virtually religious significance for the Q-Anon movement, announced NBC News’ Ben Collins, who was heard on NPR on Thursday speaking through actual, literal journalistic tears as he recounted all the times he called Facebook to plead with them to remove dangerous right-wing extremists on their platform (tears commence at roughly 7:00 minutes in). Valiantly holding back full-on sobbing, Collins explained that he proved to be so right but it pains and sorrows him to admit this. With his self-proclaimed oracle status fully in place, he prophesized that March 4 had taken on special dangers because Q-Anon followers concluded that this is when Trump would be inaugurated.

This is how apocalyptic cult leaders always function. When the end of the world did not materialize on January 6, Collins insisted that January 20 was the day of the violent reckoning. When nothing happened on that day, he moved the Doomsday Date to March 4. The flock cannot remain in a state of confusion for too long about why the world has not ended as promised by the prophet, so a new date must quickly be provided with an explanation for why this is serious business this time.

This March 4 paranoia was not confined to NBC’s resident millennial hall monitor and censorship advocate. On March 3, The New York Times warned that “the Capitol Police force is preparing for another assault on the Capitol building on Thursday after obtaining intelligence of a potential plot by a militia group.” All this, said the Paper of Record, because “intelligence analysts had spent weeks tracking online chatter by some QAnon adherents who have latched on to March 4 — the original inauguration date set in the Constitution — as the day Donald J. Trump would be restored to the presidency and renew his crusade against America’s enemies.”

These dire warnings also, quite predictably, generated serious reactions. “House leaders on Wednesday abruptly moved a vote on policing legislation from Thursday to Wednesday night, so lawmakers could leave town,” said the Times. We learned that there would be further militarization of the Capitol and troop deployment in Washington indefinitely due to so-called “chatter.” NPR announced: “The House of Representatives has canceled its Thursday session after the U.S. Capitol Police said it is aware of a threat by an identified militia group to breach the Capitol complex that day.”

Do you know what happened on March 4 when it came to violence from right-wing extremists? The same thing that happened on January 20: absolutely nothing. There were no attempted attacks on the Capitol, state capitols, or any other government institution. There was violent crime registered that day in Washington D.C. but none of it was political violence by those whom media outlets warned posed such a grave danger that Congress has to be closed and militarization of Washington extended indefinitely.

Perhaps the most significant blow to the maximalist insurrection/coup narrative took place inside the Senate on Thursday. Ever since January 6, those who were not referring to the riot as a “coup attempt” — as though the hundreds of protesters intended to overthrow the most powerful and militarized government in history — were required to refer to it instead as an “armed insurrection.”

This formulation was crucial not only for maximizing fear levels about the Democrats’ adversaries but also, as I’ve documented previously, because declaring an “armed insurrection” empowers the state with virtually unlimited powers to act against the citizenry. Over and over, leading Democrats and their media allies repeated this phrase like some hypnotic mantra:

But this was completely false. As I detailed several weeks ago, so many of the most harrowing and widespread media claims about the January 6 riot proved to be total fabrications. A pro-Trump mob did not bash Office Brian Sicknick’s skull in with a fire extinguisher. No protester brought zip-ties with them as some premeditated plot to kidnap members of Congress (two rioters found them on a table inside). There’s no evidence anyone intended to assassinate Mike Pence, Mitt Romney or anyone else.

Yet the maximalist narrative of an attempted coup or armed insurrection is so crucial to Democrats — regardless of whether it is true — that pointing out these facts deeply infuriates them. A television clip of mine from last week went viral among furious liberals calling me a fascism supporter even though it did nothing but point out the indisputable facts that other than Brian Sicknick, whose cause of death remains unknown, the only people who died at the Capitol riot were Trump supporters, and that there are no known cases of the rioters deliberately killing anyone.

(Two FBI operatives have since anonymously leaked that it is looking at a “suspect” who may have engaged with Sicknick in a way that ultimately contributed to his death. But nothing still is known; Sicknick’s mother claims he died of a stroke while his brother says it was from pepper spray; and all of this is worlds away from the endlessly repeated media claim that a bloodthirsty pro-Trump mob savagely bashed his head in with a fire extinguisher.)

What we know for sure is that no Trump supporter fired any weapon inside the Capitol and that the FBI seized a grand total of zero firearms from those it arrested that day — a rather odd state of affairs for an “armed insurrection,” to put that mildly. In questioning from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Thursday’s hearing, a senior FBI official, Jill Sanborn, acknowledged this key fact:

(The “one lady” who died referred to by this FBI official was Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed Trump supporter who was killed when she was shot point blank in the neck inside the Capitol on January 6 by an armed Capitol Police Officer).

The key point to emphasize here is that threats and dangers are not binary: they either exist or they are fully illusory. They reside on a spectrum. To insist that they be discussed rationally, soberly and truthfully is not to deny the existence of the threat itself. One can demand a rational and fact-based understanding of the magnitude of the threat revealed by the January 6 riot without denying that there is any danger at all.

