Serious adverse events from Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine are not “rare”
Maryanne Demasi, reports | June 27, 2023
Drug regulators and public health agencies have saturated the airways with claims that serious harms following covid vaccination are “rare.”
But there has been very little scrutiny of that claim by the media, and I could not find an instance where international agencies actually quantified what they meant by the term “rare” or provided a scientific source.
The best evidence so far, has been a study published in one of vaccinology’s most prestigious journals, where independent researchers reanalysed the original trial data for the mRNA vaccines.
The authors, Fraiman et al, found that serious adverse events (SAEs) – i.e. adverse events that require hospitalisation – were elevated in the vaccine arm by an alarming rate – 1 additional SAE for every 556 people vaccinated with Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine.
According to a scale used by drug regulators, SAEs occurring at a rate of 1 in 556 is categorised as “uncommon,” but far more common than what the public has been told.
Therefore, I asked eight drug regulators and public health agencies to answer a simple question: what is the official calculated rate of SAEs believed to be caused by Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine, and what is the evidence?
The agencies were FDA, TGA, MHRA, HC, PEI, CDC, ECDC and EMA.
The outcome was startling.
Not a single agency could cite the SAE rate of Pfizer’s vaccine. Most directed me to pharmacovigilance data, which they all emphasised does not establish causation.
The Australian TGA, for example, referred me to the spontaneous reporting system but warned, “it is not possible to meaningfully use these data to calculate the true incidence of adverse events due to the limitations of spontaneous reporting systems.”
Both the German regulator (PEI) and European CDC referred me to the European Medicines Agency which, according to its own report, saw no increase at all in SAEs. “SAEs occurred at a low frequency in both vaccinated and the placebo group at 0.6%.”
The UK regulator MHRA went so far as to state it “does not make estimations of a serious adverse event (SAE) rate, or a rate for adverse reactions considered to be causally related for any medicinal product.”
The US FDA, on the other hand, did conceded that SAEs after mRNA vaccination have “indeed been higher than that of influenza vaccines,” but suggested it was justified because “the severity and impact of covid-19 on public health have been significantly higher than those of seasonal influenza.”
Despite analysing at the same dataset as Fraiman, the FDA said it “disagrees with the conclusions” of the Fraiman analysis. The agency did not give specifics on the areas of disagreement, nor did it provide its own rate of SAEs.
In response to the criticism, Joe Fraiman, emergency doctor and lead author on the reanalysis said, “To be honest, I’m not that surprised that agencies have not determined the rate of SAEs. Once these agencies approve a drug there’s no incentive for them to monitor harms.”
Fraiman said it’s hypocritical for health agencies to tell people that serious harms of the covid vaccines are rare, when they have not even determined the SAE rate themselves.
“It’s very dangerous not to be honest with the public,” said Fraiman, who recently called for the mRNA vaccines to be suspended.
“These noble lies may get people vaccinated in the short term but you’re creating decades or generations of distrust when it’s revealed that they have been misleading the public,” added Fraiman.
Dick Bijl, a physician and epidemiologist based in the Netherlands, agreed. “It goes to show how corrupted these agencies are. There is no transparency, especially since regulators are largely funded by the drug industry.”
Bijl said it’s vital to know the rate of SAEs for the vaccines. “You must be able to do a harm:benefit analysis, to allow people to give fully informed consent, especially in young people at low risk of serious covid or those who have natural immunity.”
Bijl said the mainstream media has allowed these agencies to make false claims about the safety of vaccines without interrogating the facts.
“The rise of alternative media is strongly related to the lies being told by the legacy media, which just repeats government narratives and industry marketing. In the Netherlands, there is a lot of discussion about the distrust in public messaging,” said Bijl.
Myth of Big Oil’s Funding of Climate Scepticism vs Reality of Big Green’s Billions Driving Climate Alarmism
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JUNE 15, 2023
In 2019 the climate activist and UCL Geography Professor Mark Maslin wrote that oil companies were spending $200 million a year promoting something he termed “climate change denial”. The ‘dark forces’ claim has been in regular use ever since. The Guardian recently reported Big Oil was “wringing humanity dry”, noting once again the annual $200m spent on climate change lobbying. Great story. Shame there is no actual evidence to back it up.
That can be concluded from a major new work from the investigative journalist Ben Pile. He traces the Maslin claim to a Forbes article, which in turn was based on the work of InfluenceMap, an international think tank at the “cutting edge of climate and sustainability issues”. InfluenceMap claims to use a funding methodology based on “best available records”, but Pile notes the presence of a “tower of estimates”. This is largely guessing, “not the discovery of a cache of receipts”, he observes.
In more detail, Pile notes that this stack of assumptions involves defining areas of corporate activity that might be used for climate lobbying and then estimating spending associated with these activities, and then further estimating the proportion of spending directed at climate change related issues, before finally categorising as ‘lobbying’ or ‘branding’ based on whether the activity pertains to a political agenda. Overall, Pile concludes, “it is just guesses”. The work is “performative” in nature, and gives the impression of an investigation in order to make real one of green ideology’s major articles of faith.
He goes on to note: “And so the idea of an entire industry of climate denial servicing the interests of big oil companies has become the most respectable conspiracy theory at all levels of society – the online troll is as comfortable reproducing the smear as the chair of the internationally-renowned scientific organisation.”
Of course there is no reason why Big Oil, which includes Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Chevron and Total, cannot spend money in the course of contributing to the energy debate. Fossil fuels provide over 80% of global energy needs and make huge contributions to society, including the pumping of billions of pounds into state funds and individual pension schemes. The oil business is a lawful enterprise that has helped provide humankind with a current standard of living almost unimaginable to the vast majority of people that existed previously. But the actual evidence indicates they have been keeping a lowish profile in the current debate, possibly taking the view that when the madness of Net Zero subsides, they will still be required to provide 80% of the world’s energy.
Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT notes that the current climate narrative – from ‘settled’ science to Net Zero – is “absurd”, but trillions of dollars currently says it is not absurd. Pile’s latest work – an excellent examination of many of the sources funding climate and Net Zero extremism – goes into great detail about many of the green billionaire foundations that bankroll everything from activist scientists, political campaigns and parts of the mainstream media, including, of course, the Guardian. The Daily Sceptic has reported on many of these activities, noting for instance the funding of green propaganda in schools and the provision of Armageddon-friendly copy for newsrooms and TV meteorologists.
To provide an insight into the vast amount of money available to fund the green agenda, Pile tabulated the information below estimating all the annual grants made by InfluenceMap’s own benefactors.
In total, InfluenceMap’s funders alone are making grants of about $1.2 billion every year to fund climate change lobbying. And these are only the funds with which InfluenceMap has a direct relationship. There are many others, including the Rockefeller family, Bezos, Bloomberg, Gates along with the Hewletts, Packards and Gettys.
Set against this, Pile goes on to note that in a small Westminster office building at 55 Tufton Street, scene of Extinction Rebellion paint-throwing and protests, is a clutch of small think tanks including the Global Warming Policy Foundation that are, as he gently puts it, “somewhat misaligned to the dominant ideologies of woke Western politics and media”. In total, Pile estimates the income of all nine campaigning organisations at just $6.7m.
Pile is able to show that billions of dollars have been poured into “manifestly false” philanthropic foundations with the money claimed to have been used to construct narratives, to found fake civil society organisations, to actively misinform the public, policymakers, governments and intergovernmental agencies, and to buy favours from or into research organisations, media companies and public institutions. Any contrary influence from Big Oil simply does not compare, he adds.
The vast sums spent by the Green Blob are noted, but Pile observes that members are confused as to why they are not living in a green Utopia. They have long felt it unnecessary to explain themselves, preferring to smear, fearmonger, block roads, use moral blackmail in place of reason – and invent conspiracy theories around oil companies. Furthermore, even after nearly two decades of lobbying, adequately effective green tech remains a distant dream. Wind power has been a failure, EVs are an expensive luxury and heat pumps cost multiples of gas boilers. As we have started to see all too clearly, nudge has now come to shove as activists demand that society must reorganise around the shortcomings of green technology and the ‘climate emergency’. This requires the construction of supranational political agencies in the form of technocratic bureaucracies with unprecedented power, beyond democratic control, populated by unaccountable wonks.
“Environmentalism is an elite ideology, and climate change fearmongering is a preoccupation only of the topmost parts of society. The rest of us find it implausible, somewhat ridiculous and manifestly self-serving,” Pile concludes.
Media censorship is directed to nearly every important issue facing society – and has been for a long, long time
BY PIERRE KORY, MD, MPA | JUNE 14, 2023
I wrote a surprisingly popular tweet about censorship a couple of weeks ago that I thought I would expand upon here. I wrote it one night after I had made the mistake of reading some newspapers on-line and watching CNN clips, (something I do for opposition research, not to discover any truth or real news – that I get from Rumble, independant journalists, TikTok, Twitter, and most importantly books).
Then I read Rav Arora’s post on his excellent Substack “The Illusion of Consensus” with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (please subscribe to their Substack as I want to support one of the few journalists whose integrity forced them to stop working for corporate controlled media).
One line of Rav’s was a particularly powerful and concise articulation of what I (and all of us) have been living through in Covid in regards to the media;
“Notably, journalism — the filter through which ordinary people living busy lives come to understand the complex matrix of power, money, and influence — has also been exposed for its bizarre servility to public health decrees and pharmaceutical companies.”
Although I was saddened to hear of the treatment and financial loss Rav suffered from not being able to publish deeply researched pieces questioning vaccine policy, I was shocked at the near identicalness (if that’s a word) and absurdity of the wording of the rejections from numerous editors he included in his post. Although servility to Pharma paymasters might partly explain their rejections, I instead felt they revealed that a “collective psychosis” had taken hold – these editors exhibited a sudden unquestioning, pervasive (and sincere!) belief in the infallibility of the health agencies and the trustworthiness of their data supporting a number of blatantly illogical health and vaccine policies.
The replies betrayed a shocking, willful ignorance of the epidemiologic data not supporting jab policies, like mandating them for healthy young people and those with natural immunity (for starters). These news editors were both drowning in and failing to question the selective and/or manipulated data supporting the jabs. And they did so with a complete ignorance of the massive amount of conflicting and contradictory data (that Rav was trying to discuss in his article). I almost laughed at the realization that these editors were victims of their own censorship! Their deeply erroneous and harmful beliefs were self-inflicted by their censoring actions.
But knowledge of the aggressive censorship around every single Covid issue is not new, nor unknown to anyone who reads my posts. What is really freaking me out now is the extent of censorship and propaganda that I am seeing on almost every single non-Covid topic (which I will go into in my 2nd post on censorship). Anyway, the night of my tweet, I was getting disturbed watching the synchronized, coordinated, repetitive media narratives around Ukraine, climate change, the Bidens, Trump and many other topics. I started to wonder, “how long and how bad has it been like this?”
Answer: a long long time.
A friend and FLCCC supporter named Gavin De Becker (of Joe Rogan podcast interview fame), sent en email to a group of us a year ago and I saved it because of how much it impacted me. He included a chapter of Upton Sinclair’s book called “The Brass Check.”
First, know that Sinclair was one of the greatest “truth-tellers” in modern history. From our “friends” at Wikipedia:
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair’s work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943.
In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic muck-raking novel, The Jungle, which exposed labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.[1] In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muck-raking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the “free press” in the United States. Four years after publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created.[2] Time magazine called him “a man with every gift except humor and silence”.[3] He is also well remembered for the quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.“[4]
Further, know that the Associated Press was formed in May 1846 by five daily newspapers in New York City to share the cost of transmitting news of the Mexican–American War.
Note from Gavin: “This is interesting because Upton Sinclair describes several newspaper barons who had invested heavily in land in Mexico, and how they dearly wanted the US to declare war on Mexico:”
By methods such as these Otis Chandler grew wealthy, and later on he purchased six hundred and fifty thousand acres of land in Northern Mexico. When the Diaz regime was overthrown, Otis had trouble in getting his cattle out, so he wanted a counter-revolution in Mexico, and for years the whole policy of his paper has been directed to bringing on intervention and conquest of that country. At one time the Federal authorities indicted Harry Chandler, son-in-law of Otis, and his successor in control of the “Times,” for conspiracy to ship arms into Mexico. Mr. Chandler was acquitted.
Mr. Hearst also owns enormous stretches of land in Mexico, and Mr. Hearst also understands that if Mexico were conquered and annexed by the United States, the value of his lands would be increased many times over. Therefore for fifteen years the Hearst newspapers have been used as a means of forcing war with Mexico. Mr. Hearst admits and is proud of the fact that it was he who made the Spanish-American war. He sent Frederick Remington to Cuba to make pictures of the war, and Remington was afraid there wasn’t going to be any war, and so cabled Mr. Hearst. Mr. Hearst answered:
“You make the pictures and I’ll make the war.”
Hmm. Doesn’t the above make you think of the Ukraine war today?
Anyway, know that The Brass Check was published in 1919. In one chapter he does a deep dive into the Associated Press (AP) :
About nine hundred daily newspapers in the United States, comprising the great majority of the journals of influence and circulation, receive and print the news dispatches of the Associated Press. This means that concerning any event of importance an identical dispatch is printed about fifteen million times and may be read by thirty million persons.
According to the construction and wording of that dispatch, so will be the impression these thirty million persons will receive, and the opinion they will form and pass along to others. Here is the most tremendous engine for Power that ever existed in this world. If you can conceive all that Power ever wielded by the great autocrats of history, by the Alexanders, Caesars, Tamburlaines, Kubla Khans and Napoleons, to be massed together into one vast unit of Power, even this would be less than the Power now wielded by the Associated Press.
Thought is the ultimate force in the world and here you have an engine that causes thirty million minds to have the same thought at the same moment, and nothing on earth can equal the force thus generated.
Well-informed men know that the great Controlling Interests have secured most of the Other sources and engines of Power. They own or control most of the newspapers, most of the magazines, most of the pulpits, all of the politicians and most of the public men. We are asked to believe that they do not own or control the Associated Press, by far the most desirable and potent of these engines. We are asked to believe that the character and wording of the dispatches upon which depends so much public opinion is never influenced in behalf of the Controlling Interests. We are asked to believe that Interests that have absorbed all other such agencies for their benefit have overlooked this, the most useful and valuable of all. We are even asked to believe that, although the Associated Press is a mutual concern, owned by the newspapers, and although these newspapers that own it are in turn owned by the Controlling Interests, the Controlling Interests do not own, control or influence the Associated Press, which goes its immaculate way, furnishing impartial and unbiased news to the partial and biased journals that own it.
That is to say that when you buy a house you “do not buy its foundations.”
Note from Gavin: Who controls the AP today? Steven R. Swartz is the Chairman, and oh yeah, he’s also President and CEO of Hearst. The AP website describes itself as “an independent, not-for-profit news cooperative, our U.S. newspaper members elect a board of directors to provide corporate direction according to AP bylaws.”
The key phrase in the above is: “our U.S. newspaper members elect a board of directors to provide corporate direction according to AP bylaws.”
Now, if the “impartiality” of the AP is to be believed, then the Board must be made up of a large cast of newspaper editors with diverse backgrounds in terms of race, sex, wealth, ethnicity, and religion right?
Dream on. Will Irwin, writing in Harper’s Weekly in 1914, described a “ring of old, Tory, forty-one vote papers in control” of the Associated Press (meaning the small subset of newspaper editors with voting control of AP policies). Note that, at the time, 700 newspapers used the AP, but a subset of only 41 held a near majority of the voting power to elect the Board of Directors.
Sinclair then recounts how each has attacked him and his truth-telling colleagues at the time:
The “Los Angeles Times” is here, and de Young’s “San Francisco Chronicle,” and the “San Francisco Bulletin,” of the itching palm, and the “San Francisco Examiner,” which sent out my Shredded Wheat story, and the “Sacramento Union,” which was sold to the Calkins syndicate. Here is the “Pueblo Chieftain,” which circulated the foul slanders about Judge Lindsey and the miners’ wives. Here is the “Baltimore News” of Munsey, the stock-gambler. Here is the “Washington Post,” which, as I shall narrate, had a typewritten copy of a speech by Albert Williams, and deliberately made up false quotations. Here is the “Chicago Tribune,” which slandered Henry Ford, and the “Chicago Daily News,” which, with the “Tribune,” robs the Chicago school-children. Here is the “Cincinnati Times-Star,” which set out to fight Boss Cox, and didn’t. Here is the “Boston Herald,” which, I shall show you, refused President Wilson’s speech as an advertisement, and the “Boston Traveller,” which lied about my magazine. Here is the “Kansas City Star,” which hounded Mrs. Stokes to jail, and the “St. Paul Dispatch,” whose misdeeds I have just listed. Here is the “Oil City Derrick” owned by Standard Oil, and the “Seattle Post-Intelligencer,” whose bonds were found in the vaults of the Great Northern Railroad. Here is the “Portland Oregonian,” which exists for large-scale capital, and the “Milwaukee Sentinel,” owned by Pfister, who owns most of Milwaukee. Here is the “New York Herald,” which suppressed my Packingtown story, and paid me damages for the Tarrytown libel. Here is the “New York Evening Post,” which failed to expose the Associated Press, and the “New York World,” which favors twenty-cent meals for department-store girls; here is the “New York Tribune,” which lied about the Socialist state legislators, and the “New York Times,” which has lied about me so many times that I can’t count them.
In 1909, it was discovered that the AP had fifteen directors. They were all publishers of large newspapers and just one was a “liberal” who died shortly after. The other fourteen were classified as “conservative or ultra-conservative” and were “huge commercial ventures, connected by advertising and in other ways with banks, trust companies, railway and city utility companies, department-stores and manufacturing enterprises. They reflect the system which supports them.”
Know that back in 1945, the US Supreme Court found that the Associated Press had been violating the Sherman anti-trust Act by prohibiting member newspapers from selling or providing news to nonmember organizations as well as making it very difficult for nonmember newspapers to join the AP.
Again from The Brass Check:
The Associated Press is probably the most iron-clad monopoly in America. It was organized originally as a corporation under the laws of Illinois, but the Illinois courts declared it a monopoly, so it moved out of Illinois, and reorganized itself as a “membership corporation,” thus evading the law. The members of the Associated Press have what is called “the right of protest”—that is, they can object to new franchises being issued; and this power they use ruthlessly to maintain their monopoly.
Like I will do in my next post, here Sinclair lists examples of other censoring actions of that time period:
When Kansas, in 1908, rejected a conservative and elected a progressive United States Senator, the general public at a distance from that state did not know the real issue involved. For more than two years, there has been a strong movement in California against the rule of that state by special and corrupt interests, but that fact, merely as news, has never reached the general public in the East. The prosecution of offenders in San Francisco has only been a part of the wider movement in California. The strong movement in New Hampshire, headed by Winston Churchill, to free that state from the grasp of the Boston and Maine Railway Company and the movement in New Jersey led by Everett Colby, which resulted in the defeat of Senator Dryden, the president of the Prudential Insurance Company, have not been given to the people adequately as matters of news. In my story of the Colorado coal-strike, I showed you the “A. P.” suppressing news, and the newspapers of the country, without one single exception, keeping silence about it. I showed you one bold managing editor promising to tell the truth, and then suddenly stricken dumb, and not carrying out his promise.
Now, I will include an excerpt from my own book where I describe what happened with the Associated Press in the immediate wake of my “viral” ivermectin testimony in Senator Ron Johnson’s historic Covid-19 Homeland Security hearing:
A day later, I received a request for an interview by the Associated Press, self-described as “the largest news gathering organization in the world.” This was huge—the global media home run we’d been waiting for!
The AP dispatched a former fashion reporter named Beatrice Dupuy to interview me. I spent twenty minutes detailing the countless data points which consistently showed massive benefits with ivermectin treatment. The interview was cordial and Beatrice appeared genuinely interested in and intrigued by the information I presented.
Shortly afterward, the AP ran their piece. This was the headline:
The article itself isn’t fit for a birdcage. Beatrice deliberately omitted all the data I provided and chose instead to share the story of an Arizona couple who’d ingested a fish tank cleaning additive (chloroquine phosphate), which is an ingredient in hydroxychloroquine.
“The woman became gravely ill and the man died,” Beatrice wrote breathlessly (I imagined).
Don Henley said it best: “It’s interesting when people die; give us dirty laundry.”
At the bottom of surely very stylish Beatrice’s piece was this interesting disclaimer:
“This is part of The Associated Press’ ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.”
The FLCCC immediately filed an ethics complaint with the AP. Thanks to an errant “reply all” on their part, we were able to see an email thread between the CEO, ethics chief, and president discussing a plan to delay their response so they could “buy some time” to figure out what to do. It’s hilarious looking back at the naivete we possessed by filing an ethics complaint against an erstwhile fashion reporter. We actually believed that a moral code existed that we could rely on to force journalistic integrity.
Two weeks later we received a letter stating that the AP had investigated the complaint and found no ethical concerns with the piece. As if they were actually going to side with us? Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse. We had a lot to learn, but our ignorance is amusing in hindsight.
To summarize it differently: within two days of my ivermectin testimony, the AP contracted a media hit job on me, the FLCCC, and ivermectin. I wonder who commissioned that one (Gilly Bates and Pfizer are at the top of my list).
Anyway, this is from Will Irwin, a writer from Harper’s Weekly at the time of Sinclair’s book:
“The subordinates have drifted inevitably toward the point of view held by their masters.” And again, of the average Associated Press correspondent: “A movement in stocks is to him news—big news. Wide-spread industrial misery in a mining camp is scarcely news at all.” At a conference at the University of Wisconsin, the editor of the “Madison Democrat” stated that he had been a correspondent of the Associated Press for many years, and had never been asked “to suppress news or to color news in any way whatever.”
He counters the above with a quote from Editor A. M. Simons: “I have had many reporters working under me, and every one knows that you will not have a reporter on your paper who cannot ‘catch policy‘ in 2 weeks [in modern terms, I would say an employee who has “not gotten the memo.”]
From Will Irwin: To the best of my knowledge, only two or three new franchises [to the AP ] have ever been granted over the right of protest—and those after a terrible fight. Few, indeed, have had the hardihood to apply. When such an application comes up in the annual meeting, the members shake with laughter as they shout out a unanimous “No!” Abolish the exclusive feature, throw the Association open to all, and you wipe out these values. The publishers are taking no chances with a precedent so dangerous.
Also the Associated Press, being a membership corporation or club, possesses the legal right to expel and to discipline its members. They can expel a member “for any conduct on his part, or on the part of anyone in his employ or connected with his newspaper, which in its absolute discretion it shall deem of such a character as to be prejudicial to the welfare and interest of the corporation and its members, or to justify such expulsion. The action of the members of the corporation in such regard shall be final, and there shall be no right of appeal or review of such action.”
This, you perceive, is power to destroy any newspaper overnight. Not merely may a franchise worth two hundred thousand dollars be wiped out at the whim of the little controlling oligarchy; the entire value of the newspaper may be destroyed ; for of course a big morning newspaper cannot exist without its franchise. The masters of the “A. P.” hold this whip over the head of every member.
Now, know that as of 2019, AP had more than 240 bureaus globally with 1,400 U.S. newspaper members as well as broadcasters, international subscribers, and online customers.
How about this little factoid: The AP is the only organization that collects and verifies election results in every city and county across the United States, including races for the U.S. president, the Senate and House of Representatives, governor as well as other statewide offices. Major news outlets rely on the polling data and results provided by the Associated Press before declaring a winner in major political races, particularly the presidential election. In declaring the winners, the AP has historically relied on a robust network of local reporters with first-hand knowledge of assigned territories who also have long-standing relationships with county clerks as well as other local officials. Moreover, the AP monitors and gathers data from county websites and electronic feeds provided by states. The research team further verifies the results by considering demographics, number of absentee ballots, and other political issues that may have an effect on the final results.
Whoa. Thankfully, we haven’t had any concerns with election integrity lately.
