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WSJ admits no proof of UNRWA staff collaborating with Hamas

Al Mayadeen | August 5, 2024

The chief editor of The Wall Street Journal Elena Cherney has admitted to not having evidence to back up its January claims that numerous UNRWA employees in Gaza were involved in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Semafor news reported.

The Wall Street Journal stated in January, citing Israeli intelligence, that at least 12 UNRWA employees were personally involved in the events of October 7.

“The fact that the Israeli claims haven’t been backed up by solid evidence doesn’t mean our reporting was inaccurate or misleading, that we have walked it back or that there is a correctable error here,” Cherney said at the time.

Sources told Semafor that since the WSJ article was published, its writers have attempted to validate the information several times but have failed at doing so.

They also divulged that WSJ journalists covering the war on Gaza have frequently expressed worry about the newspaper’s biased coverage of “Israel”.

In March, Reuters reported that following weeks of a nonstop Israeli-targeted campaign against the UN agency, UNRWA said in an unpublished report that some of its staffers were coerced into falsely stating that they had ties with the Palestinian Resistance movement – Hamas and that they took part in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7

The occupation entity alleged in January that 12 of the 12,000 UNRWA members in Gaza participated in the October operation.

According to the news agency, UNRWA’s report dated February said that its workers were subjected “to threats and coercion” by the Israeli authorities “while in detention and pressured to make false statements against the Agency,” including that it has affiliations with Hamas and that “UNRWA staff members took part” in the Resistance operation in October 2023.

The Israeli allegations prompted over 15 countries, including the United States, to suspend almost half a billion dollars in UNRWA funding. The agency warned of the catastrophic repercussions of this decision on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, already in shatters due to “Israel’s” ongoing genocide and starvation policy.

Since then, several countries resumed their funding as none of the Israeli allegations were corroborated.

‘Israel’ passes bill in first reading to label UNRWA ‘terrorist org.’

Last month, the Israeli parliament granted initial approval to a bill that aims to label UNRWA as a “terrorist organization” and suggests severing ties with the humanitarian agency.

The bill received approval during its first reading in the Knesset. It was set to be sent back to the Israeli “Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee” for additional review and discussion before the final decision is made.

Commenting on the Knesset’s measure, UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma warned that this is “another attempt in a wider campaign to dismantle the agency,” adding that “such steps are unheard of in the history of the United Nations.”

The Palestinian Resistance group Hamas condemned the approval of the bill, saying that the bill seeks “to end the Palestinian cause, foremost the refugee issue.”

Hamas called on the international community and the United Nations to “take firm stances against Israel” and protect UNRWA from the occupation’s attempts to “eliminate it.”

Similarly, the Palestinian al-Mujahideen Movement condemned the bill, describing it as a “Zionist attempt to eliminate one of the legal witnesses to our people’s tragedy and their displacement in 1948,” asserting that the decision is a “precursor to a new policy of starvation and siege” against the Palestinian people.

August 5, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Source tells Tasnim NYT report on Haniyeh assassination false

Al Mayadeen | August 3, 2024

An informed source has dismissed a recent report by The New York Times regarding the assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Speaking to Tasnim News Agency on Saturday, the source described the NYT article published on August 1 as being “riddled with lies” and a continuation of a psyop of the Israeli occupation that lacks any news value.

The source specifically highlighted the involvement of Ronen Bergman, one of the report’s authors, suggesting that his track record undermines the credibility of the article.

“The Zionist regime has crossed a major red line and committed a barbaric and cowardly assassination, whose full details are being investigated,” the source stated.

They accused the Israeli occupation of mobilizing its security elements within media outlets to disseminate false details, thereby confusing the public and experts to cover up their terrorist acts.

According to the source, vital information has surfaced about Haniyeh’s martyrdom. They refuted the NYT‘s claim that Haniyeh was killed by an explosive device covertly smuggled into his residence. Instead, the source stated that evidence indicates an aerial projectile, possibly carried by a drone, was responsible for the explosion.

The source further denied claims in the NYT report that members of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council met with the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei at 7 am on July 31.

The source described such details as part of an old media tactic designed to make readers believe in the authenticity of the report by providing seemingly precise information.

August 3, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

More dead children. More BBC ‘news’ channelling Israeli propaganda as its own

By Jonathan Cook | July 28, 2024

BBC coverage of the attack on a football pitch in the Golan Heights on Saturday has been intentionally misleading.

The BBC’s evening news entirely ignored the fact that those killed by the blast are a dozen Syrians, not Israeli citizens, and that for decades the surviving Syrian population in the Golan, most of them Druze, has been forced to live unwillingly under an Israeli military occupation.

I suppose mention of this context might complicate the story Israel and the BBC wish to tell – and risk reminding viewers that Israel is a belligerent state occupying not just Palestinian territory but Syrian territory too (not to mention nearby Lebanese territory).

It might suggest to audiences that these various permanent Israeli occupations have been contributing not only to large-scale human rights abuses but to regional tensions as well. That Israel’s acts of aggression against its neighbours might be the cause of “conflict”, rather than, as Israel and the BBC would have us believe, some kind of unusual, pre-emptive form of self-defence.

The BBC, of course, chose to uncritically air comments from a military spokesman for Israel, who blamed Hizbullah for the blast in the Golan.

Daniel Hagari tried to milk the incident for maximum propaganda value, arguing: “This attack shows the true face of Hizbullah, a terrorist organisation that targets and murders children playing soccer.”

Except, as the BBC failed to mention in its report, Israel infamously targeted and murdered four young children from the Bakr family playing football on a beach in Gaza in 2014.

Much more recently, video footage showed Israel striking yet more children playing football at a school in Gaza that was serving as a shelter for families whose homes were destroyed by earlier Israeli bombs.

Doubtless other strikes in Gaza over the past 10 months, so many of them targeting school-shelters, have killed Palestinian children playing football – especially as it is one of the very few ways they can take their mind off the horror all around.

So, should we – and the BBC – not conclude that all these attacks on children playing football make the Israeli military even more of a terrorist organisation than Hizbullah?

Note too the way the western media are so ready to accept unquestioningly Israel’s claim that Hizbullah was responsible for the blast – and dismiss Hizbullah’s denials.

Viewers are discouraged from exercising their memories. Any who do may recall that those same media outlets were only too willing to take on faith Israeli disinformation suggesting that Hamas had hit Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital back in October, even when all the evidence showed it was an Israeli air strike.

(Israel soon went on to destroy all Gaza’s hospitals, effectively eradicating the enclave’s health sector, on the pretext that medical facilities there served as Hamas bases – another patently preposterous claim the western media treated with wide-eyed credulity.)

The BBC next went to Jerusalem to hear from diplomatic editor Paul Adams. He intoned gravely: “This is precisely what we have been worrying about for the past 10 months – that something of this magnitude would occur on the northern border, that would turn what has been a simmering conflict for all of these months into an all-out war.”

So there you have it. Paul Adams and the BBC concede they haven’t been worrying for the past 10 months about the genocide unfolding under their very noses in Gaza, or its consequences.

A genocide of Palestinians, apparently, is not something of significant “magnitude”.

Only now, when Israel can exploit the deaths of Syrians forced to live under its military rule as a pretext to expand its “war”, are we supposed to sit up and take notice. Or so the BBC tells us.

Update:

Facebook instantly removed a post linking to this article – and for reasons that are entirely opaque to me (apart from the fact that it is critical of the BBC and Israel).

Facebook’s warning, threatening that my account may face “more account restrictions”, suggests that I was misleading followers by taking them to a “landing page that impersonates another website”. That is patent nonsense. The link took them to my Substack page.

As I have been warning for some time, social media platforms have been tightening the noose around the necks of independent journalists like me, making our work all but impossible to find. It is only a matter of time before we are disappeared completely.

Substack has been a lifeline, because it connects readers to my work directly – either through email or via Substack’s app – bypassing, at least for the moment, the grip of the social-media billionaires.

If you wish to keep reading my articles, and haven’t already, please sign up to my Substack page.

July 31, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran Rejects US Intelligence Words on Tehran’s Alleged Interference in Elections – Reports

Sputnik – 30.07.2024

TEHRAN – Iran’s mission to the United Nations has rejected US intelligence statements regarding Tehran’s alleged interference in the upcoming elections in the United States, the IRNA news agency reported on Tuesday.

On Monday, media reported that the office of the Director of National Intelligence of the United States had unsubstantiated claims that Russia, China and Iran allegedly use marketing, communications and other means to influence US voters and the outcome of the upcoming presidential election.

“Iran has no purpose or activity aimed at influencing the US elections. Most of these accusations are being made as part of psychological actions to artificially revive election campaigns,” the Iranian mission to the UN said, as quoted by the news agency.

July 30, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

China responds to US election interference claim

RT | July 30, 2024

Beijing has never interfered in US elections and has no intention of doing so, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has stressed in response to accusations recently levied by US intelligence officials.

The ministry’s statement comes in response to a late July Election Security Update by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in which Russia, China and Iran were accused of supposedly using their influence to impact US politics and threaten the upcoming US presidential election, scheduled for November.

In the report, ODNI stated that while China “probably does not plan to influence the outcome of the US presidential election,” actors linked to Beijing are expected to “seek to denigrate down-ballot candidates” who are seen as a threat to China’s core interests. The agency suggested that similar actions were carried out by Chinese agents “in a handful of midterm races in 2022.”

ODNI also stated that it is aware that Beijing is using social media to sow “divisions in the US and portray democracies as chaotic.”

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian responded to the accusations by stating that “China has never interfered in and will not interfere in the US election.”

“We oppose the US spreading false information to smear China and oppose the US election using China as an excuse,” Lin stressed.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also categorically rejected ODNI’s allegations of election meddling, describing them as “absurd” and accusing the US intelligence community of succumbing to “fashionable trends in domestic politics” and “looking for enemies.”

“The Americans cannot think of a better enemy than Russia,” Peskov told reporters on Tuesday, adding that more similar accusations are likely to come out in the future as the US election approaches. He explained that Russia and its President Vladimir Putin continue to be major factors for US Republicans and Democrats to exploit amid their ongoing political struggle.

The Kremlin spokesman expressed regret that Moscow has to deal with this fact, noting that the American politicians’ baseless accusations only serve to further harm Russian-American relations.

July 30, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Veteran War Correspondent: Blast In Golan Heights Not From Hezbollah Rocket

By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 29.07.2024

On Saturday, an explosive fell onto a sports field in Majdal Shams in Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children. Israel blamed the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah. The group has denied the accusation.

Veteran war correspondent Elijah Magnier told Sputnik on Monday that what little information is available on the Golan Heights explosion that killed 12 Arab Druze Muslim children contradicts the official story offered by the Israeli government.

“First, [Israel has] refused any Western investigation by Israeli allies. So they don’t want anyone to investigate the type of rockets and/or the debris,” Magnier explained. “And the technical details of the explosions are very telling. The Falaq rocket that Hezbollah fires is a 50 kilogram explosive. Now, a warhead with such a quantity of explosive doesn’t leave the damage that was left by the explosion that happened in Golan Heights, [it would be] much bigger.”

Magnier, who has over 35 years of experience covering conflicts in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, says that the evidence the Israelis have provided has been unconvincing.

“We have not seen any picture… of the guidance system, or any component that [we] need to understand what kind of rocket [or missile] that exploded in this place,” Magnier began. “They showed us two pieces with serial numbers that match the Falaq, but not on the same scene of the explosion. They’re completely different on a white plank. So, we don’t know where these pieces were taken from.”

“Normally, when the forensic team is on the scene, [they] take hundreds of photographs with every single piece before they touch anything. We haven’t seen all that, but we’ve seen a rush of accusing Hezbollah,” Magnier added.

“The diameter of the crater [from a Hezbollah Falaq rocket] can [be] between four to six meters and the depth can be… between 1.5 to 3 meters, which is not the case at all of the explosion we’ve seen,” Magnier described. “We’ve seen in this explosion only a small part of the fence [was] damaged and the other part of the fence is still intact. So, even the fragment of the explosion is different. The shrapnel is different.”

On Sunday, Israel bombed 12 settlements in Lebanon after saying that Hezbollah had crossed a “red line” in the attack. Hezbollah has vehemently denied it was involved. Magnier pointed out that they do not have a reason to attack Druze Muslims in Golan Heights, which is illegally occupied by Israel but still contains a large Muslim population.

“Hezbollah has thousands of civilian objectives [it could hit] that are close to the borders of Lebanon, and it can really destroy any village or any Israeli occupied city without the need to go to another village that is occupied by Druze Muslims who have [influence] in Syria and Lebanon and want to declare their support to the Palestinians,” argued Magnier, who added that Hezbollah has not been hitting civilian targets since it started shelling Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.

Magnier argued that a faulty Israeli air defense missile was a more likely culprit in the Golan Heights explosion.

“I can say that there are malfunctioning missiles and there are malfunctioning rockets that can fall anywhere and these incidents are very frequent, in particular with the Israeli interception missiles, where they say that only 60 to 65% reach their target and the others miss,” he said. “A strong possibility… an Israeli interception missile of the type Tamir… they carry around 10 to 15 kilograms of explosive and they have a very similar impact to what we’ve seen in the pictures provided on the ground by the people of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights.”

Magnier noted that the size of the crater matched what the Tamir could create and that there was still grass from the field around the crater, which would not happen with a larger Falaq rocket.

“Everything there indicates that we’re talking about a small-sized missile [and] not a big sized rocket of 50 kilograms.”

On Monday, US and Israeli media reported that an Israeli official said its response was still coming and that it would be “limited but significant” in order to avoid an all-out war.

“So, we understand that Netanyahu is really trying to avoid being involved in a war that he doesn’t know what the consequences would be. He can start, but he can’t end it,” concluded Magnier. “What is the ultimate objective [in attacking Hezbollah]? Destroy Lebanon? Destroy the airport? He will have his airport destroyed. Attack the Capital? He will have Tel Aviv destroyed. So this is where we see that things are not as smooth as the Israelis are trying to show.”

July 29, 2024 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Does the new study on face masks show they prevent respiratory illnesses?

A new randomised trial in The BMJ is being touted as proof that surgical face masks are effective at an individual level for reducing respiratory infections

Maryanne Demasi, reports | July 28, 2024

Whether to wear a face mask to prevent respiratory illnesses has been one of the most divisive debates during the pandemic.

After a Cochrane review in 2023 found that face masks made “little or no difference” to the spread of respiratory viruses, the issue became highly politicised.

Tom Jefferson, lead author of the Cochrane review, told me “There is just no evidence that they make any difference. Full stop.”  The interview was picked up by media such as the New York Times and CNN, sparking an international furore.

New York Times columnist, Zeynep Tufekci pushed back in her own column arguing that despite no high-quality data, we could still conclude from less rigorous observational studies, that masks do in fact work.

Well-known science historian and co-author of Merchants of Doubt Naomi Oreskes agreed with Tufekci, claiming the public had been “misled” by the Cochrane review because it prioritised high-quality studies and excluded less rigorous ones.

When former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky was challenged about her controversial mask mandates in light of Cochrane’s findings, she lied to Congress claiming that the review had been “retracted” when it had not.

Then, in September 2023, former White House physician Anthony Fauci told CNN, “There’s no doubt that masks work.” Fauci said that while studies might show masks do not work at a population level, they do work “on an individual basis.”

Could this be true?

Well, a new study published in The BMJ is being touted as proof that face masks are effective at an individual level for reducing respiratory infections.

The study

Researchers in Norway performed a ‘pragmatic’ randomised trial in the off-peak period of “the normal influenza season” to determine if wearing a surgical face mask in public could reduce the risk of contracting a respiratory illness.

This study was sufficiently powered to detect a difference in outcomes in a real-world setting.

Over a 14-day period (between Feb-April 2023), 4647 participants were randomly assigned to either wear a surgical mask in public places (shopping centres, streets, public transport) or not to wear a surgical face mask in public places (control group).

The group wearing masks showed an absolute risk reduction of ~3 percent in “self-reported symptoms consistent with respiratory infection” (8.9% mask group; 12.2% control group, 95% CI 0.58 to 0.87; P=0.001).

The authors concluded, “Wearing a surgical face mask in public spaces over 14 days reduces the risk of self-reported symptoms consistent with a respiratory infection, compared with not wearing a surgical face mask.”

In an accompanying editorial, the authors of the study anticipated their findings would inflame an already divisive debate, and called for more “open and nuanced discussions” about face masks.

“We know exactly what to expect,” they wrote.

“Mask non-believers will describe the effect size as too small to be of interest, and they will intensively highlight any source of potential bias that might have inflated the results in the wrong direction. Of course, the mask believers will do the same but in the opposite direction.”

The authors said they would welcome “a nuanced debate around the potential biases and the interpretation” of the study findings, so here I go….

Analysis

I would argue that an absolute reduction of 3% in self-reported symptoms from people wearing masks is not a clinically meaningful result.

There are several reasons why.

First, in such a study, you obviously cannot blind the participants to one group or the other. People know they’re wearing a mask and may be less likely to report symptoms if they feel “protected.”

In fact, a pre-specified subgroup analysis showed a “beneficial effect was estimated for participants who reported that they believed face masks reduced the risk of infection,” indicating the study suffered from ‘reporting bias.’

Second, the study found wearing a mask changed people’s habits which may have accounted for the small difference between groups.

For example, people in the control group were more likely to attend cultural events than people wearing a mask (39% and 32%, respectively; P<0.001). Also, a larger percentage of people in the control group visited restaurants compared to those wearing a mask (65% and 53% respectively; P<0.001).

This is similar to the cluster-randomised trial of community-level masking carried out in Bangladesh. The study found a small effect of face masks which could be explained by changes in behaviour; 29% of people in villages wearing masks practiced physical distancing, compared to only 24% in the control (non-masking) villages. The apparent small effect of masks could therefore be due to physical distancing.

Third, masks were mandated across the world to reduce the burden of covid-19. But in this study, there was no difference in the number of self-reported or registered covid-19 infections between the control group and those wearing masks.

Fourth, the study showed people wearing a mask in public places sought healthcare for respiratory symptoms at a similar rate to people who weren’t wearing a mask, indicating that the mask was not reducing the burden on the healthcare system.

Fifth, with an intervention like surgical masks, compliance is always an issue because participants can feel uncomfortable or self-conscious wearing a face covering in public, and a small reduction in risk may not be worth it.

In this trial, only 25% of participants reported “always wearing a face mask” in public and 19% wore them less than 50% of the time. Had the trial been longer than 14-days, it’s likely that compliance would have diminished along with the small benefit.

The most reported adverse effect of wearing masks in public places was the unpleasant comments from other people.

This may also explain the difference in dropout rates. At follow-up, 21% of people assigned to wear masks did not respond to the questionnaire, compared to 13% in the control group, which again, suggests reporting bias.

Conclusion

What this study shows is that wearing a face mask in public during the flu season, might reduce the sniffles by a small percentage, but it won’t change whether you seek healthcare and might actually make you less inclined to go out and have fun.

This study does not show that community masking reduces the healthcare burden of disease associated with respiratory illnesses, which was the justification for mandating face masks during the pandemic.

I’d add that viruses are smaller than the pores in surgical or cloth masks (and masks are rarely worn properly), so it’s unlikely to be an effective public health intervention.

At the start of the pandemic before masking became political, Fauci had the right idea when he told 60 minutes, “Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks.”

As shown in the 2023 Cochrane review, hand hygiene is likely to be more effective at reducing the burden of respiratory illnesses, and has no real downsides.

July 28, 2024 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Majdal Shams residents mourn martyrs, reject any Israeli presence

Al Mayadeen | July 28, 2024

Residents of Majdal Shams in the occupied Syrian Golan held a funeral ceremony on Saturday for the victims of the Israeli attack that targeted a football field in the town.

An Israeli Iron Dome interceptor missile struck a playground in the town, which is made up entirely of Druze Syrians, killing at least 12 civilians, including children, and wounding at least a dozen others.

“Israel” was quick to pin the blame on Hezbollah and claimed that the Lebanese group targeted the town with an “Iranian rocket”.

The Israeli Channel 13 reported that residents of Majdal Shams attacked members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party who attended the funeral.

Meanwhile, the Israeli news website Walla mentioned that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was met with rejection and protests upon his arrival in the town.

“Get out of here. We don’t want you here, you killer,” the residents told Smotrich, accusing the Israeli Minister of making use of their children’s blood.

Following the Golan incident, Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that “Israel will not let this murderous attack go unanswered and Hezbollah will pay a heavy price for it, a price it has not paid before,” according to a statement from his office.

Hezbollah denied Saturday that it targeted Majdal Shams, a Druze town where many residents have rejected Israeli nationality since the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights in 1967.

In a statement, the Lebanese Resistance group said it “categorically denies the allegations reported by certain enemy media and various media platforms concerning the targeting of Majdal Shams.”

“The Islamic Resistance has no connection to this incident,” it affirmed.

Later, Axios cited an American official as saying Hezbollah officials told the UN that the Golan Heights incident was the result of an Israeli interceptor missile hitting the playground in Majdal Shams.

July 28, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

War of Attrition & the Dishonest War Propaganda

Ukrainian FM Tells Beijing Kiev is Ready for Peace Talks, As Russian Troops Advance

By Glenn Diesen | July 26, 2024

In a war of attrition, the army of the adversary is destroyed before seizing territory. Storming well-fortified positions creates high levels of casualties, which undermines the main objective of favourable attrition rates vis-a-vis the adversary.

The narrative-driven media have called the conflict “stagnant” as the frontlines have moved very slowly, and pretended that Ukrainian casualties have been very low. This deception has been deliberate to sell the illusion that Ukraine can win as a requirement for maintaining public support in the West for keeping the war going.

Much like in Afghanistan, the obedient media committed themselves to the narrative. The unreported reality was that the Ukrainian army was being destroyed, while Russia built a powerful army. Now that Ukraine’s army is at breaking point, Russia has begun taking territory with much less resistance.

How can we end the war? There is overwhelming evidence that Russia considers NATO’s incursion into Ukraine to be an existential threat. As NATO refuses to negotiate about restoring Ukraine’s neutrality, which was lost in February 2014, territorial conquest is perceived by Moscow to be the only solution.

Yet, the media shames anyone who recognises this reality by denouncing them as carrying water for Putin as they are “legitimising” or “supporting” Russia’s invasion. Those calling for peace negotiations are smeared as traitors, while the war propagandists can claim to “stand with Ukraine” as their Ukrainian proxies fight and die in a war that cannot be won.

Calls for negotiations are dismissed as it is unacceptable to surrender Ukrainian territory, which would embolden Russia to pursue similar conquests. In reality, this only became a conflict about territory after negotiations about restoring Ukraine’s neutrality were rejected. NATO refused to accept a neutral Ukraine between 1991 and 2014 when approximately only 20% of Ukrainians wanted NATO membership, and they knew it was a red line for Russia. NATO undermined the Minsk agreement for 7 years despite announcing it was the only peaceful path to resolve the conflict. Negotiations with Russia were then rejected in 2021 even as the US and NATO acknowledged Russia would invade if NATO did not end its bid to expand. In the Istanbul peace agreement in April 2022, Russia agreed to withdraw all its troops from Donbas if Ukraine restored its neutrality, although the US and UK sabotaged the agreement. Yet, the political-media elites insist that the territorial dispute is the source rather than the consequence of the NATO-Russia conflict.

The result? Ukraine loses territory and a horrific amount of men every single day. The war is also entering a new stage as casualties increase dramatically when frontlines collapse and an army must pull back. Russia is now breaking through all the frontlines and Ukraine is about to be hit by a powerful Russian fist. Yet, the political-media elites who purportedly “support Ukraine” have criminalised diplomacy and negotiations. Hungary, who holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council, is even punished by the EU for simply engaging in diplomacy with Ukraine, Russia, and China to end the war.

In every war, the call for peace is denounced as support for the adversary while in-group loyalty and patriotism must be expressed as war enthusiasm. After every war, we also acknowledge that the war narrative was full of falsehood and we believe that we have learned an important lesson for the next war.

July 26, 2024 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

Whatever Happened to ‘Rising Sea Levels’?

By Buck Throckmorton | The Pipeline | June 21, 2024

It’s hard to keep pace with all the ways the climate cult blames naturally occurring phenomena on “climate change,” be it natural disasters, violent storms, or “record” temperatures. While the weather is not getting “more extreme” as the climatistas claim, their apocalyptic rhetoric certainly is, and it’s also getting more dishonest. The conflation of shifting sands on barrier islands with rising sea levels is another scientifically dishonest claim being made by the climate alarmists.

Back in the 1980s, the first generation of global warmists promised that a catastrophic rise in sea levels was likely to submerge the Maldives, among other coastal areas, before 2020. Not only did that never happen, but the Maldives has a greater landmass now than it did when its imminent submersion was a “scientific fact” three decades ago. So, with the oceans not cooperating in rising as prophesied by “climate scientists” 30-plus years ago, the climate hysterics and the credulous media are now blaming the naturally occurring movement of barrier islands on “climate change” and rising seas.

Whenever a beach house on a barrier island is lost to shifting sands, it is now being reported as a harbinger of the coastal doom that is being caused by our carbon sinning. Just a few weeks ago, the American media was somberly reporting about yet another house on North Carolina’s Outer Banks being lost to the rising waters of the Atlantic Ocean. From an AP story dated 5/29/2024:

Another house has collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean along North Carolina’s coast, the sixth to fall along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore’s beaches in the past four years, according to U.S. National Park Service officials. North Carolina’s coast is almost entirely made up of narrow, low-lying barrier islands that are increasingly vulnerable to storm surges and to being washed over from both the bay and the sea as the planet warms. As sea levels rise, these islands typically move toward the mainland, frustrating efforts to hold properties in place.

There is so much that is wrong in just those three sentences. For starters, it describes a barrier island as if it is the crown of an otherwise submerged mountain or coral atoll, and thus vulnerable to being completely submerged as the seas rise up around it. But barrier islands are nothing of the sort. They are impermanent deposits of sand, which reshape, move, merge, appear, and disappear due to tides, winds, and storms.

The movement of barrier islands is not due to rising sea levels, it is due to a naturally occurring force called “longshore drift.” Where there are man-made efforts to stabilize barrier islands with jetties and sea walls, this produces other impacts on currents that cause erosion in some waterfront areas and new sand deposits in others. Beach houses in the Outer Banks are not being lost due to rising sea levels, they are being lost due to shifting sands.

This short video shows how longshore drift moves a barrier island. Winds blow the tide in at an angle against the island, not perpendicularly, but the backflow of seawater will follow gravity, which is effectively perpendicular to the island. This has the effect of slowly moving the barrier island in the direction that the wind is “pushing” it.

From NOAA’s website, “Longshore drift may also create or destroy entire barrier islands along a shoreline. A barrier island is a long offshore deposit of sand situated parallel to the coast. As longshore drifts deposit, remove, and redeposit sand, barrier islands constantly change.”

Tucker’s Island, just north of Atlantic City, New Jersey, is an example of a once populated barrier island that completely disappeared. It did not get submerged by rising tides, rather, the island’s sands were shifted by longshore drift until the island no longer existed. The Philadelphia Inquirer published a story about Tucker’s Island in 2015 titled The Mystique of New Jersey’s Atlantis.

The small, picturesque island off the southern end of Long Beach Island was once a popular seaside resort. It had a lighthouse, life saving station, two rustic hotels, 20 summer cottages, and a community meetinghouse that served as a church and school. Vacationers from Philadelphia and southern New Jersey relaxed there as long ago as the late 1860s, enjoying its peaceful solitude, cool breezes, fishing, hunting, sailing, swimming and clam bakes. But Tucker’s Island’s days were numbered. Year by year, ocean tides and storms eroded it. The hotels closed in 1910 and later collapsed and were washed away. The lighthouse fell in 1927.

This NOAA link shows a series of historical maps of the New Jersey shore dating back to 1856, showing the constantly changing shape, size, and location of Tucker’s Island, until it eventually disappeared, to ultimately be replaced by growth on the southern tip of Long Beach Island.

Near Corpus Christi, Texas, the Lydia Ann Lighthouse on the intracoastal waterway is a popular destination for fishing, birding, and kayaking. Its location as a navigational aid makes little sense when looking at current maps, but current maps do not reflect the islands and channels as they existed in 1857 when the lighthouse (then knows as the Aransas Pass Light Station) went into service.

The purpose of the lighthouse was to guide ships from the Gulf of Mexico into the Aransas Pass, which lay between San Jose Island to the north, and Mustang Island to the south. At the time, the lighthouse aligned with the channel, but over the years, longshore drift pushed the pass well to the south. The Aransas Pass between the two islands is now about one mile south of where it was when the lighthouse was erected, as both San Jose Island and Mustang Island shifted south.

Like so much else related to the phony “climate crisis,” stories of rising seas eating away at barrier islands are dishonest misrepresentations of naturally occurring events.

Buck Throckmorton is a writer (“co-blogger”) at the Ace of Spades HQ blog. His career includes many years in banking and commercial lending, as well as a stint with an American auto manufacturer. Buck’s writing often takes a critical look at electric vehicles, “green” energy, and woke capital. Twitter: @BuckThrockmort; email: buck.throckmorton@protonmail.com

July 21, 2024 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

DONALD TRUMP AND THE TOLL OF VITRIOL

The HighWire | July 18, 2024

Nearly a decade of increasingly dangerous rhetoric and bias from corporate ‘journalists’ and those in power have prepared the grounds for violence. Who is to blame??

July 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | | Leave a comment

Iran rejects claim about Trump assassination, asserts will pursue Soleimani case legally

Press TV – July 17, 2024

Iran has roundly rejected claims of devising plot to assassinate former US president Donald Trump, but vows to pursue legal channels to consign him to justice for his ordering the assassination of the Islamic Republic’s top anti-terror commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani made the remarks on Wednesday after US media alleged that American authorities had obtained “intelligence from a human source in recent weeks on a plot by Iran to try to assassinate Trump.”

It followed an assassination attempt against Trump that took place while he was campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump survived the attempt, suffering an ear injury.

Kan’ani said Iran strongly rejected allegations of any involvement in the armed attack against Trump or claims of harboring any intention to take such action, Kan’ani said.

The Islamic Republic considers such claims to be a product of malicious political goals and intents, he added.

The country, however, is determined to legally pursue Trump due to his direct role in the assassination of General Soleimani, the spokesman asserted.

Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), and their companions were assassinated in a US drone strike authorized by Trump near Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020.

The commanders were highly revered across West Asia due to their key role in fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations also reacted to the US media report earlier on Wednesday, considering its claim to be “unfounded and malicious.”

The mission, nevertheless, asserted that “from the Islamic Republic’s standpoint, Trump is a criminal, who should be tried and punished in court for [issuing] General Soleimani’s assassination order.”

“Iran has chosen the legal pathway to hold him accountable,” it stated.

July 17, 2024 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

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