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BBC fights ‘fake news’ with fake Twitter accounts

RT | May 23, 2023

A journalist with the British broadcaster’s new fact-checking spinoff BBC Verify has admitted to deploying multiple fake Twitter accounts to combat “disinformation.”

In a segment broadcast on Saturday, BBC “disinformation correspondent” Marianna Spring warned the audience that “mistruths can cause really serious harm to societies and the people in them.” She then revealed she had set up multiple “undercover accounts” on Twitter for the BBC’s Americast broadcast, each one representing different political views so as to better “interrogate” the viewpoints of the network’s target audience.

While the deception was portrayed as an attempt to “understand polarization online” by observing a cross-section of what kind of content social media platforms are recommending to different demographics, all three “characters” were white women. Emma, a 25-year-old atheist graphic designer with a “live-in partner” based in New York City, hails from the “progressive left.” Britney, a recently-divorced 50-year-old mother of three living in Houston, comes from the “populist right” and works as a school secretary. Gabriela, 44, a married mother of three who moonlights as a nanny, is cast as a “stressed sideliner.”

The graphics surrounding the fake profiles suggested a presence across Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, though the network stopped short of revealing its sock-puppets’ usernames. Twitter explicitly forbids using the platform to “artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience or platform manipulation defenses,” and most other social media platforms have similar policies.

According to the BBC, its Verify division consists of a team of 60 “forensic journalists and expert talent” from within the network, tasked with “fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation, analyzing data, and – crucially – explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth.”

The BBC got a £20 million ($24.13 million) shot in the arm from the UK government earlier this year specifically to “counter disinformation,” with Foreign Secretary James Cleverly hailing the network as “the world’s most trusted international broadcaster.”

However, critics have called out the BBC for putting out what they claim are heavily biased and outright fabricated stories, particularly with regard to the conflict in Ukraine, even while the network continues to portray “disinformation” as the exclusive province of Russian media.

The network has nurtured the careers of ‘Russian bot’ hunters like the Atlantic Council alumnus Ben Nimmo, who has made a livelihood out of reclassifying genuine political dissent as “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” and having its practitioners deplatformed as state operatives. The BBC has also hosted government-controlled journalists tasked with waging information warfare against Russia, while its “charitable” arm, BBC Media Action, engaged in covert operations designed to “weaken the Russian state’s influence” in the Balkans.

May 23, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

THE UNVACCINATED | “Nobody is Safe!”

Matt Orfalea | May 21, 2023

Original: https://youtu.be/zI3yU5Z2adI

May 23, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Poll finds disconnect between US public and media

RT | May 22, 2023

Most Americans believe the ‘Russiagate’ investigation of Donald Trump was based on lies and that President Joe Biden’s family engaged in influence-peddling crimes, a new Harvard CAPS-Harris poll has shown, suggesting that legacy media outlets have failed to sway public opinion.

The poll, released on Friday, found that 56% of US voters believe the claim that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election was a “false story.” The same percentage believe the Steele dossier, which was the basis for an FBI investigation of Trump’s campaign, was false.

Nearly seven in ten respondents said they weren’t surprised that the Durham Report, released earlier this month, found that the FBI violated its own standards in starting the Trump-Russia investigation and became a funnel for “disinformation” from Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Likewise, 70% of voters are concerned about interference by the FBI and intelligence agencies in US presidential elections, and 71% believe the federal government needs “wide-ranging reform” to prevent such meddling.

CNN and other US media outlets hyped the Trump-Russia collusion allegations for three years and downplayed last week’s release of the Durham Report, calling the special prosecutor’s findings about the FBI a “whole big nothing.” Just before voters went to the polls in 2020, media outlets amplified claims by former US intelligence officials that a bombshell report on alleged influence-peddling by Biden’s family – sourced to a laptop computer that Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had abandoned at a repair shop – was based on “Russian disinformation.”

The Harvard CAPS-Harris poll found that 63% of voters believe Hunter Biden engaged in illegal influence-peddling and tax evasion, while 53% think Joe Biden was involved in the alleged criminal operation when he was vice president, according to the Harvard CAPS-Harris poll. Most voters (55%) also believe that the FBI and the US Department of Justice aren’t really investigating the Biden family’s alleged corruption, and 59% think the Russian disinformation claim was false.

Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald said the poll illustrated how “radically out of touch” liberal corporate media was with the views of Americans. He added that major media outlets were not only pushing narratives that Americans didn’t believe, but also didn’t permit the majority’s views to be heard.

The poll found other troubling opinions on Biden’s 2024 election prospects. Nearly two-thirds of voters (65%) believe Biden is showing signs that he’s too old to be president, while 57% have doubts about his mental fitness, and 61% think he wouldn’t make it through a second term.

Trump is the current frontrunner for the Republican Party’s 2024 nomination and is widening his lead over Biden in a hypothetical rematch. Harvard CAPS-Harris poll found that voters favor the former president over his successor by a 47%-40% margin, up from a five-point lead last month. If Vice President Kamala Harris is the Democratic Party’s nominee, Trump is favored by a 50%-39% margin.

May 22, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

The Western Media Disinformation Campaign: Fall of Bakhmut, a case in point

By Gilbert Doctorow | May 21, 2023

Our language is in constant evolution. Partly this is bottom up, from the inventiveness of creative personalities or writers for commercial advertising. Partly it is top down, from the powers that be as they seek to manipulate and control the thought processes of the broad public.

My brief essay today addresses the latter phenomenon and the introduction of the word “disinformation” into common parlance. There is a charming freshness to it, unlike the stale and repugnant word “propaganda.”

The word “disinformation” has a specific context in time and intent: it is used by the powers that be and by the mainstream media they control to denigrate, marginalize and suppress sources of military, political, economic and other information that might contradict the official government narrative and so dilute the control exercised by those in power over the general population. It is to remove “disinformation” from public life that the United States and EU member states ban RT and other Russian media outlets from the internet, from satellite and cable television channels. The censorship here in Europe varies from country to country and is probably most drastic in France and Germany. One would think that these European states are truly at war with Russia, not just giving a helping hand to Kiev.

In reality, it is these censorious states and the mass media that carry their messages with stenographic precision into print and electronic dissemination who are the ones that day after day feed disinformation to the public. It is cynically composed and consists of a toxic blend of ‘spin,’ by which is meant misleading interpretation of events, and outright lies.

The many months long battle for the provincial Donbas city of Bakhmut, or Artyomovsk as it is known in Russia, has been described variously from on high in Washington, London and Berlin. When the likely outcome was unclear, the defense of Bakhmut was called heroic and demonstrative of the brave fighting spirit of the Ukrainians.

Casualty figures issued by Kiev and then trumpeted from Washington suggested that the Russians were stupidly throwing away the lives of their fighting men by using WWI style human waves of attackers who were decimated by the defenders. Russian lives are cheap was the message. The fact that Russian artillery on site outnumbered and outperformed Ukrainian artillery by a factor of five or seven to one was freely admitted by the Western propagandists as they pleaded for increased supplies to Kiev. They, nonetheless, issued casualty reports for the Russians that inverted the force correlation. It was assumed, obviously with reason, that the public was too lazy or too uninterested to do the arithmetic.

At one moment, the spin doctors in Washington, London and Berlin said that Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut made sense because it was pinning down Russian forces and giving time to the Ukrainians to train and position their men for the heralded “counter offensive” during which they would overrun Russian positions at chosen points in the 600 mile line of combat and drive a wedge through to the Sea of Azov, opening the way for recapture of Crimea. Those were grand words and ambitions to justify continued and ever rising Western military assistance to Kiev.

At another point, the spin doctors said it would be better if Ukraine stopped losing men in Bakhmut and launched instead that much vaunted counter-offensive. Now we were told that Bakhmut is just a Russian fantasy, that it has no strategic value.

In the past couple of weeks, the Russian command has issued daily reports on the progressive capture by Russian forces of Bakhmut, square kilometer after square kilometer. We were told they controlled 75%, then 80% and most recently more than 90% of the city proper while artillery bombardment of the remaining blocks of high rise residential buildings that were being used by Ukrainian defenders for their sniper attacks and intelligence reports on Russian troop movements pulverized everything in their path.

At this point, the attention of Western media defending truth against Russian disinformation was directed at the Ukrainian “successes” in recapturing settlements on the flanks of Bakhmut.  Just three days ago The New York Times was telling its readers that these “breakthroughs” by the Ukrainians put in jeopardy the Russian forces holding the city proper: they might be surrounded and compelled to surrender or die. The possibility that the offensives on the flanks were only intended to facilitate withdrawal of remaining Ukrainian soldiers from Bakhmut and were tolerated by the Russians to avoid bloody fights to the death – that possibility crossed no one’s mind at the NYT, it seems.

Midday yesterday, 20 May, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group which did most of the fighting for Bakhmut on the ground, claimed total victory. In the evening, President Vladimir Putin announced to the Russian public that Bakhmut was taken. Joyous messages of congratulations filled the internet message services in Russia as the broad public celebrated a victory as iconic as the Battle for Stalingrad.

Meanwhile, the defenders of the Western public against Russian “disinformation” were hard at work, straining their brains to find what to say. This morning’s New York Times still speaks of the battle for Bakhmut as undecided, pointing yet again to the Ukrainian hold on the flanks.

Given their losses in men and materiel defending Bakhmut, the surrender of the city to the Russians will be a great blow to Ukrainian fighting morale when it is finally admitted. So will the fate of their Commander in Chief General Zaluzhny who, according to Russian sources, has been hospitalized for the past two weeks and remains in critical condition after falling victim to a Russian strike on a provincial command center which killed most of the high officers around him. If nothing else, this speaks to the amazing success of Russian military intelligence directing their firepower.

Meanwhile, Western media attention to Ukraine is conveniently redirected at the nonstop travels of President Zalensky who went from his European tour on to the Middle East, where he attended the meeting of the Arab League, and thence via French military jet to the G7 gathering in Hiroshima where he held talks with fellow heads of state and joined them for the obligatory group photos. All the talk was about when the U.S. will formally give its consent to the dispatch of F16s to Kiev. For the disseminators of Western disinformation this is a wonderful distraction from a war that clearly is going badly for Kiev and in particular a distraction from the counter offensive that looks less likely with each passing day of Russian military strikes on the command centers and weapons stores of the Ukrainian side.

The plume of radioactive smoke and ash that rose from the Khmelnitsky store of British depleted uranium artillery shells in Western Ukraine after a Russian missile strike, just like the extensive damage to the Patriot air defense installation near Kiev by a Russian Kinzhal hypersonic missile tell us all what will be the fate of future Western arms deliveries to Ukraine. It is an interesting question how much longer the Ukrainian military or politicians will put up with their high flying, good life President while the country is well on its way to hell.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

May 21, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

NATO Is Panicking After Russia’s Kinzhal Hypersonic Missiles Smashed Kiev’s Patriots

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 18, 2023

The fake news that circulated earlier this month alleging that Kiev’s Patriots shot down one of Russia’s Kinzhal hypersonic missiles has become even more ridiculous in the days after since they’re now claiming that another six were supposedly downed during a recent strike. The Mainstream Media’s (MSM) laundering of these lies isn’t just due to them taking everything their Ukrainian proxies say at face value, but even includes their own military experts actively contributing to this disinformation campaign.

The US’ Patriots lack the technical capabilities to track and intercept hypersonic projectiles, but that isn’t anything for them to be embarrassed about since there doesn’t presently exist any air defense system in the world that could do this. The West’s problem is therefore one of perceptions, however, since the MSM hyped up their deployment to Ukraine to the point where the public expected that former Soviet Republic to become invulnerable to any Russian strikes.

The Kremlin was aware of the West’s soft power interests in transferring this equipment there, hence why it cleverly decided to include several hypersonic missiles in its latest spree of strikes against military targets, knowing that there was no way that they’d be intercepted and thus discrediting their opponents. Not only that, but they even managed to destroy five launchers and a multifunctional radar on 16 May according to the Russian Ministry of Defense’s report that was shared the day after.

Footage of that night’s strikes subsequently appeared on social media, after which those who shared such were detained by the Ukrainian secret police on the pretext that this could have helped Russia’s military-intelligence services. In reality, Kiev was left flustered after that same footage showed how many millions of dollars’ worth of air defense missiles were wasted in trying to shoot down the Kinzhals. The US also confirmed that the Patriots were indeed damaged but denied that any of them were destroyed.

Nevertheless, the public was able to see for themselves just how desperate Kiev was to intercept those hypersonic projectiles, and many interpreted America’s confirmation that the Patriots were damaged as a limited hangout to deflect from their suspicions that they were actually destroyed. 16 May will therefore be seen in hindsight as a pivotal turning point in popular perceptions since Russia’s claim that its Kinzhals smashed the Patriots is believed by a growing number of people after watching that footage.

This poses a major reputational problem for the West, which claims to be able to defend its people in the event of any contingency, especially the worst-case one of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine turning into a direct conventional conflict between those two. Nobody who saw Tuesday night’s footage and heard about Russia’s achievement the day after can say with confidence that they still believe in the viability of their side’s air defenses since they’ve now been exposed as worthless by the Kinzhals.

The Kremlin currently wields a monopoly on this game-changing military technology after being the first country in the world to produce these missiles and then use them in battle, which means that it can pierce NATO’s Patriot-centric air defenses with ease in the worst-case scenario described above. The preceding observation about the US’ struggle to compete with Russia in this respect isn’t so-called “propaganda” like skeptics might claim but was confirmed by The Hill two months ago.

In their piece on 14 March explaining “Why the US is going full throttle on hypersonic missiles”, they wrote that “The United States is opening the throttle in its push to develop and procure hypersonic missiles after falling behind key foreign adversaries China and Russia in the race to field a potentially game-changing defense system”, adding that “the Defense Department has not fielded the weapons yet, and there remain challenges in the industrial production base and with testing infrastructure.”

Most damning of all, The Hill also informed their audience that “Not even the U.S. currently has an adequate defense system to take down hypersonic missiles. Air defense systems, such as Patriots and Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, are capable of taking down ballistic missiles that reach hypersonic speeds, but only over small areas.” That “politically inconvenient” fact not only discredits this month’s disinformation campaign, but also reaffirms Russia’s military dominance in the hypersonic domain.

Simply put, the Kremlin has full confidence that its Kinzhals would successfully reach all their targets in the worst-case scenario of a conventional NATO-Russian war, thus meaning that Moscow could in theory destroy the West’s nuclear second-strike capabilities if it carried out a first strike to preempt its enemies’. Its achievement the other day in Kiev where it destroyed five Patriot launchers and a multifunctional radar sent shivers down the spines of NATO’s warmongers and sobered them up to what they’re facing.

Any thoughts they might have had of trying to “Balkanize” Russia by conventional military means as a last resort upon the failure of their Ukrainian-fronted Hybrid War to this end instantly evaporated since they realized that it could provoke the Kremlin into destroying the West out of self-defense. To be sure, some of their second-strike capabilities would likely remain intact and thus be used against Russia, but the point is that Moscow could first inflict unacceptable damage to them if it’s pushed to do so.

Despite popular claims to the contrary from many of the Alt-Media Community’s top influencers, NATO isn’t “insane” in the sense of its leaders being willing to sacrifice themselves as long as their deaths resulted in dismembering Russia. Like all elites, they want to live as long as possible, hence why they’ll now think twice about indulging in the neoconservative fantasy of resorting to conventional means to “Balkanize” that targeted Great Power upon the failure of their proxy war on it through Ukraine to that end.

In practical terms, this suggests that they might be more amenable to a ceasefire once Kiev’s NATO-backed counteroffensive ends by this winter, thus raising the prospects that the upcoming African-led peace mission to Russia and Ukraine could earn their approval and lead to Kiev agreeing to these terms. The leading Anglo-American Axis within NATO could never endorse the parallel Chinese-led initiative so it therefore follows that the African-led one could give them a “face-saving” way to support a ceasefire.

It’s premature to predict this latest initiative’s success or lack therefore, but the relevance of this development to the present piece is that it can help give NATO an “exit strategy” from this proxy war after its leaders just realized how suicidal it would be to escalate it to a conventional one. Russia’s Kinzhals smashed their Patriots in Kiev, which proved that the Kremlin can pierce the West’s air defenses with ease, thus representing both a military game-changer and possibly even a diplomatic one soon too.

May 18, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Kiev’s air defense capability threatened

By Lucas Leiroz | May 18, 2023

The recent successful Russian attacks against strategic Ukrainian targets made clear the reality that was already reported by many military experts: the Ukrainian air defense is  vulnerable. Despite all the Western aid and the incessant delivery of weapons, Kiev seems unable to improve its defense system, continuing to be an easy target for Russia’s incisive combat actions. Tracking and shooting down Russian missiles and drones has become difficult work for Ukrainian forces, which are still failing to stop Russian weapons from reaching their targets.

However, this news coexists with Western-Ukrainian propaganda that Russian hypersonic missiles are being shot down by Kiev. Although mainstream media outlets support the Ukrainian narrative, in recent months these same newspapers have reported the weakness of the regime’s armed forces on several occasions, therefore there is a contradiction in data.

For example, in March, experts pointed out in an article published in The Washington Post that Kiev was suffering from a severe shortage of ammunition for its air defense systems. At the time, analysts said that Ukrainian forces could become absolutely unable to protect their airspace against Russian missiles and UAVs, leaving military facilities “open” to enemy attacks. Experts also warned at the time of the serious lack of qualified military personnel, stating that most of the experienced Ukrainian military had already been neutralized in the first year of the operation, leaving now few able soldiers to manage the country’s defense systems.

Even more pessimistic forecasts were exposed by the Financial Times, which also commented on the critical situation of the Ukrainian air defense. Experts have warned that the number of anti-missiles launched to intercept a Russian attack is usually double the number of Russian missiles or drones, in order to increase the chances of success. A side effect of this is to overspend artillery ammunition, accelerating depletion.

“[…] Officials said the continuing need to defend against Russian missile and drone attacks had systematically depleted Ukraine’s stockpiles — a warning backed up by US intelligence documents leaked online this spring that suggested Kyiv might run out of ammunition for five critical air defence systems. According to documents reviewed by the Financial Times, the US assessed in late February that Ukraine’s ability to protect its troops on the front lines would be ‘completely reduced’ by May 23″, the Financial Times article reads.

Forbes also reported on the Ukrainian situation. In an article published on the site in April, experts said the imminent shortage of missiles was the main problem for Ukraine’s air defense. At the time, it was warned that, in addition to having dozens of their systems destroyed by Russian attacks, the Ukrainians would also be suffering from the absence of 9M38 Buk missiles. This equipment is produced in Russia, with Ukrainian stocks remaining from Soviet times. The depletion of these missiles, therefore, becomes an even more worrying issue because Kiev’s sponsors do not manufacture this weapon, which is compatible with the Soviet-era Buk systems that Ukraine has.

One solution found was the American supply of Raytheon RIM-7 Sea Sparrows, which, although different, use the same radar guidance as the 9M38. With proper technical adaptations, these American weapons could be launched using Soviet Buk systems. However, despite promises started in January, so far Washington has not been able to organize a program of constant supply of Raytheon RIM-7 Sea Sparrow missiles, thus preventing Kiev’s air defense from being re-established. Furthermore, the need for technical handling and adaptation of these weapons to Soviet systems could be a problem, considering the lack of qualified military personnel, as pointed out by the Post. With that, Ukraine’s hopes for recovery become even more complicated.

Another big outlet commenting on this problem was Deutsche Welle, which in an article published on April 22 made it clear that Ukraine is not capable of shooting down Russian guided bombs, being vulnerable to the air operations of Moscow’s forces. The newspaper at the time interviewed the representative of the Air Force of Ukraine, Yuri Ignat, who said that the systems used by his troops were not able to shoot down Russian equipment, with the need to receive new, more modern and efficient systems from the West.

As is well known, most of the Western media is extremely biased and propagandistic in its narrative of the conflict, always trying to make it seem like Kiev has the advantage over the Russians. When something negative for the regime is communicated, it is because there really is no way to ignore the situation and it becomes more convenient to report it in order to seek improvements – perhaps trying to pressure western authorities to send more help to change the scenario. This seems to have been the case in recent months regarding the Ukrainian air defense.

However, now the media work has again been “optimistic” about the Ukrainian defense. Media outlets repeated the regime’s propaganda that several Russian “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles were shot down by Ukrainian troops. In addition to no evidence of this being given, the narrative also contradicts everything that had been reported by the Western media (citing Ukrainian sources) in recent months, that the country’s air defenses were close to being disabled.

This contradictory information shows once again how the western media has been spreading lies about the conflict. Either the Ukrainian air defense is close to collapse, or it is able to shoot down “Kinzhal” missiles – there is no way to join both narratives. And the recent successful Russian air strikes across the conflict zone, neutralizing several strategic targets, already makes clear what is the correct information.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

May 18, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

WHY IS THE DOJ LYING ABOUT JACK TEIXEIRA?

By Larry Johnson | SONAR | May 11, 2023 

When CBS reporter Catherine Herridge posted the story about the DOJ claim that the alleged leaker of classified intelligence documents had a “cache of weapons and tactical gear surrounding his bed,” my first reaction was that the FBI was going all out to paint him as a right wing extremist with possible plans to carry out a mass shooting. Call me naive, but I never imagined that the DOJ and FBI could engage in such an easily disproven lie in such an important case.

Here is how the U.S. Government claim was reported:

Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member, was arrested earlier this month in connection with the leak of more than 100 top-secret military documents about the war in Ukraine and other national security issues.

An 18-page court filing submitted by federal prosecutors on Wednesday said that Teixeira had a gun locker two feet from his bed filled with an “arsenal” of weapons.

“In the gun locker were multiple weapons, including handguns, bolt-action rifles, shotguns, an AK-style high-capacity weapon, and a gas mask,” the prosecutors said.

Stash of “weapons?” Not quite. The “firearms” pictured in Jack’s room ARE NOT ACTUAL FIREARMS. These are AIR SOFT guns. All AIR SOFT guns are required by law to have an orange tip when sold to the public. Yes, they look realistic but they do not fire ammunition that can kill or maim. These “guns” fire a round plastic projectile that can leave a bruise. These faux firearms are used predominantly by guys who like to simulate the alleged thrill of combat without putting their lives or bodies in actual risk. The following videos explain the concept.

Judging from the “stash” in Jack’s room it appears he was an avid AIR SOFT guy. That’s why he had all the tactical gear. He would go to the woods or an AIR SOFT range and chase other guys, similarly armed, doing simulated combat. The evidence collected from Jack’s room in terms of the faux “firearms” picture tells us one thing for certain — the media are a bunch of lying bastards too lazy or too ignorant to actually do some legitimate reporting.

I would also like to know if the FBI accurately identified this so-called “weapons stash” as AIR SOFT and DOJ omitted the Bureau’s explanation or are the FBI agents on the case also morons? To reiterate my previous conclusion regarding Airman Teixeira — it appears he mishandled classified information as a stunt to show off to his chat room buddies. That is a far cry from being a dangerous psychopath training to shoot up a school or mall.

May 13, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Covid jabs the big picture: Part 1

Overview of evidence prior to rollout

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | May 10, 2023 

HART have been asked to submit evidence to module 3 of the Covid-19 Public Inquiry. That module is about the impacts on healthcare but we were specifically asked to include evidence around deaths in males aged 15-18 years of age and so provided an overview of the full impact these novel products have had on the healthcare system. What follows are some of the highlights. There will be three parts to this series. Here the evidence on what was known before rollout will be presented. Part two covers the evidence after rollout (excluding deaths) and part three the evidence on deaths.

It is worth remembering how cautious people were about any novel products that might claim to prevent covid. In February 2020, Chris Whitty said,

“The rate limiting steps are late clinical trials for safety & efficacy, & then manufacturing. For a disease with a low (for the sake of argument 1%) mortality a vaccine has to be very safe so the safety studies can’t be shortcut. So important for the long run.”

He was right.

The belief that vaccines were safe had led to a circular belief that vaccines required fewer safety checks than other novel therapies. Novel vaccines take a decade or more to go through safety checks. Flu vaccines don’t. These novel drugs were treated like flu vaccines for regulatory purposes.

The regulators failed us in numerous ways as set out in The Perseus Report.  Examples include:

  1. Companies were allowed to skip testing for gene and cancer toxicity and even studies showing how much spike is produced, for how long and where in the body it reaches. Pfizer said these studies were “not considered necessary.” Even while their trial info sheet said “Due to the urgent need for a vaccine against Covid-19, with agreement from the MHRA, some of the tests usually required for a newly manufactured vaccine have been modified, in order to make the vaccine available more quickly for assessment.”
  2. They did not demand these studies were done after rushed emergency approvals either. No human studies were carried out to see what happened to the synthetic modified RNA – no-one knows how long it takes to be removed from the body. There is evidence that in some it lasts between at least 28 days and 4 months in the blood.
  3. The regulators let the pharma companies get away with terminating the placebo arm of the study after ~3months by offering them all the novel products.This was despite us knowing that narcolepsy caused by Pandemrix vaccine took on average of 8 months to be diagnosed.
  4. The lipid nanoparticles that deliver the modified synthetic mRNA are themselves toxic. This mechanism of delivery was shelved in 2016 for gene therapy to treat inherited genetic conditions because of the multiple doses needed. It was claimed it could still be used in vaccine technology because that only requires one dose…
  5. The viral vector used for delivering the AstraZeneca DNA message was reported in 2007 to cause platelet activation, which can lead to blood clots.
  6. There were many more points made including failings in investigating deaths, failing to listen to patients, problems with manufacturing processes and problems with accountability and governance all of which are in the report.

Since 2005 there have been concerns about the regulator losing “sight of the need to protect and promote public health.” The CEO of the MHRA, Dame June Raine, claims the MHRA is now an “enabler” not a “watchdog.” Even before there was political capture there were pre-existing conflicts of interest.

The spike protein is the most toxic part of the virus. It damages lungs, vessel walls and causes clots. Part of the sequence is identical to a region of a bacterial sequence that can bind directly to a particular type of white blood cells resulting in lethal cytokine storms. This part of the sequence was heavily mutated in the Omicron variant making it less lethal. However, even the most recent injections contained the original Chinese spike sequence with this dangerous sequence.