What is even more disturbing than the history, control, and destructive censoring actions of the AP, is that they then joined the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), whose members include a few minor influencers like BBC, Facebook, Google/YouTube, Twitter, Microsoft, Agence France Press, Reuters, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, CBC/Radio-Canada, First Draft, and Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Although originally formed to control information around elections, in 2020, partner members of the TNI agreed, in the words of Director-General Tim Davie, “to work together to ensure legitimate concerns about future vaccinations are heard whilst harmful disinformation myths are stopped in their tracks.”
Now you know why Covid was an absolute nightmare – the globally pervasive censoring of both the efficacy of early treatments (like HCQ and IVM among many others like Vitamin D) and of the toxicity, lethality, and inefficacy of the vaccines. These actions caused millions of unnecessary deaths while adding even more millions to the ranks of the disabled. History must remember this but, more important than History… is the Future.
Censorship, in practice, is now literally a principle of major media journalism in my opinion. We no longer have a “4th Estate” to check the power of the branches of government and it’s controlling corporations. We are in a world war without an army to defend ourselves. They captured our most effective weapon, long ago, but the control they exert over it is now so complete, that army has now been turned against us. Traitors.
But here’s the hope: independant media, the internet, and books – as long as the internet is running, books can be marketed and sold, and we can be discerning, there are excellent, transparent, objective sources of information and data to help us understand the many, often complex issues our society is facing. We must flee to those. It’s our only hope.
In my next post I plan to explore and detail numerous examples of censorship being applied to nearly every non-Covid issue we face (which is a bit of a departure for Medical Musings).
The BBC’s War on ‘Disinformation’ is Just Government Censorship by Another Name
BY SHIRAZ AKRAM | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JUNE 15, 2023
In 2017 the BBC announced its intention to assemble a dedicated team “to fact check and debunk deliberately misleading and false stories masquerading as real news”. News chief James Harding proclaimed that the Reality Check team would be “weighing in on the battle over lies, distortions and exaggerations”. Harding continued: “The BBC can’t edit the internet, but we won’t stand aside either.” Harding goes further to say the corporation had been inundated by news in 2016 because the world was “living in an age of instability”.
It appears that the BBC has not coped particularly well with this excess of news and the methods employed by the Reality Check team have not generated the desired outcome. According to data compiled by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, the BBC has experienced a decline in public trust from 75% to just 55%, with other mainstream TV broadcasters and print news suffering a similar decline over the same period, from 2018-2022. Further to this, the most recent global annual report published by the Edelman Trust Barometer placed the U.K. in 26th position, ahead of only South Korea and Japan in terms of public faith in media. The survey clearly tells us that the U.K. remains one of the countries with the lowest faith in media.
So what is driving this decline in trust? Is fake news to blame? Or, paradoxically, could the efforts of the BBC to counter such stories be exposing its own limitations? A typical example of how BBC Reality Check chooses to ‘weigh in’ is illustrated in this 2022 report, ‘Does video show Russian prisoners being shot?‘ The report is unable to provide sufficient evidence to ‘debunk’ the authenticity of the footage, which, the BBC states, “has been claimed to show Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russian prisoners of war”. Instead, it offers the reader a discourse, the content of which is clearly riddled with omission, selection and presentation bias. The report reads like a crude attempt to defend a narrative, rather than an objective attempt to elucidate a news story.
Consider this shocking statistic: only two of every 10 people in the U.K. feel that the news media is “independent from undue political or Government influence most of the time”. This ranks us 16th among the 24 nations surveyed, on a par with Romania.
I do not mention this to slight other nations, but to illustrate the point that our much vaunted media landscape is not the envy of the world as we are often led to believe.
Against this background, with such a prolonged and substantial decline in trust, what action is our national broadcaster taking to rebuild it? One might expect the BBC to reflect on its output, a period of introspection perhaps, an honest assessment of mistakes that have been made, a promise to learn from them and do better in the future. But no – the BBC has concluded that the problem is you: your inability to separate fact from fiction and your inability to appreciate the hard work that goes into getting the truth to your television.
So in order to help us, the BBC has a launched a new initiative, BBC Verify, “a new brand within our brand” aiming to “pull back the curtain on our journalists’ investigative work and introduce radical transparency”.
Deborah Turness, the Chief Executive of BBC News and Current Affairs, writes:
The exponential growth of manipulated and distorted video means that seeing is no longer believing. Consumers tell us they can no longer trust that the video in their news feeds is real. Which is why we at the BBC must urgently begin to show and share the work we do behind the scenes to check and verify information and video content before it appears on our platforms. All day, every day, the BBC’s news teams are using ever more sophisticated tools, techniques and technology to check and verify videos like the Kremlin drone footage, as well as images and information… but, until now, that work has largely gone on in the background, unseen by audiences.
The implication being presented here is that the BBC’s output is not at fault, but it is our perception of its output that is defective and BBC Verify is designed to correct our misconceptions. It is with circular, or perhaps spurious, reasoning that the BBC chooses not to report on its own decline in trust and then circumvents any discussion of this fact by creating a unit to verify the trustworthiness of content available on other platforms.
Turness kindly provides us with a link to “give people a taste of what Verify will be doing, day in, day out”. The video, presented by BBC Verify editor Ros Atkins, analyses footage of the apparent attack on the Kremlin and one can assume that this is the best current example of the BBC’s forensic capabilities. I would urge readers to view this report and, like the roof of the Kremlin, prepare not to be blown away!
We are informed that BBC Verify will foster the investigative skills and open source intelligence capabilities of around 60 journalists and experts including the specialist ‘disinformation correspondent’ Marianna Spring.
Marianna helps us in the fight for identifying the perpetrators of misinformation online by listing the “seven types of people who start and spread falsehoods”.
Interestingly, Marianna lists politicians, jokers, scammers, conspiracy theorists, insiders, celebrities and even your relatives as people to be wary of, but fails to acknowledge the role of journalists in the dissemination of ‘fake news’. This is despite contemporary research informing us that British people have among the lowest level of trust in journalists, with only 37% of those surveyed saying that they trusted them, versus a global average of 47%. The report states: “That might indicate that developed countries either have people who are more prone to trusting conspiracy theories or they are experienced enough to know when journalists might be lying.”
The BBC offers no evidence that the former theory rather than the latter is more probable, but it is nonetheless working hard to push the former. A demonstration of this push is apparent in the publicity material for Marianna Spring’s podcast series Marianna in Conspiracyland.
The press release for episode six (airs June 19th Radio 4) states: “Marianna is uniquely equipped to navigate Conspiracyland, having found herself on the frontlines of the battle of online disinformation and hate since those early days of the pandemic. She herself has become a frequent target of this movement.”
Does the movement in question include the eminent doctors and scientists whose voices have been censored and ignored by the mainstream?
Will Marianna act impartially, exercise objectivity and engage with these experts? Will she discuss the substantial body of research that counters the mainstream pandemic and vaccine narrative? Will she detail how our Government delayed the release of statistics revealing that “for healthy 40-49 year-olds almost one million booster shots were required to prevent one ‘severe’ hospital admission”? Or the freedom of information releases from Japan and Australia revealing that vaccine trial data indicated widespread multi-organ bio-distribution of vaccine lipid nano-particles? This was known to authorities but not revealed and it runs counter to assurances given to the public at the time.
Surely, this knowledge is essential to obtain informed consent, especially from those at less risk from infection.
Legitimate concerns of deficiencies within the vaccine trials, regulatory failures and widespread data misrepresentation have been either censored or forced to the periphery of debate. It seems improbable that Marianna will take part in any substantive discussion on these issues, as she has already announced her intention, namely to construct a tenable narrative that links the “growing U.K. conspiracy movement and alternative media” to foreign, far-Right groups and ‘hate’.
To appreciate the ultimate purpose of this podcast and the underlying intention of BBC Verify, we must refer back to James Harding’s comment in 2016 when he intimated that the BBC was unable to fulfil its desire to “edit the internet”. Since then, much has changed; mechanisms that curtail the exchange of information between law-abiding citizens are now well established via the Trusted News initiative (TNI).
The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) is a partnership founded by the BBC in 2019. According to the press release:
TNI members work together to build audience trust and to find solutions to tackle challenges of disinformation. By including media organisations and social media platforms, it is the only forum in the world of its kind designed to take on disinformation in real time.
The public interest argument presented is that the TNI is essential “to protect audiences and users from disinformation, particularly around moments of jeopardy”.
A very basic question regarding this initiative by the BBC remains undetermined, namely: by what authority does the BBC exercise the power to create the TNI? The BBC Charter clearly states: “The BBC must be independent in all matters concerning the fulfilment of its Mission and the promotion of the Public Purposes, particularly as regards to editorial and creative decisions… and in the management of its affairs.”
The charter makes no exception to this rule. One cannot be “independent in all matters” whilst also engaging in discussions about media content with a vast network of international news providers and social media platforms. Currently the partners are listed as: AP, AFP, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Facebook, Financial Times, First Draft, Google/YouTube, the Hindu, Microsoft, Reuters and Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter and the Washington Post.
When our national broadcaster creates an international media partnership whose collective perspective is formed through the lens of official guidance then it becomes less able to fulfil its democratic function: to hold officialdom to account. This partnership makes a mockery of the notion of media plurality and the damage to our democratic values is confounded by its inconspicuous nature.
The editorial independence of the BBC also comes into question when it defines health disinformation as any view that runs counter to official guidance. By taking this stance it becomes unable or unwilling to act as an arbiter of truth in its own right. If the BBC only defines truth via the diktats of Government agencies then its role becomes that of an intermediary, like an arm of Government, acting in a similar fashion to a state broadcaster.
For a damning example of how the TNI creates bias within our media, listen to the story of Mr. John Watt outlined in this video.
His experience of severe vaccine injury is purged from the internet by multiple platforms. Consequently, his voice and access to communications via the internet are restricted. Of equal importance, a challenge to the unscientific mantra of ‘safe and effective’ is removed from the discourse. John’s story is not disinformation and this type of censorship acts in opposition to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 is clear: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
The question of whether media platforms have the right to censor speech and ban people from communicating will become highly irrelevant once the Online Safety Bill and the EU Digital Services Act become law. Once this happens, Article 19 of the Declaration of Human Rights looks set to be of limited help.
The BBC should not be coordinating a publicity campaign that falsely implies the only speech these laws will affect are those of far-Right groups, purveyors of ‘hate’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’.
The public deserve a more thorough analysis of how the proposed limits to their communication will remove an essential balance within our society. When diverse voices are supressed, truth and transparency are often the first victims. It is this suppression of ‘unapproved’ viewpoints that has fuelled the rise in alternative media. If the BBC is to regain trust, it should set a path to a return to impartiality.
Shiraz Akram is a member of the Thinking Coalition, a pro-liberty group, highlighting and questioning Government overreach.
Suspended for Providing Balanced News on Ukraine
By Tony Kevin | Consortium News | June 13, 2023
Canberra – On Friday The Guardian Australia website carried a news report, with a follow-up piece on Monday, whose implications for free speech are profoundly disturbing.
They concern a Radio New Zealand, or RNZ, broadcasting employee — unnamed, but everyone in the small New Zealand broadcasting world will soon know who it is — who has been placed on leave while their professional conduct is investigated. Obviously, a career hangs in the balance.
The malign ghosts of Orwell’s 1984 stalk this story.
‘Russian Garbage’
This unnamed person in RNZ committed the cardinal sin of “inappropriate editing” of incoming Reuters news feeds on the war in Ukraine to insert “Russian garbage” in the contemptuous words of Paul Thompson, chief executive of RNZ. That is to say, they drew on Russian news sources to insert balancing pro-Russian material to the incoming Western news agency feeds.
The Guardian tells us that in fact accurate information about Ukraine was added to the Reuters copy:
“The articles in question made a range of amendments: adding the word ‘coup’ to describe the Maidan revolution; changing a description of Ukraine’s former ‘pro-Russian president’ to read ‘pro-Russian elected government’; adding references to a ‘pro-western government’ that had ‘suppressed ethnic Russians’; and on several occasions adding references to Russian concerns about ‘neo-Nazi elements’ in Ukraine.”
And more truth was added to the story, The Guardian says:
“In one article, a paragraph was added reading: ‘The Kremlin also said its invasion was sparked by a failure to implement the Minsk agreement peace accords, designed to give Russia speakers autonomy and protection, and the rise of a neo-Nazi element in Ukraine since a coup ousted a Russian-friendly Ukrainian government in 2014.’
Another added that Russia launched its invasion ‘claiming that a US-backed coup in 2014 with the help of neo-Nazis had created a threat to its borders and had ignited a civil war that saw Russian-speaking minorities persecuted.’”
This, it seems, is an offence not to be countenanced any longer in New Zealand. “An RNZ spokesperson, John Barr, said in a statement after the first article came to public attention that ‘RNZ is taking the issue extremely seriously and is investigating how the situation arose,’” the newspaper wrote.
The Guardian, in its effort to “correct” the story, says: “Ukraine says these claims are discredited Kremlin propaganda … The anti-corruption movement was peaceful and had widespread public support. Yanukovych fled to Russia months later after his security forces shot dead more than 100 unarmed protesters.”
[Consortium News has published numerous stories laying out the facts of the events of 2014, including these two exhaustively corroborated accounts: On the Influence of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine and Evidence of US-Backed Coup in Kiev]
‘Gutted’
The RNZ executive Thompson was “gutted” to learn what has been going on under his watch. We read that 250 past published articles have been gone through “with a finetooth comb” to investigate and counter such offensive inserted material, and thousands more are being reviewed.
Sixteen such offending articles have been found and warning commentaries added to them. Investigations continue while the staffer remains indefinitely suspended. The responsible minister is being briefed. Clearly these editors have not delved very deeply into the Ukraine story.
Luke Harding’s Involvement
Both Guardian articles carry a tagline that says “Additional reporting by Luke Harding.” This should be a key warning to everyone in New Zealand’s and Australia’s broadcasting world, indeed in the entire English-speaking world.
Harding carries a formidable reputation as an inveterate anti-Russian British journalist with alleged strong links to the U.K. anti-Russian disinformation system and even to MI6, the U.K.’s secret intelligence service.
He was heavily involved in the Julian Assange affair and in the now discredited campaign to label former U.S. President Donald Trump as under Russian control. He is known as a leading Western disinformation warrior.
Normal Editorial Practice
Australian Broadcasting Company journalists edit incoming feeds from Reuters and other wire services all the time. They add context, link to previous stories, add Australian-relevant material.
The problem is, this person in RNZ was adding such context from the “wrong ‘side.’”
The ABC has long been exposed as an obedient servant of the U.S.-dominated Five Eyes intelligence network and runs along approved anti-Russian and anti-Chinese editorial lines. RNZ, by contrast, is still widely respected in New Zealand. But it committed the sin of allowing counter-perspectives to be heard on the responsibility for the present tragic war in Ukraine.
Read the two Guardian articles to see what exactly Harding in London and his colleagues in U.K. disinformation appear to be objecting to. It sends a strong message across the Tasman Sea, from New Zealand to the Australian media world: We watch every word you say and every word you write.
Cancelled for the Same Thought Crimes
The examples of journalistic misconduct identified in the two articles match exactly research and opinions on the historical context and causes of the war in Ukraine and mounting Russia-West tensions that I have been trying to express publicly in Australia as an expert former senior diplomat since publication of my book Return to Moscow in 2017.
As a result I have been cancelled, unpersoned, silenced — dropped down the Australia Broadcasting Company memory hole, never to be allowed on its airwaves again.
An innocuous interview I conducted from Moscow with Paul Barclay for the respected ABC program “Big Ideas” in February 2022 was “disarchived” — yes, you read it right — a few weeks later, under pressure from unidentified critics.
Ukraine is Losing
The war in Ukraine now winds steadily towards its inevitable pro-Russian denouement. Russia clearly has the military edge and this will not change now. Billions of dollars’ worth of supplied U.S./NATO equipment continues to be destroyed in combat.
In suicidal offensives ordered by the doomed Zelensky regime in Kiev, an estimated half a million Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or crippled since February 2022. [Exact casualty figures are very hard to come by]. Many more proxy warriors will die in coming weeks as this brutal war of attrition demanded by the U.S. and NATO continues to destroy what is left of poor Ukraine.
Australians and New Zealanders with naïve faith in the professional integrity of their national broadcasters will continue to be insulated from these tragic truths.
Fortunately, for those who dare to read them, there are now plenty of accessible reliable sources of alternative perspectives on Russia-West relations and the pivotal importance of the war in Ukraine in transforming the world. This world now looks very different from outside the Western laager. We are in the midst of huge global changes.
But, thanks to the likes of Harding and his Anglo-American friends, we won’t find such information anywhere on the ABC or RNZ. We Antipodeans in the colonies will be the last to know.
Tony Kevin is a former Australian senior diplomat, having served as ambassador to Cambodia and Poland, as well as being posted to Australia’s embassy in Moscow. He is the author of six published books on public policy and international relations.
Related:
CNN Admitted That Kiev Lost Around 15% Of Its Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles In A Week
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 12, 2023
Kiev’s NATO–backed counteroffensive is off to a rough start after losing around 15% of its Bradley infantry fighting vehicles in a week according to CNN’s latest report. The outlet cited a Dutch open-source intelligence website that’s collected visual evidence of each side’s military equipment losses since the start of Russia’s special operation. While Ukrainian supporters are celebrating the recapture of some long-contested villages along the Line of Contact, these were pyrrhic victories considering the costs.
The first line of Russia’s multilayered defenses in the Zaporozhye Region has yet to even be reached, which suggests that Kiev’s already very high losses will likely spike the closer that its forces get to there. Russia’s Ministry of Defense earlier shared footage showing some of the same Bradley vehicles that CNN later confirmed were indeed destroyed, which also included a German Leopard tank. Observers should therefore assume that there’s truth to Moscow’s claims that some of the latter were destroyed too.
Kiev’s loss of such American and German “wunderwaffen” was to be expected since it was never realistic that either piece of equipment would reshape the military-strategic dynamics of the NATO-Russian “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” that have been trending in Moscow’s favor since the start of this year. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian and Western publics were misled by their governments’ information warfare campaigns into pinning their hopes of victory on those two and others.
The deep disappointment that they’d inevitably feel after seeing footage of them being destroyed by their opponents explains why Kiev released a propaganda video last week urging everyone to remain tight-lipped about the counteroffensive and not to share any unconfirmed claims about it. This narrative context makes it all the more surprising that CNN just informed their global audience that Ukraine lost around one out of every seven Bradley vehicles before it even reached the first line of Russia’s defenses.
Kiev will obviously be displeased by this, but there isn’t anything that it can do in response. According to Semafor, the regime has already threatened, revoked, or denied the credentials of Western journalists in the country over their coverage of this conflict, including CNN’s. That outlet’s latest report, however, was derived from third-party open-source intelligence and not its own sources on the ground. In fact, CNN might even have published it as a form of protest against Kiev’s censorship of its journalists.
After all, they usually toe the Western line on this conflict, which is why their report stands out so much. CNN didn’t have to inform their global audience about the scale of Kiev’s losses thus far just one week into the counteroffensive and contrary to that side’s demand not to share any unconfirmed claims. For this reason, it can be seen not only as an act of protest against Kiev, but also against that regime’s Western patrons who support their proxy’s censorship of foreign journalists like CNN’s by their silence.
Kiev and its patrons should therefore have expected that some of these same Western outlets whose journalists’ work the regime impeded would eventually rebel and do so in a way that embarrasses them. Both would have preferred for proof of these “wunderwaffens’” destruction to be kept under wraps, but now there’s no denying this after CNN’s latest report. They can’t reflexively claim that this is “Russian propaganda” either since no Westerner believes that this outlet is under Moscow’s control.
The public’s artificially manufactured hopes that the Bradley vehicles and Leopard tanks would lead to a speedy victory for Kiev have thus been shattered, but most will likely cope with this by taking false comfort in the recapture of some long-contested villages. Those whose eyes have finally been opened by CNN’s surprising report, however, might rightly fear what could happen in the event of a direct NATO-Russian conflict since it’s clear that the West can’t rely on these “wunderwaffen” to win.
Poland refutes Nord Stream sabotage claim
RT | June 11, 2023
Poland had nothing to do with last September’s explosions on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, high-ranking security official Stanislaw Zaryn has stated. Reports alleging Warsaw had a role in the sabotage are aimed at distracting the public’s attention from what actually happened, he added.
On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal claimed that German investigators were seeking to establish if Poland was somehow involved in the attack on the undersea pipelines, built to deliver Russian natural gas to Europe via Germany.
According to the paper, officials in Berlin suggested that Ukrainian saboteurs could have used the country as an operational base before the explosions. They reached this assumption based on the fact the Andromeda yacht, which could have been used in the attack, had been chartered through a Ukrainian-owned travel agency in Warsaw, and that the suspects arrived at a German port, where they boarded the vessel on a van with Polish license plates, the report claimed.
“Poland had no connection with the blowing up of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2,” Zaryn wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
Attempts to link Poland to those events are “baseless,” the official, serves as Secretary of State in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland and as acting deputy of the minister coordinator of Special Services, insisted.
The recent spreading of theories on who might have destroyed a key component of Europe’s energy infrastructure “resembles the tactics of information noise, the aim of which is to distort the true picture of events,” he argued.
“The hypothesis that the blow-up was committed by Russia, which had the motive and the ability to carry out such an operation, remains valid,” Zaryn said.
Russia has repeatedly denied accusations made by some in the West that it blew up its own pipelines. It has also rejected claims that a “pro-Ukrainian” group was responsible for the sabotage, saying such stories were aimed at distracting attention from a bombshell article by veteran reporter Seymour Hersh, who insisted in February that Nord Stream had been destroyed by American operatives.
According to an informed source who talked to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the explosives were planted on the pipelines in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the cover of a NATO exercise and detonated two months later on the order of US President Joe Biden.
What are UFO Disclosure Gatekeepers Acclimating the Public To?
By Susan A. Manewich and Jefferey Jaxen | IET Evolve | June 10, 2023
The public received another drop of military intelligence agency-led ‘disclosure’ this week. Vetting the story was, well, impossible. Why? Because it’s classified.
Unlike whistleblowers like Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, both revealing actual evidence, David Grusch’s ‘whistleblowing’ storytelling and ‘evidence’ are two different things altogether.
Grusch is alleging there is a secret UFO retrieval program.
Interviewer, “Do we have bodies? Do we have species?” Grusch replies, “When you recover something that has either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots.”
Interviewer asks, “We have spacecraft from another species?” Grusch replies, “Yes, we do.”
Was he (Grusch) part of that program? No.
Did he (Grusch) see the craft or bodies himself? No.
Grusch says, “we’re definitely not alone.”
There are two major points here; first is the continuity of media chosen to release these type of stories and second is the progression of a narrative through the same media sources.
Breaking the story first on June 5th, in written form, was Leslie Keane and Ralph Blumenthal. It was NewsNation who did the first sit-down recorded interview of Grusch, also released on the same day with a pre-recorded appearance by Keane. Coincidently on the same day, June 5th, a live panel discussion at one of the largest UFO conferences in the world also picked up the story and excitedly integrated it into their segment with Danny Sheehan and Richard Dolan giving a live synopsis.
NewsNation claimed they have not seen or verified the alleged proof Grusch claims he provided to investigators. They also state that Grusch has not seen photos of the alleged craft himself but has talked extensively with other intelligence officials who have.
Keane and Blumenthal were the journalists who kicked off the intelligence agency-led ‘disclosure’ in their co-authored article which appeared in the NY Times on December 16, 2017 titled Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program which featured former Pentagon official Lue Elizondo.
Then, three days later, CNN added to the intelligence agency-led ‘disclosure’ on December 19, 2017. “My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone,” says Lue Elizondo.
So who is NewsNation? Owned by Nexstar Media Group, America’s largest local TV and media company boasting a record $1.26 billion in first quarter revenue of 2023, NewsNation is also the platform the untrusted former CNN notable Chris Cuomo now leads. There is a continuity of media shepherding the story throughout the past six years. Albeit, the facing organizations of it have changed.
Elizondo’s statement in 2017 “My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone.” And Grusch in 2023, “we’re definitely not alone” hint at the building of a narrative in lockstep.
Embedded within this current disclosure narrative are both subtle and not so subtle directives. First, if we don’t know what is ‘out there,’ the military, and by extension, the public must treat it as a threat. Second, the focus should be on the mechanistic and materialist aspects of this phenomena, nothing more because that’s what the military is looking at. How does it maneuver? What material are they made of? Can we back-engineer it?
Are forces at work crafting this narrowly defined disclosure narrative?
Keane said in an interview three days after the Grusch story was released, “It’s a matter of strategically bringing out aspects one step at a time and letting people acclimate to that.”
That sounds like gatekeeping of information.
Who’s making the decisions to strategically pick and choose what parts of this huge story the public gets to ‘acclimate to?’ And to what is the public acclimating? Acclimating to this type of narrative of disclosure? The words used, whom they are from and the authoritative voice has an ongoing psychological impact to how the public formulates their thoughts, emotions and values approaching the UFO and ET conversation.
If we are being told that now these flood gates have opened and individuals within the government and ex government want transparency for the American people around this topic, because the public “has a right to know” why the strategic drip on a narrow perspective?
The fallout from this story particularly has seen several credible journalists and pundits checking basic due diligence and scrutiny at the door to parrot stories and talking points from intelligence agencies that have been rightfully discredited in previous reporting of the last few years, sometimes by their own hand.
Things the current military intelligence agency-led ‘disclosure’ doesn’t seem to want to address at this stage, is that there is a long history of the U.S. government actively working to discredit and neutralize researchers and citizen information around these topics.
And what about the large community of people around the world who have multifaceted experiences of contact with these alleged craft and intelligence which the government has actively sought to disrupt, ignore, and ridicule?
Furthermore, what about individuals who, in some cases, speculate that it has been the U.S. government itself responsible for the negative abduction experiences American citizens have reported?
Whipping up humanity into fear of a purportedly unknown, uncontrollable threat that could appear at any moment from anywhere poses a greater, more immediate concern. As evidenced from the pandemic response of the last three years, there is now a well-trained reflex from the political, scientific and military communities, acting in concert, to lockdown populations and suspend civil liberties, Constitutional rights and wage all-out psychological and information warfare on their populations at the hint of any threat you are told is dangerous.
Is there another lens to view this subject matter from besides fear and threat? Besides technology and material from the craft?
In the 2018 book Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness & Contact with Non-Human Intelligence several PhD researchers surveyed thousands of people around the globe who claimed to have contact with non-human intelligences and they paint a very different picture than what the slow drip of disclosure is attempting. The respondents overall main points were that, the planet is energetically changing and so are us human beings as a species. Our consciousness is primary. The capacity to heal ourselves from fear and traumas and to spiral up to a more loving species is necessary for this next phase in humanity’s evolution. Beings that many people reported in their encounters were teachers assisting in guiding this evolutionary process.
When you look up at the sky, do you think about the government first? Do you fear human beings are no longer top of the food chain in a predatory system? Or is your wonderment still intact towards something infinite, beautiful and expansive where you are a part of this next phase in co-creation?
A Western Media Outlet Just Exposed Kiev’s Propaganda Machine
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 8, 2023
Semafor is a Western online media outlet co-founded by Ben Smith and Justin B. Smith, whose claim to fame are that they used to be the founding editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News and the former CEO of Bloomberg Media. Neither they nor their joint platform can credibly be accused of being so-called “Russian agents” or “Russian propaganda”, which is important to remember when reading Ben’s recent piece that dives deep “Inside the high-stakes clash for control of Ukraine’s story”.
He exposed the dark truth about Kiev’s infowar operations that cynics have long suspected. Ben revealed that “Articles and broadcasts from outlets including NBC News, The New York Times, CNN, The New Yorker, and the Ukrainian digital broadcaster Hromadske have led to journalists having their credentials threatened, revoked, or denied over charges they’ve broken rules imposed by Ukrainian minders.” He also cited sources who spoke anonymously due to fear of having their press credentials revoked.
The other important part of Ben’s piece was when he informed readers that “[Ukraine’s] military press office vets journalists and issues passes which allow them to travel to certain areas, often with press handlers, and to interview officials, after signing a document stating that journalists will abide by rules outlined by the military.” Kiev quite clearly doesn’t believe in freedom of the press, which the West claims is sacred, yet its state patrons looked the other way out of narrative convenience until recently.
In late April, Politico cited unnamed Biden Administration officials who expressed concern about the potential consequences if the Western public’s expectations of Kiev’s NATO–backed counteroffensive aren’t met. The only reason why they were unrealistically high to begin with, however, was precisely because the US turned a blind eye to Kiev churning out countless pieces of propaganda through the control that it exerts over foreign media.
Efforts have since been made to bring Western perceptions closer to reality, but they might be too little too late to make much of a difference for some people after the psychological damage was already done. Moreover, the root cause of the problem still hasn’t been resolved and might never be. If Ukraine began telling the truth about the NATO-Russian proxy war, then there’d likely be a serious crisis of confidence among its people and throughout the rest of the West more broadly.
The Washington Post gave readers a glimpse of just how poorly Kiev’s forces are faring in their detailed report that was published in mid-March, which illustrated the logistical and organizational challenges that still remained despite the over $165 billion that their side received from NATO. For as informative as it is, this piece of journalism represented the exception rather than the rule. In general, Westerners have been fed nothing but propaganda about this conflict since the start of Russia’s special operation.
That’s a problem for anyone in those countries who cares about how their taxpayer funds are being spent. It’s important for the public to be accurately apprised of the progress in this proxy war in order to determine whether it’s worth financing indefinitely. Furthermore, they shouldn’t have been gaslighted about “politically inconvenient” facts such as the prevalence of Nazi symbols among Kiev’s fighters by being told that it’s “Russian propaganda” until the New York Times just ran a story proving that it’s true.
Slowly but surely, Westerners are becoming aware that mostly everything they’d hitherto thought about this proxy war was the result of literal propaganda. They might still support Kiev’s cause in principle for whatever their personal reasons may be, but they’re increasingly unlikely to take whatever positive news they hear about it at face value like before. People will start questioning everything more, which is a positive trend that every honest person should appreciate.
Top 5 completely absurd lies about Russia since SMO started
By Drago Bosnic | June 8, 2023
Russophobia and anti-Russian propaganda run very deep, particularly in the political West. For centuries, various European invaders have been portraying Russia in the worst possible light. Over time, this became extremely intricate and even found its way into the mainstream. However, more recently, particularly since the start of the special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine, Russophobic propaganda became completely absurd. Choosing the top 5 of these certainly wasn’t an easy task, as the amount of ludicrous claims is absolutely mind-boggling. From the “Ghost of Kiev” and “the last stand of the Snake Island defenders” to pickle jar air defenses and the “Goat of Kiev”, you get a pretty good idea of just how laborious such a task could’ve been. However, in terms of being completely devoid of any logic, here are the top 5, in chronological order.
Russia destroys its own Nord Stream pipelines
According to the “free press”, on September 26, 2022, Moscow was extremely bored with all the windfall coming from rising natural gas prices, so it decided to blow up its Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines after spending the previous 17 years building them. Interestingly, Russia decided to do this only a day after Poland and Norway opened the Nord Stream’s primary competitor, the Baltic Pipe, running through Denmark and bringing in gas from the North Sea. Obviously, in order to make the task more difficult, but also more fun, Russia decided to conduct the attack within the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of Denmark and Sweden, instead of its own.
For months, various “conspiracy theorists” kept claiming that Russia didn’t actually destroy its own pipelines. However, the “free press” had “conclusive evidence” that the “cartoonishly evil Kremlin”, previously accused of “weaponizing” its vast energy reserves against the European Union, decided to destroy it and help the US profit immensely from the EU’s weaning off Russian natural gas. US President Joe Biden openly threatening to destroy Nord Stream, as well as Victoria Nuland’s snarky boastfulness about the pipelines becoming “a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea” mean absolutely nothing and are just Russian propaganda.