Those who denounced the excesses of McCarthyism were not insisting that there were no Communists in government; those denouncing the excesses of the Clinton administration’s attempts to seize more surveillance power after the Oklahoma City court bombing were not denying that some anti-government militias may do violence again; those who objected to the protracted and unhinged assault on civil liberties by the Bush/Cheney and Obama administrations after 9/11 were not arguing that there were no Muslim extremists intent on committing violence.

The argument then, and the argument now, is that the threat was being deliberately inflated and exaggerated, and fears stoked and exploited, both for political gain and to justify the placement of more and more powers in the hands of the state in the name of stopping these threats. That is the core formula of authoritarianism — to place the population in a state of such acute fear that it acquiesces to any assertion of power which security state agencies and politicians demand and which they insist are necessary to keep everyone safe.

There is, relatedly, a massive political benefit from convincing the population that the opponents and critics of those in power do not merely hold a different ideology but are coup plotters, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists. That is the same political benefit that accrued from trying to persuade the population that adversaries of the Democratic Party were treasonous Kremlin agents. The more you can demonize your opponents as something monstrous, the more political power you can acquire.

And as Democrats and liberals now gear up to demand a new War on Terror, this one domestic in nature, it should be no surprise that the rhetorical leaders of their effort now are the same lowlife neocon and Rovian slanderers — Bill Kristol, David Frum, Steve Schmidt, Nicolle Wallace, Rick Wilson — who demonized everyone who questioned them as part of the first War on Terror as traitors and terrorist-lovers and subversives. It is not a coincidence that neocons are leading the way now as liberals’ favorite propagandists: they are the most skilled and experienced in weaponizing and exaggerating terrorism threats for political gain and authoritarian power.

Ultimately, if this “armed insurrection” and threat of domestic terrorism are so grave, why do media figures and politicians in both parties — from Adam Schiff to Liz Cheney — keep lying about it and peddling fictions? Politicians and media figures do that only when they know that the threat, in reality, is not nearly as menacing as they need it to be to fulfill their objectives of political gain and coercive power.

March 5, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | , , , | 1 Comment

CNN.com Gaslights Readers on Failed Ocean Predictions – Now Claims Opposite

By James Taylor | ClimateRealism | March 2, 2021

Just one year after climate activists and their media allies spread fear with claims that global warming is causing the world’s ocean currents to speed up, CNN.com is now claiming the opposite – and claiming scientists predicted a slowing of ocean currents all along. CNN’s attempt at “Gaslighting” (a term derived from the 1944 movie Gaslight, in which a man attempts to convince his wife that she cannot believe her own memory) reveals the lack of honesty and lack of scientific basis for alarmist climate claims.

CNN published an article this morning titled, “The slowing down of ocean currents could have a devastating effect on our climate.” In the course of claiming all sorts of existential threats caused by slow ocean currents – including stronger hurricanes, heat waves, and sea-level rise – CNN asserted, “The slowdown of ocean circulation is directly caused by warming global temperatures and has been predicted by climate scientists.”

Except that “climate scientists” and the activist media were telling us exactly the opposite just one year ago.

On February 6, 2020, NASA published an article titled, “Arctic Ice Melt Is Changing Ocean Currents.” The article claimed global warming is speeding up ocean currents. According to the article, “A major ocean current in the Arctic is faster and more turbulent as a result of rapid sea ice melt, a new study from NASA shows. The current is part of a delicate Arctic environment that is now flooded with fresh water, an effect of human-caused climate change.”

On February 6, 2020, Scientific American published an article titled, “Ocean Currents Are Speeding Up, Driven by Faster Winds.” The article claims, “Climate change may in part be spurring the acceleration, which could change how heat and nutrients are pushed around the oceans.”

On February 5, 2020, Science magazine published an article titled, “Global warming is speeding up Earth’s massive ocean currents.” Quoting a scientist reviewing data on ocean-current speeds derived from instruments on Argo robotic floats, Science reported, “The evidence in the Argo data is absolutely astonishing,”

On February 6, 2020, the website Live Science published an article titled, “Ocean currents are getting faster.” The article claimed, “The change is driven by global warming and wind.”

To ensure the public was sufficiently aware and sufficiently alarmed about accelerating ocean currents, Washington Post climate change reporter Chris Mooney published a February 5, 2020, article titled, “World’s oceans are speeding up – another mega-scale consequence of climate change.” According to the article, “It’s the latest dramatic finding about the stark transformation of the global ocean — joining revelations about massive coral die-offs, upheaval to fisheries, ocean-driven melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, increasingly intense ocean heat waves and accelerating sea level rise. … This suggests the Earth might actually be more sensitive to climate change than our simulations can currently show.”

On February 11, 2020, NBC News published an article titled, “Climate change models predicted ocean currents would speed up – but not this soon.” According to the article, “Climate models had predicted that ocean circulation would accelerate with unmitigated climate change, but the changes had not been expected until much later this century … The disparity suggests that some climate models may underestimate the effects of global warming.”

Now, quickly and completely forget everything you just read. New data are destroying all those claims of climate change speeding up ocean currents. As CNN reports this morning, ocean currents now appear to be slowing down, not speeding up, due to global warming. And, remember, as CNN tells us, climate scientists predicted this all along.

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment