US spies behind ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy – report
US President Barack Obama and CIA Director John Brennan, December 14, 2012 in Washington, DC. © Pete Souza / The White House via Getty Images
RT | February 14, 2024
The US intelligence community inappropriately used foreign allies to target Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign to set up the ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy ahead of the 2016 election, according to a trio of investigative journalists.
Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag – of ‘Twitter Files’ fame – published the first part of an investigation on Tuesday, in which they claim the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ were operationalized against Trump staffers, citing anonymous sources close to the House Intelligence Committee.
According to their report, President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, had sent America’s partners – the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – a list of 26 Trump associates to target with data collection, misinformation and manipulation.
The Russiagate conspiracy involved multiple failures across western media networks to critically assess US intelligence claims that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. A 2018 Pulitzer prize was awarded to Washington Post and New York Times journalists for their reporting on what was later to exposed as a false story.
“They were making contacts and bumping Trump people going back to March 2016,” said a committee source. “They were sending people around the UK, Australia, Italy — the Mossad in Italy. MI6 was working at an intelligence school they had set up,” the journalists claim.
Officially, the FBI only started looking into the Trump campaign that summer, after an Australian diplomat reportedly overheard an aide mention Russia. If confirmed, these findings would demonstrate that the US intelligence community had worked for months before that to set up just such a pretext.
In a statement to the investigative journalists, the FBI said it had made “missteps” in the 2016 and 2017 investigation of the Trump campaign, but has since implemented reforms to prevent it from happening again.
“The allegations that GCHQ was asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense,” a spokesman for the British surveillance agency said. “They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.” Shellenberger, Taibbi and Gutentag said they had never asked the GCHQ about “wiretapping.”
According to Shellenberger, there is a “10-inch binder” containing previously unknown documents about the intelligence community’s surveillance of the Trump campaign. The 45th US president had ordered these documents declassified, but they went missing instead. In a Fox News appearance on Tuesday evening, Shellenberger suggested the FBI’s August 2022 raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort may have been related to the missing binder.
After the US intelligence community created a pretext for investigating Trump for ‘ties to Russia,’ they spied on his campaign – and then his presidency – using a falsely obtained FISA warrant. The warrant was based on the ‘Steele dossier,’ a file compiled by a British spy in the pay of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, through several intermediaries. The FBI knew the dossier was false as early as January 2017, but continued using the FISA warrant for almost a year thereafter.
The FBI lawyer who altered evidence to obtain the warrant, Kevin Clinesmith, ended up sentenced to probation and his law license has since been restored.
US ‘security threat’ revelations prompt panic
RT | February 14, 2024
The US is facing a “serious national security threat” that requires action from the White House, the head of the House Intelligence Committee said on Wednesday. The exact nature of the alleged threat has not been revealed.
Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, has sent a letter to all members of Congress about an urgent matter “with regard to a destabilizing foreign military capability.” The House Intelligence Committee voted on Tuesday to make certain information available to lawmakers between Wednesday and Friday this week, he said.
Turner also called on President Joe Biden to declassify “all information relating to this threat.”
What exactly the threat might entail, Turner did not say. CNN cited two anonymous sources and an unnamed US official to claim it was “related to Russia.” One of the sources, who has allegedly viewed the intelligence Turner provided, described it as “a highly concerning and destabilizing” Russian capability “that we were recently made aware of.”
A Fox News correspondent cited a Pentagon source to claim the threat “has to do with space.”
Answering questions from reporters on Wednesday afternoon, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said he had been trying to schedule a meeting of top lawmakers for Thursday when Turner went public with the existence of the “threat.”
“I’m not in a position to say anything further from this podium at this time,” Sullivan said when asked about the alleged threat.
Numerous social media commentators have pointed out the uncanny coincidence that the supposed “security threat” was announced just after the US Senate passed a $95 billion foreign aid bill – about two thirds of which was earmarked for Ukraine – and amid the pressure on the House of Representatives to do the same. Turner is a vocal proponent of funding Kiev.
The White House and most US media outlets have consistently denigrated Russia’s military capabilities and insisted that Ukraine is “winning” the conflict thanks to the ongoing support of the West.
According to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the alleged threat was announced because “the White House and Intel Committee felt a need to scare Members of Congress into line for a certain set of controversial pro-war and/or surveillance votes” that are coming up.
Blood on BoJo’s Hands
Putin’s claim that Boris Johnson scuttled peace deal confirmed by witnesses
BY JOHN LEAKE | COURAGEOUS DISCOURSE | FEBRUARY 13, 2024
Former British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and the mainstream media are hotly denying Vladimir Putin’s claim (in his recent Tucker Carlson interview) that Johnson derailed a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine just a couple of months after the war commenced.
And yet, Putin was merely confirming the statement of David Arahamiya, leader of Ukraine’s ruling party, that was reported in Newsweek on November 27, 2023: Russia Offered to End War if Ukraine Dropped NATO Bid: Kyiv Official.
The German analyst and Former United Nations Assistant Secretary General, Michael von der Schulenberg, also published a reconstruction of these events on November 14, 2023, titled How The Chance Was Lost For A Peace Settlement Of The Ukraine War.
The totality of circumstances and the statements of Arahamiya and von der Schulenberg indicate that an Austrian-style neutrality deal could have prevented this war to begin with, and then—had it been embraced by the the USA and Britain—ended it just two months later.
Since Churchill delivered his June 4, 1940, “We shall fight on the beaches” speech, many postwar heads of state have apparently fantasized that their opponents on the international stage are “just like Hitler” and that there can be no negotiated settlement with them.
In BoJo’s case, this shallow, sophomoric notion has apparently resulted in the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainian and Russian soldiers.
Tucker Slayed the Mainstream Media Dragon
By Ron Paul | February 12, 2024
There has been much written and said about Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. As of this writing the video on Twitter alone has been viewed nearly 200 million times, making it likely the most-viewed news event in history.
Many millions of viewers who may not have had access to the other side of the story were informed that the Russia/Ukraine military conflict did not begin in 2022, as the mainstream media continuously reports, but in fact began eight years earlier with a US-backed coup in Ukraine. The US media does not report this because they don’t want Americans to begin questioning our interventionist foreign policy. They don’t want Americans to see that our government meddling in the affairs of other countries – whether by “color revolution,” sanctions, or bombs – has real and deadly consequences to those on the receiving end of our foreign policy.
To me, however, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Tucker Carlson interview with Putin was the US mainstream media reaction. As Putin himself said during the interview, “in the world of propaganda, it’s very difficult to defeat the United States.” Even a casual look at the US mainstream media’s reporting before and after the interview would show how correct he is about that. In the days and weeks before the interview, the US media was filled with stories about how horrible it was that Tucker Carlson was interviewing the Russian president. There was the danger, they all said, that Putin might spread “disinformation.”
That Putin might say something to put his country in a better light was, they were saying, reason enough to not interview him. With that logic, why have journalism at all? Everyone interviewed by journalists – certainly every world leader – will attempt to paint a rosy picture. The job of a journalist in a free society should be to do the reporting and let the people decide. But somehow that has been lost. These days the mainstream media tells you what to think and you better not dispute it or you will be cancelled!
What the US mainstream media was really worried about was that the “other side of the story” might start to ring true with the public. So they attacked the messenger.
The CNN reporting on Tucker’s interview pretty much sums up the reaction across the board of the US mainstream media. Their headline read, “Tucker Carlson is in Russia to interview Putin. He’s already doing the bidding of the Kremlin.”
By merely doing what used to be called “journalism” – interviewing and reporting on people and events, whether good or bad – one is “doing the bidding” of the subject of the interview or report?
No wonder fellow journalist Julian Assange has been locked away in a gulag for so many years. He dared to assume that in a free society, being a journalist means reporting the good, the bad, and the ugly even if it puts those in power in a bad light.
In the end, the massive success of the Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin demonstrates once and for all that the American people are sick to death of their mainstream media propagandists and liars. They are looking not for government narratives, but for truth. That’s the really good news about this interview.
Mainstream propaganda machine’s laughable meltdown over Putin interview
By Drago Bosnic | February 12, 2024
As expected, Tucker Carlson is getting a lot of flak for conducting his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He’s not merely being accused of “spreading Russian propaganda” (he’s long been accustomed to that, as well as the mainstream propaganda machine’s obsession with all sorts of deranged “Russia, Russia, Russia” conspiracy theories), but there’s an actual push in the European Union to sanction Carlson. It seems journalists doing journalism is considered “heresy” by most other mainstream “journalists”. The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt is unhappy that the interview was “neither a talk show nor a real conversation”, so he went on to parrot every propaganda trope in the book. Al Jazeera’s Mansur Mirovalev insists that Putin is “obsessed”, concluding his remarks by quoting a certain Valentin, the Kiev regime’s drone operator who allegedly complained that both Putin and Carlson are “conspiracy theorists” and that “Ukraine is real and it will prevail.”
In a piece published by Politico, a German-owned publication infamous for attempts to whitewash Nazism, Sergey Goryashko claimed that Putin supposedly “lied”. Among several propaganda claims he used to, as he says, “debunk” Putin’s points was that the Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky “only signed a decree banning negotiations specifically with Putin, not Russia as a country”. Such ludicrous claims aren’t only false, but are even childish. Pushed by the United States, United Kingdom and NATO, the Kiev regime certainly broke the March 2022 peace deal that could have ended the special military operation (SMO) in less than a month. What’s more, it even publicly promotes its so-called “10-point peace plan” that boils down to Russia’s unconditional capitulation, a fantasy that the political West wholeheartedly supports and even promotes through some sort of absurd unilateral “peace talks”. In doing so, the Neo-Nazi junta effectively codified the impossibility of a peaceful settlement.
So much for Putin “lying”. However, that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to frenzied attacks by the mainstream propaganda machine. In a piece for The New Yorker, Masha Gessen, the infamous “woke” ideologue obsessed with Putin, called the interview “boring”. She (although Gessen insists her pronouns are “they/them”, a request I earnestly refuse to comply with) obviously loathes historical facts, so the trouble she has with going through the entire interview, a problem most likely exacerbated by her two-second attention span (tends to happen to a lot of people staring at reels all day), perfectly explains her rather poor judgment of Putin’s points. Then came the “fact-checkers” such as Charlie Hancock of the Amsterdam-based Moscow Times who essentially repeated several of Goryashko’s long-debunked claims and added a few of his own. After all, what would the mainstream propaganda machine ever do without “fact-checkers“?
Of course, Hancock wasn’t the only one. The UK’s state-run BBC also published its own version, “fact-checking Putin’s nonsense history“. It would seem Masha Gessen isn’t the only one who skipped history classes in primary school, as the BBC’s Ido Vock quoted several self-styled “experts” and “pundits” to supposedly “debunk Putin’s rambling”, as he called it, clearly implying that he was also bored by the interview, which further indicates just how much he actually knows about the topic he covered for the UK’s state-run news agency. And of course, there’s also the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), claiming that Carlson’s Putin interview supposedly serves as a “propaganda platform”, which is quite rich coming from a literal CIA front formed to spread Washington DC’s state-sponsored propaganda. The Economist insists that “Russia’s president is not a man to be trusted, still less to emulate or admire”, because, luckily, they “know Putin’s real message” better than he himself does.
Newsweek’s Brendan Cole quoted Oleksandra Matviichuk, the Kiev regime’s “human rights activist”, who also slammed Carlson. Comically enough, Cole insists that Matviichuk’s opinion “matters” because she’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Is it even necessary to explain just how politicized that vaunted “peace prize” is when laureates include people like Barrack Obama and Al Gore? The Obama administration came to power criticizing the previous government run by George W. Bush for its aggression across the Middle East. Obama promised to end these wars, which is why he got the once-prestigious award in the first place. However, as soon as Bush left the White House, Obama expanded his aggression from two countries (Iraq and Afghanistan) to another five (Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan), seven in total. Worse yet, during Obama’s presidency (2009-2017), Washington DC launched ten times more airstrikes than under Bush, killing millions of innocent civilians in the process.
While the DNC-dominated media always try to whitewash Obama by shifting blame solely on Bush, it should be noted that the former personally authorized at least 6,000 drone strikes (approximately 2 per day during 8 years of his presidency), although the actual number may be orders of magnitude higher. So much for Obama’s contribution to “peace”. As for Al Gore, his active role in the Clinton administration’s war crimes and aggression on Serbia/former Yugoslavia requires an entirely separate analysis. However, as previously mentioned, this isn’t the end of the mainstream propaganda machine’s attempts to denigrate Putin’s interview with Carlson. The Associated Press (AP) insists that Russia’s president “missed the bigger picture”, so they felt the urge to “fill the gaps” with five points, composed largely of debunked propaganda tropes. And yet, these were expanded to nine in another piece by Politico, signed by Eva Hartog and, once again, Sergey Goryashko.
The key takeaway is that the mainstream propaganda machine is in meltdown over the interview, seen by hundreds of millions (if not billions at this point) on TV and across numerous Internet platforms. The political West is genuinely terrified of Putin’s global popularity, so the goal is to try and tarnish his reputation by twisting his remarks or simply telling outright lies about him. And while the interview may seem lengthy (by today’s standards), Putin simply had to get a lot of propaganda out of the way, as NATO and its Neo-Nazi puppets have been falsifying historical facts about Ukraine quite intensively, particularly in recent times, all in an attempt to show that the country supposedly has “nothing to do with Russia“. In that sense, websites such as Wikipedia have experienced an unprecedented number of edits with the goal of promoting these historically baseless claims. Putin is certainly aware of that, which is why he had to explain the complex history of the Ukrainian conflict.
Putin’s intellect and encyclopedic knowledge of history, law, intelligence and several other key fields are a massive boost to Russia’s already world-class diplomacy. This stands in stark contrast to the US and its current administration. Could anyone imagine Joe Biden giving an unscripted, two-hour-long interview to a foreign journalist, much less one conducted with near-scholarly precision? Regardless of whether one adores or loathes President Putin, the fact is that the increasingly unpopular and impotent leaders of the political West are simply no match for him, which is why we never see any of them giving remotely similar interviews to journalists of Tucker Carlson’s caliber. And while he might be among the most prominent journalists to ever interview Putin, Russia’s president is well-known for hours-long discussions with hundreds (if not thousands) of journalists from all over the world, without any papers, cliff notes or scripted questions. He simply doesn’t need them.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Here’s why you shouldn’t trust the ‘declining’ Gaza death toll narrative
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | February 11, 2024
Shortly before the International Court of Justice’s highly anticipated decision to pursue South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide, the New York Times released a report titled ‘The Decline of Death in Gaza’.