The destruction of its own pipelines came approximately a month after some in the EU suggested using the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to increase Russian energy imports and also “coincided perfectly” with the manifold surge in US LNG shipments to the EU, which surpassed Russian natural gas deliveries for the very first time. This resulted in even the usually compliant Brussels bureaucrats complaining that the US is engaged in war profiteering.
Russia blows up the Crimean Bridge
On October 8, the “evil dictator Putin” was sick and tired of seeing the Crimean Bridge whole, so he decided to blow it up. Unfortunately, the men he entrusted this task with failed and managed to “only” partially damage the bridge which is crucial for Russian logistics. Once again, in order to make it more fun, Putin ordered the saboteurs to try and reach Crimea through Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia, then go through southern Russia and reach the bridge from the east. Repeated snarky remarks by Zelensky’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak who boasted about the attack, as well as similar statements from the Kiev regime’s Defense Ministry and even Zelensky himself were just another piece of Russian propaganda and they could never in any way implicate anyone else.
Russia wants to irradiate itself by attacking the Zaporozhye NPP
After Russian forces took over the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (NPP), “evil Putin” realized that his troops there didn’t have much to do, so he decided to order the nearby Russian artillery unit to start shelling their own comrades in the NPP. Apparently, this was the only way to extract the sensitive US nuclear technologies from there, as Russia lacks such advanced high-tech due to its extremely underdeveloped nuclear energy industry. According to undeniably truthful reporting by the “free press”, Russian shelling is ongoing as President Putin wants to make sure his forces there also get irradiated in case of a catastrophic detonation of one or all reactors. The only reason this hasn’t happened yet is the chronic lack of shells and the poor precision of the Russian artillerymen.
Russia regularly attacks itself with drones
The escalating drone attacks across western parts of Russia, including the capital city of Moscow, clearly cannot be the fault of its neighbor to the southwest. Which begs the question of where do these mysterious unmanned flying machines come from? Once again, the only logical conclusion could be President Putin’s unrelenting boredom. Because Moscow is too safe, this significantly amplifies the monotony, resulting in the Russian president’s orders for repeated attacks on the capital city. This is also a good way to make sure Russian air defense units in and around Moscow have something to do. However, Putin might have gone a bit too far recently, as he ordered a drone strike on the Kremlin and possibly on himself. The “free press” reports that this might have something to do with his rapidly deteriorating physical and mental health, as clearly indicated by the way Putin sits and places his hands.
Russia blows up its own dam in order to flood itself
On the morning of June 6, Russia realized it has had enough of the Kakhovka dam being too whole, so it decided to blow it up. The “evil Kremlin” went ahead with this plan after realizing it would result in catastrophic flooding of the areas under its control and also endanger hundreds of defensive positions of the Russian military. In addition, the water supply for Crimea is now at risk, once again clearly implying that Putin had every reason to order the destruction of the dam, as Crimeans were obviously too bored with all the water they’ve been getting since the Northern Crimean Canal was reactivated. Another important piece of evidence pointing to Moscow is that this also endangers the Zaporozhye NPP, which Russia clearly wants to destroy in order to irradiate itself (see point four).
However, although several Kiev regime’s top officials, such as Major General Andriy Kovalchuk, stated they’ve been planning to attack Kakhovka and even conducted “test strikes”, this is obviously just Russian propaganda by rabidly pro-Kremlin outlets such as the Washington Post. Interestingly, some Western analysts and experts, particularly those from the “free press” such as CNN and NBC have suggested this might have something to do with Russia finally acknowledging that the Normandy landings were much more important than the Eastern Front during the Second World War, as the event “coincided” with the 79th anniversary of the D-Day.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Featured Video
Israelis SUDDENLY Mass Deported From Many Countries
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Elite Western universities are a corrupt, parasitic empire
Instead of high-quality education, these institutions are fostering a global neo-feudal system reminiscent of the British Raj
By Dr. Mathew Maavak | RT | May 30, 2025
In a move that has ignited a global uproar, US President Donald Trump banned international students from Harvard University, citing “national security” and ideological infiltration. The decision, which has been widely condemned by academics and foreign governments alike, apparently threatens to undermine America’s “intellectual leadership and soft power.” At stake is not just Harvard’s global appeal, but the very premise of open academic exchange that has long defined elite higher education in the US.
But exactly how ‘open’ is Harvard’s admissions process? Every year, highly qualified students – many with top-tier SAT or GMAT test scores – are rejected, often with little explanation. Critics argue that behind the prestigious Ivy League brand lies an opaque system shaped by legacy preferences, DEI imperatives, geopolitical interests, and outright bribes. George Soros, for instance, once pledged $1 billion to open up elite university admissions to drones who would read from his Open Society script.
China’s swift condemnation of Trump’s policy added a layer of geopolitical irony to the debate. Why would Beijing feign concern for “America’s international standing” amid a bitter trade war? The international standing of US universities has long been tarnished by a woke psychosis which spread like cancer to all branches of the government.
So, what was behind China’s latest gripe? ... continue
Blog Roll
Recent Comments
loongtip on Report warns that ‘Jewish terr… Craig Nelms on New study shows that toxic gas… loongtip on A Funny Thing Happened on the… loongtip on EU free trade pact on hold as… John Edward Kendrick on Regime Change In Iran Is The F… Bill Francis on Australia Passes New Hate Spee… seversonebcfb985d9 on Australia Passes New Hate Spee… Bill Francis on Britain’s AI Policing Plan Tur… loongtip on Miami Beach Resident Questione… loongtip on Israeli agricultural export co… loongtip on The War On Free Speech In Aust… seversonebcfb985d9 on Scott Ritter Hiding the Domina…
Aletho News- Jordan using Israeli software to monitor journalists, rights defenders: Report
- Israelis SUDDENLY Mass Deported From Many Countries
- Peace Plan Phase 2 Without Phase 1: Can the US Really Bring Peace to Gaza?
- Hamas: Netanyahu’s inclusion in ‘peace council’ threatens justice
- Report warns that ‘Jewish terrorism is out of control’ and could lead to major security escalation
- Lebanese Resistance will inevitably triumph: Former President Lahoud
- Iran: The Eurasian Lock
- Russian gas exports to China soar – data
- France seizes tanker ‘coming from Russia’
- European leaders’ shift in their Davos addresses exposes Europe’s strategic anxiety
- If Americans Knew
- War criminal Netanyahu kills 11 in Gaza, joins Board of Peace – Not a ceasefire Day 104
- Another baby dies of cold in Gaza, as Rafah crossing remains locked down – Not a ceasefire Day 103
- Brutal Beatings, Arson, and Impunity: A Palestinian Plant Nursery Becomes a Target for Settler Pogroms
- On Iran’s protests, Israeli hypocrisy knows no limits
- A Cease-fire for Israelis and a War for Palestinians
- ‘When will Baba come back?’ Gaza’s widows and orphans struggle to survive
- Genocide research institute levels accusations against Germany for denying Israel’s genocide against Palestinians
- Over 1,200 Israeli truce violations in Gaza – Not a ceasefire Day 102
- Trump has created a monster: Gaza Board of Peace – Not a ceasefire Day 101
- As world leaders squabble over controlling Gaza, another baby freezes to death – Not a ceasefire Day 100
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Sea Levels Rose 20 Times The Modern Rate During The Roman Warm Period
- As German Gas Storage Dips Dangerously Low…Shortage Hardly Avoidable
- New Study: Brazil’s Relative Sea Level Was 2+ Meters Higher And SSTs 3-4°C Warmer 6000 Years Ago
- Philosopher Schopenhauer: Climate Science Certainty Stems From Stupidity, Ignorance
- New Study: Species Extinction Rates Declining Since 1980 – ‘Climate Change Is Not An Important Threat’
- Denmark Places Climate Protection Above Animal Welfare, Poisoning And Culling Cows
- New Study: Greenland Was 3-7°C Warmer And Far Less Glaciated Than Today 6000-8000 Years Ago
- German Media Report That Current Frigid Weather Can Be Explained By Arctic Warming!
- Berlin Blackout Shows Germany’s $5 Trillion Green Scheme Is “Left-Green Ideological Pipe Dream”
- Modeling Error In Estimating How Clouds Affect Climate Is 8700% Larger Than Alleged CO2 Forcing
Aletho News 