The manufacturers decided to use the WHOLE chinese spike sequence rather than parts of it, or peptides, which have been shown to be safer for vaccine design. Some manufacturers modified the spike so that it could not bind to the receptor and enter a cell. This might have reduced some harm from receptor binding but not from the action of spike within cells. The spike was delivered into cells so spike was produced INSIDE the cells in the first place. AstraZeneca did not modify the sequence. From November 2020 it was clear that parts of AZ spike could be shed outside of cells.

The Pfizer and Moderna clinical trial data shows a higher rate of serious adverse reactions from the treatment group (12.5 per 10,000) than any reduction in serious events from covid (2.3 and 6.4 per 10,000 for Pfizer and Moderna respectively). Yet the claim of 90%+ efficacy was all that was reported and all that Dame June Raine claimed she needed to see in order to approve the drugs.

AZ issued a press release claiming 100% efficacy against hospitalisation and death after only two severe covid hospitalisations and one death in the placebo arm. This claim was repeated widely and was believed.

At the time, the priority was to protect the old and vulnerable who accounted for 98% of covid deaths. There were going to be 15 million jabs to freedom:

The evidence presented is damning. The failures of the regulators to adequately test the safety and efficacy of these novel vaccines are shocking. The circular belief that vaccines required fewer safety checks than other novel therapies is a dangerous assumption that has put the lives of millions at risk. The fact that serious adverse reactions were higher in the treatment group than any reduction in serious events from covid is deeply concerning. We must demand accountability from the regulators and demand that the safety and wellbeing of the public is always the top priority, not profit or political gain. There was total regulatory failure in allowing these products to be given to anyone, which was compounded by not withdrawing them promptly once evidence these issues were clinically relevant became clear.

May 10, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

NBC Host Worries No One Will Be Able to “Police” What Tucker Carlson Says if He Moves Show to Twitter

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | May 10, 2023

NBC host Tom Costello is worried that no one will be able to “police” what Tucker Carlson says if he moves his show to Twitter.

Oh no, the absolute horror.

The former Fox News host posted a video to Twitter yesterday announcing that he would move his content to the platform owned by Elon Musk.

“There aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech. The last big one remaining in the world is Twitter,” said Carlson, adding, “You can’t have a free society if people aren’t allowed to say what they think is true.”

The legacy media reacted by panicking that Carlson will go uncensored.

NBC host Costello accused Twitter of peddling “misinformation, disinformation, all out lies” (information that doesn’t fortify regime narratives) before expressing his real fear.

“Will anybody be able to police what Carlson says, or is this the point, it’s just a free for all?” he asked former CNN host Brian Stelter.

Stelter responded by claiming that Tucker’s increased presence on Twitter will cement the platform as a “right-wing website.”

Because God forbid someone be allowed to speak freely without having their activity ‘policed’ by censors – we can’t have that!

Yesterday, CNN faced ridicule for describing Carlson, who at his peak enjoyed a viewership of over 5 million people, as a “right wing extremist.”

Carlson moving full time to Twitter might be a way to circumvent the fact that Fox is trying to keep him locked in a contract until 2025, preventing him from being signed up by other broadcasters and freezing him out of the 2024 election.

Elon Musk responded to the announcement by clarifying that Twitter and Carlson have not signed “a deal of any kind whatsoever,” and that the former Fox host will be supported by user subscriptions and advertising revenue.

May 10, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Why American and Kiev regime media keep insisting Russian ‘Kinzhal’ hypersonic missile was shot down?

By Drago Bosnic | May 10, 2023

For approximately a week, the Kiev regime has been claiming it shot down one of Russia’s hypersonic missiles, specifically the 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal”. According to the unsubstantiated (to say the least) claims, on May 4, air defense units deployed in and around Kiev shot down one of the air-launched hypersonic missiles allegedly fired by Russian Aerospace Forces. Various local sources published images supposedly “proving” the incident took place. In the first two days, the news went largely unreported by non-Ukrainian sources, but on May 6, CNN, the infamous neoliberal mouthpiece and the flagship of the mainstream propaganda machine among news networks, broke the story in the political West.

According to CNN, commander of the Neo-Nazi junta’s air force, three-star General Mykola Oleshchuk, announced in a Telegram post that “a Russian ‘Kinzhal’ [commonly designated as Kh-47M2 by various media sources] was inbound until being successfully intercepted using American ‘Patriot’ missiles”. The intercept supposedly took place on Thursday night, with the Kiev regime forces claiming this is the first time the much-touted US “Patriot” SAM (surface-to-air missile) system shot down a target, and no less than a hypersonic one. The aforementioned images published by various sources show an object which indeed seems to have been hit by the “Patriot’s” kinetic kill vehicle.

“Yes, we shot down the ‘unique’ Kinzhal,” General Oleshchuk stated, adding: “It happened during the night time attack on May 4 in the skies of the Kyiv region.”

Oleshchuk claims that “the missile was launched by a MiG-31K jet from the Russian territory and was then shot down” with a missile fired by a battery of “Patriot” SAM systems. In a separate statement from Neo-Nazi junta’s air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat, given to Kiev-based Channel 24, he was boasting about the US-made “Patriot’s” supposedly “proven” capabilities:

“They were saying that the ‘Patriot’ is an outdated American weapon, and Russian weapons are the best in the world. Well, there is confirmation that it effectively works against even a super hypersonic missile… … successful interception of the ‘Kinzhal’ is a slap in the face for Russia.”

