Chinese embassy dismisses US allegations of bases in Cuba as slander
Al Mayadeen | July 2, 2024
In response to ongoing allegations by the US regarding Chinese military bases in Cuba, the Chinese Embassy in Washington vehemently refuted these claims, labeling them as slanderous and malicious.
The remarks come after US think-tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a report using satellite imagery to identify four alleged Chinese listening stations in Cuba, including one located near Guantanamo Bay.
“The US side has repeatedly hyped up China’s establishment of spy bases or conducting surveillance activities in Cuba. Such claims are nothing but slander. The Cuban side has already made a clarification,” Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told Sputnik on Tuesday.
Liu stressed the need for the US to halt its ongoing effort to make malicious accusations against China without delay.
Additionally, Liu highlighted that the US maintains a leading role in global surveillance operations, which encompass monitoring its allies as well.
BBC presenter calls for Trump to be assassinated
RT | July 2, 2024
BBC presenter David Aaronovitch has called for the “murder” of former US President Donald Trump in a post on X (formerly Twitter). Aaronovitch later deleted his message following a backlash, claiming it had been “satire.”
Aaronovitch, the voice behind the British state broadcaster’s Radio 4 program ‘The Briefing Room’, tweeted on Monday: “If I was Biden I’d hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s security.”
The post was accompanied by the hashtag #SCOTUS, indicating that the comment had been triggered by Monday’s confirmation from the US Supreme Court that former presidents have “absolute immunity” from prosecution for their official actions.
Aaronovitch was forced delete the post after an online backlash, and claimed in a follow-up message that he had been accused of inciting violence by “a far right pile.” The presenter insisted his tweet was “plainly a satire.”
On Monday, the highest US court ruled that under “our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts.”
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Trump touted the verdict on presidential immunity as a “big win for our Constitution and for democracy.”
President Biden attacked the Supreme Court ruling, urging citizens to “dissent” against the verdict.
US federal prosecutors have charged Trump with four criminal counts related to the 2020 presidential election, alleging that he “conspired” to overturn the results.
The Supreme Court verdict still grants lower courts the right to hold evidentiary hearings to determine whether the actions are official or unofficial. Unofficial acts by the president are not covered by immunity from prosecution.
Trump has repeatedly called his prosecution politically motivated, describing it as a “witch hunt” launched by Biden and his administration.
This Energy Transition Thing Really Is Not Happening
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | June 25, 2024
From reading the left-wing media, you know (or think you know) that there is an energy “transition” going on. This is something that must happen as a matter of urgent necessity. Vast government subsidies are being disbursed to assure its rapid success. Fossil fuels are rapidly on the way out, while wind and solar are quickly taking over.
For example, you may well have seen the big piece last August in the New York Times, headline “The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think.”
Across the country, a profound shift is taking place . . . . The nation that burned coal, oil and gas for more than a century to become the richest economy on the planet, as well as historically the most polluting, is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels.
But if you read that piece, or any one of dozens of others from the Times or other “mainstream” sources, what you won’t find are meaningful statistics on the extent to which fossil fuel use is declining, if at all, or the extent to which renewables like wind and solar are actually replacing them.
That’s why the Manhattan Contrarian turns instead to dry statistical data to try to get the real story. Several years ago I discovered an annual book of energy data called the Statistical Review of World Energy. At the time, the Statistical Review was produced by the international oil company BP. I first covered one of these Reviews in this post from July 2019. A couple of years ago BP apparently decided to get out of this business, and turned the product over to something called the Energy Institute. EI then produced a Statistical Review in June 2023 (covering 2022), and now is just out on June 20, 2024 with a Statistical Review covering 2023.
Most of the Statistical Review consists of just spreadsheets of numbers. There are some charts, but relatively few. But the takeaways are too obvious to hide. The big one is this: there is no energy “transition” going on, at least not in the sense that “renewables” are actually supplanting fossil fuels. Yes there is some considerable amount of “renewable” wind and solar electricity generation getting built (with huge government subsidies). But it is not replacing fossil fuel generation. Rather, fossil fuel generation continues to increase, and its share of overall energy production has barely budged.
Here is EI’s June 20 Press Release, which summarizes the five “key stories” that it says emerge from the statistics. The first one is the big one — increasing energy consumption led by increased production and consumption of fossil fuels:
Record global energy consumption, with coal and oil pushing fossil fuels and their emissions to record levels. Global primary energy consumption overall was at a record absolute high, up 2% on the previous year to 620 Exajoules (EJ). Global fossil fuel consumption reached a record high, up 1.5% to 505 EJ (driven by coal up 1.6%, oil up 2% to above 100 million barrels for first time, while gas was flat). As a share of the overall mix they were at 81.5%, marginally down from 82% last year.
And of course, “emissions” continue to rise:
Emissions from energy increased by 2%, exceeding 40 gigatonnes of CO2 for the first time.
No matter how much the federal government or any state threatens to punish you for your sin of fossil fuel use, aggregate global emissions from such use are not going to go down within our lifetimes.
The second “key story” relates to the contribution, or lack thereof, of solar and wind. Here EI engages in some modest spinning to make things look less bad than they are for the solar and wind promoters; but there’s not much they can do:
Solar and wind push global renewable electricity generation to another record level. Renewable generation, excluding hydro, was up 13% to a record high of 4,748 TWh. This growth was driven almost entirely by wind and solar, and accounted for 74% of all net additional electricity generated.
4,748 TWh of renewable generation — wow, that’s a lot! Or is it? Do you notice how they suddenly switched units from Exajoules to Terawatt hours when they changed from talking about fossil fuels to solar and wind. Does anybody around here know the conversion factor? Yes — it’s 277.778 TWh per EJ. That means that the 4,748 TWh of “almost entirely” solar and wind power generated in 2023 came to all of 17.1 EJ, which is just 2.7% of the 620 EJ of world primary energy consumption. Could you have imagined that it could be so little, after decades of over-the-top promotion and trillions of dollars of subsidies?
And pay attention to that line “wind and solar . . . accounted for 74% of all net additional electricity generated.” Does that somehow sound like a transition is happening? It’s the opposite. If wind and solar were actually taking over, they would have to account for 100% of additional generation, plus large further amounts to replace fossil fuel generators. As long as wind and solar account for less than all of additional generation, then fossil fuels are continuing to increase, and there is no “transition” going on at all.
I mentioned that there were relatively few charts in the Review, but some of them are striking. Here is one of my favorites, showing global coal consumption from 1965 to 2023:
Over that period, North America and Europe have cut their consumption almost by half, from almost 40 EJ per year to around 20. But over the same period the consumption in the rest of the world has gone from about 20 EJ to around 140, multiplying by a factor of 7. And don’t be fooled by the apparent leveling off of increases in total consumption in the last several years. That reflects continuing decreases in North America and Europe, which are more than offset by larger increases in the Asia Pacific region.
Robert Bryce at his Substack has many more details from the EI Statistical Review, plus several charts that he has created from the EI data. He is much better at creating charts than I am. The title of Bryce’s article is “Numbers Don’t Lie.” Bryce also has a figure for the amount of government subsidies that have gone to wind and solar generation since 2004: $4.7 trillion. That much money to fund a supposed “transition” that isn’t occurring at all.
The story is going to be effectively the same every year until finally the promoters give up on the wind/solar scam.
Don’t Let The Elite Get Away With Gaslighting That They Didn’t Know About Biden’s Senility
By Andrew Korybko | June 29, 2024
Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week made it impossible to deny his senility, yet the Western elite is gaslighting they were supposedly oblivious to this until now. Time Magazine published a piece titled “Inside Biden’s Debate Disaster and the Scramble to Quell Democratic Panic”, which was complemented by CNN’s about how “Foreign diplomats react with horror to Biden’s dismal debate performance”. Both make it seem like Biden’s senility is a surprise for everyone who knew him.
The reality is that they knew about this all along but covered it up by lying that any claims to this effect were “Russian propaganda” and/or a “conspiracy theory”, all because they actually approved of the Democrats installing a literal placeholder in the White House who the liberal–globalist elite could control. It was a refreshing change of pace from Trump, who was much too independent for their liking despite his occasional capitulations to their demands, and it also reassured America’s allies who disliked him too.
They both went along with the lie that Biden is in tip-top mental condition for reasons of political convenience, but now it’s impossible to keep up the charade any longer, hence why they’re all feigning surprise and shock. The elite shouldn’t be allowed to get away with their latest gaslighting and should be exposed for one of the greatest cover-ups in American history. The country is being ruled by a shadowy network of transnational and domestic elites that are united by their radical liberal-globalist ideology.
Biden was chosen as the Democrats’ candidate in 2020 precisely because he was already senile and therefore completely controllable. That party, which functions as the public face of the abovementioned elite network, wanted someone who’d do whatever they demanded on the home and foreign policy fronts. In particular, they sought to turn America into a liberal-globalist hellhole while ramping up NATO’s containment of Russia in Ukraine, but the second policy backfired after the special operation began.
Nevertheless, they’ll never have another chance to install someone like Biden since 2020 was an exceptional election year due to it being a referendum on Trump – who a significant share of the public was preconditioned to falsely believe is the new Hitler – and mail-in voting due to COVID-19. These conditions can never be replicated in the same way again no matter how hard the elite try, which is why they decided to keep Biden as their candidate instead of replace him early on.
Although there’s now a push by some for him to be replaced during the party’s upcoming national convention, Politico and NBC News among others both pointed out that this would be a difficult process, so there’s no guarantee that they’ll seriously attempt it. That said, he might also suffer some sort of emergency that incapacitates him more than he already is, so the scenario can’t be ruled out. In that case, they’ll still do everything they can to gaslight that they had no idea that he was so unhealthy.
Any acknowledgement that they were aware of this would expose their role in 2020’s de facto coup, which was the elite’s latest after the ones in 2001, 1974, and 1963. Back then, 9/11 was exploited as the pretext for taking the national security state to its next level, while Nixon’s resignation in the face of the CIA’s Watergate scandal was meant to remove a truly independent and popular visionary leader. As for Kennedy’s assassination, many believe that it was aimed to stop his planned withdrawal from Vietnam.
The elite’s latest coup was meant to turbocharge the US’ preexisting liberal-globalist trajectory after Trump partially offset it with his comparatively more conservative-nationalist policies, which necessitated provoking a proxy war with Russia in order to unify the West around this ideological cause. The damage has already been dealt and a lot of it is irreparable, but Trump’s return to power would still be better for Americans and the rest of the world, which is why the elite are dead-set against it.
Irrespective of whether the decision is made to replace Biden, which has its pros such as putting a more publicly appealing candidate on the ballot but also its cons like stoking panic about the party’s electoral prospects, the elite will do everything to cover up for their knowledge of his senility. Acknowledging that they knew about this would leave little doubt in the minds of many that the 2020 election was actually the elite’s latest coup, which his why they’re going overboard gaslighting about how they’re surprised.
Robert Hur Emerges as the Clear Winner in the Presidential Debate
By Jonathan Turley | June 28, 2024
The presidential debate last night was chilling to watch as President Joe Biden clearly struggled to retain his focus and, at points, seemed hopelessly confused. The winner was clear: Special Counsel Robert Hur. For months, Democrats in Congress and the media have attacked Hur for his report that the president came across as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur concluded that prosecuting Biden would be difficult because a jury would view him as a sympathetic figure of a man with declining mental capabilities. That was evident last night and the question is whether a man who was too diminished to be a criminal defendant can still be a president for four more years.
Hur laid out evidence that President Biden had unlawfully retained and mishandled classified evidence for decades. However, he also concluded that “at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” He found that “it would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
What has followed is the usual pile-on in the media with legal analysts, press, and pundits denouncing Hur for his findings.
Hur likely does not anticipate any apologies even as commentators on CNN and MSNBC admit that there are now unavoidable questions of Biden’s ability to be the nominee.
Democrats have repeatedly insisted that Hur did not find Biden diminished and that he actually was impressed by his memory and mental acuity. Hur contradicted that in his own testimony before Congress.
Indeed, the denial campaign took on a bizarre character, particularly when Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) insisted that Hur “exonerated” Biden. Hur pushed back: “I need to go back and make sure that I take note of a word that you used, ‘exoneration.’ That is not a word that is used in my report and that is not a part of my task as a prosecutor.”
Jayapal shot back, “You exonerated him.”
Hur responded, “I did not exonerate him. That word does not appear in the report.”
The debate also further undermines the ridiculous effort of the Biden Administration to continue to withhold the audiotape of the Hur interview as privileged (despite saying that the transcript is not privileged).
The debate showed not only what Hur saw but why the Justice Department is making a clearly laughable privilege claim to delay any release of the audiotape until after the election.
Lebanon denies Telegraph claims, invites officials for airport tour
Al-Mayadeen | June 23, 2024
The Air Transport Union in Lebanon (UTA) denied in a statement The Telegraph’s report in which it claimed that “Hezbollah stores missiles and explosives at Lebanon’s main airport,” saying that these clams were made without any proof offered.
The UTA called The Telegraph’s unfounded claims “mere illusions and lies aimed at endangering Beirut Airport and its civilian workers, as well as travelers to and from it, all of whom are civilians.”
Moreover, the Air Transport Union held the media outlet, as well as “those who report on it and spread its falsehoods” responsible for the safety of those who work at Beirut Airport in all its facilities “including the passenger terminal, departure and arrival, the apron, maintenance, and civil air cargo.”
Additionally, in its statement, it called on all Lebanese, Arab, and foreign media outlets to come to Beirut Airport “with their camera crews and verify for themselves, otherwise, we consider what is being promoted by suspicious media outlets as incitement to kill us.”
On his part, Lebanon’s Caretaker Minister of Public Works and Transport, Ali Hamieh, proclaimed, in a press conference, that “Beirut Airport has been subjected to disinformation for years,” adding that instead of publishing a “ridiculous” and baseless report citing anonymous sources, the British daily “should have opted for checking in with the British Department of Transport, which conducted a field visit of the airport on January 22, 2024.”
“This is the primary authority responsible for transportation matters at the airport,” he stated.
Questioning the paper’s credibility, Hamieh asked, “Is it conceivable that a reputable newspaper would change its sources within an hour?”
Additionally, the caretaker minister called on all media outlets and all ambassadors or their representatives to visit the airport tomorrow at 10:30 am for a tour of all airport facilities to make sure that the airport is strictly a civilian infrastructure and that no weapons are being smuggled through it.
“We have nothing to hide,” he maintained.
Moreover, Hamieh informed the press, “We are in the process of filing a lawsuit against the newspaper and we will announce the details later.”
Candace Owens and Briahna Joy Gray reveal media ‘red line’ on Israel
If Americans Knew | June 16, 2024
Conservative Candace Owens interviews progressive Briahna Joy Gray about their experiences getting fired because of their criticism of Israel. This clip is from the Candace Show on June 14, 2024.
Background information:
Krystal Ball, Saagar Enjeti, Glenn Greenwald reveal details of the campaign against her:
Behind the Myth of “Billions in Arms” Flowing into Ukraine
By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – 13.06.2024
In a June 8, 2024, Bloomberg article titled, “Putin Is Running Out of Time to Achieve Breakthrough in Ukraine,” an optimistic prognosis was made regarding the ongoing conflict in Ukraine in favor of Kiev.
The article claims that Russia has made “limited progress” along the line of contact, including along the newly-opened front in Kharkov and that as “billions in arms start flowing” into Ukraine, Ukrainian forces will be given the opportunity to “counter-attack.”
The “billions in arms” Bloomberg cites refers to the renewed flow of US military assistance after months of delays in passing funding in the US Congress. However, recalling the flagging impact of US arms transfers to Ukraine even before the funding delays, and a closer look at the actual quantities associated with these packages versus Russian military production, tells an entirely different story.
Bloomberg claims that the renewed flow of US arms is eroding Russia’s military advantage. However, this is simply not true.
Artillery Shells
The most recent US arms package featured, among other items, badly needed 155mm artillery shells and anti-tank weapons including the vaunted Javelin missile. Missing from the Pentagon’s public press release, were the quantities these weapons and munitions were being sent in.
It is well-known that US and European artillery shell production falls short of Russia’s by several times. A May 2024 Business Insider article puts the number of Russian shells produced this year at 4.5 million, while the US and Europe combined amount to only 1.3 million.
The prospect of Western shell production drastically increasing to match or even exceed Russian production numbers is unrealistic, according to a June 7, 2024 Bloomberg article titled, “America’s War Machine Can’t Make Basic Artillery Fast Enough.”
In the Bloomberg piece, various factors are mentioned ranging from limited material inputs, a lack of trained human resources, the need to vastly expand the physical production sites producing both the shells themselves and their various individual components, as well as the need to consistently procure funding to expand each of these factors. All of this takes time.
The article claims that by 2025, the US should be producing up to 68,000 155mm artillery shells a month. Even if Europe was able to match these production numbers, it would represent only two-thirds of Ukraine’s monthly requirements to achieve its 6,000 round daily rate of fire, which still falls far short of Russia’s daily rate of fire, placing Ukraine at a disadvantage.
Artillery shell production is relatively straightforward compared to more advanced weapons Ukraine also desperately requires. This includes anti-armor weapons like the Javelin missile.
Javelin Anti-Tank Missiles
Once hailed as a “game changer” by the collective Western media, the Javelin is now rarely mentioned either in headlines or even buried deep within articles. The missiles were passed over to Ukraine by the thousands during the initial phases of the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO), up to 7,000 or about one-third of the US’ total inventory according to the US government and arms industry-funded Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in late 2022.
Since then, Lockheed Martin, which produces the Javelin missile, claims to have expanded production by up to 15% in a 2024 release, producing up to 2,400 missiles per year or about 200 per month.
2,400 missiles are not being sent entirely to Ukraine each year. The missiles and less numerous command launch units (CLU) that fire them are required by the US, other NATO members, and other Lockheed customers around the globe. But let’s assume for a moment all 2,400 missiles are sent to Ukraine each year, and because US stockpiles are at critical levels, let’s assume Ukraine is sent Javelins drawn from this monthly production.
Does this mean that each month, 200 Russian tanks will be damaged or destroyed, adding up to 2,400 a year? No. According to the US Army’s own studies, even trained US soldiers have a 19% hit rate while utilizing Javelin, TOW, and AT-4 systems, all of which the US has sent to Ukraine throughout the SMO.
This means that even if Ukraine was receiving 200 missiles a month and firing them at Russian armored vehicles, they would be scoring only about 38 hits a month. Out of those 38 hits, fewer still would result in significant damage or complete destruction.
Comparing these overly optimistic numbers with Russian tank and other armored vehicle production puts this into better context.
According to a March 2024 CNN article discussing Russian military production, it admits Russia is producing up to 125 tanks a month. Other Western sources claim Russia also produces up to 250 other armored vehicles per month, for a total of 375 armored vehicles a month.
Compare that with the 38 hits Ukraine would be able to inflict even if the US sent every single Javelin produced straight to Ukraine each month. Russia is producing far more armored vehicles than the US is producing Javelin missiles to destroy them. The story is the same for other anti-armor weapon systems produced across the West (e.g. 1,000 TOW missiles produced per year), all of which face depleted stockpiles and low monthly production rates.
Considering that the number of Javelin missiles and other ordnance sent to Ukraine will be far less in reality than total monthly production, we begin to see the true measure of US (and European) military assistance and how the “billions in arms” now flowing to Ukraine do not represent a significant change in Ukraine’s ability to slow, let alone stop Russian forces as they continue mounting pressure not only along the existing front, but opening entirely new fronts, creating a wider strategic dilemma for Ukraine, stretching an already insufficient amount of manpower, equipment, and ammunition even further.
Empty Rhetoric
Despite Bloomberg discounting its “Putin is Running Out of Time” article with its “America’s War Machine Can’t Make Basic Artillery Fast Enough” article, it and other Western publications’ attempts to convince audiences that the tide is about to shift in Ukraine’s favor is a repeat of this same empty rhetoric used to sell Ukraine’s 2023 “counteroffensive” as poised to shift the conflict.
In reality, the 2023 Ukrainian military operation was soundly defeated by Russian forces who not only decimated Ukraine’s manpower, equipment, and ammunition stocks, but managed to bolster its own numbers and capabilities in the process.
Ukrainian attempts to claw back territory it has recently lost in Kharkov will lead to the same fruitless conclusion its 2022 and 2023 offensives did, a questionable chance of actually taking the territory for a guaranteed severe cost in irreplaceable trained manpower and equipment.
Today’s headlines across the West portending the tide changing in the fighting across Ukraine represent a now familiar cycle of encouraging Ukraine to fight on in what is otherwise an unwinnable conflict inflicting an immense and indelible cost on Ukraine in terms of territory, human lives, and economic prospects well into the future.
But as has been pointed out many times before, feeding Ukraine into an unwinnable proxy war had been a US objective articulated as early as 2019 in RAND Corporation’s paper, “Extending Russia,” which stated:
Expanding U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including lethal military assistance, would likely increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure, of holding the Donbass region. More Russian aid to the separatists and an additional Russian troop presence would likely be required, leading to larger expenditures, equipment losses, and Russian casualties. The latter could become quite controversial at home, as it did when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
But warned:
However, such a move might also come at a significant cost to Ukraine and to U.S. prestige and credibility. This could produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.
Obviously, even in 2019, US policymakers realized Ukraine would not win a US-sponsored proxy war against Russia. The actual objective was to raise the cost of Russian victory high enough to undermine Russia’s economy, divide Russian society, and perhaps even eventually precipitate a Soviet Union-style collapse. While RAND’s predictions of Ukraine’s destruction amid such a proxy war have clearly come to pass, the supposed “benefits” of this policy have yet to avail themselves and do not appear even plausible at this juncture.
Thus, Western rhetoric about Ukraine’s soon-to-be good fortune is not based on genuine analysis of the ongoing conflict, but is instead a point of propaganda aimed at encouraging Ukraine to fight on despite all actual analysis warning of the disaster awaiting in doing so.
Only time will tell just how far this process plays out to where the US and its partners are no longer pushing Ukraine onto the battlefield and are instead taking to the negotiation table. In the meantime, the “billions in arms” flowing into Ukraine will continue to have the same impact they’ve had all along, ensuring “disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows,” ultimately leading Ukraine “into a disadvantageous peace.”
Glenn Greenwald interviews Briahna Joy Gray about her firing by the Hill
System Update | June 11, 2024
From System Update with Glenn Greenwald, June 7, 2024. Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. He has won numerous journalism awards. (https://theintercept.com/staff/glenn-…)
More information on Gray’s firing is at https://israelpalestinenews.org/most-…
Shorter clips are at https://youtu.be/KjbEsA7rVqk?si=Yb91r… and https://youtu.be/Ly9F_45OZi0?si=Ph95S…
Full show at : https://rumble.com/v5091bc-system-upd… –
Ex-Press TV reporter at center of WaPo’s smear campaign against Grayzone
By Maryam Qarehgozlou | Press TV | June 11, 2024
The Washington Post reports that Grayzone journalist Wyatt Reed took funds from Iran, and the report is based on testimonies of anti-Iran elements or those linked to US arms manufacturers.
In another desperate bid to muzzle alternative media that has been revealing Western complicity in Gaza and Ukraine, The Washington Post recently published a hit piece targeting The Grayzone news outlet.
The article alleged that The Grayzone is financially backed by Iran and Russia to “spread falsehoods.”
Authored by Joseph Menn, the article claimed to have “exposed” The Grayzone’s journalist Wyatt Reed’s ties with Iran’s state media, relying on what it said were hacked emails and quotes from sources either anti-Iran elements or linked to the US government or arms manufacturers.
The oldest newspaper in Washington, owned by pro-Israel business tycoon Jeff Bezos, insinuated that since Reed, now a managing director at The Grayzone, appeared on Press TV many years ago, he is on the Islamic Republic’s payroll.
The piece went as far as to suggest that he should be jailed for reporting for the Iranian news channel.
The Washington Post report repeated the same claims about Reed’s reporting for Russia’s state-run news agency Sputnik.
Reed, for his part, has never hidden his work for Press TV. At the start of his journalistic career in 2020, Reed appeared on Press TV several dozen times and openly tweeted his reports. The “correspondent @PressTV” was also featured in his Twitter bio at the time.
“For weeks, we’ve been waiting to see how they would target us. Now we know. Congrats to the @washingtonpost’s ‘Digital threats reporter’ on this earth-shattering reporting on my appearances on Press TV years before I edited Grayzone,” Reed wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, last week.
“How could they possibly have figured it out?” he added.
Dan Cohen, an American journalist and filmmaker, also took to X to assert that The Washington Post’s “sloppy attempt” to discredit independent journalism only highlights the media group’s own corruption.
“The Washington Post is targeting Grayzone journalist @wyattreed13 for having previously worked for Iran state media outlet Press TV and Russian state outlet Sputnik, as if that’s somehow a breach of journalist ethics,” Cohen wrote in a post.
He said The Washington Post reporter Greg Jaffe has a fellowship at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a permanent war think tank funded by the US State Department and Pentagon.
The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal, responded that supporters of the Israeli war on Gaza and the Western proxy war in Ukraine are angry with The Grayzone and Reed because of their truthful reporting.
“The motive behind this malicious attack is abundantly clear: Wyatt now works for The Grayzone, and The Grayzone’s factual reporting has infuriated boosters of the Ukraine proxy war and members of Israel’s international propaganda network,” he said.
‘Embarrassing’ correction
Stung by the backlash, The Washington Post was forced to retract some of its allegations. While the story initially claimed that editors of The Grayzone had received payments from Iranian media, it soon corrected the story, saying only Reed received such payments.
“Less than 24 hours after @JosephMenn’s hatchet job on @TheGrayzoneNews landed, WaPo has been forced into a massive and deeply embarrassing correction,” Kit Klarenberg, a British investigative journalist and contributor to the Press TV website, wrote in a post on X.
“Other egregious distortions and falsehoods remain extant. But it’s a start. And certainly the foundation of future legal action,” he added.
Reed also said in an X post that more corrections are expected in the coming days.
“The ‘journalists’ attempting to get me jailed for journalism just had to issue a major correction to their hit piece. Expect more in the coming days as we expose the US government cutouts, pro-Israel zealots, and federal informants they relied on to target us.”
Bogus claims
Despite the correction, the piece is still filled with false, twisted, and distorted accounts. For example, the author of the article, Menn, claims Blumenthal did not answer emails seeking comment. However, Blumenthal said in a post on X that he received no emails.
“Unless Menn can prove that he emailed me and I somehow missed it, this is malicious conduct that demonstrates reckless disregard for journalistic ethics,” he said.
Blumenthal added that if he had received any emails from Menn, he would have stated clearly that Reed reported for Press TV three years before he joined The Grayzone and that Wyatt’s position at The Grayzone was created through “a public, grassroots crowd-funding campaign” in which readers pooled together small donations.
“I would have also stated that The Grayzone does not accept funding from any government, unlike nearly every intel front Menn quoted against us,” he added.
According to Blumenthal, these facts would have undermined the entire premise of Menn’s “malicious” smear piece, which may be why he did not email him.
WaPo quotes NATO-backed groups
Blumenthal also revealed that Menn’s key sources for the article included Neil Rauhauser, a “shady online troll” who is also believed to be an FBI informant, and some NATO-backed outfits.
The article cited the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI, a Canberra-based think tank funded by Australia’s Department of Defence, NATO, and the US Department of State.
The Atlantic Council, the semi-official DC think tank of NATO, is another source cited by The Washington Post, which has taken in substantial funding from the US Department of State, EU states, and arms manufacturers.
It also quoted Ali Herischi, personal lawyer of Masih Alinejad, a US-based, exiled Iranian rabble-rouser who is on Washington’s payroll for instigating anti-Iran sentiments inside and outside the country.
Alinejad has advocated for Israeli military attacks on Iran and received $305,000 from the US government for her work at Voice of America, the US state broadcaster, between 2015 and 2019.
“At no point did Menn inform his readers that his sources were state-funded pro-war entities,” Blumenthal said.
Misinforming readers
The Washington Post story also alleged that The Grayzone is spreading misinformation by reporting “widespread Israeli attacks against its [settlers] on October 7” when Hamas carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories.
However, the newspaper conveniently failed to inform its readers that Israeli media have corroborated The Grayzone’s assessment that the Israeli military explicitly ordered attacks on Israeli settlers who had been taken captive on October 7, killing many.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported last month that Israeli Gen. Barak Hiram ordered an Israeli tank to shell a home in Kibbutz Beeri filled with over a dozen Israeli captives on October 7, killing all but two.
Desperate attempts
According to Hermela Aregawi, a US-based independent journalist, the targeting of American journalists who challenge mainstream narratives is likely to ramp up ahead of the US presidential elections.
“If you read beyond the headline, the ‘editor’s ties’ are that… ‘The files appear to show that the Iranian broadcaster paid [journalist Wyatt] Reed for occasional contributions to its programming’… The reality is US outlets, UK outlets, Qatar (Al Jazeera) etc. pay some of their contributors for their analysis,” she wrote on X.
Journalist Mark Ames also said that the piece was a desperate attempt to trigger a federal investigation against independent journalists.
“This is the second WaPo hit piece against Grayzone this year. Based on the sourcing/media here, you get the sense Langley & DC press corps are so frustrated that their ‘disinformation’ hex cast upon [The Grayzone ] has had no effect, so they’re trying to summon the Feds to shut [The Grayzone ] down.”
The Australia-based anti-war commentator Caitlin Johnstone also said on X that The Grayzone staff worked for foreign media outlets like Press TV because there are no major Western media outlets that platform dissident voices like theirs, who “criticize the Western empire and its actions.”
“The Washington Post is one of the worst propaganda rags ever to exist in any country. If I’d published such an article for such a depraved empire propaganda outlet, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”
PCR Testing for Bird Flu ‘Will Only Serve to Raise False Case Count’ Critics Say
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 6, 2024
Dr. Deborah Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, told CNN’s Kasie Hunt the U.S. is making the “same mistakes” with bird flu that it made with COVID-19, which she said spread because there wasn’t enough testing for asymptomatic infection.
Birx is now calling for every cow to be tested for bird flu weekly and for regular pooled tests for dairy workers. She also said it’s likely that undetected cases are circulating in humans.
“We have the technology,” Birx said. “The great thing about America is we’re incredibly innovative and we have the ability to have these breakthroughs.”
The technology Birx referenced is polymerase chain reaction or PCR testing — the same diagnostic tool that came under fire during the COVID-19 pandemic for producing inaccurate results, including false positives.
Speaking out on X (formerly Twitter), critics like Simon Goddek, Ph.D., pushed back, accusing Birx of “deliberately using the same strategy to fabricate another fake health emergency.”
On Wednesday, the day after Birx’s interview, JAMA published its own article advocating for more widespread bird flu testing.
“No animal or public health expert thinks that we are doing enough surveillance,” Keith Poulsen, DVM, Ph.D., director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told JAMA.
Andrew Pekosz, Ph.D., from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told JAMA that more testing should be conducted to find asymptomatic and mild infections. Workers at infected farms should be tested twice weekly, he said, and cows should be tested once a week.
Inventor: PCR test never intended for use as diagnostic tool
PCR testing works by starting with tiny fragments of DNA or RNA called nucleotides and replicating them until they become large enough to identify. The nucleotides are replicated in cycles, and each cycle doubles the amount of genetic material in the sample. The number of cycles required to create an identifiable sample is the “cycle threshold” (Ct).
PCR tests became a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic because they were treated as the “gold standard” for identifying positive cases, especially among asymptomatic people.
However, as early as December 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that using a high-cycle threshold would lead to false-positive results. The agency encouraged healthcare providers to consider the test in concert with other factors — namely the presence of symptoms — when diagnosing patients.
The WHO also cautioned those using the tests to read the instructions carefully to determine whether the cycle threshold ought to be changed to account for any background noise that could lead to a high-cycle threshold being mistaken for a false positive.
“When specimens return a high Ct value,” the press release said, “it means that many cycles were required to detect virus. In some circumstances, the distinction between background noise and actual presence of the target virus is difficult to ascertain.”
Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the PCR test, said it was inappropriate to use the test as a diagnostic tool to detect a viral infection.
Even Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted during the pandemic that a high cycle — which was used often — detected only “dead nucleotides,” not a viral infection.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) did not immediately respond to The Defender’s inquiry about which cycle thresholds are used to test animals for bird flu.
Mass testing ‘will only serve to raise a false case count’
As of Tuesday, the latest circulating bird flu virus has reportedly infected 81 herds of dairy cattle in nine states and poultry farms in 48 states. The virus can be fatal for poultry but does not generally cause serious illness in cattle.
Bird flu is rare among humans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintains it poses only a low risk to public health.
In the latest wave of bird flu, only three people in the U.S. have tested positive for the virus after close exposure to an infected cow. All three experienced mild symptoms — two experienced eye irritation and one also had a cough and sore throat. All recovered without incident.
The WHO reported Wednesday that a resident of Mexico died from a bird flu infection, but WHO officials also maintain the virus’ threat to the general population is low.
Bird flu cannot be transmitted among humans, but that hasn’t stopped health officials such as the WHO’s Chief Scientist Jeremy Farrar and U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf from publicly stoking fears that the virus could suddenly mutate, become more infectious and transmissible among humans, and cause a pandemic.
Mainstream media outlets like Scientific American warned that the bird flu isn’t a pandemic “yet,” but it could evolve to become one if people do things like continue to drink raw milk. And The New York Times warned yesterday that the virus “may not be done” adapting.
The CDC reported on Tuesday that it monitors genetic changes in the virus and “few genetic changes of public health concern have been identified.”
Nevertheless, the U.S. government is building up its national stockpile of existing vaccines produced by CSL Seqirus and is nearing contracts with Moderna and possibly Pfizer to fund the development of an mRNA vaccine for the virus.
On Tuesday, Finland announced it will begin offering the vaccine to selected groups of people.
Other public health experts have dismissed the alarmism as “overblown,” with some suggesting the “fearmongering” is motivated by profit.
Dr. David Bell, a public health physician and biotech consultant, told The Defender last month the bird flu scare was “farcical.”
“We did not have a bad outbreak for over a century, and there is every likelihood that we won’t again,” Bell said. “We are using technology to pretend that new threats are occurring because we can now detect them.”
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough said last month that mass testing of healthy animals — as Birx is suggesting — will only serve to “raise a false case count.”
Feds using PCR testing on animals, wastewater, farmworkers, meat and milk
The federal government last month announced a new round of funding to reduce the impact of bird flu. The plan appropriated $93 million for the CDC to do virus genomic sequencing, increase monitoring of farmworkers, and improve and expand testing on a national scale for bird flu in animals, wastewater, farmworkers and meat.
The FDA also appropriated an additional $8 million to surveil and test the commercial milk supply.
Lactating dairy cows must be tested for bird flu before they can cross state lines, per an April 24 Federal Order issued by the USDA.
The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) also encourages farmers to voluntarily test cattle and herds with suspected infection, showing symptoms like reduced milk production or respiratory issues. APHIS covers the cost of the tests if conducted at an approved laboratory and if the farmers agree to have the tested cattle and premises tracked.
The approved laboratories conduct PCR tests for several different flu strains that could be bird flu markers, including “FluA matrix, H5 and optionally H5N1 2.3.4.4b,” to determine whether the cattle are infected.
All laboratories, whether or not on the USDA’s approved list, must report all positive influenza A test results to the USDA weekly by 5 p.m. on Mondays. Farms with positive cases are quarantined.
KFF Health News reported that additional testing of farmworkers would make it possible for researchers to “track infections.” The problem is that “people generally get tested when they seek treatment for illnesses,” but farmworkers don’t tend to go to doctors unless they are very ill.
Farmworkers have been actively monitored for symptoms since the first case was detected but not PCR-tested. In response, federal authorities announced in May they would pay farmworkers to get tested for the virus as part of a program that also offers incentives to farmers to allow their dairy herds to get tested.
Workers are paid $75 for giving the CDC a blood sample and nasal swab.
The federal money also goes to support new wastewater surveillance using PCR tests. The CDC’s National Wastewater Surveillance System, launched in 2020, collects and makes public viruses identified in facilities across the country.
That wastewater testing is done by organizations including WastewaterSCAN, an infectious disease monitoring program based at Stanford University, in partnership with Emory University and funded through philanthropy, including the Sergey Brin Family Foundation created by the founder of Google.
The organization has most recently detected bird flu in San Francisco, although it is unclear whether it comes “from animal waste, milk, people or a combination of sources, according to the Los Angeles Times. WastewaterSCAN on June 3 began publicly reporting H5 data from its 190 sampling sites across the country in its online dashboard.
Other private companies that do PCR-based wastewater surveillance, like Biobot Analytics, are funded by venture capital firms in addition to the CDC.
The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service is also testing meat from condemned cows. Late last month the agency announced that 95 of 96 culled cows tested negative for viral particles and that none of their meat entered the food supply.
It also reported that ground beef from retail facilities in states with cows that have tested positive for bird flu was all PCR-negative for the virus.
The agency also experimented with inoculating meat with high levels of the virus and then cooking it and testing for the virus. The virus was not detected in the meat patties cooked to medium or well-done, and it was “substantially inactivated” in the rare patties.
The FDA also tested retail dairy products in 17 states. The agency noted that PCR-positive results “do not necessarily represent live virus that may be a risk to consumers,” so when they found PCR-positive samples, they further tested them through a process called “egg inoculation.”
The agency found many samples with positive PCR tests, but none tested positive for the live virus.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
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Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
An excerpt from ‘The Great Betrayal’
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
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