The article attributed this alleged decline to a change in Israel’s battle strategy in Gaza, yet the piece omitted key data that contradicted its claims. Then, in the aftermath of the ICJ preliminary ruling, the NYT became the first news outlet to receive and publish information from an Israeli dossier that accused UNRWA staff of complicity in the armed activities of Hamas.
Since the beginning of the war between Israel and Gaza, which began with the Hamas-led attack on October 7, Western corporate media have shown what can only be described as pro-Israeli double standards. On January 9, The Intercept published a quantitative analysis of over 1,000 articles in US mainstream media, including by the NYT, proving the undeniable bias demonstrated in favor of Israeli life and underreporting on Palestinian suffering.
An even more targeted analysis was published by researchers Jan Lietava and Dana Najjar, who specifically looked at the BBC’s coverage of the conflict between October 17 to December 2. The study documented that words like murder(ed), massacre(d) and slaughter(ed) were used by the BBC to describe Israelis 144 times, while Palestinians had only been described as having been murdered or massacred one time each; the word slaughter had never been used to describe the killing of Palestinians. The study clearly shows the disparity in humanizing language used and the number of stories on Palestinian deaths, despite the Palestinian death toll being far higher than the Israeli one.
The Israeli death toll throughout the war officially stands around 700 civilians and 600 combatants, while for Palestinians it is roughly 27,600, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The estimates are that between 61% to 75% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza are women and children. Ranging estimates as to how many Palestinian combatants have been killed are not trustworthy. Israeli spokespeople claim between 7,000 to 10,000 Hamas fighters, depending on the time of day, but provide no estimate for the number of fighters killed who are members of the dozen or so other armed groups in Gaza.
While the NYT report attempts to make the point that deaths in Gaza are steadily declining as the Israeli operation goes on, statistics released by the authorities in Gaza, from January 17 (when the NYT data chart ends) until January 24, clearly show the opposite trend. For reference the daily death tolls read: 163, 172, 142, 165, 178, 190, 195, 210.
The piece also lacks any evidence showing a correlation between the Israeli announcement of what it calls “phase 3” of its battle plan and the death toll charts that showed a downward arc in the daily fatality rate. Israel began announcing its intention to implement its new phase at the beginning of January, yet the argument presented in the article attempted to draw the conclusion that pressure from the US government had contributed to a lowering of fatalities between early December and January 17.
There was a decline in the daily reported death toll, but this occurred prior to any stated change in the military strategy. Also observable is that during the week that the report was released, the daily Gaza death toll actually jumped to 188. Monday through to Sunday of that week there were some 1,317 Palestinians killed by Israel. The week prior, a total of 1,110 were killed.
The NYT also pointed to the Israeli withdrawal of forces from northern Gaza, attempting to use this as evidence of a change in tactics in January that had been brought about due to efforts from the Biden administration. Israel actually reinvaded the north, briefly, after the article was published.
Furthermore, Israel didn’t start withdrawing from northern Gaza in January – it began this process around December 21, when it withdrew the elite Golani Brigades. In late December, five brigades were withdrawn and the reservists amongst them were released for economic reasons. Then, earlier last month, a further four brigades were withdrawn as the Israeli army implemented a retreat from most of the built-up areas in northern Gaza.
Israeli authorities claim that the reason for the change in the war strategy, shifting from the high-pressure tactics of the first two phases, was due to their desire to continue the fight for the whole of 2024. If Israel is planning to fight a year-long war, it makes sense for it to use fewer munitions and soldiers, as munitions are finite and the cost of the initial battle strategy would have been a significant economic burden.
Another crucial point is that the report completely left aside all other considerations as to what could explain a decline in death tolls across certain periods of time. A major issue that is faced today is a lack of a properly functioning health sector in Gaza altogether; according to the World Health Organization (WHO), only 16 hospitals out of 36 remain operational and all are “minimally or partially functioning.”
One of the last remaining professional journalists in northern Gaza, Anas al-Sharif, reported to Al Jazeera Arabic, on January 16, of the intensifying bombardments in the area and the underreporting of casualties there. A resident named Akram based in the Jabalia Refugee Camp told RT that “the bombing over those few days returned to how it was at the start of the war, it was terrifying and it seemed like it didn’t stop at all for over a day.”
With a health sector that has all but collapsed, properly accounting for the dead is a tough challenge, which is why the Gaza Health Ministry routinely includes the caveat to its daily death tolls that there are others under the rubble who are unaccounted for. To demonstrate how big of a difference the death toll is, when those missing under the rubble are factored in, take the statistics released by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which stated that 31,497 Palestinians had been killed by January 14.
Aside from us not having a full picture of the true daily death toll, Israel is also being accused of using starvation as a weapon of war, and the statistics that are being cited do not include those who are now dying due to disease and starvation. Some 400,000 people living in northern Gaza are without aid altogether, as efforts by international organizations to transport medical, food and fuel aid to the north have repeatedly been blocked. On December 9, Save The Children warned that the primary cause of death in Gaza could soon be starvation and disease, instead of bombs, with the humanitarian situation having severely deteriorated since then.
When the Israeli government later released its allegations that 12 UNRWA employees – out of 13,000 working in Gaza – had participated in the Hamas-led attack of October 7, the New York Times was the first to get its hands on the Israeli dossier that detailed its allegations. The newspaper failed to report that most of the allegations were based on interrogations conducted by the Shin Bet (Israeli secret police), which is renowned for extracting confessions through torture. The article that the NYT published on the issue made the dossier’s information seem somewhat credible, yet, when the UK’s Channel 4 obtained it and quoted it directly to the public, it concluded that “no evidence” was contained within the dossier.
The NYT’s reporting on Israeli allegations that Hamas conducted a premeditated mass rape campaign have come under fire also. In one case family members of an Israeli woman killed on October 7 had to take to social media to denounce the NYT’s attempts to suggest she had been raped, which the newspaper allegedly failed to tell the family it was planning to include in its article.
At every turn, Western corporate media has used distortions, linguistic manipulation, and outright lies to mislead its audiences on the truth about what is occurring in Gaza. It does not get lower than playing with statistics in order to downplay what the highest judicial body on earth has overwhelmingly ruled is plausibly a genocide, or what UN aid chief Martin Griffiths has called “the worst ever” humanitarian crisis.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News.
Are You an Anti-Paxxer?
As doctors drop Paxlovid because of drug interactions, Covid rebounds, and virus shedding, Pfizer cranks the PR machine to hide the facts and shame “anti-paxxers.”
BY LINDA BONVIE | RESCUE | FEBRUARY 9, 2024
When an article by Los Angeles Times metro reporter Rong-Gong Lin II recommended last month that practically everyone who tests positive for Covid takes Pfizer’s Paxlovid, some media veterans may have wondered what had become of the traditional wall between news reporting and advertising.
The story, which appeared on January 28, swept away almost all of the reservations that have been raised about the safety and effectiveness of this patent medicine, assuring us that “Paxlovid rebound” is a non-issue and fear of serious side effects is “erroneous.” It even went so far as to suggest that if your doctor won’t prescribe this “highly effective” medication, it’s time to go doctor shopping.
So why is this LA Times writer so desperately trying to sell us this fast-tracked antiviral that comes with a black box warning?
The article appeared at a particularly critical time for Pfizer just as it transitions from Emergency Use Authorization, or EUA Paxlovid, to FDA-approved Paxlovid. Originally free to patients, the medication was stockpiled by the U.S. government to the tune of 24 million treatment courses at a cost to taxpayers of $530 a box. Now, the FDA-approved version (same drug, different box) sells for a list price of up to $1,500. (According to an analysis by researchers at Harvard University, the actual cost to Pfizer for a five-day Paxlovid course is $13).
But to Pfizer’s chagrin, it now doesn’t seem to be able to even give the stuff away, let alone sell it at a premium price. Last fall Pfizer accepted a return of nearly 8 million boxes sent back by the U.S. government.
What’s a drugmaker to do when both patients and doctors shun a product that was anticipated to be the better half of Pfizer’s post-Covid “multibillion-dollar franchise?
Flush with all that Covid cash and new Paxlovid FDA approval last May, Pfizer went shopping for partners to help promote its products.
No stranger to top-tier PR firms such as Edelman and Ogilvy, the drugmaker tagged two of the biggest names in contemporary communications companies, Publicis Groupe, a Paris-based giant PR and ad agency, and the humongous Interpublic Group. These high-level agencies come at a big price tag, but what they can offer is priceless—a way to get your story told by respected media outlets.
That’s right, if you have enough money to hire the folks with all the right contacts, you too can create your own “news!” And these special contacts are something that PR firms, such as Edelman, are very proud of. Many agency hires, in fact, are recruited directly from major media outlets, such as Edelman NYC Brand Director Nancy Jeffrey, who spent a decade at the Wall Street Journal.
As quoted in an Edelman website blog, Jeffrey recalls how Richard Edelman (son of founder Dan) would call her during her time working at the paper “to meet a client with a story to tell.” As Jeffrey says, “No one at Edelman ever rises too high to pitch a reporter.”
So was our LA Times reporter “pitched,” or does he just have an evangelical connection with Paxlovid?
Let’s take a close look at his story and see what we find.
First, there’s the article’s headline, which began: “If it’s COVID, Paxlovid”? Getting your oft-advertised product’s rhyming tagline in a headline—now that’s branding! And we don’t have to tell any of the side effects in this venue. The LA Times piece was off to a great start.
Why aren’t more people being given Paxlovid, the reporter wanted to know. It’s “cheap or even free for many,” he said. And then he delivered his first rave review, calling it “highly effective.”
By paragraph four, however, our intrepid reporter had uncovered the bad news that “a number of doctors are still declining to prescribe it.” But why? It must be those pesky “outdated arguments” about “Paxlovid rebound.” Anyone who gets Covid “has a similar rare chance of rebound,” he told us. For extra punch, he called on Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, professor of medicine at UCSF, to back up that statement. Rebound is “like, bogus” and “just dumb,” Chin-Hong said.
What Lin didn’t report is that a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in November 2023, by researchers from Mass General Brigham, found that in Covid patients taking Paxlovid, rebound was “much more common” and often without symptoms. Nearly 21 percent had virologic rebound versus under 2 percent not on the drug. Of perhaps even more significance, prolonged viral shedding for an average of fourteen days was noted in those who rebounded, indicating that they “were potentially still contagious for much longer.” The virologic rebound “phenomenon,” in Paxlovid patients, the authors noted, “has implications for post-N-R (Paxlovid) monitoring and isolation recommendations.” This study closely monitored patients with follow-ups three times a week “sometimes for months.”
After quoting from several Paxlovid-positive FDA and CDC statements and referencing a California Public Health commercial where people dance to an upbeat tune singing “Test it, treat it, beat it, California you know you need it,” Lin got around to some serious stuff—side effects.
Not mentioned by Lin, but good to know anyway, Paxlovid bears an FDA-required black-box warning about drug interactions, cautioning of “potentially severe, life-threatening, or fatal events.” But the article carefully danced around this inconvenient issue, simply mentioning that some Paxlovid takers may need to have their medications adjusted. The fear of “serious side effects . . . is largely erroneous,” it claimed.
Really?
“There are 125 drug interactions (for Paxlovid) across twenty-five different classes of medicines,” author and FLCCC President Dr. Pierre Kory said in a phone interview. “I’ve never used any medicine that had that number and degree of drug interactions, and I find it absurd,” added Kory, who is an expert in early Covid treatment.
And this is no secret. The Paxlovid package insert lists thirty-nine specific drugs that interact with this anti-viral (which is not a complete list, we’re warned) including medications that treat conditions such as an enlarged prostate, gout, migraines, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arrhythmias, and angina.
With side effects out of the way, our reporter moved on to an interesting idea—doctor shopping.
If your doctor turns you down for Paxlovid, “what other options are there?” How about “reaching out to another healthcare provider” we’re advised, one “who might be more knowledgeable about Paxlovid . . .”
Don’t be an ‘Anti-Paxxer!’
The LA Times isn’t alone in this timely pushing of Paxlovid. The New York Times also ran a glowing Paxlovid piece at the beginning of January. The black-box warning was glossed over by simply saying that some “doctors balk” over the “long list of medications not to be mixed with Paxlovid,” referring to the drug as being “stunningly effective.” The NYT reporter also added five mentions of a study—actually a preprint (not yet peer reviewed or published)—which through the use of statistical magic concluded that during the course of the research had only half of the eligible Covid patients in the U.S. taken Paxlovid, 48,000 lives would have been saved.
The server where the research was posted warns journalists and others when discussing preprints to “emphasize it has yet to be evaluated by the medical community and information presented may be erroneous.”
Paxlovid is not the only drug that gets special treatment by the media. Last January, a 60 Minutes segment was called out by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine as “an unlawful weight loss drug ad” for the med Wegovy. The piece, it noted, “looked like a news story, but it was effectively a drug ad,” the group said in a press release. PCRM also stated that Novo Nordisk, which makes Wegovy, paid over $100,000 to the doctors CBS interviewed for the segment.
With this new frenzy to sell Paxlovid, one can’t help but compare it to the campaign against ivermectin. Kicked off by the FDA in August 2021, it successfully branded this Nobel Prize-winning, FDA-approved drug as nothing more than a horse dewormer endorsed by fanatical outlier doctors and accepted by gullible patients. Despite being found to be an extremely safe treatment as well as an effective one for Covid, the FDA, CDC, and its media “partners” made ivermectin the subject of false accusations and warnings about the supposed risks of using it.
But early on in the game it was decided, as Dr. Kory pointed out, “to keep the market open for their novel pricey Paxlovid pill.” And to that effect, nothing was going to stand in the way. In an interview last summer with the head of the UCSF Department of Medicine, FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf admitted that he helped promote Paxlovid—something he acknowledged is explicitly against the rules.
“In normal times, the FDA should not be a cheerleader . . .” Califf said. But since back then EUA drugs could not be advertised (a policy that changed in the fall of 2022) he went ahead and pitched it himself.
The Paxlovid campaign is far from over. In fact, it may now be revving up to full throttle. There’s even a name being bandied about for those who question the drug: “Anti-Paxxers.”
And if we can take any insight from the new Pfizer tagline (just filed for protection with the US Patent and Trademark Office), “Outdo Yesterday,” there are even more spurious strategies in its pharmaceutical pipeline.
Linda Bonvie is an investigative journalist, freelance health and environmental writer and co-author of several books including “Chemical-Free Kids” and most recently “A Consumer’s Guide to Toxic Food Additives.”
White House denies ‘ridiculous’ Tucker Carlson claims
RT | February 7, 2024
Allegations that the administration of US President Joe Biden tried to stop journalist Tucker Carlson from interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin are “ridiculous”, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a daily press briefing on Tuesday.
The former Fox News host interviewed Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin has confirmed. Carlson however, has claimed that Washington has consistently attempted to block his overtures to the Russian president.
”Almost three years ago, the Biden administration illegally spied on our text messages and then leaked their contents to their servants in the news media. They did this in order to stop a Putin interview that we were planning,” he asserted. “Last month, we’re pretty certain they did exactly the same thing once again. But this time, we came to Moscow anyway.”
Asked about Carlson’s allegation, Jean-Pierre initially said she would “absolutely not” comment, but later changed her mind.
”It’s a ridiculous premise and a ridiculous statement that was made about this administration,” she said.
Carlson has claimed on several occasions that while trying to arrange a one-on-one with Putin, he found out from a source that his communications were being intercepted by US intelligence. He said his messages were quoted back to him verbatim, confirming the surveillance.
The NSA has denied targeting the journalist, but the Axios news website has partially corroborated his story, citing unnamed US government officials who said the government indeed had learned about his efforts to secure an interview with Putin. The outlet suggested that “US-based Kremlin intermediaries” contacted by Carlson had leaked the communications.
The journalist, how hosts a show on X (formerly Twitter) stated in his preview that the American media were failing to properly inform the public about the nature of the Ukraine conflict and the wider confrontation between the US and Russia. He said he had the backing of X owner Elon Musk, who vowed not to block the interview on his platform.
”Western governments, by contrast, will certainly do their best to censor this video on other, less principled platforms, because that’s what they do. They are afraid of information they can’t control” he predicted.
Carlson Interview With Putin Could Topple Western Elites, End Ukraine War
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 7, 2024
In the seventies, when the cold war was at its peak, Donald Rumsfeld was convinced that the Atlantic Ocean, off the U.S. coast, was teaming with Russian submarines. The U.S. navy couldn’t detect them because, he was convinced, the Soviets had a new ‘acoustic technology’ which made them effectively invisible. Rumsfeld went ahead and ploughed billions of dollars into developing a new technology which could detect the non-acoustic subs. But that failed and is still costing the U.S. taxpayer today. The truth was in fact, the Soviet subs just weren’t there.
The error on the part of Rumsfeld, it could be argued, still paid dividends as scaring the American public into believing a threat is real and imminent – on your doorstep in fact – is very profitable for a government which wishes to achieve two clear objectives: pouring billions into the pockets of defence contractors; and secondly whipping up fear of an imminent war with an enemy, with the sole objective of distracting the public away from a failing economy and abysmal foreign policy.
It’s happening today. If we look at the mainstream news all we see is talk of war with Russia. And yet there isn’t a single shred of intel which these outlets can offer to substantiate this claim. It will remind many of the weeks leading up the Iraq invasion in 2003 when the U.S. and UK faked intel to show that Saddam Hussein had WMDs.
Western elites are guiding journalists to write this nonsense as their bigger plan is to stir up a frenzy of war talk so as to prepare the public for much bigger defence spending and, in the case of the UK, even conscription. This is really about covering up one of the biggest cock-ups in contemporary history which western governments have made – sanctions against Russia and the NATO campaign in Ukraine – which have backfired so spectacularly that the Biden administration and a number of EU governments are united in this scaremongering, believing it’s a winner.
Of course the “we’re going to war with Russia” comes from the White House. Where else? Only the U.S. has that sort of power with an increasingly craven, pathetic EU which is now so servile to the Biden administration that it’s beginning to make the UK look less of a poodle to the Americans.
The whole scam is American and the Europeans are obliging with it in a big way. The only real threat the plan has of not working is if a few, remote feral corners of the media – or mavericks who were fired by media giants – make a stand and call it out for what it is. Which is why Tucker Carlson’s trip to Moscow where he intends to interview Putin is so important and such a threat to the Biden administration and western elites as a whole. When Carlson interviews the Russian leader and it becomes clear that western media have been lying for so long about the Ukraine war and even this latest ruse of Russia wanting to invade eastern Europe, then the whole scam will collapse.
Clearly the West is worried about the interview. They have already wheeled out enough congressmen on social media to try and brandish Carlson as some sort of traitor who should not be allowed back into the U.S. Western media will probably not report on the interview but this will only make it a bigger hit on social media. The interview is really the only single opportunity for this mad war machine to be halted, for the lies to be exposed and for a more salient approach to East-West relations to begin. It should not be underestimated. But the knifes are out. Watch in particular the embedded western media correspondents who live in Moscow push the blade into Carlson’s back and mock the interview in a bid to discredit the whole thing. Scores of millions of Americans are about to be enlightened on a whole plethora of issues which, until now, their own media have lied to them about. To call this interview a bombshell would be an understatement. Tucker Carleson is about to bring the truth to the American people. But are they ready for it?
CNN Staffers Say Network Has ‘Systemic and Institutional Bias Toward Israel’
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | February 5, 2024
Several employees of CNN spoke out against the outlet’s bias towards Israel in its reporting on the war on Gaza. Other US corporate media outlets have shown significant favoritism toward Tel Aviv.
The Guardian reports speaking with six staffers from different newsrooms who said that there is growing backlash against the leadership’s pro-Israel slant. “The majority of news since the war began, regardless of how accurate the initial reporting, has been skewed by a systemic and institutional bias within the network toward Israel,” said one CNN staffer. “Ultimately, CNN’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war amounts to journalistic malpractice.”
“There’s a lot of internal strife and dissent. Some people are looking to get out,” the CNN staffer explained. “Senior staffers who disagree with the status quo are butting heads with the executives giving orders, questioning how we can effectively tell the story with such restrictive directives in place.”
A staffer speaking with the Guardian explained how systemic censorship occurs. “Many have been pushing for more content from Gaza to be alerted and aired.” The source continued, “By the time these reports go through Jerusalem and make it to TV or the homepage, critical changes – from the introduction of imprecise language to an ignorance of crucial stories – ensure that nearly every report, no matter how damning, relieves Israel of wrongdoing.”
The CNN employees say the bias starts at the top, with CEO Mark Thompson. The Guardian obtained emails and members that backed up the accusations made by the CNN staff members. The employees say the slant is causing a backlash.
In one memo obtained by the Guardian, Thompson gave orders that all stories mentioning the atrocities committed by the Israelis in Gaza must mention the war is only occurring because of the Hamas attack on October 7.
The memo reads, “We must continue always to remind our audiences of the immediate cause of this current conflict, namely the Hamas attack and mass murder and kidnap of civilians.” One staffer confirmed that the memo was interpreted “as an instruction that no matter what the Israelis do, Hamas is ultimately to blame.”
CNN’s bias towards Tel Aviv is matched by the Washington Post and New York Times. Writing at FAIR, Julie Hollar explains,” At the New York Times and Washington Post, opinion editors have skewed the Gaza debate toward an Israel-centered perspective, dominated by men and, among guest writers, government officials.”
“While both papers did include a few strong pro-Palestinian voices—their pages leaned heavily toward a conversation dominated by Israeli interests and concerns.” She continued, “That was due in large part due to their stables of regular columnists, who tend to write from a perspective aligned with Israel. As a result, the viewpoints readers were most likely to encounter on the opinion pages of the two papers were sympathetic to, but not necessarily uncritical of, Israel.”
Is a New Korean War in the Offing?
BY GREGORY ELICH | COUNTERPUNCH | FEBRUARY 5, 2024
In recent days, U.S. media have been proclaiming that North Korea plans to initiate military action against its neighbor to the south. An article by Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker, neither previously prone to making wild assertions, created quite a splash and set off a chain reaction of media fear-mongering. In Carlin’s and Hecker’s assessment, “[W]e believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war.” They add that if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is convinced that engagement with the United States is not possible, then “his recent words and actions point toward the prospects of a military solution using [his nuclear] arsenal.” [1]
U.S. officials have stated that while they do not see “an imminent risk of a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula,” Kim Jong Un “could take some form of lethal military action against South Korea in the coming months after having shifted to a policy of open hostility.” [2] How do these sensationalist claims stack up against the evidence?
It is no secret that lately, the stance of the United States and South Korea has hardened against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the formal name for North Korea). Since the centerpiece for suggesting that war may be on the horizon is Kim’s speech at the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly, its content is worth examining in some detail. [3] What strikes one when reading the text is that mainstream media have taken quotes out of context and ignored much of the content of Kim’s speech, creating an impression of unprovoked belligerence.
Also generally absent from media reporting is the speech’s relationship to the backdrop of events since the far-right Yoon Suk Yeol became president of South Korea in May 2022. Yoon came into office determined to smash every vestige of the improved inter-Korean environment established during his predecessor’s term. Instead, Yoon prioritized making South Korea a subordinate partner in the Biden administration’s hyper-militarized Indo-Pacific Strategy.
To fully understand Kim Jong Un’s speech, one must also consider the nature of the Biden administration’s rapid military escalation in the Asia-Pacific. The United States conducts a virtually nonstop series of military exercises at North Korea’s doorstep, practicing the bombing and invasion of that nation. One South Korean analyst has counted 42 joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises conducted in 2023 alone, along with ten more involving Japan. [4] Those totals do not include exercises that the U.S. and South Korea engaged in outside of Northeast Asia, such as Exercise Talisman Sabre in Australia and Exercise Cobra Gold in Thailand. Moreover, U.S. actions on the Korean Peninsula must also be situated within the broader geopolitical framework of its hostility towards China.
Last year, in an act of overt intimidation, the United States conducted seven exercises with nuclear-capable bombers over the Korean Peninsula. [5] Additional flights involved the B-1 bomber, which the U.S. Air Force says “can rapidly deliver massive quantities of precision and non-precision weapons.” [6] Through its actions, the United States sends far more provocative messages than anything that could be honestly construed in Kim’s speech. But then, we are led to see nothing amiss in such aggressive behavior from the United States. Nevertheless, the threat is real and unmistakable from the targeted nation’s perspective.
It also has not gone unnoticed in Pyongyang that U.S. and South Korean military forces regularly conduct training exercises to practice assassinating Kim Jong Un and other North Korean officials. [7] Just this month, U.S. Green Berets and soldiers from South Korea’s Special Warfare Command completed training focused on the targeted killing of North Korean individuals. [8] The Biden administration avers that it harbors no hostile intent toward the DPRK, but its actions say otherwise, loud and clear.
North Korea, with a GDP that the United Nations ranks just behind that of Congo and Laos, is considered such a danger that the U.S. must confront it with substantial military might. An inconvenient question that is never asked is why the DPRK is singled out for punishment and threats when the other nuclear non-members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty – each armed with ballistic missiles — are not. What distinguishes North Korea from India, Pakistan, and Israel? How is it that North Korea is regarded as a threat to peace but not Israel, notwithstanding mounting evidence to the contrary? The essential distinction is that North Korea is the only one of the four that is not a U.S. ally; moreover, one which the U.S. wishes to retain the ability to bomb, whether or not it ever exercises the option to do so.
It is a tribute to the persuasiveness of propaganda that the United States, with its record of multiple wars, bombings, and drone assassinations in recent decades, can convince so many that the DPRK, which has done none of these things during the same period, is a danger to international peace and stability. Yet, such towering hypocrisy goes largely unnoticed. It would appear that there is no principle involved in targeting only North Korea and not the other nuclear-armed non-members of the NPT — unless outrage over a small nation following an independent path being able to defend itself can be regarded as a principle.
Predictably, Washington think tank analysts and media commentators are throwing more heat than light on the subject of Kim’s pronouncements, and they are always ready with a cliché at hand. Some, like Bruce W. Bennett of RAND Corporation, let their imagination run wild, conjuring bizarre absurdities. Bennett suggests that armed with more nuclear weapons in the years ahead, North Korea “could threaten one or more U.S. cities with nuclear attack if the United States does not repeal its sanctions against North Korea.” Or perhaps, he suggests, the DPRK could threaten the U.S. with a limited nuclear attack “unless it abandons its alliance with [South Korea]” or “disengage from Ukraine.” As for South Korea, Bennett warns that Kim might insist that it “pay him $100 billion per year and permanently discontinue producing K-pop…” [9] This is what passes as expert analysis in Washington.
The military section of Kim’s speech was at root defensive, pointing out that North Korea’s “security environment has been steadily deteriorated” and that if it wants to take “the road of independent development,” it must be fully prepared to defend itself. Kim quotes specific threats made by U.S. and South Korean leaders to emphasize his awareness that his nation is in the crosshairs.
At one point in his speech, Kim suggested that the constitution could specify “the issue of completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK [Republic of Korea, the formal name for South Korea] and annex it…in case war breaks out…” He added, “There is no reason to opt for war, and therefore, there is no intention of unilaterally going to war, but once a war becomes a reality facing us, we will never try to avoid it.” Such a war, he warned, “will terribly destroy the entity called the Republic of Korea and put an end to its existence” and “inflict an unimaginably crushing calamity and defeat upon the U.S.” Kim continues, “If the enemies ignite a war, our Republic will resolutely punish the enemies by mobilizing all its military forces including nuclear weapons.” Harsh language, indeed, intended to remind the war hawks in Washington and Seoul not to imagine that their nations are invulnerable if they attack the DPRK. Note also the conditional phrasing, which tends to get downplayed in Western media.
Even less attention is paid to more direct clarifying language, such as Kim’s statement that the DPRK’s military is for “legitimate self-defense” and “not a means of preemptive attack for realizing unilateral reunification by force of arms.” And: “Explicitly speaking, we will never unilaterally unleash a war if the enemies do not provoke us.”
It was entirely predictable that Western media would put the worst spin on Kim’s blunt language that mirrored earlier South Korean pronouncements. The month before Kim’s speech, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik warned, “North Korea has only two choices – peace or destruction. If North Korea makes reckless actions that harm peace, only a hell of destruction awaits them.” [10] A few days later, Yoon ordered his military to launch an “immediate and overwhelming response” to any provocation by the DPRK. [11] Yoon and South Korean military officials use the term ‘provocation’ so loosely as to encompass almost any action the DPRK takes that they do not like, including what is normal behavior for other nations – or for South Korea itself, for that matter. South Korean and North Korean rhetoric identifying each other as enemies and destruction in the event of war differ in that the former preceded the latter. By ignoring the fact that North Korea is reacting to prior South Korean statements, mainstream media can portray Kim’s language as unprovoked.
Last December, Yoon heightened the risk of conflict when he visited an infantry division near the border and gave them an order: “In case of provocations, I ask you to immediately retaliate in response and report it later.” [12] Vague in defining neither “provocation” nor the appropriate response level and delegating to lower-level commanders to decide those questions, this formula potentially can transform a minor clash of arms into a conflict of wider impact.
Kim’s statements are presented in Western media as tantamount to a plan to start a war. Earlier statements of a similar nature by the Yoon administration that created an acrimonious atmosphere are rendered invisible or uncontroversial. It is fair to say that given North Korea’s longstanding practice of responding in kind, Kim may have adopted more restrained phrasing without South Korean officials setting the tone.
Western media have raised concerns over Kim’s labeling of South Korea as a “principal enemy.” We are not reminded that nearly one year before, South Korea had re-designated the DPRK as “our enemy” in its Defense White Paper. [13] Under Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, the defense paper dropped the reference to North Korea as an enemy. [14] The general pattern has been for liberal presidents to shun that tag in the interests of inter-Korean relations and for conservative presidents to embrace it as one element in their project to undo progress. Yoon himself frequently refers to North Korea as the enemy, and his administration’s National Security Strategy document describes the Kill Chain system, which is designed to launch preemptive strikes on North Korea. [15] In omitting such details, cause and effect are inverted, reinforcing the media-constructed Orientalist image of an irrational leader at the helm of the DPRK, prone to unpredictable statements and rash acts.
Patience has run thin in Pyongyang, as Biden’s trilateral alliance with South Korea and Japan, “buoyed with war fever,” as Kim put it, sharply escalates military tensions in the region. In a sharp reversal, North Korea has abandoned its longstanding policy of seeking improved inter-Korean relations and working toward peaceful reunification. Any headway achieved in the past has quickly been undone in South Korea whenever the conservative party came to power. Still, Yoon has taken matters further than the norm, not only willfully dynamiting inter-Korean relations but also deliberately raising the risk of military conflict. Inter-Korean relations have reached such a nadir under Yoon that the DPRK sees no hope of progress in the current circumstances. The North Koreans are not wrong in that perception.
Sadly, in a clear signal of its exasperation with Yoon, North Korea demolished the Arch of Reunification in Pyongyang, and all governmental bodies responsible for reunification planning and projects were shut down. The latter steps are not inherently irreversible, however. But as long as Yoon remains in power, there is no conceivable possibility of progress on reunification. Yoon has slammed the door shut on inter-Korean relations.
One would never know it from Western reports, but more than two-thirds of Kim’s speech focused on economic development. “The supreme task,” Kim announced, “is to stabilize and improve the people’s living as early as possible.” Peace is an essential prerequisite for the realization of that goal. North Koreans are well aware of American and South Korean military capabilities, and a war would not only wipe out new economic projects but most of the existing infrastructure as well.
Immense damage has been done to the DPRK’s economy by sanctions designed to target the entire population and inflict as much suffering as possible. [16] The period when North Korea closed its border with China in response to the COVID-19 pandemic added to economic challenges. Reversing direction is imperative. In his speech, Kim called for “a radical turn in the economic construction and improvement of the people’s living standard” and said that progress is being made “despite unprecedented trials.” Kim enumerated industrial, power, housing, and other ongoing projects.
Kim admitted there have been internal challenges in economic development. “It is a reality that the Party and the government yet fail to meet even the simple demand of the people in life…” In particular, regional and urban-rural economic imbalances have plagued the North Korean economy for decades. “At present,” Kim continued, “there is a great disparity of living standards between the capital city and provinces and between towns and the countryside.” Kim acknowledged that these issues have not been adequately addressed in the past, but it “is an immediate task” to do so now.
Kim took the occasion to officially unveil the launch of the Regional Development 20×10 Policy. This ambitious plan calls for substantially raising material and cultural standards in twenty counties over the next ten years, including constructing regional industrial factories and establishing advanced educational institutions. In particular, emphasis is to be given to scientific and technological development. The aim is to even out regional imbalances and to accelerate overall development.
None of this can be achieved if the U.S. and South Korea are showering the DPRK with high explosives, and the Regional 20×10 Policy makes nonsense of Western scaremongering that Kim has decided to go to war. As usual, though, when it comes to reporting on North Korea, assertion substitutes for evidence, and we can expect Washington think tanks, U.S. media, military contractors, and the Biden administration to capitalize on the manufactured image of a war-mad Kim Jong Un to accelerate the military buildup in the Asia-Pacific, aimed against the DPRK and the People’s Republic of China. For his part, Yoon can be expected to amplify military tensions on the Korean Peninsula and sharpen his war on South Korean progressives. What is not in the cards is militarism abating in the foreseeable future.
Notes.
[1] Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker, “Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War,” 38 North, January 11, 2024.
[2] Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes, “U.S. is Watching North Korea for Signs of Lethal Military Action,” New York Times, January 25, 2024.
[3] “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Policy Speech at 10th Session of the 14th SPA,” KCNA, January 16, 2024.
[4] http://www.minplusnews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=14494
[5] Chae Yun-hwan, “S. Korea, U.S. Stage Joint Air Drills with B-52H Bombers Over the Yellow Sea,” Yonhap, November 15, 2023.
[6] https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104500/b-1b-lancer/
[7] Jeongmin Kim, “Drills on Assassinating Kim Jong Un Remain an ‘Option,’ ROK Defense Chief Says,” NK News, December 19, 2023.
[8] Lee Yu-jung and Esther Chung, “Kim Jong-un Instructs North Korea’s Navy to Prepare for War,” JoongAng Ilbo, February 2, 2024.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQJF7tbzwfY
Donald Kirk, “U.S. to Enrage Kim Jong Un with Assassination Dry Run,” Daily Beast, August 19, 2022.
[9] Bruce W. Bennett, “Is North Korea Really Getting Ready for a War Against America?” The National Interest, January 17, 2024.
[10] Chae Yun-hwan, “Defense Chief Warns N. Korea of ‘Hell of Destruction’ in Event of Reckless Acts,” Yonhap, December 13, 2023.
[11] “Yoon Orders Swift, Overwhelming Response to N. Korean Provocation,” KBS World, December 18, 2023.
[12] Kim Han-joo, “Yoon Orders Military to Retaliate First, Report Later in Case of Enemy Attacks,” Yonhap, December 28, 2023.
[13] Kwon Hyuk-chul, “S. Korea’s First Defense White Paper Under Yoon Defines N. Korea as ‘Enemy’”, Hankyoreh, February 17, 2023.
[14] Yosuke Onchi, “South Korea No Longer Calls Pyongyang ‘Enemy’ in Defense Paper,” Nikkei Asia, January 16, 2019.
Josh Smith, “South Korea Doubles Down on Risky ‘Kill Chain’ Plans to Counter North Korea Nuclear Threat,” Reuters, July 25, 2022.
[16] https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/19/trumps-war-on-the-north-korean-people/
FOR WESTERN MEDIA, ISRAEL’S BOMBING OF GAZA IS NOT ‘DEADLY’
Right across the Anglo-American mainstream media, the killing of Palestinians is seen as normal. It’s only Israeli lives that matter.
BY DES FREEDMAN | DECLASSIFIED UK | JANUARY 30, 2024
Twenty-four Israeli soldiers were killed in two separate incidents in Gaza on 22 January. Mainstream media outlets around the world reacted in unison: that this was the “deadliest day” for Israel since 7 October.
This exact phrase was used in headlines on 23 January carried by news agencies such as Reuters and AFP, and major broadcasters including the BBC, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC and ITV News.
The exact same phrase was also used by leading news titles including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, Daily Telegraph, the Sun, Jerusalem Post, Guardian, London’s Evening Standard, Financial Times, Independent and Yahoo News.
On the same day, Israeli forces killed almost 200 Palestinians in Gaza including at least 65 people in Khan Younis alone.
These deaths received no headlines in the above outlets. Where they were reported, they were listed as part of the regular daily round-up of events in an unfolding genocide that has now seen more than 26,000 people killed in Gaza.
How is it possible that the world’s media could embrace exactly the same phrase in relation to Israeli victims but largely ignore the identities of the much higher number of Palestinians killed?
Why would 22 January be described as “deadly” for one group of people but not for another?
Unequal value
You might expect that editors took the “deadliest day” phrase from press statements from the Israeli government or military.
Yet Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari did not use this phrase in his statement and neither did the IDF Chief of the General Staff, Herzi Halevi, who instead simply called it a “difficult day”.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanhayu also described it as “one of the most difficult days” while Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, spoke of “an unbearably difficult morning”.
He used the same language as both Knesset speaker Amir Ohana and minister Benny Gantz, both of whom referred to a “painful morning”.
Of course, it is possible the phrase was used in private and informal briefings to the press on the morning of 23 January. It is, however, equally conceivable that this was a trope that came “naturally” from a deep-rooted idea in the western media that the lives of Israelis and Palestinians are not of equal value.
And, therefore, that measuring the “deadliness” of a particular day should only be done for Israelis (where every life matters) and not for Palestinians (whose individual lives clearly appear to count for less).
‘Deadliest day’
Indeed, a search of the Nexis database of UK national and local news (including BBC broadcast bulletins) reveals that there were 856 uses of the phrase “deadliest day” from 7 October 2023 until 25 January 2024, none of which directly referred to evidence of Palestinian deaths in Gaza.
The only exception to this were some BBC bulletins on 25 October which mentioned “Palestinians reporting the deadliest day in Gaza” (emphasis added).
Otherwise, there was not a single reference during this period across the British media to “the deadliest day for Palestinians” or “for the people of Gaza”.
The other approximately 850 references directly related only to Israeli casualties. Some 28 per cent of them focused on the killing of IDF soldiers on 22 January.
The vast majority referred to the events of 7 October, described either as “the deadliest day for Jews” or “the deadliest day for the Jewish people” which accounted for some 25% of all references.
Many of these stories were focused on the words of US president Joe Biden who, in a much publicised speech to Jewish leaders at the White House, described the Hamas attack on 7 October as the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”.
Biden’s words alone make up 20% of all references to the “deadliest day” trope.
Perhaps Biden’s words were on the minds of editors across the world as they listened to Israeli spokespeople on the morning of 23 January and that the deaths of 24 IDF soldiers merited such a phrase when talking about Israeli lives.
Framing the war
But why has the phrase not been used in relation to Palestinians and, indeed, why is there so little preoccupation with days when particularly large number of Gazans are killed?
Precisely because the war is not framed in a way which recognises the equal worth of all those affected – in other words, a situation where every instance of significant Palestinian casualties would deserve a headline – it’s hard to be certain of which have been the very deadliest days for the residents of Gaza.
However, it’s clear that the period immediately after the temporary ceasefire in the last week of November saw particularly intense airstrikes and there were, according to Al Jazeera, at least 700 Palestinians killed on 2 December alone.
Yet there was no mention in the UK media about this being the “deadliest day” for Palestinians. Instead, the Guardian simply ran with a headline of “‘Israel says its ground forces are operating across ‘all of Gaza’” while the Sunday Times wrote that “Fears for hostages as Gazans say bombardment is worse than ever”.
According to the Mail Online, “Israel says it is expanding its ground operations against Hamas’ strongholds across the whole of the Gaza Strip as IDF continues to bomb territory after terrorists broke fragile truce”.
The BBC’s TV news bulletins on 3 December carried distressing footage of casualties but also featured a quote from an adviser to Netanyahu saying that “Israel was making the ‘maximum effort’ to avoid killing civilians” without carrying an immediate rebuttal of this outrageous claim.
In other words, despite the fact that 30 times more Palestinians were killed on 2 December than when the 24 IDF soldiers were killed, there was no recognition of the “deadliness” of that day.
Instead, the framing was all about the strategic plans of the Israeli military rather than the mass slaughter of Palestinians.
‘Intensive strike’
On 26 December, a further 241 people were killed by Israeli bombs. Britain’s “newspaper of record”, The Times, responded with the headline: “Israel-Gaza war: Palestinians hit by ‘most savage bombing’” with a sub heading that “Israel launches most intensive strike since Hamas attack on October 7”.
You could be forgiven for thinking that there was nothing deadly about this episode because, after all, Palestinians were only being “struck” as opposed to brutally killed.
But this was hardly an exceptional day given that Oxfam reported earlier this year that Israel’s military was killing Palestinians at an average rate of 250 people a day, a figure it said exceeded the daily death toll of any other major conflict of recent years.
There is clearly a brutal politics to counting the dead. The New York Times ran an article on 22 January headlined “The Decline of Deaths in Gaza” arguing that average daily deaths across a 30-day period have now fallen below 150.
For the NYT, it is “plausible that a lower percentage of deaths are among civilians now that Israel’s attacks have become more targeted and the [average] daily toll has declined”.
Not only, however, is there little evidence that the IDF is in any way opposed to killing civilians but the idea that casualties are declining at a time when we are soon likely to see a total of 30,000 Palestinian deaths is profoundly shocking.
Any slowdown in the rate of killing is hardly a consolation to the millions who still live in fear of IDF raids and rockets.
Media consensus
The media consensus that only Israelis are the victims of the “deadliest days” in the region and not Palestinians, despite the latter accounting for 95% of deaths since 7 October, is one of the many illustrations of the unequal and profoundly distorted coverage of this war.
Until the South African government submitted its partially successful claim to the International Court of Justice, news organisations were unwilling even to investigate the genocidal language of Israeli political and military leaders.
The media also routinely uses dehumanising and differential language where Israelis are “massacred” while Palestinians simply “die”. This illustrates the awful role of the mainstream media in paving the way for the ethnic cleansing we are currently seeing.
The real reason you don’t see or hear the media talk about a “deadly day” for Palestinians is that every day is deadly when you live in Gaza.
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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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- Radio Free Europe, the Cold War ‘Weapon’ Congress Still Funds
- UN: Israel continues to violate Lebanon airspace in defiance of Iran-US MoU
- Araghchi: Israeli occupation of Lebanese land a violation of MoU
- Hezbollah fighters confront intruding Israeli forces in southern Lebanon
- The Straight of Hormuz is Open for Iranian Business… Oil is Moving and Iran is Getting Paid
- Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
- If Americans Knew
- Pro-Israel Donors Power Last-Minute Surge of Espaillat Spending
- “They Stole Our Home and Our Life”: Israel Permanently Displaces Syrians in Quneitra
- Massie Recognizes USS Liberty Attack. Here’s Why That Matters
- The blatant racism and cruelty that define Israel’s settler movement
- Israeli army ‘murdered child’ in Gaza and then dumped body on a roadside
- The Forward’s Hit Piece on Thomas Massie and USS Liberty Veterans
- Israel’s former defense minister compares settler ideology to Nazism
- The Pro-Israel Lobby’s Quiet Cash Shuffle
- Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) Propagandizes for Israel’s Wars
- A grim milestone: Gaza’s death toll surpasses 73,000 – Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
- Germany’s Ecological Holocaust… Once Fairy Tale Forests Getting Cleared For Wind Turbines
- A Grand Solar Minimum Has Arrived…Global Cooling Of At Least 1°C Is Expected By The 2030s, 2040s
- European “Expert Commission” Urges COVID-19-Like Global Climate State Of Energency!
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