However, no military analyst worth his salt has ever taken these claims even remotely seriously. The images presented by the Kiev regime show an object that doesn’t even resemble the air-launched hypersonic “Kinzhal”. While it remains uncertain what sort of weapon the Neo-Nazi junta forces shot down, images show what looks like a KAB-1500L or perhaps a BetAB-500 ShP, both of which are laser-guided bombs. It’s also unclear which of “Patriot’s” several versions were used. The Kiev regime is known to have received one of the PAC-2 variants (MiM-104C, D and F), all of which have proven unable to shoot down even the old Iraqi “Scud” ballistic missiles during the First Gulf War in 1991.

There are reports that one of the newer PAC-3 versions has been delivered as well, but these claims are yet to be supported by any actual evidence. What’s more, this variant is also nowhere near the capabilities to shoot down even older supersonic missiles the Russian Aerospace Forces have been using extensively, let alone a maneuvering hypersonic missile such as the 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal”. On the other hand, even basic knowledge of how physics works makes Western and Kiev regime claims ridiculous. The images show that the Russian weapon was struck by the aforementioned kinetic kill vehicle, which in the PAC-2 variant flies at approximately 4000 km per hour.

The 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal’s” speed ranges from over 12,000 km per hour to almost 16,000 km per hour. If we were to imagine an interceptor missile flying at 4000 km per hour hitting another missile flying three or four times faster than that, can anyone really believe there would be anything more than a bunch of sparks, let alone a wreckage of any kind? Worse yet, the alleged “Russian ‘Kinzhal’ hypersonic missile” fell to the ground in a relatively good condition and was then even photographed and presented as supposed “evidence”. So, again, if nothing more than basic physics is taken into account, the claims become extremely difficult to even consider, let alone take at face value.

Even some Kiev regime media, such as The Kyiv Independent, almost immediately refuted the claims. Only a day after the incident, this outlet published that the Kiev regime forces have denied shooting down the “Kinzhal” over the capital city, because there were neither MiG-31K/I strike fighters nor 9-A-7660 “Kinzhals” in the air that night. However, this didn’t stop mainstream propaganda outlets from parroting the story. Considering the fact that the political West and its Kiev puppets are primarily fighting an infowar, this is the only viable explanation as to why they keep insisting that a Russian hypersonic missile was shot down.

It was only in late April that the Neo-Nazi junta confirmed the delivery of its first “Patriot” batteries from the US, Germany and the Netherlands. The system has had an atrocious track record against any sort of target, be it the Iraqi “Scuds” over 30 years ago or Houthi/Iranian drones nowadays. On the other hand, the political West is decades behind Russia in hypersonic weapons development, meaning that this propaganda story accomplishes at least two objectives – promotes US-made air defenses after decades of humiliating failures and “tarnishes” the reputation of Russian hypersonic missiles. The previous is also aimed to help the sales of US systems, just like the hype about the alleged successes of the HIMARS.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

May 10, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Bloomberg Wants The West To Punish African States Over Their Preferred Security Partners

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 8, 2023

Bloomberg’s demand for the West to punish African states over their preferred security partners is extremely condescending. Opinion columnist Bobby Ghosh published a piece about this over the weekend urging to “Make Russia’s Wagner Group a Pariah in Africa”, to which end he’s lobbying for the US and EU to designate it as a terrorist organization so that its clients there can then be sanctioned. This suggests that the West knows what’s better for African states’ security than their own governments do.

According to Ghosh, Wagner is only useful for “reinforc[ing] military rule” in “despot[ic]” states and “disproportionately targeting civilians” in its anti-terrorist operations. In exchange, it supposedly bleeds local partners dry by extracting their resources. He thus predicts that “The arrival of fresh legions of Wagner mercenaries in Africa will make it harder for the West to nudge military governments back toward democracy, and to prevent democratic governments from going in the other direction.”

The reality is altogether different as could have been expected considering how often Mainstream Media (MSM) outlets like Ghosh’s publish the exact opposite of the truth in pursuit of the West’s interests. “Russia’s Newfound Appeal To African Countries Is Actually Quite Easy To Explain” since it simply boils down to Wagner’s “Democratic Security” expertise. This refers to its counter-Hybrid Warfare tactics and strategies that ensure its partners’ sovereignty in the face of related threats from the West.

Its earlier success in the Central African Republic (CAR) inspired Mali’s revolutionary anti-imperialist government to follow in that nearby country’s footsteps. Just last week, neighboring Burkina Faso’s interim leader declared that his state is in a “strategic alliance” with Russia too despite denying that Wagner is on the ground helping the national forces fight terrorism. In all three cases, these Russian-friendly governments enjoy genuine grassroots support for striving to restore their sovereignty.

This means that Ghosh’s demand for the West to designate the CAR and Mali’s Wagner partners as terrorists in order to then punish them with sanctions is anti-democratic, as is the potential deterrent effect that this could have on that group’s cooperation with Burkina Faso and other countries. So long as any given security relationship doesn’t occur at the expense of a third party’s legitimate interests, then there shouldn’t be any pressure put upon either side for their ties with one another.

Wagner is always invited by African authorities to assist their armed forces and hasn’t ever intervened without their permission. Allegations of it committing war crimes are part of the US’ Hybrid War against that group, which was detailed at length by Politico a few days after Ghosh’s piece and analyzed here. Whether by coincidence or collusion, his article advances America’s information warfare interests, with its timing being extra curious since it in hindsight preconditions his audience to accept the US’ narratives.

Regardless of his speculative ties with its military-intelligence services, there’s no denying that the condescending way in which he addresses Africans is very offensive. It’s up to their countries as equal members of the international community to decide for themselves how best to ensure their security and who to partner with to that end, not any third parties like the US, let alone MSM figures like Ghosh. Meddling of the sort that Bloomberg just attempted only further discredits the West in Africans’ eyes.

May 8, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Scientists Uncover the Role of Undersea Volcanoes in Climate Change – But the Media Don’t Want to Know

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MAY 7, 2023

The recent doubling of known underwater volcanoes is a very significant geological discovery, but it has been largely ignored in mainstream media. It is the latest example of how the promotion of human-caused climate change has led to the downplaying of any science news that runs the risk of opening discussion about the natural forces surrounding the constantly changing climate. A group of oceanographers led by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego identified in total 19,325 new volcanoes, or seamounts, to add to the existing known total of 24,643.

Erupting volcanoes under the sea produce huge quantities of carbon dioxide and must play a part in pushing warming water and nutrients around the surrounding areas, with possible effects on currents and surrounding marine life. Some scientists believe that they play an important part in ocean mixing and have a role in determining long-term climate. The science writer Jo Nova observes that climate modellers take a different view, since they believe all unexplained warming is due to CO2. With a hint of sarcasm, she added: “The Pacific Ocean cycles are the largest driver of climate on Earth, but we ‘know’ as only high priests can, that volcanoes we’ve never studied definitely had no role in it.”

Almost all mainstream media seem to have ignored the story, bar, so far as I can tell from a Google search, The U.K. Sun and Newsweek in the U.S. Since the story broke, the BBC has led its specialist climate page with a variety of clickbait Net Zero stories, noting a recent ‘record’ single day temperature in Spain, a query as to whether climate change is “killing” Australian wine, the use of kitchen fumes to heat a restaurant, and a suggestion that life in the ocean ’twilight’ zone is at risk due to warming. Keen climate fact-check attackers Reuters and Agence France-Presse (AFP) appear quiet on the matter, as do the Guardian, Washington PostNew York Times and CNN.

Curiously, the BBC’s volcanophobia seems a recent condition. In 2015, it ran a story titled ‘Underwater volcanoes discovered off Australia’. The story said that a grand total of four extinct seamounts had been identified near Sydney. Volcano expert Richard Arculus is reported to have told AFP that, “every time we turn the spotlight on the sea floor we see things that we’ve never seen before”.

Only 20% of the ocean floor has been mapped by sonar, and these latest discoveries arise from improvements in the gravity data from satellite altimetry. These allow scientist to gain much more information about the topography of the sea floor. Scientists speculate that there could be many thousands of seamounts still to be discovered. Jo Nova reports that the second largest volcano in the solar system is not to be found on the Jupiter moon Io, but 1,000 miles east of Japan. It is the size of the British Isles. In January 2022, a massive seamount explosion 40 miles off the Tonga coast sent tsunami waves crashing around the region.

The Scripps scientists stress that “seamounts are valuable characteristics of the ocean floor since they provide insight on many of the Earth’s geological, oceanographical and ecological cycles and processes”. In addition they note that ocean floor levels have an important effect on ocean circulation, with large seafloor features such as ridges and plateaus acting as “barriers” that inhibit deep cold water to mix with the warmer waters of the ocean surface. Recent studies are said to suggest that seamounts can have an influence on ocean circulation, which can help scientists better understand the uptake of heat and carbon dioxide in the ocean. Heat transfers between ocean and atmosphere, and the movements from equatorial regions to the poles, are difficult if not impossible to fully plot, but they play a vital part in regulating short-term weather and longer term climate around the world.

The role of seamounts could cause warming or cooling, we simply don’t know. But only climate models – the ‘high priests’ – have all the answers, and they ignore all the effects of seamounts, particularly the thousands yet to be discovered. The lack of interest in the media about this latest discovery is indicative of how much geology, chemistry, physics and other scientific work is effectively off-limits under the settled climate change guidelines. It is difficult not to conclude that such protection is given, lest the unproven hypothesis of overwhelming human involvement is challenged.

The Daily Sceptic has noted on a number of occasions that over the last seven decades there has been little or no warming in Antarctica. According to a recent paper, sea ice has “modestly expanded” and warming has been “nearly non-existent” over much of the ice sheet. But there has been some warming in one spot, over on the west side of the continent. Carbon dioxide is well mixed in the atmosphere so it is a valid scientific question to ask why it only warms the surface in this one patch? An alternative explanation might note the existence of a chain of volcanoes in the area. In 2017, scientists discovered 91 volcanoes in the West Antarctica Rift System. It brought the number of volcanoes located in the area to 138. The heights ranged from 300 to 12,600 ft, with the tallest as high as Mount Fuji.

The more we learn about the geography of the planet and the science behind the chaotic processes of the oceans and atmosphere, the less we really comprehend how climate evolves. So we rely on the flawed inputs and outputs of basic climate models to convince us we are heading for climate Armageddon, and only a top-down, collectivist Net Zero solution can save us from our folly.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

May 7, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment