What if the Palestinians Won a Battle and No One Knew?
By Eve Mykytyn | September 2, 2019
There is a lawsuit, Al-Tammimi v. Adelson, that is making its way through the federal courts. The lawsuit was brought by a group of Palestinians and Palestinian/Americans asking for damages of 34.5 billion dollars resulting from Israeli settlements in the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians claim that the defendants, pro-Israel donors and organizations, banks, contractors working for Israel and deputy National Security Advisor Abrams conspired to expel Non Jews from their land and otherwise harm them. Defendants include Americans Sheldon Adelson, Lawrence Ellison, Haim Saban, Irving Moskowitz, John Hagee and Israeli Lev Leviev. The appeals court decision is here.
The suit was first brought in a US Federal district court (the “trial court”) alleging that the defendants “funneled millions of dollars through the defendant tax-exempt entities and banks to Israeli villages called “settlements.” Armed with this financial assistance, the settlement leaders hired full-time security coordinators who trained a militia of Israeli settlers to kill Palestinians and confiscate their property. The defendant construction and support firms destroyed property belonging to the Palestinians and built settlements in its place” and deputy national security advisor of the United States publicly endorsed the settlements.
The plaintiffs pressed four claims: “(1) civil conspiracy, (2) genocide and other war crimes, (3) aiding and abetting genocide and other war crimes and (4) trespass.”
The trial court dismissed the suit, relying on the doctrine that it is inappropriate for a court to determine matters that are inherently political and more properly decided by Congress and/or the President. The trial court found that the case required it to “adjudicate and resolve the lawfulness of the development of Israeli settlements…” Such a ruling, the trial court said, was “simply inappropriate for this court to resolve. Instead, these issues must be decided by the political branches.”
According to Haaretz, Israeli legal organization, Shurat Hadin, that claims to represent victims of terror, praised the trial court decision, and incorrectly stated that “cases such as this are brought solely to furnish a foundation of legal legitimacy for the BDS movement, and undermine the legitimacy of Israel.” And then, perhaps for vengeance, added the hope that “the judge will see clear to impose the large costs of these proceedings on the plaintiffs.” Imposition of costs is routine in some countries but unusual in the US.
On February 19, 2019 a panel of the Washington, DC Federal Circuit Court of Appeals (the “appeals court”) unanimously reversed the trial court and ruled that a trial court could find the defendants liable without deciding who owns the land. Although the appeals court did not decide liability, it sent the case back to the trial court for trial.
The appeals court agreed with the trial court that the issue of sovereignty over the land is political, but found that the case could be dismissed only if none of its claims could be resolved without deciding the political issue. In other words, they ruled that the Plaintiff’s claims can be separated from the issue of sovereignty over the land.
The lawsuit was brought primarily under a federal law entitled, the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”). The ATS provides, in part, that federal courts can hear a civil action by a nonresident non- US citizen for a wrong “that is committed in violation of the law of nations.” The appeals court noted that “it is well settled that genocide violates the law of nations.” The court found that there is a definition of genocide within international law, that is: “[k]illing members of [a national, ethnic, racial or religious group] with intent to destroy [the group], in whole or in part.”
“Thus, the ATS—by incorporating the law of nations … —provides a judicially manageable standard to determine whether Israeli settlers are committing genocide.” In so stating, the appeals court is telling the trial court that this is the proper standard for its decision, and that this is not a “political” issue. (by political, they mean in the narrow sense of sovereignty involved in this case).
This decision can be appealed to a larger panel of the appeals court or to the Supreme Court, absent a successful appeal by the defendants, the Palestinians will be able to proceed. The district court has not yet reheard the case.
It seems to me like a big deal that three federal appeals judges ruled unanimously that the plaintiffs may proceed to argue that Israeli settlers and their benefactors have committed or aided in genocide.
However, the mainstream media has declined to cover this crucial case. A search of The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg yielded no results. The case was covered by a few smaller outlets and by Bloomberg, Reuters (which included a summary that was at least partially correct) and by the Jerusalem Post (that complained the Palestinian plaintiffs failed to present the Israeli narrative). The Electronic Intifada covered the initial filing but does not seem to have followed the case. And Haaretz and the Times of Israel wrote about the dismissal by the district court but not that it was overturned on appeal. This strikes me as scant coverage of an important case.
Finally, a part of the United States government is treating Palestinians as people who have at least potential rights even against billionaires, and most of our media has not bothered to tell us the story.
Questions Nobody Is Asking About Jeffrey Epstein
By Eric Rasmusen • Unz Review • September 2, 2019
The Jeffrey Epstein case is notable for the ups and downs in media coverage it’s gotten over the years. Everybody, it seems, in New York society knew by 2000 that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were corrupting teenage girls, but the press wouldn’t cover it. Articles by New York in 2002 and Vanity Fair in 2003 alluded to it gently, while probing Epstein’s finances more closely. In 2005, the Palm Beach police investigated. The county prosecutor, Democrat Barry Krischer, wouldn’t prosecute for more than prostitution, so they went to the federal prosecutor, Republican Alexander Acosta, and got the FBI involved. Acosta’s office prepared an indictment, but before it was filed, he made a deal: Epstein agreed to plead guilty to a state law felony and receive a prison term of 18 months. In exchange, the federal interstate sex trafficking charges would not be prosecuted by Acosta’s office. Epstein was officially at the county jail for 13 months, where the county officials under Democratic Sheriff Ric Bradshaw gave him scandalously easy treatment, letting him spend his days outside, and letting him serve a year of probation in place of the last 5 months of his sentence. Acosta’s office complained, but it was a county jail, not a federal jail, so he was powerless.
Epstein was released, and various lawsuits were filed against him and settled out of court, presumably in exchange for silence. The media was quiet or complimentary as Epstein worked his way back into high society. Two books were written about the affair, and fell flat. The FBI became interested again around 2011 (a little known fact) and maybe things were happening behind the scenes, but the next big event was in 2018 when the Miami Herald published a series of investigative articles rehashing what had happened. In 2019 federal prosecutors indicted Epstein, he was put in jail, and he mysteriously died. Now, after much complaining in the press about how awful jails are and how many people commit suicide, things are quiet again, at least until the Justice Department and the State of Florida finish their investigation a few years from now. (For details and more links, see “Investigation: Jeffrey Epstein” at Medium.com and “Jeffrey Epstein” at Wikipedia.)
I’m an expert in the field of “game theory”, strategic thinking. What would I do if I were Epstein? I’d try to get the President, the Attorney-General, or the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York to shut down the investigation before it went public. I’d have all my friends and all my money try to pressure them. If it failed and I were arrested, it would be time for the backup plan— the Deal. I’d try to minimize my prison time, and, just as important, to be put in one of the nicer federal prisons where I could associate with financial wizards and drug lords instead of serial killers, black nationalists, and people with bad breath.
That’s what Epstein would do. What about the powerful people Epstein would turn in to get his deal? They aren’t as smart as Epstein, but they would know the Deal was coming— that Epstein would be quite happy to sacrifice them in exchange for a prison with a slightly better golf course. What could they do? There’s only one good option— to kill Epstein, and do it quickly, before he could start giving information samples to the U. S. Attorney.
Trying to kill informers is absolutely routine in the mafia, or indeed, for gangs of any kind. The reason people call such talk “conspiracy theories” when it comes to Epstein is that his friends are WASPs and Jews, not Italians and Mexicans. But WASPs and Jews are human too. They want to protect themselves. Famous politicians, unlike gangsters, don’t have full-time professional hit men on their staffs, but that’s just common sense—politicians rarely need hit men, so it makes more sense to hire them on a piecework basis than as full-time employees. How would they find hit men? You or I wouldn’t know how to start, but it would be easy for them. Rich powerful people have bodyguards. Bodyguards are for defense, but the guys who do defense know guys who do offense. And Epstein’s friends are professional networkers. One reporter said of Ghislaine Maxwell, “Her Rolodex would blow away almost anyone else’s I can think of—probably even Rupert Murdoch’s.” They know people who know people. Maybe I’m six degrees of separation from a mafia hit man, but not Ghislaine Maxwell. I bet she knows at least one mafioso personally who knows more than one hit man.
In light of this, it would be very surprising if someone with a spare $50 million to spend to solve the Epstein problem didn’t give it a try. A lot of people can be bribed for $50 million. Thus, we should have expected to see bribery attempts. If none were detected, it must have been because prison workers are not reporting they’d been approached.
Some people say that government incompetence is always a better explanation than government malfeasance. That’s obviously wrong— when an undeserving business gets a contract, it’s not always because the government official in charge was just not paying attention. I can well believe that prisons often take prisoners off of suicide watch too soon, have guards who go to sleep and falsify records, remove cellmates from prisoners at risk of suicide or murder, let the TV cameras watching their most important prisoners go on the blink, and so forth. But that cuts both ways. Remember, in the case of Epstein, we’d expect a murder attempt whether the warden of the most important federal jail in the country is competent or not. If the warden is incompetent, we should expect that murder attempt to succeed. Murder becomes all the more plausible. Instead of spending $50 million to bribe 20 guards and the warden, you just pay some thug $30,000 to walk in past the snoring guards, open the cell door, and strangle the sleeping prisoner, no fancy James Bond necessary. Or, if you can hire a New York Times reporter for $30,000 (as Epstein famously did a couple of years ago), you can spend $200,000 on a competent hit man to make double sure. Government incompetence does not lend support to the suicide theory; quite the opposite.
Now to my questions.
- Why is nobody blaming the Florida and New York state prosecutors for not prosecuting Epstein and others for statutory rape?
Statutory rape is not a federal crime, so it is not something the Justice Dept. is supposed to investigate or prosecute. They are going after things like interstate sex trafficking. Interstate sex trafficking is generally much harder to prove than statutory rape, which is very easy if the victims will testify.
At any time from 2008 to the present, Florida and New York prosecutors could have gone after Epstein and easily convicted him. The federal nonprosecution agreement did not bind them. And, of course, it is not just Epstein who should have been prosecuted. Other culprits such as Prince Andrew are still at large.
Note that even if the evidence is just the girl’s word against Ghislaine Maxwell’s or Prince Andrew’s, it’s still quite possible to get a jury to convict. After all, who would you believe, in a choice between Maxwell, Andrew, and Anyone Else in the World? For an example of what can be done if the government is eager to convict, instead of eager to protect important people, see the 2019 Cardinal Pell case in Australia. He was convicted by the secret testimony of a former choirboy, the only complainant, who claimed Pell had committed indecent acts during a chance encounter after Mass before Pell had even unrobed. Naturally, the only cardinal to be convicted of anything in the Catholic Church scandals is also the one who’s done the most to fight corruption. Where there’s a will, there’s a way to prosecute. It’s even easier to convict someone if he’s actually guilty.
- Why isn’t anybody but Ann Coulter talking about Barry Krischer and Ric Bradshaw, the Florida state prosecutor and sheriff who went easy on Epstein, or the New York City police who let him violate the sex offender regulations?
Krischer refused to use the evidence the Palm Beach police gave him except to file a no-jail-time prostitution charge (they eventually went to Acosta, the federal prosecutor, instead, who got a guilty plea with an 18-month sentence). Bradshaw let him spend his days at home instead of at jail. In New York State, the county prosecutor, Cyrus Vance, fought to prevent Epstein from being classified as a Level III sex offender. Once he was, the police didn’t enforce the rule that required him to check in every 90 days.
- How easy would it have been to prove in 2016 or 2019 that Epstein and his people were guilty of federal sex trafficking?
Not easy, I should think. It wouldn’t be enough to prove that Epstein debauched teenagers. Trafficking is a federal offense, so it would have to involve commerce across state lines. It also must involve sale and profit, not just personal pleasure. The 2019 indictment is weak on this. The “interstate commerce” looks like it’s limited to Epstein making phone calls between Florida and New York. This is why I am not completely skeptical when former U.S. Attorney Acosta says that the 2008 nonprosecution deal was reasonable. He had strong evidence that Epstein violated Florida state law— but that wasn’t relevant. He had to prove violations of federal law.
- Why didn’t Epstein ask the Court, or the Justice Dept., for permission to have an unarmed guard share his cell with him?
Epstein had no chance at bail without bribing the judge, but this request would have been reasonable. That he didn’t request a guard is, I think, the strongest evidence that he wanted to die. If he didn’t commit suicide himself, he was sure making it easy for someone else to kill him.
- Could Epstein have used the safeguard of leaving a trove of photos with a friend or lawyer to be published if he died an unnatural death?
Well, think about it— Epstein’s lawyer was Alan Dershowitz. If he left photos with someone like Dershowitz, that someone could earn a lot more by using the photos for blackmail himself than by dutifully carrying out his perverted customer’s instructions. The evidence is just too valuable, and Epstein was someone whose friends weren’t the kind of people he could trust. Probably not even his brother.
- Who is in danger of dying next?
Prison workers from guard to warden should be told that if they took bribes, their lives are now in danger. Prison guards may not be bright enough to realize this. Anybody who knows anything important about Epstein should be advised to publicize their information immediately. That is the best way to stay alive. This is not like a typical case where witnesses get killed so they won’t testify. It’s not like with gangsters. Here, the publicity and investigative lead is what is most important, because these are reputable and rich offenders for whom publicity is a bigger threat than losing in court. They have very good lawyers, and probably aren’t guilty of federal crimes anyway, just state crimes, in corrupt states where they can use clout more effectively. Thus, killing potential informants before they tell the public is more important than killing informants to prevent their testimony at trial, a much more leisurely task.
- What happened to Epstein’s body?
The Justice Dept. had better not have let Epstein’s body be cremated. And they’d better give us convincing evidence that it’s his body. If I had $100 million to get out of jail with, acquiring a corpse and bribing a few people to switch fingerprints and DNA wouldn’t be hard. I find it worrying that the government has not released proof that Epstein is dead or a copy of the autopsy.
- Was Epstein’s jail really full of mice?
The New York Times says,
“Beyond its isolation, the wing is infested with rodents and cockroaches, and inmates often have to navigate standing water — as well as urine and fecal matter — that spills from faulty plumbing, accounts from former inmates and lawyers said. One lawyer said mice often eat his clients’ papers.”
“Often have to navigate standing water”? “Mice often eat his clients’ papers?” Really? I’m skeptical. What do the vermin eat— do inmates leave Snickers bars open in their cells? Has anyone checked on what the prison conditions are really like?
- Is it just a coincidence that Epstein made a new will two days before he died?
I can answer this one. Yes, it is coincidence, though it’s not a coincidence that he rewrote the will shortly after being denied bail. The will leaves everything to a trust, and it is the trust document (which is confidential), not the will (which is public), that determines who gets the money. Probably the only thing that Epstein changed in his will was the listing of assets, and he probably changed that because he’d just updated his list of assets for the bail hearing anyway, so it was a convenient time to update the will.
- Did Epstein’s veiled threat against DOJ officials in his bail filing backfire?
Epstein’s lawyers wrote in his bail request,
“If the government is correct that the NPA does not, and never did, preclude a prosecution in this district, then the government will likely have to explain why it purposefully delayed a prosecution of someone like Mr. Epstein, who registered as a sex offender 10 years ago and was certainly no stranger to law enforcement. There is no legitimate explanation for the delay.”
I see this as a veiled threat. The threat is that Epstein would subpoena people and documents from the Justice Department relevant to the question of why there was a ten-year delay before prosecution, to expose the illegitimate explanation for the delay. Somebody is to blame for that delay, and court-ordered disclosure is a bigger threat than an internal federal investigation.
- Who can we trust?
Geoffrey Berman, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is the only government official who is clearly trustworthy, because he could have stopped the 2019 Epstein indictment and he didn’t. I don’t think Attorney-General Barr could have blocked it, and I don’t think President Trump could have except by firing Berman. I do trust Attorney-General Barr, however, from what I’ve heard of him and because he instantly and publicly said he would have not just the FBI but the Justice Dept. Inspector-General investigate Epstein’s death, and he quickly fired the federal prison head honcho. The FBI is untrustworthy, but Inspector-Generals are often honorable.
Someone else who may be a hero in this is Senator Ben Sasse. Vicki Ward writes in the Daily Beast:
“It was that heart-wrenching series that caught the attention of Congress. Ben Sasse, the Republican senator from Nebraska, joined with his Democratic colleagues and demanded to know how justice had been so miscarried.
Given the political sentiment, it’s unsurprising that the FBI should feel newly emboldened to investigate Epstein—basing some of their work on Brown’s excellent reporting.”
- Will President Trump Cover Up Epstein’s Death in Exchange for Political Leverage?
President Trump didn’t have anything personally to fear from Epstein. He is too canny to have gotten involved with him, and the press has been eagerly at work to find the slightest connection between him and Epstein and have come up dry as far as anything but acquaintanceship. But we must worry about a cover-up anyway, because rich and important people would be willing to pay Trump a lot in money or, more likely, in political support, if he does a cover-up.
- Why did Judge Sweet order Epstein documents sealed in 2017. Did he die naturally in 2019?
Judge Robert Sweet in 2017 ordered all documents in an Epstein-related case sealed. He died in May 2019 at age 96, at home in Idaho. The sealing was completely illegal, as the appeals court politely but devastatingly noted in 2019, and the documents were released a day or two before Epstein died. Someone should check into Judge Sweet’s finance and death. He was an ultra-Establishment figure— a Yale man, alas, like me, and Taft School— so he might just have been protecting what he considered good people, but his decision to seal the court records was grossly improper.
- Did Epstein have any dealings in sex, favors, or investments with any Republican except Wexner?
Dershowitz, Mitchell, Clinton, Richardson, Dubin, George Stephanopolous, Lawrence Krauss, Katie Couric, Mortimer Zuckerman, Chelsea Handler, Cyrus Vance, and Woody Allen, are all Democrats. Did Epstein ever make use of Republicans? Don’t count Trump, who has not been implicated despite the media’s best efforts and was probably not even a Republican back in the 90’s. Don’t count Ken Starr– he’s just one of Epstein’s lawyers. Don’t count scientists who just took money gifts from him. (By the way, Epstein made very little in the way of political contributions, though that little went mostly to Democrats ($139,000 vs. $18,000. I bet he extracted more from politicians than he gave to them.
- What role did Israeli politician Ehud Barak play in all this?
Remember Marc Rich? He was a billionaire who fled the country to avoid a possible 300 years prison term, and was pardoned by Bill Clinton in 2001. Ehud Barak, one of Epstein’s friends, was one of the people who asked for Rich to be pardoned. Epstein, his killers, and other rich people know that as a last resort they can flee the country and wait for someone like Clinton to come to office and pardon them.
Acosta said that Washington Bush Administration people told him to go easy on Epstein because he was an intelligence source. That is plausible. Epstein had info and blackmailing ability with people like Ehud Barak, leader of Israel’s Labor Party. But “intelligence” is also the kind of excuse people make up so they don’t have to say “political pressure.”
- Why did nobody pay attention to the two 2016 books on Epstein?
James Patterson and John Connolly published Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Sex Scandal that Undid Him, and All the Justice that Money Can Buy: The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein. Conchita Sarnoff published TrafficKing: The Jeffrey Epstein Case. I never heard of these before 2019. Did the media bury them?
- Which newspapers reported Epstein’s death as “suicide” and which as “apparent suicide”?
More generally, which media outlets seem to be trying to brush Epstein’s death under the rug? There seems to have been an orchestrated attempt to divert attention to the issue of suicides in prison. Subtle differences in phrasing might help reveal who’s been paid off. National Review had an article, “The Conspiracy Theories about Jeffrey Epstein’s Death Don’t Make Much Sense.” The article contains no evidence or argument to support the headline’s assertion, just bluster about “madness” and “conspiracy theories”. Who else publishes stuff like this?
- How much did Epstein corrupt the media from 2008 to 2019?
Even outlets that generally publish good articles must be suspected of corruption. Epstein made an effort to get good publicity. The New York Times wrote,
“The effort led to the publication of articles describing him as a selfless and forward-thinking philanthropist with an interest in science on websites like Forbes, National Review and HuffPost….
All three articles have been removed from their sites in recent days, after inquiries from The New York Times….
The National Review piece, from the same year, called him “a smart businessman” with a “passion for cutting-edge science.”…
Ms. Galbraith was also a publicist for Mr. Epstein, according to several news releases promoting Mr. Epstein’s foundations… In the article that appeared on the National Review site, she described him as having “given thoughtfully to countless organizations that help educate underprivileged children.”
“We took down the piece, and regret publishing it,” Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review since 1997, said in an email. He added that the publication had “had a process in place for a while now to weed out such commercially self-interested pieces from lobbyists and PR flacks.””
The New York Times was, to its credit, willing to embarrass other publications by 2019. But the Times itself had been part of the cover-up in previous years. Who else was?
Eric Rasmusen is an economist who has held an endowed chair at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and visiting positions at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, the Harvard Economics Department, Chicago’s Booth School of Business, Nuffield College/Oxford, and the University of Tokyo Economics Department. He is best known for his book Games and Information. He has published extensively in law and economics, including recent articles on the burakumin outcastes in Japan, the use of game theory in jurisprudence, and quasi-concave functions. The views expressed here are his personal views and are not intended to represent the views of the Kelley School of Business or Indiana University. His vitae is at http://www.rasmusen.org/vita.htm .
NYT Presents Murder of a Palestinian Boy as ‘National Trauma’—for Jewish Israelis
By Jim Naureckas | FAIR | August 30, 2019
HBO has a series based on a real-life crime in Israel—a 2014 case involving (in the New York Times‘ words) “a Palestinian teenager snatched off a Jerusalem street by Orthodox Jews, choked, bludgeoned and burned to death in a forest at dawn.”
And how does the Times headline its report (8/27/19) on this series?
HBO Drama Revives a National Trauma for Israel
For Israel? Yes, and by “Israel,” Times Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner means Jewish Israelis; in her eyes, they are the ones for whom the murder of 16-year-old Palestinian Muhammad Abu Khdeir was a “national trauma”:
It was the extraordinary coldbloodedness of the murder that made it true-crime movie material in the first place…. But Our Boys, a 10-part series that started this month on HBO, is under attack in Israel largely because of that singularity.
Some critics have accused the creators of skewing reality and ignoring what they say is the more common scourge of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, creating a false equivalency between the two and tarnishing Israel’s image.
Let’s stop here for a reality check: There are, in fact, statistics on who’s killing whom in Israel/Palestine. The Israeli human rights group group B’Tselem reports that since January 2009, there have been 95 Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians—and at least 1,771 “Palestinians who did not take part in hostilities…killed by Israeli security forces.” (This latter number does not include Israeli assassinations—labeled as “targeted killings”—or Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians.) There have been 13 Israeli minors killed by Palestinians since 2009, and 785 Palestinian minors killed by Israeli security forces; in other words, a child killed in the conflict is 60 times more likely to be a Palestinian child than a Jewish child.
Kershner might have pointed out that the accusation that Palestinians murdering Jewish Israelis is a “more common scourge” is an absolute inversion of reality. Instead, to cite an example of “some critics” who think it’s “skewing reality” to focus on a single Palestinian death, she turns to Yair Netanyahu, the son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said on Twitter (8/21/19):
The series tells the whole world how the Israelis and Jews are cruel and bloodthirsty murderers, and how the Palestinians are badly done by and oppressed.
The tweeter’s father, as prime minister since March 2009, is responsible for nearly every one of those 785 Palestinian children killed by his security services.
After quoting the younger Netanyahu, Kershner acknowledges that Palestinians watching the series “also had painful memories.” As an example, she offers the parents of the murdered boy, who no doubt felt at least as bad watching a TV show about their dead child as the prime minister’s son did.
Did somebody say “false equivalency”?
ACTION:
Please tell the New York Times not to treat the murder of a Palestinian child as chiefly a “national trauma” for Jewish Israelis.
CONTACT:
Email: letters@nytimes.com
Science Goes Up In Rainforest Smoke
By Dr. David Whitehouse | August 29, 2019
The idea that the Amazon rainforest is the lungs of the world is so embedded in our minds that few questioned its widespread use when news about fires in the Amazon was reported this summer.
The idea is everywhere—so it’s obviously true. Trees absorb carbon dioxide (bad), don’t they, and give off oxygen (good), and there are billions of trees in the Amazon, so surely it makes sense.
Responding to the fires in the Amazon the Pope has said that the “Lungs of the forest are vital for the planet.”
Emmanuel Macron tweeted, “The Amazon rainforest – the lungs which produce 20% of the planet’s oxygen – is on fire.”
Leonardo DiCaprio has almost 3 million likes for his Instagram posting saying, “The lungs of the Earth are in flames.”
Christiano Ronaldo tweeted that The Amazon Rainforest produces more than 20% of the world’s oxygen,” adding #prayforamazonia
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas says “It’s the lungs of the Earth…which provides 20% of our oxygen.”
Barry Gardiner Shadow Minister for International Climate Change tweeted he couldn’t agree with Macron more.
Lib Dem MEP’s say the lungs of our planet are literally burning.
Even Donald Tusk, the President of the European Commission tweeted about “…the destruction of the green lungs of Planet Earth.”
The Rainforest Alliance said, “The lungs of the world are in flames.”
Friends of the Earth want a deal to stop the fires adding: “They need to say ‘we won’t do a deal with you if you are effectively condoning burning the lungs of the world’.”
WWF says the Amazon is popularly known as the lungs of the world.
DiCaprio’s Earth Alliance has formed an emergency Amazon Forest Fund with an initial commitment of $5 million to focus critical resources on the key protections needed to maintain the ‘lungs of the planet.’
However, as the saying goes, it’s not that simple – things never are in science. Check where the figure comes from (and it’s actually not that straightforward to do) and you will find that it’s not that simple. It’s actually wrong.
Geology’s Gift
The Amazon rainforest is not the lungs of the world and they do not produce 20% of the world’s oxygen as is so often said.
The Amazon rainforest is a vast, vital wonder, full of biodiversity and photosynthesizing plants producing 9% of the world’s photosynthetic output but, here is the key figure, 0% of its net output.
You could destroy all of the world’s forests and it would hardly affect our oxygen supply.
In fact, you could destroy every living thing on Earth and still not dent it because our atmosphere of 20.9% oxygen is the gift of geologic time, slow to build up and we have enough to last millions of years.
Yet this idea about the world’s lungs and of atmospheric oxygen needing to be refreshed and replenished—ideas unsupported by science—is everywhere.
Surely journalists would act differently from advocacy groups, celebrities, and politicians and check this fact before writing and broadcasting about it.
After all, journalists, especially science and environment journalists who are experts in their field, always check figures and statistics? Oh no, they don’t.
Just Google the phrase to see how many time it is repeated, by the BBC, the New York Times, CNN, The Australian, to name a few.
ITN, in particular, has risen above much of the other coverage with its over-the-top reporting. They say the Amazon is burning on a scale never seen before (nonsense). That the Amazon can never be replaced (nonsense), and that Nature is being killed (Oh come off it)!
Who Spoke Up?
If journalists, as well as politicians, celebrities, presidents and the Pope, can so easily slip into such scientific myth and get the facts so wrong, what credibility do they have on other issues of climate science?
Where are their science advisors? Surely they should make this mistake only once before being given proper advice.
Or is it that if any of them goes against the trend they fear the condemnation? This is not the way to tackle the important environmental issues we face.
Look how much we had to go through for science to wrench our minds free of what is “obviously true” and seek proof. Is climate science, or at least the public side of it, immune from normal scientific standards?
And where are the high-profile “public” scientists setting the record straight, highlighting that the Amazon rainforests are not the lungs of the world?
Another Syrian Victory – and West’s Telling Silence
Strategic Culture Foundation | August 30, 2019
The liberation of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province by the Syrian army and its Russian ally marks another important victory towards ending the eight-year war in Syria.
Last week saw the return to relative normalcy in the northwestern town which had been held under siege by al Qaeda-affiliated militants for over five years. Situated south of Aleppo on the road to the capital Damascus, Khan Sheikhoun was officially declared under the control of Syrian state forces on August 21 after a hard-fought battle against militants.
International journalists from Italy, Bulgaria, Greece and Russia witnessed the return of residents and efforts to resume electricity services and reopening of schools. Khan Sheikhoun was ransacked by the routed jihadi terror groups, with the typical depravity that had been seen in other liberated areas. But despite the devastation, residents were relieved to begin the task of restoration of what was previously a town renowned for its culture and beauty before the war erupted in March 2011.
The remnants left behind by the defeated militants as well as the identity of dead fighters testified to their terrorist affiliation. Many of them were foreign mercenaries. Khan Sheikhoun was a stronghold for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group which was formerly known as Al Nusra Front. Notwithstanding the chameleonic name, they are part of the jihadi Al Qaeda terror network which is internationally proscribed and which Western governments are officially opposed to.
The capture of the town again demonstrates the vile nature of the Syrian war as being one of foreign-sponsored aggression for regime change. In particular, the United States government and its NATO allies, Britain, France, Turkey, and others, are now known to be fully complicit in covert sponsorship of these terrorists.
Khan Sheikhoun is of particular significance because on April 4, 2017, it was dramatically reported by Western news media as being the site of a Sarin chemical weapon attack, allegedly carried out by the Syrian state forces. Three days later, on April 7, the US, Britain and France launched over 100 airstrikes on Syria in what was claimed to be “revenge” against the “Syrian regime” for allegedly committing an atrocity with chemical weapons. Syrian authorities and Russia asserted the alleged Sarin attack at Khan Sheikhoun was a false-flag provocation, fabricated by the militants with the aim of eliciting a military strike on Syria by the US and its NATO allies.
Clearly, after the liberation of the town this month, it is evident that it was a den of terrorist groups which held residents under a reign of terror. Yet for years, the Western news media had proclaimed that these fighters were “rebels” who deserved support from Western intervention. Even as Syrian forces were launching their assault on Idlib Province in recent months, the Western media were animated by shrill reports of “rebels” and civilians being killed by indiscriminate “regime” air strikes.
Tellingly, the momentous victory at Khan Sheikhoun was met with an astonishing silence among Western governments and news media.
The same duplicitous pattern has been seen before when the Syrian army and its Russian ally liberated Douma, Ghouta, Daraa, Aleppo, Maaloula and many other areas besieged by the so-called “rebels” so lionized in Western media. Syrian residents have been invariably relieved and overjoyed to have their freedom and dignity restored by the Syrian army and Russian forces. Their stories of the horror they endured under captivity are shocking from the depravity and cruelty meted out by Western-backed “rebels”.
That is why the liberation of Khan Sheikhoun, as with other locations in Syria, has had to be studiously ignored by the Western news media. Because if they really performed normal journalistic duty what the Western public would learn is that their governments and media have been complicit in huge war crimes against the Syrian nation.
It is all the more despicable therefore that the US is shifting its efforts to block the reconstruction of war-torn Syria. This week, the country is to hold the annual Damascus International Trade Fair. Delegates from some 40 nations are attending and exploring ways to regenerate the Syrian economy and to meet the challenge of reconstruction. Some estimates put minimal repair of infrastructure at a cost of $388 billion. The true figure could be in trillions of dollars.
That bill should be assigned to Washington, London, Paris, Ankara, Riyadh, Doha and Tel Aviv for the criminal aggression they collectively and stealthily inflicted on Syria.
Ahead of the Damascus trade fair, the US was warning prospective foreign investors that they could face sanctions if they did business with Syria. Russia’s foreign ministry condemned the American effort to sabotage Syria’s reconstruction.
As Russian lawmaker Valery Rashkin, who was in Syria this week, put it, the US is trying to destroy Syria through economic warfare after losing its dirty-war military agenda.
The European Union also stands condemned for continuing to impose economic sanctions on Syria. The war is over and it has been exposed as Western-backed criminal aggression. All past accusations against the Syrian state are null and void as malign propaganda. Thus, sanctions on Syria are a contemptible attack on the country by nations whose criminal complicity should actually be a matter of prosecution.
We can only wish the people of Syria well. With international solidarity from Russia, China, Iran and others, Syria will recover its former strength and pride. Syria has won a tremendous victory. The losers are the Western governments and media who have been exposed for the corrupt charlatans they are.
Film ‘Official Secrets’ is the Tip of a Mammoth Iceberg
By Sam Husseini • Consortium News • August 29, 2019
Two-time Oscar nominee Keira Knightley is known for being in “period pieces” such as “Pride and Prejudice,” so her playing the lead in the new film “Official Secrets,” scheduled to be released in the U.S. on Friday, may seem odd at first. That is until one considers that the time span being depicted — the early 2003 run-up to the invasion of Iraq — is one of the most dramatic and consequential periods of modern human history.
It is also one of the most poorly understood, in part because the story of Katharine Gun, played by Knightley, is so little known. Having followed this story from the start, I find this film to be, by Hollywood standards, a remarkably accurate account of what has happened to date–“to date” because the wider story still isn’t over.
Katharine Gun worked as an analyst for Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the secretive U.S. National Security Agency. She tried to stop the impending invasion of Iraq in early 2003 by exposing the deceit of George W. Bush and Tony Blair in their claims about that country. For doing that she was prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act — a juiced up version of the U.S. Espionage Act, which in recent years has been used repeatedly by the Obama administration against whistleblowers and now by the Trump administration against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
Gun was charged for exposing— around the time of Colin Powell’s infamous testimony to the UN about Iraq’s alleged WMDs – a top secret U.S. government memo showing it was mounting an illegal spying “surge” against other U.N. Security Council delegations in an effort to manipulate them into voting for an Iraq invasion resolution. The U.S. and Britain had successfully forced through a trumped up resolution, 1441 in November 2002. In early 2003, they were poised to threaten, bribe or blackmail their way to get formal United Nations authorization for the invasion. [See recent interview with Gun.]
Katherine Gun
The leaked memo, published by the British Observer, was big news in parts of the world, especially the targeted countries on the Security Council, and helped prevent Bush and Blair from getting the second UN Security Council resolution they said they wanted. Veto powers Russia, China and France were opposed as well as U.S. ally Germany.
Washington invaded anyway of course — without Security Council authorization — by telling the UN weapons inspectors to leave Iraq and issuing a unilateral demand that Saddam Hussein leave Iraq in 48 hours— and then saying the invasion would commence regardless.
‘Most Courageous Leak’
It was the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where I work (accuracy.org), Norman Solomon, as well as Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg who in the U.S. most immediately saw the importance of what Gun had done. Ellsberg would later comment: “No one else — including myself — has ever done what Katharine Gun did: Tell secret truths at personal risk, before an imminent war, in time, possibly, to avert it. Hers was the most important — and courageous — leak I’ve ever seen, more timely and potentially more effective than the Pentagon Papers.”
Of course, no one knew her name at the time. After the Observer broke the story on March 1, 2003, accuracy.org put out a series of news releases on it and organized a sadly, sparsely attended news conference with Ellsberg on March 11, 2003 at the National Press Club, focusing on Gun’s revelations. Ellsberg called for more such truth telling to stop the impending invasion, just nine days away.
Though I’ve followed this case for years, I didn’t realize until recently that accuray.org’s work helped compel Gun to expose the document. At a recent D.C. showing of “Official Secrets” that Gun attended, she revealed that she had read a book co-authored by Solomon, published in January 2003 that included material from accuracy.org as well as the media watch group FAIR debunking many of the falsehoods for war.
Gun said: “I went to the local bookshop, and I went into the political section. I found two books, which had apparently been rushed into publication, one was by Norman Solomon and Reese Erlich, and it was called Target Iraq. And the other one was by Milan Rai. It was called War Plan Iraq. And I bought both of them. And I read them cover to cover that weekend, and it basically convinced me that there was no real evidence for this war. So I think from that point onward, I was very critical and scrutinizing everything that was being said in the media.”
Thus, we see Gun in “Official Secrets” shouting at the TV to Tony Blair that he’s not entitled to make up facts. The film may be jarring to some consumers of major media who might think that Donald Trump invented lying in 2017.
Gun’s immediate action after reading critiques of U.S. policy and media coverage makes a strong case for trying to reach government workers by handing out fliers and books and putting up billboards outside government offices to encourage them to be more critically minded.
Solomon and Ellsberg had debunked Bush administration propaganda in real time. But Gun’s revelation showed that the U.S. and British governments were not only lying to invade Iraq, they were violating international law to blackmail whole nations to get in line.
Mainstream reviews of “Official Secrets” still seem to not fully grasp the importance of what they just saw. The trendy AV Club review leads: “Virtually everyone now agrees that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a colossal mistake based on faulty (at best) or fabricated (at worst) intelligence.” “Mistake” is a serious understatement even with “colossal” attached to it when the movie details the diabolical, illegal lengths to which the U.S. and British governments went to get other governments to go along with it.
Gun’s revelations showed before the invasion that people on the inside, whose livelihood depends on following the party line, were willing to risk jail time to out the lies and threats.
Portrayal of The Observer
Other than Gun herself, the film focuses on a dramatization of what happened at her work; as well as her relationship with her husband, a Kurd from Turkey who the British government attempted to have deported to get at Gun. The film also portrays the work of her lawyers who helped get the Official Secrets charge against her dropped, as well as the drama at The Observer, which published the NSA document after much internal debate.
Observer reporter Martin Bright, whose strong work on the original Gun story was strangely followed by an ill-fated stint at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, has recently noted that very little additional work has been done on Gun’s case. We know virtually nothing about the apparent author of the NSA document that she leaked — one “Frank Koza.” Other questions persist, such as how prevalent is this sort of U.S. blackmail of foreign governments to get UN votes or for other purposes? How is it leveraged? Does it fit in with allegations made by former NSA analyst Russ Tice about the NSA having massive files on political people?
Observer reporter Ed Vulliamy is energetically depicted getting tips from former CIA man Mel Goodman. There do seem to be subtle but potentially serious deviations from reality in the film. Vulliamy is depicted as actually speaking with “Frank Koza,” but that’s not what he originally reported:
“The NSA main switchboard put The Observer through to extension 6727 at the agency which was answered by an assistant, who confirmed it was Koza’s office. However, when The Observer asked to talk to Koza about the surveillance of diplomatic missions at the United Nations, it was then told ‘You have reached the wrong number’. On protesting that the assistant had just said this was Koza’s extension, the assistant repeated that it was an erroneous extension, and hung up.”
There must doubtlessly be many aspects of the film that have been simplified or altered regarding Gun’s personal experience. A compelling part of the film — apparently fictitious or exaggerated — is a GCHQ apparatchik questioning Gun to see if she was the source.
Little is known about the reaction inside the governments of Security Council members that the U.S. spied on. After the invasion, Mexican Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser spoke in blunt terms about U.S. bullying — saying it viewed Mexico as its patio trasero, or back yard — and Zinser was compelled to resign by President Vicente Fox. He then, in 2004, gave details about some aspects of U.S. surveillance sabotaging the efforts of the other members of the Security Council to hammer out a compromise to avert the invasion of Iraq, saying the U.S. was “violating the U.N. headquarters covenant.” In 2005, he tragically died in a car crash.
“Official Secrets” director Gavin Hood is perhaps more right than he realizes when he says that his depiction of the Gun case is like the “tip of an iceberg,” pointing to other deceits surrounding the Iraq war. His record with political films has been uneven until now. Peace activist David Swanson, for instance, derided his film on drones, “Eye in the Sky.” At a D.C. showing of “Official Secrets,” Hood depicted those who backed the Iraq war as being discredited. But that’s simply untrue.
Keira Knightley appears as Katherine Gun in Official Secrets (Courtesy of Sundance Institute.)
Leading presidential candidate Joe Biden — who not only voted for the Iraq invasion, but presided over rigged hearings on in 2002 – has recently falsified his record repeatedly on Iraq at presidential debates with hardly a murmur. Nor is he alone. Those refusing to be held accountable for their Iraq war lies include not just Bush and Cheney, but John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi.
Biden has actually faulted Bush for not doing enough to get United Nations approval for the Iraq invasion. But as the Gun case helps show, there was no legitimate case for invasion and the Bush administration had done virtually everything, both legal and illegal, to get UN authorization.
Many who supported the invasion try to distance themselves from it. But the repercussions of that illegal act are enormous: It led directly or indirectly to the rise of ISIS, the civil war in Iraq and the war in Syria. Journalists who pushed for the Iraq invasion are prosperous and atop major news organizations, such as Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt. The editor who argued most strongly against publication of the NSA document at The Observer, Kamal Ahmed, is now editorial director of BBC News.
The British government — unlike the U.S.– did ultimately produce a study ostensibly around the decision-making leading to the invasion of Iraq, the Chilcot Report of 2016. But that report — called “devastating” by the The New York Times – made no mention of the Gun case. [See accuracy.org release from 2016: “Chilcot Report Avoids Smoking Gun.”]
After Gun’s identity became known, the Institute for Public Accuracy brought on Jeff Cohen, the founder of FAIR, to work with Hollie Ainbinder to get prominent individuals to support Gun. The film — quite plausibly — depicts the charges being dropped against Gun for the simple reason that the British government feared that a high profile proceeding would effectively put the war on trial, which to them would be have been a nightmare.
Sam Husseini is an independent journalist, senior analyst at the Institute for Public Accuracy and founder of VotePact.org. Follow him on twitter: @samhusseini.
Inventing ‘2nd Skripal case’? Moscow rejects any link to asylum-seeker assassination in Germany
RT | August 28, 2019
Russia denies “any links” to the death of a Chechen man who was gunned down in Berlin last week. The German press, meanwhile, said the incident may end up being a “second Skripal case.”
“This case has nothing to do with the Russian state, the [Russian] authorities,” the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Wednesday.
“I categorically reject any links between… this murder and official Russia.”
His comments came in response to speculation that Moscow may have been somehow involved in the assassination of a man in the Kleiner Tiergarten park in central Berlin on Friday. German media identified the victim as 40-year-old Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian national of Chechen origin who had fought against the Russian troops during the war in Chechnya. Public broadcaster Deutsche Welle cited a 2017 letter by a local NGO to the migration services, saying that Khangoshvili served under infamous warlords Shamil Basayev and Abu al-Walid, who coordinated terrorist attacks on Russian soil and were killed by Russian security forces.
Khangoshvili is said to have fled Georgia in 2016 after surviving an assassination attempt. He sought asylum in Germany but this was rejected. The German authorities had also reportedly considered him an Islamist threat at some point. Other reports said that Khangoshvili had ties with the Georgian security services and assisted in anti-terrorism operations.
The suspect in Khangoshvili’s murder was quickly apprehended by police. He was identified as 49-year-old Vadim S., a Russian national who recently traveled to Berlin from Moscow via Paris.
The story has caused a stir in the German press. The victim’s brother, Zurab Khangoshvili, claimed that Russian agents committed the crime but provided no evidence. Security sources told Der Spiegel the investigation could potentially be a “second Skripal case” in terms of its “consequences,” if the alleged involvement of Russia is proven.
Last year, former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by a nerve agent in Salisbury, UK. The British authorities quickly pinned the blame on Moscow. This led to London and its allies expelling a number of Russian diplomats and imposing new sanctions on Russia. Moscow has strongly denied any involvement in the incident.
Mainstream media cries foul over conservatives turning their smear-tactic culture war against them
By Helen Buyniski | RT | August 28, 2019
Conservatives are digging through reporters’ social media histories to find “potentially embarrassing” posts that could be used to discredit their employers, MSM has discovered to its horror – only they are allowed to do that!
“A loose network of conservative operatives” is sifting through journalists’ social media histories, looking for inflammatory nuggets that can be used to discredit the organizations they work for, the New York Times warned earlier this week, noting that this band of marauding internet sleuths has already exposed sensitive information about reporters from CNN, the Washington Post, and the Times itself.
Much of it, they claim, “has been professionally harmful to its targets.”
Who are these right-wing information terrorists, and why are they doing such a terrible thing? It’s a “response to reporting or commentary that the White House’s allies consider unfair to [US President Donald] Trump and his team or harmful to his re-election prospects,” of course.
That the New York Times is pearl-clutching about politically-motivated smear campaigns – Washington’s bread and butter since the dawn of time – is ridiculous on its face. But their feigned moral outrage becomes actively insulting when it becomes clear it isn’t the social media-mining smear campaigns the outlet has a problem with – it’s the “conservative” part of it.
The Trump supporters’ campaign is designed to highlight mainstream media’s hypocrisy in constantly calling the president a racist, sexist, homophobe, and other identity-politics mortal sins while being racist themselves, former Trump aide Sam Nunberg – a friend of campaign ringleader Arthur Schwartz – explained.
“Two can play at this game … The media has long targeted Republicans with deep dives into their social media, looking to caricature all conservatives and Trump voters as racists.”
Schwartz, a conservative political consultant, is described as a friend to Donald Trump Jr. and an erstwhile colleague of Steve Bannon. While the White House denies Schwartz’s operation receives government funding, the Times does its best to play up the connection between the muckraker and the Bad Orange Man, declaring that “the campaign is consistent with Mr. Trump’s long-running effort to delegitimize critical reporting and brand the news media as an ‘enemy of the people.’”
Schwartz is portrayed as a mustache-twirling menace, threatening to “expose a few of [the Times’ ] other bigots” in a tweet after dredging up a handful of racist tweets from politics section editor Tom Wright-Piersanti last week and “known for badgering and threatening reporters and others he believes have wronged the Trumps.”
But the Times turns a blind eye toward similar campaigns by mainstream media allies. CNN’s Oliver Darcy, for example, infamously trawled through a decade of Alex Jones’ tweets in order to produce evidence that he ought to be deplatformed from Twitter. And the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer dug through Google whistleblower Zach Vorhies’ tweets as soon as he went public, finding enough controversial material to scare most media outlets away from interviewing someone whose leaks they had been perfectly happy to report on before they knew who he was.
The #Resistance even has a big-budget smear operation of its own: former Clinton strategist David Brock’s infamous Media Matters, devoted to the same kind of social-media sleuthing (Rudy Giuliani retweeted a QAnon account!) and guilt-by-association smears (a Fox Sports clip was replayed on Infowars!) that the Times finds so odious in Schwartz’s group. Except Media Matters gets a pass from the Times, which praises the organization for pioneering the public records deep-dive and accuses conservative operatives like Schwartz and Project Veritas’ James O’Keeffe of “twisting” its business model to “undercut the credibility” of the supposedly liberal media.CNN warned that smear merchants who “threaten and retaliate against reporters as a means of suppression” represent “a clear abandonment of democracy for something very dangerous.” Is this the same CNN who threatened to dox a Reddit user for animating an image showing the CNN logo on the receiving end of a pro-wrestling smackdown?
Apparently such extortion is only bad for democracy if it’s done on behalf of Trump.
And none of the outlets clutching their pearls about Schwartz’s call-out operation seem to understand their part in creating the culture that made such things possible. Wright-Piersanti’s tweets, while racially insensitive, are not the sort of thing that would have warranted a second look 10 years ago, let alone imperiled one’s professional position. Liberals have only themselves to blame for creating the hyper-PC media bubble in which they ply their trade. None of the apology ballet Wright-Piersanti has performed after Breitbart republished his youthful tweets would have been necessary in a pre-identity politics era – and it wasn’t conservatives who stretched these rhetorical tripwires across every sensitive area of American life in the hope of ensnaring someone who could be pilloried for their insensitivity.
It’s no surprise that the New York Times and its mainstream media peers are not enjoying being on the receiving end of the public-history smear their peers pioneered so long ago. Perhaps they even regret giving their own “side’s” black-PR artists space to ply their trade, allowing the tactics to fall into enemy hands. But it’s too late to do anything about it now – mainstream journalists have spent the last three years disingenuously attacking Trump and his allies, and rarely for their genuine transgressions (wasn’t he supposed to end some wars, or something?). They’ve made their bed, and now they must lie in it. When you start a culture war, don’t expect to come out unscathed.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator.
The Mainstream Press’s Deference to Authority in the Death of Jeffrey Epstein
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | August 28, 2019
One of the fascinating, albeit not too surprising, aspects of the Jeffrey Epstein death has been the reaction of the mainstream media. From the very first moment that the news hit that Epstein had died in prison from an apparent suicide, the mainstream media concluded that that is precisely what happened. Immediately, there was a spate of commentaries, op-eds, and editorials mocking and ridiculing any speculation about whether Epstein had been murdered or possibly even been secretly whisked out of the jail in which he was incarcerated. And all this took place even before an autopsy had been conducted on Epstein’s body!
Okay, I’m not saying that Epstein was in fact murdered or that someone else’s body was secretly substituted for his. He very well may have committed suicide, something that the autopsy ultimately said he had done. What I’m saying is that there was absolutely no skepticism among the investigative reporters, editorial writers, and op-ed writers in the mainstream press, not even before the autopsy was conducted.
Why? Wouldn’t we ordinarily expect the press to have skepticism when it comes to governmental conduct? Isn’t that one of the ideas behind freedom of the press — so that journalists will be free to keep a sharp and critical eye on what government is doing? If all that the press does is automatically accept whatever the government says, then what happens to the famous “watchdog” role that we have all been taught comes with a free press?
What is also interesting about this phenomenon is not only that the mainstream media automatically and immediately accepted the suicide version but also the way it immediately went on the attack against people on the Internet who were expressing skepticism about the official story. In fact, one almost got the impression, from the harsh nature of the attacks, that the mainstream press was actually playing an active role in trying to suppress any version of Epstein’s death different from the official one.
Before the autopsy was even conducted, the mainstream writers immediately began branding anyone who was expressing skepticism about the official account as a “conspiracy theorist.” That, of course, was the label that the CIA seized upon when people began questioning the official account of the Kennedy assassination back in the 1960s and 1970s. The CIA sent out a secret memo to its assets in the mainstream press advising them to label anyone who questioned the official account of the assassination a “conspiracy theorist,” which came to be a term of great opprobrium. The CIA’s strategy worked brilliantly, at least within the mainstream press, to such a point that today the biggest fear that mainstream journalists have is being labeled a “conspiracy theorist.”
Of course, back then the CIA actually had operatives, agents, and assets working within the mainstream press. No, that’s not a “conspiracy theory!” It is actually an established fact of a secret conspiracy between the CIA and mainstream journalists. The conspiracy was called Operation Mockingbird. Information about it can be found online. Under Operation Mockingbird, the CIA conspired to enlist mainstream journalists to serve as secret assets for the CIA who would expound the official CIA line in editorials and commentaries, but without disclosing their CIA connection.
That conspiracy, presumably, came to an end when it was uncovered and disclosed. But ironically, the end result seems to be the same as when Operation Mockingbird was in full effect. By automatically deferring to official accounts of deaths and other matters put out by U.S. officials, as well as by actively mocking people who express skepticism of official versions as “conspiracy theorists,” the CIA ended up with the same outcome as it was aiming for with Operation Mockingbird.
Another interesting aspect to this phenomenon is that the mainstream mindset applies only to governmental conduct, not private conduct. For example, suppose you were to ask the editorial writers, op-ed writers, and investigative journalists the following question: “Do you believe that drug cartels conspire to kill people?” All of them would respond: “Of course, they do. We see it all the time.” They would not have the remotest fear of being labeled a “conspiracy theorist.”
Apply the same question using the Mafia: “Do you believe the Mafia conspires to kill people”? The mainstream press answer would immediately be: “Of course it does. They’re still looking for Jimmy Hoffa’s body.” Again, no fear of being called a “conspiracy theorist.”
But then shift the question toward the federal government: “Do you believe that the CIA or other elements within the U.S. deep state conspire to kill people?” The answer is immediate: “Are you nuts? Are you some sort of conspiracy theorist? Our government would never do anything like that?”
Yet, soon after the CIA was formed in 1947, it secretly began preparing an assassination manual, which indicates that it was specializing in the art of assassination practically from the beginning. The manual, which the CIA kept secret for 40 years and which can be read online, detailed various ways that an assassination could be carried out. It also detailed ways to prevent people from discovering that the CIA was behind the killing. For example, the manual recommended throwing someone off a high building as a way to kill him because it would look like a suicide.
It is safe to assume that from the time that assassination manual began being developed, the CIA became increasingly more proficient in the art of assassination and cover-up. After all, that was more than 60 years ago. Specializing in something that long would ordinarily mean that they would get better and better at killing people as well as at covering up their role in the killings.
That means that when there is a death like that of Jeffrey Epstein, one would expect the mainstream press to want to examine it with a critical eye. This is especially true given various reports (on the Internet, not in the mainstream press) that Epstein might have had ties to some intelligence agency (see here) and also reports that he might have been running a blackmail operation involving sex with under-aged girls.
Again, I’m not saying that Epstein did not, in fact, commit suicide. He might well have committed suicide. So, please resist the impulse to send me an email calling me a “conspiracy theorist” (not that I care though). I’m just criticizing the dereliction of the mainstream press in fulfilling its journalist obligation to make certain that that really is what happened.
Blowing smoke over the Amazon – a strange story
or how to flip an average into a record without changing the data
By Catte Black – OffGuardian – August 28, 2019
My original article about the media presentation of the 2019 Amazon Rain Forest burning season produced a good deal more controversy than any of us anticipated. I don’t know how many times in the past four days OffG admins and editors have had to say “no, we aren’t claiming deforestation is a good idea”, but it’s been a few.
We also received our first DDoS attack in a couple of months the day after it was published. So, even the hackers were pissed off at us.
Surprising as it may be to those who favor knee jerk spontaneity over reading and reflection, I don’t think deforestation is a non-issue.
Which is why I said so in my previous article. And why OffG has repeated it numerous times since on our Twitter feed.
But let’s expand.
And put it in emphasis.
I, along with most other non-crazy people, believe the total or almost total destruction of the Amazon rain forest in order to build mahogany end tables or provide McDonald’s with cheap beef would be a crime of unprecedented dimensions.
(Maybe someone would like to cut and paste this as an automated tweet in response to anyone else who says “oh wow dude, so if you were on the Titanic you’d be like “what, there’s no problem?”)
I just also happen to think the importance of the subject doesn’t make buying into media memes about it, or lying about the data, somehow ok.
I don’t think it justifies hysteria, or uninformed rants from people who think indignation is a legitimate substitute for research data (“look how ANGRY I am, if this doesn’t fix things, nothing will!”).
I think that is –
a) often colonialist and patronizing, assuming the issue is so simple your massive western brain can grasp it simply by semi-digesting a couple of headlines over your cornflakes (“oh my God Janice, the Amazon is burning down, send that charity the Guardian are recommending some money and pass the milk”)
b) counter-productive, if not devastatingly destructive.
I’m not sure when the notion gained currency that exaggeration, lies and distortion were somehow appropriate if the event being lied about/exaggerated was “urgent” or “serious” enough, but it’s an idea antithetical to reason and truth.
The corollary also expressed, that demanding factual accuracy about such events is equivalent to denying their importance is equally, if not more disturbing.
It’s a mindset that invites manipulation and uncritical acceptance of authoritarian-inspired panic memes
But I’ll talk more about that another time. This is a follow up to the original article from August 23. There have been some interesting developments in the last few days and I think we should note them.
Firstly, as has been observed BTL on the original article, the three sources we cited underwent quite extensive revisions very shortly after our article was published.
Science20.com is the most noteworthy of these. On August 24, the day after we published our piece, the article we cited was completely re-written, presumably by its original author, identified as Robert Walker. In fact the changes implemented are so bizarre I want to look at them in some detail.
Here’s the original version we cited, now preserved only as an archive. This is the first part of the text:
NASA Say The Amazon Is Burning At Below Average Rates – Yet Many News Stories Say Record Rates???
Short summary: we have had wild fires for many years now in the Amazon, even in the tropical rainforest – mainly started by humans for forest clearing and ranching. It is not enough to impact significantly on the Paris agreement pledges yet though it is important in the long term if this continues for decades.
This image is beign shared with captions such as “The Amazon is burning at record rates – and deforestation is to blame”. NASA’s caption is that it is burning at less than average rates. Bit of a big difference there.
It shows smoke from fires in the Amazon region on 13th August 2019. These are not necessarily all forest fires. Some of these will be fires in pasture to stimulate new growth for the cattle.
So, go to the Global Fire Emissions Database. and this is what you see:
The green line for 2019 there is a bit hard to make out, so here is a zoom in, as you can see it is way below the top line which is for 2005, with only a few data points, and is also below the 2003 line.
The BBC is misreporting it as a “record”
Big difference between (sic) “record” and “Less than average”. By “record” all they mean is that there are more than for 2018. It’s also greater than for 2017, but less than for 2016. That is not how the word “record” is normally understood. (OffG emphasis)
The ranchers use fire for forest clearing, “slash and burn agriculture” as it is called. That is because it is much easier to convert forest into grassland by burning it than to do it by felling the trees. Once it is cut, the way they manage the pastures is to re-burn them every few years to clear out the brush and to get the grass to re-sprout.
So not all the fires you see are virgin forest. Many are controlled grassland fires, to get the grass to re-sprout. We do something similar in the UK where they do controlled burning of heather (muir burn) for grouse, sheep and deer. However, some of those fires get out of control (same sometimes happens for our moor fires) and burn the nearby forest at the forest edges.
So, not all the forest fires are deliberate clearing.
Also we do not risk losing the Amazon as a whole. That is something they used to think a few years back, but the research has moved on. A large part of the Amazon rainforest will remain through to 2100 even with high emissions – they survived the previous glacial minimum when it was warmer.
We do not need them for oxygen. This is just an urban myth. We have enough oxygen in the atmosphere already for thousands of years even if all the plants magically stopped producing oxygen.
The burnt areas do not become desert, but rather, regrow quickly as lower mass drier forests which given enough time over many decades and perhaps centuries would restore to tropical rainforest again – but in a warmer world some of them will turn to savannah with scattered trees, a habitat known as the Cerrada.
This is another article I’m writing to support people we help in the Facebook Doomsday Debunked group, that find us because they get scared, sometimes to the point of feeling suicidal about it, by such stories.
Do share this with your friends if you find it useful, as they may be panicking too.
This original version of the article is at pains to make certain things clear:
- it calls the media to task for describing the burning as “record”
- it says the Amazon as a whole is not under threat
- it says the Amazon is not needed for oxygen, and this is just an ‘urban myth’
- it says the burned areas do not become desert
- it asks readers to share the article with friends who may be panicking unnecessarily
But then, on August 24, Walker apparently had a complete change of heart, decided panicking might be a good idea after all, took down the above version, and replaced it with this one.
Is Amazon Rainforest Burning At Record Rates? What Is The Way Forward?
Short summary: we have had wild fires for many years now in the Amazon, even in the tropical rainforest – mainly started by humans for forest clearing and ranching. It is not enough to impact significantly on the Paris agreement pledges yet, though it is important in the long term if this continues for decades. It does of course have major and immediate impacts on forest residents, nature services and the biodiversity in Brazil.
This image is being shared widely, for instance in National Geographic’s “The Amazon is burning at record rates – and deforestation is to blame”. Similarly, the BBC is reporting it as ‘Record number of fires’ in Brazilian rainforest.
Yet, NASA’s own description for this photo says that it is burning at close to the average for the last 15 years. So, what is going on here?It turns out that the earlier 13th August [the date is an error, the article was from August 16, and updated August 22 – OffG] article gives the number of fires since 1st January but they use 1st May as the start date for the August 19 update.
There’s been a rapid increase of fires in the second half of August still continuing as of 24th August. it was at average levels or below average through to early August but had a huge uptick and is now close to the 2016 levels from 1st January and if it continues likely crosses them soon. But if you count from 1st May it is already way above recent previous years and close to rates last seen over a decade ago.
The new fires are more intense, near roads and show all the signs of being deliberate fires for deforestation. In addition, local farmers in Para district organized a “day of fire” on August 10th to show to Bolsonaro that they are ready to work and that they need to use fire to do so. So there is a clear link here. Bolsonaro however, in response to pressure internationally and also locally within Brazil has responded instead by sending in the army to stop the fires and he says that it is his duty to protect the Amazon. He also said clearly that these fires are illegal. There is also an investigation underway into the “day of fire”.
If they can stop the illegal fires this could make a big difference to deforestation figures for this year and indeed future years. There are more sustainable ways to increase the productivity of Brazil using existing land without impacting on the forest…
APOLOGIES – UPDATE FROM NASA FROM 19TH AUGUST – THEY NOW CONFIRM INPE INSTEAD OF SAYING IT IS BELOW AVERAGE
Previous version of this article was mistaken. I have made a copy on my website here (the comments on this article are based on that earlier version):
He then goes on to add some stuff about Trump and the G7, which isn’t in the first version. But then, after paragraphs of this interpolation, he reverts, way down the page, to many of his original non-panic points (scroll down and you will see what I mean).
This is very odd editing and the result is a car crash of clearly conflicting intentions. It’s not that the new text is revising the data or denying the claims it previously made. In fact it does not do this at all. Instead it uses a frenzied avalanche of words and non sequitur to give the impression it’s denying the claims, while it ends up actually re-affirming them elsewhere on the page.
In so doing, it replaces the cogent data points and arguments it previously used with the same vague claims of loosely-defined exceptionality you can read in the MSM, that imply a weight of ‘record’ significance but never say what that significance actually is. Such as:
It turns out that the earlier 13th August article gives the number of fires since 1st January but they use 1st May as the start date for the August 19 update.
This is presented as if it were an explanation of why NASA was claiming the fires were average at the same time the mass media were hyping “record” fires. But it’s obviously no such thing, as I go into further on.
And this:
The new fires are more intense, near roads and show all the signs of being deliberate fires for deforestation.
Maybe so, but since they are still well within the 15 year average, what difference does this make in any environmental sense? None is the obvious answer. Certainly neither Walker nor anyone else citing these points attempt to suggest any.
Further down the page it still has an approximation of the sections quoted above that attempt to debunk the alleged myths about the Amazon being essential for oxygen-production etc, though the wording has been toned down. It carries the same videos that try to put forest fires in a historical perspective (worth watching if you have the time).
On the question of the comparative amount of burning, the first version says:
By “record” all they mean is that there are more than for 2018. It’s also greater than for 2017, but less than for 2016. That is not how the word “record” is normally understood.
The new version says:
it was at average levels or below average through to early August but had a huge uptick and is now close to the 2016 levels from 1st January and if it continues likely crosses them soon
This is the same information, just the spin has been changed. And this is confirmed by the fact the same 17-year graphs that appear in the first version, showing 2019 to be an average burn year are re-posted in this version, just further down the page and with a rider added drawing attention to the ‘sudden’ rise in August.
Prominently displayed in the new version are four graphs from globalfiredata.org, the other website we referenced in our original piece. This website had also been updated August 24, and the graphs added.
As we can see the thick black lines showing burning activity for 2019 are highly striking and certainly appear to support the media contention that 2019 is “record-breaking,” and eliminate all the doubts previously being expressed.
But on closer inspection, they have simply been constructed to make the 2019 burning look as “record” as the headlines were already claiming.
To achieve this two things have been done to the data.
1) the earlier years that are included in the other graphs from the same source, and which all had much higher burn rates than anything more recent, have been eliminated from these new graphs. The rather thin rationale for doing this is the VIIR/MODIS measure only goes back to 2012.
2) They start the sample in May rather than in January. No rationale is given for this at all, and it’s hard to see any beyond the fact that excluding the earlier months is the only way to make 2019 stand out as being “record” in line with media claims.
NASA’s website has made a similar journey over the same period.
This article, which we originally quoted, still says the burn activity in the Amazon is “close to average” and explains that a lot of farmers burn their land in the dry season.
As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years. (The Amazon spreads across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and parts of other countries.) Though activity appears to be above average in the states of Amazonas and Rondônia, it has so far appeared below average in Mato Grosso and Pará, according to estimates from the Global Fire Emissions Database, a research project that compiles and analyzes NASA data
This one, referenced by Walker and published just before his revised piece, might superficially appear to contradict the above claim, but – in a similar fashion to Walker’s piece – actually doesn’t if you look closely:
MODIS active fire detections in 2019 are higher across the Brazilian Amazon than in any year since 2010. The state of Amazonas is on track for record fire activity in 2019.
What NASA has done here in order to be able to claim a ‘record’ where previously there was an ‘average’ is simply switch from a fifteen-year analysis in the first article, to a nine-year one in the second. As I already pointed out above in relation to the revised graphs, this removes all the years of major burning this century and instantly shifts 2019 much further up toward the top of any comparative table.
Note also that NASA’s claim is not really true. Even within these somewhat distorted parameters 2019 is NOT higher than any year since 2010. As of today (August 27) 2016 is still just higher in total activity, and of course the earlier years of the 21st century were much higher again, but have been eliminated, apparently just for the purpose of making 2019 look a bit more “record-breaking”.
What we have here, in both the Sceince20.com article and in NASA’s ‘update’, is interpretation-manipulation being passed off as data-update. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion this is a direct attempt to make their pages fall in line with the current media hysteria.
Looking at the wider issue, it’s pretty clear an orchestrated campaign to create unique panic and fear about the Amazon forest fires was initiated, not because the 2019 fires were uniquely dangerous, but because public fear was perceived as useful for promoting an agenda.
What agenda? I think it’s too early to get a comprehensive answer there. Many straws blowing in the wind. It’s been suggested Bolsonaro, the new imperial puppet, may have been proving a little antsy and required pulling into line. Or that it’s a concealed attempt at strengthening his position while appearing to attack it.
There’s this little straw in the wind that shouldn’t be ignored:
#Brazil is clearly unable to be caretaker of the #Amazon rainforest as shown by the #AmazonFire. Given the ecological, medicinal and climate importance to our entire species, perhaps it’s time to place part of the Amazon rainforest under international treaty similar to Antarctica pic.twitter.com/OiLsw5hlkZ
— Matthew VanDyke (@Matt_VanDyke) August 26, 2019
An “international treaty” would certainly be a nice cover for exploitation of the Amazon’s riches. It can’t be discounted as one possible motive for fomenting a fake crisis where only an endemic problem exists.
Or this:
We have a crisis. We have a new tipping point. We have the UN climate action summit around the corner. We have a villain. Our heroine arrives in NYC soon. #NewDealForNature
The #BehaviouralEconomics of hatred. https://t.co/jleIN4m1ip
— Cory Morningstar (@elleprovocateur) August 27, 2019
Only the markets can save us.
Certification schemes. Green Bonds. A “New Deal For Nature”. We need momentum. We need that “Paris moment”. pic.twitter.com/2isJlyrFyP
— Cory Morningstar (@elleprovocateur) August 27, 2019
Or this:
The media focus on the burning #Amazon rather than Siberia’s boreal forest ‘aims to allow Europeans to control the Amazon, its minerals, its pharmaceutical treasures & its precious woods. Its purpose is to distort the problem b4 providing a false solution’https://t.co/T2OFtZgbsI
— Robin Monotti Graziadei (@robinmonotti) August 27, 2019
There are no shortage of possibilities once the question “cui bono?” is asked.
If that question isn’t asked, if it’s outlawed as “unhelpful” or “conspiratorial”, we can become trapped in a refusal to interrogate. And that can lead to disaster.
Too many of us become utterly trusting as soon as our hot button subjects are on the front pages. People who know the media is utterly corrupt can still switch off their critical thinking when it starts to venture any opinion they can agree with.
Commentators who deride the absurd media lies about the Skripals or Corbyn or Syria or Russia still share the Environment page of the BBC or the Guardian, as if somehow honesty and integrity are guaranteed there.
George Monbiot, serial liar and lunatic when it comes to Syria or western foreign policy, is trusted to be an honest broker when he talks about climate change or veganism, or saving the whales.
It’s too easy for any one of us to tell ourselves the mainstream journalist who is saying what we want to hear must have a good and honest reason for saying it.
It’s so comforting to just shut off the critical awareness and drift on the cloud of manufactured ‘popular opinion’. Seductive to be in the majority for once. Reassuring to have someone do the thinking for us so we can, just for a bit, ride easy in their wake.
But the problem is then we end up signing up for Avaaz. Or cheering on the invasion of Iraq – because of those scary WMDs, or thinking thank goodness the G7 are going to do something about those terrifying “record” Amazon fires.
Because we forgot that the mass media and the body politic serve the super-rich, the financial institutions, the intelligence agencies and no one else.
And they always lie, because they always need to hide that simple fact.
*PS – I STILL don’t support the destruction of the rain forests.
Catte Black, OffG co-founding editor. Writer. Opinionated polemicist.
Amazon Burning? – well maybe not so much
Statistics indicate this is an average year for wildfires, so why the above-average hysteria?
By Catte Black – OffGuardian – August 23, 2019
Today on Twitter OffG stepped into the current panic-inferno and thick forest of screaming hashtags that is the “Amazon Forest Fire Crisis.” The results were thought-provoking.
The mainstream media message is very simple. There are “record” numbers of forest fires currently in the Amazon basin. It’s mostly Bolsonaro’s fault. The G7 – soon to be assembling – needs to act. (Business Insider and The Guardian are also both very keen we send money to some rainforest charities)
Now, I’m not a fan of Bolsonaro personally, and that goes for all of us at OffG. I’m equally very supportive of preserving the rain forests and wild spaces of the earth. So, the broad sweep of the message is something I’m inclined to be sympathetic toward.
But something isn’t sitting right. This is the mainstream media in full and united chorus, flooding the news space with this one single message. This means there’s a fairly major agenda, and it’s unlikely to be saving the Amazon for all the little future babies.
So, we thought we’d take a deeper look and tweeted this:
How unusual/unnatural are these fires? What percentage burns naturally every year? Be nice to have data rather than hysteria. https://t.co/BDi95EXCiu
— OffGuardian (@OffGuardian0) August 23, 2019
Three people immediately unfollowed us. A couple of others responded. Here’s one:
“Hysteria?” You are being irresponsible and lazy. “Fires in the Amazon have surged 83% so far this year compared with the same period a year earlier, environmentalists blamed the sharp rise on farmers setting the forest alight to clear land for pasture” https://t.co/USit1oOL8p pic.twitter.com/pLPibygyp0
— Representative Press (@RepPress) August 23, 2019
We replied to RP with the following:
Yes, hysteria. What’s the annual variation? How do these fires compare with a 10 year average? A 50 year average? Asking for data is NEVER irresponsible. Demonising it as ‘lazy’ may well be however. Please note we aren’t claiming this isn’t a problem, just asking for context
— OffGuardian (@OffGuardian0) August 23, 2019
RP’s hostility only increased, and they retweeted the same basic claim again, apparently in the belief it was new and revelatory and an answer to our questions:
Are you incapable of doing research and of applying basic logic? You think the sharp rise in farmers setting fires is “made up?” I found this info in seconds: https://t.co/e11v2RH84r pic.twitter.com/o6RP5K83mL
— Representative Press (@RepPress) August 23, 2019
In fairness, we also got some positive response, most notably from the always rational Robin Monotti Graziadei. We recommend taking time to read the whole thread.
During the Medieval Climate Anomaly, the period most similar to recent decades, warm & dry climatic conditions resulted in peak forest burning, but severe fires favored less-flammable deciduous vegetation, such that fire frequency remained stationary:https://t.co/wTkIgCQm5h
— Robin Monotti Graziadei (@robinmonotti) August 23, 2019
Someone else then sent us a link to this article at Science20.com
In this article you can find a quote from the Earth Observatory , which up until August 22 read as follows:
As of August 16, 2019, satellite observations indicated that total fire activity in the Amazon basin was slightly below average in comparison to the past 15 years. Though activity has been above average in Amazonas and to a lesser extent in Rondônia, it has been below average in Mato Grosso and Pará, according to the Global Fire Emissions Database”
(SIDEBAR: this text was changed on Aug 22 and now reads, significantly “As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years.”, although the data on which this conclusion is based has not apparently changed. You can check the archived version for proof of the edit.)
On the same site (science20.com) you can also find this graph of “cumulative monthly fire data” for the Amazon basin (the original is at from GlobalFireData.org):
This clearly indicates that the current amount of burning in the Amazon basin in 2019 (the green line) is, as NASA originally said,somewhat below the average, and well below the previous extremes for the region.
This will be why, when you look close, the media articles are artfully talking about the number of fires, rather than the area of burning. There may well be more fires (or maybe that’s just been made up like so much else), but that’s a statistic without meaning if the total area covered is actually less than a fifteen-year average.
Now, we’re not about to take NASA as a final authority on this any more than any other single source. But given the amount of emphasis being put by the screaming media on how “unprecedented” the current burning is, and how deceptive this might turn out to be, it seemed important to us that this data was at least discussed. So we tweeted a ref to it.
Given the fact NASA has said the current total burning in the Amazon basin is slightly BELOW a 15 year average, we need to ask what the current media hysteria is aimed at achieving. https://t.co/BDi95EG1qW
— OffGuardian (@OffGuardian0) August 23, 2019
This was one response:
you can breath stats if you wish, I prefer oxygen!
Most stats are manipulated or self serving anyway!https://t.co/ZtH5IEXi2x— 💧truth-seeker (@very_grem) August 23, 2019
Here is another. Visit our timeline for more.
NASA = America = Trump = The far-right.
— Roy Underwood (@TannersCross) August 23, 2019
It turns out the messy truth behind the blaring headlines is – yes, the Amazon is burning but not as much as in many recent times, and while Bolsonaro is not a nice man accusing him of burning the world down is probably a bit premature.
To be fair a few people shared or retweeted this information. But they were very few. Most simply ignored it, intent, like Greenwald and Media Lens, Naomi Klein et al in joining chorus with the shrieking mainstream doom-sirens.
Bolsonaro is simultaneously denying the severity of the Amazon crisis and, worse, recklessly claiming environmental groups started them, because he knows the world recognizes he’s to blame. He can’t escape that responsibility, as @davidmirandario said today in Congress [English]: pic.twitter.com/CAiWKsUCEp
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 23, 2019
‘The French and German leaders say the record number of fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is an international crisis which must be discussed at this weekend’s G7 summit.’https://t.co/aiwzg8lJST
— Media Lens (@medialens) August 23, 2019
The world is on fire and in country after country the arsonists are ascending to the highest office. This is utter madness. We need a global #GreenNewDeal. We all need to ask ourselves: who do we trust to lead that and how will we help them? https://t.co/6gYXI1cwUG
— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) August 22, 2019
Make a note of that #GreenNewDeal hashtag. We’ll be seeing a lot of that in the next week or so.
Before the inevitable “oh so you don’t care if all the possums DIE” type comments BTL, let’s make it ultra-clear, this isn’t about disparaging environmentalism or claiming it’s fine for the Amazon to burn (though actually it is, up to a point, and is an important part of the forest’s life cycle).
It’s about the fact so many of us – even many who think of themselves as sophisticated analysts – are still as much in the grip of authoritarian story-telling as our ancestors were when they heard tales of heaven and hell and believed them.
Thank goodness for a few lone voices of sanity, like Robin again:
Media are ignoring data in order to sell the Green New Deal scam https://t.co/KJX767XS2C
— Robin Monotti Graziadei (@robinmonotti) August 23, 2019
Hmmm… is that Green New Deal the reason why this apparently fairly average year of burning has been morphed by the power of lies into the latest doomsday meme? Why exactly would so many corporate news outlets be so keen to sell us that?
Oh who cares, right? It’s hard. Memes are easy. Did you know that the Amazon produces 20% of our Oxygen? No, because it doesn’t. But that’s not stopping everyone repeating it.
A few cyberwarfare-generated hashtags, a few (sometimes misattributed) images and there is a mass belief-system unfolding before our eyes. Uncritical, rabid, rancid with fear, demanding solutions.
Just in time for the G7 summit – where I’m sure a Green New Deal “solution” will emerge right on cue, to universal cheers and a few more hashtags handed down to the proles to be spread about in the name of “standing up to the 1%”.
We have to do better, guys, or it’s over. We’re done.
Catte Black, OffG co-founding editor. Writer. Opinionated polemicist.
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USS Liberty Massacre: A Pivotal Moment in the Hostile Takeover of America
By Kevin Barrett | Crescent | Dhu al-Qa’dah 24, 1445
In corporate America, hostile takeovers are commonplace. They occur when an aggressor—a larger corporation or rich individuals—seizes control of a smaller corporation without asking permission.
What few recognize is that the United States itself has been subjected to a hostile takeover. Since the aggressor, the illegitimate settler colony known as “Israel,” is much smaller than the US, the takeover has necessarily been surreptitious.
As of June, 2024, Israel’s gradual takeover of the US has become obvious and undeniable—a proverbial “elephant in the living room.” … continue
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